Fraser Harris

Building Nolan:

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

~None of these homes will be bought by Silicon Valley or San Francisco commuters. The rush hour commute would be 2 to 3 hours and 1.5 to 3 hours each way. The people willing to do that are already buying homes in exurbs in the Central Valley (Tracy, Manteca, Modesto) on former farmland

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@Itsjoeco Legal immigrants are required to get drivers licenses too. The error was registering them to vote automatically

[a16z @a16z]

"I was speaking to a grandmother in rural Tennessee, and she was taking care of her eleven-year-old granddaughter. So she wakes up, she walks into her room, the bed's empty."

" Detective arrives, no sign of force. There's nothing, except one thing that he remembers. There's a Flock camera just down the street. So he pulls out his phone and runs a search for the night and finds one car. He runs that tag, and it's his worst nightmare. It's a registered sex offender. So he logs into Flock, and he's looking for this car, and he sees the car is traveling down I-75."

"The person's on the highway. The detective doesn't know what to do, so he does what every hero does, is he moves into action. He jumps in his car and races down I-75. As he approaches the interstate line, he sees the vehicle."

"A violent struggles ensues, and at the end, he hears crying. And the girl's in the back. She's bound, but she's alive. They went on to go search the suspect's house, and the nightmare got scarier. Everything one would need to not only assault, but dispose of the body was there."

"Now that girl's alive today because the detective had two things: He had a license plate, and he had direction of travel. This, for me, is one of thousands of stories I sadly hear about every day in America. I started Flock nine years ago because of this exact type of problem."

@glangley at @TEDTalks

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@arampell @pitdesi That is definitely not a universal opinion. In our house it sucks far more to lose an hour of outdoor play in the afternoon

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

I long thought the impact of ideological capture of universities was overblown because those students would need to get jobs and then realize through osmosis how the economy actually works. I didn't appreciate how large the proportion of employment of government, NGOs, & non-profits in politically left cities had become, creating an alternate economic reality that reinforced their ideological beliefs instead of discrediting them. Unfortunately history shows that nothing will change until the dysfunction gets extreme

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

This work deriving general relativity from entropy (quantum information) flowing over the horizon of a very small observable space seems likely to be a future Nobel prize. Much work remains to flesh it out into a full theory, but the core insight is there. https://t.co/fxHl16O4fN

[RAW EGG NATIONALIST @Babygravy9]

Better advice in this one clip than ten-thousand self-help books.

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

I know Mamdani is just setting up a straw man here, but I don't think his worldview grasps what makes America truly exceptional: freedom. You don't need permission from a King to build. You don't get wealthy by a King giving you a title & income. It is that freedom that attracts people looking to better themselves. Not because they believe they are owed it, but because they want to earn it. That widely held entrepreneurial spirit is what makes America truly exceptional.

[CSPAN @cspan]

NYC Mayor Mamdani on American exceptionalism: "We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else... The truth, my friends is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place."

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@Austen A defensible interpretation of his wishy-washy speech:

a) end the step-up in basis for inheritances
b) loans against assets for personal use are taxed & basis is stepped-up

I've never heard a good defense for why inheritances should get a step-up in basis...

[Loquitur Ponte Sublicio @loquitur_ponte]

I know its very on vogue for smart people to mock the positive / negative rights distinction as facile, in a sense it is, but what that construct gets at is any strongly posed positive rights framework makes normal people murderers and monsters for the countless things they should do but dont. And similarly they make the existence of other people who suffer an act of moral violence against you, every suffering person born who needs you imposes an obligation on you and damns you for failing to meet it.

This is a very unappealing moral framework! The idea that we dont, by default, owe strangers ordinary course affirmative sacrifices is load bearing to our ability to live life and interact with each other as people not walking moral harms. If i accepted affirmative rights broadly i would be extremely anti natalist to protect the living from the moral parasitism of other people being alive.

[Jaimie @mountainwesttax]

@berniemoreno @SenWarren A 12.4% tax hike on young families facing crushing inflation in childcare, housing, and insurance so the wealthiest cohort in human history can take more vacations

[Alex Armlovich @aarmlovi]

Almost everything in the field of urban planning devised after ~1916 is benighted pseudoscience

Almost everything good in the field of urban planning was implemented before 1916

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@AndyPlausible @paulg @infobeautiful @newmoney Serious answer: every major brokerage and investment bank offers this product for non-retirement assets. Your portfolio is collateral, but you still own it.

Fidelity: https://t.co/P5AUX6ozU2
Goldman Sachs: https://t.co/yA33xcyQrK

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

Not surprising at all -- hanging out with my kids is awesome!

[The Institute for Family Studies @FamStudies]

Modern dads are helping out at home more than ever, @lymanstoneky finds.

Married dads of young children in 1965 did, on average, less than 10 hours a week of child care or help around the house. Dads in 2024 contributed nearly 30 hours a week, an increase of approximately 300%.

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@defaultuser9999 @Noahpinion @dr_r_j_harley Let me know when the federal government passes a law placing a limit on Aboriginal title & it survives court challenges. Until then, courts will slowly and continually shift power to the first nations. This has all been in motion since the Constitution Act (Section 35) in 1982

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

So, no.

It's a slow continuous transfer of rights and property to first nations, with standing as nations co-equal to the federal government. The nations are senior to the provinces. Eventually nearly all government land in western Canada, which is the majority of all land, will be ceded to the band's ownership & disposal. https://t.co/UCewP8j9qI

[Zara Zhang @zarazhangrui]

If you've adopted AI at your company but haven't seen any tangible results, read this 1990 article: "The Dynamo and the Computer" by Paul David.

When electricity first arrived, factories that "adopted" it barely got faster. They just swapped the steam engine for an electric one and ran everything else exactly as before: same machine layout, same workflow, same management. Electricity in, no real gains out.

The most common mistake with any new technology is to drop it into the old organization and then declare the transformation done.

The real leap came decades later, when each machine got its own small motor. Suddenly machines no longer had to be lined up around one central drive shaft. They could be rearranged around the actual flow of work.

The productivity gains didn't come from electricity. They came from REDESIGNING THE ENTIRE FACTORY around it.

AI is the same. Bolting it onto your existing process gets you a faster steam engine. The payoff comes when you redesign the work itself.

(link to paper in comments)

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

@davejohnson Maybe it's not wrong? Do you re-watch shows?

[Fraser Harris @fjharris]

Don't tease me

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the practice of “springing forward” and “falling back” by permanently advancing clocks by one hour.

The legislation now heads to the House floor. https://t.co/4HYM0cCgKt