I met a Chinese woman living in Japan yesterday, who was placed under house arrest for three months for what she wrote on WeChat. And now I'm reading about how Macron is promising to make France closer to China and more distant from the US.

I actually think European strategic autonomy is a good thing -- I don't think the EU should be an American security vassal. But damn.

Also, the way he talks about American decoupling from China is an opportunity for Europe to deepen economic integration with China is fucking nuts.

The bathing of a tiny human 💚

Probably one of the most stress-filled birthdays I can remember having in a long time. There's always next year, though!

I clicked a link in your article...

Any real world macro-level equilibrium is a built up out of smaller systems in equilibrium which are made up of smaller systems, etc. It’s impossible to know, except ex post, how vulnerable the entire system is to some little exogenous addition causing some sub-sub-sub-system to careen out of its seemingly unshakable orbit.

I think we actually disagree, here. Fundamentally. I think all complex systems are, at best, metastable. Only adaptive systems are able to persist for long periods of time. I can think of nothing in nature — literally nothing — that is absolutely stable. Except maybe the proton. Which still may be unstable, and the only reason we haven’t seen a decay event, could be because the proton’s half-life is some major multiple of the age of the universe or something.

But for social and economic systems, my base rate assumption, is they exist within metastability windows, and no set of rules or axioms can maintain their stability indefinitely. Eventually the second law of thermodynamics will rear its ugly head in every system.

I would be somewhat wary of these claims. You have no idea how the survey was worded in order to get thoses results. It's like the political compass test. Damn near everyone becomes Bernie Sanders (left libertarian) just because of the way questions are phrased.

What if people want the government to do things that are impossible to do? Like maintain a large safety social net, but also simultaneously keeping taxes low?

Bitcoin is the first time we’ve had money. Everything that came before was a proxy. Anything can monetize, but there is only one absolutely scarce money. ⚡️

If Bob's father is a cousin of Alice's father, what is the name of the familial relationship between Alice and Bob?

Someone send me sats

In happier news, California's water reserves are almost back to 100% of their historical average. So at least we'll be able to water our lawns this year.

Big day

Deregulation and bad private sector risk modeling caused this problem. The FDIC, Treasury and Fed are doing a great job cleaning up. Zaps are open.