Daniel Lakeland

Applied Mathematician, Julia programmer, father of two amazing boys, official coonhound mix mutt-walker.

PhD in Civil Engineering. Debian Linux user since ca. 1994.

Bayesian data analysis iconoclast

Github: https://github.com/dlakelan
OpenWrt: https://forum.openwrt.org/u/dlakelan/preferences/profile

Last Notes

2025-11-19 19:44:11 UTC

Hey #homeassistant peeps. I have a google free #grapheneos phone, and the F-Droid version of the homeassistant app which doesn't do location reporting because the app relies on google play services for location. Is there an alternative way to get my location reported to my homeassistant server that works under these conditions?

2025-08-26 22:11:45 UTC

Good lord this guy does an absolutely amazing job of describing in very simple terms the complete instability caused by wealth inequality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TflnQb9E6lw
#economics @npub1xh2…u80r

2025-08-18 16:46:27 UTC

- reply

Control of Twitter with. That is, money printing is a way for powerful people to exercise their power in the form of control over important assets... Then when they control those assets they can charge rent for people to use them, and extract wealth from those rents. So both factors money printing and rents enter into how the wealthy eventually control everything.
@npub1z3l…txvc @npub147s…k9k3 @npub1xh2…u80r

2025-08-13 15:34:27 UTC

@npub1z3l…txvc
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Li6Q
there's a graph for you. It's the M2 divided by the treasuries held by member banks + treasuries held by The Fed itself (I think...) minus 1.
In my mind, This should be the size of the bank-created money as a fraction of the deficit created money.
But it doesn't behave like it... notice how it rises sharply after 2008. I guess that's because the fed bought bonds like crazy at elevated prices to flood the world with reserve,

2024-09-02 16:26:02 UTC

- reply

The thing is **money is not a resource** in the modern world. So it's not really clear that there should be much interest on monetary loans. Enough to pay for the bookkeeping, yes, but not more than that.

2024-09-02 16:25:11 UTC

- reply

Debt is how we get money. So without debt we wouldn't have a monetary *measure* of GDP. This doesn't mean we wouldn't have GDP just that we'd be unable to figure out what it was.
Debt also allows for the control of resources to change hands so that people who have productive uses for those resources can utilize them. It makes sense for people to give up resources in exchange for more resources later.