Doubtful. I knew Ono as an undergrad at Wisconsin. He has far too much integrity for that.
He's always been involved in mentoring high schoolers, undergrads, and, of course, his own grad students. It's not surprising that he's working with a 24 year old.
He's a bundle of energy in math and sports and always looking for the new thing. Jumping in on a new project in a burgeoning field is very much his m.o.
For anyone outside the US, exactly 0% of the populace is interested in a confrontation with Venezuela. This looks like an unpopular president eager for a rally around the troops moment and possibly taking over oil fields to reward his supporters in the petroleum industry.
Once an invasion is happening, a majority of the population will be in favour of it.
It was true when Nixon first spoke of a silent majority. It was true when the US elected leader after leader on a platform of prolonging or escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even WWII wasn't popular in America until you were in it:
You’re comparing pre-Watergate, on one hand, and post-9/11, on the other hand, America to a country, today, that’s has strong elements in both parties that are furious about our track record and costs of foreign interventions.
Yet that furiousness hasn't ever delayed either of the parties for going on wars of adventure for even a moment. We made Al Qaeda a financial dependent within 20 years of 9/11. We funded Nazi militias to topple a government in order to harass a nearby enemy, who they think of as the Asiatic-Jewish-Muslim invader they want to fight off with pork, and whose language-speakers they'd like to ethnically cleanse from their country. We went out of our way to intervene and hold together a dangerously unstable apartheid state, and basically gave it a stake in our government. We're monsters.
The only unforced delay there has been on a military adventure since Bush Sr. pulled out of Iraq was Obama resisting interventions in Syria and Ukraine that were being heavily lobbied for by both his and his opposite party. Immediately reversed once he had one foot out of the door, and he had made up for it by bombing everyone else.
America, and I mean its electorate, finds joy in murdering nonwhite children, or Slavs, or really anybody that speaks in a language that sounds funny or gutteral. It makes us feel safe. They'll know not to mess with us, because they know we're not afraid to murder even the most innocent and saintly civilians. We'll give them the Nobel Peace Prize and kill them 10 years later. We'll give people the Nobel Prize who kill children. We'll hear about atrocities in Venezuela and wonder how we should invest.
> Yet that furiousness hasn't ever delayed either of the parties for going on wars of adventure for even a moment.
This seems difficult to falsify. I can think of a number of recent post-9/11 potential flashpoints that have been avoided by politicians due to the current unpopularity of foreign intervention.
Once boots are on the ground, yea. I mean literally within 24 hours of him saying it’s good, 40% of the population will be for it even if we haven’t fired a bullet or sent in troops
The far right podcasters and influencers have already been spending a week on saying its a good thing, that Venezuela is funding all the drug cartels and gangs in the US.
Now the stupidity and comments around renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War makes more sense. Seems if he can't win a Peace Prize he'll opt for a war one.
Gosh, a couple weeks ago it was Canada and before that it was China! Who knew there were so many places that were the main source of all our problems. /s
Ehh I think that phrasing doesn't really capture reality. It's better to say most of the USA population just doesn't care. Like if we started bombing them tomorrow everyone's going to go about their day maybe make a social media post about it but forget about it by the evening.
It will be like when Obama started bombing Libya or Syria. It's in the news but the average person doesn't care or retain that information.
Not sure that Americans (or even Europeans) don't (or wouldn't) care about it.
What I have personally observed is that there is really a strong moral dichotomy between western politicians and their citizens to such things. Most western politicians don't seem to really care about the brutality of warfare, and accept it as given and necessary for their (superpower-) politics. The people however do not hold to this. Considering them as two distinct entities does offer a better political perspective about a western country.
You can see this in the ongoing genocide in Gaza - there have been multiple, large protests in both US and Europe in the last 2+ years, and most western States have often tended to clamp down hard on the protests and the media to suppress it. Abuse of State power, by using antisemitism laws and even terrorism (see Why opposing Israel's genocide got me arrested for terrorism - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-opposing-israels-g... ), against the protestors has also been a feature. Note that the politicians aren't ignorant, and recognize that there is genuine anger, if not discomfort, in the population to what is happening in Gaza. But most believe that suppressing these protests, along with some public platitudes ("yes, what is happening is horrible", "ceasefire is necessary", "aid should be allowed" etc. etc) but not doing anything really substantial or meaningful (i.e. taking actual action towards this) is enough to "pacify" the population. In some ways, it has been - despite public anger in the west to the Gaza genocide, most western superpowers have gotten away with doing nothing. But there have been political miscalculations too - sparks of these anger did give a burn to Biden / Harris in the US as some American democrats saw through their hollow platitudes and lack of honesty, and did not vote for them, contributing to Trump's victory ( see https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/89703 ).
This is why, in my opinion, we now see some European States rushing to recognize the State of Palestine, another public gesture that has high PR value but is meaningless in political substance (it is mostly meaningless as more than 80% or so of the world already recognize it as a State; but despite this, Palestine is still not allowed to even be a UN member - the US used its veto against the General Assembly to deny it membership). So I wouldn't say that western people don't care ... the politicians don't, and some of them do pay the (democratic) price of it.
Gaza is the exception rather then the norm. I don't want to say propaganda because that implies some moral value on the campaign to make it relevant but lets be clear there is a campaign it's not organic in any way. Without said efforts Gaza would have been treated just like Libya or Syria. Probably worse because of Oct 7th.
> In some ways, it has been - despite public anger in the west to the Gaza genocide, most western superpowers have gotten away with doing nothing.
What do you mean gotten away with? In the USA right by are large fine with the events happening and the only people on the left who are anger barely both to vote on a good day. I absolutely think if Harris had come out firmly condemning Israel her lose would have been even more dramatic.
There are no other "western superpowers" Europe is completely ineffective and has to rely upon the USA even for things literally on their doorstep. Which is why they do meaning less PR moves like recognizing them for statehood.
What do you mean gotten away with? - Meaning that by not taking concrete political actions, they are tacitly supporting the genocide by Israel. (By western superpowers, I mean US, UK and France).
I mean how is that gotten away with? Your statement implies the western governments have gotten one over their people rather then just following the will of the voters (voters not people).
Yes, that is what I am implying. Even Trump pretended to care about Gaza, during his campaign. (But his political actions are all to the contrary, after becoming President). This highlights how even his campaign managers were acutely aware that he couldn't stand on a platform openly supporting Israel's genocide, if he wanted to win.
I do think there's a difference. Unfortunately a very large number of Americans have cult-related beliefs about the supposed importance of Middle Eastern affairs. There was genuine "grassroot" support for involvement there; so there was at least a genuine element of the government doing what the American people wanted from it.
With Venezuela, I believe that only a tiny portion of Americans had a preexisting desire for military intervention. This is a case of the government driving democracy in reverse by telling people what to believe. It's a far worse breakdown of democracy than the Middle East wars.
* Deploy all necessary military assets, including the U.S. Navy, to impose a full naval embargo on the cartels, to ensure they cannot use our region’s waters to traffic illicit drugs to the U.S.
From that it seems that embargos of Venezuela, El Salvador and Mexico are on the table.
Trump wags the dog. He has to be vocal about it to get his supporters to agree with it. Otherwise they'd be asking why we're starting another approach foreign war.
Glassing is different than conquering. I know folks that straight up support just killing everyone and everything there once and for all. Or at least they think that will solve the problem.
I can confirm that nuke em all attitudes towards the middle east are prevalent in America. Nobody could say the American people themselves didn't have a hand in starting those wars.
Why? Panama was a dictatorship ruled by a drugs lord in the 1980s. It's now a democratic country with competitive elections and orderly rotations of power.
You know, you’re right and I totally missed the point.
If we want to assess the chances of a US intervention in Latin America producing good results, we should probably include the results of Operation Condor in our analysis.
I would not say that Venezuela is currently having orderly rotations of power. Since the 2015 parliamentary elections, we've seen at least one constitutional crisis and the most recent election results are disputed.
I do not particularly think it's a good idea for the US to invade in order to overthrow Maduro, but I don't want to pretend he's more ethical than he appears to be.
It probably is, but why should anybody in America care? All intervention will do is drive America's international reputation even further negative, and probably cause a new wave of refugees (and people opportunistically claiming to be refugees) into America.
We don’t need to depose Maduro. We need him, ironically, to stop creating problems outside his borders.
That means to withdraw from the Guyanese border. And to do something about his drug and emigration problems. The former could be achieved from offshore. The latter requires boots on the ground.
All of which is irrelevant because the only reason this is happening is to deflect from Epstein and and the deteriorating economy.
Trump sends migrants overseas to be tortured. Mamdani says the very rich should pay a little more for better city services (free buses, etc.). These are not comparable at all. What is behind this disingenuous both-sidesism? What is going on in VC-land?
The current US federal tax system already is progressive in this way. Your first $X are taxed at 0%, the next $Y at 10%, etc. up to 37%. Your UBI in your formula is basically the standard deduction in the current system. But you still need to work or invest to make the first $X which are federal tax-free.
That kinda just means that tax evasion is still not totally precise but I still think it's closer to the mark than money laundering. They can both be either illegal or legal in similar ways and, indeed, the same otherwise-legal actions can be seen as either or both in different contexts. It's just a matter of semantics whether one's (seemingly legal) actions are better labeled as one or the other, and the tax evasion seems to more sense in this context.
Money laundering refers to making "dirty" money (profits from criminal activity) "clean" by introducing it into the general financial system in a way that doesn't easily trace it back to the crime. The way Breaking Bad used the car wash business to launder the drug money is a good example: the car wash business model doesn't have easy means of verifying the volume of legitimate transactions (e.g. inventory) so the owner can just arbitrarily perform fraudulent transactions with the dirty money. I presume it's far more complex when actual banks are involved but it's the same basic concept of making dirty money appear legitimate through some transaction.
Tax evasion is just not paying taxes. Whether or not someone avoids paying taxes through loopholes is only really a legal technicality that I don't think most people care about when discussing this topic. Corporations avoid paying the tax they should and that can be reasonably described as tax evasion even if it's not strictly illegal tax evasion.
For instance, you can time (usually, defer) your income to make sure you are never in a higher tax bracket. That doesn’t worth with flat tax with UBI.
One big problem with stock based compensation is that it pushes income into a big windfall year. The top marginal tax rate in the US is something like 52%. So, someone that would pay 25-30% effective tax in a fictional average year ends up paying 52% on multiple years worth of income.
Also, you can’t use the standard deduction to make your taxes negative. Assuming the average effective federal tax rate is 25%, to convert the standard deduction to UBI, it’d be reduced from $22,500 to $5600, but applied to the total tax owed, leading to the IRS paying you if you paid less than $5600 in taxes pre-deduction.
I think $5600 is too low. It should be enough to live off of. The 25th percentile household income in the US is $40000. $10,000 UBI per person seems more reasonable (probably still too low) to me.
I think the video streaming services are a good model to follow. You go on Prime Video and see videos from several decades, dozens of cable & broadcast networks, and hundreds or thousands of distributors and production companies. The rights are a mess, but that's all hidden from view. Now if only text-based media could operate like that...
Yes, you're still calculating an infinite decimal, no matter how you approach the problem.
What Wildberger is suggesting is that, rather than taking an nth root (solution to x^n = A where A is a fraction) as a "fundamental" operation, what if we took power series with "hyper-Catalan" coefficients as fundamental operators? (This is where I get a bit fuzzy because I haven't read and understood his work.)
Galois proved that you can't have a general algorithm for solving polynomials of degree >= 5 if all you can use are +,-,*,/, and nth roots. But what if you can use a different operation besides nth roots? That's what Wildberger is proposing and apparently it works for higher degrees.
Stepping back a bit, this is very much in line with Kronecker's notion that God made the natural numbers and all else is man's handiwork. There's no avoiding infinite series for computing non-rational roots of equations, but it is possible to choose series that are easier to work with.
I feel like physics is tending in the opposite direction: God made the complex numbers as an algebraically closed field, and provided a few groups to operate on. The rest we made up -- including the integers.
I believe this is superseded by the Willow protocol [0] which was posted here a while back.
I tried to read about Willow, but could never make heads or tails of it [1]. It seems to be a hierarchical key value store with a bunch of extra fields for timestamps and cryptographic tokens, but it's woefully short on working examples. Even the recent Rust library [2] is effectively a bunch of abstract classes with implementations that just throw errors.
I could make a quip about the state of European tech sophistication, but I'll let it pass with a polite smile.
I was going to say what the sibling said, no need for snark, NLnet funds a ton of cool projects. If I were to judge the quality of software written in silicon valley on the vc funded projects that don't pan out, god help me
> All of these above features are enabled by the new Willow General Purpose Sync Protocol we've been working on. It's a new protocol inspired by Earthstar, refining and building upon its concepts. We will be publishing a new website with complete specifications for this protocol.
> If Earthstar feels very similar to Willow, then that is no coincidence. Willow started out as a reimagining of Earthstar, future Earthstar versions will build upon Willow, and the core maintainer of Earthstar is one of the two Willow authors.
I suspect they gave him a timeline to IPO and/or sell or he's kicked out as CEO. His recent actions are those of a man with a deadline and nothing to lose.
Assuming that is the case: WordPress the company only needs to stay stable and valuable until everything goes through; if it burns down after that he's still met his obligations (to an extent).
If you invest in a company and it’s valued at $1,000,000. And you want to make some money. You sell your investment in the company.
If after 5 years revenue doesn’t grow the value is still $1,000,000. Unless the value increases the investors won’t get a return on their investment. Often investment comes with conditions.
So no it’s not as simple as “just needs to stay stable”
To put a little color on the BSD conjecture, it states that the rank (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) of rational points on an elliptic curve is related to the residue (coefficient of 1/q) of the L-function for the curve. There are some additional multiplicative factors, in particular the size of the Tate-Shafarevich group.
No one knows how to compute the size of that group in general (in fact no one has proved that it's finite!). Computing the rank of a curve via non-analytic means is more akin to a bespoke proof than a straightforward computation (see Noam Elkies' work).
So saying you're going to disprove BSD with blind computation is rather naive unless you're sitting on several career-defining proofs and not sharing them.
If the BSD rank conjecture were false, then the simplest counterexample might be an elliptic curve with algebraic rank 4 and analytic rank 2. This could be established for a specific curve by rigorously numerically computing the second derivative of the L-series at 1 to some number of digits and getting something nonzero (which is possible because elliptic curves are modular - see work of Dikchitser). This is a straightforward thing to do computations about and there are large tables of rank 4 curves. This is also exactly the problem I suggested to the OP in grad school. :-)
In number theory doing these sorts of “obvious computational investigations” is well worth doing and led to many of the papers I have written. I remember doing one in grad school and being shocked when we found a really interesting example in minutes, which led to a paper.
While I have no love for Ambetter, I think we need to ask whether behavioral health services should ever be covered by insurance. From 10,000 feet, the behavioral health product is terrible. There's no clear timeline for how long it takes to get better, and it's nearly impossible to objectively compare provider quality using any publicly available data set. In short, it's a terrible match for insurance as a product. Which is why we're in this pickle.
i take it you don’t have a lot of experience with the healthcare system prior to 2008 or so when parity for mental health benefits became a requirement. let me tell you what a hellscape it was. it was pretty well accepted practice to never use insurance for mental health, because if you tried, not only would your claim be denied but it would be a preexisting condition forever after that. if you had your GP prescribed an antidepressant —preexisting condition. if you did manage to find someone who took your insurance it was a six month wait for an appointment. and then (because it was pre obamacare) you were highly likely not to be able to get coverage again if you ever had to change insurance providers on the private market. people stayed at jobs years longer than they wanted to solely because of healthcare benefits like mental health.
basically, only those who could afford to pay out of pocket got access to mental health benefits.
i often hear people think out loud, we’re should just let the market dictate X, and it boils my blood because they clearly weren’t paying attention the LAST time we just let the market decide something like this, and it killed a lot of people.
Not really (ultimately, though, the nuclear answer is 'yes'). Many states, including mine, have mandated that for a health insurance carrier to do business/be licensed in our state, that certain minimums for mental healthcare must be met.
He's always been involved in mentoring high schoolers, undergrads, and, of course, his own grad students. It's not surprising that he's working with a 24 year old.
He's a bundle of energy in math and sports and always looking for the new thing. Jumping in on a new project in a burgeoning field is very much his m.o.