almost 150 years ago we invented the phone. the latest innovation has been to uninvent it, by inventing the phone tree, customer service center, etc. i now drive miles to talk to people whom, thirty years ago, i’d have conveniently phoned. it’s increasingly the only way to talk to a capable human.
let’s prompt a GPT to structure the SPV!
the present is different than the past, but that doesn’t render it superior. its shape derives from path dependence and lock-in much more than it is the result of some ill-defined collective “revealed preference”.
the nordics aren’t “left of liberalism”.
was King Midas wealthy or poor?
a great example of a post that refutes its own measures. no reasonable observer could conclude the typical Mississippian is better off than the typical Norweigian (except maybe the weather). if your measures say this, you’d better rethink your measures.
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it's not great to conflate needing to cover the cost of a long commute, or to find housing where the schools are good and your kids are safe, with succumbing to the hedonic treadmill.
i’d not endorse all of the cost computation choices. but the key point—changes in the price of participation in contemporary life are not taken into account by conventional purchasing power measures, and that price has grown much more than is reflected in inflation and poverty measures—is correct.
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a microwave oven, but for brains!
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a frozen conflict is not the same as a peace. the first prerequisite of a peace is mutual agreement as to the borders.
humans are better at organizing the doing of things than organizing a refraining from things they would otherwise do. instead of applying incentives to try to get people not to do a thing, consider whether you could apply incentives to get them to do some alternative things.
since they’ve fully automated the rage machine, can we just automate the rage too?
guy responsible for an estimated 600K deaths thus far has opinions.
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“I would be making a category error. We are not calculating the price of luxury. We are calculating the price of participation… The utility I’m buying is ‘connection to the economy.’ The price of that utility didn’t just keep pace with inflation; it tripled relative to it.”
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when i was a kid, reading history bored me. now, reading (okay, audiobook-listening-to) history makes me cry. almost whatever, whenever. you know too much about what could have been and what actually followed. the more effectively you are placed in the moment, the more you feel what was lost.
Screenshot of e-mail inbox entry, e-mail from "Official Kristi Noem Birthday Card", subject "Your signature is pending."
Excellent by @chrisdillow.bsky.social. Explains "dark Keynesianism" — why you have to tax the middle class, the money of the rich (alone) is no good, to make space for public services. Also goes beyond fiscal policy to think in real terms and targeted policy. There are immigration implications. 1/
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In this context, skilled immigration is a free lunch. You don't have to tax away the viability of current jobs if you don't need to shift current workers into the increased services you want to fund. 2/
If you are willing to let the nurses you want to hire immigrate, you *can* mostly let new money hire them (and just tax the rich if you're worried about fiscal balance in an accounting sense). 3/
The middle class has been persuaded that they pay taxes *to* immigrants when, in a full employment economy, it's immigration that can save them from having to pay taxes, or having to endure the disruption of sectors they work in shrinking in order to force them to retrain as nurses. /fin
so, if Trump gets a third term, Mamdani can be President. that's how this works, right?
i'd like to see a rise of "fuck you urbanism". we're gonna build out whole new mixed-used, pedestrian-awesome, high-density districts bc you assholes of locked us out of your desirable neighborhoods. we're gonna make your neighborhoods last year's thing. what's that gonna do to your home values?