Links
2 stars
How to leave a sinking nation: Tuvalu’s dreams of dry land | The Guardian
15-minute read
In November 2022, Simon Kofe, then foreign minister of the island nation of Tuvalu, announced a sensational plan for his country’s survival. Climate breakdown poses an existential threat to small island-nations in the Pacific, but Tuvalu’s geography makes it especially vulnerable. The highest point of elevation in the country is 4.5 metres. If the water rises, there is no hill to run to. In the past four decades, local sea level has risen twice as fast as the global average. By 2050, the government expects half of the capital, Funafuti, to be flooded by tidal waters. By the end of the century, more than 90% of the land could be submerged. “As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” Kofe declared in a video address to delegates at the UN climate conference Cop27. In the background was an islet of Funafuti, Te Afualiku.
“Islands like this one won’t survive,” Kofe said. Then came the twist: “So, we will recreate them virtually.” Organ music swelled, the camera zoomed out, and the image of Kofe standing on the island flickered like a glitch in a video game. The leaves of the trees behind Kofe were bathed in sunlight, but as the view widened, the sky was revealed as a black void: Kofe was delivering his address from a digital rendition of the islet. As he continued his speech, the camera went higher, as if on a drone, and Kofe became smaller and smaller. Frigate birds circled above him, signifying bad weather.
He Made a Joke So Racist Even Trump Rejected It. Now He’s the Most Powerful Comic in America. | Slate Magazine
13-minute read
Kill Tony is part stand-up showcase, part public shaming rite. If the show has an animating principle, it’s that no topic is off-limits, and that established taboos—particularly the idea that someone could ever be upset at a comedy show—are terribly outdated. Performers who make it on the bill are guaranteed to be lambasted by Hinchcliffe, and the flambéing invariably homes in on the comic’s most immediately observable qualities. Racial identities, sexual orientations, and physical disabilities are all in bounds. And yet, Kill Tony has become so firmly entrenched in the stand-up ecosystem that people are moving across the country, leaving their jobs, and sleeping in their cars for the chance to be thrown into the fire, fully aware of what they might encounter on stage. It’s not hard to see why: Survive the beatdown—brandish your thick skin—and you might become a star. But if you bomb? Your humiliation will be disseminated far and wide, bringing your stand-up career to a screeching halt.
[...]
The influence Kill Tony wields is undeniable. In an increasingly fragmented comedy environment, where traditional gatekeepers like the late-night TV circuit are in free fall, Kill Tony represents one of the only opportunities available for an up-and-coming stand-up to capture a national audience. Episodes of the show garner more than 2 million views on YouTube, and when Kill Tony goes on the road, it sells out some of the most famous buildings on the planet.
Original link | Archive.is link
‘Being short is a curse’: the men paying thousands to get their legs broken – and lengthened | The Guardian
6-minute read
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specialises in leg lengthening surgery – and made a booking.
[...]
The bleep of an alarm interrupts our conversation: time to insert a key into the metal bracket on the side of Frank’s thigh and turn it, forcing apart the rods that have been inserted into his femurs. New bone grows into the gap in his thigh bones, one agonising millimetre at time. Each turn of the key dictates how much the patient can grow, and Frank is aiming for five turns each day rather than the four recommended by his doctors, to gain a precious extra quarter of a centimetre. It means more suffering, but Frank is all about putting in the work to get what he wants. “Time to grow!” Emilia says, with a little laugh, as the alarm sounds.
[...]
“I always tell them, 1cm is not more important than your health,” says Serkan Aksoy from Wanna Be Taller, who supervises Frank’s physio. Most of their patients are men, and Aksoy has to dissuade many clients from trying to gain too much height.
Your Review: Ollantay | Astral Codex Ten
15-minute read
Ollantay is a three-act play written in Quechua, an indigenous language of the South American Andes. It was first performed in Peru around 1775. Since the mid-1800s it’s been performed more often, and nowadays it’s pretty easy to find some company in Peru doing it. If nothing else, it’s popular in Peruvian high schools as a way to get students to connect with Quechua history. It’s not a particularly long play; a full performance of Ollantay takes around an hour.
Also, nobody knows where Ollantay was written, when it was written, or who wrote it. And its first documented performance led directly to upwards of a hundred thousand deaths.
Macbeth has killed at most fifty people, and yet it routinely tops listicles of “deadliest plays”. I’m here to propose that Ollantay take its place.
How Does the US Use Water? | Construction Physics
8-minute read
Water infrastructure often gets less attention and focus than other types of infrastructure. Both the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Energy have annual budgets around $46 billion dollars. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has an annual budget of $60 billion. The closest thing the federal government has to a department of water infrastructure, the Bureau of Reclamation, has an annual budget of just $1.1 billion. Water in the US is generally both widely available and inexpensive: my monthly water bill is roughly 5% of the cost of my monthly electricity bill, and the service is far more reliable. And unlike, say, energy, water isn’t the locus of exciting technological change or great power competition.
But this might be changing. Rising demand for water in the arid southwest (which has experienced decades of drought) is creating increasing concern about water availability.
On the Hunt for Nightcrawlers in the Worm-Picking Capital of the World | The Local
9-minute read
To successfully catch a Canadian nightcrawler, you have to approach it a little like you’re a cat. The worm—fat, pink, undomesticable, and anywhere between five and 10 inches long—has made its way two-thirds out of its burrow, taking in moisture from the cool night air and exploring the surface of the soil for food. If it senses your approach, it will hurtle back into its hole with startling, uncharacteristic speed. So, crouched in the dirt, you must reach for it with a quiet, swift confidence. With the pads of your thumb and forefinger, you grasp the worm’s body right above where it disappears into the burrow hole. Gently, firmly, careful not to squish or tear it, you pull.
My Responses To Three Concerns From The Embryo Selection Post | Astral Codex Ten
9-minute read
Scott Alexander on why embryo selection is ethical
Fear and Trembling in the Garrison | The Point
9-minute read
What gives an otherwise abstract question such force is that in peace, soldiers must do hard things that only make sense in war. Late nights digging foxholes in the rain mere miles away from one’s own bed only make sense if there’s reason to think such habits will soon save a life. Long, infuriating hours fixing aged tanks only make sense if one expects to lurch toward battle in them. Lonely shifts guarding ammunition only make sense if one anticipates returning fire. It is easier to send a company to the field for training if its soldiers believe their lives will soon depend on what they learn. Without a war on, such work appears to many an exercise in pointlessness. Most persevere for a time if only out of professional discipline. But to reconcile themselves to their work, peacetime soldiers must hallucinate a war for want of one at hand or else live with the absurdity of playing war when there’s none to be had.
The Otherworldly Ambitions of R. F. Kuang | New Yorker
15-minute read
At the next table, undergraduates chatted at a distracting volume about Marxist theory, and, as they tried to outdo one another, I was reminded of the anxieties that drive “Katabasis.” Like “Babel,” Kuang’s new book can be classified in the genre of “dark academia,” a brooding, post-Hogwarts take on the campus novel which fetishizes Gothic architecture, houndstooth blazers, and dusty tomes. Even within these conventions, “Katabasis” has an extremely specific premise. It revolves around Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, two graduate students who venture to Hell to rescue their adviser Professor Grimes, who has recently died. He was a cruel mentor, yet they fear that they will never succeed on the job market without securing a letter of recommendation from him. The only way to make it to Hell without dying, though, is to master a series of logical paradoxes, and the rules governing this fictional underworld rely on both magic and a faint grasp of Plato and Aristotle.
“Katabasis” is an effective satire of academic life. But there are very basic questions that Alice, a brilliant thinker and a rabidly box-ticking student, faces—and they feel like some that Kuang is contemplating herself. “What burns inside you? What fuels your every action? What gives you a reason to get up in the morning?” When Alice’s adviser asks these questions, she doesn’t have any good answers.
Original link | Archive.is link
Moderation is good for its own sake | Noahpinion
8-minute read
This is an interesting technical debate, with some pretty high stakes. Winning elections is very important, as the consequences of Democrats’ defeats in 2016 and 2024 have made plain. But at the same time, we live in a representative democracy, and politicians aren’t perfect avatars of the popular will; they have a lot of leeway to make policy choices that are better or worse for their constituents. And they have a moral responsibility to help their constituents instead of hurting them.
Politics matters, but policy matters too.
And when it comes to policy, moderation tends to produce better results. This is because the effects of policy are highly uncertain; when you make big changes to the status quo, it’s a lot riskier than making small changes. Sometimes you need to take big risks — for example, in a war or other acute emergency, where the status quo will clearly lead to disaster in a short space of time. But most of the time, and along most dimensions, the world isn’t in an emergency, and so you should take risk into account.
[...]
An example was fervor for police defunding in 2020. A lot of progressives, including Kamala Harris, AOC, and Zohran Mamdani, called for deep cuts to police funding. But the balance of evidence strongly indicates that a robust police presence is very important for deterring crime.
Embryos small but mighty, first live videos show | NPR
2-minute read
For the first time, scientists have recorded a human embryo implanting into a womb in real time, a feat the researchers hope will lead to new ways to treat infertility and prevent miscarriages.
1 star
Rice, two curries and dal: The Indian cafes where you can pay in rubbish | BBC
5-minute read
Every day, hungry people arrive at this cafe in Ambikapur, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, in the hope of getting a hot meal. But they don't pay for their food with money – instead, they hand over bundles of plastic such as old carrier bags, food wrappers and water bottles.
People can trade a kilogram (2.2lb) of plastic waste for a full meal that includes rice, two vegetable curries, dal, roti, salad and pickles, says Vinod Kumar Patel, who runs the cafe on behalf of the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation (AMC), the public body which manages the city's infrastructure and services. "For half a kilogram of plastic, they get breakfast like samosas or vada pav."
Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane | Noahpinion
6-minute read
With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000.
So the death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America. If you think guns are an emergency in the U.S., you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency.
Most of this death is preventable. The technology that prevents it is air conditioning. Barreca et al. (2016) find that heat deaths in America declined by about 75% after 1960, and that “the diffusion of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in hot day–related fatalities”. Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it.
First-of-its-kind supernova reveals inner workings of a dying star | Northwestern
3-minute read
An international team of scientists, led by Northwestern University astrophysicists, has detected a never-before-seen type of exploding star, or supernova, that is rich with silicon, sulfur and argon.
Crude Materialism versus the Wolfers Equation | Bet On It
1-minute read
So if you currently earn $50,000, Wolfers’ coefficient implies you’d need an extra $820,585 per year to durably increase your happiness by one lousy standard deviation. In math, that’s not “zero effect of income on happiness.” But in English, it basically is.
Who gets into the best colleges and why? | Marginal Revolution
1-minute read
The three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success.
An alternative to LASIK — without the lasers | EurekAlert
1-minute read
But what if the cornea could be reshaped without the need for any incisions?
This is what Hill and collaborator Brian Wong are exploring through a process known as electromechanical reshaping (EMR). “The whole effect was discovered by accident,” explains Wong, a professor and surgeon at the University of California, Irvine. “I was looking at living tissues as moldable materials and discovered this whole process of chemical modification.”
Polycentric Status Contests | Marginal Revolution
1-minute read
The long-term equilibrium of rich societies may not be as peaceful as many assume if they become overrun by status competitions.
[...]
The model leads to surprisingly optimistic predictions: markets tend to fragment the worst kinds of positional goods into competing hierarchies of status, tend to dissipate and eliminate some positional goods, and tend to turn the most damaging status competitions into more beneficial prestige competitions.