Seth Stafford

ELIZA - Wikipedia

I like it!!

The traditional term is ELIZA ... and the plausibility is the ELIZA effect.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

How does this 'civic hero' promotion happen outside the US? Are there any good models to learn from?

Which scientific 'civic heroes' do you have in mind?

Carl Sagan comes to mind for me, but is that the type?

We do have Neil deGrasse Tyson as a Sagan-like communicator. But maybe a 'civic hero' needs enough purely scientific clout to be a cultural conscience?

Jonas Salk?

Yes, reflexivity is an important idea. Soros' own efforts at developing it are underwhelming, though.

What's needed is something more akin to 'second quantization' of interacting agents. A big ask, obv!

The Gish Gallop works because of the Dopeler effect!

I am invoking Brandolini's Law until further notice.
en.wikipedia.org/wik...

At first I thought this was Changeux's book with Connes.

Blue states: run to the courts for injunctive relief for all.

Red states: run to T/V admin contacts to make a deal (offer bribes) to get exceptions.

Guess which strategy will work with Sulla/Musk running DC?

I can relate ... "The Network State" is appalling Ayn Rand fan-fic ... but it deeply influences the T/V admin now siccing Sulla/Musk/DOGE on us.

If you can't take Balaji's semi-psychotic confabulations, you can get the main ideas from @gilduran.com

Start here: www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-...

We’re told DOGE is just a new Truman Senate Committee of the 1940’s. But Congress is dysfunctional (by design) so … oh well … we just *need* to let DOGE restructure the govt without consulting Congress.

“Fire every scientist and send them to teach middle school”

Right out of Mao’s Cultural Revolution playbook.

Took a while to recover from that. Though China is doing rather well now … half a century later. No thanks to Mao.

The T/V admin is feeding the whole govt into the DOGE wood chipper … most importantly Congress itself.

Musk is taking the law into his own hands because Congress has been deadlocked on budget matters for decades. So he is in a mad rush to smash as much as he can before the law catches up with him.

"The press's failure to connect these dots isn't just a journalistic oversight — it's a critical missed warning about the systematic dismantling of democratic governance." 👏 👏 👏

It's a mad rush because they know they are breaking the law.

Congress is dysfunctional, won't make deep cuts, so they're taking the law into their own hands. Just stop payments, fire all the staff, and scram before Congress & the Courts catch up.

Good luck rebuilding what they have smashed.

Opinion | There Is No Going Back The president’s opponents, whoever they are, cannot expect a return to the Constitution as it was.

Yeah so the Constitution isn’t really in effect right now

i have long felt that self-described "constitutional conservatives" were just subjects looking for a tyrant and they found him

YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie President Trump and the Power of the Purse

new video up on the youtube page (adapting my column last week) www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgPh...

Snipping one part of this to again note: it seems very few members of Congress realize what their lives are going to be like in the near future when Trump/Musk rip out some of these gears that run the America machine. They will face angry mobs everywhere they go, including their homes.

Opinion | The Lost Tradition That Explains Trump’s Obsession With the Panama Canal (Gift Article) Inside the lost tradition in American foregin policy that explains the president’s overseas obsessions.

Cynthia, try this link: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/o...

When I was a Hill staffer in 2009, a Dem trifecta was trying to pass universal healthcare. In response, Senate GOP released a memo detailing all of the tactics they in the minority could use to delay the effort as much as possible. I'm recirculating that 2009 GOP memo here. Take inspiration from it.

Thread: Tariffs are useful to protect strategic industries like steel, semiconductor, aluminum from unfair foreign competition. But Trump is imposing these on nondurable goods (cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados) and on allies making Americans pay more for groceries. Some questions:

It's gone until it is defended.

R congress will stand by and watch Congress become irrelevant. Dems will sue, some judges will issue injunctions. Federalist Court will dodge, delay, eventually 5/4 vote on "um maybe not ALL of this is ok".

Then T/V Show will pull an Andrew Jackson and defy SCOTUS.

Opinion | The Lost Tradition That Explains Trump’s Obsession With the Panama Canal Inside the lost tradition in American foregin policy that explains the president’s overseas obsessions.

Super smart analysis of Trump's approach to foreign policy by historian @jenmittelstadt.bsky.social. Trump is not a dovish isolationist. He's carrying forward a 100+ year tradition of US "sovereignty politics" that is often quite belligerent vis a vis other nations.
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/o...

Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and th…

Frustrated there's not more I can do directly, but for now I can just try to document reality. Elon is bringing his Twitter destruction playbook to the US government, and it's impossible to explain just how serious and bad this is.

www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/e...

He reminds me a bit of Porfirio Diaz. Minus any military competence.

If Musk and DOGE take the fall here, it would be richly deserved. But it would also be just what Stephen Miller wants and the hard core MAGA xenophobes would have more leverage. With so many malevolent people in the mix, hard to know which clique is the worst.

Yeah, how about not dissolving the air safety advisory commission at the FAA. As your team did last week.

Rhinos. Not RINO-s, but the Rhinocéroses of Ionesco's play.

Yes, very entertaining. You should do an update ... so much has happened since 2015. Not least the later career of TheresaMay ;)

Thanks for the link to Snowdon's essay ... I was about to reply with a similar objection to 'what is it like'. I enjoy Nagel's work, but I wonder if even *he* has gotten sick of being known just for this one slogan. Ditto Chalmers and his 'hard problem'.