chooky
2d ago
Eh, oil futures are down to 80-85, which seems consistent with the deal to reopen Strait holding. This is still 25-30% above pre-war, so we still have a substantial lingering impact as shipping and inventories slowly normalize.
chooky
3d ago
This kind of seems to me like a ringing endorsement from the USG about just how great and valuable Anthropic's models are! Certainly, the USG could never ever permit Anthropic or OpenAI to ever follow what had once been a practice of publishing openly about their models since that would ruin their business model, I mean national security.
Seems like a publicity coup for the frontier companies to me.
chooky
4d ago
This doesn't address the true constraint - financial resources and parent time/attention - at all. Sure, I guess theoretically a husband and wife could pump out more and more babies until they reach a certain age, but the reality is that most families these days have 1-2 kids, and a lot of the reason for this is the financial/time resources needed to have more. A Down's syndrome kid very obviously takes a lot more resources to raise, though it is perhaps a fair point that a great deal of these resources will come from society/taxes (public school or other programs) rather than the family; since a Down's syndrome kid might need a lot less college/etc money than a normal kid, I'm actually not sure I'm willing to take a strong position for the family's finances/attention either way. Possibly, it ends up a wash and comes down to someone choosing between having only one kid (with Down's) or being forced to forego one of the two normal kids they would have. Personally, I would choose the non-Down's choices. I mean, maybe you are thinking of someone with unlimited financial/family resources, in which case fertility/biology is a more reasonable binding constraint, but I think we should obviously think of a typical family for which money actually exists.
chooky
5d ago
Surely any business would welcome their competitor randomly exiting the market. This seems like an unambiguously great piece of luck for a business.
chooky
9d ago
I would totally disagree, and I don't particularly care for any Killers.
I think we can make a reasonable argument that STM's chorus is much better, but the rest of STM is very, very mid. The verse, from a catchiness standpoint, is completely disposable, which is a huge problem because the song takes forever to get to the first chorus. Brightside, on the other hand, opens with a signature guitar melody and then immediately jumps into catchy verse. Even if we acknowledge the lack of actual melody, the rhythm of the Brightside verse is very successful; like many of the best emo-punk songs, it's frequently unclear if the good part of the song is the verse or the chorus (many Paramore songs would be a major example). While the guitar riffs in STM might be better, the synths really drag the song down, and there is, again, no competition with the opening guitar notes of Brightside.
chooky
13d ago
That's funny. I insisted to my IT that they user their admin privilege to install the desktop app so I wouldn't have to use the browser-based!
chooky
18d ago
And it's increasingly just not relevant for customers. I basically never carry cash unless I have recently had to go get some to send to my kids' school. What need would I ever have to carry hundreds unless I am at a restaurant that charges substantial card fees or dodges taxes?
Final shift employees hate making bank runs, and businesses hate theft risk and working capital costs.
chooky
20d ago
There are little notches that engage different plates. They are ingenious, but a total nightmare if they break.
chooky
22d ago
Hmm, are you claiming too much, though? I'm concerned that your standard would not allow for a distinction between the Borderers versus other English groups that emigrated to the US as described in Albion's Seed.
chooky
22d ago
We called it just Snatch, but yes it was, or at least was very popular as a cool and good movie among college kids interested in such things. In Latin America, it was called something that translates to Pigs and Diamonds.
chooky
23d ago
For me, the interesting questions were not about looking past the face value of the text but about why this hagiography was undertaken. It's also fairly fun, imo, to read.
chooky
27d ago
Since the negotiations on ending the conflict thus far have centered on the nuclear question, I see the nuclear issue as the Trump administration's primary motivation, especially given the 2025 strike on an Iranian nuclear facility, Trump ending JCPOA, and because the 2026 war began as the administration seemingly concluded that negotiations on this issue were not going well.
But, sure, this could be wrong - maybe it is a deranged plot between Trump and the Russians after all!
chooky
27d ago
The stated reason for the war is to prevent Iran from acquiring the leverage of a nuclear bomb. Even once acquired, this is not the greatest leverage given that actually using it is somewhat problematic. Through the war, Iran has gained/discovered/confirmed very powerful conventional leverage in its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. This is pretty bad! I am not really sure what the off-ramp is.
On the cost of economic disruption and more expensive oil, I would personally say that the various political gains you note in the Middle East are not worth it, especially in the big picture that the US has been weakened relative to China.
chooky
27d ago
I believe that the Iran war was incompetently conceived because of how badly it has gone!
chooky
28d ago
why is Kier Starmer easing the same sanctions?
Easing the sanctions is not the part that is so harmful to US/European interests; the conditions creating the need to ease the sanctions, i.e., the US-Iran war, are the part that is harmful to Western interests. Easing the sanctions is an understandable attempt to lessen the pain created by the Iran military action that has gone on far longer than planned and come with drastically larger consequences than planned.
The incompetent part is Trump's choice to embark on the Iranian adventure in the first place. I'm not really qualified to judge the competence of the operation itself, but it seems to me like Trump probably did not get great or blunt enough advice on this front.
chooky
28d ago
That's not what I am claiming at all. I am merely pointing out the comedy that there were few choices that would have simultaneously been so beneficial for Russia and so detrimental for the US and Europe. (Perhaps intervening on Ukraine's behalf could be considered more beneficial to Russia, but having that conflict settled wouls come with at least some Western benefits.)
My personal view is simply that Trump 2 is an extraordinarily incompetent administration.
chooky
28d ago
It does not strike me as at all plausible that a court case would have resulted in this decision. Is there a mechanism for a judge blocking it?
chooky
29d ago
Russia independently attempted to intercede in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf
This seems highly in line with conventional wisdom and official government findings. What is supposed to be controversial, the "independently" part?!
I can't think of a more "secretly in cahoots with Putin" move possible than invading Iran in 2026
As noted in a different reply, the obvious logic would be higher oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz closure creating higher oil prices for Russia and an impetus to ease sanctions on Russian oil, as indeed the US has done. Mostly joking, but I was also mostly joking a couple months ago (IRL, not on here) when I speculated that a hilarious consequence of the Iran war would probably be the US getting rid of sanctions on Russian oil. That US resources are tied up in Iran, leaving less logistic and budget room to support Ukraine, is icing on the cake, not to mention the seeming erosion of US face and soft power.
chooky
29d ago
Absolutely - it drastically raised oil prices and created reasons to ease sanctions on Russian oil. I would not recommend being Russia's ally.
chooky
29d ago
While I agree that Russia independently attempted to intercede in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf rather than in collusion, I can't think of a more "secretly in cahoots with Putin" move possible than invading Iran in 2026.
chooky
30d ago
By "programmed", do you mean conditioned via training or something like selected through breeding?
Consumption taxes are generally considered the best taxes, but they are pretty damn regressive. This sounds... really good from an efficiency standpoint, is appropriately targeted on the wealthy (though we need some way to exclude middle class HELOCs) and seems much harder to game than a consumption tax too. Go run for office.
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