Sloane

poly sci phd candidate (ABD). connecting the dots everyone else missed. usually with a whiskey in hand to numb the pain.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

Let's talk about orgasms! Applications being accepted now to help study this one 😀

Sociological research shows that in first-time casual hookups, heterosexual women climax only roughly 30% of the time, compared to over 85% for men. However, in committed long-term relationships, the female rate jumps significantly.

Treating this 'orgasm gap' like a grand biological mystery is hilarious. It’s not anatomy—it’s a textbook Principal-Agent Problem straight out of corporate finance. A breakdown 🧵

[Richard Fontaine @RHFontaine]

Both sides are now settling in for a long U.S.-Iran war:

1. Gone is U.S. talk of seizing Kharg Island or forcing open the Strait of Hormuz by putting troops ashore. No more bantering about destroying Iran’s bridges and power plants - or ending its civilization - to win the war in a decisive blow.

2. Instead the U.S. approach now combines economic strangulation - blockading Iranian ports and stepped-up sanctions - with efforts to facilitate movement through the Strait, like demining and escorting ships.

3. Never say never - the U.S. could restart massive strikes - but in the meantime it’s opted for a military-economic strategy aimed at forcing an Iranian capitulation over the long run. 

4. The President here has shown more endurance than most expected. It was supposed to be a six week war, not a six month one with no end in sight. But the U.S. has not quit the fight despite the major economic costs as well as the hits to military readiness and resources.

5. Tehran has settled into a mirror image of the U.S. strategy: survive, threaten shipping periodically, and use proxies to keep much of the region insecure and on edge. Bet that the U.S. clock runs out faster than the Iranian one.

6. Shipping through the Strait has gone up significantly, but insurance rates remain sky-high and a lot of transponders are turned off. Iran targets passing ships intermittently - enough to keep risk and costs up, and to demonstrate its control.

7. Treasury’s “D-Day” sanctions announcement had more potential energy than actual moves. If the U.S. decides at some point to begin sanctioning Chinese and other entities who do business with Iran, the effects will take still more time.

8. The net result is warm war - not a cold ceasefire but not a hot conflict like we saw for the first two months. The focus of both sides is on inflicting economic pain that will eventually translate into political costs - and then abandonment or restraint.

9. We’re a long way from either side doing that, notwithstanding looming elections in the U.S. and severe economic difficulties in Iran. 

10. Escalation by one side or the other is entirely possible, given the otherwise siege-like approaches they’ve chosen. The options there are obvious, including intense bombing (on the U.S. side) and renewed attacks on regional infrastructure (for Tehran). But they aren’t obviously decisive.

11. So with or without escalation, the best bet now is on a protracted economic contest, enforced largely but not exclusively through military means. A months-long project, at least.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

The fact that the administration is either being less than truthful or flat out lying should not be a partisan issue. We should all be able to agree that knowing the truth is the best thing for us. We should know what is happening in Iran and what the risk is to our many soldiers in the line of fire.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

The reason satisfaction spikes in long-term relationships isn’t romance—it’s repeated-game theory. Accountability forces labor investment.

You don't have bad luck in bed; you're just expecting a long-term return from a one-night pump and dump from a guy who knows he’s never getting audited.

For more on the "Orgasm Gap," see studies by Armstrong, England, and Fogarty.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

Let's talk about orgasms! Applications being accepted now to help study this one 😀

Sociological research shows that in first-time casual hookups, heterosexual women climax only roughly 30% of the time, compared to over 85% for men. However, in committed long-term relationships, the female rate jumps significantly.

Treating this 'orgasm gap' like a grand biological mystery is hilarious. It’s not anatomy—it’s a textbook Principal-Agent Problem straight out of corporate finance. A breakdown 🧵

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

In economics, when an agent has zero equity in the firm, they optimize purely for short-term extraction. Casual hookups are unregulated spot markets. If a guy knows he’s never seeing you again, he has zero incentive to invest 20 minutes in customer satisfaction. He cashes out and falls asleep.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

@danheld Nice write up on that:

https://t.co/C1Vv58uG16

[The Quantified Universe @TheQuantUni]

The 2% Fed Inflation Target

When politicians talk about the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation target, it sounds like an unbreakable law of the universe. In reality, the number was basically made up by accident in New Zealand in the late 1980s.

The Origin Story
The country was fighting high inflation, and the government decided to make their central bank fully independent. To keep the bank accountable, the finance minister told the head of the central bank, Don Brash, to pick a target number. During a television interview, an off-hand comment was made suggesting inflation should be around 0 to 1 percent. Brash later admitted the number was basically plucked out of the air to influence public expectations. They eventually bumped it to 2% to give themselves a little room to breathe. It worked. Once the public and businesses believed inflation would only be 2%, they stopped demanding massive yearly wage increases, and inflation plummeted. Today, although there is no formal global coordination that forces other countries to align, nearly every major central bank uses 2%.

Why 2%? Why not 0%?
You might think - why not 0%? Central banks settled on 2% because it acts as a "shock absorber." There are three main reasons:

1⃣ Measurement Errors: The way the government measures inflation (like the Consumer Price Index) has a slight upward bias. If the gauge reads 2%, true inflation is actually closer to 1%.

2⃣ The Deflation Trap: If the target is 0% and the economy slips, prices start dropping (deflation). Deflation is catastrophic because people stop spending money (waiting for prices to drop further), which causes businesses to go bankrupt and fire workers. A 2% target keeps the economy safely away from the zero-line.

3⃣ The Interest Rate Cushion: In a normal economy, interest rates hover slightly above inflation. If inflation is 2%, interest rates might be 4%. When a recession hits, the Federal Reserve has room to slash rates by 4 percentage points to save the economy. If inflation was targeted at 0%, normal interest rates would be near zero, leaving the Fed without any ammunition to fight a crisis.

What Happens When Inflation Runs Higher than 2%?
When the central bank misses this 2% target and inflation runs hot—like the post-pandemic supply chain crisis or our current 2026 tariff environment—the effect on the working class is profound.

Inflation acts as a massive, regressive tax on the poor and middle class. The math comes down to the "consumption basket." Lower-income Americans spend the vast majority of their paychecks on strict necessities: rent, food, and gasoline. When energy shocks or supply shortages hit these specific items, the working class has no financial wiggle room. Conversely, the wealthy spend a much smaller fraction of their income on necessities and hold their wealth in assets like real estate and stocks, which actually go up in value during inflationary periods.

The long-term math is staggering. Because the things working-class people buy go up in price faster than the services wealthy people buy, the lower income households experience a completely different inflation rate. Data tracking inflation from 2005 through recent years shows that the poorest households experienced cumulative inflation roughly 10% faster than the national average.

When the 2% target breaks, the middle class drowns while the wealthy simply adjust their portfolios.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

Some textbooks (math book for example) often times have the answers in the back and may even go further and tell you how to solve it, step by step. The kids that looked at the problem, immediately looked at the solution, and then walked along thinking to themselves "uh huh yeah yeah, I get that" would ultimately score lower on exams than the ones that struggled through the problem and then checked their work with the answer. AI is a modern day high schoolers version of this. Readily available and can be easily abused much to the detriment of the student. Cliff Notes - same thing.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

A starving populace is too busy looking for food to stage a coup. A functioning economy produces an educated middle class that demands your head. Bad governance isn’t a bug or a lack of morals—it’s an incentive structure.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

The single best political science theory to ruin your day is Selectorate Theory. People think corrupt leaders stay in power because citizens are passive, but the math is much darker: competent leaders get overthrown faster than corrupt ones. A quick dive-bar breakdown 🧵

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

If you run an autocracy, spending money on hospitals and roads is political suicide. Public goods benefit everyone, including people plotting against you. To survive, you must starve the public and hand fat private checks directly to the 12 generals holding the guns.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

Disagree. I was on birth control to help manage my hormones and help with a painful period before I used the birth control for sex. It was all done with parental consent and discussion with a trusted doctor. Frankly that's where this discussion belongs, not being debated on X.

[Tulip 💐 @cutelipssx]

Patient: My back hurts so much, I really want to be a B cup after this reduction

Husband: I’ve told her she doesn’t need a reduction

Plastic surgeon: Look at the red marks on her shoulders from her bra straps digging in. That looks painful.

Patient: I have to wear 3 sports bras when I run, I’ve stopped exercising completely.

Husband: She really doesn’t need a reduction

Patient (to husband): Go wait in the waiting room

And yes, she got what she wanted and also got rid of a total boob….

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

The only two ways into a commercial cockpit are:

1⃣ Paying $100k - $200k out of pocket for civilian flight hours (FAA mandates 1,500 flight hours). This cost naturally filters out the majority of the population and favors candidates with existing generational wealth.

2⃣ Have the taxpayer fund it via the military. For decades, military pilots have been majority white and male. Those pilots eventually retire and walk directly into commercial airline jobs.

Decades of a historically white-male military pipeline and a massive wealth barrier do not equal a pure meritocracy.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

@alid1973 People think this is a feminist talking point, but it is supported in the data. Every major study shows hostile sexism is the single strongest statistical predictor for violent extremism across all ideologies.

[The Quantified Universe @TheQuantUni]

https://t.co/0Lo2KEAyDz

[The Quantified Universe @TheQuantUni]

https://t.co/yRHO4MzoOR

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

The solution is automation and "upskilling". Modern factories don't need 1970s assembly workers. They need technicians who can program robots. Slapping tariffs on imports just kills consumer demand by driving up prices, which ends up canceling factory expansions entirely and those promised jobs evaporate.

The actual think-tank strategy (https://t.co/EFm6UVyU7F) is R&D tax credits, advanced robotics, and vocational training for a high-tech workforce.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

@JoJoFromJerz If future generations thinking we were all high is the worst of what happens, I think we will have dodged a bullet. Unfortunately, I don't think the damage done can be unwound so easily and quickly.

[Sloane @SloanedIt]

Actually.... I have receipts.

A recent Harris poll found that 78% of Americans claim to understand tariffs, but only 48% actually do (https://t.co/afENeug3VV).

Ipsos just proved that 55% of the country doesn't know importers pay the tax (https://t.co/sM8PuxyFbG).

YouGov found that over 40% of the President's base literally thinks foreign countries write us a check (https://t.co/ktrLnP8YCj).

You arguing against the data gave me a chance to post all these sources, so thanks.