“Americans have to reacquaint themselves with constitutional thinking — with the idea that we, the people, make constitutional meaning. To the extent that the Supreme Court claims broad authority to say what our Constitution means, it is in large part because we have given this authority to them through our indifference.” @jbouie https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/opinion/callais-voting-rights-act-discrimination.html
incentives matter. that's why we need to dramatically reduce them.
Higher education would be better if the people who participate in it, both as students and as educators, were there, on the terms they are there, because they affirmatively choose it rather than in order to pursue instrumental derivative goals.
The humans are always stirring up trouble with one another for really dumb reasons.
My low volume, confirmed-subscribers, single-click-to-unsubscribe newsletters are getting rejected by Apple (me.com / icloud.com / mac.com e-mail addresses).
554 5.7.1 [CS01] Message rejected due to local policy.
Please visit https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204137.
Anyone have experience resolving this?
[new draft post] The $200,000 standard deduction https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/05/03/the-$200000-standard-deduction/index.html
intelligence and rationality are much more social than they are individual characteristics.
I've a surprisingly elaborate infrastructure for static-site generation that AFAIK only I use. Trying to sell a friend on giving it a try, I've built a static-site-generator-generator for sites that will publish themselves on push via GitHub Pages. Can I sell you on giving it a try, friend? https://github.com/swaldman/ghpages-unstatic-template#readme
try not to bother the humans.
#JohnHussman suggests essentially an excess margins tax. https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc260426/
Text: In my view, a more reasonable corporate tax structure would be to apply corporate taxes to gross value added (revenues less intermediate inputs) minus a generous normal return allowance (r x Capital Base) on the company’s stock of real investment and R&D, minus an allowance for labor compensation (up to some fixed amount like $150,000 per employee). It’s simple math, but in this way, you incentivize real investment, R&D, and employment, but you tax the surplus “dominance rents.”
it would have been bad if either the Hatfields or the McCoys had nuclear bombs.
the costs of child-rearing are straighforwardly measurable and quantifiable. the benefits of child-rearing are wooly and hand-wavy and entirely nonquantifiable. therefore child-rearing is irrational, as a matter of science. your arguments to the contrary are non-falsifiable.
AI is currently on a path toward delivering the most massive improvement in human history, under the Kaldor-Hicks criterion. https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/116471551079158516
“Real welfare economics asks: is this society better, taking account of everyone who lives in it? The Kaldor-Hicks criterion answers a different question: could the winners, if they chose to, arrange things so that no one was worse off?” @delong https://braddelong.substack.com/p/not-my-john-hicks-lecture-john-hicks
careful who you dish for.
if we want to restore social trust, we need to make sociopathy less remunerative.
@gildilinie we need to write some good stories about cyanibacteria hauntings.
what if running the global economy on the liquefacted corpses of ancient beings somehow cursed us?
somewhere in these ashes there is a phoenix.
the guilty massacre the guilty. and then the tables are turned.