just because someone put a book out about a last-year's issue doesn't mean it should become the heart of the news cycle and discourse today. the conversation that decides whether and what our democracy will be should not take its agenda from publicists trying to sell a new book.

i suppose we should have realized the (pre-Dobbs) Texas abortion bounty thing was a new pattern. where they cannot deny a right they dislike, they can render assertion or enforcement of that right difficult or dangerous in practice.

“Much as I might wish for a better party system, I’m operating with my values in the one that we have, not the one I wish we had. In a different system, I might think and feel differently. We all might. And that is precisely my point.” @leedrutman.bsky.social

[new draft post] A conversation with Kevin Erdmann https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/05/14/a-conversation-with-kevin-erdmann/index.html

is the Fed’s business properly to regulate credit, with maximum employment, stable prices, moderate long term rates guidance about the goals of credit regulation, without asserting that credit regulation or the Fed can or should on their own deliver or be responsible for those goods?

"with the decline of local journalism and the rise of social media brain-poisoning, a large fraction of voters have never heard about IRA projects even in their own neighborhood." @ryanlcooper.com

“To save its insurance industry, Taiwan probably needs to intervene massively to keep its currency weak. To save its export industry from the threat of “reciprocal” tariffs, Taiwan likely need to step back from the FX market and let its currency appreciate.” ~Brad Setser www.ft.com/content/d71c...

oh god.

the situation in the US is similar. first-past-the-post renders “democracy” a set of tactics incumbent politicians use to defend themselves from change against the people, rather than a means of channeling the will of the people.

one hopes there is hope.

Some thread openers from X: “I cannot stress how important this is.” “Everything changed today.” “I present to you [XXX] that you will NOT believe are real.” “9 wild prompts for image and video” “10 wild examples + Try it now & Code” “WAIT UNTIL YOUR ALONE, YOU WON’T LAST 20s THROUGH THIS THRÈAD”

“As with donations to a presidential inaugural committee, gifts to the library fund fall between the cracks of campaign finance regulations and rules governing ethics in office.” @jacobtlevy.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

"we don't need any kind of corruption law. that's what the ballot box is for, right?"

good discussion by @deanbaker13.bsky.social of alternative mechanisms for funding “innovation and creative work (ICW)”. cepr.net/publications...

this definition would exclude revolving doors, the common practice under which public officials whose actions favor an industry are foreseeably hired into extravagant sinecures after their terms. no, the Supreme Court won't convict this as bribery. but in ordinary (and correct) usage it is corrupt.

“Apple’s strategy in China has resulted in a transfer of technology and know-how so consequential as to constitute a geopolitical event” @patrickmcgee.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/business-mon... ht Brad Setser

#NewCollege

This is fascinating. The claim is an enzyme has a domain unrelated to its main binding site that (accidentally?) regulates transcription of genes implicated in Alzheimer’s. Binding that domain with a small molecule can inhibit its role in advancing the disease. scitechdaily.com/scientists-d...