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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
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26 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
This is an interesting point.

Memes are the new protest songs I guess. But even including memes, there didn't seem to be much cultural output from lefty youth during the Trump Era.
What's really weird to me is that there was basically no good pro-Bernie music or art that I ever saw. With all his fired-up youth support I would have expected a lot more utopian music and art.
A utopian movement needs art of some sort to inspire people. The inspirational power of pie charts and line graphs seems inherently limited.
I guess now we have TikTok, and there's some politically oriented cultural output there. But it sure took a while.

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
25 Nov
Thanksgiving pie poll #1:

Which of these 3 pies do you like best?
Thanksgiving pie poll #2: Which of these 3 pies do you like best?
Thanksgiving pie poll #3: Which of these 3 pies do you like best?
Read 6 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
23 Nov
Just for fun, here's a thread of responses to a tweet I wrote comparing West Virginia's per capita GDP (PPP) with Shanghai's.

Some people argued that GDP isn't the only measure of quality of life.

They're right, of course, but they generally failed to mention any factors that might make Shanghai more annoying of a place to live! Image
Some people responded with instinctive contempt for West Virginia. Image
Read 16 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
22 Nov
If you want more trains in America, you won't do it by making driving less attractive. People will revolt and you'll lose to pro-car people at the ballot box. Instead, figure out how to make Americans more enthusiastic about riding trains.
Some of this is psychological. Since Americans aren't used to riding trains, you have to figure out smart ways of getting them to think about changing their lifestyle. This is basically a form of marketing. (For me, this was living in Japan, but obviously that doesn't scale up.)
Some of it is about development. You have to allow dense development near train stations, so more people A) live near train stations, and B) can take the train to shop and eat out.
Read 8 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
21 Nov
Trads: I won't live in the pod

Also trads: I want to go back to the 1950s, when a good middle-class house looked like this
And remember the total fertility rate in the 50s was 4, so this house would have to fit a family of 6 😫
Floor space per person has more than tripled since the 1950s.

yesiamcheap.com/cost-of-living…
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
20 Nov
At a house party for A.I. people, and saved from having to do a go-around introduction by the timely arrival of a hang of thieves stealing catalytic converters from the cars outside
Ultimate San Francisco tweet
Friends asked a thief "What are you doing?" He replied "I'm robbing."

The police walked over and chatted with him, but didn't arrest him, and he left.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
20 Nov
China is facing four big economic shocks now:
1. A real estate crash
2. Covid
3. Supply chain woes
4. Xi's industrial crackdowns

Fear of war could be a fifth...
With all of those shocks, it looks like China's era of rapid, easy catch-up growth might simply be over now.

Remember that China has less than 30% of U.S. per capita GDP (PPP), and only about 40% of South Korea or Japan.

If China's catch-up stalls out before it's even half as rich as its developed neighbors, that's a fairly poor showing for its economic model.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…
Read 4 tweets

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