Frederik Vig

Worked in the tech industry 15+ years. Developer, investor, traveler, tennis player. Tweets mostly about life and politics.

[Simon Willison @simonw]

Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

“Why aren’t you cheering Trump & DOGE? I thought you wanted spending and deficit cuts!"

Because I’ve been doing this for 25 years and can’t be tricked by gimmicky nonsense. Trump’s first term added $8 trillion in enacted spending hikes and tax cuts to the deficit - half of which was unrelated to the pandemic. This time around, Trump has proposed roughly $8 trillion more in tax cuts and spending hikes over the decade. And right now, a GOP Congress is preparing to abandon most reconciliation cuts and instead add $325 billion this year in new spending. We’re headed towards $4 trillion deficits within a decade.

So, no, I don’t get excited when DOGE cancels $1 billion in govt contracts. Or saves $3 billion in federal workforce reductions out of a $7,000 billion budget. Not when Trump and Congress are also preparing to add $800 billion more annually in proposed new tax cuts and spending.

And no, the huge savings are not coming. Even (unrealistically) eliminating 20% of the federal workforce would save $60 billion, and overhauling federal systems to sharply reduce payment errors may save perhaps $80 billion (and is probably unlikely too). For all of DOGE’s bluster, administrative and executive reforms would at best save 1-2% of federal spending and offset only a small fraction of Trump’s red ink agenda.

That leaves trying to unilaterally impound spending such as USAID—which is wildly illegal—or actually going to Congress to pare back spending the constitutional way. But Trump has already taken Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans, border (and interest) off the table, which is 2/3 of all spending and is driving deficits. And the GOP Congress seems ready to give up on cutting the remaining one-third of spending. Want to cut spending and the deficit? How about they stop passing budget-busting bills. Don’t brag about your coupon-clipping frugality at the same time you are buying a $250,000 Ferrari. I’m not going to cheer Trump and DOGE for adding “only” $750 billion to deficits instead of $800 billion. We’re still going backwards.

I’ve spent decades studying the federal budget. I know that $7 trillion(!) behemoth inside and out – where the money really goes, and where the savings opportunities lie. So I can also detect bullshitters who talk tough about trillion-dollar spending cuts without doing their homework. It’s the ones who claim most spending goes to undefined “waste,” federal salaries, immigrants, foreigners, Ukraine, or non-working welfare recipients. It’s the ones who claim we can easily balance the budget or cut $1 trillion without specifying exactly what line-items to cut. Or that we can return to 2019 spending levels for each program, which means a 20% inflationary cut, defaulting on the federal debt, and kicking off every senior who has since retired into Social Security and Medicare. It’s all hot air and empty bluster. Tough talk without following through on anything substantive. Just wait until you see the final deficit numbers in October.

And this is why GOP movements to cut spending always fail. They make absurdly ambitious promises without doing their homework, understanding where the money goes, and specifying real plans to fix it. You can’t significantly cut the deficit just by cutting waste, firing bureaucrats, and defunding immigrants and foreigners. There are no easy short cuts. You have to stop cutting taxes and then address Social Security, Medicare, defense, and a lot of other popular programs. Wake me when the GOP goes there.

So, no, I will not get excited about a couple billion in DOGE savings on one hand while Trump pushes Congress to add $8 trillion over the decade in tax cuts and spending with the other hand. I’m not that gullible.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

12 thoughts about the Columbia University protests and what is happening on campuses across the country

1. I have to be honest about something: I'm really starting to hate writing about anything related to Israel or Gaza. I feel like I can't write authentically about this latest controversy without acknowledging that first. I’ve written this newsletter five days a week for nearly five years, covering COVID, abortion, gun control, trans issues, immigration, and every other controversial topic out there. I’ve never felt the kind of deranged tension I feel right now. For every sentence I write, there are people on one side accusing me of being complicit in a genocide and people on the other side accusing me of contributing to the killing and hatred of Jews. For anyone speaking on this topic publicly, the environment is so untenable, so unhelpful, so fraught, that it's no wonder we are seeing protests like these play out on college campuses. It makes me both want to run to my corner of like-minded people and just shut up and disappear.

2. A very, very large part of me does not care at all about what is happening on these campuses. I understand these students are “future leaders” and the “next generation,” but we should remember what it’s like to be their age. I went to college not that long ago. I barely remember it. When I was a teenager, I was still learning not to call things “gay” that I didn’t like. In college, I thought Natural Ice was a good beer and Barack Obama was going to unite the country. In 10 years those kids are going to look back on some of their ideas and actions now and think they were idiots. I’m sure in 10 years I'll look back on some of the things I believe now and laugh. 20-year-olds are not wizened foreign policy experts; 20-year-olds are 20-year-olds. I’m interested in their opinions, but they don’t keep me up at night. They are growing, evolving, ignorant young adults who deserve space to be wrong and screw up. That’s what college is about. When I see 30 college kids from NYU chanting "from the river to the sea," a chant that means vastly different things to different people, it ranks as about the 212th most important or notable or interesting thing I saw that hour, let alone that day or week or month. I do not know why we continue to focus on these kids so much, or call for ruining their careers, or insist we need to send in the troops against them. I hate feeling like I am falling into the trap by giving the protests any more coverage.

3. If I were ranking the importance of the actions of Hamas and the Israeli governments to the war in Gaza on a scale from 1 to 100, I would put them both somewhere in the 90 to 100 range. If I were ranking the importance of what was happening on a half-dozen elite college campuses in the U.S. on the same scale, I'd score them less than 5. Yet, in the context of the conflict, government actions and campus protests receive about the same amount of media coverage in the U.S. I have no idea how to reconcile this. I am happy to say we've covered the former a lot more than the latter, but I can't figure out the obsessiveness of so many reporters and pundits — on both the left and the right — with such minor players in the story.

4. All students have a right to protest. In fact, I encourage them to protest (though they should find some time to study, too). Movements like the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement are perfectly rational ways to protest Israel. Personally, I hope the BDS movement fails because I oppose its goal. I sometimes scoff at it because I do not think getting Columbia to rid itself of some $200,000 investment in an Israeli company is going to meaningfully change anything (not to mention, genuine divestment is easier said than done). I do not think Columbia University, its professors, its dean, or anyone on its faculty are “complicit” in anything Israel’s war cabinet decides to do 7,000 miles away, and I actually find the idea pretty silly. But guess what? It is a non-violent form of protest that offers tangible action for genuine objections to policy. When you criminalize or stifle non-violent protests like that, you often get violent protests instead. This is one thread of the story of pro-Palestine activists: Many non-violent, peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators end up being criminalized, silenced, or killed. Criminalizing or trying to destroy movements like BDS is therefore dangerous and counterproductive. Argue with them if you like, but let them be.

5. Student activism is a great way to learn and participate in democracy. Non-violent student activism is excellent. It is legal. It is not (and should not) be a violation of school rules. At the same time, if you are a student and your school makes simple rules about student protests like, say, "you can't protest on this lawn or at this time," and then you break those rules, you should be prepared to get suspended or arrested. Schools are responsible for not making rules so arduous they effectively restrict or end student activism, and students are responsible for following reasonable rules. Columbia’s initial update to their rules on protesting were overly restrictive and were rightly criticized. Then they set some reasonable rules that ensured students could attend class without too much interruption, and many of the protestors intentionally violated those rules. So they got in trouble.

6. I've never felt my own Jewishness more acutely, and never felt so surrounded by antisemitism more definitively. I know there is a difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. I preach that difference. Many of the pro-Palestine protestors at Columbia and on these campuses are, in fact, Jewish. But in the last few months, I am telling you that I have seen more videos of blatant antisemitism and more social media posts from friends that promote antisemitic ideas than ever before in my entire life. I feel like my perspective on how many people out there hate Jews or see us as evil, self-righteous, conniving people has shifted in an irretrievable way. I am not typically prone to these thoughts or feelings, so I can’t imagine how other Jews who are prone to those thoughts are feeling. This is deeply disturbing to me.

7. There are some genuinely frightening things happening on or around Columbia’s campus. We need to delineate between students and outside protestors who show up and do awful things. For instance, a video has been widely circulated of pro-Palestine protests outside Columbia University cheering on the militant leaders of Hamas and calling for the bombing of Tel Aviv, a city of half a million Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Israelis. These are violent threats that should not be tolerated anywhere on a college campus. They are representative of a thread of the extremist pro-Palestine movement that I find incredibly frightening. Still, as far as I can tell, those aren’t students and they don’t appear to be on campus. So let’s not conflate the two.

8. That doesn’t mean some students aren’t doing some objectively awful things at Columbia. There are videos and firsthand accounts of Jewish students being assaulted, told to “go back to Poland,” or prohibited from entering spaces on their own campus. This is an affront to the safety and the freedom of Jewish students, and the university president must ensure that those students can participate in campus life freely. That a rabbi at Columbia feels the need to warn Jewish students they aren’t safe on campus (however alarmist it might have been) is quite frightening.

9. There are also some genuinely embarrassing videos of “pro-Israel” people trying to make innocent things look violent or make themselves into victims. For instance, a pro-Israel account tweeted a video of a bunch of protestors cheerfully dancing in a circle and called it a “cult-like tribal dance.” Another X user posted a video of a woman in a shirt that says “Jew” with a Star of David painted onto it standing in the middle of protesters while precisely zero people pay her any mind or care that she is there. Then there’s the Israeli professor at Columbia, Shai Davidai, who makes me very uncomfortable. He seems to seek out cameras, viral moments, and confrontation as much as he can, to get attention, clicks, and social media clout. Victimization porn is becoming more and more common in our country, but I assure you there are enough bad actors out there that no one needs to manufacture any additional tension.

10. I can’t believe I have to say this, but the vast majority of the students protesting on these campuses are probably good kids who feel horrified by the things they see happening in Gaza. It’s really that simple. They log onto social media and see heartbreaking videos and feel compelled to do something – anything. That is a human and normal and empathetic reaction to war. War is horrific. Many of us become numb to it as we age, but we shouldn’t. Having that reaction doesn’t make them evil Jew-hating terrorist-lovers. Even the ones doing or saying the worst things are almost certainly retrievable, having followed a good impulse into dark territory. As of this morning, many of the protestors are now cooperating with the school to break down tents and keep non-students off campus. Isolating and demonizing these kids now in response to their earnest commitment to a cause will only radicalize them further.

11. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: In the news, we are inundated with stories of protest, clashes, and division. There are never headlines that read “Peaceful Day On 99% Of U.S. College Campuses!” even though that headline could run any day of the year, including yesterday. There was no front page story about the Palestinian and Israeli who both lost relatives in this conflict and then shared a TED stage together last week. The people who organize interfaith meetings to have dialogue about the conflict don’t get invited onto CNN or Fox News. Most of us will learn the names of Israel’s war cabinet or the head of Hamas’s military wing, but far fewer will learn about the people leading peace negotiations and ceasefire deals. This is how things are, and I hate it; but don’t be fooled into thinking the entire world is burning with animosity. It isn’t.

12. All of this campus obsession is distracting from the actual war that is going on in Gaza right now. When we covered Israel’s strike that killed workers from World Central Kitchen, I said it provided another example of how continuing this war is going to do long-term damage to Israel’s image and thus Israel’s future — which is core to my “Zionist case for a ceasefire” argument. I have to point out that the unrest and division this war is causing in the U.S. is also part of the Zionist case for a ceasefire. It is part of what I mean when I say this war is making Jews across the globe less safe. Animosity toward Israel is sometimes just anti-Zionism. It is sometimes antisemitism. And sometimes, anti-Zionism morphs into antisemitism before our eyes. Along with the 11 other thoughts above, one takeaway I have from all of this is that my worst fears about what would happen without a ceasefire continue to come true.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

For Americans to understand what happened tonight in Mexico ...

Through most of the 20th century, Mexican elections were run by officials answerable to the Mexican president. The president told the officials the result he wanted. They delivered it. 1/x

[Sam Altman @sama]

ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.

it's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

Great read - https://t.co/oOxmzQwpti

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

@davidfowl It looked like he was in control most of the time. Not much pressure for him and he could do what ever he wanted. Maybe try breaking up his rhythm more, high spin deep on his backend, slices, drop shots, etc and see if you can push back and work your way in. Tough thou for sure!

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

@Carnage4Life Except it’s more than that, 1-2% annually of 1 trillion in assets over 10 years adds up.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

@anneapplebaum is right, https://t.co/e9DglobHPN

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

8 January 1932 | A Norwegian Jewish boy, Leopold Moses Borøchstein, was born in Kristiansund.

He arrived at #Auschwitz in a transport together with his mother Masha and four siblings on 3 March 1943. They were all murdered in a gas chamber after selection.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

Same as with self driving cars and general artificial intelligence.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Too much of web3 discourse has remained at high level vision statements. Posts like Moxie’s help break why these visions are much harder in practice, and why software architecture decisions really matter. https://t.co/56qmvgZmS5

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

😂

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Iceland: 1, tech industry: 0

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

People who understand are drawn toward simple solutions. People who don’t understand prefer complicated solutions.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

I sometimes forget how racist many people in Norway are. Reading the comments of this article is just sad. https://t.co/L2JRY9S4I4.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

@tedneward Separate the two. I think what most have an issue with is not the decision but the execution.

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

This is so useful.

[Jonathan Carter @LostInTangent]

🗺️ When I initially shipped CodeTour, the first thing folks asked for was a web player. As of yesterday, you can now go to any GitHub repo w/a tour, and simply press "." to get a walkthrough of the codebase 🔥 (after installing the CodeTour extension 😎)

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

Yes 🙌🏼

[Cori Bush @CoriBush]

On Friday night, I came to the Capitol with my chair. I refused to accept that Congress could leave for vacation while 11 million people faced eviction.

For 5 days, we’ve been out here, demanding that our government acts to save lives.

Today, our movement moved mountains.

[Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto]

As with climate change and Covid itself, politics and disinformation are trumping medicine and science on Covid vaccines. It is alarming to watch in real time. Remember: more than 99% of Covid deaths last month were among the unvaccinated.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

From WestExec to the White House, a global consulting firm, and this is just the tip of it. This would be a massive scandal under Trump. https://t.co/InLtzbxalc

[Frederik Vig @frederikvig]

“For me, as a democracy scholar, it’s ridiculous to say America is the oldest democracy in the world,” Lindberg said. “The U.S. did not become a democracy until at least after the civil rights movement in the ’60s.”

https://t.co/3FcAxVEic2