Timothy F Boyle

Q: How are job postings for software engineers rising rapidly despite AI agents automating coding? A: Because there’s far more code to manage than ever before. We’re already seeing a 14x YoY increase in GitHub commits, and it’s accelerating. AI has dramatically lowered the cost of writing code, so it’s now being used across far more businesses, applications, and use cases. We’re at the beginning of a massive productivity boom driven by the proliferation of bespoke software throughout the entire economy. Coding has been AI’s breakout use case this year. The fact that it’s increased demand for software engineers — rather than decreased it — should call into question the entire “AI will cause mass job loss” narrative.

@DougAMacgregor So frustrating to have our government controlled by a foreign government.

BREAKING: Hopes of a US-Iran agreement crumble, Iran claims Washington has 'retreated' on key mutual understandings.

@KyleTrimbach @brucefenton Yeah, almost no one knows this history. Kinda important. They’ve caused a lot of conservatives to become confused about what a conservative foreign policy looks like in real life.

@TimothyFBoyle @brucefenton Neo-conservatism was born when the Democrats Party sided with the anti-war movement and opposed the Vietnam war. The pro-war Democrats re-branded themselves as “big government conservatives” (an oxymoron) and joined the pro-war Republicans with Buckley’s enthusiastic support.

Democrat woke stupidity is harmful to America but we can survive it. Democrat communist style thinking and allowing crime is more harmful and can destroy us. Republican neocon wars and Israel first insanity is even more of an existential threat to our economy and place in the world. It also puts us at far greater risk of WWIII and economic collapse as we pay for wars we can’t afford and with no benefit. It also leads to an increase in Patriot Act / DHS style tyranny and erosion of our rights. Either major party on its current course could destroy us. Lesser of two evils is still evil. Pick your poison.

@Rothmus Almost no country on earth has a fertility rate above replacement. The U.S. is WAY below replacement. It’s catastrophic for humanity and GDP almost cannot possibly maintain a positive trend because of this.

The biggest challenge for these developing countries will be ensuring that GDP growth keeps pace with their population growth (if fertility rate is above replacement level). Otherwise, rising population will simply (obviously) become an impoverishing phenomenon.

@hilldini13 @AlexEpstein Yeah, agreed. EC should be the norm. Unfortunately like 1% of the population are even aware of it, and of those that are only a fraction actually do it.

@TimothyFBoyle @AlexEpstein Amazing, well done. Yes I appreciate the sentiment, sort of. Choosing mindfulness and approaching changes with intentionality, but still seems better to me to connect with your child more by doing EC instead of keeping them in nappies

This passage on diaper-changing from Magda Gerber changed my life.

@AlexEpstein Elimination Communicstion will also change your life (my daughter was essentially potty trained at two weeks old). Instead of add of 6,000 diaper changes, it was probably more like 200-300. Also saved us a lot of $.

@hilldini13 @AlexEpstein We also did EC—daughter was going on the potty almost entirely by two weeks old—but what MG said is still true about diaper changes (and most everything else she wrote about).

@AlexEpstein wtf? Why advocate for your toddler sitting in their own waste 6000x times. You know what’s better? Elimination Communication. Our girl was TT at 6 months.

@CeaseArtTheft @AlexEpstein Not at all weird. All normal, decent people, should think like this.

@AlexEpstein Super weird. Normal people don’t think like that about diapers. I know not one person who does.

@AlexEpstein Such a great book, and I agree it helped change my perspective.

Good to see even places like Vox having to admit they pushed anti-scientific fear for the last couple of decades.

@FightOnRusty The projection is hilarious. USC ran from ND, not the other way around. Quit lying.

if you're wondering why Notre Dame ran from USC it's probably so Marcus Freeman can continue scheduling cupcakes

Yes please.

@ianmSC This is why I stopped watching the NBA about 15 years ago.

You can not watch the NBA for years, tune in for about 5 minutes of an Oklahoma City Thunder game, and immediately remember why it’s no longer a serious sport

THE GREAT BIRTH RATE DEBATE Chris Williamson hosted a nearly four-hour deep dive into the problem of collapsing fertility with leading experts @lymanstoneky, @SimoneHCollins and @StephenJShaw. The wide-ranging discussion covered tremendous ground. Here are some key highlights! The severity of the crisis Few really grasp how bad the birthrate crisis is going to be. Shaw emphasized the dramatic effect of compounding and how countries with below replacement fertility will be orders of magnitude smaller in the future. That means the collapse of whole economies and countries, especially those with fertility rates continuously well-below replacement, which is 2/3 of countries today. Loss of innovation Innovation is a numbers game, and it takes large populations to give rise to brilliant innovators and entrepreneurs. More than that, Stone explained that a large and highly educated population and an advanced economy are preconditions for innovation to flourish, and that benefits the whole world. But populations that are high in innovation are in sharp decline, and aging societies are much less innovative and slower to adopt new technology. Thinkers like Robin Hanson say that innovation itself will grind to a halt. Decline of small towns and rural areas Collins mentioned the “urban population shredder” because birthrates are far lower in cities. But Shaw described a great irony: small towns and rural areas will be ravaged the most by population decline, as people migrate to a few marquee cities. That means in a declining country like Japan, a city like Tokyo can remain healthy long after rural areas and smaller towns face abandonment and collapse. How do you invest in a declining world? How do you make new businesses work when there are fewer customers every year than the year before? We have gotten used to a growing world, where growth doesn’t come at a cost to anyone because the entire economy is growing. But before the Industrial Revolution, conflict was high because the pie was small and your gain was someone else’s loss. A shrinking world that is losing population every year could be like that. This topic is upsetting but necessary Williamson reflected how much he was attacked when he brought up this topic earlier in the year, because it tramples on so many sensitivities. The Internet got so mad at him it showed up in Google trends! But Stone and Collins said ruffling feathers is inevitable and a good sign. Shaw marveled at how much public awareness has grown and how far people have come in just the last three years. Perhaps hope for change lies in growing awareness of the problem. 40% of today’s young women will never be mothers Most women and men have no idea how little time they have, how quickly fertility drops off, and how high the odds are they will end up accidentally childless. The single easiest way to boost fertility may be to educate young people about how little time they have and how high the odds are that they will never have children past given ages. Shaw said that when young people learned this, the effects were life changing. You can’t save the environment without innovators There is little relationship between population growth and pollution, said Stone. What matters is technology. Emissions reductions have almost always come from changes in technology, not through changes in birthrates. We need better technology, and more innovators not fewer, to solve our environmental problems. Expectations are getting more expensive The most common reason people give for not having kids is that they can’t afford it. But society is collectively richer than ever before. What is going on? There has been a huge inflation of standards and expectations, both in material goods and in the level of parenting you are supposed to give your kids. A generation ago, hardly anyone ate fresh blueberries and most people never travelled abroad. Now these things are normal, even expected. Collins argued you should opt out and go rogue, but Stone sided with the masses that these options are great and pretty hard to resist. Economic success comes too late Male earnings peak in the 40s. Apparently, men’s earnings used to be near their peak in the 20s. This creates a big problem because people often delay until their economic value is higher, missing most of their fertility window. Shaw believes we won’t fix the birthrate crisis without finding a way to structure society so that people can get on with making money and having a family much earlier. Housing in cities is terrible for families Stone explained how there are modern norms and laws that say you need a certain number of bedrooms for a certain number of people. When you are renting, landlords often have strict occupancy limits and Child Protective Services is looming in the background. That means having a family in a place that is small is really risky. Most urban housing (studios and 1 and 2 BR apartments) would be practically illegal for a larger family and there are hardly any larger units to be found inside most cities. The pain of unplanned childlessness Not having the children you hoped to have is a source of incredible grief. How do we know? It turns out that there is a natural experiment. With fertility treatments one set of people is successful and another set of people is just unlucky. It turns out that prescriptions for antidepressants and antipsychotics are far higher among the group of people that undergoes fertility treatment without success. Do kids make you happy? Most research says yes, according to Stone. Collins objected to the whole framing. A lot of parenting is really hard, she admitted, but pleasure not how she thinks you should measure things. Deeper fulfillment along with the value of the lives brought forth should be the measure. Men are more domestic than ever before A lot of people say that men need to step up and help around the house. But today’s generation of young fathers already do more housework and are more involved with their children than any previous generation of men while birthrates are the lowest they have ever been. Work from home Stone pointed out that WFH is extremely pronatal and has a larger effect size on fertility than almost any single factor we can measure. Collins talked about how the economy used to be much more home based in the past, and how the huge conflict between work and family is kind of recent to our history. Both Stone, with four kids so far and Collins, with five so far, work from home the majority of the time. Cash for babies? Here the debate got really heated! Stone says that everyone has a price and if you give people large enough sums for babies, you will get more of them. He thinks we could get the TFR up to replacement in America for what we spend on seniors, although admitted that might not create great incentives. Collins and Shaw were much more skeptical and said that governments haven’t had great success with just financial incentives. Collins argued that this would produce few net taxpayers and would be unsound financially. The problem of travel Young people, especially young women, LOVE to travel, especially internationally and that desire comes in big conflict with having family. A lot of people feel they will lose part of themselves if they have to give that up. Stone loves to travel with his kids and wishes society prioritized families and kids in those environments. Is education the problem? All agree that we want both high education and high fertility, to have the kind of society we would want to live in. Shaw urges that we need to find ways to find ways to allow education to be achieved more quickly so that people can get on with the business of having families more quickly. Everyone felt that more people should have kids while in college or graduate school, but that is still niche and rare. The Laestadian Lutherans Most high fertility groups in the world today have low education or are weirdly insular. But there is a group that achieves high education, high achievement and high integration into modern society, all while achieving a TFR of 4 or 5 births per woman. Stone says that the Laestadian Lutherans of Scandinavia are exactly what we need more of, a group that contributes to society at a high level while maintaining very high birthrates. It’s hard to argue with that. Making motherhood high status Williamson reflected that if you could elevate the status of motherhood, that would be like the holy grail to solving the fertility crisis. He mentioned the Republic of Georgia and Stone, the author of the seminal paper on Georgian fertility, was on the scene to narrate about the power of the revered Patriarch Ilya II to create a baby boom all by himself. The difficult question, which should be a topic of great interest and research, is how to give motherhood high status in many different cultural contexts. Families aren’t getting smaller As Shaw explained, children per mother in the US is even higher than it was a generation ago. The problem is that far fewer women are becoming mothers at all. This reflects a big decline in marriage and big challenges with partnering. How can we get more people to partner up? Shaw was nothing if not consistent: we need to teach people how little time they have. The vast majority of people still want children, after all. Doctors and C-sections Simone Collins has had five kids, and plans to have more, all by C-section. Most people aren’t aware that this even possible and doctors usually people tell people who have C-sections that they can’t have more than two or three kids. Collins had a thing or two to say about that. “The world record is eleven. My surgeon who did my last C-section, her record [for one patient] is eight.” The risks for C-sections are manageable and most women who have more of them will be fine. Stone notes the irony that fear rules pregnancy in an era when pregnancy does not increase mortality at all in advanced countries. Here is the whole four-hour podcast: youtu.be/8eCM3NTBeb4?si… via @YouTube

@mattvanswol Because you and other NPC republicans support establishment republicans and get angry at the real conservatives like Massie who would have actually cut spending. The stupidity is insane.

Remember when the GOP gave Elon Musk a standing ovation in front of the American people... ...and then only voted on 1 DOGE cut, didn't defund the Taliban, gave $315 MILLION to a far Left group that DOGE defunded, and never passed the SAVE ACT? I don't understand the GOP...

@Timcast Boomers keep destroying everything.

Yup

@mattvanswol MAGA is officially done after tonight. Just black pilled half of the GOP voting base by going after the best conservative in Congress, and only one who actually was trying to drain the swamp. We are ruled by a corrupt uniparty deep state.

Say what you want about Massie... ...but a 7-term incumbent just lost to a candidate who had never held office, never debated, and was only in the race because Trump asked him to be. MAGA is not dead... Trump is MAGA And the thing about Trump... is he knows how to win.

@WellsJorda89710 I mean, he’s correct. Massie will be relevant for the same reason Ron Paul remains relevant.

This is cult behavior. Imagine thinking a local congressman will be more interested than a former president. Lol

The truth is that the GOP got elected in a land slide to deliver on many conservative campaign promises, and then they governed like big-govt Democrats. Massie stood up for the American first conservatives, called out the GOP hypocrisy, and for that they are trying to destroy him. Every Republican should have voted with Massie if they were actually American-first conservatives.

This term, Massie has voted with the GOP 77.7% of the time. That rate is much lower than the median GOP congressman, who voted with the party 95% of the time. Massie's rate of voting with the Republicans is also lower than his own record in the last term (91%), which itself was lower than the term before that (95%). You can like Massie. You can think he's right to buck the party. But you can't deny the trend, and you can't deny the VP's observation. t.co/xSFtLEwO4P