Seattle, WA
Joined September 2010
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Can confirm. I've seen this on my own @otrgold podcasts :)
Some NPR podcasts started getting mysterious comments on Spotify. They made no sense to the staff reading them – until someone from a younger generation cracked the code.
Hear the story: link.podtrac.com/phns92ui
Austin Vach retweeted
Because it's a ridiculous question. Why should my daughter eat healthier food than the average person? Why should she breath cleaner air than people living in Beijing & Mumbai? The answer to all such questions is "because I love her & can provide her something better". Period.
Austin Vach retweeted
😭😭😭
My hot take is that Elon is not nearly rich enough and the world would be a better place if he had 10X more capital to put at work.
The government is in great shape if you ignore the $40 trillion in debt, the 60 straight months of inflation, and that interest payments are now bigger than the military budget.
Austin Vach retweeted
Milton Friedman:
“Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.”
“That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it: to drink too much and to print too much money.”
“When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. That’s why it’s so hard to persist with the cure.”
Austin Vach retweeted
Listen.
If $9,000 is the thing that is going to let moms stay home and for families to have more children, then make it a $9,000 tax credit.
If you want them to have $9,000, then government shouldn’t take the $9000 from them to start with. Giving back the money they took like it’s a favor when they could just let them keep it. Even worse, government shouldn’t have to take $15,000 from someone else while keeping $6,000 for itself snd then “give” the $9,000 it stole from someone else.
Reduce taxes. Don’t increase spending.
Austin Vach retweeted
Even Dolly Parton’s philanthropy was good and efficient.
Her Imagination Library mails a free book every month to kids from birth to age 5.
Instead of just writing checks, she built infrastructure, kind of like what Andrew Carnegie did with libraries. Her foundation negotiates huge bulk discounts, selects the books, and runs the distribution system, and governments, nonprofits, and local donors help cover the marginal costs.
So a book that retails for ~$10-15 can be bought and mailed to a child for roughly $2–3.
Good model: use philanthropy to build the machine, then let others fund it at a tiny cost per child.
A recent study found participants entered kindergarten about 0.13 SD higher on literacy and were 16–24% less likely to be severely behind... But families self-select into the program, so much of the effect is probably selection bias.
I made a donation today:
donate.imaginationlibrary.co…
Austin Vach retweeted
They forgot to add the price of the silverware, the oven, the cutting board, the bowls, the electricity in the home… this meal probably cost like $10,000 for them
CNN remakes one of the “affordable” meals from RFK Jr.’s new cooking show. It should cost under $5 per serving, but what’s the real price point? @tomforemancnn reports.
Austin Vach retweeted
The birth years of Continental Congress members if the United States Declaration of Independence had been signed in 2026.
Austin Vach retweeted
For four straight years Florida has reduced its budget.
Rainy debt fund has been more than tripled since 2019.
52+% of taxpayer-supported state debt will have been eliminated under this new budget.
During my tenure we vetoed almost twice as much spending as was done over the previous twenty years.
The state maintains a AAA credit rating across all major rating agencies.
It can be done!
The Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget marks the fourth straight year Florida has reduced its budget. We have large reserves and a full rainy day fund—more than triple the size from when I took office. We’ve paid down historic debt instead of passing the burden to future generations.
The State of Florida has built a strong fiscal foundation because we manage taxpayers’ money responsibly. Florida’s per capita spending is one of the lowest in the nation. We have the fewest state employees per capita in the nation.
We’ve achieved high levels of fiscal responsibility while also reducing taxes and making historic investment in infrastructure, education and Everglades restoration. In short, it can be done!
Austin Vach retweeted
Somebody has to be the richest person on the planet.
The fact that it’s the guy who popularized electric cars, made rockets reusable, and is working on curing blindness and paraplegia as a side quest seems fair to me.
Austin Vach retweeted
Under the pretext of banning under-16s from social media to “protect the children,” Keir Starmer has snuck in some small print that should make Americans really glad that all the tea was dumped into the Boston harbour back in 1773.
Adults will still be “allowed” to use the platforms… once they’ve handed over facial recognition, digital ID, passport, or credit card details to prove they’re not a child.
So it was never really about the kids. It was about making sure every single person who wants to speak online has to first tell the government exactly who they are.
Step 1: Link your real identity to your speech
Step 2: police have a lovely searchable database of every spicy take, meme, or complaint you’ve ever posted
Step 3: bring in the consequences - arrests, travel ban, debunking, for out-of-bounds speech
The UK is in a free fall.
🚨 SUMMARY: The UK's social media ban for children from early 2027:
- "User-to-user" apps where people create, share and interact with content (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Facebook) will be banned for under-16s
- WhatsApp, Signal and YouTube Kids will be exempt
- Under-16s will also be banned from livestreaming, messaging strangers on gaming apps like Discord and using disappearing messages
- 16 and 17 year olds will face nightly social media curfews and limits on infinite scrolling with more details next month
- AI "romantic companion" chatbots will be banned for under-18s
- Adults can still access social media through age checks like facial recognition, digital IDs, passports and credit cards