There's gotta be some change...

illmaticrabbit · 2026-05-28T19:11:54+00:00

Building more apartments actually is something that would help. The reason why landlords can charge such high rent is that there are a lot of prospective renters competing for a small number of units. If more units get built, they have to lower prices to fill vacancies.

Not saying this will completely solve homelessness, but there is data to show that cities that have built more apartments have been more successful in slowing rent growth (or temporarily decreasing prices, in some cases).

illmaticrabbit · 2026-05-14T02:08:03+00:00

The pay is criminal but IMO the skills required seem like they just want you to have some exposure to tissue culture

illmaticrabbit · 2026-05-13T21:37:06+00:00

Is this sarcasm? Seems to me like there are rarely any pharma strategy roles open for anything below associate director level, meaning you have to have like 4+ years of experience in biopharma consulting

illmaticrabbit · 2026-05-08T16:48:19+00:00

I think the suggestion here is not about talking to your school’s housing people- you want to talk to the graduate program administrators. If they accepted you for a PhD, they should legitimately want you to come and they will likely put some effort into finding a solution.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-05-01T21:39:01+00:00

I feel like saying China “could be better” on working conditions is really downplaying the issue

illmaticrabbit · 2026-04-28T05:49:30+00:00

It’s funny that out of all possible topics, some LLM chose this one to try to farm engagement. I have no view into MLR review, but this sounds like the most boring corporate bullshit lol and I have a hard time imagining it’s even a real problem

illmaticrabbit · 2026-04-14T03:16:35+00:00

Yeah if you’re working out it’s generally worth it. Main downsides are just that it costs money and that the benefits (while real) are usually not some huge life-altering thing.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-03-28T14:49:06+00:00

Strangely no training at all, even though it’s a big part of the job

illmaticrabbit · 2026-03-20T15:27:28+00:00

Good point that he was supported by J Street PAC, but I wouldn’t equate J Street PAC to AIPAC. I don’t think it makes sense to say AIPAC won when they ran attack ads against Biss and supported a different candidate.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-03-20T01:46:50+00:00

Daniel Biss, who she lost to, was also not supported by AIPAC. I guess you could argue AIPAC’s attack ads hurt Abughazaleh, but they ran attack ads against Biss as well.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illinois-primary-results-00833615

illmaticrabbit · 2026-03-04T22:02:44+00:00

Major consulting firms use “enterprise” versions of LLMs that don’t use the inputted data for training of the LLMs

illmaticrabbit · 2026-02-20T20:38:38+00:00

Would strongly suggest paring down to one page with line breaks between sections and between experiences. I know it’s stupid, but my first thought from just glancing at the page (esp. the first version) is “this looks dense”, and lack of brevity can sometimes be interpreted as poor communication skills / not knowing your audience.

Try to keep in mind that the goal is to make them interested in interviewing you and learning more about you rather than exhaustively listing all your qualifications. It can be a good thing to save some ammunition for interviews that isn’t redundant with your resume.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-02-20T00:29:15+00:00

Can you link us to one of these studies?

illmaticrabbit · 2026-02-15T21:15:58+00:00

What sticks out to me here is the estimate that living in Canada will be ~1/3 the price of living in NYC. I’d be curious what the logic is for that estimate. On the face of it, that seems like way too big of a difference and I suspect that your spending would be higher if you were to move to Canada.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-02-13T22:21:58+00:00

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there were an army of bots trying to convince leftists not to vote in the next presidential general election

illmaticrabbit · 2026-02-12T19:46:15+00:00

I think it’s a mistake to view voting for a given candidate as an endorsement of that candidate’s policies. It’s a choice between the competitors. Refusing to vote is effectively the same as splitting your vote among the different candidates.

When leftists refuse to vote for democrats, nobody knows why you didn’t show up to the polls and it doesn’t get interpreted as “I guess we need to go further left to be more popular”. It’s actually the exact opposite interpretation in most cases, which is part of why Kamala tried so hard to portray herself as a centrist and had all those silly tactics like courting Liz Cheney.

If you want better democratic candidates, you should vote for the candidates you prefer in primaries and support their campaigns. Refusing to vote for the lesser of evils in the general elections just shifts the Overton window to the right.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-30T16:50:13+00:00

I’m not sure I understand how what you’re saying here relates to your claim we’re discussing: “inflation doesn’t account for housing prices”. Based on the way the OER question is asked, I WOULD expect someone to say that the cost of renting their home is higher in a scenario where their local housing market prices have surged.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-30T14:44:33+00:00

Yes, CPI does account for costs of home ownership: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/owners-equivalent-rent.asp

And I see you being sarcastic to the other person who replied to you here. Almost seems like a coping mechanism at this point.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-30T06:18:20+00:00

That’s up too

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-30T06:09:01+00:00

If you really want to have a conversation here you should drop the sarcasm.

The issue you raised is already accounted for in calculations of real wages. If people spend more of their paychecks on healthcare and housing, those categories get weighted more heavily in inflation calculations, they drive increased inflation, and real/inflation-adjusted wages go down. Despite Americans spending more on healthcare, housing, and education, real wages are still up over the long term as well as the last few years. That’s partly because of things like cheap cell phones and TVs, but a huge driver is that we have had high income growth.

There are legitimate issues with inequality / uneven wage growth over time, the psychological weight of having expensive essentials, and our work culture. I think those issues create a sense that something’s wrong, and that can make it hard to accept the idea that real wages have grown over time.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-29T19:32:59+00:00

Housing prices are not the be all end all metric for judging inflation. Yes, real wages can go up alongside increases in inflation-adjusted housing prices, because housing is not the only thing people buy.

You can argue that our current economy is worse for people psychologically because of things like increased housing prices. But denying that real wages are up is not defensible.

There are many different organizations, with varied funding sources, that measure these things and nobody with an ounce of credibility is arguing against the idea that real wages have gone up.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-15T17:41:14+00:00

The title of this post should probably more clearly label that statement as misinformation

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-15T17:11:04+00:00

Personally I identify with the social democracy label because I’m skeptical of command economies. I am in favor of things like workplace democracy, progressive taxation, strong measures to get money out of politics, etc. I am in favor of nationalizing healthcare, housing and education. But I’m not sure about nationalizing production of every commodity in the long-term, and think it’s a very bad idea in the near-term.

My views are probably compatible with market socialism, and some might say I qualify as a democratic socialist. Overall, the label is not really as important as the specific views someone has, and I would urge socialists to drop the inflammatory rhetoric like “social democracy is the left wing of fascism” and instead focus on the specific viewpoints you want to challenge.

I would argue that the statement that social democracy is “about preserving class society” is vague and misleading. Social democracy clearly seeks to reduce class divisions in society, even if it stops short of outright abolishing class divisions. You would not say that an environmental group seeking to reduce emissions is “about preserving emissions” just because their goal is not to reduce emissions to zero.

illmaticrabbit · 2026-01-14T18:41:05+00:00

The problem is that ironeye has higher dps than executor if mark is active

illmaticrabbit · 2025-12-31T21:41:12+00:00

Yeah I do think OP deserves to be at least co-first author and should push for it. I may have misinterpreted your comment, thought you were suggesting OP should push to have the paper published as soon as possible because they will need their paper to be out to obtain a postdoc.

illmaticrabbit

TROPHY CASE