Very conflicted on this. What about all the people who chose not to go to college to not incur debt? Surely those are the people who are really in trouble - not the highly educated middle class?
Education should be affordable for all - but going forward. This is not the way to do it.

Night wandering in Nozawa Onsen

Acemoglu+Johnson published Power and Progress in 2023. Prophetic about Musk and Andreessen. We can all starve as long as he gets to Mars. The powerful have no time to think deeply on issues + a worldview biased by a lens of privilege and luck. No error correcting mechanism exists in their system.

Imagine expansion reverses and the observable universe collapses to a near point. Will the whole universe be a point? I think it would probably still be infinite, with infinite other points next to ours stretching forever. We just can never ‘access’ those points. But there’s no moving ‘frontier’

There isn’t an into. People imagine it like a balloon inflating into a ‘something’ but they confuse the ‘observable universe’ (93bn ly sphere) with the entire universe (infinite/shapeless). It’s more like an infinite sheet stretching slowly bigger. There isn’t something ‘outside’ infinity.

I think every point is getting further from all other points. There isn’t a frontier that grows out. The visible universe is just our frontier but the full universe is likely infinite. So an endless blanket gets a bit more endless by stretching out in all directions.

The corrupt rent-seeking has already begun. Buy Trump crypto - get tarrif exemption. This is what crony capitalism looks like.

www.wsj.com/politics/tru...

+ Robert Mercer

People forget him but he funded bannon and cambridge analytica

That's fair. Don't think he was after constructive conversation.

Netherlands pioneered the protocols so make sense.

KEY point is doctors care. Do no harm. They are more likely to gatekeep than send a kid unecessarily under the knife. It makes as much sense as a conspiracy of climate scientist.

Not an endorsement

1. I've witnessed the gatekeeping for these procedures. It's a long difficult process
2. Most of these kids would have ended in suicide otherwise
3. Trying to convince these kids their dysphoria isn't real is like telling a clinically depressed person they should be happy

First - I support gender affirming care.

But there are cases (3678 bw 2016-19) of surgeries on 12 to 18 yo. 14726 minors started hormone therapy (2017-21). 4780 used puberty blockers (2017-21). Out of abt 73m kids total in the age group.

Denying easily verifiable facts doesnt help

Republicans (esp bllnrs) say US taxes high compared to “historical”, so need to cut taxes + spending. This is cherry picking.

Other dvlpd economies tax more. US govt spends ~34% of GDP. If it taxed like others = no deficit. Reps = Debt-fueled growth to feed billnrs, while real wages stagnate

Kyambura Gorge, Uganda

The European Council proposes a candidate. The EC are the elected heads of state. The parliament then votes to confirm the candidate. Again there is nothing that says: Democracy = the executive is chosen by direct popular vote. Historically the opposite is true.

In the same way the electoral college was originally designed. Or how the Swiss executive branch is elected by the two chambers of prlmnt. Democracy has never meant that every post is filled through raw voting majority. It’s a feature - not a flaw.

Puffins at Reynisdrangar

I guess he found a leaf to hide with

Long-tailed tit. Hokkaido in autumn. Will need to come back for the winter fluffball version

Mælifell last July

Coming back to social media, in protest of other toxic social media