Emmett Shear
@eshear
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SAROCHA REBECCA IN KAZZ
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#Aぇǃgroup
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Tottenham
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Prime Video
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ナイジェリア
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インプレゾンビ
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Varane
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#OurShiningStarYoshiDay
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#芳典に夢中な私はもうSTUPID
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MAY THE 24TH BE WITH YOSHI
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로즈데이
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Julie
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HAERIN SWEET 18
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MC KristP and Guest Singto
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デビュー日
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CLIPE DE ACEITA
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風の行方
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ジュニア最後
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ジュニア卒業
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twenty one pilots
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Rhaenyra
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That was easy. Have ppl never heard of swimming?
The remaining 2% will be emailing me their solutions once a week for the rest their lives…
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Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of
@OpenAI
. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my…
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I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
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We should legalize building apartments like these. For a family it’s far too small of course, but for a single person living in the big city? I would have absolutely preferred to save my money for other things.
Would you stay in an apartment in Japan like this for $300/mo?
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In honor of the 10th anniversary of launching Twitch, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I learned along the way. Each of these insights could probably be expanded into an essay, of course. Like the ones you would want me to expand on in the future.
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“Burnout” is a particularly modern affliction, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and paralyzed. I’ve found it’s best to think of burnout not as a disease but as a symptom, with many different etiologies. The big three: permanent on-call, broken steering, and mission doubt.
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The real villain here is Google.
Google found one of the very best business models of all time, skimming all the surplus profit off of the entire free open internet.
This is the natural end state of that process.
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Reddit is going IPO as $RDDT, the first social media IPO in some time. As someone who spent some substantial time running a social media company, my takes on the Reddit IPO:
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Growth mindset is just replying to yourself with “skill issue” every time something goes wrong
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I like each of these bc they each compress a pretty complex counterargument into a single image that avoids getting lost in the details.
Are there more?
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Minimalist reconstructions are not more accurate, they have their own assumptions (this is true not only of fossils but of models in general)
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Hope no one was trusting Google with anything important! YouTube videos or Blogger websites etc that are owned by inactive accounts will just get deleted…burning the commons. God forbid Google is still big 50 years from now…so much history lost to this
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The jump between the second panel and the third holds the entire secret. The correct question is asked (why am I not?), and then artfully avoided by an associative switch to self judgement.
There is some reason you’re not doing them, and but it’s hiding.
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Apropos the recent controversy: the word delve is rarely used in English. Except used by LLMs, and in formal register Nigerian English.
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We have lived through something akin to The Great Renunciation, except instead of men renouncing interest in fashion it’s all of society renouncing interest in design.
Buildings are boxes. Everything is in white or black. Mass degreebelization.
(Reversal may be coming tho!)
When did humanity stop caring about little things like this? When did we stop caring to put beauty and personality even in the door handles?
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nothing destroys your ability to learn new lessons more thoroughly in the long run than repeatedly being very very right when literally everyone thought you were wrong
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The worst part about having taken that job is now I have to constantly censor myself around making startup-or-AI-related jokes bc everyone will take it like some secret knowledge instead of a dumb joke.
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@noampomsky
Bullying someone by being verbally quicker is just as bad as bullying someone by being more cruel and aggressive or by using higher social status. Just a different form of power being abused.
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You don’t have to play Capitalism® your whole life but it’s definitely worth a few years, really deep game, good combo of strategy and luck and skill. Plus the points you get are redeemable for cool prizes.
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In October 2006 we started working on live video for the internet. That became Twitch. More than 16 years later, I'm now a father and ready to move to my next phase of life. I wrote a blog post, but the short version is: thank you so much to everyone who built this with me.
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This is the 3rd time I’ve had a
@lyft
accept my ride and claim they’ve “arrived” while driving away. When I call to ask they say “you have to cancel”. If I cancel, Lyft will blame me…if I don’t they run out the timer and claim I no showed. Lyft has no way to report this afaict.
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Advice my dad gave me that stuck with me: “consider your life as a series of 10-15 year projects”. The choices aren’t actually forever or never, although I know they sometimes feel that way.
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Twitter should have an asks-box, like tumblr. I get questions via DM that I might answer as a post, but probably wouldn’t answer as a DM. Eg…
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The future of making art favors taste over skill, and will continue to do so indefinitely until it is effectively 100% taste.
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I’m increasingly convinced we understand almost nothing about nutrition
Results of my n=1 study on potassium supplementation and weight loss.
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The fantasy of the all-powerful slave has legs: the genie bound to grant wishes, the golem that defends, the spell that animates a broom to clean on its own, the Mr MeeSeeks box.
They share a commonality: a deep intuition that this goes wrong somehow.
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How to do hard stuff:
write down a 1 page doc with your key assumptions, the hypothesis/goal you want to test, and your plan to do it
now read it with a maximally critical eye…does it make sense? are there gaps? iterate until you can’t find any
now go execute like crazy
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What if we paid prisons a flat rate per inmate per year, much higher than the current amount, but in exchange the prison was on the hook for any recidivism? You get paid for the 4 year sentence, but if they go back to prison you’re on the hook from there. Seems more aligned.
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@Duderichy
This is my favorite animation!!! I have it bookmarked on my phone for parties. Such a whitepill on past 40 years.
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One of my favorite policy ideas is "25 at 25": every American inherits $25k when they turn 25 years old. At that point you've probably been in the workforce a few years, and you understand the world a little. This would everyone to take a risk on a venture or career.
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It might ruin the joke sometimes, but I would appreciate a version of trending on this app that featured the patient-zero tweet for whatever nonsense is currently trending. Like when everyone is posting about eggs on my timeline, show me “original 30 eggs tweet”.
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I’ve noticed this same trend whenever I look at new cars…what’s caused this convergent evolution? Is it really regulatory standards, or is this kind of hybrid SUV some optimal point in design space?
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I recommend ambitious people specialize in learning new domains and new skills
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1/ What is “product/market fit”? I’m not sure I can give you a definition. But maybe I can share what the subjective difference is in how it feels when you have it and when you don’t. Founding a startup is deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder up a hill.
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18 law firms somehow miraculously have exactly identical wage scales that get updated in parallel?
Hey DOJ, I think there might be an antitrust opportunity here…any gunner of a federal prosecutor want to really make a mark?
New salary scale for law firm associates at Cravath and 17 other large law firms. This is not a small amount of money.
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Welcome new followers. We have returned to our regularly scheduled programming where I post whatever idle thoughts or silly jokes come to mind, interspersed with occasional threads or interactive games.
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You have 168 hours per week.
For most, sleep takes 56 of those.
A full time job is anyone 40.
Food, grooming, exercise add another 18 if you’re reasonably efficient.
Misc obligatory bullshit paperwork like taxes or errands, another 7.
This leaves you with 47 hours!
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I love recommending books to people, especially if they read them. For a book recommendation, reply below with three books you've read that you love and three words for each on why and I'll give you the fourth book you should read.
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The five growth strategies are high-touch sales, paid advertising, intrinsic virality, intrinsic influencer incentives (Twitch!), and platform hacks.
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Make something 10 people completely love, not something most people think is pretty good.
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One clear mark of intelligence is when someone is often surprised, but usually by particularly interesting bits of detail or nuance
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I was told recently that I should stop posting on a topic until I've understood it more deeply and mastered the material.
That seems to me to be backwards. It is exactly the material with which you are thinking the hardest and evolving your thoughts on which you should write.
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I'm trying to learn some difficult real math for the first time in a while and holy shit guys I see why everyone is raving about this AI thing now, this is a game changer.
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much suffering is caused by people turning a "reduce variance" knob without realizing it controls the positive variance too
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I'll be 40 years old soon. I thought I'd take a look back and see how I've spent it. Good memories, very few regrets.
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Twitter should have a Snooze Tweet button that pops a Tweet back up onto my timeline tomorrow
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Have you ever noticed that memory and learning are at some deep level exactly the same thing?
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Have you ever noticed that ideologies are always formed around writers who love to write a lot of words? They often cover the same few ideas, over and over, in different ways. But mostly it's a LOT of words.
This is not an accident.
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i got drinks with Beff once and he seemed like a smart, nice guy…he wanted to raise an elder machine god from the quantum foam, but i could tell it was only because he thought that would be best for everyone
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Prediction: AI has reopened consumer tech, for the first time since ~2012 when the last great mobile consumer companies started. We will see a wave of big winner AI consumer startups crossing 100m DAU in ~3 years.
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Frank Zappa once said “No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.”
Maybe the same thing is true of tech wearables.
Aesthetically, this is basically how you have to dress to make things like the Vision Pro and Cybertruck look cool. These things mainly look bad in public bc there's no congruity between the business casual gear most ppl wear and these futuristic designs
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@thechosenberg
Remember how they used to have all those articles about how “Millenials this” and “Millenials that” like 10 years ago that were all bullshit? Yeah.
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There is a certain mindset, a certain worldview, under which the possession of power and agency makes you culpable for every bad thing you don’t fix, and where being incompetent or powerless renders you pure.
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I heard about a technique for eradicating mosquitos from a city-sized area by releasing huge numbers of sterile male mosquitoes during breeding season…was that real? Who does it? What does it cost?
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If your product is for consumers, either it’s a daily habit, it’s used consistently in response to an external trigger, or it’s not going to grow.
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I’m grateful today for my family. We are all born with a family, but having a child I get to be part of creating the family. I didn’t quite realize how meaningful that would be, and I’m so grateful to have this chance on earth.
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For people who believe “there is no ethical way to make $1b”, i am curious: what is the maximum number of dollars that could be ethically made in a lifetime, in your opinion? I presume it’s not $1b-$1, but perhaps it’s that last dollar that makes the difference to you?
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conspiracy theorists are fundamentally optimists. a horrible moment that occurs, often sometime in your 30s, when you truly fully realize that the conspiracy theorists are wrong
no group is secretly in charge
there is no plan
no one even really understands what is going on
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When I have a problem, and it’s proving difficult to solve, I’ll often go on a walk about it, go talk to a friend about it, go try to solve it again. But when it’s proving intransigent, I’ll go write an essay proving why it just cannot be solved. That almost always fixes it.
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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier."
— Colin Powell
Meditate on the interplay between these two insights and you will achieve agency-enlightenment
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My most contrarian take is that, given the empirical results, the American government is actually very effective and well run on the dimensions that matter. It may look like we are led by bumbling malicious incompetents, but if so we’ve channeled their energy marvelously.
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It takes a lot of introspection to attune to the sensation of progress, rather than the sensation of reward.
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I don’t know if this study will replicate…but I’ve long believed humans have a basic need for synchronization.
It’s available through team sports, dancing (especially if everyone is dancing the same dance), choir, complicated group photos where everyone jumps…
They buried the lede on this new study. It's not that exercise beats out SSRIs for depression treatment, but that *just* dancing has the largest effect of *any treatment* for depression.
That's kind of beautiful.
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People who have only ever worked for companies structured into clear hierarchy are missing an entire mode of work and collaboration which is vastly more … alive, for lack of a better word.
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This was my very first startup idea in 1998. You’re never wrong. You’re just too early.
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Do we think it’s possible to get Apple to add ∃ and ∀ to the default symbols keyboard and thus improve all discourse permanently?
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Engagement bait is ruining twitter. People are posting crap that they know will juice their position in the algorithm. Here’re the 7 terrible tricks they’ve been using 🧵👇
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Group work is usually awful in school, as this thread points out.
Yet it’s the basis for all work as an adult. Whats the difference? Free association.
Group projects are great in theory and I'm sure some folks get lucky and have good experiences, but as a pedagogical tool it feels like most of the time they just don't work as intended
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Remember: the hours-and-views-weighted-average-person is very far from the average-person.
Casinos are designed for habitual gamblers, not you.
Mobile games are designed for whales, not you.
(Netflix is designed for the average person. Per-customer vs per-engagement revenue!)
It speaks ill of us, as a species, that this is apparently the most optimized video thumbnail.
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I might regret this but...
Ppl who think immigration reduces wages, do you think all forms of population growth do that? Does having more babies reduce wages too (on an two-decade lag)? Would deporting 10% of the current population therefore increase wages?
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You think you have a morale problem; a management problem; a recruiting problem; you don’t. You have a growth problem. Nothing succeeds like success.
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Blizzard and Apple have the same fundamental strategy as businesses. Take a proven popular product category (MMOs, phones, etc) and fanatically polish their own entrant to the point where not only is it better than the competition, it dramatically expands the category.
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Surprising result from my first year at YC: The most illuminating question about a startup idea in the beginning is not “what are you building?” but rather “who is it for?”
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Your culture is determined by what people perceive to be the behaviors you reward and punish. Note: Not what you actually reward and punish, and also not what you say you reward and punish.
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Best email bounce-back I've ever gotten?
"I am currently on a long-overdue Writing Attack (it’s like a Retreat but I don’t like the defeatist framing of that term)."
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@deepfates
I have bad news for you about real life and the information-theoretic view of quantum mechanics
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Someone should build a tool for inviting people to parties that actually understands the idea of inviting a couple instead of an individual w a +1.
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Touring SOMA, seeing tiny startups building rocket planes and superdense fuel cells and general artificial intelligences. Say what you want about it, if you want to live in the future there’s only one city on earth.
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At Twitch I learned the exact opposite. Double down on the best part of your product. Our most impactful work (especially right after p-m fit) was usually video quality, latency, reliability...exactly the stuff we were already best at and led the competition by the most at.
Post product-market fit product strategy:
What’s the worst part of your product? Make that better.
What’s the new worst part of your product? Make that better.
What’s the new worst...
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A friend asked me if I knew of anything written on abstraction and protocols in society. I realized actually yeah, I absolutely have some recommendations. So, an unusual protocols thread:
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Attempting to alter someone else’s beliefs is an act of aggression, if not paired with a true curiosity about what they believe and whether you should believe that too.
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New AI dating app idea: it monitors everyone’s entire lifestream and arranges synchronistic meetcutes which mysteriously always work out either in stable marriage or a 3-6 month adventure that teaches you an important life lesson.
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If you’re a first time manager, you suck. That’s ok, everyone sucks. Apologize to your employees, get a coach or join a support group, read books, and generally treat management like a new important skill you can master.
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EXPLAIN HOW PRICES ARE IMPACTED BY BUILDING MORE HOUSING TO ME OR I'LL FUCKING EVICT YOU! DON'T DUMB IT DOWN INTO SOME VAGUE SHIT! EXPLAIN HOUSING PRICES TO ME RIGHT NOW OR I'LL LITERALLY FUCKING EVICT YOU! DO THEY GO UP OR DOWN WITH MORE HOUSING???
Bro chill out I got you:
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“Do your own research” is unfortunately rarely an actual call to read your own primary sources, or run your own experiments. Instead it means something more like “shop through others research until you find something that matches your preconceptions”.
Only gwern is pure.
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Being prolific, helpful, and kind on Twitter seems to generate an incredible positive karma charge in my life. S: “it’s like the world just randomly showers you in little presents”
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