In what sense? It’s up by like 30 something percent since its debut. I’m the first person to admit that I have 0 understanding of internet companies’ valuations.

Thanks for finally joining! It's slow moving around here, but there are good people with some really interesting and niche expertise.

Actually I don’t think that journalist captures the biggest flaw of all, which is the sample size. 20,000 people sounds kind of big, but it’s actually tiny. The problem is that the average age of the population was 49. Heart attacks among people below old age are relatively rare to begin with, and when you are sorting out people who self-report eating on a time-restricted schedule your numbers are going to be minuscule. “91%” is the relative risk, but I don’t see where they report the absolute risk or the absolute numbers. My guess is that a couple instances could be driving that seemingly large figure. Relative risk is meaningless in almost any context (of data reporting) without also understanding absolute risk.

I'm gonna push back on that idea a little. Firstly, this was an academic scandal, with an eye toward industry. But more to the point, I have worked in academia and private industry both fairly extensively, and I've found that private industry generally does more rigorous science (though often not as exciting). The caveat is that I work in biotech, so I don't know how that relates to physics. I would imagine it's not so different, though, because the incentive structures dictate everyone's behavior (but to be fair, biology experiments are notoriously opaque and hard to reproduce even when the hypothesis is rock solid, so there's a lot more room for obfuscation than in a harder experimental science).

In academia the financial incentives come from grants, which generally result from publications, which generally result from high impact discoveries. So the incentive boils down to "make high impact discovery."

In industry the incentive is to move product, and moving product doesn't happen if the product doesn't work. The product won't work if the science behind it is faulty. So the incentive is to weed out bad science, and only pursue the most reproducible work. This leads to a relative lack of risk taking, but generally more faith that what comes out of it is solid.

I can tell you from years of experience that the attitude in academia is "defend this at all costs" and in industry it's "kill this at all costs". Totally different mentalities. But again this is biotech. I realize fully that not all industries follow this trend, especially, say, venture-backed tech. I would imagine that the academic side of tech is way more upstanding than the industry side, but that's a hunch based on little-to-no first hand knowledge.

So here’s the problem they faced in a nut shell: They absolutely had no basis to countermand the fact finding of the lower courts. I.e., if the lower courts found it was an insurrection and Trump didn’t really even try to say he wasn’t. At least that wasn’t the main thrust of his argument. And they really didn’t want to entertain that bullshit about the president not being an officer. So where do they go? Clearly, Roberts and crew weren’t comfortable with where the libs were, which is “states don’t get to say, but someone does”. I goes they felt they had to invent something, and the something turned out to be section 5. Ok. It’s a stretch that you don’t have to be a legal scholar to see though, but the problem is that they were all just uncomfortable with the facts. They were too afraid to just apply the law, because the consequences were too much to face. So now we have a wack-ass precedent that could stand for 150 years. Insane.

Pretty devastating review of the ruling from David French.

The money quote is: "Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment." I've been following French's and some other writers' interpretation of section 3 in advance of this ruling, and while I've read pieces that have been persuasive in both directions, not a single one imagined this as the outcome. This may be a new low for this court, and they have a lot of hits on that chart.

No one in government is more deserving of impeachment that Thomas, not least because of his obvious perjury during his confirmation hearings. I just think no one wants to cross that Rubicon.

He's trying to buy back WeWork, so your dreams may. come true.

Though I don't actually know, my guess is that you're on the young side of adulthood, no? The older you get, the easier it is to keep things in perspective. Like for example, when my parents were young, the n-word wasn't controversial and a lot of white people used it as the default to discuss blacks. By the time I was a kid in the 80s that was unthinkable. But, 'fag' was the de facto insult for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Transgender may have been invented as a term in academic circles back then, but it sure wasn't known to anyone in the public. The fact that conservatives are making anti-trans legislation is only possible because trans people exist in public these days in a way that they did not until very recently. It may not be perfect, but it's very difficult to not see "positive change" as being possible to hope for. Do not let short periods of noise obscure the very loud signal.

To you, but have you always voted for the winning candidate?

Lol. I turned 18 just in time to vote for Gore. That was a nice welcome into presidential politics. Been shitty every since. I remember being so angry, disappointed, and disillusioned by the result that I didn't want to get out of bed for like 3 days. But I was 18. Things affect you more at that age. But on the other hand, Bush turned out to be the worst president in American history hands down, and I include Trump in that assessment. So I suppose I was right to be down.

I do not think Trump has much of a shot in the rematch, but I also think his chances are non-zero. However, I do not share your pessimism that it will lead to the dissolution of the USA. We survived it once intact. We will again. None of this "he knows how to do it next time" carries water, because he doesn't give a fuck about policy. He cares about being in the news, and he'll never cede power to anyone who upstages him. So nothing will get done in Trump 2.0 either.

And I also do not know anyone who like Harris. I almost didn't vote Biden because he picked her. But my Trump hate was stronger than my conviction that I'd never vote for her. And I think that's true of a lot of other people, too.

Really looking forward to the first debate in presidential history in which not a single complete sentence is uttered by either candidate.

Already got scabs taking over

I keep seeing SBF quotes regarding Bayesian statistics, and I gather that's a broad theme within the effectobro community? Bayes' theorem is simple and elegant, but suffers from a critical flaw for many applications, which is that it relies on a priori knowledge of probabilities of certain events happening. Inevitably, there is no knowledge of the true probability of many future events happening or not, so the "known" probability is replaced by an assumed probability. In the case of whether AGI will come to pass in a few years, I gather that the effectobros just go ahead and insert 100%. Same for whether the "biologic substrate" matters.

I hear a little bit of early Springsteen

I've been waiting since 2008 for the GOP to implode, so I'm out of predictions, but it feels like we're coming to a head. My hope when Trump was elected was that the GOP would die, then the Democrats would split in two to reform a stable but still adversarial system. I don't love democrats by any stretch, but the incoherence of the GOP continues to exceed any reasonable expectation with every new crisis. Let's see them try to block aid to Israel on the basis that Biden will try to use the aid to turn the Israeli army into trans pedophiles or something. What a world.

I'm glad she touched on Russia, though I haven't read a lot of commentary on whether they were involved. It seems like it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine so. Clearly this plays into Russia's desire to weaken the US support for Ukraine, which will almost certainly be the case when we start shipping more arms to Israel. We appear to already to maxed out on arms shipments, so it's a zero sum game at this point. I hope that if there's any intelligence to support Russia's role that it will be leaked. It is in Biden's interest to make that connection if it's apparent. It is sad to say, but pretty much since the Arab Spring the world has been looking more and more like pre-WWI all over again.

I have no love lost for Kennedy, but he's funded by Bannon in the same way all those MAGA idiots were funded by the DNC in the last election. It's pretty common practice these days for both parties to run interference in the primary cycle to try to get the worst candidate on the ballot or at least cause some chaos and wasted funds.

Totally agree, but I specifically didn’t mention the Russian flu, because it is highly suspected that the Russian flu was actually a Corona virus that may now live on as a cause of the cold. I went Spanish flu because it’s more recent and we know beyond doubt that it was a flu, so it was a good compare/contrast case in my mind.

Flu pandemics shaped the initial covid response and lo and behold, we basically wiped out flu in the winter of 2020-2021. Sadly, we weren’t dealing with a droplet but an aerosol transmission, so standing 6 ft apart does fuckall if you’re sharing air. The data were there is February and March, but the CDC had made their choices and there was no trove of data that we’re going to convince them to follow the evidence.

See, there’s always a logical explanation for everything. Occam’s razor is never wrong.

That’s your opinion.

Given Kemp's broad clemency powers in the state, I think the Georgia GOP picked a really bad time to piss him off. I remember reading a while back that he didn't even attend the state GOP convention. They've taken to labeling him a RINO. There's no longer any extreme version of conservatism that can't get you labeled RINO, given that their official platform is quite literally "Trump".

Ever heard of McDonnell v. United States?

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mcdonnell-v-united-states/

It's laughable in retrospect.

For about the past 2 months I've been going most days, and it's really making me feel good. Once upon a time I was a regular gym attendee. I quit for a few years, then tried to go back in 2019. I was doing really well until a shoulder injury that needed surgery to fix sidelined me for a while. Getting the mentality of going to the gym regularly is harder than actually doing the workouts.

I know Tom Carmichael and he’s as big of a douche in real life as he comes off on this piece.

It’s pretty fascinating that Republican sentiment about the Court has taken a nose dive, as well. I guess it’s because they said that treaties with Indians are still treaties and that, no, you can’t just let state legislators just say that republicans win…you have to disenfranchise the old fashioned way, but even that has its limits. All things that can only be read as “liberal” in the most bizarro of worlds. It’s hilarious to read the WSJ comments screaming about Karl Rove, John Roberts and Christopher Wray being RINOs.

Depends. If they have some actuarial data that suggest that subsidized tenants are at a higher risk for injury or severe damage to the property, then they may want to stay silent because they figure there's no good PR that can come out of it.

That one always cracks be up, because America literally wouldn't exist as an ideal if not for the coveting of our neighbor's goods and, especially, his wives. Neither would Amazon be so popular if we all decided we couldn't get a 4-pack of AA batteries delivered within 3 hours on the Sabbath.

It’s harsh. I did my roof a few years back and it was $18k. Nearly choked when I heard the number but all the bids were sort if in line. Hurts. I feel you.

So happy for you. Congrats, buddy.

Holy shit, who knew Tim Draper and Don Trump shared a tailor? For real though, I can't figure out which of those companies (ALEF or Long Shot) has a higher chance of never building a full scale prototype. It's cheating to bet "both". I have a very good buddy who's involved in the personal aircraft business, and he tells me that no matter how autonomous you make the thing, there's a snowball's chance in hell that the FAA is going to let anyone who isn't a pilot pilot it. Every time you see a dipshit on the side of the road walking to the gas station to get a gas can to fill up their car that they left on the side of the road (and fuckin' hell if I haven't been that dipshit in my younger years), just ask yourself if you want that person flying their car.

I am curious about their modeling, because my understanding back from my fluid mechanics days was the the primary driver of ditching bi- and tri-planes in favor of long single wings was that the drag from the interwing connections was a giant net loss relative to the extra lift they produce. An infinity wing plane doesn't seem that make that an easier problem ("We didn't break the laws of physics, we fooled them" Um, what?).

But to circle back to Long Shot's funding, $1.5M isn't very much given that they were granted a Phase II SBIR. Phase II SBIR grants are worth at least a million and up to 2 in some cases, so it's possible that the got a couple hundred grand from these high profile billionaires, and that gives them good PR and not much more. What's 100K to Sam Altman? I'm currently waiting on the review of a Phase I SBIR and I'm going to be mighty pissed off if I don't get it ($300k) after reading this garbage!

Edit to add that I'd like to hear further thoughts about why betting on sure losers is a positive for VCs. Just as a write off? A tax dodge?