Category: Worth Your Time

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.

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.”

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

1. Measuring the scale of coronavirus via sewage
2. So… the American Revolution was not about democracy but changing which leaders were in charge (and making money, especially via cotton and slavery). Related: Race and science
3. Why are market prices surging? A lot of money managers only get paid if client funds are “invested” (!)
4. A website with Trump’s new slogan (“Keep America Great”) points out how he’s broken all his promises and failed to deliver
5. Western “liberals” are rejecting tolerance for their subjective truth?
6. Lol: “Facebook apologizes to users, businesses for Apple’s monstrous efforts to protect its customers’ privacy“
7. Why are there 5280 feet in a mile?
8. The pandemic is nuking college-town economies (velocity of money case study)
9. Online advertising wears the emperor’s new clothes (= it’s often worthless)
10. Blockchain: the amazing solution for almost nothing

H/Ts to PB and BZ

1. The Olympics are bad for local communities. (Maybe keep it in one place to avoid disruptions?)
2. Will our eyes give up all our data in the future?
3. The collapse of a key Antarctic glacier
4. How the pandemic might play out in 2021 and beyond
5. Listen to this excellent 2006 TED talk on how schools kill creativity (a big failure and missed opportunity, IMO)
6. Socially responsible/impact/ESG investing is doing rather well
7. California is already living with climate chaos (+2C, fires, blackouts)
8. RobinHood’s “free” trading takes advantage of retail investors
9. Race and advertising: “Black people are not just white people with darker skin”
10. The USPS built America. Crippling it (policy since 2006) is a mistake.

1. The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free
2. The roots of wokeness [brutal but accurate]
3. A continuing conversation on the lack of diversity in economics
4. An AI explains human intelligence
5. Police became professional — and far too powerful — because of the need to control bad drivers
6. Tech firms are worth so much because they have monopoly power?
7. Get a vasectomy
8. A good interview with Kate Raworth on Doughnut economics. She talks about “change” but doesn’t usually explain the tools (besides “be nice”) but those are discussed here. Jason Hickel is also interviewed. Here’s my review of his book.
9. A good summary of how Trump is wrecking US foreign policy, power and alliances
10. Watch this TED talk on sex workers and the “protective” laws that harm them

1. America is experiencing “hygiene theatre” (sterilizing surfaces) that’s just as ineffective and wasteful as post-9/11 “security theatre”. Wear a mask!
2. What a difference student debt makes (follow-up on the billionaire who paid off the debts — averaging $80k — of 400 Howard U students).
3. Managing China’s rise by helping its neighbors
4. Covid-finance: students vs universities and tenants vs landlords
5. America’s police are violent and ineffective compared to other rich countries. Can the “exceptional” nation learn from others?
6. “It turns out that Switzerland is not ruled by anyone in particular.”
7. NGM on women’s suffrage: 100 years ago and a long way to go.
8. Exit, Voice, Loyalty is 50 years old… and relevant today
9. Should we fight over pie (wealth) — or make it bigger?
10. Economists are starting to get a better handle on uncertainty

1. Should the UN declare a responsibility to protect Americans from the Trump administration? (Yes)
2. Notes on Beirut’s broken sewage system  (and corruption)
3. Racism, gender and diversity in economics: EconTalk and Capitalisn’t
4. The Germans rose above their past by facing their failures. The Russians have not reconciled with the real horrors of Stalin; America struggles with its slavery past.
5. Time to re-read “The Coddling of the American Mind“?
   

   Teaching students to avoid giving unintentional offense is a worthy goal, especially when the students come from many different cultural backgrounds. But students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses.

6. YouTube can take you down a dark rabbithole, but you can also direct your own adventures.
7. Minecraft is magic and disconcerting in the same way as life. Explore.
8. Marmelade
9. Climate-chaos will put poverty- and corruption-driven migration into overdrive. If the EU and US block migration, then they are more likely to have wars on their frontiers.
10. America’s failure to deal with the rise of China risks world stability

H/T to PB

1. A (really) deep analysis of the weaknesses in the Big 5 personality tests
2. The cult catastrophe at WeWork
3. Our egos + social media – community = mayhem
4. Discrimination by the State against women and minorities
5. Social media has fed our egos and rage at the same time as our local social networks have collapsed
6. Wikipedia’s “culture of neutrality” limits the damage from “my opinion over your facts.”
7. China’s assurances about flood control may be as hollow as their assurances that “Covid is under control” in Wuhan.
8. Race and fragility in universities. Related: On White Fragility: “Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.”
9. The story behind airline ticketing
10. The extremely effective, Swiss political system explained (part 1)

1. How communications technology changes our brains
2. The Writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power
3. “…because of poor political decisions [in the US] that every public-health person I know disagreed with, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.”
4. Re-opening schools will be much harder than closing them
5. Why are cases up and deaths down in the US? Lagging data and more.
6. Some good background on the rise of Putin (and KGB power)
7. The world is getting angrier, outrage defeats our public discourse, and how poker players are better at dealing with uncertainty
8. Colonial powers used opium for income, then made its use criminal.
9. Rethinking public spaces in the era of Corona
10. The first EMTs in the world were Black guys from Pittsburgh, until they were shut down by a racist mayor
11. A funny angry rant on climate change deniers