Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected]

I write software, sci-fi reviews, and sometimes other stuff too. Use open, federated Mastodon instead of Twitter.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@jessesingal If you want to get *really* nerdy, consider trying Archipelago, which lets you network a bunch of unrelated games together, randomize their item locations, and find items for each game in the other games: https://t.co/PVGUezcaBh

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@liberalishEngr @jessesingal We just amend the part of the Constitution that says you can't abolish the Senate, unless we twist ourselves into pretzels to conclude that part of the Constitution is somehow immune to amendments too.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@liberalishEngr @jessesingal Article V can be amended too.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@WildComputers Doing that is committing an async communication war crime.

Just send the message. It'll be responded to when the person sees it.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@liberalishEngr @jessesingal A constitutional amendment absolutely could abolish the Senate.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@QED76 @jessesingal I'm a fan of federalism in the sense that I support states having the right to make different laws for themselves than other states.

I'm not a fan of a kind of federalism that says Wyoming and Vermont get equal voting power in the legislature as New York and Texas.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@ChemlokNA @jessesingal The only way to move the Overton Window from unthinkably radical to mainstream and popular is to talk about such things with as many people as possible and persuade them one person at a time. Things change gradually, then all at once.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

On some of my group text threads it’s like “eek people disagree about this political topic, don’t bring it up” (echo chamber culture). On others it’s like “ooh fun disagreement!” (idea lab culture). When you get used to the latter culture, the former seems so juvenile.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

The fact that webdev has become React by default feels like fishing becoming dynamite fishing by default. With such an extremely excessive, overkill approach, you'd think people would just stop at some point, but nope. Devs just keep setting off explosives in the lake.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

The rhetorical tendency among certain people to pretend as though their fringe view is a consensus position and everyone who disagrees with them (which is in fact most people) are the real fringe is very annoying.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@mattyglesias I think the whole point of that definition of working class is that it's much more expansive, and that it is in fact quite useful to expand that definition so much. We should focus a lot more on taxing wealth than on taxing work.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

If you can't keep your house without your job, yes you're working class.

A Harvard MBA with a mortgage and a negative net worth and a low six figure income is absolutely working class.

We should focus the tax code on taxing wealth much more than we tax work.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

Some socialists insist that anyone who must work for a living is "working-class."

This idea is coherent. But it also helps well-off professionals disguise their class's particular interests as those of all working people.

For example, under Biden, the left effectively demanded debt relief for Harvard MBAs in the name of "the working class." Today, almost all Democrats want to raise taxes on the super rich -- but *only* the super rich -- in the name of "the 99%"

https://t.co/wMz5TsSJel

[Dr Satoshi Akima FRACP 『秋間聰』 @ToshiAkima]

The surgical mask shown in this article will do almost nothing to reduce particulate inhalation because it's just a splash guard. Wear a well-fitted N95 respirator or better https://t.co/1RiH1ihmeZ

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Moby Dick needs to be a limited series rather than a movie so that it can have abrupt shifts in tone and narrative structure, there should be whole episodes that are just done in the style of PBS documentaries with Morgan Freeman narrating.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@GFRobot Very true! Relatedly, strong critic/audience response doesn't mean it's good and poor critic/audience response doesn't mean it's bad.

There's way too much bandwagoning lately. People should just watch stuff and make up their own minds as to whether or not it was good.

[Eric Newport 🦣 @[email protected] @kethinov]

@BaronDestructo Ending on a cliffhanger is really tough on audiences, so in that sense I sympathize with the framing of "fail" given that it didn't get a proper ending.

Ditto SGU, that was a tough episode to end the show on. Made it feel like everyone must've died and that's why the show ended.

[Aidan Gallows is revising 👑🗡️ @Aidan_Gallows]

I think if authors are too poor to survive piracy and readers are too poor not to pirate then we need to have a really serious conversation about where all that money is and why it isn't circulating properly.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Criticism like this is why it is so important to pair a wealth tax with a simultaneous huge tax cut for everybody making less than $100k.

Otherwise the super rich will trick everyone into thinking it's gonna hit them too.

Also: life is hard out there, cutting taxes for everyone under $100k is the right thing to do.

[Thrilla the Gorilla @ThrillaRilla369]

I used to have this mental illness where I thought logical arguments would change someone’s mind.