James Medlock

Polymarket posted "JUST IN: White House officials clarify Operation Epic Fury isn't a war, but a special 'combat operation'". My reply reads: "Surprised they used the euphemism 'special' when they usually don't hold back on dropping the r-slur."

I get why so much of the Trump admin messaging is done through extremely online memes - when they open their mouths and try to speak in complete sentences they usually make things worse.

Strange times for someone whose engagement with politics began with protesting the Iraq war, but you know what, big tent!

The concept of "the linear progression of time" has defeated so many over the last few years

Hell yeah

I'm far from an anti-interventionist, but whatever real challenges there are to making policy in our own country, we should have an additional measure of humility when it comes to shaping other countries (especially when the policy is implemented via bombing).

It's funny to me when people who love to go on about second order effects of economic policies and the challenges of central planning without local knowledge suddenly drop all of that when it comes to foreign policy.

Echoing this, I know too many people who nobly and heroically cooked their brains watching Israel blow apart children for a few years and now they are functionally insane and blackpilled. Do not watch the footage of war crimes. You don't need to.

There are two types of Trump II appointees. Guys you haven't heard of because they're 23 year old groypers, and guys you vaguely remember from some scandal revealing poor moral character.

"...taking a great financial burden off the people that I love." To be specific, billionaires.

Based and Shoup-pilled

ah, the discourse...

Three Ways Terminal AI Has Changed How I Work (And Whether It's Coming for My Job) How terminal AI compresses setup, robustness checks, and iteration without replacing judgment, and whether Olivia Rodrigo caused the inflation wave.

If you're not burned out on thoughtful, well-reasoned posts that look at the pros and cons of using AI (LLMs) as a tool, this from @mtkonczal.bsky.social is a good one.

If you get bogged down in the middle, do still read the concluding paragraphs.

newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/three-ways...

Emergency pod time

Looking into it

Having humiliated myself in the arena of sports analytics, I must now relegate myself back to economics where the standards are much lower

@grantbrisbee.bsky.social can you print this skeet out and slip it under the giants analytics office door, it's very important

One year ago...

As a Giants fan I'm doing some research on our new starter.

Years he puked during a game:

2018: 3.29 ERA
2019: 3.72 ERA
2025: 3.31 ERA
Average: 3.44 ERA

Years he didn't puke during a game:

2020: 5.30 ERA
2021: 3.22 ERA
2022: 4.73 ERA
2023: 4.12 ERA
2024: 5.84 ERA
Average: 4.64 ERA

This is the way...

And where it does, it'll often be a disruptive reallocation of labor. But I still am bullish on our ability of finding new jobs to do, so I don't think it'll change the labor force participation rate over the long run.

Yea I should have said not necessarily a huge *measurable* economic impact in my case - it's quite significant to me, but since it's just me, it's not really going to show up in productivity stats or employment stats. That being said, elsewhere I'm sure it will.

thanks diego

Indeed, AI = fax machine

It has gone better than I expected!

I would probably pay $200/month for this and I'm currently paying $20 (at the level things were in August, I would not have paid more than $20). Would not shock me if most of the AI bubble popped and only a few things survived at higher prices.

I think the key thing here is it's using tools based on well documented rules to modify the data. The nicest thing is that it documented those rules for me based on me going through my normal workflow, so it wasn't a ton of work to set up, and I could verify everything.

With the second round, I did some spot checks but mostly trusted it. It's the sort of thing where if I mess up, I will hear from my customers. And not a single issue has popped up, so it seems to me to be a repeatable workflow.

For my first round, I did spend a lot of time verifying everything was working. I did a ton of spot checks, confirmed every custom rule was applying. And all I ever had to do was improve the specificity of my rules in a few cases, no hallucinations found.