Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Gotta say I’d buy a pretty fancy house if I had $193 billion https://t.co/OaUclOzGQz
John Pompliano @JohnPompliano
Reminder: Elon Musk is the richest person globally with a net worth of $193B, and he lives in a $50k foldable home that he rents on the SpaceX campus in Texas.
Stop buying stuff you don't need to impress people you don't like. https://t.co/1eSi7rF0a3
11:13 AM · Aug 13, 2021
20 Reposts · 561 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Jeff Bezos owns the biggest house in DC and he also doesn’t live in DC.
That would be my approach to the billionaire lifestyle, fancy-ass houses everywhere you look.
11:16 AM · Aug 13, 2021
5 Reposts · 327 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
An underrated aspect of rapid growth in market-rate housing is that you can cut property tax rates without cutting services.
This is rural/exurban Texas but it could be your blue city, too, if you YIMBYize.
dailytimes.com
Council gets 1st look at FY 2021-22 budget: Property tax rates reduced again
12:03 PM · Aug 13, 2021
6 Reposts · 85 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Seems like sometime between Year 5 and Year 15 of the military op in Afghanistan someone should have either tried to make a sustainable Afghan force or else explicitly made the case to the public for a permanent US presence instead of sticking with the Friedman Unit routine.
1:43 PM · Aug 13, 2021
54 Reposts · 829 Likes
Kyle Hill@Sci_Phile
Even a man *literally living under a rock* got his shots. Do your part.
3:27 PM · Aug 13, 2021
12.4K Reposts · 43.2K Likes
Gwad Spelled Backwards Is Dawg@PresidentDawg
I genuinely laughed out loud at this.
3:36 PM · Aug 13, 2021
490 Reposts · 2.72K Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
It annoys me when people who advocate a strong posture of deterrence are called "hawks". A "hawk" sounds like someone who favors war. But the purpose of deterrence is to make war LESS likely.
5:44 PM · Aug 13, 2021
38 Reposts · 379 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
WW2 taught us that appeasement can encourage war, and the Cold War taught us that deterrence can prevent war. But I feel like some of our commentators have unlearned those lessons; now, deterrence is often mischaracterized as warmongering, and appeasement praised as "restraint".
5:47 PM · Aug 13, 2021
45 Reposts · 224 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
I feel like there’s actually very little partisan hypocrisy in Afghanistan — foreign policy elites across both parties oppose withdrawal, have said so across both Trump and Biden, and the public simply disagrees with them and both presidents have acted accordingly.
5:43 PM · Aug 13, 2021
196 Reposts · 1.42K Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
I think soon we will pivot to “we need to be in Country X because if we’re not the Chinese will be” as a new threat model and maybe people will find that persuasive. But right now I think most people would say that if the Chinese want to go fight the Taliban that’d be great!
5:49 PM · Aug 13, 2021
24 Reposts · 504 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
I think there's a genuine conflict in life between good politics, which necessarily emphasizes structural factors and the importance of social change, and good advice (or good teaching or good therapy etc.) which emphasizes internal locus of control and making the best of things.
Derek Thompson @DKThomp
@ZaidJilani Yes. It’s important and hard to have a wholesome and realistic opinion of what is and isn’t under your control. But good therapists shouldn't tell ppl “sorry about your anxiety but it is fully downstream of modernity and nothing less than its overthrow will remotely help you"
5:59 PM · Aug 13, 2021
20 Reposts · 279 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Like "really they ought to rezone for higher density housing across all expensive neighborhoods" is not a good answer to a friend seeking advice about how to think about tradeoffs when deciding which house to buy.
It's just different questions.
6:02 PM · Aug 13, 2021
2 Reposts · 122 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
And while it's false — and politically pernicious — that "hard work" is the main thing determining who's successful and who isn't, it's still true that as an individual you'll raise your odds by working hard.
6:03 PM · Aug 13, 2021
6 Reposts · 144 Likes
Jessica Trounstine@trounstine
@mattyglesias Hard Work --> Success = Selection on the Dependent Variable
6:06 PM · Aug 13, 2021
1 Like
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
Haha nice try dude. Give us the dumplings or we ZAP YOU WITH THE SPACE LASER
Tuvia Gering 陶文亚 @GeringTuvia
Chinese influencer Lu Kewen: "Jews, you who rule the American Empire and control its finance and media, as well as the dwarf Japanese pirates of the small islands, you have no idea how far we, each and every one of us in the Chinese nation, are willing to go for...
1/ https://t.co/4aCBtz6AeH
8:27 PM · Aug 13, 2021
8 Reposts · 101 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
Little do they know that we Jews have been cooperating with the Japanese pirates to develop the ultimate weapon!
Free dumplings every Christmas or Shanghai gets it!
Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion
And we have obtained detailed operational footage of the Jewish Space Laser! https://t.co/gj5Psu2Abw
8:31 PM · Aug 13, 2021
41 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Some subtle anti-Semitic tropes here https://t.co/qErIuxsqWw
Tuvia Gering 陶文亚 @GeringTuvia
Chinese influencer Lu Kewen: "Jews, you who rule the American Empire and control its finance and media, as well as the dwarf Japanese pirates of the small islands, you have no idea how far we, each and every one of us in the Chinese nation, are willing to go for...
1/ https://t.co/4aCBtz6AeH
8:32 PM · Aug 13, 2021
23 Reposts · 247 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
Here's how this crazy "logic" works:
1. Housing is currently expensive
2. Therefore, any new housing we build will be expensive
3. Therefore, building any new housing raises prices
John Mirisch @JohnMirisch
It’ll never not be insane to me that there really are people out there who think that building more Porsches will really reduce the price of Priuses or that if people want Impossible burgers producing more meat is the “solution.” https://t.co/ge2RJZhFmb
9:17 PM · Aug 13, 2021
28 Reposts · 437 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
dan holler @danholler
RUBIO in WSJ:
“Biden administration’s new child allowance is wealth redistribution and the first step toward a universal basic income, because it includes no work requirement.” https://t.co/vAs92SddmL
9:25 PM · Aug 13, 2021
17 Reposts · 308 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
My take on Afghanistan is that we should have gotten out as soon as we got Bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership. It should have been viewed as a punitive expedition. The Taliban were always going to be in charge as soon as we left.
9:37 PM · Aug 13, 2021
59 Reposts · 750 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
The day we killed Bin Laden was the peak of our success in Afghanistan. Had we left the next day, many would view it as a successful military effort. Every day we stayed after that made the expedition destined to seem less successful when we inevitably withdrew.
9:45 PM · Aug 13, 2021
8 Reposts · 177 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
The Afghanistan War was a strategic success for the U.S. Whether you think it was worth the price -- to ourselves and to Afghans -- depends on your estimate of the value of destroying al Qaeda.
9:59 PM · Aug 13, 2021
1 Repost · 62 Likes
C. Robert Cargill@Massawyrm
This is White House executive chef Andre Rush, and by executive chef I mean he's definitely an under cover SEAL Team member there to thwart a terrorist attack later in the movie, right?
1:02 AM · Aug 14, 2021
483 Reposts · 3.08K Likes