Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

the fraction of communication we experience — across all media, excluding what is explicitly fiction — that is in one form or another a lie is extraordinary.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

🫩

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

at least the fallout from such an explosion is sweet. crunchberries, yum!

in reply to this
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

so much of civilization is keeping one’s vexations to oneself.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas!” is just over the top with menace.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

apartments don’t have to be small.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

nowadays if you’re naughty he just farts into it because natural gas is cleaner.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

i guess any construction where “drone” constitutes part of a verb (and refers to flying things, rather than how grownups speak in Peanuts cartoons) invites trouble.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

we should drone-show Santa’s sleigh flying around Christmas eve in order to more thoroughly and marvelously mislead the children.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

since AI is going to solve all the medical miracles now, we can dispense with the exorbitant patent rents, right?

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“…stop framing our approach to China in terms of why it can’t last, what must go wrong, or when the contradictions will finally catch up with it. The system has worked. It has delivered. Waiting for its collapse is not a strategy; it’s a coping mechanism.” jiwankshetry.substack.com/p/must-read-...

Link Preview: 
[Must Read] Kaiser Kuo: China is here to Lead, not just Stay: The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn From China

[Must Read] Kaiser Kuo: China is here to Lead, not just Stay

Link Preview: [Must Read] Kaiser Kuo: China is here to Lead, not just Stay: The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn From China
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

it’s all down to the chicken tax. 🐔

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“Practically every elite institution selects for people like this now.” @ryanlcooper.com

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“Stop asking whether Weiss is good at journalism. She is good at the job she’s actually doing: performing submission to power and recruiting others to the ritual. In today’s media oligopoly, that job pays.”

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

sometimes defiance of parsimony is an act of charity. i agree it is almost certainly unwarranted charity.

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“If I die and can look back and think ‘yeah, I more or less enjoyed a lot of that and helped more people than I hurt’ then I’ll consider my life a success no matter the scale or the stage.” @ianwelsh.bsky.social www.ianwelsh.net/what-constit...

What Constitutes A Successful Life? – Ian Welsh

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(thanks!)

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

“the financial system should be designed to put small firms in an environment where they can build credit histories and demonstrate their ability to handle debt – and where they don’t need to rely on collateral to get started.” @csissoko.bsky.social syntheticassets.wordpress.com/2025/12/22/i...

Link Preview: 
Institutions and growth: how banks used to provide the liquidity that fuels innovation and growth: Diane Coyle celebrates that for the past two years the Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to scholars who emphasize the importance of institutions in economic growth. She observes, however, …

Institutions and growth: how banks used to provide the liquidity that fuels innovation and growth

Link Preview: Institutions and growth: how banks used to provide the liquidity that fuels innovation and growth: Diane Coyle celebrates that for the past two years the Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to scholars who emphasize the importance of institutions in economic growth. She observes, however, …
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

you can never find scissors. not when you need them. never. so you end up buying another pair. until you move. then they all appear, come out of the woodwork, hundreds of them, snapping at you.

Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(most of those are visible in the official stats, if arguably understated. a more current version of the chart below would show a sharp increase in housing since 2018, and that would from most people’s perspective be understated, given how housing quality along social dimensions has stratified.)

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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(in the piece, my goal was to use the measure the more rose-colored side of the debate seems to prefer, and show that the terms on which they are using it — absolute level higher than ever! — is not really informative of whether the economy is good or bad.)

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

(whatever information is in these series — and i agree it’s a lot more problematic than naive “real purchasing power” intuitions suggest — is in the changes, not the levels.)

in reply to self
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com

( i did a post on why levels are uninformative here drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/11/12/r... )

Real purchasing power over time is not economic welfare over time

in reply to self