a bit of irony is it’s the “progressives” or “squad” or whatever who want meritocracy rather than seniority to govern Congress, in opposition to the “centrists” or “moderates”. in ed reform, a different seniority vs meritocracy conflict has the sides reversed.

from my e-mail (April 14). they are closing April 30. (i’ve no idea whether/what role the tariffs or macro/political concerns played.)

maybe Stephen Miller is telling him that the public unanimously approves, it was a 9-0 decision.

sometimes depression is an attempt to hold oneself for ransom before god.

andreeson used to chat widely, then he blocked anyone who might say anything he might find uncomfortable to hear. in retrospect that has proven consequential.

“When there is a need to address a specific weakness (say chip production), subsidies for reshoring are far superior to tariffs. Subsidies for chip making help our industries that use chips, while tariffs on chips hurt those industries.” ~Scott Sumner scottsumner.substack.com/p/nonzero-tr...

Chimerica is doing a remake of the pandemic. China will bring back PPP-style business “loans”. The US will reprise shortages of basic goods.

“The group chats that changed America” by @semaforben.bsky.social www.semafor.com/article/04/2...

“China surely does not have a great record in respecting the rule of law, but it actually is probably a better bet at this point than what we have seen in Donald Trump’s first 100 days.” @deanbaker13.bsky.social cepr.net/publications...

war is always unsustainable the question is for whom it’s unsustainable first.

the version of capitalist democracy where we tolerate intercessions into deliberation motivated by capitalist ROI (lobbying, campaign contributions, “gratuities”) can’t work. injects noise into democratic deliberation at best, more often worse, supercharges Matthew effects democracy exists to blunt.

i always think Scott Bessent is an SNL sketch version of Pat Robertson.

my contribution to the great controversy of the BlueSky day. youtu.be/cZyj6GECjZ0

i think a lot about the “barbie republicans”, kristi noem, pam bondi. such a weird phenom, but maybe this @tressiemcphd.bsky.social quote provides insight. doubling down to the point of caricature on the beauty ideals of an embattled order as a kind of desperate attempt to sustain and reproduce it.

was Milton Friedman the first MMTer? xcancel.com/jbsteinberg/...

[new draft post] How can taxing foreign investors balance trade? https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/27/how-can-taxing-foreign-investors-balance-trade/index.html

“all in all, simply telling it straight right now is beyond what would a decade ago have been the wildest dreams of the most enthusiastic CCP propagandist, after all.” @delong.social

a guy named Art Laffer had a curve…

there is work for a fine novelist/journalist to actually follow the path of these kids and portray, honestly and fairly, what their experiences must be like.

"The hard part is untangling decades of…business rules and small codebase-level decisions to make things work. Very little of that will be written down anywhere. Instead, people are essentially the documentation in legacy systems." @altusds.bsky.social ht @nathantankus.bsky.social