we imagined twitter might spark liberal revolutions in places like saudi arabia but instead what seems to be occurring is the saudification of everywhere.
maybe in an AI world most of our jobs should be legislator.
the coolest conspiracy would be if one of the other companies betting their future on AI bribed the administration to kneecap current-leader Anthropic via its own sanctimony.
(sanctimony which, by the way, i fully support!)
@elbowspeak @SteveRoth Gack! Sorry!
"They’ve genuinely identified the pattern I described in the Bonfire essay and then committed the most consequential intellectual error possible. They saw the fire and decided to pray to it." @elbowspeak https://syntropic.xyz/posts/2026-02-14-the-bonfire-in-the-cave/
// Josh pointed me to this essay but I flaked. ht @SteveRoth for pointing me again. It is excellent.
Anthropic should name their next model “Opus DEI” just to fuck with everyone.
@Phil you know the serenity prayer? you have the wisdom to know the difference.
@Phil you chart your own course.
@Phil it’s rare you get a pie tossed at you by someone who hasn’t tossed a snowball first.
snowballs are a gateway drug to cream pies. everybody knows that.
the internet of AI simulated loved ones will be called the deadiverse.
when you are not carefree, people who appear carefree are like a different species.
would you rather be part of something exclusive or part of something inclusive?
@scott so what do we do about it?
i worry, since they would lose any election in a wave, and they face significant criminal and business risks from a transfer of power, that they won’t see as their best bet manufacturing crises that they can argue foreclose the possibility of immediate term democratic transition.
i might dispute the branding of these ideas as YIMBY or “abundance”, but there’s a lot of policy wisdom in this by @resnikoff https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/lessons-from-yimbyism/ 1/
@resnikoff it’s never “deregulation”. there was regulation before the reform. there will be regulation after. it’s the character, not the “quantity”, of regulation that determines its virtue or vice. 2/
@resnikoff there is no such thing, and certainly no such desirable thing, as deregulation. there can fruitfully be reregulation. /fin
raising money is not a legitimate function of political leaders.
This feed is updating its subscriber agreement.
The main good that determines whether you think the economy is good or bad is slack. How much headroom is there between what you are going to buy and what you can afford to spend? 1/
You can lose slack because your real purchasing power declines, or because your needs expand. “Needs” are largely a function of structural facts and social norms. 2/
If you model spending only as discretionary choice, treat anything beyond the most basic food and shelter as expendable, as gravy, something optional or superfluous, you will never make sense of what human beings actually experience, and the ructions of behavior that result. /fin
“If there is an inalienable right to life, it should follow that I have an obligation to take reasonable steps to minimize disease that could harm or kill my peers.” @zeblarson https://www.liberalcurrents.com/propaganda-rather-than-pandemic-policies-caused-the-war-on-public-health/
// this is general, a thing any serious liberalism must grapple with. the dual of any meaningful right is a burdensome obligation.