If Arizona can't trade down who do you think they will/should pick? It seems as if they could do anything.

England (and Britain broadly). The north-south divide is a pervasive discussion point.

Also if you believe AI is going to take both white collar and manual jobs then what is the point of education and reskilling? Reskilled as what exactly?

Speed II: Cruise Control.

We kind of knew this was going to happen but...Coldplay? Really?

Maybe I’ll write about the Affordability Discourse one day but I think that one thing (among many both material and perceptual) that this hard to untangle is that everyone—including those who are doing fine in material terms—has a lot more visibility into how well the rich are doing than in the past

Oliver Stone almost had the cooperation of the NFL and would have used real team names. I would have liked a mashup - Jets vs. Sharks wound have been poetic.

posting is not an alternative to organizing

neither is populism

I also wonder if there is some, um, demand for condescension—for a group to look down on/feel sorry for. If there is no one below you than you're the worst off...

This is a hypothesis, though; @jdcmedlock.bsky.social might have more informed thoughts.

Thanks! Will review.

Interesting. I think something similar happened in Sweden in the 1960s under the Rehn-Meidner plan but norms adjusted to it, especially after the state stepped in with measures like free universal (and good quality) childcare.

I agree, but this—like status competition generally—is hard to measure.
The other challenge is others (including immigrants) approaching your living standards and you not seeing a way to maintain/expand the difference; this is arguably part of the angst.

What are the Cardinals going to do in the draft? Try—and fail—to trade down, then what?

The thing I wonder about is whether wage compression is *heightening* status competition, as differences collapse against people previously looked down on. If this hypothesis is right I'm not sure how to address it.

AI has limits, even if many AI people can't see them On Ben Recht's fantastic new book

A great review essay on the benefits and limits of AI by @himself.bsky.social.

What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitor | TechCrunch Mistral AI, which offers some open source AI models, has raised significant funding since its creation in 2023, with the ambition to “put frontier AI in the hands of everyone.”

The French AI company - probably the biggest independent one in Europe.

Does Mistral do this religious/philosophical stuff? This feels to be a very SV phenomenon.

I figured as much. 😄

Q: what is the best possible future for SDRs? It just seems to be such an odd "currency" the only purpose of which is to partly capitalise the IMF.

I guess that I don't see ads as norm-shifters, but this is still an area where there could be a lot more experimentation which really isn't happening.

Since a lot of the wind came out of 'nudge' behavioural work there has been a lot less of a focus on norms and how to enforce or shift them—it's either police action or nothing, and there is a lot that could be done between these extremes.

Yes, but the need to invest by a company is still driven by what they perceive as a market opportunity. *Where* they do the investment may vary, but they still want to invest somewhere. That's the point I'm making - that the transport does not result in new opportunities being invented.

I don't disagree, but they *already wanted* to set up or to expand. The desire or need to expand is largely independent from the availability of a local transport system (though the lack of one may have made it harder).

Also, labour supply doesn't create labour demand. The employers didn't have unfilled vacancies - other factors led to the local employment growth - easier commutes just enabled professionals to fill those jobs.

I think that a lot of the challenge is that growth is seen as the purpose of the state—an argument based on mobility or livability won't get a hearing, but a growth argument will. This is more of a political failure than an economic one.

Social media is turning into a freak show The ecosystem is incredibly unhealthy, especially on Twitter. But if it dies, good riddance.

Nate Silver pens an essay about how social media is dead as a way to build an audience because Twitter is now a right wing cesspool where Catturd gets more engagement than the New York Times.

Weird that it never occurs to him that Twitter is the problem and there’s more to social media l. 🤷🏾‍♂️

I think that there is a coordination problem in that European governments should switch to Bluesky but just...haven't.
There also needs to be more prominent non-politics stuff on here.

You need to do the same on RER B if you fly into CDG, though...

The Incel Global Order modern autocracy as a cult of masculinity

Yup
open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...