Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 14hIt's real annoying how people these days are using "lived experience" as moral cover for telling untruths. No the economy is not bad just because you personally don't like it bsky.app/profile/dean... 2365
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 14hso I got the covid shot this year and they didn't ask for a stupid qualifying condition like they did last year so there's that 001
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hbefore economists started talking about monopoly bad, most governments' reactions to most commercial opportunities, such as the discovery of some natural resource, was to immediately sell a monopoly license for it 020
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hmedieval and early modern governments thought monopolies were great. Competition was seen as "ruinous" whereas monopolies could act deliberately and--perhaps most importantly--deliver a stable income stream to the government that licenses them 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hI see this take on progressive era thinking a lot and I don't think it is quite right. It's not that there was a "loss" of competition, it's that economic sciences had only recently formulated a theory that monopolies were actually bad, and this was still making its way into policy ideas 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hthis is why people are pretty much giving away the limestone on facebook marketplace. It costs thousands of dollars to move it anywhere 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hThe only way to bring in enough stone for even a very small waterfall grotto wall is a commercial dump truck or semi truck. And I don't have a driveway so another problem is where do they dump it, are we really going to move 40 tons of stone one-by-one from the street before we get fines 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18h"rent a truck" ok but the weight limit of a uhaul pickup truck is still like 10 limestone blocks. The problem is not the physical space, it's the suspension and number of axles 210
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hI had this idea of building a waterfall grotto and my boyfriend keeps sending me facebook marketplace listings for piles of stone and doesn't understand why I'm not jumping on it. How do I get him to understand that the weight limit of a modern SUV is like 8 not terribly big limestone blocks 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hI think today's internet socialists like to confuse the term progressive because 1)socialists were also pretty active in the progressive era (they were called socialists, not progressives) 2)progressive still has a much more positive connotation today than socialist 000
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hProgressives were reformers. They wanted to take this wild irrational system of taxes and replace it with one that was systematic and fair. Income was a natural thing to base a tax on, it guaranteed fairness. Most progressives were not aiming for a big redistribution of wealth 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hBefore the progressive era taxes, like so many things, were a garbled hodge-podge of one-off measures. Tax revenue came from a mess of tariffs, excises, property taxes, poll taxes. The constitution mandated apportionment. If a tax hit one person way harder than another, nobody cared, tough nuggets 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 18hTeddy Roosevelt's support for income tax is a good window into thinking about how progressive era progressives thought about progressivism. TR did not support any big redistributive programs, but he supported the income tax, why? 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hthe meaning of "progressive" in the progressive era has no relationship, none, with how the word today is being used 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hIs this person actually a historian because this video is pretty dumb. Like at one point she tries to imply similarity between Teddy Roosevelt's party and the DSA, excuse me no youtube.com/shorts/_aIh_...youtube.comAre we entering a new Progressive Era?YouTube video by Anti-Social Studies 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19ha TV should last at least twice that long imo 000
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hon top of all that, doordash has also ruined restaurants. People are doordashing food, doordash increases the price by like 50% and then gives it to you cold, soggy, late, and the dasher forgot to grab half the items, and then people post bad reviews of the restaurant when doordash is at fault 010
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hGetting an influencer, who is stupid, wildly corrupt, and also 12, to recommend your restaurant has become the only marketing game in town. People crowd into fewer and fewer restaurants because they're all relying on the algorithm for recommendations, and the algorithms show everyone the same crap 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hHe mentions the "arms race" among fine dinning restaurants but misses what's driving it: reviews, social media, influencers, algorithms. Relative to actual food critics, influencers are so so dumb, but also have hundreds of times more effect than the newspaper critics ever did 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hHe tries to make the case that the economy is worse today than in 2010 and no that simply isn't true. People today can afford to spend more on eating out and actually do spend more on eating out, just facts 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hKind of interesting to see a chef's take here but tbh I think he has pretty much completely missed the plot youtu.be/MbpF6K4fQHE?...youtu.beChefs claim that Fine Dining is dead. This is the reason why.YouTube video by Christian Puglisi 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hthe dish they actually show in the movie apparently comes from The French Laundry restaurant in california 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hIt's fun how ratatouille the movie completely defined what the dish is supposed to look like for the rest of time. The actual historical dish was actually a pottage, roughly cubed vegetables meant to be served as slop in a bowl 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 19hhere's an example of what I mean, none of this is actually cream cheese. Not even close 020
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hit annoys me the extent to which google's algorithm heavily favors when recipe people do this. I want the actual for-real recipe not some watered down "easy" version 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hboth the house and senate maps heavily favor republicans, they definitely will not do as bad as the headline poll results suggest. Just keep that in mind 010
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hpolling is bad for republicans but it's also important to understand that the reason conservatives are out in force saying stuff like this is to lower expectations so when they don't do as bad they can be like "eh everyone loses midterms, it wasn't the white nationalism" bsky.app/profile/moll... 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hI was a bit confused what personalization problem AI-generated music would solve that could not have been solved by algorithmic discovery of genuine music? If you can't solve the latter problem I have a dim view of your ability to AI-generate good music bsky.app/profile/brok... 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hI hope to never read an AI-written book. But I have mixed feelings about the audio book. It would be a shame for major publishers to stop hiring real voice actors, but also I'm aware of what a burden audio books are on small-time and self-published authors, and consequentially on blind people 040
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hit's true that part of what you pay for at a fancy restaurant is the artistry of the chef, rather than expensive ingredients. But like once the chef invents the recipe there's nothing stopping you from putting it on the applebees menu, is there? 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hone fancy french restaurant I like charges an arm and a leg for a pan-seared cod over wilted spinach in beurre blanc. We understand this to be fancy food so we pay fancy prices and we don't put it on, say, applebees menus. But like, we could, right? This is easy to make and cheap ingredients 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hBut if we are being honest most of the menu items at a very expensive restaurant are not made with expensive ingredients. Nor are they particularly difficult things to make. 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hSometimes the answer is the use of rare and expensive ingredients. Black truffles are very expensive before they reach the restaurant. Black truffles cannot be effectively farmed because they only occur in delicate symbiotic relationship with a sick tree. This all makes sense 110
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hanother fun thing to think about from an econ 101 perspective is "what makes expensive restaurants expensive?" 120
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hThe skill idea can maybe explain small differentials--the medieval tailor presumably made more from tailoring than he could have from subsistence farming. But big pay differentials are driven by something else entirely 030
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hLately I've been thinking about how bespoke tailoring disproves some simple Econ 101 ideas about wage differentials. It's a highly skilled craft, very few people that kind of skill, literally everyone wears tailored clothes, yet it has *always* been low paid, even before the modern factory system 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hit's a little unfortunate that economists ever used the "skilled" vs "unskilled" labor dichotomy especially since it only loosely maps onto wage differentials. But carpentry is definitely in the skilled category, the types of skills an employer would expect you to already have when they hire you 120
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hI mean, yeah, carpentry is like the ur- example of a skilled trade bsky.app/profile/devi... 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 20hevery time she'd get a ton of retweets and like, folks, I'm sorry, you've been had, this was all fake 050
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hthere was a lady on here who would post a mutual aid type request for money every few days, first she needed help paying rent, then she needed more for late fees, then she needed more because her car got towed, then she needed more because her dog was sick, then she needed more... for months 150
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hLike I suppose it's possible a genuinely poor person could rig up a reply bot on twitter but I'm comfortable calling that a scam because a bot auto-replying to all your posts is inauthentic behavior 030
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21h"what is a scam" is an interesting question here but one reasonable definition is 1)inauthentic behavior, and/or 2)accepting money under false pretenses 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hWe do sometimes give cash to the people in real life--I have mixed feelings about it--but this is why I never give money to the gofundme's or whatever on the internet. Ratio of real to scam is just too low. I see people convince themselves they're savvy while giving to (and retweeting) scams 220
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hNot that nobody has ever needed some cash at a gas station or whatever but it's such an easy scam well over 99% of what you encounter in real life is going to be the scams rather than genuine stories 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hI believe she's poor but like the hard squeeze there at the end totally disproved her whole sob story. If I'm being honest I think that approximately all of these sob stories people who ask for money give are fake and rehearsed. 120
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hA lady stopped us saying she needed money for a bus ticket. We gave her $5. Then she's like "I just need $2.50 more" ma'am I know what bus tickets cost 130
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hI don't think you can force someone to get treatment, but definitely make it available, along with other supports, while having a mechanism to remove them from places where they're a danger to other people 160
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hCloud seeding is basically the only real weather modification technique, right? And it is only marginally effective even at it's very modest goal of increasing precipitation. MTG is saying they can control the direction of hurricanes. 100
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hActon and Brown are in the lead in recent Ohio polls but it's narrow and imo pretty soft 120
Sir Reginald, Duke of Chutney @hyperplanes.bsky.social · 21hI actually think texas going blue while republicans sweep ohio is a real possibility now 240
