maybe Day 3 of 2025 will be better.
“In a time of acute loneliness, the proliferation of AI-generated content seems not unlike an act of pollution, compromising the integrity of the social ecosystem.” @lmsacasas https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-cat-in-the-tree-why-ai-content
On the collapse of US NIIP. So much for “dark matter”. Yet more testament to the profound but often overlooked importance of pure revaluation in aggregate accounts. https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/d011326758-the-us-international-investment-position-and-the-international-role-of-the-dollar
cc @SteveRoth
Finish reading this post for free.
@migurski does it foreground the subjectivity of the vibes perceiver, or the community to which the vibes are attributed?
this feels to me like the Trump $2 bill, but for a certain kind of geek rather than for MAGA types. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/01/asimov-press-has-a-new-kind-of-book.html
@inertiate building a new industrial policy is the only thing that can save America from a long, Argentina-style decline I think. goes beyond shipbuilding, but includes it. and doing industrial policy well is always hard, the odds are always against. it's a lot of what i write about lately. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/09/04/income-driven-repayment-of-fixed-capital/index.html
@kescher are vibes downstream from culture, or is culture downstream from vibes?
only paranoid people believed this it was always a coincidence. https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/113760494456661041
"vibes" are even worse than "culture".
things that pretend to explain but do not.
“What is the point of the Liberal party?” @phillmv http://okayfail.com/garden/whats-the-point-of-the-liberal-party.html
// about Canada, but also about just about everywhere in the developed world where a “mainstream” “center left” perhaps formerly social-democratic party is struggling electorally because it has sacrificed all other values to “the center must hold”.
if it requires careful social science to suss out the truth of the matter, then the truth of the matter is entirely irrelevant to the politics of the matter.
has anyone ever examined whether Occam had a quality shave?
@inertiate I don’t at all doubt that we need pro shipbuilding industrial policy. But we are building a handful of sizable ships per year. Our industry is entirely unable to compete with Korea, let alone China, not just as a matter of cost but capability and quality. The Jones Act is a very indirect, very costly kind of industrial policy that’s not delivering the goods. Our shipbuilding incapacity is a national security vulnerability. We need a more direct, effective approach.
@MonaApp why is my iphone asking “Allow Mona to find devices on local networks?”
maybe Day 2 of 2025 will be better.
@inertiate i guess i think on that rationale it’s been an abject failure. the Jones Act is imposing a lot of costs without meaningfully securing that benefit. but that’s left domestic shipbuilding so marginal and weak as an industry it hardly seems a sufficient force on its own to preserve the act.
all the happiness in the world can't buy money.
I'd like to get a better sense of urbanism in China. They obviously have some amazing trains. How are they doing on lively, walkable, transit-accessible mixed-use neighborhoods? I know they have some car-centric, towers-in-the-park-on-arterials style development. What direction are they going?