David Walker

Hot banter and sly retweets from Toronto's sexiest Von Neumann probe.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@Mkessy @InlandCaGuy @stanfordNYC This is Twitter, we're all engineers pretending to understand Econ

[Overeducated Gibbon @MostlyMonkey]

You don't understand because you have the foresight of a goldfish. Breaking up tesla and spacex to fuel the consumption of the American underclass for a few months is precisely the type of shortsighted horseshit that keeps you and your ilk from building anything.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

I sincerely think it's bad when people polarize themselves into denying Musks' incredible achievements in engineering, but this is such a dopey take. It's not "because of politics" like Musk gave an interview once saying he's pro-life or disagrees with Democrats about taxes.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Warrenism spreading to Canada, I see. Grocery stores make almost no profits, so trying to drive their profits lower will just force them out of business, causing food deserts.

[David Zagaynov @DavidZagaynov]

The sheer scale of a trillion dollars can be hard to comprehend. Let me put it in perspective. You would be able to buy 42 miles of high speed rail in California with that much money.

[Sean Speer @Sean_Speer]

This whole episode is an example of what @reihan calls “punitive egalitarianism.”

We let it persist because we don’t see its costs—or we’re weirdly proud of them.

As @tylercowen has observed, one of the main reasons why Canada has less inequality than the U.S. is because we export inequality there.

If Musk had stayed and created his companies in Canada, our Gini co-efficient would be higher. But so would our employment, incomes and national wealth.

[Jesse Singal @jessesingal]

The Popehat trajectory has been something to watch

[Charles C. W. Cooke @charlescwcooke]

This is actually correct—just not for the reasons Vietor thinks. Musk had $180 million in cash after he sold PayPal, and it didn't make him happy. What made him happy was starting the other companies. His money isn't in some vault; it *is* those companies. https://t.co/KKDZ5EEfEw

[kache @yacineMTB]

you need to read and understand every line of code going into your codebase

[Bishop 🏴‍☠️ 🇺🇦 @KBP9a91]

>anti-semites workshopping the term “Epstein class”

[Andy Masley @AndyMasley]

Promoting this level of low trust conspiracy theory politics is just so repulsive to me

[J.J. McCullough @JJ_McCullough]

@Noahpinion What an absurd thing to say. Yes we absolutely do.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@thesoypill So either every satellite with solar panels is slowly boiling, or this satellite can probably find a way to dump the energy it gets from the sun.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@thesoypill This also treats AI as having magical heat-generating properties.

Satellites gain energy via solar panels and lose energy via radiation. It doesn't really matter if the electricity is for AI or just heating an element, the math is the same. Energy in = energy out, or you burn.

[THE SOY PILL @thesoypill]

I hate elon but the idea that SpaceX engineers don't understand radiative heat and have invented a "device that breaks when you use it" is just ridiculous.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@Noahpinion 1. We are much more liberal than the US, so we must participate
2. The US's problems are from how conservative they are, so we must not have the same issues
3. We're very distinct, so we must focus on our own issues

I'm playing a little fast and loose with "we" here, to be fair.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@Noahpinion Canadian identity is based on the idea that we're very distinct from the US because the US is way too conservative. When the US is having a liberal moment, it puts us in a bind. We want three things:

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@dilanesper I assumed HR was evocative, since it captures the spirit of the early woke era - "hang on, we were having a conversation and now you're appealing to the referee. Also, since when is there a referee?"

Seems pretty literal in the OP, though

[Alex Godofsky @AlexGodofsky]

It's so darkly funny that one of the foundational parables of the woke era was a cautionary tale about not immediately rejecting people with Nazi tattoos.

[David Walker @walkdotdv]

@corsaren C) It's marketing wank

Making the guardrails visible and obnoxious reinforces that "this is too powerful to share" which in turn reinforces "this is really powerful".