@johnelalamo old school!

@yuki2501 they served free potions at the place we had lunch yesterday.

neoconservativism first time as tragedy second time as ???

as an ersatz version of the song “Barbara Ann” goes through my head, i feel like nothing has changed in my long lifetime.

“It isn't the people who use the term who are expected to be uncomfortable, after all… don't expect a report any time soon confronting the uncomfortable truth that white ex-public schoolboys are disproportionately involved in City fraud and suggesting that Eton and Harrow have questions to answer.“ #DavidTimoney https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2025/06/uncomfortable-truths.html

This post now includes AI features.

@Mikal @scott you’re not alone!

“There is a popular myth out there that public agencies ought to be able to finance themselves with user fees. Unfortunately this principle is never applied consistently. It is used to target institutions disliked by the Right.” @maxbsawicky https://sawicky.substack.com/p/get-on-the-bus-gus

re-upping that i think what a lot of politics-knowers describe as “status quo bias” is not that at all, but rather an artifact of an electoral system that channels punishment for bad action much more effectively than rewards for good action. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/24/wreckresentative-democracy-secret-congress-and-bee-sting-theory/index.html

after seeing a lot of videos, i’ve come to the conclusion that blonde chick from Battlestar Galactica was perhaps the most prescient take on AI.

for people who live there and love it, NYC in fact has a lot of market power.

no matter how rich you are, there really isn’t anywhere else like it, particularly if you are an English speaker and your politics are antagonistic to European social democracy.

@realcaseyrollins Nondemocracies often are governed by minorities who do not forge consensus or make reciprocal compromises with opposing factions. Nondemocracies often do not tolerate political movements to exist, let alone win.

@lori you get to vote for cutting medicaid because that’s what your party wants to do but you evade the criticism that the effect will be to close hospitals that even some of your better-off / better enfranchised constituents rely upon.

the cost of stabilization fund is probably smaller than the medicaid cuts, so you can still claim net “savings” (although the costs in health will dwarf any financial savings, and the financial savings might be eaten by expensive mandatory ER care).

@isomorphismes not my self-conception, among that “we”!

a democracy progresses less by factions winning fights than by forging agreements encompassing mixes of consensus and reciprocal compromise.

i know that’s hard to imagine now that we’ve bifurcated into mirror image caricatures of ourselves.

maybe the reason for that spat with Trump is he was off his meds at the time.

X should brand its stablecoin, all of its financial products, “Starship”.

suppose you cut medicaid, but create a “stabilization fund” to hold hospitals harmless, prevent rural hospitals from shuttering.

all you’ve done is created income for hospitals without requiring—or even allowing—them to actually do the work of helping those who would have been medicaid recipients.

there is so much to be done that has to be done by people, and so many people doing little or doing a lot of little real value.

large language models have not changed this basic situation. we miss this because our current economy, lethargic with incrementalism, has a lot of people doing automatable work less valuable than less automatable work they might be doing.

now it’s based to be cringe and cringe to be based.