I was watching this video and they showed us this graph from game theory The answer the video said is that the US should do appeasement because of some multiplication, which isn’t how game theory works, so we will ignore that part of the video. You go down the tree. The highest score for the …
Author Archives: stidmatt
Will America defend NATO?
Following the end of the Second World War, relations between Josef Stalin and the rest of the world declined rapidly. Russia is by far the largest country in Europe today, and the Soviet Union was bigger still. Western Europe feared an invasion from Russia, and President Harry Truman understood that if we didn’t defend Western …
Student loans are different
When you go through bankruptcy, most of your loans can be discharged. This comes at a big cost to you of course, in the form of a significantly reduced credit score, making it near impossible to borrow at a reasonable interest rate for the next 7 years, but they can be discharged and give you …
Wither Europa
It is becoming more and more popular in international relations and international political economy circles to say “wither Europe”, “Europe is dying” and the like. Let’s look at this in detail. Human rights Using the Press Freedom Index as our metric of freedom, and looking at the countries which have a good or satisfactory ranking: …
Policy Scoreboard
As I woke up this morning, I got an idea, what if there was an easy way to rank a policy on whether it should be passed and can be passed. As I was thinking about student loans, BBB, and BIF, I made this graph:Think of it this way: Impact on people’s lives, positive would …
How social media works
Facebook: Only 5000 potential friends. You need to create your own page and build from the bottom to do anything. Your content gets quickly buried and forgotten. Twitter: Make a post saying something like “politicians need to follow through on promises.” after years of working in and studying politics. They tell you to take a …
Biden’s student loan memo
This image has been floating around the internet for the last few months, and it is a redacted memo which contains legal advice for the President on what the president’s powers are regarding student loans. Here’s what we know The President has chosen to not pardon student loans. Harvard law says the President has this …
Updated Presidential Rankings
Ranking of American Presidents I am only ranking Presidents who have served for at least 365 days. With Biden’s latest announcement that he won’t pardon student loans, and since Joe Manchin is almost certainly going to vote against it with every (other) Republican, it’s close enough for me to add Biden to my rankings. I …
Starting with Python (or really any object oriented languge)
So let’s say you are starting to program in Python, and you want to know how to start. What do you need to do? Virtual Environment Well, the first thing you need to do is install a virtual environment. There are two ways to do this: Install Anaconda. This provides you with a virtual environment …
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How to win the midterms
There are several ways to win elections in American politics, and successful strategies are opposite depending if you are in power or out of power. Other impacts outside the control of politicians (such as media bias) can impact election outcomes, but ultimately politicians will collectively determine their fate. When you are in power, you want …