Sasuke

The biggest and most influential union in Norway just declared they're in support of an economic boycott of Israel:

There were several levels to the boycott of Israel when the LO [Norway's biggest union] Congress voted today.

The majority resolution on a boycott of Israel prevailed.

It reads as follows:

"If the occupation does not end by September 2025, as the UN General Assembly has demanded, LO will work to ensure that Norway takes the initiative for an international economic boycott."

The resolution that prevailed also states that the Petroleum Fund, Norwegian companies and financial institutions "must refrain from trade and investments in companies that contribute to the maintenance of the occupation."

everything that gets a grade should be done in class

I'm a language teacher at a European high school, and this is what we've been doing for almost three years now. All graded writing happens at school with limited internet access, and (almost) all verbal assessments are conversation based with no aids. Most subjects have also moved away from homework entirely.

It takes up a lot of time that could be spent teaching, but I actually think it's more fair to the students than what we did before.

Deutsche’s Dollar Downer (Financial Times, published Apr 9)

Quoting from George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank:

The market is rapidly de-dollarizing. It is remarkable that international dollar funding markets and cross-currency basis remains well behaved. In a typical crisis environment the market would be hoarding dollar liquidity to secure funding for its underlying US asset base. This dollar imbalance is what ultimately results in a triggering of the Fed swap lines. Dynamics here seem to be very different: the market has lost faith in US assets, so that instead of closing the asset-liability mismatch by hoarding dollar liquidity it is actively selling down the US assets themselves. We wrote a few weeks ago that US administration policy is encouraging a trend towards de-dollarization to safeguard international investors from a weaponization of dollar liquidity. We are now seeing this play out in real-time at a faster pace than even we would have anticipated. It remains to be seen how orderly this process can remain. A credit event in the global financial system that threatens the provision of short-term dollar liquidity is the point of greatest vulnerability which would turn dollar dynamics more positive.

i'm using deepseek rn to break down the song word by word to practice my chinese lol

China slaps retaliatory tariffs of 84% on U.S. goods in response to Trump

China’s Office of the Tariff Commission of the State Council said that tariffs on U.S. goods will rise to 84% from 34% starting on April 10, according to a translation of the announcement. This comes after the latest U.S. tariff hike — which brings levies on Chinese goods to more than 100% — took effect at the start of April 9.