iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

if you want to build a politics with working-class support, you have to start from organized labor. if you equate this with the fossilfuey industry and climate denialism, I would submit that you re a bigger part of the problem than the uaw.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15m

maybe we shouldn't bracket those tho

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 18m

I would not put #3 in the same category as the first two. The ideas that the climate transition needs to deliver material benefits to working people is very, very different from the idea that climate change does not exist and renewables should be actively opposed.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2h

I thought it was a musical-instrument case.

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Reposted by JW Mason

Andrew Elrod @andrewelrod.bsky.social · 2h

It seems crazy to me that Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn not only hired a retired Green Beret to escape Japanese securities fraud prosecution in a suitcase, but that he's been living in Lebanon for five years talking about the importance of Hezbollah to Lebanese democracy.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 2h

I guess we don't value life expectancy.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 5h

Now you are thinking like an economist! and/or an effective altruist.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 18h

No, they did not. But others here have suggested that some banks will let you deposit a check made out to someone else.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

Another good theory. bsky.app/profile/maxm...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

but doesn't the system look at who the check is made out to?

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

some of us are old fashioned that way

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

well I don't know. we only know about them because the bank got them and initially honored them. but who actually received the payment, I don't know.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

yes if nothing else this is a teachable moment about check clearing

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

Like someone claims to have a business called "NYC Water Board" and opens a bank account for it, deposits intercepted utility checks into the account, and hopes to cash it out before getting noticed? I guess that could work...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

Further inspection reveals that a first set of duplicate checks were posted the same day as the original payment, a second set - the ones with the mobile deposit box checked - four days later (which is when we noticed it).

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

still payable to the water company. that's what makes it so weird! if that had been changed it would make more sense.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

but could that actually work?

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 22h

(no, that doesn't make sense either, does it?)

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

The plot thickens. In response to a comment here, I looked at the backs of the checks. Several duplicates, unlike the original, have the "mobile deposit" box checked. So maybe this was something more primitive, someone copying the physical check and trying to use it to get cash out of an atm.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

also could be I guess?

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

This is the best explanation I've heard. bsky.app/profile/dsei...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

ok that makes sense. I guess it worked in that case!

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

yeah, we are going to have to go into the bank in person to figure out what to do with the account (it is still frozen as of now). which is not how I'd been hoping to spend my Saturday...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

Hm, I didn't look at those. But then it wouldn't have come out of our account I don't think?

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

I had the thought too. But six extra water bill checks is definitely not going to fly under the radar!

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

haha blame the rogue AI agents

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

The bank insisted they couldn't halt payment on these checks without freezing the account. (And even that took my spouse a long time on the phone getting past the AI moat.) It did get eventually get fixed & won't cost us anything except annoyance. But I'm still baffled by *why* anyone would do this.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

So clearly this was some kind of scam, somebody went to some trouble to submit these fake checks. But what is the *point* of it? How would a scammer profit from getting us to overpay our water bill? It just doesn't seem to make sense.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

It definitely wasn't a glitch - the checks were exact copies except for the substitution of increasing (tho non-sequential) check numbers in a slightly different font, which had to have been done deliberately. They also weren't quite exact copies, they had the kind of artifacts you'd see in a xerox.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

Had a very strange experience recently. We submitted our water bill by paper check as usual the other day, and then a series of identical checks starting showing up - six in total before we got the bank o freeze the account.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

The more generic answer is that it is much, much easier to wreck the habitable planet you're on than to find and settle a new one. Any long-lived civilizations out there have solved Pascal's problem of learning to sit quietly in a room alone.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

I didn't realize you taught, somehow I had you pegged as a finance professional.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

My "we don't need to backstop CoreWeave" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answer by my shirt. bsky.app/profile/carl...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23h

you are right but this one was too good not to share

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Reposted by JW Mason

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Your regular reminder that for DECADES, a consistent majority of the American public have told pollsters that undocumented immigrants living here for years should have a chance to "fix their papers." The "deport them all" crowd are the minority, and always have been.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Also bsky.app/profile/jwma...

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Pretty soon might be pretty soon, now.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Yeah it feels like a throwback to the pre-twitter blog world.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

A mental model in which credit is infinitely elastic at the given interest rate is much better than one in which the interest rate is the price of fixed stock of saving.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Yes, credit is not *entirely* unconstrained. But it is certainly the most elastic element here. And there is no reason to think the current rise in interest rates reflects a scarcity of financing capacity in any meaningful sense.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

No doubt. But that is a separate question.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The capacity to *make* credible promises is of course also a constraint. But that has nothing to do with crowding out. If I come up with a better story about why my project will be profitable, that in no way limits your ability to also tell one.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

(The language of “savers” is a clear signal of where they’ve gone wrong.)

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

So for instance this is fine as far as it goes. But clearly if there is a binding constraint in this scenario, it’s the capacity to deliver real resources in the present. Not the capacity to accept promises about the future.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

In an important sense the Fed is the central bank of the world.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

It’s a shame that people as smart as Paul Krugman and Robin Wigglesworth are stuck in a loanable-funds world where demand for credit raises rates directly, as if banks had a vault of cash to lend out and had to stop when they ran out.

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