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

Having been born an entire generation after the end of WWII, I do have to keep reminding myself -more so since 2016 of course- that the US' commitment to liberal values isn't really structural and unwavering, even if you only look at the 20th and 21st centuries.

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On one hand, it makes me think of the use of tattoos and violence as commitment devices in gangs. OTOH, Trump's assumption of personal impunity is so deep that it might simply be an act of simultaneous patronage and dominance. via @t0nyyates.bsky.social @andrewtorrez.bsky.social

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Key phrase for me: "within the next 30 to 90 days" I don't know if that's what would trigger the (unavoidable IMHO) phase transition in economic dynamics, but it's a plausible candidate. via @brianbeutler.bsky.social

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I don't know enough about the sociology and psychology of media as activity and community to understand the details -how much is owners' control and how much is individual denial- but there's something broken I don't know how to help repair. via @t0nyyates.bsky.social

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As a quant, I blame us. Obsession with real-time data and contempt for long-term history collapses the radius of the possible. You engage in frenetic detailed activity for marginal gains and when boldness is needed you no longer know how. via @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social

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That's awful news. The CCP is bloody awful, but I'd take direct aid for Africa from the devil itself and worry about areas of influence later. via @redderbeanpaste.bsky.social @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social

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I've pushed the idea before, but by now it should be uncontroversial that all the data and GPUs in the world are useless if what's going on aligns with your personal blind spots (which is why quants need social scientists more than vice versa). via @davidheniguk.bsky.social @t0nyyates.bsky.social

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Sadly @inahpkvam.bsky.social 's area of expertise is now critical: much of the world's security infrastructure depends on assumptions about the US that are now false. This is institutional reingeneering at a huge scale. A fascinating problem, if not for the stakes. via @drjlhazelton.bsky.social

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I complain a lot about problems in the institutional information architecture of media that contributed to this mess, but it's fair to say that finance/business -in their "who needs humanities experts?" hubris- had a blind spot the size of the Mar-a-Lago Accords. via @drjlhazelton.bsky.social

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TBH I used to think ubiquitous surveillance would be only about politics; that it will also (not exclusively) be about nonsensical black box BS for brain-damaged "performance" reasons is a surprise, but shouldn't have been. I was looking at the wrong murderous idiots. via @alanallport.bsky.social

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LLMs are the dark kitchens of the mind - students won't fare better than restaurants long-term.

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Interesting from @kyleichan.bsky.social: it's a good overview at one of the basic ongoing shifts in the global economy.

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Interesting as always from @const-physics.blogsky.venki.dev . Aside: the centrality of software startups to our contemporary view of cutting-edge tech has distorted it. VCs & markets want MVPs and agile, but there are forms of frontier-pushing technology where that doesn't work. That's... 1/

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

#ScienceFiction (really short) #ShortStories posted during February: "Mandelbrot City Fragment" (some rendering bugs are features)

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I'm convinced the technologically sophisticated state that holds off the longest before adopting LLM (if ever) is going to get a huge advantage. There's no proof that it can be used the way you think you're going to use it. Wait until there is. You're a damn nation-state.

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Interesting from @pkrugman.bsky.social . I wonder if it might apply (with somewhat different mechanics) to international divergences as well. We do need "left behind" areas to catch up; it'd help if they stopped electing arsonists just because they are angry all the arson is dragging them back.

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IIRC, didn't a lot of the early white supremacist infiltration of the military happened when they lowered recruiting standards to meet quotas? This time I guess it'll be on purpose. They are asking opinions on J6 before hiring in some gov roles, so why not soldiers? via @drjlhazelton.bsky.social

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Relevant to @volts.wtf 's concerns, which I sadly share. via @drjennings.bsky.social

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At this point I think credit rating agencies are just waiting to see who downgrades the US first and what Trump/Musk does to them. I don't know if I wish I were back doing quant or not (but I like Weird fiction, which I guess answers it). via @tom-phillips.com @drjennings.bsky.social

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

My expectation too. As @t0nyyates.bsky.social notes you can work around it, and markets have yet to let themselves process second-order implications. When somebody hits you for the first time, the fact that the blow glanced is not the most relevant bit of information. via @t0nyyates.bsky.social

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( The sound of @matt-levine.bsky.social receiving ten thousand emails about defending and/or failing to defend democracy being securities fraud. ) via @jfallows.bsky.social @brianbeutler.bsky.social

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This is the biggest known unknown right now. No level of disaster will have a political impact (or the political impact you'd like it to have) if the victims don't have a reasonable understanding of (1) it happened, (2) why it happened. via @kevinriggle.bsky.social

submitted 21 hours ago • 1 comment

Not joking: Right now the first question you have to ask of any financial asset is the sensitivity of its valuation to Sam Altman being full of shit. Joking a bit: I call it the asset's ζ in reference to @edzitron.com but if anybody asks mumble something about Riemann. via @drjennings.bsky.social

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Just tell me you didn't ask a monkey's paw to make your field one of the most urgently and acutely relevant to current events. An epidemiologist did that in 2019 and we're still dealing with the aftermath.

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I don't know how much of that contributes to the awful state of military history/current military studies in public awareness and its impact on ideas of masculinity (including the whole warrior ideal nonsense) but it probably doesn't help. via @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social

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That's a good point. It's the asymptote (hopefully) of the social media phenomenon of meta-ignorance: not just not knowing but not knowing you don't know --- and if in your internalized value hierarchy you are at or near the top, the implication that nobody else does. via @drjlhazelton.bsky.social

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Economists and commentators happy with the DOGE "cost cutting" have entirely forgotten the value of expertise in state capabilities (including geopolitics). Which I guess makes sense if you think every activity and outcome are fungible through market exchanges. via @citizencyborg.bsky.social

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This. The AI bubble is the wealth-fetishizing apotheosis of it. "Who needs experts in any field if you have cheap employees and LLMs? The only people who count and deserve companesation are billionaires and their piles of GPUs." Self- (and society-) destructive madness via @kirkpams.bsky.social

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The parsimonious model of Trumpian politics is to reproduce a fantasist pre-Civil War hierarchy; that so many women voted for him still weirds me out. Groups hoping to keep somebody below them underestimate how flat rich white males like the hierarchies below them to be. via @t0nyyates.bsky.social

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I don't have the money or the hubris to bet against an expert on their area, but FWIW my mental model is gradualist: I don't think it takes a lot (ICE thugs asking for papers here, DOGE'd systems there, etc) to make a Dem quantitatively victory impossible except... 1/ via @robfordmancs.bsky.social

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On one side, yes, the Pentagon has been a mess for decades. But a look at the Pentagon in 2025 that's not based around the unprecedented behavior of the CiC and whatever the unconstitutional hell is Musk is looking at the plumbing while the house is on fire.... 1/ via @mchorowitz.bsky.social

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I guess this one goes to the "suggests good product-market fit" column.

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We're testing in real time new pattern recognition instincts within a deluge of piecemeal clues about the malevolently incompetent 24/7 sabotage of maybe the largest infrastructure in history. It's "network admin when everything is on fire," on steroids [or ketamine] via @paulgowder.bsky.social

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I can't wrap my head around how [meta-]ignorant you have to be to screw, even if temporary, something this big, this basic, this quickly. I swear I take psychic damage just trying to picture the series of individual actions leading to this. via @evodynamics.bsky.social

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This took me a while to grasp. It's not just the usual tolerance for abusers in positions of political power. It's abuse as the best, only form of political power. But few political analysis institutions are run by people who have suffered abuse via @courtneymilan.com @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social

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