Farrah Bostic

Polycrisis? What Polycrisis?
open.spotify.com/episode/7dih...
@farrahbostic.bsky.social

Supreme Court Continues to Shoot Self in Foot in Second Amendment Cases US v Hemani, case about gun rights of drug users, shows the Supreme Court's Second Amendment standard is comically unworkable.

to figure out whether a prohibition on drug users possessing guns that passed in 1968 is still legal in 2026, one must figure out how drunk the Founding Fathers got in 1776 --the Supreme Court, basically

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/us-v-...

I would love to have a conversation about the nature of mind that didn't sound like undergrads one week into a "mind & brain" 201 course. But yes - the more pressing issues are these. (Btw, no spelunking through your writing! Hi!)

And an undersold story is how bad Boomers' retirement savings really were, and how few of them were sitting on real estate equity. The predicted transfer of wealth from Boomers to Millennials will be highly concentrated.

Just last fall, when Dem Rep. Chuy Garcia engineered something similar in Illinois, the House formally voted to rebuke him.

So, will the Senate do the same to Daines? If anything, his offense is worse. Garcia schemed over one of 435 House seats. Daines did this for one of just 100 Senate seats.

I’m reminded of that tweet that says that men were able to successfully cast themselves as the less emotional gender by redefining anger as not an emotion

Trump administration is failing to address spread of measles, experts say As number of cases climbs past 1,000, experts say CDC is not taking obvious steps amid funding cuts

Um. “Failing to address”?

Is it not a significant cause of measles outbreaks?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

All the times.

/4 Anyway, a long-time theme of Trumpism, and an increasingly common theme of the Republican Party, is that violence is justified against protesters because protesters are evil. It’s a deeply foul, thuggish, un-American sentiment.

A war that isn't a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that's happened in my lifetime

Good morning! Yes, this is he

Yes, though I confess I’ve settled in nicely with the .5s

Grandpa 1 worked in an aircraft factory, was a carpenter & electrician, an Army Air Corps pilot & a teacher & school district superintendent.

Grandpa 2 served briefly, owned an appliance store, then moved to Cali (honestly I have no idea what he did there), but grandma was a linotype operator.

never, ever, ever, ever accept "how will you pay for it?" as an argument against social programs.

Senate votes down resolution to prevent Trump from continuing war with Iran War powers vote broke along party lines with almost all Democrats in support and most Republicans opposed

At this point it seems like we should regard the senate refusing to curtail this war as, in effect, a declaration of war. Anything else is vulgar formalism. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

what a change from my childhood of Mark Hatfield and (yes) Bob Packwood, of Vic Atiyeh.

I think these questions are far more salient, frankly, than "what is AI? can it reason?"

On a technical/productivity basis, I'm curious; on a moral & political basis, I'm bearish; on the basis of predicting a future for human dignity, I'm beyond despair.

2. If the tech CEO achieves all his tech & business goals, what kind of world does that create for everyone who is not situated the same as him? How will the economy work? What will it mean for society & politics? Put another way, "do you believe in other people?"

1. What does it take - in terms of public and human resources - to build, train and maintain these systems? No, I'm not thinking about the people wearing hoodies in cool offices in the Bay. I am thinking about subsidies, natural resources, and workers.

I genuinely think that writers and pundits are spending too much time on the philosophy of mind, emergent characteristics, "what is a brain, even, aren't we all stochastic parrots" questions, and not nearly enough on understanding 2 far more important questions:

The more I dig into understanding this myself, the more baffled I am that reporters covering AI don't seem to write (or know?) much about RLHF. The ghosts in the machine who make your LLM so lifelike are actual people who live in, like, Kenya.

That's how you do it.

Subsequently, I interviewed with a creative agency who told me that in contrast, their hiring POV was "someone you'd trust to pull off a heist". And while I'm sure they thought that was extremely bad-ass, I left, called the headhunter and said, "uh, no."

When I was a director at Hall & Partners, our hiring POV for quant researchers (we did not, as a general rule, hire jr qualies) was that we liked people who were curious and the line was "you'd like to go on a long car journey with them". Everything else we could teach. (Also hi, same double major!)

To cheer myself up I registered for the AAPOR conference. The thought of going to LA is keeping me warm.

I just got a weather notification that it might snow again and I think at this point the cold and snow are actually making me angry.

10/10 No notes.

Sorry, who is supposed to be “Warren’s former campaign manager” here?

This is just … not what the War Powers Act requires? Like… there are just no lawyers left working in the WH? Also they have this obvious authority to claim (even if you think it’s bullshit, as I do) and they don’t claim that, just full on imperial presidency…

This is worse.