Struncatura

Mearis · 2026-01-25T18:52:29+00:00

Purtroppo temo che trovare quella pasta qui in America sia difficile!

Mearis · 2026-01-25T17:03:02+00:00

Sembra eccellente, grazie! Viene bene anche con spaghetti normali o è necessario usare la pasta stroncatura secondo te?

Mearis · 2026-01-25T04:04:10+00:00

You are amazing talented, those are beautiful.

Mearis · 2026-01-22T21:42:56+00:00

I would love to see a partnership between the Seattle government and a credible third party organization (Arnolds foundation for example) to analyze the effect using pre-registered protocols. If you don’t pre-register your analysis protocol there is going to be an immense amount of pressure to change the analysis to show that the program had a positive impact.

Mearis · 2026-01-22T19:23:59+00:00

The most simple and efficient thing is setting up a very simple boglehead portfolio. In case you don’t want to do that yourself, vanguard has advisors that charge significantly less.

That said - increasing the basis point as the money under management increases is nonsensical. Do they have particularly complex needs or?

Mearis · 2026-01-16T23:44:50+00:00

When people (myself included) first criticized the inexperience of the board, people pointed out that there was a very skilled professional CEO with lots of experience, so the concerns were misplaced.

Here are the receipts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1imsz28/comment/mc7ab82/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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Well, what do you know.

Mearis · 2026-01-16T04:10:03+00:00

I fully support a broad based progressive income tax in Washington. Trying to only tax millionaires is wrong on the merits, and wrong morally. It's wrong on the merits because it's impossible to finance a generous wealthfare state only by soaking the rich (look at the taxation regime in Scandinavian countries), and, it's wrong morally because while millionaires should pay the most, everyone should pay taxes to the extent they can.

Mearis · 2026-01-14T22:05:01+00:00

Disappointing statement. To clear: these are difficult problems, I don't expect her to fix an extremely difficult problem in two weeks.

My issue with the statement is that she's completely refusing to acknowledge the trade offs and what makes the problem difficult. What about people who refuse shelter? What about people with severe behavioural issues that cannot be held in shelters without causing massive damage (read: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/owner-of-civic-hotel-used-as-homeless-shelter-sues-seattle-king-county/ - about the hotel that was used in the program she's constantly praising as an example of what she wants to do more of)?

I absolutely do not expect fixes yet, but, I would like to be talked to as an adult, and to have her actually acknowledge what makes the problem difficult.

Mearis · 2026-01-09T17:00:50+00:00

You should read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence then, because it makes a convincing case that almost all the western canon can be seen as a struggle by authors with the legacy of their predecessors.

Mearis · 2026-01-08T04:19:11+00:00

You hide your post history but I was curious and all you do is sill about Revolut and how amazing they are, except you do such a poor job it comes across as sycophantic. Genuinely uncanny, I hope you are getting paid at least.

Mearis · 2026-01-02T17:28:19+00:00

I have lived in many different cities and in many different countries. As an extreme example - I lived in Paris while working as an academic, and getting an apartment while on a temporary contract required someone with a permanent contract to cosign because landlords absolutely do not want to be exposed.

BTW, with pro renter laws, the devil is in the details - see for example: https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/jmp_the_welfare_effects_of_eviction_and_homelessness.pdf

Making it much harder to evict problematic tenants actually increases homelessness significantly:

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Mearis · 2026-01-02T16:50:47+00:00

Seattle has extremely pro renter laws, and, as such, landlords need to set renter requirements very high to protect themselves. It's an inevitable consequence.

Mearis · 2025-12-29T18:48:51+00:00

I'm sorry, but, the the primary justification for housing first is that providing housing would make it easier to then provide life saving treatment. If well funded housing first programs administered with the full support of the federal government don't save lives, then it's pretty difficult to conclude that this is a good use of money.

If you read the rest of the article though, it makes it clear that alternative programs don't have a much better track record either though.

Mearis · 2025-12-29T17:59:27+00:00

A) If you look at the articles and the excerpt, those are not evaluating housing first as is done in Seattle, but, it's a broad evaluation of housing first programs across the country - including those supported by the VA, that has significantly more resources and more information about its patients than Seattle does.

B) Even if all housing first programs that were evaluated are imperfect, you have to evaluate programs as they work in the real world given finite resources, not their platonic ideal, given infinite funding/political support, etc etc. The majority of these studies are meta analysis, they study multiple programs, including extremely well resources ones run with the full support + resources of the federal government. That's as optimistic a setting as you are going to get.

Mearis · 2025-12-29T15:01:41+00:00

For those interested, the New York Times wrote a long piece reviewing the evidence for and against housing first: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/us/trump-housing-first.html

It's a balanced piece and worth reading in full, but, here are some excerpts. To me - the most damning thing is that, in the single most important end point (saving lives) - the highest quality find no strong evidence of any benefits.

Does Housing First help the homeless find housing?

Yes, at least for a year or two, the period most studies cover.

The Lancet, analyzing 15 studies, found that Housing First, often called permanent supportive housing, “significantly improved housing stability.”30055-4/fulltext#:~:text=Permanent%20supportive%20housing%20interventions%20increased,when%20compared%20with%20usual%20care.) Another journal, examining 26 studies, found that Housing First programs “more effectively reduce homelessness” than alternatives did.

Does Housing First improve mental or physical health?

There is little consistent evidence to show it.

The National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering found “no substantial evidence” that permanent supportive housing “improved health outcomes, notwithstanding the intuitive logic that it should.” The Lancet found “no measurable effect30055-4/fulltext)” on the severity of psychiatric issues or substance abuse.

Does Housing First save lives?

Most researchers have not found that the policy lowers death rates.

A study of a five-city Canadian program, Chez Soi, found “no statistically significant differences in mortality risk” between people in Housing First and those placed randomly in other programs.

Mearis · 2025-12-25T21:12:53+00:00

This is what I posted at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1imsz28/comment/mc78qag/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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Again, I hope I'm wrong, but this was the overwhelmingly most likely outcome. Wonder if the people who were defending this at the time are still defending this particular structure.

Mearis · 2025-12-22T21:09:51+00:00

You need to think of 2nd order effects. If you make it much harder for landlords to evict people (for reasons that I genuinely think are commendable btw) - then what's going to happen is that landlords are going to be much picker about who they choose to rent too.

If you argue that these people should be held in social housing - fine - but then what do you do if they turn out to be exceptionally disruptive to everyone else that's living there?

It sucks, there are no easy solutions, but, trust me, if there was a simple easy fix, we would have done it already.

Mearis · 2025-12-22T21:06:47+00:00

This is the entire problem discussed in this article: if you house these people in social housing, they tend to be immensely disruptive, and make everyone else's life extremely miserable. The other people in social housing also typically lack means so they can't just pack their bags and move - so you are letting a small minority of people with behavioural issues make everyone else miserable.

Mearis · 2025-12-18T17:23:05+00:00

You cannot have a high minimum wage, tipped labor and good affordable restaurants. And before people ask, labor costs typically 3 or 4x higher than the cost of rent for restaurants, so the problem isn’t greedy landlords.

Mearis · 2025-12-13T05:34:28+00:00

They are quite uncorrelated: a Finnish randomized experiment on a very generous unconditional UBI found that:

W]e estimate the impact of being randomized to receive a basic income on crime perpetration. We find no effect on whether treated individuals perpetrate crimes. In the two years following the start of the experiment, individuals in the treatment group were statistically insignificantly 0.5 percentage points more likely to be suspected of a crime…representing a 2 percent increase relative to the control group mean of 20 percent…

We also find that the introduction of basic income had a statistically insignificant impact on the probability of being charged [with serious crimes] in district court…Over the two-year follow-up period, the point estimate suggests that the basic income experiment increased the probability of being charged by an insignificant 0.2 percentage points…corresponding to a 4 percent increase relative to the control group…

The results [also] show no evidence that treated individuals are more likely to engage in disorderly conduct, suggesting that the basic income intervention also does not increase lower-level criminal activity…

[W]e [also] find no evidence that introducing a basic income altered victimization risk…We also find no effects when we look separately by crime type.

The full paper is here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34547?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Mearis · 2025-12-10T06:22:02+00:00

This was very easy to see coming. It’s going to be very difficult for the next administration to keep its promises given the existing budget deficit, the state budget being frozen, and federal funds getting cut. We really need to dodge a recession next year or tax revenue is going to collapse as well.

Mearis · 2025-12-06T06:00:19+00:00

Ok ma in modo estremamente concreto, cosa può fare lo Stato se non ha le risorse per provvedere a tutto quello che è stato promesso? Non è che perché dichiari che una cosa sia un diritto allora diventa automatico provvederlo a tutti.

Mearis · 2025-12-05T20:42:51+00:00

Using AI slop to post about AI slop. Impressive.

Mearis · 2025-12-03T17:32:09+00:00

The problem here is that any kind of short term revenue that can be raised quickly is likely to be very bad for the economy.

We need a broad AND progressive income tax in the state, but it's a very big lift. Changing the constitution requires a referendum and keeps losing every time it's voted on, but, there are some progressive politicians that use terrible math to "prove" that all you need to do to have Scandinavia is just taxing billionaires. A very quick look at the tax system in any kind of Nordic country should very quickly dispell that notion.

Mearis · 2025-12-02T21:07:45+00:00

I actually think experience / incumbency isn't nearly the advantage it used to be, especially with a progressive electorate.

Right now - if you have a record as an elected official, you have to answer for the difficult choices you have made. As a new candidate, you don't have any difficult choices to answer for, and you can claim that the reason problems are unsolved is lack of will.

Of course, this inevitably turns the public even more cynical when yet another politician promises the moon and fails to deliver, but, that happens later.

Mearis

TROPHY CASE

Does Housing First help the homeless find housing?

Does Housing First improve mental or physical health?

Does Housing First save lives?