Interesting stuff

NB: archive.ph is NOT working, so I cannot help you get around paywalls. Let me know if you have a way!

  1. The Dutch are facing a “mest (manure) crisis” after 30 years of letting farmers put more and more animals on their land. Farmers want more subsidies for their shit. I say we should stop taking their shit! Watch [in Dutch, so add subs].
  2. Watch: How to get rich. (tl;dw? “be born rich” or “have a revolution”). It’s a good analysis. Related: The bank of mom & dad podcast
  3. Not surprising [link may not work]: People decide to have kids by considering a combination of the “cost of baby” and their “taste for baby” — or what economists would call a combination of a “slide” and “shift” on the demand curve, respectively.
  4. The call for “national disaster service” makes a lot of sense to me. First, young people (esp. guys) can benefit from service. Second, there’s a strong need for people to help, as the number of disasters increases.
  5. Holy shit, this is fascinating: Two AI “humans” discuss my book, Living with Water Scarcity, in a podcast format.
  6. I’ve been catching up with Mike Munger’s very interesting (to me) podcast “The Answer is Transactions Costs,” and here are a few good episodes: (a) The shit show of academic publishing, (b) Taking others into account, and (c) Permissionless innovation.
  7. Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work (Sorry, archive.ph links are NOT working 🙁
  8. Thinking about voting for Trump? Consider this: “Autocrats dump their democratic allies and keep the company of kleptocrats.“
  9. What Really Fueled the ‘East Asian Miracle’? It wasn’t land reform as much as forcing (kinda) people off farms and into cities. Dickens would be proud.

H/T to GK

Interesting stuff

  1. Listen to this interesting conversation on the “good old days” of (financial) blogging.
  2. The Torah discriminates between meaningful work and dog-work.
  3. Watch this nice funny summary of California’s water policy failures.
  4. Wat? “Inspire elaborated on its methodology and touted its reliability in a white paper published on its website. According to the white paper, by relying on data science and analysis of faith-based screening data, the Inspire Impact Score “reflects a rules-based, scientifically rigorous methodology of faith-based ESG analysis which creates a level of consistency and reliability of results necessary for making well-informed, quantitatively sound, biblically responsible investment decisions.”
  5. When in San Francisco — a low density city with insane housing prices — I suggested that the law allow for any building to add 1 floor (or 5%, whichever is greater) to its height, as long as its final height is lower than average. Such a regulation would allow owners to add space without overwhelming the neighborhood (looking at you, Salesforce Tower). Anyways, the Dutch have this law. I don’t know its impacts, but I’m curious.
  6. Tariffs are not as bad as some economists are saying (but they can indeed be very bad, and I think that’s the version Trump would choose). Related: How to do industrial policy correctly — or incorrectly. Listen.
  7. I’m shocked, shocked to read that “Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake“
  8. European cities are building heat pumps that can heat/cool tens of thousands of homes at once.
  9. This article on school kids making sexual deep fakes about each other led me to think a bit more: What if AI-generated deep fakes “flood the zone with shit”? I think that many people will (a) not trust that anything is real and (b) stop making their own sexy photos/porn, since theirs will not be credible. That reaction would mean that most porn/nudes would be fake, which would reduce exploitation (even trafficked children need more food than an AI) and worse abuses in the (child) porn world. Likewise, AIs could be used to make fake teams compete in sports, generate fake actors for television, etc. I am not sure that that’s such a bad thing (except for legitimate actors), to have more “phony” spectator sports. I do know it’s a bad thing for news and data, but we’re learning here.

Climate cooling chaos?

We humans are not too effective in reducing the emissions of CO2 and other GHGs. Thus, the atmosphere is retaining more heat and climate has shifted into a chaotic mess.

But what if we could invent a bacteria that would digest CO2 into O2 and “carbon poop” as a means of reducing climate risks?

(Here’s an article that I read after writing this that discusses various geo-engineering efforts — all of which need capital or other inputs to expand, so they are not subject — I hope! — to the runaway dynamic I describe here.)

I’m not sure that we can (or will), but I am pretty sure that “we” (the inventors? a nation? a business? the UN?) would release it in the hope that we could save ourselves from run away heating and climate chaos.

But I’m pretty sure that would be a bad idea — like what would stop those bacteria from digesting too much? Indeed, I can easily see that the bacteria would multiply in our CO2-rich environment, thereby digesting so much CO2 that plants would start to suffocate and producing so much O2 that we humans (and other animals) would be poisoned by excess O2.

The Earth would cool, of course — potentially losing so much “insulation” that we started burning more fossil fuels just to stay warm.

I could go on with impacts (what good/bad impact can you think of?), but let’s just stop here and admit that we humans have no idea of how to “control” the Earth in the Anthropocene.

Nice try.

Interesting stuff

  1. “Propaganda” aims to persuade.
  2. Will house prices keep going up? Yes — driven by rising in equality (so there’s a feedback loop). Watch this.
  3. Lawns are such an environmental, economic and good-taste disaster. Watch.
  4. Listen to this man’s suggestions on how to reduce your “performance stress”. Semi(?)-related: Testosterone therapy is not an beneficial as men are being told. Listen.
  5. “The economics profession has become insular and status-obsessed, and not focused enough on making a positive impact on the world.” True.
  6. Chinese authorities are concealing the state of the economy. Bad news, as undermining macro data is the first public sign of a failing system. Ask the Soviets.
  7. Who could have guessed: The Saudi’s “fantasy city” construction project is attracting a bunch of rude, corrupt (and probably incompetent) “experts.”
  8. An extra 230,000 Americans died because of their political opposition (!) to COVID vaccines.
  9. How Boston became the safest big city in America
  10. Meta is trying (hard! really!) to limit teen access to its platform, except when it comes to verifying age. Related: A curmudgeon points out all the ways that Gen-Z’ers can save time with AI — while losing whatever is left of their capacity to think.

H/T to PB

Review: Death and the Penguin

This 1996 novel by Andrei Kurkov tells the story of a failign writer who suddenly finds himself with a full time job writing obituaries. He also has a penguin, Misha, who he “rescues” from Kyiv’s zoo when they run out of money to feed their animals.

The book’s most interesting “contribution” is its description of the weirdnesses of 1990s Ukraine. It was hard for anyone to count on anything, as the Soviet world turned upside down.

You’d have to read it, but here are some characteristic passages:

  • “Am I ill?” he wondered, staring at the blank paper protruding from the typewriter. “No, I must, must, sometimes at least, make myself write short stories, or else I’ll go mad.” He fell to thinking of Sonya’s funny little freckled face, her red ponytail with its elastic band. Odd times to be a child in. An odd country, an odd life which he had no desire to make sense of. To endure, full stop, that was all he wanted.
  • For lunch Viktor gave Misha fish, while he and Sonya had fried potatoes. “I’ll buy a bit more food tomorrow,” he promised. “This’ll do me,” she said, taking the larger plate
  • “So no need to worry. Look at me [Viktor’s editor], serene as a tank, even though they’ve just murdered my driver! Believe me, life’s not something to be concerned about.”
  • Those who merited obituaries had usually achieved things, fought for their ideals, and when locked in battle, it wasn’t easy to remain entirely honest and upright. Today’s battles were all for material gain, anyway. The crazy idealist was extinct – survived by the crazy pragmatist …
  • Viktor made coffee, rejoicing in the peace of the flat… A peace which enabled him to sit down with a cup of coffee and calmly think it all over. A peace which made it possible to sit without thinking even, just drinking coffee, dwelling on its flavour, keeping at arm’s length thoughts capable of disturbing equanimity.
  • And there was another, the Principal Friend perhaps, that someone whose bold, sweeping signature approved Viktor’s obelisks [obituaries]. Though whether it was the text he approved or the subject, was now not at all clear. And then there were the dates, obviously determining the day of publication, but clearly predetermined during the subject’s lifetime! Death as planned economy!
  • Something was wrong with this life, he thought, walking with downcast eyes. Or life itself had changed, and was as it used to be – simple, comprehensible – only on the outside. Inside, it was as if the mechanism was broken, and now there was no knowing what to expect of a familiar object – be it a loaf of Ukrainian bread or a street pay telephone. Beneath every surface, inside every tree, every person, lurked an invisible alien something. The seeming reality of everything was only a relic of childhood.

FOUR STARS.

Here are all my reviews.

Interesting stuff about Japan

Here are some interesting articles from The Atlantic’s archive:

1898: The Social and Domestic Life of Japan — written by a Japanese visitor to the US. Fascinating.

1941 (Feb): An American rationalizes the weaknesses they see in Japan as a reason to ignore Japan. Whoops.

1947: The Japanese language needs to be simplified if the nation is going to prosper.

1964: Can Japan pull off the Olympics?

1986: The Japanese Are Different From You and Me, i.e., trying to understand our “competitors”

1986: Why are the Japanese thin? The author claims “no fat” but “less sugar” also plays a role, IMO.

1989: Americans may have a hard time competing with the Japanese when it’s culturally acceptable to sacrifice one’s self (long hours, low consumption) for the greater good.

The glass is 120% full

I am a pessimist. I see the glass as half empty, which means that I am (a) often right about things going wrong and (b) slightly less-often surprised when things go right. It’s a defensive mechanism I have, based on many bad experiences and disappointments.

But I could be a “glass-half-full” guy, if I was more like my dad. He is, indeed, more of a glass 120% full kinda guy — a bit delusional but always cheerful. (He’s also had some interesting luck.) I’m not sure I can convince myself to skip onto a more optimistic path, but it’s something I need to think about.

Father and son.

Interesting stuff

  1. Yet another article on why America needs to drop pennies… and the lobbying of the industry that makes silly profits whiole arguing it’s “un-American” and “anti-Lincoln” to do so. Kill the penny!
  2. Listen to Anne Applebaum (who knows a lot) on dictators.
  3. Stores are getting smaller, with less selection, to compete with online retail.
  4. Florida insurers are going bankrupt, due to a combination of losses (not surprising) and “regulatory arbitrage” by lawyers (‘merica, fuck yeah!)
  5. American is wasting billions fighting climate change giving money to lobbying special interests.
  6. A climate-sensitive man is suing the Austrian government for failing to reduce harm to him. He’s the first of billions who SHOULD sue governments for their choice of cheap fossil fuels now over the future of human civilization.
  7. Shein is making $billions because consumers care more about cheap clothes than (a) labor exploitation and (b) ripping off creators’ livelihoods.
  8. Heat will kill more of us than any other climate chaos impact. Listen.
  9. Russia finds its useful idiots among YouTube “influencers”
  10. Listen to this discussion of managing your time rather than going insane

Interesting stuff

  1. Watch Seinfeld, in 1992, on the sociopathy of social media.
  2. “Secrecy and democracy are antithetical” but there’s a lot of dark money flowing around, made possible by government policies (the US is a big perpetrator).
  3. “The world isn’t heading toward a new Cold War – it’s closer to the grinding world order collapse of the 1930s.” Agreed.
  4. Want less crime? Turn DOWN the streetlights.
  5. Oh great. Chatbots can implant fake memories.
  6. Listen to How PETA Made Radical Ideas Mainstream
  7. Flashback to 2013: How Scammers Steal Millions Through Carbon Markets
  8. Flashback to 2011: How to survive a zombie apocalypse… or natural disaster
  9. Nouveau riche bling (2008): The less money your peer group has, the more bling you buy—and vice-versa.
  10. Listen: The Problems of Boys and Men in Today’s America