My take on boots discourse is that we face a lemons problem with many consumer goods, given the acquisition of many storied brands by companies aggressively milking accumulated brand equity for higher profits, such that price and reputation for durability does not reliably predict higher roi.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the thoughtlessness of AI writing. One of the many things that makes Melville’s prose so dazzling is the EXTEME rigor of the way he surprises, deepens and extends his metaphors and cultural touchstones. AI simply can’t, and not for the same reason that most of us can’t

Matt Darling@besttrousers.bsky.social · 5d ago

Such a good passage.

Nice work, Matt.

Matt Darling@besttrousers.bsky.social · last wk.

Politics aside, do people believe federal government gas stations with deeply discounted prices are a good POLICY idea? What are they intended to accomplish, in your view? What problem do they solve? www.cnn.com/2026/07/09/b...

Empathy is good, but I also think empathy is too weak sustain an inclusive view of humanity. I don't think it's that critical to defend empathy, though it's obviously defective to not feel it. The conviction that people everywhere are the same and of equal worth and dignity is really the main thing.

Asha Rangappa@asharangappa.bsky.social · last wk.

Musk is trying to normalize selective empathy (he’s said that empathy is the West’s “greatest weakness”), because an expanded and inclusive view of humanity is one of the common features of people with moral courage. To recruit ppl to his project, he needs them to think and be small, like him.

What we are doing here is evil.

Gabe Ortíz@tusk81.bsky.social · last wk.

"America is my home, and it has been for 31 years," Marlene told ABC News in April. "It took three years for me to get granted #TPS. So a lot of hard work went into this, just to have it potentially ripped away from me ... It's kind of cruel and inhumane to rip that away from us."

The lookism around Ross is disgusting.

I’m hoping that reaction against slop is going to unleash people, such as myself, who long to write florid complicated prose, as if using a quill rendering backtracking or simplifying revision an intolerable instance

Alrighty people, let’s speak this into existence: Christopher Nolan’s Middlemarch.

Snowden St.@snowden.st · 2w ago

Join me in putting all your prayer energy into “Christopher Nolan doing it twice and accidentally kicking off two decades of zealous and toxic fandom about billion dollar films and 25 streaming series set in ancient Greek literature”

Did you know that Iowa Gov, US Sen, and 3 House races are basically tossups this year? Join me as I chat with all-things-Iowa-politics-knower @laurarbelin.bsky.social about the big races that could shift national party control. This Thursday at 2PM EDT open.substack.com/live-stream/...

LIVE SOON: Is Iowa in play? With Laura Belin

Starting Jul 16 at 2:00 PM EDT

open.substack.com

The Friedmanites have this neat little trick where they say "Well of course this isn't a free market, if we had real capitalism things would work much better and profit would reflect real value creation." Then they defend big business and billionaires against criticism as if it were real capitalism.

Blue Meme, Kinetic Ceasefire Specialist@bluememe.bsky.social · 4w ago

Wouldn’t it be great if economics classes explained to people how all this shit actually works instead of all the Milton Friedman nonsense?

Normie Dems are demanding candidates with "fight"; ideology and hot button policy positions are far less important. It's worth understanding what they're saying. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-res...

A Response to Matt Yglesias About ‘Fight’ in Democratic Candidates

This morning on Bluesky Politico’s Josh Gerstein flagged to me and others...

talkingpointsmemo.com

We're carefully growing our children in vats, and I am INCENSED.

Revisiting this one, for some reason.

Will Wilkinson@wlknsn.xyz · 2mo ago

I dunno, man. I usually agree with the HR lady, politically.

Just stop and think about this for a minute — what if YOUR city had transformed a key main street this summer (like Montreal does with #MontRoyal, actually one of 13 such street transformations this summer) into a 2.5km long pedestrian promenade & living room with thousands of seats and activities?

I'd like to hear more about the citizenship requirements that opponents of birthright citizenship have in mind. I'm a descendant of the second colonial governor of Rhode Island, but how EXACTLY am I a citizen if "born here" isn't a sufficient condition for me or my ancestors? What's the rule?

Thinking a lot about the meaning of “good behaviour”

Thesis: LLM-driven automation is overrated. More general ML-driven robotics automation is underrated. Implication: many non-computer jobs that now seem safe from AI disemployment are in fact at more at risk than many computer jobs. Dunno if that’s right but something I’ve been thinking about.

But what is the good? What is a friend? Our conclusion must await such an inquiry. So walk with me and let us reason together.

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2mo ago

No good can come of befriending a philosopher.

Every Single Attempt To See What UBI Does Proves UBI Works But instead of using this information to do something, we keep repeating the test hoping for a different outcome.

Scott Santens@scottsantens.com · 2mo ago

A basic income program in central Iowa gave 110 people $500/mo. It caused improvements in savings, stress, and agency. It also found significant changes in scores relating to hope — the ability to create goals and feel capable of working toward them, and also increases in mattering and self-reliance

@leedrutman.bsky.social is right--seriously right--about the need for proportional representation for House elections. substack.com/home/post/p-...

“Open the primaries” is the wrong answer to the right question

Why isn't November the election that matters? Single-member districts are the problem. Primary reform doesn't fix that.

substack.com

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN VERY CLOSE TO A DEAL WITH EURASIA

Look, I’m sorry but I just can’t believe the Knicks came all the way back. And I bet a lot of my fellow basketball fans feel similarly. This calls into question the legitimacy of their Game Four win.

I think first-generation immigrants can be New Yorkers or Southerners or Angelenos or Nutmeggers or whatever they want. And that goes for anyone else too

I dunno, man. I usually agree with the HR lady, politically.

Another casualty in the open web. I don't mind getting older but boy does it suck to have come of age watching the well of knowledge filling up and becoming so much more accessible to everybody, just so in my middle age I could watch it be contaminated and drained.

Ann M. Lipton@annmlipton.bsky.social · 2mo ago

not sure if everyone can access this, but I just learned about some dramatic changes to SSRN from Steve Bainbridge's Substack. This is really bad; SSRN has been how I keep up with scholarship in my field from a variety of researchers www.stephenbainbridge.com/p/the-social...

I guess I wasn’t paying attention but Zach Lahn married Chase Koch’s ex-wife and is stepdad to Charles Koch’s grandkids, which is why he actually lives in Kansas? Wild.

Vibes are rancid

Thread, partly for my own searching convenience: writings over the years on the separation of powers and the rule of law. "Law and Border," Niskanen, 2018 www.niskanencenter.org/law-and-bord...

Law and Border - Niskanen Center

The rule of law and risk of lawlessness In public law and politics, the core meaning of the rule of law is this: that the executive branch of the government, in control of the violent agencies of stat...

niskanencenter.org