Maybe we will look back on this as the period of time that clarified for all of us that fossil fuels are truly over and post-WWII universalist liberalism is absolutely worth preserving because the alternative, the alternative is… this.
@ouguoc (thanks!)
huh. i missed the big anniversary like a couple of weeks ago, but https://interfluidity.com is twenty years old this month. i'm on a bit of a hiatus as my life is overwhelmed by other things, but i'm still blogging after all these years. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/archive.html
sometimes nostalgia is so painful i think it will burn a hole right through me.
"There is no channel to change, and you can’t rewind the action. Trump made his foolhardy decision and now we must live with the consequences." @jbouie https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/opinion/trump-hegseth.html
@Phil The SAVE act would require a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate, plus another photo ID. Given that politicians (of any stripe) have incentives to manage the distribution of the franchise, creating barriers to obtaining a passport that disproportionately affect those likely not to vote your way becomes incentivized. 1/
@Phil Of course, it's not watertight. Sufficiently resourced and motivated citizens will overcome the barrier. People can get birth certificates. (But incentives will emerge to shape who retrieves those how easily as well; a saving grace with birth certificates is that state and federal politician incentives may not be aligned.) 2/
@Phil (Birth certificates also won't work for people — including many married women — who no longer retain their birth names.) 3/
@Phil For most people, especially for lower-effort potential voters, the passport will be to go-to proof-of-citizenship. People gain privileges beyond overcoming prerequisites of voting from a passport, so it's what not-super-motivated voters would choose, if they are going to deal with the bureaucracy of getting a new form of ID. 4/
@Phil So politicians will be able to statistically shape the electorate — to some degree, imperfectly — by monkeying with passport procedures in ways that make it easier for those they consider likely to vote for their side and harder for those who'd vote for the other side. Yes, it’ll be very leaky, but since our electoral system frequently yields (as its structural equilibrium) near 50:50 elections, small manipulations have big upsides. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7687.html /fin
@light @ntnsndr @KevinCarson1 not exactly what you are after, but ESOPs are a related idea https://www.esop.org/
i worry about whether the SAVE act would create incentives for politicians to make it more difficult for (some) people to get passports. international travel is good for people and for the polity.
if this decade we discovered that Bond villains are real, i'm holding out hope for next decade and Santa Claus.
“AI might displace some coders, but it won’t make priests redundant. Fostering such jobs might require more investment in soft skills, and perhaps even in humanities’ subjects.” #ChrisDillow https://chrisdillow.substack.com/p/wanted-a-new-blair
war is a continuation of policy by idiotic means.
you’ve got to admit he’s just rather definitively addressed affordability.
i know someone said this better a few days ago and i think i even reposted it but my god i’ll never get over the US sabotaging its renewables industry and doubling down on fossil fuel dependency only to force fossil fuel prices sky high. it’s like thanatos, a national death wish.
putting storefronts in every phone was about as good an idea as a technology that makes sure there is always a fresh, open bag of cheetos at hand in every room.
If accusations like the US intentionally destroyed a desalination plant prove true, elite accountability will become a national security imperative. Rehabilitation into multilateral security arrangements will require repudiation of the administration’s crimes, and imposition of a credible deterrent.
how much of it is policy uncertainty kneecapping investment and expansion? how much of it is AI-related labor minimization? what else?
Had US v. Trump not happened, would Trump have launched a full-scale war (arguably two) without some kind of Congressional fig leaf?
it’s not just a middle finger, it’s homeopathic homicide.
@artlung amending!