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alex williams

@atwilliams.bsky.social

8.1K followers 2K following 4.6K posts

macroeconomist and computer user at common-wealth.org, editor at www.continuousvariation.com, fellow at stanford, partisan of the republic of letters

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · Aug 22

"because only that exists which can be posted, bodies themselves fell under the regime of the symbolic" - literal Kittler

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 24m

"ill do it, but i dont like it, and ive got reasons....poetic reasons"

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 24m

the reason i dont like using stochastics to model economic processes is that on a theoretical level, you get pretty close to "well its all fucking random" which is a pretty nihilistic viewpoint, and more so the more successful the predictions get

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

"media theory" is about asking what role the hardware plays in the making of these decisions, imo

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 5h

All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

corn is not an efficient energy transformation vector, turns out

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 19h

Over 40% of corn grown in Indiana is used to make ethanol that cars burn. One acre of corn yields about 16,500 vehicle-miles per year of ethanol, which sounds high until you realize that one acre of solar yields about 2,700,000 vehicle-miles per year: 16,000% more driving for a given plot of land.

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Reposted by alex williams

stacy-marie ishmael @smi.bsky.social · 19h

"You can’t help anybody when you’re exhausted and keep posting one million college-educated rewordings of “I would love to be dead right now” on the computer." kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/

2025, So Far

I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time and talk to my dad in 1988, just before I was born, and tell him what it’s like to live in the future. I’d tell him all the amazing things that a...

kalebhorton.ghost.io

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Reposted by alex williams

Haunted Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · 19h

meet me at the

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 22h

caleb glasser or nigel chapman, imo

Emily, a Two-Shoes-Gooder @rebelmusicteach.bsky.social · 4d

I also need to know: I am fairly middle-of-the-road on Taylor Swift but someone I know called her the Greatest Living Lyricist. She is not.

Who is yours? Either the greatest or your favorite?

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

"We are the unhodge men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

it's really funny that I ended up looking int ZH/NC as my way into the blogs back in the day b/c when Bain bought out Guitar Center, there was some post that referred to them as "the Metal Sucks and Metal Injection, respectively, of independent financial media"

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

I mean at the end of the day this is like, a 90s/00s conservative thing, like, complaining about occupational licensing makes me feel like I'm hearing about the need for tort reform

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

sort of looks like they did Principal Component Analysis on John Hodgman to get the same guy represented as two more-orthogonal guys

L @banalplay.bsky.social · 1d

meet the 40-year-olds driving the Tory youth movement

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

mark anderson learned economics on youtube

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d

ANDREESSEN: "The employment shifts everybody’s worried about are .. not going to happen at anywhere near the velocity people think .. because a significant percentage of jobs in the U.S. are licensed or unionized .. in a way where they literally cannot be replaced.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_1c...

Marc Andreessen and Charlie Songhurst on the past, present, and future of Silicon Valley

YouTube video by Stripe

www.youtube.com

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

they're out there treating people like mere means and not ends in themselves !!!

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 1d

Because you should GO OUTSIDE to take a REGULAR WALK.

Why Kant's 250-Year-Old Ideas Are Exactly What We Need Right Now

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

why this would mean that democrats should pivot policy towards the center rather than just do a better job lying to people and increasing the loudness of their broadcast is completely beyond me, but it doesn't seem like searchlight engages with that as the logical conclusion here

Reposted by alex williams

Patrick Schmidt @pdwschmidt.bsky.social · 2d

political cartoon featuring a commander standing in front of troops with a placard, "Operation Circular Reasoning", and a caption underneath: "We're being deployed because of the protests about us being deployed."

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

I think it's a McLuhan thing: the medium (car) is the message

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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 1d

sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers

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Reposted by alex williams

Ann Pettifor @annpettifor.bsky.social · 1d

Central Banks Part 3: What has civil rights leader Coretta Scott King got to do with the full employment mandate of the Federal Reserve - and with Republican attacks on that mandate? Find out here: annpettifor.substack.com/p/lisa-cook-...

Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve, Full Employment & Civil Rights. CBs Pt 3

The Real Reason for Trumpist Attacks on a Black Fed Governor

annpettifor.substack.com

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

if all this sounds like a bad idea to you, maybe don't try pivoting to the right !!!!!!!!!

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

where are the centrist think tank secret code shibboleths about White Identity?

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

half assing it will get you nowhere, you would need to get openly antisemitic to pivot properly in this environment

alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

the centrist think tanks should be pitching occupying democrat-led cities if they want to actually pivot to the right. they should be pitching Stephen Miller

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

like the only thing worse than pivoting to the right is pivoting to the right badly

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

the centrists aren't even good at pivoting to the right because they don't understand how the right works at all, it's frankly pretty ridiculous to watch

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

There's an undercurrent of conversation about the need for Democrats at the national level to pivot to the center. That didn't work out for the last national Democrat, our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social point out.
prospect.org/politics/cen...

Centrist Democrats Have Already Forgotten About Kamala Harris

Pivoting to the right didn't work in 2024. It won't work now.

prospect.org

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

"how are all these words organized"