"anything that isn't rigged in their favor feels like it's broken to them!" @anildash.com www.anildash.com/2025/01/04/D...

#relatable

because under our electoral system and the party system it has yielded, you’ll have no choice but to either vote against your interests and values or waste a vote?

fentanyl prime. ht @hilzoy.bsky.social @rincewind.run

30 years ago maybe. if we did this now, i’d have little confidence they’d be universally taught / read as cautionary tales rather than they have their flaws but let’s look past them for the insights.

your most cancellable take.

remember when we had a massive crisis and responded with aggressive income supports for the working and middle class? what if the crisis was a financial market collapse?

people who deny the sentience of LLMs come back as ChatGPT.

“McKinsey points out…roughly two-thirds of the total return for buyout deals entered in 2010 or later + exited in 2021 or before can be attributed to broader moves in market valuation multiples + leverage, rather than improved operating efficiency.” www.ft.com/content/b75b... ht @smtuffy.bsky.social

dark matter used to be what kept the US NIIP moderate despite large, growing current account deficits. but now it has turned to dark dark matter, making NIIP even worse than all our accumulated CA deficits. and the secret gravity is all repricings of assets. that's what CA flows don't capture.

(There was that flurry of stories about big tech firms contracting to build their own nuclear power plants, or extend the life of three-mile island.)

(it seems reasonable to ask prospective users to bear much of the risk of these new projects, so if they do prove stranded as overbuilt, the cost doesn’t just get passed onto traditional rate payers.)

I think it’s probably worth decoupling the question of “do we want this new, more electricity intensive economy?” (maybe, maybe not) from “do we want it to be a durable source of rents for Amazon/Google/Microsoft etc?” (absolutely not, maybe some first mover thick margins, but not durable.)

Sure. It’s reasonable (always) to discuss externalities. Plus, even before externalities, this is the kind of casino capitalism boom that tends to overbuild things. (One way to understand AI as it was the tech industry doing what was needed to extend the “cloud” boom.)

dark matter was big when i was young and hale, back in my day.

will be meaty i think.

it makes me sad when i make a new friend then my friend gets deleted.

energy consumption for bitcoin is orders of magnitude more than AI stuff, as best i’ve been able to tell. bitcoin (not all crypto, hashtag) really is a crazy consumer of energy. unless and until we address that, i find the catastrophizing over AI energy use disingenuous.

we have an easier time extending solidarity to dangerous, powerful adversaries than to those who share the same adversaries but who disgust us with views they would be powerless to impose upon us.

all of my acts are official. i should have absolute immunity, citing the US Supreme Court.