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Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
I work for the Internet and am an advisor to @stripe. These are my personal opinions unless otherwise noted.
167 subscribers
Aug 3 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The existence of YouTube does not make reading and writing less valuable. It gives children a constant companion who is responsive, preternaturally so, to their desires and curiosity. (I devote a bit of brain space—not too much but I pray not to little—to making sure that constant companion does not make the entire world look like a pale imitation of itself, which would be wrong but could easily look accurate to the subjective experience of a child.)
Jul 29 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
This letter is what happens when a credit card PM misunderestimates how much of an adverse selection effect they have in a new portfolio. (In particular note the cap on cash back and the carveout for particular transaction types which some users are able to generate arbitrarily high amounts of or would naturally have arbitrarily high amounts relative to “normal” CC use.)
Jul 17 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If I can give a slightly more optimistic take on this: much of how commercial software development is done trades some resources for others, in ways that might not be rational for people with very different strengths than e.g. AppAmaGooFaceSoft or BigCo customers. A lot of AWS services exist so that two teams don't need to have a meeting.

That *is not a criticism of either AWS or those two teams.* That is a preference one can have about time allocation and corporate structure, and capitalism will help you satisfy it.
Jun 17 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
So strange that card program managers make such a show of doing this careful balancing act when everyone who reads the Atlantic knows that the real source of rewards is cross-subsidization of elite cardholders by poor people. </sarcasm> Less sarcastically: it’s a math problem conducted by people who are pretty good at math, and the marching orders they get are “In general and in steady state, all of our card programs should be margin accretive. Make it happen. If you can’t you’ll need a senior signoff.”
Jun 14 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
I think the so-called Bitcoin treasury companies have just reinvented exchange tokens: there is an asset with X real world utility but not naturally leverageable. It should flow to place in world where most leverage is bolted onto it; immediately incentive compatible. Repeat 100x And then “Holy %}*]^ how did so much of it end up in a place with grossly deficient risk management?!”
Jun 4 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
(n.b. This is extremely well-known among companies which have a business process where you sign things. Most of them use a signature to demonstrate solemnization rather than authorization or authentication.) As I've mentioned previously, solemnization is a sociolegal tripwire to say "There are many situations in society and in business where you're Just Talking and up until this exact moment we have been Just Talking *and after this point* We Were Not Just Talking. Do you get it?"
May 27 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Apparently Japan Post is debuting the most obvious improvement in addressing for last two decades: address virtualization.

You sign up with them and get a short alphanumeric code. Their DB holds a pointer to physical address. If you move, you tell them, pointer changes. And then when dealing with an e-commerce merchant instead of doing the traditional laborious address entry (which in Japanese usually requires redundantly providing the pronunciation of the address as well) you just give them the code.
May 23 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
Listening to @_rossry ‘s new podcast about drug development and the first episode about operational competence issues in clinical trials is giving me flashbacks. Link, inciting comments, and story time:

developmentandresearch.bio/meri-beckwith/
May 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting article about falling backwards into founding a non-profit and then doing policy advocacy work, which had a number of points which resonated with me: Image huffpost.com/entry/utah-sch…
Apr 23 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In today's very surprising example of things an LLM could be good at:

I had a print failure while running a resin print in the wee hours of the morning.

Debugging these is a bit maddening. They arise from a combination of software, math, chemistry, and unpredictable chaos. They're also very underdocumented. (In what is surely a first in the history of manufacturing.)

The community is spread between various Facebook groups and Discords, and writes little down formally. Most recorded lore is in YouTube videos, and aimed at low-skill enthusiasts.
Apr 12 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
This is 50% of my cycles this year compressed into a tweet. There are Sorts within the Sort, all the way down.
Apr 3 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I don’t have anything novel to contribute on the substance of but have to again comment, pace Situational Awareness that I think kicked this trend off, that single-essay microdomains with a bit of design, a bit of JS, and perhaps a downloadable PDF are…ai-2027.com … a really interesting form factor for policy arguments (or other ideas) designed to spread.
Mar 27 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This week on Complex Systems, a continued discussion of credit card rewards, interchange, and what I believe is a persistent misconception about how society should want justice done via payments systems.

It ends with the following, which the team took the liberty of putting into a short clip. (Sound on if you like hearing my voice, but video is subtitled.) Last week the Atlantic published an opinion piece which argues that the poor are subsidizing the rich's receipt of credit card rewards. This view has wide currency among certain advocates and among opinion writers.

It is not true.
Mar 20 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
An argument I have had with some credit card enthusiasts for a very long time, paraphrased.

Enthusiasts: I’m robbing the bank blind!
Me: Doubtful? They are probably pretty happy to have a portfolio of you.
E: Oh by carefully layering promotions and making a spreadsheet and… Me: So checking my understanding: you spend a lot of money on credit cards.
E: Yes, that’s the whole point.
Me: And in a nation which makes it illegal to underwrite using an IQ test, you have self-constructed an IQ test.
E: Yes and I pass it obviously.
Me: Right. Tracking.
Mar 20 • 36 tweets • 8 min read
The Atlantic has an interesting piece on credit card processing. The thesis is that interchange fees redistribute money from poor to rich.

I do not subscribe to this thesis.

For a quick recap on how credit cards make money, see Bits about Money's issue on the topic.

bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/how-cr…
Mar 18 • 33 tweets • 5 min read
Last up at #microconf, Marcos Rivera from Pricing I/O on pricing.

"How to avoid stupid mistakes in SaaS pricing"

(I am likely to have some thoughts.) As always, quotes are Marcos (lightly paraphrased; real time is hard), anything attributed to Marcos is a heavy paraphrase, anything unattributed is me.
Mar 10 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is a useful enough specific observation that I'm promoting the general observation to text:

Organizations don't make decisions. People at organizations make decisions. Very often, there is one lynchpin person who must hypercommit to an org doing something for that to be. From this follows any number of corollaries, including:

1) If you desire change in an org, it is really useful to understand who, specifically, is the lynchpin for the change you want to see.
Mar 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the cultural quirks of capitalists is that there are many lies that one is allowed or even encouraged to tell in society, and capitalists are members of society, but are in principle not allowed to lie about revenue.

This strikes many non-capitalists as odd. I have jokingly phrased this as “Certain forms of writing are sacred. For example, if you write the word Balance Sheet on top of a list of numbers, those numbers become sacred to capitalists, and a lie amongst them is a sin that the gods of capitalism will punish most severely.”
Feb 23 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
There is one contractor during this home remodel who I greatly enjoy because of his continued imprecations about the general state of contracting, other subs on project, etc.

“Got something to show you Mr. McKenzie. *gestures at floor* Do you understand how a laser level works?” Me: “I think I get the theory.”
Contractor: “I think I do, too. Of course back in my day we did this with a bubble level of maybe a piece of string and a weight. But I was concerned that perhaps the people who put this floor in might not understand how to use traditional wisdom.”
Feb 21 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.

Highlights include:

* Strong direct statement of his innocence.
* Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy.
* Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans.
Feb 17 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Me: Ah a nice relaxing Monday where I can finally get some work done.
DOGE: Have you ever heard of checks?!
Me: %{*]% it. Me: I don’t do partisan politics.
Twitter the Sumerian bird demon: Got it.
Me: Which is why I work in a painfully boring infrastructural field.
Twitter: Oh sure.
Me: That no one hates each other over.
Twitter: Yeah.
Me: So just writing the truth won’t summon a mob.
*curse starts*