Software Dev in Penn’s Woods. Interests 🤓: psychology, computing, comedy, politics, complex adaptive systems. Cable news abolitionist. Soda de-polarizer.
Joined December 2013
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Ryan Shaw retweeted
What a heartbreaking week it has been. Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did. Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him. I was filled with affection and admiration for him and his work.
My heart goes out to Sunny and his family. He will be deeply missed.
Ryan Shaw retweeted
For years I've been saying "When you see fake papers, you don't have to spend an hour to find the magic trick and refute it, you can just call it bullshit, everyone already knows it's fake." But maybe now you can go "Hey Claude find the magic trick and tell me why it's fake."
Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Regarded by many as one of the best written, best acted scenes in Sitcom history.
PHILIP BAKER HALL delivers an all-time performance as ‘Lt. Bookman’ —The Library Cop, a role that changed this hugely talented Actor’s life & career forever.
Ryan Shaw retweeted
We gave @TurnerSportsEJ a moment to thank everyone for the kind words on the show this morning. ❤️
Ryan Shaw retweeted
On another note I’m sure the complete 10 year destruction of the work of the French socialists, with this week’s fun AI kerfuffle just the latest summary of, is going to be very prevalent in the minds of California voters being asked if they want to expropriate some money (one time of course).
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Should be generalized to every economics and social science paper
Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Retired millionaires do not "warrant" the benefits they receive. To claim a senior citizen deserves, or "earned" their benefits is to deny a worker's right to his income. It is to say the idle elderly rich have a stronger claim on young people's labor than they do themselves.
I think this is mostly reasonable although the top quintile of seniors did pay enough to warrant the benefits they receive and I don't see how they have any more responsibility than anyone else for a program that was created 90 years ago and has been headed for this end for decades. (Indeed, it's unlikely a group that large probably has a close to uniform position on anything.) Nevertheless, avoiding real hardship will have to involve some benefit reductions and that won't work for lower income retirees. And it will involve some revenue, but raising the cap is a very bad idea for the economy. Everyone is going to have to give up something. FDR famously said no one could end "my social security" because politicians wouldn't want to leave anyone holding the bag.
Ryan Shaw retweeted
"Boomers granted themselves generous pensions, relying on demographic trends that have since lapsed ... Today’s grandparents inherited a continent rebuilding itself after war; they will pass on one in need of repair after the damage they helped wreak"
If the European welfare state looks like a pyramid scheme, its pharaohs are the “baby boomers”. We explain how the cohort has pulled off an intergenerational heist economist.com/europe/2026/05…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
This Mao groveling moron is a professor at Cambridge. Academia is irredeemably broken and that’s a disaster.
Under “dictator” Mao, life expectancy in China increased by 30 years, literacy rates went from 20% to 70%, steel output grew from 1 million to 23 million tons, 47 million hectares of land was taken from landlords and given to peasants, and China was unified under a strong central state and got nuclear weapons.
Despite his failures, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand why Mao is revered in China.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Mao's Great Leap Forward and related policies caused an estimated 30-45 million famine deaths in 1959-1961 alone, with total excess deaths under his rule often estimated at 40 million or higher.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chi…
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC43…
chinafile.com/library/nyrb-c…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
What do we learn from Mbappé’s story?
Free speech can never be tolerated under Communism.
When you go to the polls, choose freedom—not Communism!
Ryan Shaw retweeted
A scorpion wanted to cross a river, but could not swim. It asked a frog to carry it across.
"How do I know you won’t sting and kill me?" said the frog.
"I'd love to sting you and will definitely do it," said the scorpion.
"I’m sure you don’t mean that," said the frog. "Hop on."
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Not sure what is more striking—how bad the research audited here seems to be, or the thought that a lot of other research might come out similarly shaky.
Via @tylercowen / @MargRev – saez-zucman-audit-replicatio…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
AI is coming for econ. Artificial intelligence will force a major push against the endemic (often ideologically or financially motivated) fraud in the social sciences and life sciences
Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
At Nuremberg, American judges had to teach the Soviet judges about concepts such as “innocent until proven guilty.” The Soviets saw the trials as simply being about whether the accused went to the gulags or were taken out back with a pistol.
Most people aren’t prepared to learn just how different their cultures are from others, let alone realize the implications.
Ryan Shaw retweeted
One thing that’s important to remember in this Mbappé controversy is that this is *not* just about “offense.” That sanitizes the truth. People are jailed for criticizing Mao.
Some issue groveling apologies for financial gain. Others suffer in prison.
bbc.com/news/articles/c07lng…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Error-prone French socialists shouldn’t decide American policy, especially when the errors are very far from random. For that matter they shouldn’t decide French policy, but that is their problem.
marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Ryan Shaw retweeted
Armed guards at the door. Opioids offered on repeat. Apple Pay at my bedside. Welcome to the American Emergency Room.
The French think it bankrupts you. Americans think France does it for free. I’ve been to the ER in both. Both are wrong.
Mountain bike crash, dislocated and fractured shoulder. I’m French, I live in San Francisco, and I take slightly too many risks. Let’s compare.
Security
🇺🇸 Kaiser in Marin. Three armed guards and a metal detector. My phone set it off, so with my shoulder out of its socket I walked through again. And again. Then a pat-down.
🇫🇷 A couple of unarmed guys with walkie-talkies. Still not sure what they’re for.
Wait
🇺🇸 Three people in the waiting room. Seen in 15 to 30 minutes.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: packed room, 4 hours before anyone touched me.
Records
🇺🇸 Kaiser is vertically integrated. Insurer, hospital, doctors: one system. They had my file before I sat down.
🇫🇷 Every new doctor is a fresh context window. Zero history, maybe a printout from last time.
Infrastructure
🇺🇸 Small hospital, serious kit. Straight to the trauma bay: real bed, IV, vitals monitoring, ready for surgery if needed. All imaging on the spot.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: a plastic chair and a Doliprane.
Drugs
🇺🇸 Strong opioids were the default offer. I said no. They insisted. The doctor came in personally, confused why someone in that much pain would refuse. I stuck to Tylenol, an anti-inflammatory, to put the shoulder back in.
Yes, it hurt. No, I didn’t tap out. My mom is proud of me.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: Doliprane, opioids never mentioned. I have friends who got their shoulder popped back in with nothing at all.
US default: opioids. French default: Doliprane.
Bill
🇺🇸 Every nurse warned me: “You’re French, this bill is going to traumatize you.”
Before discharge, someone came to my bed to collect payment. Apple Pay, from the hospital bed. $300. For everything. On a ~$500/month Kaiser plan.
🇫🇷 A flat ~€20 ER fee, usually reimbursed by your mutuelle. The real bill shows up later, on your payslip (see below)
followup
🇺🇸 Kaiser called me right after to set up follow-up and physio, all in their system. So far, so good.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: discharged, figure it out yourself. A friend dislocated her finger. They put it back in wrong, sent her home with bad instructions, it locked up, and she needed surgery months later. Still not fixed.
“Free healthcare” in France
It’s not free when your marginal tax rate nears 70% with social charges. And if you want quality care fast, more and more people pay for private clinics anyway.
Verdict
One person, one data point. But the care was 10x better than anything I’ve had in France, for a price that’s completely fine.
France has a lot to learn.
And yes, I refused the narcotics to stay sharp enough to launch a NanoCorp from my hospital bed. Launch your first company run by an AI agent: nanocorp .so
