Scramuel Verhasselt

Thoughts expressed here are probably those of someone else.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

More people would cycle if their bike was more likely to still be there when they leave it.

[Grant Slatton @GrantSlatton]

being a cyclist kinda sucks politically because your options are always

Candidate A: loves bike infrastructure, but refuses to jail bike thieves

Candidate B: wants to send bike thieves to the gulag, but hates cyclists

anyway my bike was stolen last week, RIP

[Alex Plitsas 🇺🇸 @alexplitsas]

The U.S. should honor Senator Graham by passing his final piece of legislation, the Russia sanctions bill, to help bring this war to an end

[roon @tszzl]

🇺🇸

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

Just learned I can no longer ask Jeeves

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

"Most capitalists will happily become oligarchs. Their allegiance isn't to any particular system, it's to margin."

I'm a capitalist, but not a crony capitalist.

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

Just listened to a clip of Jason Calacanis talking about how most tech companies now "support Trump on various endeavors" with the exception of Anthropic and "this is america you're allowed to have an opinion BUT! This administration takes things personally, and they're full contact."

The overall thesis of the clip as I understood it was "Anthropic is a bunch of Democrats, they hate Trump, Trump hates them back. Why isn't Dario doing the thing all the other tech leaders are doing? Of course Trump is fucking with them."

OK.

I think it's fair to say that the average person would say that Jason Calacanis is more of a capitalist than me. Certainly he's made much more money than me and his job title contains the word "capitalist."

But what Jason is talking about being the new structural quality of the American economy here is not capitalism.

If the President of the United States picks OpenAI to win the AI race even though Anthropic's tech is better, that's not "Oh, y'know, this administration takes things personally!" shrug.

That's actually not capitalism anymore...it's a pretty well-understood different system called oligarchy. That becomes very obvious if you just replace any of the characters in the story with names you don't recognize.

Just in case it needs saying, oligarchy sucks. It is bad for innovation and bad for economies and bad for consumers and ultimately also often (eventually) very bad for the oligarchs! This is why we're supposed to be apalled when our leaders start actively encouraging oligarch-like behavior.

Because, look...funny thing about capitalism that I've noticed...most capitalists (there are some exceptions) have no real ideological allegiance to capitalism. They don't /want/ to compete. Competing is annoying, it's hard, you can very easily lose!

If they can make more money by getting the state to protect them than they can by innovating and competing, they will absolutely pick state protection.

Most capitalists will happily become oligarchs. Their allegiance isn't to any particular system, it's to margin.

Now, people to my left will say that oligarchy is, in fact, the final form of capitalism...it's where capitalism will inevitably ends up. I don't believe this because of how we have lots of examples of capitalist countries that are not oligarchies.

But watching it happen in my country (and watching influential capitalists shrug as it does) doesn't strengthen my position!

It is honestly kinda astounding to see such a staunch pro-market guy just say, "the administration is full-contact, Dario needs to play ball." We all get that that's not a defense of markets, right?

It's a defense of one guy distorting a market because he dislikes any power that is not his power. If you find yourself defending that, it is possibly because you, yourself, strive to be an oligarch. Be real careful with that. You can follow your incentives into an evolutionary dead-end. It happens all the time.

I've just been thinking about it all morning. Just a real jaw dropper.

You can watch the video here: https://t.co/eU29LH9xoR

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

Severely underwhelming performance from the Iberian Peninsula so far this World Cup.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

I imagine they'll fund many a houthi with $300 billion dollars.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

@trq212 @bbishdotdev There are only two hard things in computer science!

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

"You're only as powerful as you can make the people around you feel"

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

A good speakeasy is all shadows.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

@stratechery How am I following this but it's never in my feed?

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

One of the most profound effects Trump has had on Congress is that he convinced a giant portion of GOP voters that the establishment guys who fall in line are the heroes and the constitutional conservatives who challenge the system are the villains.

[Ron Shillman @shillman1]

I don’t want a president who’s “just like me.” I want a president who’s smarter than me, more articulate than me, more well-read than me, and better educated than me with the confidence to surround themselves with people smarter, more educated and articulate than they are.

[Chris Freiman @cafreiman]

It’s a strategic mistake for the left to cede patriotism to the right rather than correctly point out that the right has actually betrayed American principles

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

My favorite part about being American is not knowing what the Olympian looks like until they appear on the screen

[roon @tszzl]

Olympics makes it immediately obvious that diversity is actually a strength

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

@thsottiaux I'd like the artifacts of planning, documentation, and decision making to be something configurable to keep in directories of my choosing.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

If someone only has W-2 income, there is no reason they should have to file taxes at all.

[Scott Santens @scottsantens]

TurboTax literally makes 100% of its revenue from lobbying to keep taxes annoying and complicated.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

I'm a simple man.

I trust any message sent by a man with that kind of ball security

[Be A King @BerniceKing]

Be Love.

#BadBunny #SuperBowl #BeLove

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

I respect Thai food too much to try to make it myself.

[Scramuel Verhasselt @SamVerhasselt]

I am limited by my imagination at the present

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

for me the odds that AI is a bubble declined significantly in the last 3 weeks and the odds that we’re actually quite under-built for the necessary levels of inference/usage went significantly up in that period

basically I think AI is going to become the home screen of a ludicrously high percentage of white collar workers in the next two years and parallel agents will be deployed in the battlefield of knowledge work at downright Soviet levels