Power Monger

My sporadic thoughts on politics, economics, and public policy.

[orteil42]

we're overdue for a reactive wave of anti-cozy games. animal crossing but office workers. restaurant management but applebee's. farming sim but all spreadsheets. never see an ear of corn the whole game

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

a young witch trying to solve a gristly murder in the Italian alps during the Years of Lead

[regina-bithyniae]

Farming simulator but it's all just lobbying for more subsidies.

Or, to develop the idea a bit more, you can do farming. But it becomes very quickly apparent that any time spent farming is much better spent harassing your elected representatives or parking your tractors in the street to protest agricultural reform.

[donjuaninhell]

Y'know, I've largely moved on beyond pointing out and lamenting at how openly corrupt the Trump administration is, but holy shit the Trump administration is so unbelievably corrupt.

Article.

[morlock-holmes]

I find myself constantly wondering about the internal psychology of these people and the folks who vote for these people.

Particularly the combination of incredibly moralizing language and public Christianity with this kind of open, obvious, naked corruption and self-dealing.

[comparativelysuperlative]

"he's Caesar now so render unto him"

[yesornopolls]

Do you know the name of this area between Iran and Oman?

Yes

No

Voting ended onMar 9

[powermonger]

The above poll was posted on March 2, 2026.

Did you know the name of this area between Iran and Oman back then? Do you know it now?

I didn't know the name then and I still don't know it now.

I didn't know the name then but I know it now.

I knew the name then but I can't remember it now.

I knew the name then and I still know it now.

Voting ended onMay 31

[st-just]

I really hate to say this but like; networking with rich people and convincing them you're cool and competent and have great ideas is actually possibly the single most classic way to get out of poverty that doesn't involve sharp rocks and skulls.

[powermonger]

Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data

As in the rest of the literature, we find that the effect of each college characteristic [average SAT score, Barron's Index of selectivity, and net tuition] is sizeable for both cohorts in cross-sectional least squares regression models that control for variables commonly observed by researchers (such as student characteristics and SAT scores). However, when we adjust for a proxy for unobserved student characteristics—namely, by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to—our estimates for the effects of college characteristics fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero for both the 1976 and 1989 cohort of students. Notable exceptions are for racial and ethnic minorities (black and Hispanic students) and for students whose parents have relatively little education; for these subgroups, our estimates remain large, even in models that adjust for unobserved student characteristics. One possible explanation for this pattern of results is that highly selective colleges provide access to networks for minority students and for students from disadvantaged family backgrounds that are otherwise not available to them.

Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges

Using this design, we find that being admitted from the waitlist to an Ivy-Plus college increases students’ chances of achieving early career upper-tail success on both monetary and non-monetary dimensions. The causal effects of admission to an Ivy-Plus college are much larger for students with weaker fallback options– e.g., whose colleges in their home state channel fewer students to the top 1% after college. Exploiting this heterogeneity in treatment effects, we estimate that the marginal student who is admitted to and attends an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public is about 50% more likely to reach the top 1% of the income distribution at age 33, nearly twice as likely to attend a highly-ranked graduate school, and 2.5 times as likely to work at a prestigious firm.

some relevant studies for the discussion

[markovchaingang]

it is better for a person to defend failed oppressive regimes from their other countries than from their own

strongly disagree

mildly disagree

neutral/they're both just as bad

mildly agree

strongly agree

Voting ended onMay 19

[markovchaingang]

i fucked up the wording. what i meant to say was, "it is better for a person to defend failed oppressive regimes from other countries than from their own"

[markovchaingang]

ADDENDUM: which is more embarrassing

their own country

other country

Voting ended onMay 20

[myconetted]

im not feeling so good about AI and data center journalism right now. these headlines are very shocking! so i clicked through.

for background: Lake Tahoe residents live in California and get their energy from Liberty Utilities, a California energy provider. Liberty Utilities gets 75% of its energy from NV Energy, a Nevada energy provider with the power lines and energy going to Lake Tahoe. NV Energy has a contract to stop supplying energy to Liberty once a new transmission line is built that can serve Tahoe.

based on the headlines you'd never guess that

the energy supplier NV Energy already sold its CA assets to CA-based Liberty Utilities in 2009 and told them to find their own energy provider within five years

Liberty Utilities did not do that (it's hard and costly and they're a small provider!) so NV Energy granted temporary extensions in 2015, 2020, and 2025

Liberty Utilities is struggling and having to raise energy prices because fire insurance has gone through the roof. CA has a Wildfire Fund that helps energy providers with this, but Liberty Utilities isn't covered by it

NV Energy is building new transmission lines that should give Liberty Utilities access to energy from other providers

NV Energy will continue providing energy to Liberty Utilities until the new transmission lines are finished

so the headline is insanely misleading rage bait. a Nevada energy supplier is finally ending their 16 years of temporary energy service to Tahoe residents in California because the infrastructure for letting a different provider serve Tahoe is about to be built. Tahoe residents are kinda screwed but their plight has been 16 years in the making.

Tahoe residents complain that prices have gone up, but it's not because of ai, it's because of fire insurance! Liberty also isn't trying to increase profit to fund ai stuff. they asked for an 11% return on equity (max allowed shareholder profit) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) instead brought them from 10% to 9.75%. larger energy provider PG&E is also down, from 10.28% at 9.98%, but PG&E is way bigger and benefits from the CA Wildfire Fund! which is to say Liberty is allowed less profit than before they had to raise the prices, and less profit than larger energy providers despite carrying way more risk.

if the new providers cost more, then Tahoe residents will probably be sad about even more price increases, but they're not going to lose power because of NV Energy. NV Energy already gave 16 months of notice for Liberty to find a supplier on the new transmission lines. if Tahoe residents lose power, blame sits squarely with Liberty Utilities and CA/CPUC.

[markovchaingang]

rule 1 of arguing is to never actually present the case in favour of your point. it shows weakness in your position that you feel the need to prove it. instead simply repeatedly assert it to be true and self-evident. rule 2 is to use mockery tactics at every opportunity. the more personal attacks to better. rule 3 is to always argue in a pack. this will indicate to your opponent that your point must clearly be convincing to other people, so there must be something to it. make repeated references to the fact that more people agree with you whenever you can. if you follow all three rules in the end you should have convinced exactly 0 people, but that's fine because if they didn't already agree with you they clearly had a moral deficiency anyway and were never even reachable in the first place

[beemovieerotica]

PEAK!!!

[beemovieerotica]

y'all are so specific....

[powermonger]

i was worried the picture didn't come through because there's no preview of the picture on submissions:

perfectly functional webbed site

[krasnoarmeyets]

my job in the anarchist commune will be having the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence

[nightpool]

Oh Chicago

The Chicago Maroon reports:

> At 1:30 p.m. on April 17, a group of undergraduate students identifying themselves as “UChicago For Our Future” gathered on the main quad, handing out onions to protest the 1958 Onion Futures Act.  > The 1958 law prohibits the trading of onion futures contracts, making the bulbs the only type of agricultural product banned from futures markets in the United States.  > To draw attention, the group brought approximately 100 raw onions to the quad in a large cart. They encouraged passersby to participate, saying that any student who ate an entire onion would be featured on their website. About 20 students attended the event, while others took onions as they passed through. The group also collected 131 signatures on a petition to repeal the law. 

I feel like you might see a protest like this at Oberlin as a joke, but at the University of Chicago market distortions are deadly serious and the protest was in earnest. Maybe:

> “It’s always filled me with fury that we accept such odd minuscule policies that really are just odd market distortions,” second-year Adam Ash, a member of the group, said. “Even if one specific issue seems minute or minuscule and trivial, what matters is a combination of all of these. It’s a death by a thousand cuts to our agricultural policy.” … > The group’s Instagram account was later banned, which Ash claimed was the doing of “the corn lobby.”  

Okay maybe a joke?

(via matt levine)

deep and abiding respect to the uchicago undergrads who decided 2026 was the year we stand up and protest the 1958 onions futures act

[official-kircheis]

See the location of the Trinity Test, site of the first human-caused first nuclear detonation.

human-caused

as opposed to what? bigfoot nukes? ET?

[powermonger]

Depending your preferred parameter values in the Drake Equation, perhaps some intelligent lifeform detonated a nuke elsewhere in the universe before us. No way to rule it out!

[friendshapedhole]

[veryverytemporary]

Mitch Epstein, Poca High School and Amos Coal Power Plant, West Virginia, 2004. From American Power.

[powermonger]

FYI:

This is not to imply there is anything misleading about the photo. Rather, I encounter a lot of people who don't know the difference, so I see this as an educational opportunity.

[regina-bithyniae]

Do you have a generally positive or negative opinion on LLMs and generative AI? Are you currently employed in a full time job?

Positive opinion; are employed

Negative opinion; are employed

Positive opinion; not employed

Negative opinion; not employed

Other, view results, etc

Voting ended onMay 4

Please reblog for sample size.

[femmenietzsche]

UNWOKE CONFESSION TIME: I still find it rather affected when academics use the default "she"

[powermonger]

I was reading a graduate-level econ textbook from the 1990s recently and wow, I didn't realize how common this was even back then.

[wajb]

ragebaiting lemonade stand owner with one simple order

[dragon-in-a-fez]

if there is one thing we all know is a core component of being in the military it is being free to make your own decisions about things that could threaten your life

[manipulated-pieces]

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -George W. Bush