Peter Gallagher @pwgallagher@qoto.org

The mess in AU politics is just that: deplorable, unserious. The 2 big Parties pursued politics, signalling rather than principles, so voters denied them bicameral power to govern by fiat. But they ignore calls for consistency, prudence, accountability & have only dug-in deeper.

Will “Models Run the World”? To the extent this is about more than software structures — any algorithm implies a model — it’s exaggerated. Most *forecasts* are just not that strong. When were you last pleasantly suprised by an Amazon book recommendation?:: https://www.wsj.com/articles/models-will-run-the-world-1534716720

Until about 3 million years ago, camels were confined to their continent of origin... North America 🐫

‘“Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police,” [Mr Trump] continued. “Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!”’::https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-slams-social-media-companies-for-censorship-of-the-right-1534609973

Go tell the Spartans... “The 19th AU and 6th NZ were to hold the [Thermopylae] passes as long as possible, allowing the other units to withdraw. The Germans... met fierce resistance...& sustained considerable casualties. The Allies held out the entire day;”https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Greece#Hitler's_decision_to_attack_and_British_aid_to_Greece

Long, interesting report about the evolution of theory, from one side of the (venemous) dispute over the Cretaceous “asteroid impact” and alternative extinctions:: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/

A reply to @joel_olbrich on the “QWERTY” effect. Apologies to Joel.I don’t know (yet) how to make replies public. BEGINS
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English language keyboards have a letter-layout begining QWERTY... apparently because this order facilitated the mechanical operation of early typewriters. There was no linguistic logic in the design: there seem to be several layouts that would be easier to learn and faster to use. But the early manufacturers standardised, by default, on the QWERTY layout and it became universal. No typewriter having a different layout would sell because users had accommodated to the idiosyncrasy of QWERTY. The “QWERTY Effect” is, by analogy, any structure, however idiosyncratic, that has been entrenched by use. But, on reflection, the “Twitter effect” is not due so much to its QWERTY-ness but to the natural monopoly effect of network scale economies. First movers in many network spaces (railways, airlines, telephone networks, Twitter) who secure large scale quickly can often block new entrants simply because the scale of investments needed to compete against the reach of their established network is too large for new entrants (who have no customers, at first) to justify. #longwinded

Introducing myself. I am a Twitter refugee (maybe) where my handle is the same as here. I archive my own Twitter timeline here (https://petergallagher.com.au/tweetnest/). A quick glance will show you what I’m up to. My professional expertise is/was economic history and administration of trade and trade agreements. I have an economist’s view of the world although my academic qualifications are in law, philosophy and literature. I follow people/stuff like @tylercowan, @samirvama, @sixthtone, @patrickcollison, @catotrade I’ve recorded and am annotating Byron’s comic epic “Don Juan” (funny, touching, outrageous but neglected): see @madbaddangerous on Twitter. I would be better at piano and photography if I hadn’t waited until my mid-60s to take them up. I’m trying to create a portfolio at https://images.petergallagher.net.au. I like Opera a lot more than Metal. #introductions

A would-be refugee (?) from Twitter. Interested in myself, mainly. Also rationality, liberality and... lots of ‘isms’.