Interesting stuff

  1. Short selling to take down bad companies
  2. The future? “Imagine if men could have the diversity of sexual experience of Genghis Khan, Muhammad, or John F. Kennedy without actually achieving anything. Sex robots are about to make the virtual world even more alluring.
  3. This article captures the mentality of many Trump supporters: “The fact that the leader of one of our two parties—the party, in fact, that has for many decades represented what was normal, acceptable, and respectable—was not ashamed to reveal his own selfishness, was not ashamed to reveal his own indifference to the suffering of others, was not even ashamed to reveal his own cheerful enjoyment of cruelty…all of this helped people to feel that they no longer needed to be ashamed of those qualities in themselves either. They didn’t need to feel bad because they didn’t care about other people. Maybe they didn’t want to be forbearing toward enemies. Maybe they didn’t want to be gentle or kind. In a world in which the rich want permission to take as much as they can get without feeling any shame, and many of the not-rich are so worried about their own sinking fortunes that they find it hard to worry about the misery of anyone else, Trump is the priest who grants absolution.
  4. Sean Connery, RIP
  5. Macron defends free speech (unlike many cowardly “leaders”): “The polities of France’s historical allies, notably the United States and the United Kingdom, have degenerated into various species of illiberalism. There is the right-populist form that currently holds power in those places—and also the left-authoritarian form that dominates many cultural institutions and buys into the lie that when a terror cell with automatic weapons assassinates an office full of humble caricaturists, it is the latter who are the oppressors. That lie is at least as attractive in the English-speaking world now as it was in 2015.”
  6. Cancel culture is much worse than critical culture
  7. The China bubble that never pops
  8. Social media has empowered “deplorables” against elites: “I would not say that our institutions are mired in a period of secular incompetence and decline. That is actually true, but I wouldn’t use those words. I would say that our institutions are structurally (and, I believe, catastrophically) mal-adapted to the new information environment, and that the people who run them are both unable and unwilling to reform them.”
  9. Steve Levitt (Freakonomics) on “making a difference” as an economist​​​​​​​
  10. Overgeneralizing affairs: Men have them to reclaim manliness; women to complete their relations.

Interesting stuff

  1. Covid has shut down DJs, clubs & festivals around the world 🙁
  2. A history of Greyhound bus lines…
  3. The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons
  4. The Netherlands is the ideal base for international drugs trade
  5. I had no idea, but the “forest wars” to cut or preserve old growth trees in the Pacific Northwest were being fought when I was a child in the 70s and 80s. What’s crazy/sad is that it was a “great idea” to clearcut thousand-year old trees until then 🙁
  6. Economic growth gives us liberalism and demands for equality whilst stagnation and regress give us political reaction
  7. Kevin & Mike are the co-founders of Instagram. How did they form such a strong partnership?
  8. Facebook is happy to sell ads to those who believe in conspiracy theories, undermining its claim to be fighting misinformation.
  9. The former head of Venezuela’s central bank on how to mess up an economy
  10. The Lockpicking Lawyer is funny as hell

Interesting stuff

  1. China is taking more power as Trump abandons global bodies.
  2. This Belgian artist helps us re-imagine our digital privacy
  3. American crazy (QAnon) hits the Netherlands. (I’m secretly hoping that QAnon is actually Sasha Baron Cohen trolling the fuck out of idiots, but Russian agents are more likely. Sad.)
  4. Lots of Overnight Tragedies, No Overnight Miracles
  5. America’s Fatal 1618 Project (aka the new 30 Years War)
  6. White Americans can say “strange” names when it suits them. When they cannot, they merely reveal their casual racism.
  7. A Venezuelan explains the REAL value of Bitcoin
  8. The beginning of house music (“he thought the music was a little slow because he was a heroin addict, so he sped it up…)
  9. The Karen meme morphs into racist misogyny
  10. A former PR man for American health insurers blows the whistle on the industry’s conspiracy to slander Canadian healthcare
  11. Cats are far worse for birds than anything else… including wind turbines:

H/T to CD

Interesting stuff

  1. A great PSA for “clean water in a packet”
  2. The roots of “wokefulness” in academia
  3. Some Russian academics published an article [paywall] proposing to use crypto-currencies as an “academic payment system”, much like the system Jens and I proposed 10 years ago. I hope they succeed!
  4. Why are cities so expensive? (hint: safety regulations)
  5. Three Leiden professors on the Trump-Biden debate (and US politics)
  6. From fascist to communist to green pigs
  7. What is philosophy?
  8. John Snow used maps to identify the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak
  9. Emily Oster is helping families raise their kids and parents understand Covid school risks, but she’s “not publishing enough” academic research. A good example of wrong incentives in the academic world.
  10. The best forecasts quantify potential risks without limiting “interesting” possible scenarios

Interesting stuff

  1. Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s “digital minister”, is an original thinker
  2. So Moynihan was wrong about “black families”? Listen to this.
  3. San Francisco is losing its Private Investigators
  4. Margaret Atwood sees the darkness of our times — and how to resist
  5. The economics of vending machines (a lot has changed since I ran one!)
  6. How targeted (vote! stay home!) political advertising works 
  7. Thomas Friedman looks at US politics through a foreign policy lens
  8. Gaming chairs are getting better at supporting immobility, which is bad for your circulation (and probably your soul), but also part of the “retreat from reality” I predicted for a good part of society.
  9. Anne Appelbaum on the twilight of democracy (the comments to this podcast leave me worried for America; seems that lots of people are excited to trade freedom for controls on “left-wing terrorists” [sic]. Read Jacob’s Dark Age Ahead (2005) for more.
  10. An over-caffinated guy says “don’t get into watches!” (Too late 😉

Interesting stuff

    1. When we lose weight, where does it go? (Hint: Water!)
    2. A view on what Covid will bring, from 6 months ago
    3. Who steals “famous art”? Underworld criminals looking for swag
    4. China’s civil war isn’t over (bad news for Taiwan)
    5. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is setting up a “futures market” for water based on California water trades. I think this is a bad idea b/c (1) there’s no “commodity water” equivalent to oil (water prices reflect unique local and regulatory considerations) and (2) there’s no easy way to store or deliver water, due to its weight and low value per unit (a barrel of oil is worth $40; a barrel of [potable tap water] water is worth about $0.16; agricultural water is worth 1% of that, or less).
    6. Equality is not as useful as equity:
    7. Interesting details on how the airline industry is “melting down”
    8. Tired of experts? Lobbyists? Activists? Check out the UK’s Citizen Assembly format and how they approached climate change
    9. How a Chinese millionaire disrupted damaged BitTorrent by trying to rip off people via his crypto-scam
    10. Health care in rich countries: The US ranks very low due to high costs and chaotic results (this is even before Covid!). The NL does well 😉

H/T to AL

Interesting stuff

  1. Why you should install Signal and ditch WhatsApp (and probably Telegram)
  2. There is something different in the United States today, and I know that you feel it; something noxious, toxic, sick, diseased, and most of all decadent. The wealthiest nation on Earth with such iniquity, where pandemic burnt—still burns—through the population while the gameshow host emperor froths his supporters into bouts of political necromancy.”
  3. Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
  4. The burdens of paperwork are growing heavier 
  5. Amsterdam, the beauty.
  6. A fascinating documentary about Shenzen, shanzhai (copycat innovation) and how (some) Chinese see “IP-theft” as “open sourcing” (spin?)
  7. A fire historian explains why California’s burning is mostly about people encroaching on areas that burn naturally  [paywall]
  8. Iceland’s viking culture explains why they offer coffee & cake to visitors 🙂
  9. How Are Psychedelics and Other Party Drugs Changing Psychiatry?

H/T to CD

Interesting stuff

  1. Fossil fuel companies are dying, and that’s good for the environment
  2. Back in 1920, we knew how to reduce the pandemic spread
  3. So many forecasts are not even close to right
  4. Rapidly melting ice means we are facing a big (not included in IPCC) risk of non-linear sea level rise (e.g., +5 meters in 10 years).
  5. Looking back 50 years on shareholders vs stakeholders
  6. How Republicans used local elections to “queer the pitch” in national elections (via gerrymandering)
  7. Airlines are pushing for 30-min preflight C-19 antibody tests. I can see the profit motive. Let’s hope there’s also a penalty for being too lax on false-negatives.

Interesting stuff

  1. Maybe we should read fewer books, better?
  2. Why Karachi floods
  3. How to escape a volcanic eruption
  4. Surprise! (Not!) The plastic industry came up with “recyclable plastic” to confuse consumers and sell more “virgin” plastic
  5. Western US wildfires are exactly what climate scientists predicted and people can’t accept this new world of smoke and fire Get used to it.
  6. How Taiwan successfully (so far) contained Covid and a great sad summary of how the US (185k+ deaths) is failing
  7. The death of the office economy — many interesting dimensions
  8. Many of Trump’s have zero interest in reality
  9. Dr. Daniel Pauly on why overfishing is a Ponzi scheme” Insightful!
  10. Is the US going through a “mega cycle” of disruption?
    “American politics has fallen into a pattern that is characteristic of many developing countries, where one portion of the elite seeks to win support from the working classes not by sharing the wealth or by expanding public services and making sacrifices to increase the common good, but by persuading the working classes that they are beset by enemies who hate them (liberal elites, minorities, illegal immigrants) and want to take away what little they have. This pattern builds polarization and distrust and is strongly associated with civil conflict, violence and democratic decline.”

Interesting stuff

  1. It’s not so nice when “nice white families” take over a non-white school
  2. How energy bars turned into meals
  3. The first “good” map was made by a Greek who also (accurately) calculated the diameter  of the Earth.
  4. Working at home is forcing cultural change
  5. Taibbi on the Trump Era that we’re sick of
  6. Rice vs wheat: a labor, calorie and governance comparison
  7. How settlers screwed up ecosystems in the “New” world
  8. What does “gentrification” mean?
  9. Singapore’s “authoritarian capitalism” doesn’t scale
  10. Every episode in this podcast series has changed my mind on race and US history. Listen in!

H/T to TJ