Ronan

@Scholars_Stage Inclusion of AGI in the decision making process could have better calibrated Iranian intent ?

I want the "AGI will be a military super weapon" crowd to give me their honest answer to this question: if America had AGI, how would it help us open up the Straits of Hormuz? What could it do to defeat Iran that we cannot do already?

@edmundharbord I should have qualified it more to say it does make sense from the perspective of the homeowner already on situ

Financial Times journalist endorses plan to make homes even more expensive and cumbersome to build in Britain:

@alexkehr Yes

the american mind (me) cannot comprehend european airline flight prices can i just book all 190 seats for $3400 and have a private 737 flight?

Would it really be a spiked article if it didn't have a completely spurious claim about how the working class in Ireland are secretly pro Israel

The reveal of the guy really kinda looking like Obama is peak comedy

Sorry, Americans are the indigenous people of the Moon. You must respect our traditional placenames.

@CptHastings1916 What's the context here ?

Wow--thanks for sharing what must have a difficult experience. It sounds like you're managing really well. The history of people trying to pass off other people's work as their own is actually really interesting. Do you want me to talk a bit about that?

@edler261 @Peter_Nimitz @lionel_trolling You're right

@fitzr1189 @Peter_Nimitz @lionel_trolling He didn't say that. You switch around literature and model.

Okay, so I guess Pinochet's Chile wasn't authoritarian because there was a plebiscite and then an election? Moreover, there's a whole literature on competitive authoritarianism and hybrid regimes. Getting rid of elections entirely is very hard.

@DeadLiftCapital @Rongwrong_ On the actual thing Aaron wouldnt read or on the point about some thing's being not worth reading?

@fitzr1189 @Rongwrong_ nah, both you and ronwrong are wrong on this one. It happens.

Fair enough, bit I’m not going to carefully read a long post arguing that the earth is flat either. Nathan Cofnas is a moron and it says a lot about right-wing intellectuals today that they take him seriously.

@matthewschmitz @dj_d_sol .

“A Kevin isn’t allowed to be an intellectual. He can be a bodybuilding trainer, a printer salesman, a store manager. But an intellectual? Never.” compactmag.com/article/the-ne…

@joehas I'd accept it might have taken on a life of its own, but everyone should be less credulous

@fitzr1189 The Journal article was is just an edited version of the blog post. 162 comments so far and almost all in support. thejournal.ie/readme/fuel-pr…

My analysis pretty conclusively shows Sinead specifically built her model to make the case she wanted. Thing is I think she's likely directionally correct, so if she'd done it properly she could have made a more qualified version of the same argument

@Muinchille I think when working properly unions, lobby groups, associations etc are important parts of civil society, and so democracy. But the question might be over the "working properly" part.

@fitzr1189 There seem to be a lot of clubeens that most of their "members" don't get a look into. The trades unions seem to have led the way in this. There members practically have "temporary, part-time, assistants" hired to do their actual work for them while they do what, exactly?

There's people who make a big fuss about NGOs. Fair enough, they're unaccountable, outside democratic process, or the legal structures of the civil and public service, but isn't the sane true of trades unions? How deep are they in with the NGOs? Are they privileged clubs?

@flexnose @Peter_Nimitz @lionel_trolling Not having rainbow pride parades is not the point

@Peter_Nimitz @lionel_trolling You can get away with arresting people for speech and imposing ideological compliance apparati on businesses and still be considered a liberal democracy, but you can't get away with not having rainbow pride parades. Therefore that's what liberal democracy is.

@Peter_Nimitz @lionel_trolling But that doesn't make it worthless, just poorly applied. But if you can apply it to western liberal regimes and are convinced by it, then the model has value

@lionel_trolling the literature is largely worthless because it neglects to discuss how many of the features of "competitive authoritarian" and "hybrid" regimes are present in states which the authors want to portray as proper liberal democracies.

@joehas I think she should have properly disavowed it then rather than write about it in the journal

@fitzr1189 As Sinead explained in her piece, she hacked together something quick and dirty. This is not publication standard. butthistime.com/p/mind-the-gap Don’t be surprised if a more qualified version appears in the future.

@SligoBrian1994 Bed utilisation is very important though because most usage is over 70s. You would mathematically just need more beds per capita if you have more over 70s

@fitzr1189 It can make sense in terms of medical spend to account for age, I remember reading a Lithuanian study years ago that showed something like a 60+ requiring 3x avg cost of health of a 30yo, then again you'd have to adjust for purchasing power to get a true comparison there

This is a great example of the arrogance of Varadkar, wading in with actually I know better and here's why ... only to discover he has completely misidentified the subject matter being discussed.

@Robcass78 @SineadOS1 @LeoVaradkar How are you measuring this? just aggregate births? Are you accounting for age structure? But either way your argument is backwards as it's harder to build in wealthy Dublin areas

@fitzr1189 @SineadOS1 @LeoVaradkar Nope. You’ve asked the 1.5m 18-44’s Not owning on that? Can’t make babies when national plans assume decline in homes (particularly in 2m rural). And births are running 3x more per person in wealthy districts (where limited infra has gone) as infra supply capped homes & kids.

The protests in Ireland are not about just fuel! They are about the distance between Ireland on this graph and every other modern and developed economy. Ireland is second wealthiest but gets waaaaay less than any other country for that wealth. By a golden mile. That visual gap in this graph? That’s what people are protesting. It’s a lack of infrastructure and the everyday enshittification of services, the economy, and the additional difficulty of trying to live, relative to peers in any other country. It also highlights why people don’t get uniformly listened to! - because there is no government architecture to engage meaningfully across this huge gap. That gap is a three hour drive to work in traffic, a 14 month wait for an MRI, buses that don’t arrive, trains that don’t exist, schools that have no places for your kids, houses that are unaffordable, pubs that close before midnight, €12 sandwiches, expensive fuel. People feel this gap, even if they can’t explain it precisely. And that builds into resentment, and ultimately protest. Fuel just happened to be the next thing that could be pointed to, today.

@ceala1g1 Finland

@fitzr1189 Who's the worst performing high income country in this one?

Not knowing her weighting choices, I asked claude to replicate the viral chart on Irish twitter. I think the infrastructure measure looks broadly in line, although the GDP/GNI per capita a little off(note I have left in a few counties Sinead excluded but it’s not hugely important