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Zac Hill
48K posts
Zac Hill
@zdch
Co-founder/President, Office of American Possibilities. Newest stuff: Resilient America; In Pursuit. Professional Wizard in a previous life.
Washington, DC Katılım Ocak 2009
1K Takip Edilen7.6K Takipçiler
@LosingWinners I’ll start with two words (I say blindly before actually checking the Twitter handle): @wmataGM
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@zdch Lol well you got me there. No idea how you prefer dc to nyc though
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I've lived in a lot of places and DC is by a large margin my favorite city I've ever called "home". If you have just any appetite for any cultural or intellectual anything you can find every kind of experience you possibly want — easily, with very low transaction cost.
K.Y.R.I@VividDope
DC is the most lit city in the world if you explore it right
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@LosingWinners I lived in Manhattan for literally a decade, so, I think that counts?
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@johnarnold Hard agree. @tab_delete is one of the best to be doing it currently, and there is no substitute for actually being in the trenches with the battalion you're striving to describe.
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Highly recommend “How to Rule the World.” It’s the social commentary book of the 'fake it till you make it' era. Written by the 17-year-old who brought down Stanford’s president, it shows how a toxic mix of power, money, and hubris has transformed the school and SV more broadly.
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@deanwball More people need to have watched AlphaGo (2017). The most beautiful dimension bar none was watching elite-tier people catch glimpses of something like the divine as they watched their own capability exceeded to a degree they couldn't comprehend. Thus so also with <etc>
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Humanity is building machines that will be smarter than we are at things we care about, things in which take individual and collective pride, domains of thought we originally invented and discovered. This will enable incredible things, but no honest person can deny that this will be a kind of grand humbling for humanity. No honest person can deny that there is at least some melancholy in contemplating it all, some change to the centrality we have ascribed to our own minds in the order of the world.
My primary disappointment in the encyclical is that it fundamentally denies that grand humbling. It sidesteps the humbling altogether, saying that AI cannot “really” this and that. Instead, it puts the Church into the awkward role of the European technocratic regulatory advocate, which, love those regulations or hate them, is probably not what the world really needs from the Catholic Church at this moment.
That is a shame, because this humbling—which will trigger a crisis in mass psychology and in our institutions when it dawns on people—is precisely the sort of thing I’d look to the Church for leadership on. What is the genuine and unique source of human meaning? What is the human touch in the era of thinking machines? These are the hard questions that the encyclical dodges.
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@DonnieNoland @cryptochamomile @hecubian_devil @RobertKennedyJr Fun fact: one of my best friends in NYC was the OG pioneer of ketamine as a preventative pharmacological for depression and PTSD
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@zdch @cryptochamomile @hecubian_devil Look at us out here agreeing. Big @RobertKennedyJr fan. Say what you want but from food to peptides to psychedelics for addiction hes getting shit done
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GLP-1 drugs are the first intervention ever to make a dent in the rising obesity rate. "Do it naturally" just means do it not at all
Dr Shawn Baker 🥩@SBakerMD
If you go on a weight loss drug such as a GLP-1 or similar just to shed a few pounds, you will likely become psychologically dependent upon these drugs for life. If you stop and regain the weight, which almost all do, you will find it extremely difficult to lose the weight again without the drugs. You then will be forever dependent on these drugs, something you may not have considered, The folks that “hop on a cycle of Reta” to get lean for the summer are going to be stuck on these drugs for life, or at least the vast majority will. Just watch it play out!
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@Blueelectron4 Totally. Because, you know, when *MY* wages rise, *I* earned it!
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The main legacy of Bidenomics is that both the right and left cosplay support of better pay for working people (coded differently ofc), but actually resoundingly dislike the part where this drives up expenses for the middle class who represent a disproportionate share of voters.
Jamesetta Williams 💕@jamesetta_w
My unpopular opinion is that Biden’s econ team achieved their stated goal of world class Covid recovery, avoided recession (once thought inevitable), prioritized employment, navigated global inflation, and delivered benefits to the working class. it’s just that voters hated it.
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@mattyglesias Yeah I think - as a basically big fan of the overall economic regime relative to the plausible counterfactual scenarios - this is a solid diagnosis. Basically once there was an initial commit there wasn't nearly enough updating.
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I think the Biden team made a reasonable calculus that erring on the side of fiscal overshoot was better than the alternative, but then spent the rest of the term under-reacting to the new reality they created.
Jamesetta Williams 💕@jamesetta_w
My unpopular opinion is that Biden’s econ team achieved their stated goal of world class Covid recovery, avoided recession (once thought inevitable), prioritized employment, navigated global inflation, and delivered benefits to the working class. it’s just that voters hated it.
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@axel_kolp Totally - like once you see it you can't unsee it. Just feels impossible to catch up, but doesn't show up anywhere in the individual stats.
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@zdch This is literally all it is, I have buddies living at home making 80-100k in their mid 20s with no expenses throwing their money into semiconductor and memory stocks lol. Rents are UMC and bought their homes 10-20+ years ago. Sure it’s just an anecdote but how can anyone compete
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@Knifey_Spoonee @LinkofSunshine Thank you! Tried to substantiate it as much as I possibly could.
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Every one of the things Seb mentions here is a game-changing idea. On the New Renaissance I have to shout out @AnnapurnaPics for basically doing a version of this for creators many other people wouldn't and didn't support, and think they're an underrated model to emulate.
Séb Krier@sebkrier
Three things I'd like to see more philanthropic funding for: first, scientific moonshots of all kinds. There are way too few funding streams for this kind of thing, relative to the more crowded (but important) ethics/safety space. Solving physical addiction, for example, would be transformative for the world. Second, arts and culture. The New Aesthetics grants are a great example, and I'd love for more of these. There are so many cool things happening in the world of arts and culture, and technology brethren either don't care or have poor taste - just hand out unconditional grants to young artists and creatives, even if some are anti-tech. I want a new Renaissance. Third, World's Fair/Universal Exhibitions that aren't state-sponsored/marketed, and really showcase the marvels of science, technology, art, medicine, and engineering. Something very Progress Studies coded, but accessible to more people. The last decade has bent heavily towards pessimism, but it's important to nurture hope in progress, international cooperation, and positive-sum endeavours.
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@MattZeitlin It's the same fundamental dynamic as abundance stuff: rising incomes across the board; finite supply of desired goods; QED; etc.
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This is why “experiences” will get essentially infinitely expensive, they’re not making more Knicks and the number of guys with the means to do this far far far outstrips supply
@jason@Jason
Heading to Cleveland for Knicks game 🫡
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@StatisticUrban @HistoryBoomer As someone who is (unwillingly) on like 30+Boomer Meme threads, this certainly tracks with my experience. Interestingly this is compatible with my It’s Parents, Actually thesis from the other direction: no one wants to be like ‘I’m subsidizing my loser kids’ out loud.
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Narrative violation: Gen Z has the highest consumer confidence. Gen X and Boomers are the pessimists.
I do feel that undercuts many of the material explanations for the vibecession, insofar as uniquely awful economic conditions for young people are a main driving force.
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@thejordanhart I just wrote a whole thing about why I think this is happening for big ticket items specifically fwiw.
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@JeremiahDJohns @HistoryBoomer I think that is for sure true, and one reason is how receptive Boomers are to just the stainsiest memes of all time.
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An interesting counterpoint to the idea that Gen Z is uniquely doom-pilled.
I think we might be underrating the idea that it's actually older generations - who are not digital natives - who are the most fully brain rotted by social media doom narratives.
Hunter📈🌈📊@StatisticUrban
Narrative violation: Gen Z has the highest consumer confidence. Gen X and Boomers are the pessimists. I do feel that undercuts many of the material explanations for the vibecession, insofar as uniquely awful economic conditions for young people are a main driving force.
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@zdch Well yeah, when housing increases by 80% in 10 years and wages don't keep up then you're boosting the economy at the expense of outcomes, same for healthcare and housing. All the wealth creation in the world doesn't matter if people's outcomes are worse across the board
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@nucknyan Said piece is this one with the more fully-fleshed-out case:
Zac Hill@zdch
The discourse acts like Gen Z is broke. The charts say Gen Z in fact out-earns every prior generation at the same age. Both are missing the same variable — and it has a name, a mechanism, and a big house out in the Virginia 'burbs.
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I think it’s notable that the price increases are primarily inelastic goods — we need housing, we need healthcare, we need food — while price decreases are almost entirely optional luxury goods
This feels worse than the opposite because we can’t tighten our belt out of it
syl ♡@sylviapuffs
not even that hard to explain tbh
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@DonnieNoland @cryptochamomile @hecubian_devil Yeah one of the better things this admin has done is restore coherence to the food pyramid.
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@zdch @cryptochamomile @hecubian_devil Agreed multiple factors contribute including low cost of high sugar foods, good foods, foods cooked with seed oils, food stored with glyphosate, easier to focus on peripherals meaning less exercise, and upside down food pyramid 2022 lucky charms was better than beef
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@jenboland @jamesetta_w My piece today suggests that all things make it worse except supply; can’t think of anything else!
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@zdch @jamesetta_w The lower class feels inflation less so bc the higher wages and transfers negate it.
The question becomes how do you lift all boats?
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My unpopular opinion is that Biden’s econ team achieved their stated goal of world class Covid recovery, avoided recession (once thought inevitable), prioritized employment, navigated global inflation, and delivered benefits to the working class. it’s just that voters hated it.
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Definitely ... but how about not bringing the entire Bidenomics team while we're at it, too?
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