Adam Karpowich

:-)

[In/Pacino/Out @slime_machine]

Heads up! Won’t be commentating anymore. And yes, I have been porking Joe’s ex-wife. Much love to the CDL and the scene. Busting down nearly every single night. Down to come back whenever! But yeah just digging her out regularly and loudly. Locking the thread, have a great night!

[CIDRAP @CIDRAP]

CDC cuts back foodborne illness surveillance program

The CDC's FoodNet program has reduced required surveillance from eight foodborne pathogens to two, a move some experts warn could leave the country more vulnerable to outbreaks.

https://t.co/EYwLZ9YkM2

[Berwyn Choobs @sabatonfan69]

They worship money like a god, and will tear out the copper wiring of this once great nation while they shake their heads and shrug their shoulders as you lie broken, impoverished and lobotomized

[François Chollet @fchollet]

Even after the steep progress of the past 3 months, it remains that AI performance is tied to task familiarity. In domains that can be densely sampled (via programmatic generation + verification), performance is effectively unbounded, and will keep increasing from current levels. In novel, unfamiliar domains, performance remains low and further progress still requires new ideas, not just more data and compute.

[Federal Reserve @federalreserve]

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: https://t.co/5dfrkByGyX

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@chrislhayes Yes, but it began before World War II.

https://t.co/Luw9oakxo2

[vids that go hard @vidsthatgohard]

This edit has no business being this high quality

[François Chollet @fchollet]

LLM adoption among US workers is closing in on 50%. Meanwhile labor productivity growth is lower than in 2020.

Many counter-arguments can be made here, e.g. "they don't know yet how to be productive with it, they've only been using for 1-2 years", "50% is still too low to see impact", "models next year will be unbelievably better", etc.

But I think we now have enough evidence to say that the 2023 talking point that "LLMs will make workers 10x more productive" (some folks even quoted 100x) is probably not accurate.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The Economist on Gaza:

"The continuation of the war in Gaza disgraces Israel. It no longer has a military justification."

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

https://t.co/PUUxSqYIv8

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Repeatedly threatening to fire Jerome Powell isn’t something you would do if your 75 simultaneous bilateral trade negotiations are going well

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@nntaleb @JDVance Either he gets it and he's pretending not to, or he just doesn't get it. I.e. he's either evil or stupid. There is no third alternative.

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Yeah so I guess it makes sense that he bankrupted a bunch of casinos

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

To illustrate just how nonsensically these tariffs were calculated, take the example of Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in Africa with just $2.4 billion in annual GDP, which is being struck with a 50% tariff rate under the Trump plan, the highest rate among all countries on the list.

Why? Does Lesotho apply extortionate tariffs on U.S. products and the U.S. is merely being "reciprocal" here? Not at all, despite what Trump is saying, it's NOT the way these tariffs are defined.

As a matter of fact Lesotho, as a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), applies the common external tariff structure established by this regional trade bloc.

Which means it applies the same tariffs on U.S. products as South Africa does, as well as the 3 other members of the bloc: Namibia, Eswatini and Botswana.

So since the tariffs charged by these 5 countries on U.S. products are exactly the same, they must all be struck with a 50% tariff rate by the U.S., right? Not at all: South Africa is getting 30%, Namibia 21%, Botswana 37% and Eswatini just 10%, the lowest rate possible among all countries.

So what gives? Again, the way these tariffs are calculated has absolutely zero relationship with actual tariffs imposed by these countries on U.S. products. Instead, they appear to be simply derived from trade deficit calculations.

Looking at Lesotho specifically, every year the U.S. imports approximately $236 million in goods from Lesotho (primarily diamonds, textiles and apparel) while exporting only about $7 million worth of goods to Lesotho (https://t.co/uHvem6nH2o).

Why do they export so little? Again this is an extremely poor country where 56.2% of the population lives with less than $3.65 a day (https://t.co/GEho8xFjAp), i.e. $1,300 a year. They simply can't afford U.S. products, no-one is going to buy an iPhone or a Tesla on that sort of income...

The way the tariffs are ACTUALLY calculated appears to be based on a simplistic and economically senseless formula: you take the trade deficit the U.S. has with a country, divide it by that country's exports to the U.S and declare this - falsely - "the tariff they charge on the U.S."

And then as Trump did in his speech last night, you magnanimously declare that you'll only "reciprocate" by charging half that "tariff" on them.

As such, for Lesotho, the calculation goes like this: ($236M - $7M)/$235M = 97%. That's the "tariff" Lesotho is deemed to charge this U.S. and half of that, i.e. roughly 50% is what the U.S. "reciprocates" with.

It's extremely easy to see why this makes no sense at all.

First of all, there's nothing Lesotho can do about it: they can't change tariffs they allegedly charge the U.S. to reduce the tariff rate the U.S. "reciprocates" with because, again, it's NOT based on any tariff that they charge.

Similarly they can't do much about reducing the trade deficit they have with the U.S. because, again, they simply don't have enough money to buy U.S. products.

Also the main rational Trump gave for the tariffs is to get production back to the U.S., to "bring manufacturing back". 47.3% of Lesotho's exports are diamonds: how do you bring the "manufacturing" of that "back to the U.S."? Anyone can see it makes just about zero sense.

The Lesotho example exposes the fundamental economic incoherence of these tariffs. Rather than addressing actual trade barriers, they punish countries based on trade deficits that arise from structural economic realities. All the more countries like Lesotho which pose zero competitive threat to American industry.

Worse yet, these tariffs will likely make these structural realities even worse: the U.S. is Lesotho's second most important export destination so it's a fair bet that applying 50% tariffs on their products will make people in Lesotho even poorer, and therefore even LESS able to afford U.S. products.

But perhaps the most unfair and detrimental aspect of all this is that these tariffs represent a complete reversal of longstanding U.S. development policy, and therefore a betrayal of countries - like Lesotho - who chose to follow U.S. advice in the past.

For decades the U.S. has used preferential trade access to encourage economic development in the world's poorest nations, recognizing that trade, not just aid, could get them out of poverty and ultimately put them in a position where they too could afford iPhones or Tesla.

They're now effectively penalizing countries for following previous U.S. policy, a lesson which I bet they won't forget anytime soon.

So all in all the irony is painful: in the name of fighting unfair trade, America has just demonstrated what truly unfair trade looks like.

This isn't something designed to address genuine trade issues, but simply a mechanism based on arbitrary math to punish countries for the affront of selling more to the United States than they buy.

[U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell @SenMcConnell]

As I have always warned, tariffs are bad policy, and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most. Tariffs drive up the cost of goods and services. They are a tax on everyday working Americans. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them. With so much at stake globally, the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices. That includes what we do on trade.

[Lawrence H. Summers @LHSummers]

It’s now clear that the @realDonaldTrump Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.

[François Chollet @fchollet]

Imagine announcing a scheme to directly transfer taxpayer money to crypto holders (basically backing up the loot truck all the way to the Treasury) and still failing to pump crypto prices because in parallel to that you're also tanking the economy

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@Kasparov63 I truly do not understand how America benefits from siding with Russia. It's so mystifying that I can't help wondering again whether Putin has some kind of hold over Trump.

[Matthew Chapman @fawfulfan]

This is exactly the problem. You can't take the "move fast and break things" mentality of Silicon Valley into the federal government, a place where if you break things, people die, or have their rights violated, or can't access essential services.