The Chief Rabbi speaks for Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and their apologists in this country. Ed Miliband speaks for me and many other British Jews.

Nadine Batchelor-Hunt@nadinebh.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is an overtly political statement unbecoming for a chief rabbi that conflates Jews and Israel and does not represent the views of me or people like me I could say more, but it’s almost Rosh Hashanah and I don’t want to start the new year badly - and, frankly, its awfulness speaks for itself

For all the hate this has got it’s almost right: we know that models work by mimicry, no debate there. But if you think (as I do!) that consciousness is qualitatively different then you need to elaborate a theory of consciousness which is ideally observationally distinct. It’s not a trivial problem!

Paul Frazee@pfrazee.com · 6d ago

This is the crux of the debate, right? Whether it's doing mimicry or reasoning. I struggle to see how you could view it as purely mimicry. It has to tie together multiple novel thoughts in a logical construction to create its responses.

I argue that the human tendency towards xenophobia, domination-politics and violence (to be clear, alongside our tendencies towards cooperation and altruism - we are complex!) comes from our long history of warfare. So let's talk about the evidence for how long that history is.

Should have taken a class on welfare economics. They’ve got this 100% nailed down.

Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social · 3w ago

I first noticed this in grad school when I took a class on public health in cities and the professor spent the entire semester talking about what's good for "the community" without even trying to explain what the community is.

I think the issue is live again, somewhat, because of the poli-sci view that people really hated the covid inflation, which wasn't that far off IMO the best central banks could do under the circumstances. The alternative being less inflation and a big recession.

the Fall Guy premium?

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 2mo ago

looks like Thames Water has given a 14% pay rise to its chief executive and a 26% rise to its finance director

Akerlof Kranton laser eyes etc.

post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 2mo ago

performing gender is very often good and satisfying and people really like doing it

Reminds me of Ali G /Borat or any of the SBC personas where the character wears thin pretty quickly but the comedy comes from people interacting with it seriously. If you wonder why people are laughing at the bin, they’re not, they’re laughing at you.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I don't think I've ever seen a group of people take a joke quite as badly to heart as this lot have this week

Kudos to the CMA for pursuing this!

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3mo ago

UK housebuilders face class action suit over alleged collusion to inflate prices

If I could associate YIMBY with one historical thinker it’d be Ricardo, so, close enough?

Mikhail Gorbaechev@mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Hot take: YIMBY analysis of housing policy is at its core substantially more Marxist than the liberal rights-based view of housing that comes from a lot of the left.

Wholly agree. And will add that this stems from UK elites’ cynicism about the possibility of materially improving the lives of the British public. We must keep feeding resentments & cultivating new ones!

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 4mo ago

the anti-trans bathroom ban is very bad—it's also a sign uk democracy is failing my latest with @liberalcurrents.com www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

Even Euston to Birmingham will have no meaningful impact on reducing WCML congestion, for that the whole way to Manchester needs to be finished.

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 4mo ago

in 2010 ministers said phase 1 of High-Speed 2 (from Old Oak Common to Birmingham) would be finished by 2026 now the completion date has been pushed back to between 2036 and 2039 with the final leg to Euston not set to be finished until as late as 2043 price tag up from £80bn to £103bn

Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer & Welch (1992) say it’s ok if the paper’s been cited by others, or so I’m told I haven’t read it /s

Hadas Weiss@hadas.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Conspiracy theory: the past 10 years of British political intrigue are Ed Miliband’s attempts to House of Cards himself into No 10 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Keir Starmer faces ‘judgment day’ as Mandelson vetting debacle grows

As revelations mount and accusations fly, prime minister prepares for MPs’ anger and Olly Robbins’ testimony early next week

theguardian.com

One of the least edifying parts of my job is having to snitch to the Home Office about whether international students are attending class. Consider that if someone is willing to pay £20k to not study maybe they should have been given a work visa.

I now pronounce the name of the letter “H” as if it begins with a(n) h 😬

Judah Grunstein@judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 6mo ago

To my horror, I recently noticed I've begun pronouncing my t's. There should be a warning about this in the Life in the UK study guide.

nearly wrote a long explanation of why one can agree with the general sentiment "all art is political" or even the more ambitious "everything is political" while also thinking that the sense in which Crash Bandicoot is political is different from the sense in which the Communist Manifesto is

I wrote an article for Harper's Bazaar about what it's like for trans people in Kansas (spoiler: it's bad). Read, share, and send some love to your trans loved ones.

Kansas Stripped Trans Citizens of Their Driver’s Licenses. Here’s What Happened Next

For trans people living in the state, existence has begun to feel like a high-stakes test with no right answers

harpersbazaar.com

Yeah I strongly dislike the left anti tax movement. There's no having a society just on the back of soaking the rich, even people far lower down the inequality ladder have to contribute. That's fine. We're all in this together.

ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · 6mo ago

not really the time for this particular discussion, but for the record, this is a stupid idea www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...

The policy being announced here is putting higher marginal tax rates on married women's income which makes what he said even weirder than what you'd think based on the headline.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 7mo ago

Reform’s Danny Kruger criticises UK’s ‘totally unregulated sexual economy’

A leftist named Marx, praising every technology handed down from self-interested capitalists seeking only to enhance their power and profits.

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · 7mo ago

why won’t the left just praise every technology handed down from self-interested billionaires seeking only to enhance their power and profits?! clearly, they’re the ones in the wrong if they can’t get on board 😤

Help my country is in a Condorcet cycle and can’t get out

Ok I wanna do this just for pizza. Over-rated: Impossible Under-rated (globally): New York style Under-rated (US specifically): Roman style Under-rated (🇺🇸&🌐): Chicago style Accurately rated: Neapolitan style (laudatory), St Louis style (derogatory)

Kevin Zollman@kevinzollman.com · 9mo ago

Time to start a bluesky Christmas fight: Most over-rated and under-rated cuisine? For me: Over-rated: French Under-rated (globally): Mexican Under-rated (US specifically): Indonesian

What share of the present-day labour force would be necessary to produce the world GDP of 1800? 10% doesn’t sound like a bad guess.

jake@yetanotheruseless.com · 9mo ago

What I want to know is: how far is unsatisfactorily boring is this stuff going to get us? What happens when we find out that like 90% of the GDP is fucking rote as stuff a non-reasoning model can memorize how to handle? It's still a dumb/clever hunk of sand, but we're also basically not needed?

This is far from over, but I tend to agree. Authoritarian attempts are prototypical cases of multiple equilibria: when the key actors believe that it will succeed, they are more likely to join, which makes it more likely to succeed. When that belief crumbles, the probability of success vanishes...

Max Berger@maxberger.bsky.social · 9mo ago

In the last few weeks, I’ve become increasingly convinced that Trump and his regime are totally cooked. They can only stay in power by stealing elections—but they can only do that if enough people are willing to help them. They’re in a downward spiral and can’t pull themselves out of it.

Remember when Larry Summers made the lazy inference that fewer women in science means they must be less able? @mardelgiu.bsky.social and I wrote a paper exploring the consequences of this lazy inference for occupational segregation which we term the "Larry effect:" www.iza.org/publications...

Steven Durlauf@durlauf.bsky.social · 10mo ago

1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile. www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...

Imagine you time travel back to 1847 and you find the left response to industrialization is a) machines will never be as good as human weavers or b) we need to copyright loom patterns or c) it’s a speculative bubble. You’d say “Y’all. Not helping. What you need is obviously a labor movement.”

The lump of consumption fallacy

onion person@junlper.beer · 11mo ago

one of the most deeply infuriating aspects of american politics is close to half of americans would love if 20% of the country starved to death

Economists think of ourselves as social scientists. It’s other social scientists who seem to think we are STEM, or think that we think of ourselves as STEM. We also do cite other socsci. fields, though fwiw there is a clear asymmetry in feelings of not being cited appropriately.

Sheila Liming@seeshespeak.bsky.social · 11mo ago

BREAKING: economist discovers “second shift,” a concept coined by sociologists almost 50 years ago; gives it new, stupider, and less explicitly labor-oriented name