Research Scientist - FAANG; Film / culture / history / baseball / tech;
Joined July 2020
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Gibbon recounts a funny story about the Gothic sack of Athens under emperor Gallienus - a series of raids from the Black Sea - where a barbarian Chief decides to spare the Grecian library to keep them focused on book learning instead of war
Charles retweeted
For all he gets labeled as anti Christian, Gibbon takes Seneca and Pliny the elder and the philosophers of the time to task for their lack of curiosity and engagement with what was happening under Christianity to close out volume 1….
I remember there were people accusing BAP of just pretending to be against the war that his “handlers” were really for as if it was some kind of head fake so that it wouldn’t be “too obvious”. Anyways if Dems force Elon to reform twitter that would actually help the right bc it would increase the discourse and engagement with libs like back in 2018 as an actual public square again with an iq filter for talking about certain issues with less vulgarity that has more mainstream appeal - doubt the left has this foresight though
For all he gets labeled as anti Christian, Gibbon takes Seneca and Pliny the elder and the philosophers of the time to task for their lack of curiosity and engagement with what was happening under Christianity to close out volume 1….
We’re going to turn into right-wing Stancils over the next year trying to poast our way out of the vibecession
JUST IN: A blowout jobs report. The US economy added 165,000 jobs in October. That’s above expectations of ~65k. August and September also revised a lot higher. There was a big surge in professional and biz services hiring (+70k!), along with ongoing gains in healthcare and transportation
Unemployment rate: 4.1% (down from 4.2% in September)
Wage growth: 3.1% -->That’s below inflation for the 7th straight month, but it was stronger than expected.
Can’t Trump declare a national emergency and call data centers/chips critical infrastructure and just steal land through eminent domain and have data center reservations across the great plains and south / southwest? His approval may be beyond reach, but his legacy isn’t
Something the polls show us wrt AI is just how far away we are still from connecting frontier capabilities to everyday usefulness for people - as a top 0.1% knowledge worker it’s obviously miraculous, but until there’s a major drug discovery breakthrough or products that really make people’s lives easier, give them something fun etc there’s going to be a massive disconnect between what’s effectively a compute utility for greater efficiency at the upper end of science and engineering work and the sentiment over AI - even most of my colleagues aren’t as excited about AI as I am. There’s really going to have to be “this new Alzheimer’s drug that saved your father was made by AI” or some incredible products that we seem nowhere near building for this to change
Even a device that gives instantaneous seamless access, research, purchasing etc will still only be useful to the top 1% of people who are curious and inquisitive. Does shopping need to be transformed? It’s already incredibly easy to buy stuff online, and many people enjoy the “friction” of comparing products. Booking flights? Sure that’s a pain - but enough friction to offset anxiety about the job market? Operating a computer is already relatively easy
Computers and computing itself will be indistinguishable from AI , so maybe all tech advancement itself gets credit - but in the next few years? Not sure if I see sentiment changing unless joe normalson sees direct utility
Something to reiterate here - it’s not the war per se, it’s the war being seen in pursuit of someone else’s interests, not America’s, that does the real damage. (Ie alignment)
Also I think Vance is wrong about composition - there were clear turnout differentials in Texas, it wasn’t vote switching (although cause might still be the same)
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Charles retweeted
Montgomery, TX — Trump +45.5 in 2024 —
hour 2 just beat 2024's hour 2: 5,411 (partial) vs 5,034, extrapolating to ~5,550–5,600.
Day total already 11,325. A midterm second hour beating a presidential second hour.
Endless exhibits of how much discourse here is driven by WEIRD distinctions - no, in most cultures the norm is more like a slop / stew bowl with tons of ingredients thrown together, a measure of whiteness is how cleanly you separate your protein - sometimes my week is too busy to be fully white though
Charles retweeted
The White underclass is a miracle, and probably why the West has succeeded.
Thomas Frank wrote “What’s the Matter with Kansas” to explore why poor Whites don’t vote for socialist policies that would (narrowly, in the short-term) benefit them. Of course he concluded it was about racism, as he was predetermined to do by his ideology.
But I actually think he highlighted an incredibly important fact: poor White Americans, uniquely among underclasses globally, don’t vote for socialism.
The typical dynamic is rich people trying to keep what they have and poor people trying to take it. But the American lower-class White does not behave this way, because he has a deontological aversion to government interference. The collection of attitudes and beliefs described as “rugged individualism” are often assessed in terms of how they impact the individual, but I think it’s much more important to consider how they impact a nation.
(White) America has the world’s least resentful or grasping underclass. This is a treasure. They should be preserved and rewarded. Many might be net-negative fiscally in a narrow sense, but they are hugely net-positive if you consider their votes. Trump famously said “I love the poorly educated.” He was right to say this. Every nation has an elite. No other nation has such a high quality of virtuous common people.
Charles retweeted
There are actually two different versions of Conquest’s 3 Laws, which compete & take turns mattering:
1. Everyone is liberal in the domain where he is most known.
2. Any anonymous forum not explicitly run by the left will sooner or later become right-wing.
3. The behavior of a bureaucratic organization can best be subverted by encouraging its members to anonymously post about it.
1. Every girl is conservative about the social structures that she actually buys from.
2. Any organization not explicitly focused on stamping out social signaling will sooner or later become a girls’ club.
3. The behavior of a bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it’s controlled by an unofficial cabal of mean girls.
