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mattparlmer's profile
mattparlmer 🪐
mattparlmer 🪐
mattparlmer  🪐
@mattparlmer

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mattparlmer  🪐

@mattparlmer

Making machines that make other machines @genfabco, rationalist, cryptoanarchotechnocrat

Great Lakes, USA, Earth
mattparlmer.substack.com
Joined February 2011

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    1. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      8) While I sympathize with people who want to reopen their businesses I don't think you need a militia QRF to do it. You certainly don't need a militia QRF to cover morons screaming about 5G and "Mark of the Beast" vaccines.

      2 replies 3 retweets 44 likes
      Show this thread
    2. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      9) People continue to have trouble with the concept that multiple things can be bad at the same time. This is an evergreen problem, but its impact is heightened in situations like the one we face right now. Another case of cognitively "running home to mommy" cope.

      1 reply 7 retweets 87 likes
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    3. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      10) These shortages really spook me. Our supply chains are way more brittle than normies realize. They've been changing the layout of the grocery store I go to to make it look normal, but there's only about half of the product that used to be on the shelves.

      3 replies 10 retweets 117 likes
      Show this thread
    4. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      11) One thing that got my gears turning the other day was the 30% drop in bottled fruit smoothie prices, which indicate a upstream market collapse. I don't think a lot of the growers are going to plant crops anytime soon given these conditions.

      2 replies 4 retweets 68 likes
      Show this thread
    5. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      12) Logistical problems take time to materialize. We won't experience the consequences of a fruit market collapse in the form of acute shortages for a month or two, but rest assured, they're coming. And when they do I think a lot of people will get really scared.

      2 replies 8 retweets 64 likes
      Show this thread
    6. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      13) We'll be able to work through the concrete aspects of these problems given resources and time, but the abstract, psychological impact is what really worries me. Is our society gonna be able to handle things visibly falling apart everywhere at once?

      2 replies 3 retweets 57 likes
      Show this thread
    7. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      14) More importantly, can the authorities handle it? The potential for overreaction and misbehavior on the part of the average American cop is unacceptable even under regular circumstances. These are not regular circumstances.

      2 replies 4 retweets 79 likes
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    8. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      15) Every police officer I've interacted with in the past few months is noticeably shook. The thin blue line is awfully thin, and they know it better than anybody else. Combine that with a habit for acting like the suburbs are Iraq and you can see the potential for problems.

      1 reply 5 retweets 76 likes
      Show this thread
    9. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      16) Last week somebody tried to break into the lower level of my building. Since I was pretty sure it was just a few hobos scavenging I hit the lights started yelling at them and they ran off. Once they had time to split I called the cops to take a look for damage.

      2 replies 3 retweets 36 likes
      Show this thread
    10. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      17) Within five minutes there were three SUVs and two squad cars with a total of about fifteen cops, and *they* broke into the building to search it. The funny thing is that I didn't even call 911, I called 311 and got transferred without asking to be. Complete overreaction.

      2 replies 2 retweets 56 likes
      Show this thread
      mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

      18) One thing that I thought I'd see more of is companies leaning into the abnormality of everything from an operational perspective. There are precious few large firms who looked at this situation and said "yes, now is our time to adapt faster than everyone else".

      10:17 PM - 2 May 2020
      • 4 Retweets
      • 64 Likes
      • RedwoodGirl working on shelter for all in Chico🌹 Dohn Joe Sawyer Chana Richard Move Kyle Ray Doraisamy 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛 🌺 🤷🏻‍♀️
      3 replies 4 retweets 64 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

          19) Do investment banks *really* need offices to function, or do investment bankers need offices to see and be seen? So many companies could go full remote permanently, but everybody still seems to be committed to returning to "normal", whatever that's supposed to mean.

          4 replies 8 retweets 63 likes
          Show this thread
        3. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 2 May 2020

          20) I know of very few software companies that couldn't go full remote permanently. I'm not predicting any historic shift at this point though, mainly because I thought we'd see most tech firms commit to permanent full remote in week one of the lockdowns, and that didn't happen.

          6 replies 3 retweets 47 likes
          Show this thread
        4. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          mattparlmer  🪐 Retweeted

          21) As Adam says, the parallels to Gulf War II and Katrina are striking. Absolutely none of what we're seeing is a novel failure mode. https://mobile.twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1255828023166844928 …

          mattparlmer  🪐 added,

          This Tweet is unavailable.
          2 replies 4 retweets 43 likes
          Show this thread
        5. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          22) We see in recent history a correlation between high outdoor temperatures and civil unrest. It's likely that this will be a very hot summer politically, given the other pressures covid exerts. And if people riot, who can really blame them? Things are spinning out of control.

          2 replies 7 retweets 48 likes
          Show this thread
        6. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          23) The poor have a right to be angry, and while they don't have a right to lash out violently it's totally understandable if they do. The society that failed them for decades is failing them again in their time of acutest need.

          2 replies 10 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        7. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          24) Whenever I see the lines at food banks I think "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet".

          1 reply 10 retweets 67 likes
          Show this thread
        8. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          25) The Discourse is fouler than ever, in particular the smug condescension aimed at people who question the necessity of strict lockdowns. When the history of this is written it won't look kindly on those who decided to impose a depression on top of a pandemic.

          2 replies 18 retweets 88 likes
          Show this thread
        9. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          26) The argument that there is a direct tradeoff between the level of allowed economic activity and human life is one of the most simplistic, fear-driven, fact-free pieces of reasoning I've ever heard, and it is established blue tribe orthodoxy at this point.

          3 replies 22 retweets 83 likes
          Show this thread
        10. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          27) The lockdowns continue because nobody at any level of government has a plan other than protracted martial law. No central quarantine, no mass testing, no tracing project, no rules for firms to restart safely. Just martial law and politically determined "essential business".

          3 replies 39 retweets 155 likes
          Show this thread
        11. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          28) Meanwhile we're sending positive cases home to infect their families. We're cramming people into centralized supermarkets that become hotzones. We're not applying pathogen control measures that were well understood by medieval port cities centuries before we had germ theory.

          1 reply 17 retweets 94 likes
          Show this thread
        12. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          29) National test and trace isn't gonna happen soon enough, because we didn't start in January. Central quarantine likely won't happen in enough places to matter. The idea that the state is even capable of executing effectively against this virus is a dangerous pipe dream.

          3 replies 11 retweets 74 likes
          Show this thread
        13. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          30) What's most infuriating about this is that Hong Kong, a failed state, beat this thing down with little to no serious government attention to the problem in the early stages. Everybody masked up, stopped sending their kids to school, and started disinfecting touchpoints.

          3 replies 12 retweets 74 likes
          Show this thread
        14. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          31) Covid never took off in Hong Kong because the people led the effort. The state had very little work to do when they actually kicked into gear. Mass adoption of pathogen defense is the silver bullet, but there has been no attempt to do that in the US.

          1 reply 13 retweets 75 likes
          Show this thread
        15. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          32) If we do ever adopt a defense in depth strategy in the West I expect comprehensive gaslighting from the established institutions, just like what happened with masks, or what could easily happen if hydroxychloroquine trials work out. Nobody will learn the lesson.

          1 reply 8 retweets 67 likes
          Show this thread
        16. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          33) That inability to learn lessons even at tremendous cost is precisely why we need to completely replace most of our institutions. We had our chance for incrementalism and we squandered it. Now we have our chance to be nonviolently revolutionary. Let's hope we use it.

          1 reply 9 retweets 68 likes
          Show this thread
        17. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          34) Stasis is not a thing in politics. You can have relatively stable conditions for long periods of time, but things are constantly shifting in all manner of dimensions. There is no status quo ante that we can return to. No changes are permanent, but change is.

          1 reply 3 retweets 37 likes
          Show this thread
        18. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          35) I just don't understand the thought process that feeds into wanting to ban guns while simultaneously being terrified of political rivals who have guns that aren't going away even in a ban scenario. Why not arm up yourself? Is it just hoplophobia? Why do most progs think this?

          4 replies 4 retweets 36 likes
          Show this thread
        19. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          36) I've been thinking a lot lately about Georgism and its prospects. The wave of neo-Georgist thought characterized by the Weyl-Posner work is still building, but to what end I'm not sure. They present an excellent grab bag of ideas, but with few paths to implemention.

          1 reply 2 retweets 33 likes
          Show this thread
        20. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          37) I think Georgism and the land value tax was kneecapped by the emergence of the far less just, far easier to manipulate income tax regimes that we have today, and I think that kneecapping happened because the oligarchs of the time wanted it to.

          2 replies 2 retweets 42 likes
          Show this thread
        21. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          38) The New York Times is a hereditary monarchy.

          2 replies 10 retweets 50 likes
          Show this thread
        22. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          39) Major universities have similar corruption patterns to the monastic estates of the Renaissance.

          2 replies 7 retweets 54 likes
          Show this thread
        23. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          40) 20th century prog institutions increasingly resemble a decayed ancien regime.

          1 reply 7 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        24. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          41) The fact that people have a hard time thinking about the possible outcomes of drastic political change over short periods of time is exactly what makes those moments of dramatic change dangerous.

          1 reply 3 retweets 36 likes
          Show this thread
        25. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          mattparlmer  🪐 Retweeted mattparlmer  🪐

          42)https://twitter.com/mattparlmer/status/1256444607371579393 …

          mattparlmer  🪐 added,

          mattparlmer  🪐 @mattparlmer
          Overapplication of the precautionary principle is the root of a lot of society's problems.
          Show this thread
          1 reply 3 retweets 31 likes
          Show this thread
        26. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          43) Blue tribe people should understand that the charitable explanation for shutdown fetishism is that supporters are out of touch and don't understand the conditions being experienced on the ground. The less charitable explanation is increasingly the consensus among some people.

          3 replies 3 retweets 38 likes
          Show this thread
        27. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          44) By the time early March came around even I was supportive of a multiweek national service industry lockdown and office work-from-home order. Most firms were sending their staff home anyway. We needed to buy time to scale up a response. And then nobody in government did shit.

          1 reply 11 retweets 77 likes
          Show this thread
        28. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          45) Think about that. We shut down the entire economy. People mostly complied, knowing they were putting their livelihoods at risk, out of genuine civic and humanitarian spirit. And the bureaucrats at every level of government pissed away the time that we bought them.

          6 replies 42 retweets 161 likes
          Show this thread
        29. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          46) Why should we trust these institutions with anything ever again? Why should we trust the alphabet soup to do its job in any matter of consequence? What titanic failures happen under the surface and never float to the top for the public to see?

          3 replies 18 retweets 89 likes
          Show this thread
        30. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          47) Action and inaction have consequences, and those consequences always play out one way or another. We've had zero accountability for the institutions that have steered our society into disaster after disaster over the last few decades. This will all eventually come to a head.

          2 replies 6 retweets 47 likes
          Show this thread
        31. mattparlmer  🪐‏ @mattparlmer 3 May 2020

          48) When it does, the people in the institutions who slept through this had better hope the reckoning stays limited to hearings, sackings, and new names for some agencies. I have a feeling it's gonna go a lot further than that, and I just hope things stay peaceful.

          1 reply 4 retweets 38 likes
          Show this thread
        32. Show replies

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