J. S. Bach
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bachtothefuture.bsky.social
J. S. Bach
@bachtothefuture.bsky.social
590 followers 200 following 670 posts
🎶1685-1750🎶
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bachtothefuture.bsky.social
This is the breakdown of ages in the 119th congress, per fiscalnote.com
Chart showing age ranges in congress
October 22, 2025 at 6:17 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
When we’re on the other side of *this*, let’s take some of FDR’s ideas on adding seats to the court-
LAWLESS by Leah Litman 154 political power. "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—-ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power," FDR said in a later speech. 58 Three months after his landslide 1936 reelection, FDR proposed adding seats to the Supreme Court for every justice above a certain age.59 This, finally, hit home with a certain group of nine old men—or at least one of them. Justice Owen Roberts changed his vote and started upholding New Deal programs as well as other redistributive legislation. Three weeks after FDR spoke to the country in a fireside chat about his court reform pro-posal, the Supreme Court upheld a minimum wage law by a 5-4 vote, with Justice Roberts in the majority.6o The Court's decision upholding the minimum wage law seemed to cut back on the justices previous suggestion that certain legislative efforts to address economic inequality were unjustified handouts to the less well-off. The justices came around to the idea that, without a minimum wage, markets and laws were structured in ways that unjustifiably favored employers. The majority wrote that, without a minimum wage, the market provided "a subsidy for unconscionable employers."61 The Court even echoed FDRs earlier speech about the dangers of too much economic power concentrated in the hands of the few. It said the minimum wage law "corrects) the abuse which springs from" companies' "selfish disregard of the public interest."62 While Congress didn't ultimately pass FDR's court expansion plan, it didn't have to. The Court changed without it. In 1937, the Court began upholding elements of the New Deal program. In
October 19, 2025 at 10:29 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Some good signs in Lexington! #NoKings
Picture of peaceful protesters with signs referring to Lexington’s history of protesting kings!
October 18, 2025 at 3:40 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
That one and this one get me through it all:
I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Pull of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shinest will shine out the ceaner Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something -Samwise Gamgee
September 11, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Really think we need to go hard on economics against the billionaires.
Excerpt from Bad Company by Megan Greenwell: BAD COMPANY 170 Critics of the industry point out that rate of return is an easy metric to game, making them skeptical of thos rosier studies. And public pension funds tend to generate worse returns from private equity funds than governments and private investors do. while it is true that millions of pensioners do rely on private returns, the evidence is far less clear that they must. Those returns also aren't generated in a vacuum. Private equity often makes money by cutting costs and raising prices, both of which take the heaviest tolls on working-class people. In the retail world, cutting costs almost always means layoffs not of executives, but of low level employees like Liz. If private equity does in fact help pensioners lead better lives, it does so in part by hurting workers. Stavros and other private equity executives often talk about their responsibility to public employees who have served their communities don't all thore teachers and firefighters who served their communities for decades deserve a nice retirement? - but what they are in fact describing is a sort of zero-sum game in which cutting wages for working- and middle-class employes in one place helps working- and middle-class retirees in other places, a phenomenon labor journalist Hamilton Nolan has termed "capitalism's washing machine." And while the pensioners make for a tidier narrative, the reality is that no one benefits nearly as much from private equity as privat equity itself. The system is designed so that firms put in less money and shoulder less risk than anyone else, yet reap the lion's share of the profits. Benefiting retired teachers and firefighters might be a desirabe side effect, but the point is to earn returns for private equity executives. Stephen Schwarzman didn't earn $37 billion by putting reachen and firefighters interests first.
August 23, 2025 at 10:16 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
When things swing back our way politically, we need to work hard to get private equity out of housing. We can’t fix the housing issue with them in there, they’re too motivated to drive up prices and kick people out.
Excerpt from Bad Company by Megan Greenwell So if a private equity company hikes lot rent beyond what its residents can pay, many will have no choice but to sell. If a resident falls too far behind on payments, they can be evicted from the park, which means walking away from the home they own. That, in turn, legally makes the home abandoned property, freeing the park's owner to assume control, sell or rent it, and pocket the proceeds. This recipe has made mobile homes irresistible to many private equity firms, including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, Carlyle Group, Stockbridge Capital, and, more recently, Alden Global Capital, the most infamous newspaper owner in the country. Twenty-three percent of all mobile home park purchases in 2019 and 2020 were made by large investors. In 2017 and 2018, that number was 13 percent. Park owners have described the opportunity in eye-poppingly crass terms. Most infamously, Frank Rolfe, the co-owner of a large chain of mobile home parks, once compared his business to a "Waffle House where everyone is chained to the booths." Between apartments, single-family houses, and mobile homes, private equity firms now own millions of individual homes across the U.S. The industry's money and political clout, meanwhile, gives them outsize power to raise rents, lobby against regulation, and put homeownership out of reach of more people. Blackstone, which is both the world's largest private equity firm and the nation's largest landlord, is explicit about how America's affordable-housing crisis benefits its shareholders: "a structural shortage of housing has resulted in pricing power for rental housing assets," it wrote in a 2023 letter touting its growing investor returns. The firm has also poured millions of dollars into fighting ballot measures designed to expand rent-control protection in California.
August 17, 2025 at 10:30 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
True
Photo of a Sandwich, Massachusetts police cruiser
August 16, 2025 at 9:17 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Empire of AI by Karen Hao is so wonderfully informative. I’ve felt for a while that AI is like a god/religion to some of these people, and here it is, laid out.
Wher GPT-4, Sutskever, who had previously dedicated most of his time cadancing model capabilities, had made a hard pivot toward focusing Al safety. He began to split his time half and half. To people around him, he seemed at times to be at war with himself. He was both Boomer and Doomer: more excited and afraid than ever before of AGI arriving und rapidly surpassing humans to become superintelligence. Sutskever now spoke in increasingly messianic overtones, leaving een his longtime friends scratching their heads and other employees ap-prehensive. During one meeting with a new group of researchers, Suts-leser laid out his plans for how to prepare for AGL "Once we all get into the bunker—" he began. I'm sorry," a researcher interrupted, "the bunker?" «We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI; Suts-lever replied matter-of-factly. Such a powerful technology would surely become an object of intense desire for governments globally. It could escalate geopolitical tensions; the core scientists working on the technology would need to be protected. "Of course," he added, "it's going to be optional whether you want to get into the bunker." The researcher would in equal parts continue to hold Sutskever in high regard and keep himself at arm's length. "There is a group of people- Ilya being one of them-who believe that building AGI will bring about a rapture. Literally, a rapture," he says.
August 11, 2025 at 10:27 AM
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Opaque because they choose not to do reviews to figure it out (from the book Empire of AI):
Among many employees, GPT-4 solidified the belief that AGI was possible. Researchers who were once skeptical felt increasingly bullish about reaching such a technical pinnacle-even while OpenAI continued to lack a definition of what exactly it was. Engineers and product managers joining Applied and having their first close-up interaction with AI through GPT-4 adopted even more deterministic language. For many employees, the question became not if AGI would happen but when. Some employees also felt exactly the opposite. While there was a clear qualitative change in what GPT-3 could do over GPT-2, GPT-4 was just bigger, says one of the researchers who worked on the model. "The big result was that there were a bunch of exams that the model does well. But even that is highly questionable." OpenAI never did a comprehensive review of GPT-4's training data to check whether those exams-and their answers-were just in the data and being regurgitated, or whether GPT-4 had in fact developed a novel capability to pass them. It was the kind of shaky science that had become pervasive with the industry-wide shift from peer-reviewed to PR-reviewed research.
August 10, 2025 at 10:29 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
I learned about goat glands from a buster keaton flick!
Buster Keaton in “Cops”, walking a horse into a Goat Gland Specialist shop.
July 29, 2025 at 3:14 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Found a typo in a great book I’m reading. It just came out last year- who do I reach out to, to help them fix it? Anyone know?
*find the typo* :D
152 / LEGAL PERSONHOOD the nation was continuing its constitutional recovery from the depthd the Dred Scott decision. It seemed to him that Johnson had won. Some could rejoice that despite Johnson's obstruction of Black equality, the states were moving forward in ratifying the Fourteenth Amendmen, which came on July 9, 1986. For Douglass, given the amendments shon-comings, its ratification provided little evidence of real progress. * * * THE ROUTE TO DEMOCRATIC RECOVERY from the current crisis had no set path. The response to the Adams crisis had been somewhat linear, expressed first in a partial recovery driven by the newspaper editors and Jefferson and next in a more comprehensive one by Hanson and Madison. The quest to realize the promise of a democratic and multiracial Const-rution after Buchanan's attack on it was more jagged: a partial move by Lincoln toward full democracy at the behest of Douglass, followed by a new threat to it from Johnson. At that moment, "We the White People" not "We the People" looked like the nation's future. Still, even at such a precarious point, the promise of equality was on the hori-zon, and a partnership between Douglass and a member of the Johnson administration would help realize that promise.
July 18, 2025 at 10:16 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Project my aunt bought, but couldn’t work on due to health issues. I’m determined to get this done this summer. #crossstitch 🪡
Cross stitch project; it’s a cat, reading a book. Currently has mostly dark red shades and black thread completed, more to come.
July 11, 2025 at 6:09 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Filling in the last color in this section of the project I’ve been working on for my aunt. 🪡
Cross stitch project in light blue frame. The image of the project is hard to discern from this small section, but it’s a cat with a book.
July 10, 2025 at 8:15 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Good No Kings protest in Lexington today! My favorite sign: NO KINGS!
IN AMERICA!
WE ALREADY FOUGHT
ABOUT THIS...
RIGHT HERE!!
NO KINGS! IN AMERICA! WE ALREADY FOUGHT ABOUT THIS... RIGHT HERE!!
June 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
All this talk of Eureka Moments in Abundance makes me want to play Civ
Excerpt from Abundance: And it doesn't always change, even after a truly brilliant discov. ery. The ten-thousand-year story of human civilization is Mostly the story of things not getting better: diseases not being cured. edoms not being extended, truths not being transmitted, tech. nolocy not delivering on its promises. Progress is our escape from the status quo of suffering, our ejection seat from history-it is the less common story of how our inventions and institutions reduce disease, poverty, pain, and violence whlle expanding freedom happiness, and empowerment. It's a story that has been at risk of grinding to a halt in the United States.® The US has thrown tens of billions of dollars annually into scientific discovery. But it hasn't brought as much progress as wed ex: pect. As we explained in the previous chapter, we have haphazardly burdened the scientific process with the same flavor of procedural kludge that has slowed down other critical parts of the economy. What's more, as we'll explain in this chapter, we have gotten worse at translating our inventions into domestic industries. To borrow some familiar language, it's not just that ideas are getting harderto find. The problem is also that new ideas are getting harder to use? What went wrong? There are many answers, but one is that we have become too enthralled by the eureka myth and, more to the point, too inattentive to all the things that must follow a eureka moment. The US has more Nobel Prizes for science than the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and Austria combined. But if there were a Nobel Prize for the domestic deployment of techno-ogy— even technology that we invented —our legacy wouldn't beso sterling.
May 13, 2025 at 9:49 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Happy Pi Day! Made mini pies for the family ☺️ Apple, blueberry, cherry, and lemon meringue
Four 5 inch mini pies on a sheet pan topped with aluminum foil to catch any drips. From left to right, the fillings on the pies with latticework are apple, blueberry, and cherry. In the back right corner is a lemon meringue.
March 14, 2025 at 10:34 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Excited about my next few reads from the library! Almost done with Character Limit - read it guys, it’s a great guide for all the steps Elon’s taking with Doge. Same playbook.
MUIRHEAD and ROSENBLUM A Lot of People Are Saying CHRIS HAYES THE SIRENS' CALL Character Limit How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter Kate Conger & Ryan Mac
February 28, 2025 at 10:27 AM
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Ok small thing, but one more reason to dislike Elon Musk? He doesn’t approve of the Oxford comma!
Page of a book (Character Limit): The company's lawyers had warned that there were consumer protection laws outside the U.S. that would require the company to refund subscribers who were later suspended by the company for breaking is rules. We might be liable to give some money back, Crawford explained. "Don't care," Musk said. "Fuck it. Do I seem concerned about legal bat-Les? Move forward. Get this thing done." The only thing that seemed to hold Musk somewhat accountable was a fear of public shame on Twitter. In one meeting he blurted out that House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Twitter power user and darling of the progressive left, would roast him if the Blue relaunch went poorly. alacanis chimed in to agree, stating that he thought Ocasio-Cortez would run for president one day. At Tesla and Spacex, engineers often joked that the only laws they respected were those of physics and Musk's own demands. At Twitter, the Blue team got a crash course. In the same meeting, Musk wanted to review the descriptions of Twitter Blue that would be used online and in the Apple App store. "It should be: 'Rocket to the top of replies, mentions, search, and topics," he said, reading through some of that copy. "Remove the comma before 'and.' I find it troubling." Crawford, a fan of the Oxford comma, tried to defend it. "I find the opposite with commas," she said with a smile. Some in the room shifted nervously in their seats. "Too bad, I'm the law," Musk replied.
February 25, 2025 at 10:48 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Being out in public as a Sneaky Sasquatch
Screenshot of the Apple Arcade game sneaky Sasquatch, in which a Sasquatch tries to sneak some food from an unaware camper without being caught by the Ranger
January 16, 2025 at 9:01 PM
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What a cute pup! Hopefully it’s many years of health for her after this.
We have the same blanket! Well, I think so at least. Is it supposed to be a burrito tortilla?
Foreground is a blanket that is made to look like a tortilla/burrito wrap. Beyond that you can see a white table with a dark wooden top. On the table is a blue yeti teacup and a clear vase with flowers. To the left of the table is a grey couch; beyond the table is a children’s playroom with various toys.
December 11, 2024 at 12:34 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Borrowed from r/LOTRMemes
Meme from the Office. A man is pointing to a sign saying “the fellowship leaves Rivendell on the 25th of December.” In the image below, he smiles next to the sign that now says, “Thus, LOTR is a Christmas movie.”
December 5, 2024 at 10:35 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Hey all- let’s try not to encourage AI spam accounts here. Yeah the picture looks neat, so did my Lisa Frank folders years ago, but it’s just spam here
AI spam account that has cool looking but very unrealistic space pictures
November 25, 2024 at 6:41 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
I’ve seen those. Silly. My yeti works to hold my tea and keep it hot for quite some time (if I use the lid, and I have a toddler, so I do!)
Dark blue Yeti brand mug with a clear lid on a wooden table in a living room. The fluffiest Ragdoll kitty sits behind in the distance, on a grey couch.
November 23, 2024 at 10:53 AM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Took my two year old to Town Hall today so she could help me vote Harris-Walz! Straight D down ballot, yes to all 5 questions in MA. 🇺🇸
“I voted” sticker with blue writing to the right of a waving American flag. Sticker is stuck to a navy blue waffle knit sweater.
October 21, 2024 at 9:04 PM
bachtothefuture.bsky.social
Neat! This is my current work in progress
Cross stitch of ragdoll cat’s head, partially completed. Ragdoll is seal pointed, with blue eyes, reclining on its side.
October 4, 2024 at 5:36 PM