4 stars
My Life As a Homeless Man in America | Esquire
I’m parked in the public lot across from the beach, sitting in the front passenger seat, working on a novel. An SUV police cruiser pulls in front of me, parks close, at an angle, as if to block me from a would-be escape. This officer is a young blond woman in a bulletproof vest with a pistol strapped to her abdomen. She says, “We received some calls. People are concerned.”
“Yes?”
“They see you out here and are concerned.”
She doesn’t say who these “concerned” people are, but the only ones who can see me are the owners of large beachfront houses. Maybe they’re looking out their $3 million windows and seeing the consequences of their avarice.
“What are your plans for the day?” she says.
She’s trying to get me to move along, but the lot is open to the public from dawn to dusk. I have every right to be here.
“Write,” I say.
“What do you write?”
“Literary fiction. I was a reporter.”
“Anywhere I know?”
“The Boston Globe.”
[...]
Statistics vary by source, but last year there were a record-high 650,100 homeless people in the United States, many of them suffering mental illness and substance-abuse issues. Of course, most citizens suffering mental illness and substance-abuse issues are not homeless.
One of the primary causes of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. Many Americans are just one unexpected event away from losing their homes. For some, it’s a medical emergency; for others, a job loss or the breakdown of a relationship.
3 stars
The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians | WIRED
I know this is unconventional, but I’m going to start by telling you the ending. Or at least, the ending as it stands today. Most of the people involved in this story wind up either dead, maimed, spending months in a mental hospital, languishing in jail, or gone underground. It's a tragedy from almost any angle, especially because, at the outset, most of these people were idealists committed to doing as much good as possible in a world they saw as beset by existential threats. In spite of those aims, or perhaps in pursuit of them, over the course of this story their lives will devolve into senseless violence. And by the time we reach the present, six people will be killed, two others presumed dead by suicide, and at least two in hiding. Countless friends and family members will find themselves bereft. I feel it's only fair to warn you that, in this story, justice and redemption have so far proven hard to come by.
[...]
But just like the outputs produced by our current AI oracles, some of these narratives turn out to be rife with hallucinations: plausible-sounding visions of reality, but fabricated to fill the need for a greater meaning. The trouble, as I went along, was separating the truth from the delirium. I wasn't always sure that I could. To be honest, I'm still not. But here we are, and a story has to start somewhere.
Murder in the Blue Mountains | Toronto Life
Ashley and James Schwalm had what seemed like a fairy tale life—two wonderful children, fulfilling careers and a gorgeous home close to the private ski club where they’d fallen in love. Then Ashley’s remains turned up in a burned-out car at the bottom of a ditch, and all signs pointed to her husband.
AI Promise and Chip Precariousness | Stratechery
The problem is less the need for creative thinking and more the courage to make trade-offs: the fact of the matter is that there are no good solutions to the situation the U.S. has got itself into with regards to Taiwan and chips. That is a long-winded way to say that the following proposal includes several ideas that, in isolation, I find some combination of distasteful, against my principles, and even downright dangerous. So here goes.
[...]
The first thing the U.S. should do — and, by all means, make this a negotiating plank in a broader agreement with China — is let Chinese companies, including Huawei, make chips at TSMC, and further, let Chinese companies buy top-of-the-line Nvidia chips.
The Shape of a Mars Mission | Idle Words
“From a mathematics and trajectory standpoint and with a certain kind of technology, there’s not too many different ways to go to Mars. It’s been pretty well figured out. You can adjust the decimal places here and there, but basically if you're talking about chemical rockets, there's a certain way you're going to go to Mars.” - John Aaron
Unlike the Moon, which hangs in the sky like a lonely grandparent waiting for someone to visit, Mars leads a rich orbital life of its own and is not always around to entertain the itinerant astronaut. There is just one brief window every 26 months when travel between our two planets is feasible, and this constraint of orbital mechanics is so fundamental that we’ve known since Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic what a mission to Mars must look like.
[...]
Before comparing the merits of each, it’s worth stressing what they have in common—both are long, more than double the absolute record for space flight (438 days), five times longer than anyone has remained in space without resupply (128 days), and about ten times humanity’s accumulated time beyond low Earth orbit (82 days). It is this inconvenient length, more than any technical obstacle, that has kept us from going to Mars since rockets capable of making the trip first became available in the 1960's.
And because this length is set by the relative motions of the planets, it’s resistant to attack by technology.
Tyler Cowen, the man who wants to know everything | The Economist
Yet among acolytes, Cowen is famous not for a single theory but for the broad scope of his intellect. Put simply, he seems to know something about everything: machine learning, Icelandic sagas and where to eat in Bergen, Norway. “You can have a specific and detailed discussion with him about 17th-century Irish economic thinkers, or trends in African music, or the history of nominal GDP targeting,” said Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, an online-payments company. “I don’t know anyone who can engage in so many domains at the depth that he does.”
REVIEW: Imperial China, by F.W. Mote | Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf
One of the very first reviews I wrote here was of James Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed. That book is about the peoples who inhabit the rugged and hilly region of Southeast Asia known as Zomia, centered around the border between China and Laos. Scott is interested in the practices employed by the “barbarians” — the hill people — to resist domination by the much more numerous and organized “civilized” people living around them. He argues that many of the negative associations we have with barbarism — illiteracy, itinerancy, cousin marriage, religious messianism, and so on — are actually either deliberately adopted or emerge out of a process of cultural evolution that’s optimizing for ungovernability.
Zomia was an effective refuge from the state (in fact it still is — Dan Wang has a beautiful essay about fleeing to the exact same area to escape China’s zero-COVID policies). But what really stuck in my head from Scott’s book was the idea that barbarism is mostly a state of mind and a set of social practices and habits that could be employed anywhere. To be a barbarian is just to recognize that the world is full of forces vastly more powerful than you and coldly indifferent to your survival, be they criminal gangs, nation states, multinational corporations, fanatical social movements, artificial intelligences, or plain old egregores.
America is being sold out by its leaders | Noahpinion
Lindbergh-ism — a voluntary retreat to the Western hemisphere — might seem like a way of appeasing the Chinese, at the same time that it allows America’s new rightist leaders to focus all of their energies on Metternichian internal struggles. Part of that idea is to divide the world into three spheres of influence, controlled by three authoritarian conservative powers — China as the ruler of Asia, Russia as the ruler of Europe, and America as the ruler of the Western Hemisphere. That certainly fits with Trump’s suddenly bellicose statements toward Canada and other nearby countries. That’s what I call the Metternich-Lindbergh theory of Trump’s sudden rush to accommodate America’s foreign rivals. It’s basically an early surrender in Cold War 2, but Trump, Musk, & co. may see it as their only option for preserving their vision of Western civilization.
2 stars
Yes, Shrimp Matter | Asterisk Magazine
I left private equity to work on shrimp welfare. When I tell anyone this, they usually think I've lost my mind. I know the feeling — I’ve been there. When I first read Charity Entrepreneurship's proposal for a shrimp welfare charity, I thought: “Effective altruists have gone mad — who cares about shrimp?” The transition from analyzing real estate deals to advocating for some of the smallest animals in our food system feels counterintuitive, to say the least. But it was the same muscle I used converting derelict office buildings into luxury hotels that allowed me to appreciate an enormous opportunity overlooked by almost everyone, including those in the animal welfare space. I still spend my days analyzing returns (though they’re now measured in suffering averted). I still work to identify mutual opportunities with industry partners. Perhaps most importantly, I still view it as paramount to build trust with people who — initially — sit on opposite sides of the table. After years of practicing my response to the inevitable raised eyebrows, I now sum it up simply: ignoring shrimp welfare would have been both negligent and reckless.
[...]
Shrimp’s nervous system, behavior, and estimated welfare capacity all point toward meaningful sentience. The fact that they haven't been studied as extensively as some other animals should not blind us to the evidence we do have, nor to their evident similarities with better-studied relatives.
On the Origin of the Pork Taboo | Archaeology Magazine
Pork accounts for more than a third of the world’s meat, making pigs among the planet’s most widely consumed animals. They are also widely reviled: For about two billion people, eating pork is explicitly prohibited. The Hebrew Bible and the Islamic Koran both forbid adherents from eating pig flesh, and this ban is one of humanity’s most deeply entrenched dietary restrictions. For centuries, scholars have struggled to find a satisfying explanation for this widespread taboo. “There are an amazing number of misconceptions people continue to have about pigs,” says archaeologist Max Price of Durham University, who is among a small group of scholars scouring both modern excavation reports and ancient tablets for clues about the rise and fall of pork consumption in the ancient Near East. “That makes this research both frustrating and fascinating.”
Among the most surprising finds is that the inhabitants of the earliest cities of the Bronze Age (3500–1200 b.c.) were enthusiastic pig eaters, and that even later Iron Age (1200–586 b.c.) residents of Jerusalem enjoyed the occasional pork feast. Yet despite a wealth of data and new techniques including ancient DNA analysis, archaeologists still wrestle with many porcine mysteries, including why the once plentiful animal gradually became scarce long before religious taboos were enacted.
Why Japan Succeeds Despite Stagnation | Uncharted Territories
For more than three decades, Japan has endured near complete economic stagnation. Since 2000, Japan’s total output has grown by only $200B. That’s less additional output than Nigeria, Pakistan, and Chile, even though they all started from much lower bases, and only around a fifth of South Korea’s growth over the same period. But despite severe economic stagnation, Japan is still a desirable place to live and work. The major costs of living, like housing, energy, and transportation are not particularly expensive compared to other highly-developed countries. Infrastructure in Japan is clean, functional, and regularly expanded. There is very little crime or disorder, and almost zero open drug use or homelessness. Compared to a peer country like Britain, whose economic stagnation over the past 30 years has been less severe, Japan seems to enjoy a higher quality of life.
10 Observations About Tokyo | Persuasion
Tokyo is hyper-dense but not crowded. Even in the very center of town where we live—Nihonbashi—Manhattan-level density feels placid. The streets around our apartment are bordered by high rises and see plenty of foot traffic, but they always feel calm. The visual stereotype of white-gloved subway officials shoving commuters into hyper-crowded rail cars is two decades out of date: massive investment in new subway lines put an end to that years ago. Aside from a relatively small number of mega train stations, tourist hotspots and nightlife areas, Tokyo is calm.
[...]
Living here radicalizes you. Transit-centered hyper-density is just a smarter, more convenient, objectively better way to build a city than the car-choked messes we insist on in North America.
[...]
In the West, if you want to put someone at ease, you affect a plain, informal manner. Speak a little bit too politely and you come across as stiff, which turns the vibe frosty. In Japan, it works in exactly the opposite way. Polite language projects warmth and creates psychological comfort. Outside an intimate family setting, informal Japanese comes across as quite aggressive: it ends up hindering intimacy instead of enabling it. The hardest part of learning the language isn’t the language itself—though that’s quite hard, of course—but learning how to project warmth through politeness. I’m still bad at this.
To people in the West, Japan’s uncompromising insistence on prosocial behavior can come across as quite oppressive. The Japanese people I talk to don’t experience it that way. Quite the opposite. They can’t imagine how people elsewhere manage to get along without it. Or why they might want to try. In Japan, social interaction is very rarely ambiguous: what is expected of you is always explicit, always clear. My kids report that fitting in at school turned out to be strangely straightforward: there’s always a script. They just have to follow it. This is the opposite of stressful. You rarely have to think. Just follow the norm and you’re safe.
History’s Largest & Most Famous Disability Access Ramp | Ex Urbe
Florence’s Medici had a family curse: an agonizing hereditary medical condition causing torturous joint pain and severe mobility restrictions, so it was agony to stand, walk, or even hold a pen. Yes, Renaissance Florence, cradle of the Renaissance, was run by disabled people from a sickbed. The famous Cosimo had to have servants carry him through his own home, and used to shout every time they neared a doorway. When asked, “Why do you shout before we go through a doorway?” He answered “Because if I shout after you slam my head into the stone lintel it doesn’t help.”
[...]
Eventually, the Medici built a ramp. This ramp. It connects from the floor where the priori were, passes through the bureaucratic offices and all-important guild HQs, sloping at an easy grade down to the living-quarters level of the family palace. The long interior descends at a gentle grade with minimal turns and staircases, mostly stair that a horse can climb—horse ramps and riding horses or donkeys indoors at a walk was another proto-wheelchair disability tool, one architecture had to plan for with things like horse stairs.
Zelensky Has Behaved Honorably. He Should Now Resign. | Richard Hanania's Newsletter
An interesting take, even if I don’t agree:
Zelensky needed to get Trump to agree to continue providing military, diplomatic, and financial support to Ukraine. By now, we know that arguments based in morality or maintaining the rules based international order do not work on Trump. What works is flattery and appealing to his vanity and sense of self-interest.
The minerals deal looked like it was a brilliant way to get Trump to support Ukraine through a logic that appealed to him. Trump wants to be seen as competent and tough, and also a guy who is good at “making deals.” He likes comparing himself favorably to other American leaders. The Ukrainians and hawks within the US like Lindsey Graham decided that they could get Trump to support the Zelensky government by encouraging him to sign an agreement that appealed to naked self-interest. The idea that the minerals deal was going to be a positive-sum proposition for the US from a financial perspective never made much sense. The agreement didn’t even apply to current Ukrainian sources of revenue, and any future president could rework the deal more to the advantage of Kiev, as any Democrat certainly would have. But this reality didn’t matter. Trump could now tell himself and the world that we were “getting something” out of our support for Ukraine. And since ideas like Pax Americana or protecting international norms are too abstract for MAGA brains, this is what the deal had to look like.
1 star
Thutmose II: Last undiscovered tomb of Tutankhamun dynasty found | BBC News
Archaeologists have found the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, which included the famous pharaoh Tutankhamun. The uncovering of King Thutmose II's tomb marks the first time a pharaoh's tomb has been found by a British-led excavation since Tutankhamun's was found over a century ago. The British-Egyptian team located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th dynasty pharaohs were more than 2km away, closer to the Valley of the Kings. The crew found it in an area associated with the resting places of royal women, but when they got into the burial chamber they found it to be decorated - the sign of a pharaoh.
"Part of the ceiling was still intact: a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in kings' tombs," said the field director of the mission Piers Litherland. He told the BBC's Newshour programme he felt overwhelmed in the moment. "The emotion of getting into these things is just one of extraordinary bewilderment because when you come across something you're not expecting to find, it's emotionally extremely turbulent really," he said.
Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow | Marginal Revolution
Due to the Baumol-Bowen cost disease, less productive sectors tend to become a larger share of the economy over time. This already has been happening since the American economy originated. A big chunk of current gdp already is slow to respond, highly inefficient, governmental or government-subsidized sectors. They just won’t adopt AI, or use it effectively, all that quickly. As I said to an AI guy a few days ago “The way I can convince you is to have you sit in on a Faculty Senate meeting.” And the more effiicient AI becomes, the more this trend is likely to continue, which slows the prospective measured growth gains from AI.
Human bottlenecks become more important, the more productive is AI. Let’s say AI increases the rate of good pharma ideas by 10x. Well, until the FDA gets its act together, the relevant constraint is the rate of drug approval, not the rate of drug discovery.
Personality traits and gender gaps | Marginal Revolution
Higher conscientiousness and emotional stability and lower agreeableness levels enhance earnings and job stability for both genders. Differences in the distributions of personality characteristics between men and women account for as much of the gender wage gap as do the large differences in labor market experience.