James Tiberius Stone

The mechanic thinks the academic is looking down on him for not having more book knowledge, while the academic thinks the mechanic is looking down on him for not being able to change his own wiper blades.

The "Reverse Kissinger"? Ally with Rus to keep China at bay?

As we worry about deficits and debt, we need to talk more about how much private wealth there is in the US -- and how much more wealth there is today than there was in 2020. The new wealth of the top 1% alone is in the neighborhood of the entire National Debt (not deficit, debt).

This platform needs polls.

Fun fact: The main research farm for Johnny's Seeds is in Albion Maine.

Very strange watching an immigrant take Donald Trump's job.

In a market with reasonable house prices, buying a house is an alternative for some renters. In this market, very few renters are able to buy. That makes the number of renters higher, pushing up rents.

Again, I don't disagree that we need to build more houses.

Yield = rent/price. So if the price rises a little faster than the rent, then the yield will go down, even though the rent is going up.

I see both being causes.

Dear DOGE,

Deficit spending + QE caused asset inflation. Asset inflation caused rents to go up. Poor people don't have assets, but do pay rent.

Now you want the poor to "sacrifice" to help pay the money back, while the wealthy keep the gains?

It's grotesque.

Context is almost by definition "relevant". So by "seemingly irrelevant" do you mean that the factors will seem irrelevant until you really think about them? Then you'll see the relevance?

Or do you just mean "merely implicit" or "hidden"?

With that cleared up, your 2x2 does seem to produce a clear typology that might be useful for some purposes.

Russel Brand is an interesting case. He's been an overt narcissist on both the left and the right.

Not sure if you're mapping that onto the PC or not. If so, it feels a bit off to me.

I tend to think left-libertarians are more self-reflective than right-libertarians. Specifically, more apt to notice when their own actions have negative externatlities.

Maybe that's just a Twitter thing, though.

Sometimes I think the political compass maps pretty well onto guilt and anger susceptibility, where left is more guilt-susceptible and authoritarian is more anger-susceptible.

There are two main things "big government" can mean.
1. Big bureaucracy.
2. Big budget.
These are not the same, and it feels like Elon/Vivek are intentionally conflating the two.
Even if the bureaucracy needs some refactoring, the budget is not particularly large:

I'm guessing this was generated by AI. I've circled some clues.

Over the last 47 years the wealthiest 1% in the US have transferred 36 trillion dollars from the public balance sheet to their own, & now they'd like the other 99% to start paying that money back.

This is how I currently see the debt and "calls for sacrifice". Is this wrong?

Making use of the argumentative function of reasoning. Sounds promising.

No respect for international borders.

Of course.

Yeah, but they were doing better before and the coffee didn't change.

Probably, the pandemic had us making coffee at home again for a lot less money, and broke our patterns of meeting people at Starbucks.

😆

After reading the article, it sounds like "commitment" would be voluntary. So not as bad an idea as the headline suggests. I've often thought it would be good if there were more affordable retreat centers for people who want to go cold turkey on various bad habits.

Instead of saying you are in favor of "equality", it's better to say that you are in favor of "equality of [something more specific]". You can't be in favor of equality of everything at the same time, as making one thing equal always makes other things unequal.

If I'm in the garden, a spider can crawl halfway up my arm and I will brush it off gently and watch it go about its business.
If I'm in the house, it's a completely different story.

I think we're talking past each other. My concern is about who to argue with, not which views to consider. That's the context for "ignore them".

If it's worth considering, the reasonable people on the other side will probably bring it tou your attention.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November.

In "V for Vendetta", "the 5th of November" was the trigger for collective action, when unilateral action was not enough.

We are witnessing the same thing with BlueSky right now. The 5th of November, once again, was a trigger for collective action when unilateral action was not enough.

🧵‼️