benjaminhcohen.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

A wonderfully brutal biographical description in a book I’m reading: “Not very well educated and thus overawed by the few books he had read”

submitted 13 days ago • 9 comments

EXACTLY

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Carney won because he was the candidate most ordinary, least square.

submitted 41 days ago • 5 comments

As long as the robots allow it, this will be the best unattributed quote about AI: "Why bother reading something no one was bothered enough to write?"

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

If it weren't for the tariffs, this would be one of the biggest stories right now.

submitted 59 days ago • 156 comments

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

submitted 60 days ago • 391 comments

This also drives me crazy about the US higher ed sector. Foreign students bring $40b a year into the us from their home countries — compare that to $25b in grain exports or $20b in iron and steel.

submitted 58 days ago • 7 comments

Steve Jackson Games posted this to their blog and the post is getting so many hits their site is effectively crashed but the point is worth repeating

submitted 66 days ago • 91 comments

Some European central banking and supervisory officials are questioning whether they can still rely on the US Federal Reserve to provide dollar funding in times of market stress, casting some doubt over what has been a bedrock of financial stability reut.rs/4bUsaGl

submitted 77 days ago • 19 comments

I’ve posted a number of threads over the past couple of weeks explaining the framework I’ve developed around disordered discourse and its outcomes. But I also want to explain why that framework is useful, beyond just mapping the problem or explaining how we got here.

submitted 87 days ago • 23 comments

Where's Maester Qyburn?

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

A study of eight AI search engines found they provided incorrect citations of news articles in 60%+ of queries; Grok 3 answered 94% of the queries incorrectly (Columbia Journalism Review) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

submitted 90 days ago • 28 comments

They didn't take him literally OR Seriously From today's Odd Lots newsletter www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

submitted 97 days ago • 21 comments

SCOOP: A US Treasury threat intelligence analysis has designated DOGE staff an ‘insider threat'. An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems “the single biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”

submitted 121 days ago • 720 comments

I suppose my question is: if you set fire to one end of the rube goldberg machine that is the government, how long does it take for the average person to notice that the other end of the machine is no longer producing widgets?

submitted 132 days ago • 67 comments

I don't think I have ever seem a norm go from widely accepted to completely irrelevant as quickly as the importance of minimizing conflicts of interests

submitted 146 days ago • 161 comments

Well this is grim

submitted 337 days ago • 386 comments

Democracy is a tarnished brand

submitted 188 days ago • 0 comments

Very much this, from Dan Drezner. He focuses a lot on universities, but rightly so. U.S. educational, scientific and technological preeminence are closely linked — and all have a lot to do with the past openness of our society 1/ open.substack.com/pub/danieldr...

submitted 194 days ago • 66 comments

So chaos scenario. Mass deportations create huge labour imbalance. Fed starts hiking again. Trump appoints lacky as new chair. Powell stays on as part of the Board. Civil war within FOMC. Fed funds and IoER diverge, as different factions push the policy levers they control in different directions. 🤣

submitted 198 days ago • 10 comments

My status as #2,351,868 looks a lot more impressive than it did a month ago, doesn’t it

submitted 202 days ago • 0 comments

Thread: Republicans won the Senate in 2024 despite Democrats winning more votes & representing more people nationwide. Republicans last won more support than Democrats in the 1990s but won the Senate anyway in 7 of 13 elections since 2000. Data & charts below: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

submitted 202 days ago • 35 comments

It looks as if this place is becoming what Twitter used to be; for now, at least, we can post stuff to a sigificant audience without being overrun by trolls and bots. For starters, here's my complete theory of the election, and probably my last word on the subject