Alex Pustelnyk

ICYMI over the weekend: A deep dive into the connections Jeffrey Epstein had with the hacking community

Kendrick Lamar's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show YouTube video by NFL

If the Super Bowl was your first listening to Kendrick Lamar and you had trouble hearing, it’s not your fault! His microphone was too low during the first half of the concert. They remixed it in YouTube recording, which will allow you to hear why he is a generational talent. youtu.be/KDorKy-13ak

‘Catastrophic’ layoffs hit foreign aid groups amid Trump admin funding freeze Thousands of U.S. workers in the foreign development field are being furloughed or laid off, as the industry coffers run dry.

Latest with Carmen Paun: The US development sector — which carries out USAID contracts overseas — is being decimated by the pause in foreign aid by the Trump administration. Thousands in the U.S. will be laid off, and it may take years to recover: www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

A sad moment for journalism. In High School, I read a wide smattering of opinion columnists and Krugman was on constant rotation. I’ve disagreed with him as often as I’ve agreed. Legacy media continues to shoot itself in the foot by ignoring controversy. I look forward to reading Krugman’s substack

Only one way to know for sure, anyone want to split a $2000+ GPU with me? 😂

*inequality

* RTA of 1934! Excuse me. Dates are hard :)

Trade Wars: The Collapse of America's Free Trade Consensus Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump held up Carrier, an air conditioning and heating company, as a symbol of the plight of American manufacturing, buffeted by free trade deals tha...

For more on the history of free trade in the last century, I love this article by Aaron Cavin. Wish I knew about it when I used to TA on this subject in grad school! origins.osu.edu/article/trad...

Latin America now boasts some of the best universities in the world, while China and the EU will provide promising trade partners. For the first time since 1945, the U.S.’s role in the world economy may now rest in the actions of Beijing, Brussels, and indeed… Bogota rather than D.C.

Furthermore, the world has changed dramatically since the United States utilized reciprocal tariffs and capital controls to crush the import substitution policies of left-leaning leaders during the Cold War.

We’re now in unchartered waters. While it’s clear that free trade has done little to improve the lives of American workers, it’s less clear that free trade is the superseding cause of growing equality in the United States. The successes of Mexico, China, Brazil, and the EU prove strong counterpoints

In response to Smoot-Hawley, FDR sponsored the Reciprocal Trade Act of 1932, which gave the President the power to negotiate tariffs to further the U.S.’s strategic interests. Call it a funny twist of history, but it’s the legacy of this act which now authorizes Trump to pursue his trade agenda.

The recent move by the Trump administration to place tariffs on Colombia, and possibly Canada and Mexico, marks one of the greatest departures from the U.S. free trade consensus since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 spurred its arrival.

I am now on @bsky.app! I’m very excited for the future of decentralized social media. Social media has come a long way in democratizing and decentralizing information. We must consciously choose to promote smart-moderated platforms in this space, rather than walled-ecosystems controlled by a few.