Interesting stuff

Archive.ph (or .md, etc.) is working again! Yay for sharing articles!

  1. Listen to this political-economist downplay the risks of Trump (“too egotistical and disorganized to be a real dictator”). Slightly less worse?
  2. Listen to this appreciation of manhole covers — as well as the origin of the name “99% Invisible” — i.e., an appreciation of the infrastructure that improves our lives.
  3. Six Dumb Misconceptions About The Economy (that the Politicians Want You To Believe)
  4. Watch this video on why Tokyo’s streets (and living) are better. I really liked the video, but here’s my comment on some additional weaknesses (looking at you, Google Maps, for directing us from safe streets to busy roads).

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.

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

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.

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

Interesting stuff

  1. The stories behind people’s tattoos.
  2. House prices will drop as climate risk gets priced in (most obviously, “this neighborhood won’t be here”)
  3. Watch this vlog, by a carpenter who was attacked and how he is recovering, mentally and physically. Key insight: “for the one person who attacked me, 10,000 others have not… and many have stopped to help. We are good people, most of the time.”
  4. The resurgence in restaurant diversity that I predicted is taking place (can’t find the link, but I said that new ideas would grow where older restaurants went broke during COVID), as pop-ups turn into full time locations (in the US). Watch.
  5. Listen to the interesting history of “gaslighting”
  6. Will pro-life evangelicals abandon El Cheeto, now that he’s pro-choice? Probably not, sadly.
  7. Impatient people have no problem with facial recognition, so businesses are making it harder to avoid it.
  8. A coffee geek shows an influencer how to really do the scientific method. Bravo James!
  9. The Economist has a good overview of how climate chaos is making water dirtier, in shortage or surplus. They did not do a good job of explaining private vs social water, nor of how “bad water” will reduce our quality of life, but it’s a start.
  10. Well, this sucks: “In 2010 the Nuffield Foundation, a think-tank, decided to test whether Britain was really so bad at offering educational breadth by comparing it with 24 other countries, mostly drawn from the oecd, a rich-country club. In England fewer than one in five students studied maths after 16. In 18 of the countries more than half did; in eight, everyone did. Government data suggest that almost half of the working-age population in Britain have the numeracy skills of a primary school child.”

Interesting stuff

  1. Price fixing (and the AI-assisted variety) is getting worse. Profits up, customers screwed.
  2. People are already dying from extreme heat.
  3. Yes, it pays to “buy the dip”
  4. Listen to this discussion on the loss of trust in UK politicians.
  5. Watch this nice overview of the Thames flood barrier
  6. It’s happening! A podcast on the need (and failure) to adapt to climate chaos.
  7. The strange (mostly imaginary?) connections between “settler colonialism” and everything that Isreal does.

Interesting stuff

  1. People are not having kids more because of a cultural shift than affordability (demand shifting in rather than sliding up and down).
  2. Texas has more renewables than California because TX allows markets to work.
  3. Listen to this discussion on the downsides of globalization
  4. Higher inheritance taxes are better for society and equality. Listen.
  5. The collapse of AMOC (the current that keeps northern Europe warm in winter) is now more than likely before 2050. Sharpen your ice skates!
  6. Keanu Reeves: “The Matrix changed my life… and that of many others.” Watch.
  7. America has so many laws that nobody can count the ways you can end up in jail.
  8. Vienna’s “social” housing is a gift to the middle class, not the poor. Related: Why rent control doesn’t work podcast.
  9. More schools are banning phones. Good.
  10. An air-conditioner’s “money saving mode” is really “not-as-cool mode”

H/T to PB