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Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
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Feb 2 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In San Francisco
It takes 20 years to build a public bathroom
They held a ribbon-cutting ceremony
And a press conference
This is not a joke
"BART will hold a ribbon-cutting event to mark the reopening of the Powell Street Station restrooms that have been closed for more than 20 years." bart.gov/news/articles/…
You laugh, but the SF model is being exported all over the US, from Seattle to LA.

It's legalized graft, on an enormous scale, always in the name of the people, at the expense of the people. Read @ShellenbergerMD's book about this catastrophe of a city.
amazon.com/San-Fransicko-…
Oh, so the "security concerns" vanished in Feb 2022?

Even the normal TSA wasn't able to keep functioning bathrooms out of airports. God only knows what San Francisco's TSA equivalent must be like...
Mission Accomplished 🧻

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More from @balajis

Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Feb 3
Their approach is a school-of-fish strategy. They mindlessly mouth the conventional wisdom. When they’re wrong, they’re all wrong together. Who coulda known?

But any individual who did know, and said so, can be singled out for opprobrium.

It’s all about conformity, not truth.
It's actually a good strategy for the establishment, albeit emergent.

Attack any heterodox thought as a group. Then, if the idea breaks through regardless, no one person needs to apologize.

The lab leak theory is a good example. @Ayjchan @mattwridley
scottaaronson.blog/?p=6183
One defense against the school-of-fish strategy is pseudonymity.

That's why Satoshi and project-evidence.github.io put their work out under a pseudonym.

The latter is the renamed version of an early lab leak study that we discussed in April 2020.
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Feb 3
This is a Renaissance painting.
No, the opposite of a Renaissance.
Dégringolade.
20 years.
2 stalls.
A full press conference.
A toilet paper ribbon.
No scissors.
Idiocratically oblivious pride in this “accomplishment”.
And a model that is being exported all over America.
I can’t get over how stupid this is.
It is decivilization.
Literal Idiocracy.
Gawking at a flush toilet from multiple camera angles.
13 billion dollars a year for the city.
No one in the whole imbroglio seems to recognize how underwhelming it all is. Image
The thing is that SF is not just the future of much of America. It is its present.

Its governance model may be terrible for citizens. And terribly wasteful of money. But it secures sinecures for parasites & funds the homeless industrial complex.

They’re happy with the outcome.
Read 9 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Feb 1
India is legalizing cryptoassets. There’s significant fine print, especially around tax, but overall this is a win.

Speech (video):
Speech (transcript): indiabudget.gov.in/doc/budget_spe…
Summary: pib.gov.in/PressReleasePa…
Full Bill: indiabudget.gov.in/doc/Finance_Bi…
The speech is bigger than crypto, however. If you read it, you get the unmistakable impression that India is more tech savvy than many realize.

Digital universities, drone farms, telemedicine, open source…embraced and understood at the highest levels.
indiabudget.gov.in/doc/budget_spe…
It's a bizarre experience to see a national politician who is conversant with technology and can calmly describe its benefits to the public as part of a dry budget speech.

It shouldn't be bizarre, but it is.

In other words, this was also my impression:
Read 9 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 27
My rebuttal is that California is rolling blackouts while China is scaling nuclear.
As noted, I have nothing against @PeterZeihan the person. But since you asked, I do disagree with some of his ideas. China is a technologically advanced, formidable power. And the US is not on the right track. Defending freedom means grappling with this.
My position:

- I regard China under Xi with apprehension
- But I don't think the US is a guarantor of order anymore either, as it is characterized by chaos at home and war abroad
- I don't have significant investment in China
- But like many Chinese, I prefer trade to conflict
Read 6 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 26
The person of color victimized by this terrible crime is suing SF's DA directly. That's a new twist.

Just a little while ago woke whites wanted to end qualified immunity for police. Perhaps this case will end absolute immunity for prosecutors themselves. nlg-npap.org/absolute-immun…
Of course, the push against immunity came from a certain direction. But life is unpredictable.

Allowing regulators, prosecutors, judges, etc to be individually sued could break the system. What's on the other side?

Maybe anarchy, maybe accountability.
fedsoc.org/events/prosecu…
The discourse has, so far, entertained the idea of police being sued for over-enforcement. We are now seeing prosecutors being sued for *under*-enforcement.

Setting emotions aside, these are (in a sense) type I and type II errors respectively, and both should be disincentivized.
Read 8 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 22
Russian troops have been massing near the Ukrainian border for weeks. Negotiations not looking good. US carriers also apparently now positioned to deter China if something happens in Ukraine.

No idea what's going to happen or which reports are accurate. Monitoring with caution.
Some thoughts:

1) Fog of war applies. Who knows what reports are real? Military deception is a thing.

2) This is one of those things (possible simultaneous conflicts with Russia and China?) that you'd think would get more attention. Not that attention necessarily helps...
Also, if you're truly taking Gell-Mann amnesia into account, every article has to be put through the filter that media corporations are unreliable narrators.

But *if* they didn't butcher this quote, then Russia is saying negotiations are at a "dead end".
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Read 14 tweets

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