David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
banner
davidralin.bsky.social
David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
@davidralin.bsky.social
juman with volvo 240 Stockholm syndrome, anarchisht, macaroni art peacenik, ellipsometry tinkerer

☕️ 🚲 🧪🚲🔬🚲
Where do you see yourself in five years?

“Firing guys for not keeping track of my blanket”
MAGA is a cult of personality who worship celebrity and ostentatious wealth and all its vulgar trappings. Every Trump appointee is living out a jet-setter fantasy, traveling around the world on private jets with a retinue of bodyguards and valets carrying their shopping bags.
February 13, 2026 at 5:55 PM
“Fadel” me through her on-air name pronunciation the years:

Falden
Fahddle
Fahl-din
Fah-dih
Leyla shifted the way she sars her name. Again!
February 13, 2026 at 5:42 PM
Leyla shifted the way she sars her name. Again!
February 13, 2026 at 4:47 PM
If I’d grown up in a Southern California beach town I’d no doubt be a snow sports champion.
February 13, 2026 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
If Moderna is no longer bringing vaccine trials for Epstein-Barr virus (good evidence that EB causes Multiple Sclerosis), herpes, and shingles because of Trump appointees, I want prison time for those appointees.

This might be dooming millions to disease they don’t have to experience.
February 13, 2026 at 1:04 AM
Zero.

Haven’t had snails or oysters or limas yet this year.
7 for me how about y’all ?
February 12, 2026 at 11:27 PM
The freeze on his smile after “white culture is simply better” is priceless.
Trump nominated a legit white nationalist to a top post at the State Department. I asked him some basic questions about his belief in the “erasure of white culture”. Watch this embarrassing, fumbling answer. Like he has never before been asked to explain his views.
February 12, 2026 at 11:11 PM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
Was looking for info on one of my all time favorite noise rock bands and found this - enjoy if you love Scratch Acid like I do! www.austinchronicle.com/music/the-gr...
The Greatest Gift
When Scratch Acid scorched the earth, an oral history
www.austinchronicle.com
February 10, 2026 at 1:10 AM
Torn between staying informed and blocking the “Iran’s gov is good, actually, the riots are western imperialism” guys.
February 12, 2026 at 6:18 PM
Nick’s mom is still proud of her little man.
Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”
Nick Fuentes: “The number one political enemy in America is women. … They have to be imprisoned.”
www.mediamatters.org
February 12, 2026 at 4:25 PM
Does Nick Fuentes even have that dream where his dad says “I love you, son” or what?
Fuentes then fantasizes about “breeding gulags”: “So just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists, you know, all of his political rivals, we have to do the same thing with women… They go to the breeding gulags. The good ones will be liberated. The bad ones will toil in the mines forever.”
February 12, 2026 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
Economists seem to assume that expensive cities have a high proportion of college-educated workers because they attract a lot of them. They don't. The high proportion comes from less educated workers moving away because of housing.

3/
February 12, 2026 at 4:55 AM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
A misguided letter from the SF Fed.

GIGO from the San Francisco Fed
open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...
GIGO from the San Francisco Fed
I recently highlighted a really interesting new paper that provides some interesting insights about housing in spite of the blind spots about the current market among economists.
open.substack.com
February 12, 2026 at 4:55 AM
A guy with one “top ten on the adult contemporary” chart in the 90s.
Who's the most famous alum of your high school?

I'll go first: David Draiman of Disturbed
guys i just found out i went to the same high school as howard lutnick. please respect my privacy at this time.
February 12, 2026 at 6:04 AM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
RIP Bud Cort. How else would you even pay tribute to him.
February 11, 2026 at 8:51 PM
Gravel Influencer blocked me for being mean to Bob Dylan?

For the record I’ve always appreciated their posts, we’ve had some fun exchanges, sincerely interested in following them, and would love to patch things up so long as I don’t have to dial back my Bob Dylan indifference.
February 12, 2026 at 1:51 AM
Medical pricing is wild. When Kaiser sent me my “not a bill, this is what it actually costs to do this but we got ya” statement for my colonoscopy a year ago, it was not even $1500. In a high-cost market.
Love how colon cancer keeps killing people under 50 and yet insurance doesn't cover colonoscopy without cost-sharing until age 45.

I just paid $1,584 out of pocket for mine thanks to my deductible and copays
February 11, 2026 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
Love how colon cancer keeps killing people under 50 and yet insurance doesn't cover colonoscopy without cost-sharing until age 45.

I just paid $1,584 out of pocket for mine thanks to my deductible and copays
February 11, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Why should they know who he is? He is an inertia act, who hasn’t done much for half a century, and can’t seriously be critically explained without a lot of shrugging.
February 11, 2026 at 11:40 PM
Lot of posts get deleted, usually the wrong ones.
When someone mentions that they saw me delete a post
February 11, 2026 at 10:51 PM
They should extend LA voting privileges to anyone spending more than fifteen minutes a day within city limits.
I live in the South Bay so sadly cannot vote in LA city elections
February 11, 2026 at 7:00 PM
“what if Freud had a vivarium?”
this path also leads to papers like
February 11, 2026 at 5:11 PM
Complained that my car was terrifyingly laggy and inconsistent going from D to N to R and back while working the brake, like when parallel parking on a hill, got told “itsa normal, itsa hybrid.”

Three months later, shift lock pawl & brake software recall.

Just a notification not a fix.
February 11, 2026 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by David Ralin, Cognitive Amplifier
I feel intensely how much this is boomer but as a driver of 2006 and 2014 cars I cannot emphasize enough that for rental purposes all new cars need a “Turn all of this shit off. All of it.” button.

Campaign on this and win 40 states, someone.
February 11, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Death cult
The flu and pneumonia kill over 45,000 people a year. Moderna developed a new mRNA flu vaccine for people 50 and older--who are most at risk. Prasad, unilaterally, against the recommendation of experts within the agency, denied Moderna's appplication. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...
Prasad overruled FDA staff to reject Moderna's flu vaccine application
The rejection is the latest instance of Vinay Prasad overruling career FDA scientists to place vaccines under harsher scrutiny.
www.statnews.com
February 11, 2026 at 4:26 PM