Conrad Bastable @ConradBastable Twitter profile

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 years

So many system-level problems are born at the intersection of Zero-Sum Games & Leverage (or lack thereof)...

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

"What does he mean, there were no trees in the UK?" You pull up satellite imagery to reassure yourself that there are in fact trees in England. You pause, staring at the map. Why is it all a pale shade of farmland greenery? Where are all the trees?! Let's look...

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

If you follow the right twitter anons, you can front run the latest academic research by 6+ months.

Quantian1

@quantian1

9 months

So let's re-estimate the model, then, and figure out what changed. The answer is that three major things changed: consumers care a lot less about unemployment than they did, prefer housing prices to fall rather than rise now, and, more than anything else, HATE high interest rates

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

It always surprises me how gleeful non-STEM grads are to subject engineering students to a course load that's 25% humanities. The reverse is never true -- I don't think liberal arts colleges should subject students to Thermodynamics & E&M!

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@namalhotra @reznavajo What I disliked about MIT was that to graduate with a MechE degree, you have to take 8 semesters worth of humanities courses!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

everywhere you look in the entire country of England looks like that lovely pale shade of green, "England's pleasant pastures," because it's been farmed for a thousand years any "forest" exists only because of royal hunting decrees (which caused riots) or modern planting.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

"take your humanities, anon, it's good for you!"

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

ok so this is the largest forest in britain and it's a goddamn post-WW1 tree farm created out of fast-growing pine because the nation ran out of oak trees during the war neat. (i wonder if oak is better than pine? the pine trees outside my house fall over in every storm...)

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

why are the trees all in neat fields? my god...they're all in lines like a....a... tree farm.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

lest my loyal or new followers think I've suddenly become a tree lover, allow me to remind you that New England was covered with the mightiest trees ever seen on earth, unforested since the dawn of time. and THESE trees truly did make for the very best ship building material.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

21 days

Kids imagine everyone who outcompetes them in America’s academic treadmill broke their own soul grinding from 4-18. In reality they had school romances, rank 45 in Halo’s MLG playlist, 2100+ rating in arenas, debates in online forums, & whatever else captured your attention.

Steven Godofsky

@sgodofsk

21 days

You can blame schools for being stifling and boring and failing these gifted students if you like but the kids who succeed at the stifling and boring schoolwork have an advantage over the kids who don't in real life.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

In the same way that hordes of disaffected 30 year old males watching anime ostensibly targeted at teens warps the content itself to be darker than it otherwise would’ve been, the YA book market in America now creates content optimized for an audience outside its original bounds

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

@eigenrobot Ok so the theory is: - teen girls will read male protagonists - teen boys only read male protagonists - but adult millennial women read YA for nostalgic escapism - they want to self-insert to escape - they are >55% of the market (2012!) - the market is now a fake market gg

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

no...surely not....it can't be... it's....just...another managed tree farm??

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

"they aren't BS classes!" -- yeah you try sitting in a room of 40 engineers who're forced to be there, don't want to be, and must spend $15k for the privilege "they teach you to appreciate-" -- nobody comes out of that classroom appreciating anything

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

HA! This looks marvelous does it not? What's that? This area was regarded as producing the best material for building ships? They deforested 50,000 acres? Royals shut down the operations to preserve hunting grounds? 2,000 people marched with armed riots? Soldiers were called?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

in America, there be trees you really do appreciate why these people were seized by the spirit of growth a few hundred years ago imagine living on a rock with no hope of wealth for hundreds of years...then taking a boat and ending up surrounded by this natural bounty??

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

the local colonists were not at all happy with this thus the lack of trees in England contributed, in small part, to the American Revolution

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

(you didn't think a thread about trees wouldn't be about mercantilism & geopolitical conflict, did you?) the brits ran out of good trees establishing their naval trade empire and wanted to prevent American timber from becoming a part of French ships trying to sink British ships

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

the European mind boggles to think that Americans feed themselves with the pale green pastureland off in the middle of the nation, on the left of this image, while the dark green above and to the right of it is... nothing but trees as far as the eye can see.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

There! In the south east, a huge patch of dark green! Surely those are trees?? Aha! It's labeled "Forest"! But wait...what's this...

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

do I even need to mention that the forest south-west of London is a modern pine plantation? it goes without saying, right??

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

do they think this endears the humanities to students??? do they imagine STEM kids will have the same difficulty passing the humanities class that they would have passing Differential Equations? neither of these are true. it just ends up extending graduation time!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

which is of course the origin of my salt here. 25% of your coursework not contributing to your degree means you need an extra year to graduate! that's a lot of money.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

this is the 1600s equivalent of a Taiwanese family taking a boat ride to an island in the Pacific where semiconductors grow from the ground and train tracks already run across the land

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

ok ok what about the dark patch just to the west of it, on the other side of Sheffield?? HA! Finally! Some natural trees! Hmmm, yes, they do seem to be in a gorge? I wonder if this makes them hard to access? Hm, there's a modern dam built there, I wonder how new this is?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

so that nice patch in the south east is out, let's look elsewhere? what about that little dark patch in the middle, right above Nottingham?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 years

Cost Disease in Education partially a result of intentionally-limited supply in order to keep Investment Returns tax free. Endowment Profits already far more important than Tuition revenues...

The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands | Conrad Bastable

How Colleges Make More Money Than God By Giving It Away

www.conradbastable.com

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

"they make you a better person-"

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@mbacarella but sir i've met many humanities graduates

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

anyway, if you want to see trees today in America you just drive 30mins outside most major urban areas in the North East. Here's Weare, NH, today. It's unclear which plot of land was the evil Tory loyalist's? Presumably reclaimed by the trees.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

7 months

@bastard_brian yes, there is a hivemind good luck escaping it

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

how about the south west, near Bristol? That looks positively verdant!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

anyway, this was a cool photo comparison achieving regional hegemony must bring back the trees or something

China in Pictures

@tongbingxue

4 months

Then & Now: The Sacred Way of the Ming Xiaoling, the mausoleum of the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in Nanking(Nanjing), China.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

The notion that the university was founded to create well-rounded civic-minded citizens is part of the American mythology. Alas, it does not map at all to international reality. Cambridge University, for example, did not demand Newton study literature.

secret eris

@eris_nerung

10 months

it's almost as if the university was a humanistic institution created to form well-rounded citizens and not a strict training mill to pump out hyper-specialized cogs for the Big Job machine

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

@eigenrobot Ok so the theory is: - teen girls will read male protagonists - teen boys only read male protagonists - but adult millennial women read YA for nostalgic escapism - they want to self-insert to escape - they are >55% of the market (2012!) - the market is now a fake market gg

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

It's funny how people assume I don't *enjoy* the humanities and call me a "robot" Tuition at these schools is now $60k/year! That's a quarter million bucks if you take 4 years to graduate. My deep & abiding interest in the humanities is free! Zero!

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@varadhjain yes exactly I enjoyed the opportunities to read Clausewitz and write genre fiction with Joe Haldeman and explore the growth of industrial exports in Meiji Japan! it's not that I would've taken zero humanities electives. but I could've graduated a semester early still.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

11 months

Harvard: "We are need-blind." Also Harvard: "Any applicants we consider cutting at this final stage are placed on a 'lop list,' which contains only four pieces of info: FINANCIAL AID ELIGIBILITY, ..." Spicy.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

One reason I find China's Cultural Revolution particularly relevant post-2012 is this photo of Xi Jinping's father. People will watch the Netflix clip in the quote and think it's an overdramatization. But no. 18% of world GDP is managed by a man who went through this at age 14.

normality

@getnormality

2 months

The Chinese Communist Party said the Cultural Revolution was "responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the people, the country, and the party since the founding of the People's Republic". They'd just lost 30 million in the Great Leap Forward.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

- gloating & gleeful - misunderstands & misrepresents the subject - poor grammar & sentence construction yes, I find this pattern matches nicely

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@mnolangray sir, I think you dropped a verb?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

sidenote: this gem, in which the men charged with rioting against the British were judged by a man who later helped write the state's revolutionary constitution. Benjamin Whiting was the town sheriff. They took all his land (after beating him & cutting ears off his horses).

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

@nabeelqu somewhat related

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

since this thread escaped the orbit of my followers, I've learned two things: 1) there's a large contingent of humanities lovers who believe in an idealized version of a humanities education and will abuse any stereotypes of engineers necessary to reinforce their worldview

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

2) there IS in fact, contrary to my expectations, a reasonable contingent of STEM-stans who want to subject liberal arts majors to full-fledged engineering-level math & science courses, no survey course nonsense, in order to humble them out of spite. Graduation rates be damned.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

when I was at MIT they helped make kids better about taking 5 years to graduate by publicizing that ~20% of the student body needed an extra semester or two to graduate! at $20k per semester, that's pretty nice, eh?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

"Machines are beautiful, the rocket equation is tragedy, and energy-mass conversion is poetry."

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

I live in a typical suburb about an hour's drive from a major international airport in a large Tier 2 US city. We have coyotes and bobcats in town. You have to drive another hour north or so to get the bears. The UK mind struggles to grasp it.

Ryan Moulton

@moultano

4 months

If you want to preserve some nature around you, you're going to have to plant some nature worth preserving.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

oh jk it's $30k per semester now, sweet

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

@sgodofsk Gotta pass the torch on to the next generation

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

1 month

I was familiar with the research on toy preferences, so in theory my own experience with kids was unsurprising. In reality, I still couldn’t believe just how much my little boy was infatuated with trucks & diggers & everything motorized. Pre-12 months old. Pre-language.

wanye

@wanyeburkett

1 month

We live on different planets. The notion that biology determines toy preference is as obvious as it is scientifically confirmed. People like this have absorbed from the culture that there are certain ideas that cannot possibly be true and some of those ideas are amongst the most

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

...I submit that 25% of your coursework not contributing in any way to your degree -- aka a whole year's worth of time -- is indefensible through any lens except the desire to subject one's outgroup to pain. For some schools, the students are the outgroup of the administration.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@namalhotra @reznavajo What I disliked about MIT was that to graduate with a MechE degree, you have to take 8 semesters worth of humanities courses!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

I'm not gonna lie though, the humanities gang who keep accusing me of being illiterate circa age 18 are definitely radicalizing me here. I promise you: Intro To Theatre and a minor in Japanese did not, in fact, spark my ability to read, write, & think.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

since this thread escaped the orbit of my followers, I've learned two things: 1) there's a large contingent of humanities lovers who believe in an idealized version of a humanities education and will abuse any stereotypes of engineers necessary to reinforce their worldview

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

I simply want to reduce the bloat in the university experience. To recognize it for what it is: a way to extend the graduation time of engineering students, & capture more tuition dollars, divert those dollars to questionable programs.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@chrisemmett_ Alas, humanities departments have decreed value is subjective and thereby prevented any way to discriminate between Intro to Theatre & foundational cultural touchstones. It’d be tragic if it didn’t rack up an extra $60k in tuition.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

Some people misread the thread to suggest the shipbuilding caused the conversion of forests to farmland. The point is that the conversion of forest to farmland prohibited building England’s finest ships & planes and jeopardized the Empire at its height.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

@M_1983827301 The claim is simply that the process of building the nation from nothing to something involved stripping all trees from the land. And that the American colonial project was influenced by this fact in many ways, from start to revolution. In america today, the trees remain.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

A young family of 3 with no pre-existing conditions? No surgeries in the last decade? No prescriptions? No pediatric visits beyond checkups since birth? That'll be $1,150 every 2 weeks, if you please! Plus your HSA contribution! 34 grand a year, sir, thank you, go right ahead.

andi (e/alb)

@Nexuist

2 months

Would anyone care about universal healthcare if they could fully cover their family for under $500/mo? Would anyone care about the cost of bread if their rent was under $900/mo? These issues only became prominent because the daily compromises became excessive

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

The man with the most enmity for the patrician isn't the plebeian. It’s the Novus Homo, inducted into their ranks but still held slightly apart. The higher he climbs, the more contempt he has for the system. He is elevated to a level by skill that others attained through…what?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

I stand betwixt these two opposing sides I don't care what you study I don't need to subject others to the courses I believe will mould them into a better person I don't think being bad at math makes you inferior I don't think lack of interest in literature is an indictment

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

1 year

2,000 years ago one group of euros lived like the left pic, while another group of euros preferred the right pic. their failure to conquer each other back then has had horrible consequences for urbanism discourse on twitter

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

@plumnotes @_candroid Also has overlap with review rings: “gee, i wonder whose paper on this niche topic I could possibly be reviewing”

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

1 month

Everyone has different strategies here, but my personal advice for dads is to take the baby off on adventures and later recount stories of him enjoying himself, learning stuff, & the two of you overcoming challenges in good spirits. You can’t argue your way into responsibility.

Kirsten

@Kirsten3531

1 month

Maternal gatekeeping is when you won't let dad look after the kids, maybe usually by having Extremely Specific Standards Like having a 72-step process for baby's bathtime, or "I can't believe you let him eat avocado when you KNOW he had it for BREAKFAST already!"

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@mbacarella but sir i've met many humanities graduates

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

11 months

another big reason academia gets disrespected is that there's now a massive cohort of smart college-educated adults who *chose* to go work in the corporate world but who think of themselves as perfectly capable of engaging with academic material and once you do engage...oh boy

eigenrobot

@eigenrobot

2 years

epistemic status: im just speculating bro potentially one reason the rationalist diaspora somewhat disrespects academia in some ways is that imo rationalism cultivated legitimately better norms around discourse. in fact, imo, it was rationalism's greatest contribution

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

@nabeelqu Alternate answer: Growth. It's easier to be positive-sum in a high growth environment.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

7 months

Mainstream voices now catching on to the obvious point: the UK has become a city state. All globally competitive economic activity has been exported, crushed, or otherwise diminished except a narrow slice of services located in London.

John Burn-Murdoch

@jburnmurdoch

7 months

But look what happens when we break this down by region within the UK: The graduate wage premium has fallen everywhere *except London*. If you work in the capital, having a degree is just as valuable today as it was in 1997.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

If Midjourney was owned by a massive Big Tech brand, their stock would've soared yesterday and everyone would be talking about how awesome their company culture must be instead of how weird Google's is. But instead they just keep shipping good product. Just use Midjourney.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

1 month

TLP was a generational essayist with incredible prescience across multiple disciplines. The irony of eschewing his writing because the tone displeases you & then accusing him of immaturity is too much.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

$60k/year may not be a lot of money to some people. And on the flipside, if you're able to qualify for enough aid, it can occasionally become an irrelevant number. But. If you have to take on personal debt to attend an institution...

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@eatskolnikov @namalhotra @reznavajo thank god I have so much else in my life beyond my degree!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 years

@andy_matuschak - genuine scholars are rare on a generational level - no reason same Q couldn’t be asked of Finance for last 4 decades - maybe substack is partially this - maybe institutionalization of scholarship - work is mentally costly even if overpaid & underworked, not enough brain cycles

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

It's true! There are forests in Europe! Could you have turned any of these into ships easily in the 1700s? You can draw a map around the pale green farmland colors on satellite images and see how far afield you have to go to find trees...

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

@somatichealer01 @dilf_farts Yes, Russia too has massive areas of wilderness, you’re right. But in Europe, these forests are mostly far far from civilization. The ones I screenshotted in America are a short drive from massive urban sprawl.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

11 months

@hi_frye there are a LOT of ways to spend a LOT of money...but headcount is the tried & true one. 400 -> 2,000 employees since the pandemic. for a userbase that has like 90% adblock install rates and hates spending money and rejected the site redesign

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

11 months

$124,430/yr, multiplied by 2,000 employees, plus a 25% overhead for taxes, fees, insurance, and all the rest, comes out to... $250 million. A year. Just on headcount.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

Top books for kids: dog man and spy school! Top books for YA: feelings & friendship Top books for adults: a fucking axe You don’t need a PhD in marketing to know when you are not the target audience. Boys apparently go from Dog Man to The Horus Heresy with nothing between.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@RyGuyHii @mukumoya @namalhotra @reznavajo do you think the median hardcore engineering student who chose to go to a Technical Institute views the mandatory humanities graduation requirement as anything other than a box to check? is there any viable measure of empathy that would increase after?

Poi - SF 17 - 19 May, South Bay 20-25 May

@poiThePoi

10 months

You figure out really quick which classes are easy passes too and then you get these 75+% engineering classes on Central Campus. I didn't write a single term paper! Perhaps I should have, but I didn't.

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@ConradBastable

10 months

for some people in the replies, the study of the natural world and its mechanics is merely "vocational" and not intellectually interesting or worth of study on its own merits it's quite tragic - they rob themselves of appreciating a fascinating perspective of the universe!

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@ConradBastable

8 days

@sdrgalvis @wanyeburkett Neurotic sickly child of wealthy upper class family attends Princeton university & studies humanities. Becomes political radical. Graduates and goes directly into activism. Never works real job or fights in war. Ultimately rewrites nation’s laws in his ideal image.

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@ConradBastable

11 months

if you are even halfway capable of self-direction and have an internet connection, you can read almost any paper you want. and see the methodology. and weep.

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

11 months

The gas stove-asthma study that bombed the news cycle a while back was based on a meta-analysis that I found was replete with errors. After correcting them, the meta-analysis was still affected by publication bias. A huge, high-quality study the meta didn't cover found a null.

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@ConradBastable

11 months

if you're sufficiently good at math or physics you can just go work at a hedge fund and be a millionaire your personal wealth is dictated by the quality of your research and the accuracy of your world model this turns out to be a higher bar than peer review

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

One group of people believes "fair" means "everyone receives an equal share", while another believes "fair" means "everyone receives the share they earn" These two groups will never convince each other of anything and should probably use another word. Alas, it's more fun not to

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

5 months

I don't think there's anything fair at all about the fact that some people are born smart or attractive and others aren't. Or that I was born in a rich country, at a rich time in history, and most other people weren't. I don't see how "fairness" comes into these questions at all.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

Read my latest essay here if you missed it

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

read in full here:

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

@ArmoredNorman @owenbroadcast it is what it is

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@mnolangray sir, I think you dropped a verb?

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

This chart showing average industrial production per player in a fake videogame about blowing up each other’s internet spaceships always makes me laugh. Turns out German & Japanese players choose to spend their free time making stuff. Who could’ve guessed!

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

@kane @nabeelqu Well yes, the subset of any group that ends up in the bay tends to be pretty good! And being non-German doesn’t mean you can’t be good! But their engineering & industrial predilection shows up in any vaguely industry-related metric, even the fake videogame ones!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

@eigenrobot Ok this is my expanded rant on how the market being warped by an external demographic changes national perceptions about reading interest & ultimately deprives young boys of enjoyable content. (Source: i want my son to enjoy reading like i do)

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

In the same way that hordes of disaffected 30 year old males watching anime ostensibly targeted at teens warps the content itself to be darker than it otherwise would’ve been, the YA book market in America now creates content optimized for an audience outside its original bounds

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

you thought Larry Summers & the IMF gang wouldn't write about "vibes" in a paper??

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

there's a type of reply to this thread that -- after ignoring the glee point -- expresses the belief that STEM kids can learn history, culture, and good writing with instruction... ...but humanities kids cannot learn real math. darkly funny, really.

Castem Ember

@CasteMember

10 months

@Tim_The_Sandman @ConradBastable I don’t think arts students are capable of understanding advanced math and physics. Sure, it’s possible to learn history and culture outside of a university. It’s also possible to learn advanced math and physics outside of the education system.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

4 months

@lisatomic5 okay, so does the teacher actually know the answer?? i'm leaning towards "no" at this point

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

Also reiterating that Cambridge & Oxford are not usually derided for churning out low-quality graduates, despite allowing them to focus primarily on their chosen discipline. There is not a great exhortation to add a year to this process.

Glinert 🇺🇸 🏭

@StevenGlinert

10 months

The UK/commonwealth system works. It’s fine. They learn how to read and write. They tend to be well rounded too. Relies on curiosity and that jobs teach you most skills you need. We should also do what they do and make medicine and law undergrad degrees with apprenticeship.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

From the dawn of civilization until the Great Depression, wealth transfers between direct family members were untaxed. In 1932, the US started taxing transfers of more than $112,500 per year. In 2024, transfer taxes now kick in at $18,000 per year (lol).

Ruxandra Teslo 🧬

@RuxandraTeslo

2 months

This seems very suboptimal imo and a huge resource misallocation. It’s young people (20-40) who need money the most: to start families, to embark on that risky project etc. a cultural change where these transfers happen earlier would be immensely beneficial.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

1 year

@punishedlenore @wanyeburkett (if you read this response and think it's a meme, i promise it's not -- skip the $1k test prep course, get this book, do it all front to back) so much of the $1k nonsense is tied up in glorified babysitting

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 years

@BernoulliDefect 100% agree, see below:

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

re-iterating that the OP tweet is specifically about having *glee* when one's outgroup is subjected to the financial burden of paying for courses unrelated to their degree the surprise, to me, was the glee.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@doublespeak152 Ah, but I am not *gleeful* that you had to take courses you had no interest in. Unless you found it worthwhile all things considered!

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

8 months

"If you want public funding, you must submit your data to the public and you must face the public in court if you attempt to defraud them" is not a draconian standard it's basically how the entire rest of the economy works

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

Twitter anons have been cooking up alternate constructions of Inflation for a couple years now. Have no fear, the IMF & Harvard gang are here to explain that the CPI calculation method was changed in the 80s because it negatively impacted a presidential candidate (lol).

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

@shakoistsLog Having a kid unlocks this core experience:

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

And it’s funny because I was browsing the Children’s section with my son this week while it rained outside and it was filled with colorful books clearly targeted at boys! Americans believe “boys don’t read” between ages 12-18 because that book market is warped by adults.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

People liked my thread defending Malthus, but I got a fair critique that reading 130k words of 1800s academic English is painful for modern readers. So. I’ve translated a key summary portion of it into easily readable English for interested followers! (1/n)

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

2 months

If Devon has actually read Malthus's famous 6th edition essay on the Principle of Population, I will buy another copy of his book. Your primary school textbook is unsurprisingly only suitable for primary school children. At some point you have to read the original text.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

Hundreds of replies from people who adore the humanities but cannot read 20 tweets and accurately describe the author, his point of view, and the contents of said tweets. I am skeptical that additional classroom instruction could fix this.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@ramendik AND to be quite clear -- my thread is NOT a strict criticism of the inclusion of some mandatory humanities in order to graduate, and reading it as such is a reading comp. issue (a mistake many have made) it's a criticism of the *amount* and *expense* of their inclusion

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

6 months

@eigenrobot Individual: Criminal fraud, to the tune of the budget of their teams, plus the follow on budgets of any citations & private R&D efforts. Collective: loss of 501c3 for any institution affiliated with them. Alas, I am too draconian I’m sure.

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

8 months

"If you want public funding, you must submit your data to the public and you must face the public in court if you attempt to defraud them" is not a draconian standard it's basically how the entire rest of the economy works

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

5 months

The Masters paper I screenshotted has a whole section labeled “Boys’ Reading Troubles” And this should be readily apparent to anyone who walks into a Barnes & Noble There are consequences for millennials capturing content for their own consumption til none is made for kids

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

The ire directed at this meme comes from people genuinely thinking me uncivilized for calling an equation tragic. An equation they've never considered, don't understand the implications of, and have not bothered to ask anyone about. Fitting.

Wichita Ryanman

@ryanscottaudio

10 months

@ConradBastable well you said an equation was tragedy. it just makes no sense on its face if you’ve ever actually consumed any good art

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

3 months

@Duderichy every time you see memes like this, it's quicker to remind yourself: they don't love buses, they just hate cars.

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@atonal440 Engineering classes: group projects, building robots as a team, coding as a group, making sure nobody explodes something they shouldn't Humanities classes: sit around table, say words the teacher likes

Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

10 months

@eris_nerung ah yes, such impeccably civic-minded classics taught by our ivies as "wine tasting" it's not like these requirements are doing broad surveys of foundational culture here

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Conrad Bastable

@ConradBastable

21 days

Of course, every child *could* probably achieve +1 level on their journey through the Course of Honors by forsaking all their childish interests. But knowing you could do that doesn't mean everyone who outcompeted you had to!

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