- Read: Dutch temperature anomalies, visualised.
- Read: It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber [data!]
- Read: People think they are poorer because they are paying more attention to grocery prices than their income. Related: College (if you finish) is still a good economic decision. Also related: Americans think they are poor when gasoline is expensive, even if gasoline is a tiny share of their spending. And another discussion on the topic!
- Read: Want to save the world? Don’t replace that stone wall with concrete. Rebuild it.
- Read: The Economist catches up with my 2020 observation that Bitcoin is a new species — and thus beyond human control.
- Read: The US government should apply the lessons from Operation Warp Speed to other projects (=set a target, then meet it).
- Listen: Naomi Klein has some good ideas on how to defeat right-wing populists. (Hint: Work more with blue collar workers and less with lifestyle activists.) Related: Paganism “(the worship of natural forces) generally takes two forms: the deification of nature, and the deification of force… On the left, there are the world-worshippers, who elevate nature to the summit of sanctity. On the right, you see the worship of force in the forms of wealth, political power, and tribal solidarity. In other words, the paganism of the left is a kind of pantheism, and the paganism of the right is a kind of idolatry.”
- Read this excellent summary of ecosystem services, which uses the “value of a whale” to make its points. (The article reminded me of the Soviet’s disastrous policy of killing whales to meet planning targets rather than to harvest anything of value.)
- Read this fascinating investigation of Ukraine’s (likely) sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline.
- Read (and worry): Dictator Xi’s quest for ideological purity and party power (see pagan, above) is moving China closer to a new cultural revolution… and the victims, this time, will not just be Chinese.