Tomas Heard
@tomasheard
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Doctor. Liberal democracy + globalism. YIMBY+LVT. Free speech+trade. Effective Altruism. Vegan runner+lifter. Stoic+minimalist+Bayesian.
Joined May 2009
Tribal societies are incredibly violent, and ironically the Pacific Northwest has the clearest data on this, showing violent death rates 30-200x that of modern USA. It's important to kill the noble savage myth or we'll get hopelessly confused about building good societies.
best quality of life in all of human history was precolumbian coastal california and the pacific northwest.
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In the first half of 1970, 119k babies were born in Cuba. In the first half of 2025, that number was 28k. Less than a quarter. To my eye, the most stunning example yet of birth collapse.
19.33%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.and already in 2024 the number of births was the lowest in decades
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People choose the best housing they can find. When government bans housing options, perfect housing doesn't magically appear, people end up in worse situations, often homeless.
It would seem that Yarra Ranges council are a mob of heartless numpties. And the Yarra Council spokeswoman who claims "Council takes the housing crisis seriously" clearly has her head firmly up her backside!!!! 😡. Call your MP and complain everyone 🙏.
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Putin's cost of servicing debt going exponential. Troop deaths rising, recruitment cost spiralling, energy exports smashed, train loadings falling, private debt defaults spiking, financial crisis looming. Ukraine need only hold on for a year and Russian fascism solves itself.
Today, the Russian Ministry of Finance sold federal bonds for 200 billion rubles. Growth of bonds in circulation since the beginning of the year 2945 billion rubles.Absolute annual record.1/
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Hilarious to blame low birth rates on low wages, unaffordable housing, high taxes, and migrants when the 4 lowest fertility countries, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan have either 0 or 1 of those factors each.
This literally will not happen en masse until the conditions are fixed. Low wages, literally unaffordable house prices, paying half your income in tax, foreign invaders pouring in and stealing jobs at best or raping/killing your children at worst? Who would naturally have lots.
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Criteria (tongue in cheek, in case it wasn't obvious): . 1. EIU democracy index>7.5 (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and of course PRC miss out).2. Chinese ancestry eligible voters >2 million (Canada, Australia, UK miss out)
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Chinese Communist Party fans flip out when you refer to China as West Taiwan. Truth is there are 2 states with legitimate claim to represent the Chinese people, due to having free+fair elections + millions of Chinese voters:. 1. Taiwan (RoC).2. The United States of America
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Missing Middleman! . Faster than a floor area freeze! More powerful than a parking mandate! Able to leap height limits in a single bound!.
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I emailed the organizers of this upzoning campaign in Chicago and hilariously they have no idea who did the poster. A hidden hero. A caped crusader. An unrevealed upzoner. Liberator of Lots. Nixer of NIMBYs. Hope of the Homeless. Ladies and Gentlefolk, I present.
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The data on basal metabolic rate is clear: age, sex, and PCOS status have minimal independent effect on BMR. All humans face the same challenge in weight loss: keeping energy input below output. Lying to women about the nature of this challenge hurts them, not helps.
@Jabs247 Hormone profiles, metabolic responses, and fat storage patterns are. That’s the point. You can’t apply the same practical recommendations to different physiologies and expect identical outcomes. The laws of thermodynamics may be universal. The research applying them to real.
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Vibe shift happening. YIMBY is cool now.
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The "Global South" concept grows ever more ridiculous when you realize that Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Aus, NZ, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina are now, or soon will be, richer than Russia and most former Soviet states.
I know global south is a political and economic relationship not a strictly geographic one but this part of the north-south line still always gets me
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My wife is watching The Buccaneers, a TV show set in Runnymede, which reminded me of the Kipling poem about the Magna Carta. I read it for the first time since school and damn the final stanzas go hard!. Feel free to share your favourite poetry in the comments :)
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If you're worried about security, you shouldn't be. China can't project power to us, and wouldn't want to, they make more money trading with us. But even if they did, we could just seize the land, then we have the money and the assets!.
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Great example of how you badly you can misunderstand the world if you don't know economics. Chinese investment in Australia is a sign of PRC weakness, not strength. It shows they want to invest in us, not China. It gives us employment, capital and tax revenue. Plus, it's tiny!
No Australian can own a square inch of China either, so why do we allow Chinese nationals to own trillions of dollars of prime real estate here?.
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Note Japanese housing actually got 20% cheaper, and their birthrate plummeted! So did South Korea's, when you adjust for incomes:
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YIMBYism solves a lot of problems, but not low fertility. Japan and South Korea have the cheapest housing in the OECD and the lowest TFR. YIMBYism might even lower birth rates, dense cities lower fertility, via the alternative of better childfree life opportunities
@CartoonsHateHer I have a hunch that a lot of YIMBY/deregulatory policies could help the birth rate go up, though probably not by as much as is necessary.
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