@LouisIngenthron @georgetakei (for a moment i didn't notice your post "What's the context for this? Anyone have a link?" was attached to a thread to give it context, and i was very amused.)
"you can really see constitutional political economy arguments at work in our legal and political system…in the choices courts and politicians make about which statutes should count as the super-statutes."
from an excellent post by @fishkin on how to manage the debt ceiling https://balkin.blogspot.com/2023/05/what-is-optimal-strategy-for-debt.html ht @eARCwelder
@eARCwelder I think that's fair enough. Pulling back from recent staffing changes, the Biden administration overall has surprised me to the upside, while the Obama administration pretty consistently disappointed me. So I'm willing to suspend my skepticism a bit. Of course we could be bitterly disappointed by a serious cave. In which case the Democratic coalition will fall to disarray and responsibility for the pain of extorted cuts will fall on Biden. It's still unfortunately conceivable.
@mattlehrer it is. but to be fair, it’s not NYT. it’s also financial professionals as an industry, whose fiscal politics are Republican-ish, but who have a strong interest in stability (the status quo is good to them!) and who culturally want to distance themselves from the GOP. 1/
@mattlehrer under this conjecture, the admin is going through contortions to persuade “finance” (as well as the rich establishment liberals the NYT represents) that it is the guardian of stability, doing everything possible to manage irresponsible threats, rather than a radical risk to stability, as they might be tarred if they seemed insufficiently reluctant about whatever novelty is eventually required. /fin
@mattlehrer Fox News headlines are invariant. Anything Biden does will be criminal, outrageous, whatev. NYT is basically the audience here, inclined to bend over towards sympathy with bad-faith right-wing critics in the name of “fairness”. NYT wld be inclined to both-sides 14A or MTC or long-bonds or Republican-interest harming payment prioritization, if the admin jumped straight to it. But if they do so after a huge show of reasonable concession, the story is R intransigence.
a (perhaps unjustifiably) optimistic take on Biden’s debt-ceiling strategy: negotiate, even offer some concessions, in order to appear open and reasonable, but with an expectation that any reasonable compromise is one McCarthy’s leashmasters won’t permit. then when we ultimately go over the cliff and something unusual and/or unpopular must be done, let the blame sit squarely.
This content is only available to subscribers.
“Have you ever noticed how the corporate media is obsessed with government corruption, but mostly mute on corporate corruption? There’s a reason for that. In modern America, corporate corruption is just the free market in action“ @blair_fix https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/
“his feeling of pioneering excitement in the days of the early web, one strong enough to fuel him for decades, has finally curdled into shame and disgust.” https://www.wired.com/story/doug-rushkoff-survival-of-the-richest/ ht @dave
@eARCwelder is it only apocryphally from some CIA handbook, or is that story real, that while you may not be able to suppress the truth, you can drown it in a sea of lies.
This is a fun kind of ego surfing. In ChatGPT's world, I have been so prolific! I have written about evvvvrything!
In our world, of course, I've never written about cathedrals.
The pathetic thing is I felt compelled to Google the made-up article I haven't written. I mean, what if I forgot something? I know the machine bullshits, but my mind is fallible and my memory fails, maybe it is me who does not know my own work?
Chat GPT answers a question with some made-up bullshit: What was Steve Randy Waldman's argument about cathedrals? Steve Randy Waldman, an economist and blogger, used the metaphor of cathedrals in a 20 blog post titled "The Cathedral and the Warehouse". His argument was that certain kinds of institutions, particularly those related to finance and banking, are like cathedrals because they are built to inspire confidence and trust in society. Waldman argued that like cathedrals, financial institutions are complex structures that are designed to create an impression of stability and permanence. This is important because people need to trust that their money is safe when they deposit it in a bank, and that the financial system as a whole is reliable and trustworthy. However, Waldman also argued that these financial "cathedrals" can become corrupt or unstable if they are not properly maintained and regulated. He used the example of the 2008 financial crisis, which he argued was caused in part by the failure of regulators to properly oversee the financial system. Waldman's argument was that we need to recognize the importance of financial institutions as trusted and stable institutions in our society, but also ensure that they are properly regulated and maintained in order to prevent them from becoming sources of instability and corruption.
what the matrix got wrong was that the robots would have to deceive us into our pods, rather than merely engage and seduce us. we’ll climb in enthusiastically while ironizing about being “too online”.
eight billion humans, and any of them could be your friend.
to really delude yourself, you have to reason your way into it.
"My plea is for adherents of the new ideology to openly articulate their principles and give reasons for them, and not to expect nor demand automatic acceptance. And also for opponents of the new ideology to understand what they are opposing and give reasons for their own principles."
from a skeptical-but-not-hostile definition-of and grappling-with "wokeness" by #PhilEbersole. https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2023/05/12/what-is-this-thing-called-woke/ #ViaRSS
“Washington, DC…is designed to be run by the elderly. The seniority system in Congress ties old age to increased power, as young people are told to wait their turn. Incumbency comes with a higher profile and robust donor network. Leadership posts and committee chairs are often filled by people in their 70s and 80s who, by nature of their age and wealth, are disconnected from the problems facing broad swaths of the public.” #PaulMcLeod https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dianne-feinstein-health-crisis-senate-resign-1234734590/ ht @noahshachtman
“New thinking about how authoritarian rule works” @DanLittle https://undsoc.org/2023/05/13/new-thinking-about-how-authoritarian-rule-works/
I had great fun giving an Intro to #Scala for #Java Programmers last night at the Tampa Java Users Group.
Slides are at https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2023/05/tjug-scala-talk-2023-05-11/index.html (html/css) or https://www.interfluidity.com/uploads/2023/05/tjug-scala-talk-2023-05-11-glitchy-render.pdf (pdf).
( There's also — oh no! — video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8KGn8ZOXvc )
I got to meet @AccordionGuy, who did a great writeup here https://www.globalnerdy.com/2023/05/12/scenes-from-last-nights-java-user-group-meetup-featuring-scala/
Thanks to #AmmarYussuf and #SamKasimalla for organizing!
we know so much less than we pretend we do but that’s no excuse to make shit up in order to justify your dickishness. regardless of whether you believe the shit you make up.