don't trust anything that doesn't also make feeds available via #RSS.

[new draft post] Norms mean you can't pull rank https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/12/14/norms-mean-you-cant-pull-rank/index.html

according to growth statistics we may be richer than we have ever been, while at the same time we collectively can't afford to keep the actual, well, food in the foods we are accustomed to eating. (inflation stats mostly don't capture "skimpflation", the hedonic modeling that hypothetically could would be too complicated and controversial. so skimpflation doesn't subtract from "measured" growth.) https://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-high-prices-costs-making-food-snacks-sodas-worse-quality-2023-12 ht #quoderat at the #TechnologyAsNature blog

when i awake and the fading haze of a dream is still with me, i come to sympathize with hamlet.

from another excellent piece by #PhilippeLemoine https://www.philippelemoine.com/p/gaza-heroes-and-terrorists

@ouguoc i mean, but we don’t want our nuclear fuel actually to *combust*, just to get very hot!

i was going to post something like

"are you pro-fire or anti-fire?"

as an analogy to the way people set up what i think are foolishly framed questions about e.g. the state as a social institution.

but i realized it doesn't work very well in this era of climate crisis, non-combustion-based sources of heat and energy, electrifying all the things.

looking forward, one can arguably be pretty consistently anti-fire.

@DetroitDan this seems maybe of interest to you: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/european-union-far-right.html

@farah who?

often the best way to get it right is to get it wrong and then fix it.

It's good they specifically added a Reply-To header.

"if it's gonna end in tears, it might as well begin in laughter."

(from a board meeting of https://d24n.org/, including @chrisp et al.)

i don’t know whether the deadline is a week from now or not, but i think people are underestimating the catastrophe, both in terms of a longer-term international order and shorter term domestic politics, an abandonment of Ukraine would be.

@selmins i’m grateful!

for me it’s maybe a bit pathetic at this point. https://youtu.be/6vQpW9XRiyM

your kindness is a crime. it will only encourage them.

“There's an interesting recent development in the world of feeds and blogs -- blogs that are only feeds.” @davew http://scripting.com/2023/12/11.html#a133756

// podcasts have basically been this for a long time. i increasingly think it’s the right model. humans generate items (articles, podcasts, artwork, video, comments and remarks). the most basic form into which they are organized are feeds, which a variety of tools and applications both render for them and enable them to author into

is the prayer “may god’s will be done” tautological or essential?

if, granted a single wish by a genie, yours was “may god’s will be done”, would anything change?

“[I]t is likely that lowering drug prices will actually result in better health outcomes. If there is no one who has a major incentive to mislead the public about the safety and effectiveness of a drug, we are more likely to get accurate information about the usefulness of different drugs for treating various conditions.” @DeanBaker13 on a Biden administration proposal to use a provision of the Bayh-Dole Act to limit prices of drugs derived from government-funded research https://cepr.net/bidens-move-on-bayh-dole-important-first-step-in-dealing-with-patent-monopolies-and-high-prices/

@ZaneSelvans that's the bad part.

history is best made gradually.