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Raymond Douglas

@rmdd.net

23 followers 17 following 8 posts

Doing some stuff with computers.

Mostly over at hachyderm.io/@rdouglas

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Raymond Douglas

@rmdd.net

Out and about

September 22, 2025 at 3:49 AM

Raymond Douglas

@rmdd.net

A commuter on a BMX bike.

July 23, 2025 at 3:39 PM

Reposted by Raymond Douglas

Mikell Taylor

@mikell.bsky.social

Central Valley camouflage

Photo of parceled farmland from an airplane flying over the California Central Valley, showing random curved borders of parcels in varying colors of green and tan that resemble army camouflage

July 21, 2025 at 6:20 PM

Reposted by Raymond Douglas

Keith (advent calendar speedrunner)

@mosheroperandi.bsky.social

I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

July 13, 2025 at 1:07 AM

Reposted by Raymond Douglas

METR

@metr.org

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.

The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

July 10, 2025 at 7:47 PM

Raymond Douglas

@rmdd.net

Ah, when a Craigslist deal restores a bit of humanity to your day.

June 22, 2025 at 6:03 PM

Raymond Douglas

@rmdd.net

“You’re someone I’ve shared life with, shared holiday tables with, worked alongside, grew up with. I know who you are, at least who I thought you were, and so this is personal for me.”

https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/to-the-people-i-know-who-voted-for

June 22, 2025 at 4:01 PM