OG political blogger. Predicted the 2007 collapse. Read: https://teapaw.org/t.co/2oa9MDzFwj , Support: https://teapaw.org/t.co/XRrXGbpjQm - @ianwelsh.bsky.social
@ianwelsh.bsky.social
Joined August 2008
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"How To Think."
Thinking well is not for the faint-hearted. If you do it properly you will often come to conclusions you hate: reality is rarely as we would have it be: this is not the best of all possible worlds. You must be brave and willing to endure discomfort to think well.
Ian Welsh retweeted
This war is really the last looting of the imperial treasury before the dynasty comes crashing down.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the US military has taken our Patriot Missile Defense System out of Texas and sent it to Israel in preparation for a new round of combat operations against Iran after the midterms.
At the same time, the Intercept reports that "top defense officials are expressing increasing worry about the vulnerability of U.S. bases around the world and even within the United States..."
Links in thread.
As someone who's had cancer 3 times in Canada if your issue is urgent, it's treated as urgent. If I lived in the US I would have exhausted my insurance and be dead now.
Ian Welsh retweeted
I AM BEGGING people to learn from the Hong Kong protests!
Be like water!
Do not stand off against cops.
They show up, disperse and move to another area.
You don't want to be tear gassed and arrested.
They cannot cover a whole city.
It takes HOURS for them to regroup, unlike protestors.
No face off, less likely to get arrested.
Ian Welsh retweeted
In Britain, if you earn £2,000 a month after tax with this budget:
- No Netflix.
- £75 a week on food.
- No eating out.
- Renting a one or two-bedroom flat.
- No holidays.
Your monthly outgoings:
- £800 rent.
- £250 council tax and gas/electricity.
- £325 food.
- £50 household items and clothes.
- £200 car payments, insurance and MOT.
- £200 fuel.
- £50 phone and internet.
That’s £1,875 gone.
You’re saving just £125 a month.
This is how you create a generation of lifelong renters.
It's over for UK.
Ian Welsh retweeted
I'LL SAY IT LOUD AND CLEAR:
IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO CHARGE A "CONVENIENCE FEE" FOR PAYING A BILL ONLINE.
I went to pay my $142 utility bill on their website. At checkout, there it was: $3.95 "convenience fee."
Convenient for WHO?
Online payments save them paper, stamps, envelopes, mail sorting, and the person who used to open checks and type them in. The company saves money every single time you click "pay."
And then they charge YOU for it.
$3.95 a month is $47.40 a year for doing their bookkeeping myself.
The convenience is for them. The fee is for you.
Ian Welsh retweeted
Update on this: Dad is checking all the calculations by hand (because he still doesn't fully trust the robot) and found a place where it should have used cos(x+a) instead of cos(x); the two are not the same since there's rotational variation
What's more amusing is that despite the US spending way more in R&D, China is ahead in over 80% of fields.
GDP means nothing. Everything in the US in inefficient and overly expensive.
This is eye-opening. Europe’s share of global tech R&D has collapsed from 23% in 2005 to just 8% today, while the US has climbed to 62% and China has risen from near zero to 15%. South Korea now outspends Germany, France, the UK, and Italy combined in tech R&D. Yep, you read that right.
This is the predictable result of policy choices that systematically favor control and redistribution over growth. Layered regulation, data rules, AI restrictions, labor rigidities, and precautionary frameworks, raises the cost and slows the pace of turning ideas into products, forcing companies to spend scarce resources on compliance rather than experimentation. High taxation and expansive redistributive systems extract capital that would otherwise fund private R&D and risk-taking, while shrinking the after-tax reward for building something new and scaling it. The broader left-leaning mindset that prioritizes equality of outcome over dynamism treats entrepreneurial success as something to be managed, taxed, or shared rather than unleashed and rewarded.
Places that protect the returns to innovation and keep barriers low continue to pull ahead, attracting talent and capital that Europe increasingly loses. Europe’s relative decline is the cumulative outcome of treating dynamism as a problem to be regulated rather than the engine of prosperity. Without a shift toward lighter rules, lower burdens on enterprise, and greater tolerance for unequal outcomes from unequal effort, the gap will keep widening, and Europe will become an open-air museum for wealthy Americans and Asians.
Ian Welsh retweeted
China just released a desktop automation agent that runs 100% locally.
It can run any desktop app, open files, browse websites, and automate tasks without needing an internet connection.
100% Open-Source.
Ian Welsh retweeted
Every day in America someone stands up at a public meeting to rail against luxury housing for yuppies, never realizing they are the load bearing demographic keeping city budgets from imploding.
🤖 Made with AI
Ian Welsh retweeted
Patrick Stewart was a highly respected Thespian when he did Star Trek. He could have viewed the work as beneath him, just a big payday where he could phone it in. But he played the part like he was doing goddamn Hamlet.
He was a professional who adored his craft.
Ian Welsh retweeted
It's striking that the Google Maps team has evidently been resisting any AI takeover of their app (in stark contrast to search). They know they made something good and they don't want it smashed to bits by the reckless division.
Ian Welsh retweeted
Really unfortunate coincidence how these accidents keep happening when countries upset Israel and their computer/security contracts are with Israel. It's inexplicable.
BREAKING: 🇪🇸 At least 68 people have died and 80 others injured after a train crash in Spain.
Investigators say it’s due to an “inexplicable” safety error after a “widespread computer communications failure.”
It’s the THIRD train crash in Spain this year.
ISRAEL warned Spain they would pay a “heavy price” and for some reason an Israeli railway cyber firm recruited Spain’s former railway safety chief/transport secretary… 🤔
May God rest their souls and bring ease to their families 🙏🏼
Straight up monopolization that any competent government would not allow.
BREAKING: DoorDash just agreed to buy Instacart for $17 billion. Here's what that means for customers and shoppers. apnews.com/article/doordash-…
Ian Welsh retweeted
Just last month, DoorDash couldn’t seem to find the money to pay their deliveristas — until our administration forced them to give back $131M+ in stolen wages and penalties.
This week, they’ve managed to find $17 billion to acquire one of their main competitors.
Corporate consolidation means higher prices, harsher exploitation, and greater economic inequality for New Yorkers.
We’ve stood up to these giants before. That doesn’t stop now.
BREAKING: DoorDash just agreed to buy Instacart for $17 billion. Here's what that means for customers and shoppers. apnews.com/article/doordash-…
The best thing about the old world was that unless someone was actually watching you, they didn't know what you were doing.
And yes, that was fine for business too. The only thing that should matter is if the job got done, to spec, by the deadline.
🦔Anthropic launched “smart reports” for Claude Enterprise this week. A manager picks a team and a date range, and Claude reads the team’s chat transcripts and flags “inefficiencies,” including sessions it labels “personal or off-topic.” Anthropic says the reports shouldn’t be used to evaluate individual workers or make employment decisions.
My Take
Companies cut jobs and pin it on AI, while 90% of executives in one big survey say AI hasn’t made their companies more productive. Now the AI can hand a manager a chart of who looks “inefficient.” Anthropic says not to use it for employment decisions, but Proton just told its staff their jobs depend on an AI re-interview, so I don’t think that line holds for long.
Anthropic also has more than $800 billion in compute and lease commitments to pay for, and this report comes with a button to raise a worker’s spending limit. So it doubles as a sales tool. The catch for Anthropic is that workers who know a manager can read the chart will think twice before they open Claude.
Hedgie🤗
