Category: Worth Your Time

1. Great overview into technology and China, and a pretty clear rundown on why Huawei can’t be trusted (all of those bugs are not there by accident).
2. “Killer Slime, Dead Birds, an Expunged Map: The Dirty Secrets of European Farm Subsidies” Here’s more from me, back in 2014.
3. The art of the elevator pitch
4. A good justification for a year of travel
5. Lots of young people are waiting… for houses, partners, adulthood. Related: Poorer men are not getting married, and that’s bad for society.
6. Excellent career advice
7. AI-generated fake people want to date you
8. Neither regulation nor free markets can, on their own, adequately reduce carbon, but they can work together.
9. Weaker regulations under Trump (written by lobbyists he put into the EPA) mean more and worse methane leaks, which makes “natural gas” a stronger driver of climate chaos than coal — something that I warned about in 2014 — and my student showed with data.
10. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is still good for conversations, 70 years later.

H/Ts to CD and JP

1. Paul Krugman on the rhetoric-reality gap between political leaders and climate-chaos-driven fires in Australia. We will see this dysfunction in far too many other places as humanity goes down in flames… of denial.
2. Economists are starting to understand the value of culture and community.
3. A useful look into the dangers of nuclear war under Trump. Good news is that he can’t just do crazy. Bad news is that some of his advisors may help him do crazy.
4. How bees vote.
5. Good news: Climate change is “not going as badly as we expected” as RCP8.5 gets shot down as “business as usual.” Bad news in 5 parts.
6. Some good tips on improving your life. Related: The simple life is good for your mental health but also for the environment, as I wrote here.
7. Teens are reading less and following “trustworthy people” to learn about reality. I’m worried.
8. Esther Duflo (one of three new Nobel Laureates in Economics) has good ideas on how to fight poverty and develop yourself.
9. An amazing essay on how technology will be misused to undermine both economies and our political spaces.
10. A really beautiful podcast on how challenges can drive our creativity.

1. I suggest listening to these podcasts on Russia’s mafia capitalism, Silicon Valley’s undermining of social values, the need for non-manipulated social and news media and privacy in the Age of Surveillance.
2. “Doing well in school is nothing to be proud of” and how the meaning of meritocracy was inverted from “undeserving” to “deserving”
3. Menstruation apps are sharing your physical, sexual and emotional data with advertisers (mostly via Facebook’s sales machine). Meanwhile, colleges are forcing students to install tracking apps
4. “America once had a balanced transportation landscape, one with choice and some semblance of freedom… until the federal government put nearly all its weight behind the automobile.”
5. Experiences are replacing shopping malls (and they are pretty cringy)
6. Andrew Yang is a really cool presidential candidate: smart, honest and (realistically) devoted to the middle classes in a way that few others are
7. A farewell essay to a dear, brilliant, compelling friend.
8. Smart phones and students: “awkward interactions, calculated risks, time alone, and connecting with others without being in control of the interaction are all important parts of being human. Navigating those experiences is part of a healthy engagement with a world that we can never fully master, and the illusions of safety and control provided by our technology also produce isolation, distraction, and anxiety as we retreat from that uncontrollable world.” Related: Insights from students who lived 10 days without their phones. (I will try this with mine).
9. How economists used “virtual currency” to overcame Brazil’s perennial hyperinflation in the early 1990s.
10. A sharp but insightful rant against research on the history of philosophy

It’s 2020! I’m still on vacation in Italy but I’ve too many interesting articles to share with you, so I’m posting these now. I’ll be blogging (what’s that?!?) from Monday…

But before I share these links, let me note here that Trump’s attack on Iran is not just ground for war, but yet another example of him doing the exact stupid thing he’s accused others of thinking.

1. Related: How do dictators go about their business?
2. Americans are spending $7k-100k+ per household on parking spaces. That’s quite a lot of money wasted on legacy technology that helps oil companies and destroys the commons.
3. People are often rich (or poor) due to chance, not luck.
4. The NYT has an excellent series of articles on how little privacy you really have. In this one, they explore how your location is tracked, by the minute, and for sale to anyone.
5. Five money rules to give yourself more financial security
6. If you leave a partner who doesn’t appreciate you, then perhaps it’s useful to busy yourself with human (or biological) trivia, rather than obsessing over what you might have done right or wrong.
7. Piketty points out that the supporters of populists (and Trump) are from the lower class (in education, income and work). So it’s not about ignorance as much as class rebellion.
8. Are you eating the butter you deserve?
9. “…the real snowflakes are the people who are afraid of that situation. The poor souls who never take the opportunity to discuss ideas in a group of people who will very likely respectfully disagree with them”
10. American spies are increasingly vulnerable to their digital habits (DNA tests, Facebook), which leaves the country vulnerable to the profit-seeking policies of American companies that don’t care about national security. Related: Facial recognition means that you will not longer have privacy, let alone “obscurity” from tracking (or stalking) in public.

I’m on vacation in Italy, so this short post will also give you a break 😉

Here’s a really short episode of Jive Talking if you want to think a little about saving (or gaining) time.

My one-handed opinion is that most of us have a lot more time than we think — it’s just hard to say no to all the things that take it from us.

See you in 2020!

1. The internet is now mainly driven by shopping
2. Arundhati Roy says lots of insightful things about colonialism, capitalism and sustainability.
3. I’m seeing a rise in “farewell to the Earth we knew” articles, videos, etc. These scientists are saying goodbye to cold weather as the arctic warms. In this video, a Solomon Islander bids farewell to their island lives. What will you miss as climate chaos changes your life?
4. Visualizing the Mississippi’s evolving route
5. Great podcast (in Dutch) with a Dutch woman working for Greenpeace on climate change, etc.
6. The EU’s CAP is exploited by corrupt politicians (and not very helpful for small farmers)
7. Vitalik Buterin (inventor of Ethereum) writes a nice overview of quadratic payments, which can be used as a hybrid voting mechanism. I should have used this method in my 2009 paper [pdf] on fighting over water in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
8. Schools need to stop teaching to the test and focus on learning.
9. Funny how we only started to understand the oceans about 50 years ago!
10. Want to see the future? Spend some time on these maps showing how climate change chaos impacts will vary across the US. Related: RCP 8.5 (the “worst case scenario” for global heating, with an average increase of 4.9C by 2100) is sometimes called “business as usual,” but its proposed pathways of population growth (12 billion people), GDP growth (very slow) and coal use (a multiple of today’s use in contrast to current downward trends) tend to attract criticism. I agree that those assumptions are questionable, but this article makes the obvious point that we might get to RCP8.5 by a combination of human activity (10 billion richer people using lots of oil and gas on goodies as well as coping with chaos) and natural feedback loops (lost albedo as Arctic summer ice disappears, permafrost belching methane, perennial fires/loss of tree cover), such that we get that scenario anyway. Not a good scenario.

 

H/T to JP

1. Why girls (and boys) need summer camp: “Traditions—unlike the superficial public culture that surrounds us—actually establish significant places for people at every age. They offer work and responsibility appropriate to a person’s experience.”
2. American Racism will never go away
3. China’s AI-totalitarianism may backfire, badly. Related: The beginnings of AI gave insight into human biases… and new “reporter bots” that can fool us.
4. Sea-levels are rising faster than expected. Say goodbye to Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Mumbai, Alexandria et al by 2050. Related: Our inability to consume less means the end of our ecosphere.
5. Kim Kardashian is a surprisingly sensible woman.
6. “Why Faster Internet Isn’t Worth It“
7. AI is not taking over the world… just yet.
8. Putting China’s rise (and America’s fears) into perspective
9. Social media and risks to digital freedom
10. Western bankers are helping dictators rob their people blind

1. American laws now aid global tax dodgers — and that’s not an accident
2. Economic warfare (embargoes, tariffs, etc.) is useless and probably counterproductive. Better to offer favorable economic terms on migration and trade and shame leaders into serving their people.
3. The rise of women (from inequality) is both useful and urgently needed. NGM — the magazine of bare-breasted exotics — has put out an issue on women, with all the editing, writing and photography by women.
4. Why is Iran’s government paranoid about environmentalists? Here’s one (authoritative) perspective. My take is that enviro-groups can challenge the government’s authority and competence.
5. Free-market medical care works in the US
6. COP15 fail, in the manner of Dr. Seuss
7. Two excellent podcasts: Eastern Europe after the wall and the “disrespected” who support populists and Naomi Klein’s evolution as a public intellectual against excess capitalism
8. Paranoia about abuse of power has diffused power and stopped progress.
9. China is one (of ?? countries) “erasing the past” by removing articles from academic databases. Such censorship was not possible in the days of printed journals, but digital archives (often controlled by for-profit companies) are centralized — and thus vulnerable.
10. California’s decision to prohibit insurers from dropping clients as new risks (e.g., living near fire-vulnerable areas) emerge will nuke the insurance market, increasing the risk that people, businesses and cities will go bankrupt as climate chaos results in new damages in different places.

H/T to JP

 

1. “Political hobbyism takes us away from spending time working with others to acquire power. While we sit at home, people who seek political control are out winning over voters.”
2. An advertising guy has lots of insights for economists (I bought his book to read and learn 😉
3. How psychics “see your future” (with a little help from your credulity)
4. A good overview of illegal drug markets in the UK
5. Dutch celebrities sue Facebook for fake ads — and win.
6. Listen to these two great episodes of the Capitalisn’t podcast: DuPont covers up the hazards of teflon and Monsanto lobbying farmers to use glycophosphate
7. My boss (LUC’s Dean) is also a researcher into parents-child communication. She’s just released a paper on gender and racial stereotyping in kids books.
8. I really learned a few things listening to this podcast on the “economics of Millennial Socialists”
9. A short video on how the Dutch nearly destroyed Amsterdam with US-style highways, off-ramps and urban destruction.
10. “Before there was recycling, there was the rag trade” (I bought the book!)

1. Nice podcast explaining Pigouvian taxes and their origin 
2. Do economic sanctions work? No.
3. “Why Does Tipping Still Exist” — especially when it’s biased
4. “How Oligarchs and Populists Milk the E.U. for Millions” Me: End the CAP!  
5. Governments are using spyware to target journalists via hacked WhatsApp messages. The same can happen to you. Here’s how to protect yourself.
6. Regrets for a Dutch town that switched from natural gas to “renewable” biofuel.
7. Greater urban density means more connections and more innovation
8. Church vs tribe: “Western Individualism Arose from Incest Taboo“
9. Prosperity in China is changing the way people behave towards each other
10. Will India get rich fast enough to prevent more smog deaths?