case in point. things that at very close range seem extraordinary feats—and they were, i don’t mean to diminish the work!—but in the sweep of history fade to ordinary. perhaps Pelosi was just dealt a terrible hand. but for all her “greatness”, she accomplished nothing other than a holding action.

it’s such a straitened sense of greatest. yes, she whipped like no one else, got things done despite minuscule margins, over impossible objections. but what, pray, did she actually get done? what extraordinary feat of legislative jujitsu will history bother to remember?

i read people on here describing a crisis of affluence and i tell you i don’t know what country we’re sharing. i live in a country where the crisis is cost of living, where the burden of securing “ordinary” goods like safety, shelter, decent peers for ones kids, health care has become impossible.

people who quietly know the community they’ve joined up with is not right. but who are making good money, and feeling so fulfilled by great projects membership in that community helps get funded.

i suppose one shouldn’t be surprised to find that capital is on the side of an autocracy of capital.

in general on bluesky i don’t understand how to control or even know who is in the “canoe”, who going to be notified if i write a reply.

“data” tells you much less than you think. the odds that you interpret it in the way that accurately addresses the question rather than in the way that provides an answer you have some interest in is not so great. “data” says nothing without interpretation, and we are all unreliable interpreters.

remember JD Vance?

it's right there, just after the part about Presidential immunity, and before the part about major questions.

i think events over the last week or so really put a nail in the coffin of the thesis of this one.

he’s got much more sympathy, and so is much more dangerous. plus, we didn’t carry around our own personal stasi devices back then.

there will be other events like Luigi, and they will use them to crank up the surveillance and Palantir the fuck out of us. stuff our phones overhear and snitch will constitute threats of domestic terrorism, considering the status of our country at this point.

hey guys what if they’re not drones at all but actually BALLOONS?

the conservative bias is a tendency to think in terms of in-groups and out-groups, to be skeptical of universalism and drawn to those who (usually falsely) flatter you as part of the in-group.

reality has a well-known liberal bias, but human psychology has a well-known conservative bias.

📌

let’s do it again! um, right?

i don’t know enough to have a strong view about it. i do know that if, as you suggest, really robust supply would reduce aggregate value even as it increases quantity due to collapsing price, industries are likely to seek ways of coordinating strategically to prevent that.

if you say so. i don’t see much evidence one way or any other in a share price graph.

Stoller may be right or wrong, but his claim is homebuilders *are* working to maximizing revenue—just with sufficient pricing power to render that not equivalent to maximizing quantity supplied. Which seems also to be Mohtashami’s view, tho I perhaps his account might differ somewhat from Stoller’s.