I got lots of stuff wrong during Covid, but the thing that I got right (and that I'm most proud of) was a pattern of researching source materials, finding and promoting large-scale studies, and letting that information drive my thinking My best piece during Covid was against mask mandates in schools. I did a systematic review of large scale studies which all pointed the same direction:

1) Covid is not a big danger for kids
2) student masking is not an effective mitigation

marginallycompelling.com/p/the-case-aga…

The difficulty here is that, if we are going to blame the US for not spending 12 cents to save a baby girl, we also have to ask why the organization that literally hands the medication to people can't spend 12 cents

Do they not have 12 cents? No one in that org had 12 cents?

https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1900983163968798729

If the left had spent the last decade telling us that America was good b/c we are saving thousands of lives every day, there would be little appetite to cut this funding

But they didn't. They told us America was shit and we're all awful people who make the world worse

I don't have strong thoughts on Ukraine so I'm going to watch this thing with zero wisdom and just say what I see

OK, Trump is saying he can't shit on Putin and then expect him to make a deal. But then he immediately shits on Zelensky saying "he's got a lot of hatred" (implying very strongly that this hatred means Z can't cut a deal). That's... crass.

My 9yo son loves sharks. You cannot understand how much a person can love sharks until you have met my son.

We watched Sharknado. He did not just love it. He wants to live in this world. He believes a Sharknado is possible. He is on the sharks' side. 🧵 This morning, he woke up early and asked if we could watch a shark show together.

Of course. Nothing would make me happier. He went to Disney+ and they have about 800 shark shows including (I'm not making this up)

- Shark side of the Moon
- Game of Sharks
- 50 Shades of Shark

I'm not sure what is going on, a 🧵

Is USAID little more than a grift org? I'm skeptical mainly because that's a really comfortable narrative to get people to be ok with nuking it from orbit.

https://x.com/Anc_Aesthetics/status/1886579120512913445

This seems like a reasonable explanation of the Musk strategy for clearing out the corruption brush in the government.

BUT I'm very skeptical of reasonable explanations like this because they are often used to persuade people like me

https://x.com/AndreaSJames/status/1886968773682586003

This reminded me that Reading Recovery is quite possibly the most damaging program implemented in American schools

It teaches children not to sound out words but to guess at the word based on the first few letters, surrounding context, and visual cues

It has caused massive permanent damage to millions of children My son was taught using this method for one year when he was in public school and I am still trying to teach him to sound out words

His inability to read long words correctly has shattered his confidence and has made him despise reading that doesn't have pictures

"We can't find any 'native' Americans to fill these jobs" is the kind of thing a tech executive will say when they have no idea what their own company's hiring process looks like "We can't find anyone to fill these jobs" but when I talk to my friend inside the company, it turns out they have a hiring freeze

It's impossible to have a conversation around this but, if I were to try, it would be this:

People (esp young people) are furious at the diffusion of responsibility that our modern world represents. Bureaucracies, public & private, can do anything and no one is held responsible

https://twitter.com/andylancaster/status/1869102381985845369

You can see this on almost every level of life. A pharm company can roll out policies that kill thousands.

McKesson Corp was ordered to pay billions for killing thousands of people in Jan 2022. Since then their stock price has doubled. No one truly held accountable.

10 years ago, I identified as a libertarian

Today I do not. Most of this has been because I've lost 2 family members and almost a dozen friends to fentanyl.

I'm sorry, libertarian friends. The drug problem is fucked and your solution is to just let everyone die There are two libertarian answers to this

1) of course people are dying, that's b/c the gov't doesn't allow safe legal drugs

2) letting the weak die is best for the survival of the species

This is, indeed, an interesting clip. But I want to focus on a throw-away comment in here.

Ezra says that Greg Abbott bussing migrants was obviously "cruel" and I just want to know...

Cruel to whom?

https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1856904182973776383

Was bussing migrants cruel to the migrants?

How so? Is New York City a crueler place than Texas? Is it dirtier or uglier? Does it have fewer resources?

Is NYC more racist than Texas that it would be kinder to keep the migrants in the warm embrace of Texas?

I don't know how to say this gently, but young men don't want control over women's bodies

They want to be this guy

https://x.com/DiscordianKitty/status/1854381230201909689

young men want to be brave in the face of danger. They want challenge and glory and a culture that will respect them for sacrifice, a culture that treats them with dignity for their risk taking or protective instincts

I'm incredibly sympathetic to this argument

I don't think Dem primary voters have been given a real choice to have their voices heard in the selection of a presidential candidate since 2008 link archive.is/DefM6

Look: We cannot operate a society if we are not honest with the facts on the ground

Yes, car seat bullshit is a giant pain in the ass for parents on many fronts. It impacts quality of life in a huge way.

https://twitter.com/acweyand/status/1840050452253020181

In 1987, my parents had 5 kids under 10. We did big road trips that were tolerable in part b/c we weren't all strapped into a car seat.

imo, anyone who talks about "misinformation" must first write an essay about Rick Santorum and how much Google should pay him in restitution for allowing a radio host hijack his search results for 10 years

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1842007873569644583

I am shocked how many people don't know about this.

Dan Savage hated GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum for his socially conservative views so he told his readers to hijack Google's search result for "Santorum" to point to a pornographic result

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_…

I'm trying to go through Arizona's budget documents, but what is abundantly true from even a brief investigation is that @propublica is being deeply dishonest in this framing

They are treating the voucher program as if it is purely additive to the education budget

https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1831542778116923796

@propublica What do I mean by "purely additive"?

Well, the concept of the voucher program is that they take the money they would spend on your child in public school and you get to spend it on a school of your choice

For example:

https://x.com/exjon/status/1831743088240509115

This kind of obsequience to a politician is all the more revolting in the knowledge that is is voluntary

https://twitter.com/JayeJaybird54/status/1821341020396597554

This all feels like someone told them to go lick the feet of whatever random politician got selected for VP and they said "are you sure you just want me to lick his feet?"

It seems like an ideal time for us to come together and figure out what kind of rules and patterns we would want that would neuter cancel culture for everyone.

We can't keep going like this. It's not stable.

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1812622052685193541

I would love to see some sort of agreement that employers can sign on to that says "We don't cancel our employees. Period."

I'm fairly certain the only possible reform needs to come from employers. They are the weak point b/c they are the cowards.

Really... what the hell is this argument from SCOTUS?

The plaintiffs don't have standing to be protected from censorship b/c they can't prove "a real and immediate threat of repeated injury"?

No shit. That's b/c the gov't is doing it behind the scenes!

supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
When this was happening, we couldn't prove it was happening. We were suspicious, we were guessing, we were extrapolating.

We couldn't prove until long after the fact that the executive branch was pressuring social media companies to censor.

Thanks to @moyurireads (Author of "Is your fav author a Zionist?") we have a wonderful purchase list for authors who are not openly antagonistic to Israel

Take a stroll through this thread and see what you might want to add to your reading list: 🧵 We'll start with the big ones.

Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) is here for the crimes of not believing in boycotts and "visiting Israel despite people asking him not to"

He's written dozens of great fantasy novels, including the Stormlight Archive

amzn.to/4btF5O0

I'll say this again:

This is a DIRECT consequence of the fact that people let the severe Covid restrictions come and go with zero consequences

Covid taught authority figures that they can treat the people under their authority like trash and they will simply accept it

https://twitter.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1783650223132451116

Students: If you don't like this kind of treatment, you have to show that you reject it. You have to go to a different school, move to a different state, vote a different way.

A friend of mine died today

He was too young to die. His kids were exactly the age of my kids, they played together and loved each other.

He was fine last week, looking forward to Christmas with his family

Now he is gone I've had a peculiar life but generally speaking, the possibilities of life grew in scope throughout my 20's and well into my 30's

I had a serious speed bump when I was unemployed for a time, but generally things seemed on the up-and-up until, in my late 30's, my dad passed away