it’s hard to believe Elon Musk will become aloof to politics given how much risk he would be in from the criminal justice system under different politics.

@admitsWrongIfProven a phobe fears something. a phage eats it.

what if all of our phobias converted to phagias?

text is now infinite what grows scarcer and scarcer is voice connected to a human soul.

“The enduring strength of a state-dominated Chinese system that can pivot, change policy and redirect resources at will in service of long-term national strength is now undeniable, regardless of whether free-market advocates like it.” #KyleChan https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html

[indistinct chatter]

“maybe if you tax poverty you get less of it.”

a "rogue employee" is one who gets caught doing what Elon has asked.

perhaps we should be grateful that the first job to be really perfectly and completely automated by AI is the fraudster.

@taber i use digital ocean and upcloud now. have used racknerd and linode too. all fine.

maybe antivax influencers are the result of a conspiracy by big pharma to replace efficient one-or-two shot cures with expensive chronic treatments that yield perpetual recurring revenue.

@Transportist Drutman in his book recommends Australia-style single transferable vote as the most straightforward path to proportional representation for the US.

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 https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/doomier-and-loopier-why-our-two-party

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

"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 https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-14-house-republicans-take-aim-red-state-economies/

“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 foreign exchange market and let its currency appreciate.” #BradSetser https://www.ft.com/content/d71c34a0-4ded-4cba-be1c-82384915a8fd

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”

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