Poplicola

old books and movies
new tech and policy

[Poplicola @selectsand]

reading about the Erdos problem and so what, so AI can solve incredibly hard math problems with dots on grids

big deal, we all know toy problems shared by mathematicians barely ever have any practical applications so there's absolutely nothing to worry about

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@andrewmccalip this sounds amazing and i'm curious about details.

can you do metrics? how many KB of text do you glance at per day? do you dedupe things like file and edit menus and if so how?

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@RichardHanania Half of US counties have zero murders per year

when looking at global violence rates maybe need to control for mississippi

[Poplicola @selectsand]

I want a mode where I can a/b test follows, show me three random tweets each from two different users and whoever I pick gets a follow the other one unfollowed

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@elonmusk semianalysis on this is a must read as always

https://t.co/znjPJtVMY3

[Poplicola @selectsand]

reading old papers is sometimes surreal

[Poplicola @selectsand]

that said this does not mean infants strictly need high fluoride doses, most of these benefits make much more sense later in life, if you look at an n/10,000 impacts we're talking very small numbers on either side of the ledger, do whatever works for the first year and don't worry about it is probably the right answer

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@NielsHoven toothpaste's main dental value lies in fluoride delivery for enamel remineralization and cavity prevention, not plaque removal

valkenburg's research is focused on dentifrice as an abrasive and explicitly scopes out fluoride's chemical contributions to oral health:

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@NielsHoven the author did a series of four papers and the last one was open access and you can read the whole thing:
https://t.co/Z9inVrGdQC

you get different insights from that than you do from just reading the abstract of the earlier work on wiley:
https://t.co/I1zjtx1L6S

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@Romy_Holland @LaissezLexi as i understand it they aren't really substitutes, but also there's a case to be made that you should go extremely light on flouride for infants anyway (though thresholds and ages are still being hashed out in the lit):

https://t.co/PNUPcBGMUY

[Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin]

what's everyone's plan when a progressive candidate in the democratic primary calls for a nationwide moratorium and 2020 style everyone else adopts it

[Brian Schwartz @schwartzbWSJ]

SCOOP: President Trump in an exclusive interview tells me he expects and has made clear to Bill Pulte, his new acting Director of National Intelligence, he wants him to make sweeping personnel cuts and major changes to the U.S. intelligence community, in particular taking aim at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“You're less shackled,” Trump told me about Pulte’s temporary role. “It sort of gives you more power.”

https://t.co/vx2nQOVuOy

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@MichaelAArouet extend the x axis and you'll find that Spain hasn't posted meaningful economic growth for 700 years, outside one brief period where the economy was run by technocratic economic ministers in the 60s before labor shut that down

[Poplicola @selectsand]

People think flat and progressive have wildly different results but they can be the same, one is just simpler.

Suppose you can choose between two systems, flat or progressive. The flat is a 20% rate on income above a 20k personal exemption. Progressive has 0% on first 20k, 10% on 20-50k, 25% on 50-100k, then 30% on income above 100k.

If you make 30k you pay 2k, 6.7% effective rate in both systems. 60k earner pays 8k in both systems. 120k earner pays 20k in both systems. Revenue is the same.

A flat tax with a large universal income can end up generating the exact same results as a progressive approach, because as your income increases the impact of the exemption diminishes. It's identical results just with far greater simplicity.

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@0xCheshire what's funny is that weekend drift is often negative, or at least weaker than any other overnight drift

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Last night, the House chose to stand with Ukraine, and I was proud to cast my vote.

We passed military and reconstruction aid for Ukraine, plus hard new sanctions on Russia.

We did it over the objections of Mike Johnson and Republican leadership, who spent over a year trying to keep this bill from ever hitting the floor.

Eighteen Republicans crossed the aisle and did the right thing.

Why does this matter?

Because when a giant authoritarian state invades a smaller democracy, there is no gray area. There is no “both sides.”

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He started an unprovoked war. He flattened cities. He stole children from their families. Helping Ukraine isn’t charity. It’s the test of whether we still mean a single word we say about freedom.

I heard every excuse. The war’s winding down, they said, so let’s wait and see. Nonsense. You don’t strengthen a democracy by going wobbly the second things get hard. You don’t stop the next invasion by telling the world American resolve comes with an expiration date. Putin is watching. So is every dictator who dreams of taking what isn’t his by force.

This bill still has to clear the Senate and survive a presidential signature. The odds are long. But the House did its job. And we said it plainly: no country gets swallowed whole just because a tyrant wants it.

I’ll keep fighting to see this through. Ukraine’s fight is our fight, and we do not abandon our friends.
https://t.co/16OTeNW1dD

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Sam Harris has written the best thing you’ll read today.

https://t.co/gI0wZZNH4m

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@jaxroam @Noahpinion if you talk with people who conduct negotiations with other countries they repeatedly get clear and direct evidence that sanctions work

their firsthand experiences are quality evidence than just sitting around imagining models of how the world works

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@Noahpinion they should watch their fertility crisis closely is all i'm saying

[Poplicola @selectsand]

@Noahpinion if russia had only four people left, we would definitely rush in to secure the nukes

if it had 4+1 people left, we would probably go in

if russia has 20m people we probably don't touch it

this implies there's some number in the middle...