Say that I hold the political that the US should provide more humanitarian aid to Gaza. If I raise a bunch of money for this cause, can I use that money to make movies about the poor conditions in Gaza? Can I buy a full page in the New York Times with information about the crisis in Gaza? Can I use the money to run ads advocating my position on Gaza? Can I use the money to buy ads that support candidates that share my position on this issue?

This is basically what super PACs do. Of course I don't want it so that you can deliver a bunch of gold bars to a senator in exchange for their vote on a bill, but was illegal before citizens united and remains illegal after.

For me, I don't see how you can reasonably enforce some rule against using "money to influence politics" without also having some central entity that gets to police everyone's political speech, and that scares me.

But yes, I agree, WP is very useful for those times when you need to run a quick `sudo rm -rf /` command but can't get to a terminal.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't comment as maybe WP has progressed but it doesn't sound like it.

If we do want to soak the rich, can we do it in a progressive, targeted way (such as taxes) and not in a NIMBY way where we just say no one can build or improve anything?

Where I live pretty much every piece of land has some sort of easement on it: for water, power, or something else. Seems weird to me if we can insist that now everything needs to be frozen and no more infrastructure upgrades.

So in some theoretical hiring example, if I have to choose between two candidates: one which is really good at keeping the code in the head and the other who is less good at that, but who is very skilled at using programming tools like advanced type systems or formal verification tools, then I'd prefer the latter.

Of course in practice, I would of course take a student that I knew had passed their paper test with their own knowledge over a student that likely ran their digital test through an LLM.

So instead of companies working on their AI support execution, I wish they would just work on their website.

Can someone give me examples of the kind of support they want from a company that could be provided by AI, but could not be better provided by a well designed app and/or site?

If the definition of "awful" is broad enough, I imagine most public companies will fall in the "awful" bucket, probably with the same distribution of stock performance as the whole market. If "awful" is going to mean something truly extraordinarily bad like dumping mercury into a well or whatever, I would still guess there is no correlation as I've read horrifying stories of corporate behavior at companies with unremarkable stock performance.

"There was a spoils system in the late 1800s. It sure would be great if we could go back to that time." Technically these can be interpreted as unrelated statements (as apparently the statements are in your original comment), but most people would infer from that they were related and that the reason it would be nice to rollback to the earlier time was the aforementioned spoils system.

This is your comment basically:

People really need to read their history. When America definitively surpassed the UK in 1880 as the richest country in the world (per capita), tuberculosis was a leading cause of death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis

The advancement of antibiotics did not happen until the mid 20th century, which significantly postdates America's rise to the top. It would be a great idea to rollback science to that time when we didn't have all these life saving vaccines and antibiotics.

When the 65 year old sole proprietor of a local HVAC business sells it to a PE firm, the other option was likely winding down the business. If the owner had children that were interested in running the business, no doubt they would give it to them. But usually that is not the case. So the owner needs to sell. And if there were capitalized, enthusiastic local entrepreneurs that could buy it, no doubt the owner would consider them. But again, this is quite rare.

So the choices usually come down to: close up shop or sell to a PE firm. All other things being equal (which they never are), I think a market with more businesses is going to be more competitive and pro-consumer than a market with fewer businesses. Further, some economists have found that PE activity encourages business formation, perhaps partially explaining why the US has more small businesses per capita than Europe (where they have far less PE). So it's a double whammy: PE causes less businesses to close and more businesses to open.

A short, entertaining article on this topic: https://www.economist.com/business/2026/02/23/rejoice-privat...

If it is like you say and different people are just inherently more or less suited to different paradigms, then not everyone can be happy.

Unless of course those with a modicum of competence desire to be true public servants. Read about the character of some of our great leaders like Washington, Lincoln or Eisenhower to understand the mentality of a true public servant. Something someone like Kash Patel knows nothing about.

I don’t think this level of virtue is all that rare, though it is rarely rewarded at the ballot box.

There’s almost nothing to forget? I’m just struggling to understand.

You want the ability to choose a different “authorities” that verify and sign binaries? That makes sense to me but is unlikely to relieve any of the issues in the post.

Also what do you mean by “even yourself?” What would that option look like?

The charges could be very serious but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, because being charged (or even just arrested) is not the same as being convicted. The author of this post claims both of their charges were dropped.

So, what, let’s torture anyone that _might_ have done something “serious?” No judge, no jury, just if a cop thinks you might have done something, straight into a psychological torture cell for weeks and months while they think about your case? wtf

Also, your description of their experience as “not pleasant” just kind of blows my mind. Like it was a long line at the DMV or something.

But there are other studies and meta analyses which cover other countries and come to the same conclusion.

I think many of the studies claiming to find significant population level decline are older and overstate the issue due to the methodological errors outlined in my previous post. If you are thinking of a particular one, please share a link.

I am not familiar with the research on testosterone levels in animals. In humans, while not conclusory, I do think the evidence suggests that increasing rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome are the proximate cause of testosterone decline.