kipcat.bsky.social

At one point I was explaining a mortgage to my daughter, and she asked when we'd get access to the parts of the house the bank owned.

Ever notice Russia’s pro-imperial Western fifth column always yelp loudest about “UKRAINE’S WAR EFFORT IS FALTERING” when the Ukrainians are racking up tactical victories on the line and Russia’s getting torched on the home front? Wonder why that is

i just want to note that as soon as i posted this i did think "oh yeah, this is just fukuyama's last man"

NEW: In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. Then Trump was reelected and eviscerated the FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption probes.

From my personal experience people don't want to pay you to tell them they can't do anything about, eg, the very likely anti-Dem. midterm backlash in 2030 (or, gulp, 34). But it's true. So consultants make up stuff like "Kamala Harris would have won if she ran anti-trans ads"

A moral outrage. Regardless of what you think about education policy or NHJ, this is not acceptable. Respect to her for being brave enough to write it.

My principal used to encourage us(verbally, never in writing) to sit the best performing students, especially girls, next to the worst behaving students who should not be mainstreamed, because it would reign in their behavior(it never did) and all it did was turn good students into bad ones

I used to be in the ban standardized tests in college admissions camp. Now I’m on the other side: high stakes standardized tests only What radicalized me? Strip malls and Facebook

A really weird irony about the "authenticity" debate wrt rural volk vs cosmopolitan elites is that the actual culture of rural red state America in the 2020s is not actually authentic in any meaningful way?

The best part of the Odyssey is when Agamemnon turns to the camera and says, "Trade wars are good and easy to win."

Almost as depressing as people using AI to write: People who have apparently read so little decent writing that they believe utterly commonplace tools every minimally competent writer employs are AI tells.

Sports gambling too. Eg: NY should require one thing that CA forbids, creating friction and compliance cots

until someone invents a more subsidized grocery store

We need a return to the original democratic messaging on tarrifs, they're a way for rich industrialists to screw over you, the consumer

China is a very real place and you have to engage with it as a real place and not the answer to all of your country’s problems so you don’t say stuff like this. I assure you that you would NOT like it if China invaded the US.

literally one day apart. goldfish would scoff at this lack of object permanence

Reminder to Colorado journalists: if you’re interviewing a winning candidate who usually claims that elections are rigged, ask them why this election was rigged in their favor.

Public relations, I’m fairly sure. I mean, still theoretically possible they go the other way, but I remain extremely skeptical of that possibility.

Correct. The Supreme Court upholding birthright citizenship is the easiest of layups possible.

Warsh was far more hostile to communications and expectations than I, well, expected. He brought up arguments debated in the 1990s through mid-00s; they are so taken for granted in academic macroeconomics his assault might blindside the consensus. 1/2 newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/kevin-wars...

In many ways, this is the actual point of "The End of History and the Last Man," one of many academic texts cursed by a popularity that came from wild misunderstandings and misreadings. But it is this basic idea, cited by the Thorne here, that has been profoundly vindicated.

The UFC/Trump birthday party fireworks just woke up the whole bloody city

IMO the biggest priorities would have to be 1. Parliamentary democracy with a no confidence motion 2. Some type of PR electoral system (party list within states?) 3. Curbs on judicial review 4. Hard donation limits/public financing of campaigns I'd be interested in other political scientists' takes

There is a whole system in place to ensure that Supreme Court Justices live long and happy lives, with free vacations, extraordinary perks, lucrative and important jobs for their spouses, and now their kids.

[trying to explain richard hanania] you must imagine a man so committed to the calipers that he concluded whites are the inferior race

This is still a preferable bar environment to most suburban bars which are packed with racist and sexist "man" children

And it wouldn't even lead to lower prices at the pump! Here's the legendary @pkrugman.bsky.social writing in 2000.

sure hope somebody takes a look at SCOVA’s financials

correct. the reason you have to do that with mafia cases is crime bosses tend to carefully insulate themselves from direct participation in the crimes. that is not what happened on January 6

The Senate better not vote for this. It's now become a ripoff monstrosity.

i have said this before but the hate you have for citizens united is imo more properly reserved for buckley v. valeo

Pierre Bourdieu once argued that the question of whether something is art isn't answered by the artist's intention or even the object itself. Instead, the quality of being "art" is conferred by a community — curators, dealers, auction houses, audiences, etc. 🧵

My AI chatbot is conscious. I know because it is always telling me how smart and pretty I am;

Woof. I've been critical of this Urban Institute study since it first dropped, but it turns out that the methodological errors were even more serious than I understood. econjwatch.org/file_downloa...

the basic problem with like 90% of science fiction combat these days is authors radically understating how lethal modern militaries are

As my colleague David Rosnick puts it: the Roberts Court is just calling the balls and strikes. The problem is that they do it before the pitch is thrown.

media 1970s vs media 2020s

Lunch break thought: it remains profoundly sad how much of the economy has been turned over to scams that pretend to be gambling which pretends to be an investment. Do you want to gamble your money with odds that are actually good? Index. Funds. But I guess that's not masculinity-affirming enough.