[New Post] Unfinished https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/10098.html
the welfare cost of drugs not taken due to price is pure deadweight loss, the pharma monopolist enjoys no profit, the potential patient suffers.
if glps are as potentially beneficial as they seem so far to be, the welfare cost of glp pricing must be rather astonishing.
from @jbouie https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/28/opinion/trump-law-lawlessness-presidency-congress.html
Text: It matters a great deal then that Trump does not see himself as a steward of a democracy. The country, to him, is little more than a large and lucrative piece of real estate. And his obligations appear to extend only as far as his pecuniary interests. His ideological obsession with whitening the United States can be seen in terms of his fundamentally aesthetic preoccupations. What else is mass deportation than the effort of a lifelong landlord to remove the people he thinks degrade the value of the property?
“the one i’m using now it’s covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame” https://youtu.be/A0k5vpsWb4g
four really transformative technologies of this decade: glp-1s, solar/battery tech, mRNA vaccines, and ai.
we devote much too little attention to three of them.
(thanks @louisevans for the mRNA reminder!)
What’s the counterfactual AI build-out under a Harris administration? Similar scale and speed? Similar stock market / IPO plans? Or something very different?
if you do good things without charging for them, are you just a sucker?
"A Critical History of the Cost-Benefit State: Part 1" by #NathanTankus https://www.crisesnotes.com/a-critical-history-of-the-cost-benefit-state-part-1/?ref=notes-on-the-crises-newsletter
// excellent on the function rather than fantasies of ubiquitized quantitative analysis in government
social media is a reminder that the choice has always been introversion or misanthropy. only with peephole to the stupid human tricks in your pocket 24/7, it’s hard even for introverts to choose sufficient isolation.
one must await the consent of the dead.
there must surely be a military-technical solution to constipation.
i am an awesomist, which means i believe in things that are awesome and all the things that awesome people believe.
you, of course, are free to disagree with me.
"immense wealth and control of information in a small number of tech-industry figures whose personal interests do not align with the public interest." #NicholasGrossman https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-plausible-techno-dystopian-future/
// the true alignment problem
If the Democrats take Congress, they should pass amazing, sweeping, exciting bills for Trump to veto. They can nuke the filibuster, just to pass bills that Trump will veto, for which they'll lack a veto-proof majority. 1/
You see a lot of comparisons to Trump's dismal approval now and Truman's in 1946, which lead to a midterm electoral rout. But the resulting do-nothing Congress gave him back the presidency in 1948. 2/
Famous image showing Harry Truman holding up a Chicago Daily Tribune front page with the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN", published prematurely to describe the election Truman won.
If nothing is done, let that be on Trump, not Congress. /fin
maybe we could convert data centers into dead malls.
"By starting from a position of 'respect for the problem', and treating public consent as one of the essential inputs to an infrastructure project…[France] deal[s] with the political problem at the level of the political system, rather than trying to shift it into the legal and regulatory framework" #DanDavies https://backofmind.substack.com/p/the-mirage-of-thatcherfuturism
i tried to get over myself i just ended up with my head up my ass.
i think it’s best to be obtuse and not perceive even what others might describe as obvious slights.
“On legacy ideas” by #ChrisDillow https://chrisdillow.substack.com/p/on-legacy-ideas