I think its useful to test as to what questions they are and aren't prepared for. In the future you won't necessarily know they were an imposter, so it's good to devise and test certain captcha like questions to tease out the fake from the real candidates.
I'm sorry but I can't take Paul Krugman seriously anymore. His level of discourse was kept somewhat in check by a NYT editor, but now that he's gone on substack, the histrionics about everything was just amped up to about an 11.
Earlier this year he had an article: "Donald Trump Wants You to Die"
No nuance, debate about policies and tradeoffs you would expect from an economist. Just childish screaming into the abyss.
I have learned over the past decade to ignore any articles like this.
If you believed the press, the Muller Report was going to be a smoking gun, destined to reshape the political landscape for a generation and there was nothing Trump could do to stop it.
It’s 2025 now and I’m only going to trust what I read in a sworn deposition, and even then I need to see who took the oath.
Try reading the article instead of just the headline. He is calm and rational as always, explain what's going to happen. I can't see anything wrong with his logic. If someone gave me this article and didn't say who wrote it, I would still say it was spot on. His prediction here is a shocking attack on HHS and the civil service. Are you saying that's not happening? He is saying that Trump will outlaw DEI. Are you saying that's not happening? You seem to be saying that Krugman is shrill and childish, but everything he predicted in this article IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
This is a surprising win for an incumbent party. Whenever I look at basic life issues in Canada I'm blown away. Somehow salaries for engineers are about half what they are in the US, but real estate prices are comparable in large cities. And nation wide the national come price is 678k compared to around 420k in US. Who does this work for?
The liberals have moderated a bit. I remember seeing an ad saying that if elected they would remove trade barriers between Canadian provinces, which is pretty crazy that they exist in the first place. Free trade within your borders should be the starting ante for a country
Finally, there was the increase in immigration which no one really seemed to ask for, that they're also pulling back now due to backlash.
Anyway, I don't really see the tide stemming but who knows. I can't remember a time in the US where an incumbent party has won on so many negatives.
When Carney became a candidate for the Liberal Party leader, he seemed to mimic most of the Conservative talking points, i.e. get rid of carbon tax, etc.
But the 51st state/tariff talk from the south overrode whatever problems Canadians seemed to bitch about daily in 2024.
The immigration increase was a surprise for most Canadians - increase immigration by 4x without corresponding increase in support costs???
You have to look at all the parties and how they traditionally align to understand what happened. We have two very far left parties (green and NDP),a fairly far left party (Liberals) that is historically closer to center left a center right party (conservatives) and in quebec a quebec nationalist party (bloc). What we had this election was a massive move to center right with a big upswing in conservative votes and at the same time we had an utter collapse of the far left NDP and green party vote which mostly went liberal and a softening of support for bloc in Quebec that mostly went liberal. So the conservatives captured a percent of the popular vote that would have been a staggering majority at any other time and still lost because the concentration of the very far left vote into the liberals overwhelmed it.
I would also say the liberals have not moderated a bit, they just said and did some disingenuous things to trick people into thinking this guy was more like Chretien, when his books read like the green party mixed with greed. Time will tell if this view proves correct or not.
Extremely rare and improbable. It took the left wing of Canada to intentionally sabotage themselves and shift politics to the right. A bizarre choice with no benefit to themselves. Canada is no longer left wing I guess?
>Whenever I look at basic life issues in Canada I'm blown away. Somehow salaries for engineers are about half what they are in the US, but real estate prices are comparable in large cities. And nation wide the national come price is 678k compared to around 420k in US. Who does this work for?
Senior IT positions are more like 3x the salary in the USA.
Housing is much worse than that. Shack in Canada, Mansion in the USA for the same pricing. Housing supply is greatly reduced by governments, housing demand is greatly increased by the federal government.
>The liberals have moderated a bit. I remember seeing an ad saying that if elected they would remove trade barriers between Canadian provinces, which is pretty crazy that they exist in the first place. Free trade within your borders should be the starting ante for a country
Mulroney, Chretien, and Harper had significant majority governments who attempted multiple times to remove those trade barriers. there's a 0% chance Carney will be able to remove these barriers. In fact I predict more trade barriers will be going up soon.
It's not typically a huge problem because Canada is ridiculously wide. We are 2 hours from the USA for trade; but multiple days away from trading interprovincially. So we traditionally just trade with the usa, but TRUMP.
>Finally, there was the increase in immigration which no one really seemed to ask for, that they're also pulling back now due to backlash.
Basically didnt even come up in the election. It was one of the censored subjects.
>Anyway, I don't really see the tide stemming but who knows. I can't remember a time in the US where an incumbent party has won on so many negatives.
Consider the media. The incumbents gives billions of $ to the media who write puff pieces.
China interfered in our election to benefit the liberals. The state media wrote "Carney being targeted by china" but that is to say Carney was being targeted with SUPPORT.
> According to a Migration Policy Institute report, the deportation system dramatically changed over the past 19 years - moving from a judicial system prior to 1996 where most people facing deportation had immigration court hearings, to a system during Obama's administration where 75 percent of people removed did not see a judge before being deported.
You have to understand that most what you read about online about this administration is not written in good faith and reported honestly. Everything is unprecedented and a constitutional crisis. Really unforgivable when basic questions in an LLM can provide you meaningful context
Can I point out that this administration has gone out of it's way to flaunt it's disregard for the law and constitutional norms? Is anyone buying that the US can't pressure El Salvador to get back someone it wants? Anyone in doubt that it's a backroom deal in defiance of due process?
There's a reason why trust in the ruling administration is so important, because otherwise the system breaks down. Any time any questions pop up about how the law is being violated, Tom Homan breaks down crying about how the real crime is how children are baking to death in the heat of the sun, that children are being raped by cartel members... like what do you even say to that? Its easy to see why people are able to commit acts of great cruelty if they've convinced themselves that it's a neccesary evil for the greater good.
And it is unprecedented for modern times and it is a constitutional crisis on an almost daily basis.
Dishonest phrasing. The children were the US citizens. Parents were in US illegally. They deported the parents and their kids along with them. Should they go into foster care instead?
First of all, that is not correct. In one of the cases one parent was also a US citizen.
Second, even if in all cases the parents were not citizens it does matter because the US citizen child's due process rights were not respected.
> They deported the parents and their kids along with them. Should they go into foster care instead?
There should be a hearing for the US citizen child to determine what to do with them. Even if both parents have to leave there may be other relatives in the US legally who would be happy to care for the child.
This comment is irrelevant unless you literally believe the person you are responding to is Barack Obama. Maybe ask an ai to write the whole comment for you next time!
The school was likely a failure. I couldn't find any stats on success of children but I find that telling as if it was lifting kids out of poverty effectively it would have been advertised. Its probably just not effective and the money could be better spent elsewhere.
Were this a public project it would have persisted indefinitely and have a lobbying constituency to keep setting money on fire.
We want more failed experiments. If committing to a venture where there is no off ramp if it doesn't work, no one will invest
Failing or not, it still has an ongoing obligation to its enrollees. A kid attending the school doesn't really care if the school is meeting its particular metric goals. That kid is still upset that their school is closing and their education and social life is disrupted.
I also don't think that "the school was likely a failure" is a claim we can make in the modern world. Zuck (and other tech CEOs) is/are very clearly fleeing visible commitment to diversity initiatives.
"We will give out a bunch of cash to people who no longer have a school" is better than nothing, but absolutely nothing mandates that this happen the next time.
> CZI plans to donate $50 million to the communities and families affected by the closure, the school said in its note this week.
Again, the point is no one is going to experiment if you can't wind it down.
I don't know if it's a failure but I know the 300m zuck spent in Newark schools was a huge failure and waste of money and very well documented. If it was a success they would be making a big show and not shutting it down
Right. And I mentioned that in my post. I'm glad that Zuck is doing this but he is not obligated to do so, which is one of the perils of this sort of program funded by billionaires.
With the government we have a degree of democratic control over decision-making. We also have laws that limit the degree with which the government can make capricious decisions.
like the government? they better not be shutting down failing schools, leaving the kids in the lurch. but instead they should research why the schools are failing and figure out how to fix the problem. a private entity may not have such an obligation, but we as a society sure do.
i believe many countries went through a period of consolidation where many smaller (failing) schools were closed as the population became more mobile with cars.
Put another way, at least this experiment actually cared about the outcome and did something about it.
Generally, there's far too little feedback and accountability when it comes to public policy intentions vs. outcomes. Our government (US) policies and program are basically running on an open loop, no one is ever comparing outcomes against goals/intentions.
Experimentation requires looking at results of the experiments.
I’m fascinated that you have yet to consider the fact that what you’re talking about is experimenting with children as the subjects. Or that, maybe that’s why there’s so many guard rails around, you know, experimentation in this space.
You know government programs are experiments too, just without the feedback? Do you think anyone knows for certain what the best education system is? Just because it's what the government decided doesn't mean it's not fundamentally experimental in the sense of having unknown outcomes. Maybe it just seems that way to you? I don't really know what to say, maybe you think education is solved and there's no way the government could be doing it better? That seems like a hard belief to hold with something as complicated as education.
I don't appreciate the accusation that I'm not thinking about the children. It is precisely because I care about the children that I care about the possibility of a better system for them.
> Were this a public project it would have persisted indefinitely and have a lobbying constituency to keep setting money on fire.
And, more importantly, keep going on with a strategy that isn't actually helping the kids in the program... I can easily look past the government wasting an extra $50M/yr here and there, because that barely matters in the grand scheme of government waste, fraud, and inefficiency. But getting poor educational and life-preparation outcomes for generations of kids because of inertia is an entirely greater concern, at least to me.
The problem with your second paragraph is that it is made up theory.
Goverment projects do actually frequently end. Sometimes for good reasons, other times for wrong reasons - like conservatives not liking it when they work and are effective.
This is easily searchable. Here is a quick answer from Claude.
> Regarding agency terminations through sunset provisions, in practice these have been rare. Despite the widespread adoption of sunset laws at the state level in the 1970s and 1980s (with 35 states enacting such laws), "few agencies have actually been terminated under these sunset provisions." At the federal level, Congress has used sunset provisions more sparingly and typically for specific statutes rather than entire agencies. [Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/topic/sunset-law)
As the saying goes, there's nothing as permanent as a temporary government program
We can optimize chances for successful experiments, and I doubt optimization involves having a lot of hands on by tech CEOs or the wives of tech CEOs (Zuckerberg and Bezos wives’ come to mind, but there are many cases). The Gates foundation and others that have had success in various areas are relatively hands off, or “bottom up” in their approach. One can spend money to feel good, or one can spend money to do good. A lot of tech CEO/tech wife CEO philanthropy is the former.
Strong disagree, the failure is from no one having incentives or control. There is no bottom up if you have career unelected bureaucrats running the show. That's why it's in bad shape now. I'm thinking things like teachers unions that fought like hell to keep schools closed during COVID even when it became obvious that the virus was not especially harmful to children, parents wanted them open and incredible harm was being done. This is also why schools have grown administrative staff so much over the last few decades. You think an executive would allow for that?
I don't know the answer is necessarily top down but someone needs to make the calls and have ownership.
Still sounds like a magic spell, as the first time I've heard it from Musk. Practically everyone on some sort of management position is a "career unelected bureaucrat". Electing each other on properly career-limited and non-bureaucratic positions sounds as much fun as cutting each-other's hair and fixing each-other's windows, if you know what I mean.
> You think an executive would allow for that?
Executives have a vested interest in as little-as-possible service at as high-as-possible price. Plenty of private schools do worse than most public schools and the only reason they don't do worse is... drum roll, please... career unelected bureaucrats!
> I'm thinking things like teachers unions that fought like hell to keep schools closed during COVID even when it became obvious that the virus was not especially harmful to children"
"to children"??? You think teachers are children? The president at the time was hyping the dangers of covid and blaming it on China, he's still blaming everything on China, well half of it, the other half goes to "career unelected bureaucrats".
This looks great. But isn't there a long history of new car companies over the last few decades that have an impressive car, take pre-orders and never deliver? Something about production hell?
Slate is financially backed by Bezos [1] and Eric Schmidt [2] so it's not like they're going to run out of money unless they choose to do so. And it's staffed by a bunch of Detroit automotive engineers, so it's not like they're going to be surprised to learn that building and selling automobiles is harder than launching a CRUD app or SAAS.
I do expect a steep price jump when they realize that all this customization (especially post-purchase) makes crash testing really difficult and expensive, $20k is not going to happen but hopefully it will be under $30k MSRP and under $40k with typical options, at least targeting a different market than Rivian.
Why would post-purchase customization be crash-tested at all? It’s not currently. If I buy an F-150 and jack it up, it’s not Ford’s responsibility to crash-test my work. Even if I use genuine Ford parts I buy from Ford.
This is too bad. I'm not buying anything from people who showed up January 20th. It hasn't been difficult. And luckily there is plenty of competition in the electric car space.
If they get somebody else at the helm (not Elon), I'll root for them like crazy.
Being backed by Bezos and the appearance of infinite funding isn't necessarily a good thing. You need someone at the helm that is driven and in control. Don't know who's running the company or if they have the proper mentality to get through production issues, but it's certainly not Bezos.
Either way, I'm rooting for their success. The low end car market is pretty much non-existent. I've heard people blame the cash for clunkers program that got rid of a ton of low end supply in 2009, but haven't looked into it too much.
> Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, blocked news from its apps in Canada in 2023 after a new law required the social media giant to pay Canadian news publishers a tax for publishing their content. The ban applies to all news outlets irrespective of origin, including The New York Times.
> Paying publishers would most likely cost Meta, which generated $164.5 billion in revenue last year, 62 million Canadian dollars a year, or about $44 million.
Banning news was likely an economic decision. The amount they would have to pay publishers and the costs associated with payment outweighed the benefits of having news on the platform. So Meta responded accordingly based on a law that would make them pay publishers.
I think it says more about the Canadian law-makers and publishers that pushed for this law than it does about Meta, AI generated content, and fake news. Who benefits from this law? Seems like everyone is worse off.
I think it also sets a precedent. All the news publishers who lobbied for the bill expected it to be an easy payday, and now they lost one of their largest platforms.
If you run a similar Facebook-adjacent company, you’ll think twice before trying to squeeze any money from them.
Note that Google decided to pay $100M per annum because of this law. So it seems lawmakers successfully chose close to the maximal amount. Much higher and Facebook's example indicates that Google would likely have not paid. Much lower and even both paying would have been less than $100M p.a.
The two aren't really comparable. Google runs a news service, and shows ads on that service. Google News isn't a feasible business without crawling and aggregating the content that media organizations provide, so signing deals with them (whether forced or not) makes sense.
Facebook meanwhile would have to pay publishers for news links that you and I post on our feeds. That is much closer to a shakedown, and the service can work just fine (better, one may argue) without this category of links. So regardless of the dollar amount saying no is the better option for them.
> Paying publishers would most likely cost Meta, which generated $164.5 billion in revenue last year, 62 million Canadian dollars a year, or about $44 million.
What a deceptive sentence. First it quotes worldwide numbers instead of only the Canadian share, and then uses revenue instead of profit.
Why deceptive? It shows how much their revenue was compared to how much they’d have to pay. No judgement, no misleads. Only facts. Anyone who reads can immediately have an idea of their financial strength. How does using profit help as opposed to revenue? And it’s not like FB can only use Canada’s profit to pay for expenses there.
> It shows how much their revenue was compared to how much they’d have to pay.
I bought an oil tanker for $100,000,000, and sold it for $100,020,000. My revenue was $100,020,000, so an extra tax of $400,000 should be no problem for me, right?
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