I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again: Gates is not a saint, but there is clearly a difference between him and fucks like Thiel, Sacks or the Koch family who would never consider donating any of their money to research ways to eradicate Malaria or fund education programs for women.

Not the full picture: He plans to donate the majority of his wealth to his foundation, and then wind it down in 20 years. source

I am a bit too dumb to understand that graph and asked ai for an explanation. It helped me, maybe it also helps others:

This graph comes from a study by Gilens and Page that examines how different groups influence U.S. policy decisions. It has three separate charts, each showing how policy adoption (whether a policy is enacted) relates to the preferences of different groups:

1. Average Citizens’ Preferences (top chart)

2. Economic Elites’ Preferences (middle chart)

3. Interest Group Alignments (bottom chart)

Breaking It Down:

• X-axis:

• In the first two graphs, it represents how much each group supports a policy (from 0% to 100%).

• In the third graph (Interest Groups), the x-axis shows alignment, with negative values meaning opposition and positive values meaning support.

• Y-axis:

• The left y-axis (dark line) shows the predicted probability of a policy being adopted.

• The right y-axis (gray bars) shows how often different levels of support occur in the data (percentage of cases).

Key Takeaways & Surprises:

1. The top chart (Average Citizens) is nearly a flat line.

• This means that whether the general public strongly supports or opposes a policy has little impact on whether it gets adopted.

2. The middle chart (Economic Elites) has a rising curve.

• This suggests that policies supported by the wealthy have a much higher chance of being adopted.

3. The bottom chart (Interest Groups) also shows a strong upward trend.

• The more interest groups align in favor of a policy, the more likely it is to be adopted.

Big Picture:

This graph suggests that the opinions of average citizens have little to no effect on policy decisions, while economic elites and interest groups have significant influence. This challenges the idea that the U.S. operates as a true democracy where the will of the majority decides policy.

Hard to compete with that 90s confidence 😎

„It‘s totally a lot smarter than I am, no way could I deliver (234 * 534)^21 as confidently!“

I want those fuckers powering little submarines that fight cancer cells right now - but realistically speaking, these microcontrollers would need to be at least one order two order of magnitude smaller for that, no?

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