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alex williams

@atwilliams.bsky.social
9.9K followers 2.5K following 7.9K posts

macroeconomist and computer user at www.common-wealth.org, founder at www.continuousvariation.com, fellow at stanford, partisan of the republic of letters, "in this horrible age of abuse and decay / its good to know somebody's looking ok"

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Reposted by alex williams
rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
there's a thing in moderate democratic politics where it is considered fundamentally illegitimate to deliver results to your own voters; instead, you must propose a better way to implement your adversaries' entire ideological program
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francisco varela fan club @paleopragmatist.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Stancil and the leftists have been shouting the two parts of this sentence at each other for years now when they should just be shouting the name at the top to everyone else
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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
it is crazy that he did a straight-up supervillain monologue about how he had planted this in right-wing media and that the NYT was going to pick it up, right in front of the NYT, and they did
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
incredible scenes as i am experiencing my own "night they reread minsky", but reading him in proper 18 brumaire fashion as a growth model rather than a prophecy of doom
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conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I have been thinking that teaching is one of the core “relational” occupations and maybe we should plan to reallocate people into it as office work comes to require fewer people. what if we halved student/teacher ratios at all levels? would be a nicer world
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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Surprise, it turns out AI regulation is *also* all about gender
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Scott Edgar @scottedgar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Excellent paper alert! Marco Giovanelli's "Cassirer and the Arithmetization of Physics" really, REALLY (imho) advances our understanding of Cassirer's basic epistemological perspective. direct.mit.edu/posc/article...
direct.mit.edu
Cassirer and the Arithmetization of Physics
Abstract. Drawing an explicit parallel with Felix Klein’s account of the arithmetization of nineteenth-century mathematics, Ernst Cassirer maintains that nineteenth-century physics likewise underwent ...
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
wait hang on i just put 12 and 12 togethere for the first time here: are they actually just called "Rationalists" because the term names "fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" ??????????
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
REAL REAL REAL REAL
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
made a pour-over in the same style
jar w pour over
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 28/09/2026
I really wish Evgeny Morozov was less prickly as a person because he was arguing this in 2010 as an OSF fellow and I think the way Jared Cohen in particular outmaneuvered him in the 2010s mania about the Arab Spring was genuinely bad for society.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
As I keep saying, not repairing a bridge imposes a cost on future generations, just not the kind of cost that is immediately visible in the accounting system
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
They Need To Force Mark Lilla To Write This Piece Frfr
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Snowden St. @snowden.st · 28/09/2026
It’s gonna be darkly amusing to watch people who spent years angrily or apocalyptically reciting the crimes attributed to various Communist regimes do the “now, hold on, Trump wasn’t actually conservative” shuffle
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Joshua Basseches @joshuabasseches.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"'When an agency acts outside the bounds of its statutory authority, it violates the [Administrative Procedure Act],' Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump-appointed judge with the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, wrote in her ruling.": www.utilitydive.com/news/federal...
utilitydive.com
Federal judge restores $7B Solar for All program, says EPA illegally axed it
A Trump-appointed judge said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act did not convert the funding into “a lump-sum amount subject to EPA’s discretion.” Defendants acted contrary to Congress’ intent and with “no...
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
made a pour-over in the same style
jar w pour over
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🚲insert into dq_list select uid from partisans where party = "R" @db-user.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
you should not be taking coke with your PA, you should not be fucking the head of your HR you should be taking coke with your competitor's head of HR and hosting sex parties with the pharmacist down the street
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Matt Weiner @mattweiner19.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
great piece would add that one big dange is The Powers That Be putting a system that *isn't* capable of running things in charge of it, and trusting what it does because it is The Machine God the "the supercompetent AI will kill us all!" doomsaying makes that more likely, because Machine God
Most crucially, the real problem with this narrative is that there are real reasons to be afraid. Not in a “Skynet superintelligent AI turning on humanity in a sci-fi judgment day scenario,” but in the incredibly banal “as soon as the powers that be find AI models sufficiently capable to be put in charge of defense, weapons development and guidance (including bioweapons), and information, they will do it.” Smiling serenely and saying (correctly) AI is not super intelligent or sentient will not stop it from being used as though it is.Therein lies the real existential threat: not Skynet, but Shitty Skynet.
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
saw a hammer fall out of the bed of a guy's pickup on the road today
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Osbert Crale @ooorev.mir.cee.wtf · 26/09/2026
They have put a drainage scheme and a quarry in my tea. The pool is in the wrong position but the roads are honestly not bad.
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
isnt the paperclip maximizer just goodharts law for people who dont read econ
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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
“Neoliteralism” maybe a hyper positivist, super secularist, post postmodernist “style” of “too late capitalism”
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I think something to consider here is that Collins voted to confirm Russ Vought as OMB Director despite the fact that he said a billion times that he thought Trump had a constitutional right to illegally impound funds, and now she’s doing shocked Pikachu reactions.
Sen. Susan Collins • fAl
劉
@SenatorCollins
X.com
Without warning or consultation, Congress just received an $810 million package of pocket rescissions from the Administration. This is the most recent attempt by this Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to undermine Congress's Constitutional power of the purse.
This move shows that OMB intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law.Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress's appropriations powers.
OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.
The independent Government Accountability Office has concluded that pocket rescissions are unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment Control Act. Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.
I will work with my colleagues to address these illegal actions.
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Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · 25/09/2026
arstechnica.com
US being left behind in EV charging speeds as China goes sub-5 min to 70%
The new LFP battery charges from 10 to 70% in 4.5 minutes at just 65˚C.
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All In with Chris Hayes @allinwithchris.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The White House released new ads promoting Trump—and they’re paid for by the U.S. government. “The whole thing is weird,” says Chris Hayes.
youtube.com
‘What the hell?’: Your tax dollars just paid for a 'PSA' praising Trump
YouTube video by MS NOW
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Thomas Ptacek @sockpuppet.org · 25/09/2026
Today I'm parting ways with fly.io. It's been a privilege. I'm off to tilt at a big old windmill with Kurt, again. sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/09...
sockpuppet.org
What Even Is An OS Now?
Computers now work the way I thought they did when I was 8. What does computing look like when most applications have an audience of 1-2 people? I'm leaving Fly.io to build a phone for that world.
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Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Most riveting thing I've seen all week
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
@jevbot.bsky.social is warsh losing control of the long end?
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Tim Fernholz @timfernholz.com · 25/09/2026
🚨OpenAI friday news dump 🚨 techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/u...
techcrunch.com
Unsecured OpenAI agents posted 53 user images on the internet without the lab's knowledge | TechCrunch
AI agents operating in OpenAI's research environment posted user images on public image-hosting sites without the lab's knowledge.
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laura’s aura @lauragiron.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“always tomorrow sounds true” is what im always saying
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godoglyness @godoglyness.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This world is so much stranger than I ever could have hoped
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Ken Acks @costbenefitkmaacks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/b... Tom Malinowski "This is a huge NYT investigation into how Russia uses shell companies & Tether, a crypto coin, to evade sanctions & buy arms. What it doesn't mention is that the main U.S. backer of Tether is Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Howard Lutnick's sons."
nytimes.com
The ‘Monster’ Behind Russia’s Global Effort to Evade Western Sanctions
A Moscow firm uses shell companies and cryptocurrency to launder money, and a custom app to forge trade records, to help Russia bypass sweeping financial restrictions.
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Dean Baker @deanbaker13.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Now that homeownership rates for young people really have fallen, as opposed to under Biden when they hadn't but the media reported on it anyhow, where are the news stories on young people giving up on homeownership? cepr.net/publications...
cepr.net
Where Are the Articles About Young People Giving Up on Homeownership?
Young Americans’ homeownership rate has fallen below its pre-pandemic peak, raising questions about why the media is paying less attention.
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danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Today is Pub Day for "Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census"!!! ::bounce:: Please support me by buying a copy of the book or asking your library for a copy! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
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asura @asura.dev · 24/09/2026
I wish more people would address this as an executive problem. No logging, no moderation, no observability, ... Palworld has more security. For decades people (like me) could cause entire outages in entire regions. Jail or fired if I did. In most of these scenarios, some mechanism should stop me.
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
ai discourse be like "its too late! topologize!"
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 23/09/2026
I believe the agents were discussing this on that German Wiki
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ceej @ceej.online · 24/09/2026
impeach them all. fuck em. why should they get to fly around on our dime and hurt people? “they’ll never actually removed from office” who gives a shit? I want them miserable every day for the rest of the term. I hope they have nightmares. air their dirty laundry. make em sweat
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
i love to see GOP midterm panic spread
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Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Really good stuff in this:
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"what on earth is going on with metaphor these days?" - derrida, platos pharmacy, loose translation
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
[ai policy discourse voice] woah, just saw one car drive into another car. they shouldnt do that! there oughta be a law
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Scoiattolo @scarnecchia.net · 21/09/2026
Imagine if all the evidence for climate change was "a bunch of guys on a website thought very hard about it and agreed it was very bad and might happen" instead of empiricism.
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
too much work, everyone who matters is here anyway. it is everywhere.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 21/09/2026
the question "can computers drive?" is vastly superior to "can computers think?" because it disarms all the dorm room bullshit and reduces the question to its pragmatic implications, while also revealing that the underlying problem is one of vocabulary rather than anything metaphysical
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hikikomorphism @hikikomorphism.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I think Jev is a huge missing piece: we can now build intelligent agents out of fast cheap reflexes and slow expensive chain-of-thought cognition, instead of running everything on LLMs.
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Stefan @zin5ki.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Steles are up.
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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Btw ive dug a little more into his ideas here. He had this notion in 2019 that USD was increasingly unsuited for a multipolar world. But that just changing the reserve asset doesnt solve any of the adjustment problems. Whatever people use for funding/transactions still creates an unnatural demand
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
everything stupid comes from aristotle
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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
going to start saying "passes for mustard" instead of "passes muster"
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