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4 stars
Your Book Review: Cities And The Wealth Of Nations / The Question Of Separatism | Astral Codex Ten
Starts slow, is a bit wonky…but also completely changed how I see the world. For instance, while I’m still quite anti-Brexit, I am now more sympathetic to some Brexit arguments. Which I never thought I’d say…
The original sin of macroeconomics, Jacobs believe, is to treat sovereign countries, or nations, as the main unit of economic analysis. […]
If nations aren’t the best unit to analyze the economy, what is? This is a Jane Jacobs book, so the answer is obviously going to be cities. […]
So, [in 1980] Jacobs sees only decline for Montreal. And she thinks this means decline for Quebecois culture generally. Without a strong import-replacing city, Quebec will become a patchwork of supply regions, regions that workers abandon, or transplant economies, like the poverty-stricken Atlantic provinces in eastern Canada already are. Either the Quebecois resign themselves to this fate, she says, or they fight it — and the only true way to fight it is to declare independence.
As of the 1980 referendum, she thinks they should go for independence.
2 stars
$100 Million Gone in 27 Minutes | New York Magazine
After possibly the most expensive jewelry heist in U.S. history, Brink’s went after the victims.
Where China is beating the world | Noahpinion
Over the past two years I’ve written a lot of criticism of China’s economic policies. There were basically two reasons for that: First, China really did make a bunch of policy blunders during that time, and second, there was a narrative of Chinese economic infallibility in the late 2010s that needed correcting. Now I think that correction has largely been accomplished, and I see the possibility of an opposite narrative of Chinese economic incompetence taking hold. That would also be a mistake. The truth is that China has some serious weaknesses but also some amazing strengths, and we need to pay attention to both.
In fact, I think they’re connected. In his book China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know (which is excellent and which I heavily recommend), Arthur Kroeber offers a grand unified theory of the country’s economy — that it’s good at rapidly and effectively mobilizing lots of resources, but bad at using those resources in an optimally efficient way. So in the case of say, building too many apartments, or failed Belt and Road projects, or wasteful corporate subsidies, the lack of efficiency can really bite. But if we’re talking about building the world’s biggest high-speed rail system, or creating a world-beating car industry from scratch, or building massive amounts of green energy, then China’s resource-mobilizing approach can accomplish things on a scale no other country has ever accomplished before.
Google I/O and the Coming AI Battles | Stratechery
Some things in tech are shocking, but not surprising — think of a CEO of a struggling company losing their job. Sure, the news is unexpected, but it makes sense if you think about it. Other news, though, is shocking and surprising, and Google’s February keynote in Paris — which appeared to be a panicked response to Microsoft’s GPT-powered Bing announcement — was both.
The shocking part was just how poor the presentation was: there was very little content that was new, the slides and speakers were out of sync, and the nadir came when one of the presenters started a demo and only then realized they didn’t have a phone to demo with.
The surprise is that Google would be caught so far out of pocket about AI, and not just because AI would seem to be in Google’s sweet spot: in fact Google has been talking about AI at Google I/O in particular for years now, and I’ve consistently found the company’s framing of its work very impressive.
Unboxing a 400-Year-Old Copy of Shakespeare's First Folio | Kottke
The First Folio is a collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare that was published in 1623. One of the most influential books ever published, only about 230 copies are known to have survived. The Victoria and Albert Museum has three copies, and in this video, they lead the viewer on a tour through one of them.
Money Can’t Buy Happiness…Or Can It? | Of Dollars And Data
When Killingsworth and Kahneman realized they had a conflict in their results, they decided to dig deeper to reconcile their differences. The result was a paper released in March 2023 titled, “Income and emotional well-being: a conflict resolved.”
In their paper, they identified the primary reasons as to why Kahneman’s original paper found a leveling off effect in emotional well-being with higher income and why Killingsworth’s original paper didn’t.
Study Offers New Twist in How the First Humans Evolved | New York Times
A new genetic analysis of 290 people suggests that humans emerged at various times and places in Africa.
Risky Business | News Items
Mary’s latest looks into the Fed’s most recent Financial Stability Report and what it says about the solvency of the life insurance “industry.” One thing it says is: “over the past decade, the liquidity of life insurers’ assets steadily declined, and the liquidity of their liabilities slowly increased.” Another thing it says is: “Life insurers are growing more dependent on FHLB (Federal Home Loan Bank) funding.” Something about those two sentences seems….unsettling. Read what follows and see if you agree.
New study puts a definitive age on Saturn's rings: They're really young | PhysOrg
A new study led by physicist Sascha Kempf at the University of Colorado Boulder has delivered the strongest evidence yet that Saturn's rings are remarkably young—potentially answering a question that has boggled scientists for well over a century.
The research, published May 12 in the journal Science Advances, pegs the age of Saturn's rings at no more than 400 million years old.
1 star
The Greatest Classic Tetris Game of All Time | Kottke
In the finals of the Classic Tetris Mega Masters Championship held at the end of last month, two of the top Tetris players in the world played what is probably the greatest 1-vs-1 Classic Tetris game of all time. And then they did it again...
Even if you only have a passing interest in Tetris or video games, this is worth a watch and just as exciting as watching a hard-fought soccer or tennis match.
Fun fact: one of the finalists, Alex T, managed to score zero points in a match at a previous tournament.
Can the Shingles Vaccine Prevent Dementia? | Marginal Revolution
A new paper provides good evidence that the shingles vaccine can prevent dementia, which strongly suggests that some forms of dementia are caused by the varicella zoster virus (VZV), the virus that on initial infection causes chickenpox.
Secrets of Japan's TOP Hamburger Joint: American Handcrafted Burgers | YouTube
A fun / uplifting story:
Get ready to discover the secrets of Japan's top hamburger joint, known far and wide for its awesome American handcrafted burgers. The guy running the show is an American who grinds all his own meat and makes everything from scratch, right there in his Fukuoka shop. It's as authentic as you can get, like stepping into a burger spot right in the heart of America.
Liberals Are Persuading Themselves of a Debt Ceiling Plan That Won’t Work | New York Times
Ezra Klein:
The Supreme Court does what it wants to do. Does it want to let the Biden administration dissolve the debt ceiling using a novel legal theory?
How Precise Metal Machining Is Done | Kottke
I've always wondered about the process for making pieces of metal that appear to fit together perfectly, so perfectly that you can't see any sort of cut or seam. In this video, Steve Mould explains how wire EDM works, in part using cheese.
Starting from where you are | Overthinking Everything
Another, seemingly unrelated, problem is that seemingly half the people I know (including, to a large degree, myself) don’t know what they want to do with their life. This is unfortunate, as I’ve just turned 40 and many of them aren’t far behind, some of them are ahead. This feels like a point where you should have some idea of that.
In contrast, many people seem to have a very clear idea of what they want to do with their life. How can we be more like them?
Standard advice is that comparing yourself to other people like this, where you look at some positive trait of theirs and ask why you are not like that, is mostly a way to make yourself miserable and anxious, but many people seem to be able to compare themselves to other people just fine without becoming miserable and anxious. How can we be more like them?
I think in all of these cases the answer starts from the same place: Acknowledging that you are not, and being able to acknowledge that to others.
The way things come to be as they are is that they have evolved that way from the way things were. If you want them to be different, you can’t just force them to be different, instead you must incrementally, step by step, move things in the direction you want to go.