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JamisonMon America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

The Singaporean government is responsive to public opinion to some degree, but it is so they can maintain their current status of not having to worry about winning elections.

JamisonMon America vs. Singapore: You can't save your way out of economic shocks

There are actually a fair number of folks that commute from Canada to the US for work. They will generally have TN Visas, it is certainly not "unthinkable" - it really does happen, although I will confess that the only folks I have ever met that did it were not recommending it to anyone else!

JamisonMon Canadian bill would strip internet access from 'specified persons', no warrant

Jean Chrétien is the one that said Canada is the first post-nationalist state, why would it be a bad thing?

Is there a reason why national identity and being a high-trust society need to be linked?

JamisonMon Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

Fair enough on the immediate consequences.. but shutting down these plants was a long term decision, so the long term consequences are still consequences. It is certainly true that no one predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine when Fukushima happened but Germany's over-reliance on Russian gas was well understood at the time. Which I raise only to point out that the bad things that did happen were foreseeable, the German energy system was subject to systemic risks and those risks were made worse by these choices.

It seems like the statement "No negative effect" is probably not well supported by subsequent events.

JamisonMon Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

"Except the shutdown had no negative effect."

Three things here:

* Didn't the diversion of natural gas to electricity generation end some German industrial production completely?

* Are there not large electricity subsidies in place via subsidies for US imported LNG?

* Isn't the alternate reality where there is a surplus of electricity in German due to nuclear power a better world where Germany has more opportunity? (the AI datacentre boom is built on excess electricity, isn't it?)

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

Do you think that 25% of Arkansas farmers are going to go bankrupt soon?

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

Define "enough"? The article in question is about Arkansas and broad acre farming, there is 600+ million acres of farm in the midwest down to the delta 99% of which isn't close to a major population center. There is lots of pressure in areas of California and all up and down the west coast up to Vancouver.. but that is a trivial amount a farm land in the grand scheme of things (and specialized due to climate, water, and market access issues that don't apply to most farm land in the US or really anywhere)

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

Lots of farmers in my area owning equipment with fresh paint (well, plastic panels these days) that can't make land payments, or at least complaining about it. The ROI on new equipment is poor and when things were booming the farmers lost discipline and the manufacturers were happy to add features and cost - fun for everyone! Chickens are coming home to roost now for a lot of folks and some of them are sharpening their pencils and some of them are in denial - in my opinion.

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

OK, what secret information do you have from living in America that I don't have? I got people driving land prices up here too.. they have driven them up to roughly the same as Arkansas and I can still afford to buy land from time to time. Do explain.

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

From the article: In August 2025, Graves sent an open letter to media and politicians, pleading for attention to eye-popping numbers. “My letter told what things are like right now. In our geography, it looks like you need to yield 100-300-300 to stay ahead,” Graves describes. “That’s 100-bushel beans, 300-bushel rice and 300-bushel corn. Basic Arkansas averages are 56-bushel beans, 166-bushel rice and 175-bushel corn. In a nutshell, we are going over a cliff. Banks are forecasting farm bankruptcies at 25% to 40%, and the dirty secret is out. Everyone knows it; everyone feels it.”

Couple of things here:

- Where I farm we grow 40-50bu beans most years, rarely hit 180bu corn and, not cited as reference points above, wheat in the 60's, Oats around 130, and Canola in the 40's. All of which is to say $400/ac revenue is a pretty easy target to hit. Our costs, besides land values are essentially the same as farmer in Arkansas and things aren't all that bad for me, so what gives?

- Who honestly thinks that 25% of Arkansas farmers are going to go bankrupt in the next 3 years? (I don't know what report he is citing or the timeline so I just picked a timeline that seems reasonable.) My bet is no one.

I looked up Arkansas land values and good ground seems to go for under $5,000USD an acre, not much different from where I farm - is there some crazy extra cost that American farmers bear that I am unaware of? As a Canadian I hear American farmers whining all the time about how tough things are and I just don't get it. Things are not as good as they were in some recent crop years but overall profitability is not a big issue.

https://www.arfb.com/uploads/pages/arkansas_land_values_2024...

These monopolies, if they were so powerful, would be squeezing farmers so bad that land values would be dropping, not rising... but land values keep going up. Profits are being plowed into fixed assets, which means that there are profits - that's the economics of the thing, right?

JamisonMon Three farmers on monopolies and mismanagement in U.S. agriculture

That doesn't really make sense, the vast, vast majority of farmland is not close enough to an urban area to be influenced by sprawl and get bid up to development prices.

JamisonMon How a $2k 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured

The Europeans seem to have become more free trade curious after recent events so this doesn't seem like it will hold up as a "what if". And I expect that the coming months of US-only inflation are just going to confirm that position for them even i they face a mild recession due to US market access/demand collapse issues.

JamisonMon How a $2k 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured

> This ignores the reality of power in the US. Presidents can't implement multi-decade initiatives.

Which is why if anyone wanted to actually bring manufacturing "back" to the US they would work with congress and pass laws that curtailed the tariff powers in a way that ensured that in the areas where you wanted long term investment the president would not have the power to change policy unilaterally. At which point the typical congressional gridlock would serve to ensure stability going forward and allow businesses to invest.

JamisonMon Why I don't discuss politics with friends

Is this an American thing? No one has ever in my life asked me "Who did you vote for?"

I have had plenty of people behave in a way that made it clear they assumed I agreed with them on political matters/issues that would have us voting the same way (sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly) but I have never been asked this question. Is it common or is it a contrivance in service of the article?

JamisonMon The US stops sharing air quality data from embassies worldwide

> Making the issue more political, the US edits and censors the data it publishes for its own purposes. This isn’t a secret but it taints the perception of US neutrality when making this data available.

First I have heard of this, what's the source for the US editing & censoring global sensing data?

JamisonMon The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

As soon as he described the physical setup I was screaming "Tree!" internally.

JamisonMon Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

That's the thing, the governance of the org decides what to do based on these guidelines, so the management & board decides when it is applicable.

JamisonMon Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

I would say you are using the words "explicitly tasked" when the articles of incorporation use the words "seek to" and "when applicable". (And also the "allowing competition" part I don't think is actually in the mix, is there a citation for that?)

""The Founding Agreement was also memorialized, among other places, in OpenAI, Inc.’s December 8, 2015 Certificate of Incorporation, which affirmed that its “resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person.”""

That said, I was only commenting on the idea that creating a for-profit wing was adding to the unusual corporate structure of OpenAI and saying that it really didn't.

JamisonMon Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

Why do you think he has a good case?

To me OpenAI's response is simply, "It is our honestly held belief that given our available resources private partnership was the only viable way to ensure that we are in control of the most advanced AGI when it is developed. And it is our honest belief opening up what we are developing without a lot of log term due diligence would not be in the best interests of humanity and the best interests of humanity is the metric by which we decide how quickly to open source our progress."

To me you can't win a lawsuit like this that is essentially about a small difference in opinions about strategy, but I am not a lawyer.

JamisonMon Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

A non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary is actually pretty common and it is probably one of the more "normal" things OpenAI has done.

https://www.marcumllp.com/insights/creating-a-for-profit-sub...

My personal opinion is that not creating a for-profit wing would have made a even bigger mess.

(But then I also think this suit is very obviously without merit and the complaint is written in a way that it sounds like lawyers sucking up to Musk to take his money - but people seem to be taking it very seriously!)

JamisonMon Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

Running the headline "Fewer people are buying electric cars" and then conceding that EV sales are rising at the start of the 3rd paragraph is embarrassing for the author Paris Marx and I hope he feels ashamed.

JamisonMon The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing

Right, but that is entirely unrelated to USB working -- the regulation exists long after USB had proven itself.. because it had proven itself.

JamisonMon The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing

> USB is not the poster child for successful industry-led standards.

Every day billions of devices use USB for charging and data transfer and work just fine.. was there some government intervention that jumped in to make that work that I am unfamiliar with?

However the sausage was made.. and is still being made... may be imperfect and ugly but USB seems pretty darn successful!

Bluetooth too!

JamisonMon More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

https://the-decoder.com/openai-apparently-going-all-in-on-ch...

This behaviour seems more consistent with wanting is sorted out than stalling for time.

JamisonMon More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

I expect that OpenAI would concede that they used the data in any court case immediately to get that issue off the table, I really don't think they have a strong interest in foot-dragging on this stuff, right?

I would think OpenAI wants the thornier legal issues actually settled so that the whole ecosystem can grow within those terms & they can lobby for the legal changes they need/want?

JamisonMon Tidal energy is not renewable

You don't seem to be addressing my point in this reply. You have to make an affirmative case that growth and energy are decoupled in China but exports and energy are not to make your argument work.

If you don't have the data that's fine, I was hoping for data!

JamisonMon Tidal energy is not renewable

> France is estimated to import between 117 and 750Mt of CO2 a year, quite a large error margin…

I don't know, if your basis for your opinion is that you googled it and you got some very wide ranging and contradictory results then that seems like a poor foundation to start with.

> Why? These exports from China generates GDP in China so it just grow the energy consumption as well as the Chinese GDP, making the ratio flat.

If the ratio is flat then there isn't really much of an export of energy effect in my view. If you are exports were dominated specifically by the use of energy (over say human capital or laxer pollution standards) that intensity would rise because it would be the source of the economic advantage. I.e. if domestic consumption trade 1 unit of energy for one unit of growth but exports trades 2 units of energy for one unit of growth intensity will rise if exports dominate the energy mix. That does not seem to be the case.

A huge proportion of US imports seem to be based on "assembly" from what I can tell, the dominant categories from China are electrical/electronic goods and industrial machines - most of the stuff is the assembling of US & EU (and Taiwan for semiconductor reasons) made parts.. the energy mix of the import-export dynamic seems like it needs a lot of analysis - I would like something authoritative that shows an attempt at an analysis, I can't seem to find it.

JamisonMon Tidal energy is not renewable

Do you have some data to back up this assertion? For me what I see in the numbers is that Chinese domestic quality of living improvements correlate better with increases in energy consumption than does US imports (or Chinese exports).

What is also interesting is that China's "energy intensity" - energy used per unit of GDP is pretty flat, if wealthier nations were exporting energy demand via imports I would expect that number to be climbing. I am at a bit of a loss as to how to determine exactly what is going on TBH.

JamisonMon Doctors on TikTok

ETA means Edited to Add.

Thank you for the information.

JamisonMon Doctors on TikTok

These are "uses" of data but they don't seem to in any way involve making the data public - I think if you published deidentified data to a public forum of any kind under the auspice of "educating agents" you'd get a very big fine! (You need example charts to educate certain healthcare workers, using real ones with the name blanked out is fine - publishing that on the Internet probably going to get you a violation.)

These are just standard legislative exceptions saying "you can use the data you have to run the operation without fear of getting in trouble" not publication rules.

ETA: You obviously know about the legislation, if you know of instances of orgs using these rules to publish data.. blow that damn whistle!