Bookmarks (2285)

1. An unusual and indeed very positive book review, of a book about China. 2. South Africa reinstates alcohol ban. 3. Smart piece on why cancel culture is not so bad today, the reader who sent it in insisted that I not mention/thank him by name. 4. Tokyo, 1913-1915, footage. 5. Celine Halioua on tech […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I will be doing a Conversation with him, based in part on his new forthcoming book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger.  While I have not yet read it, I strongly expect it will be excellent. And to be clear, this will be the conversation with Matt I want to have, not the […] The post What should I ask Matt Yglesias? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

According to a research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to […] The post Another attempt to address the Fermi paradox — aestivation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

It might be the next best thing to a coronavirus vaccine. Scientists have devised a way to use the antibody-rich blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors for an upper-arm injection that they say could inoculate people against the virus for months. Using technology that’s been proven effective in preventing other diseases such as hepatitis A, the […] The post Our regulatory state is failing us, antibodies edition appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  I suggest it will take three major forms, namely anti-China, pro-internet as a communications medium (as an offset to left-wing media), and dislike of the Left, most of all the latter.  Note these are predictions rather than normative claims about what should happen.  Here is one […] The post What is the future of the intellectual right? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam when filled will have capacity to hold 74bn cubic metres of water, more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile. Makes Egypt nervous about water supply in a drought. That is from Adam Tooze. The post Ethiopia dam fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: Some of the very worst treatment of the vulnerable is hardly being discussed. There is an entire category of American adults being denied almost all of their basic legal rights: to hold a job, choose a residence, determine their health care, enter […] The post Too many autistic adults are denied basic rights appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I won’t add extra formatting, here goes (and here is my original post): “Nice point about a Straussian reading of the free speech letter, and the general constraints of working in groups…But I have this worry about your post. I am not myself a Straussian, but I will express the point as a way of […] The post Philosopher J. emails me about free speech and Straussianism appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. What the auction listing for a campus looks like. 2. As fewer kids played football, hospitals saw a big drop in ER visits. 3. Polite explanations of why so many professional athletes test positive for coronavirus (NYT).  Why can’t they just come out and write the likely truth about multiple sex partners? 4. Response […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

One of the most confounding aspects of the pandemic has been Congress’s unwillingness or inability to spend to fight the virus. As I said in the LA Times: If an invader rained missiles down on cities across the United States killing thousands of people, we would fight back. Yet despite spending trillions on unemployment insurance […] The post Fight the Virus! Please. appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

It used to be called The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, but the later title was Return on the Primitive.  It was published in 1971, but sometimes drawn from slightly earlier essays.  I wondered if a revisit might shed light on the current day, and here is what I learned: 1. “The New Left is […] The post Rereading Ayn Rand on the New Left appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

In the United States that is, link here, from Lyman Stone, photo here: In other words, lockdown and shelter at home have limited some of the otherwise risky activities that young people engage in. Excess deaths more generally seem to have reached a normal range, albeit at the upper end of that range: I wouldn’t […] The post Excess deaths are down — below average — for those younger than eighteen appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

You know, turkeys sound a lot like aliens, if you just name them part by part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_(bird)#Anatomy “Anatomical structures on the head and throat of a domestic turkey. 1. Caruncles, 2. Snood, 3. Wattle (Dewlap), 4. Major caruncle, 5. Beard” That is from Jackson Stone. The post Claims about turkeys appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The period from the 1870s to the start of the First World War saw a steep rise in working-class living standards in Britain, much of it underpinned by a vast array of cheap imported foods. Thanks to new refrigerated steamships and a growing railway network, such items as butter, eggs and meat could be transported […] The post The arrival of cheap food in England appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that nearly half of Oklahoma falls within an Indian reservation, a decision that could reshape the criminal-justice system by preventing state authorities from prosecuting offenses there that involve Native Americans. The 5-to-4 decision, potentially one of the most consequential legal victories for Native Americans in decades, could have far-reaching […] The post The polity that is Oklahoma appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The post The New Yorker covers the Scott Alexander saga appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Thor Heyderdahl vindicated (NYT). 2. Just a bit more distancing and Sweden suddenly fell to 17 deaths per week? 3. Heterogeneities in who is most vulnerable, amazing data set (NYT).  Original research is here. 4. Ross Douthat thread on free speech and coalitions. 5. They are solving for the equilibrium: “NYPD limits retirement applications […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Tyler and I have been pushing pooled testing for months. The primary benefit of pooled testing is obvious. If 1% are infected and we test 100 people individually we need 100 tests. If we split the group into five pools of twenty then if we’re lucky, we only need five tests. Of course, chances are […] The post Pooled Testing is Super-Beneficial appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I won’t indent further, all the rest is from the reader: “Some thoughts on your heterogeneity post. I agree this is still bafflingly under-discussed in “the discourse” & people are grasping onto policy arguments but ignoring the medical/bio aspects since ignorance of those is higher. Nobody knows the answer right now, obviously, but I did […] The post A highly qualified reader emails me on heterogeneity appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Many of you have been asking for a more detailed account of what I think.  Here is an NYT summary of the debate, in case you have been living under a rock.  Of course I side with those who signed the letter, but I would add a few points. First, I don’t think the letter […] The post The Harpers free speech letter and controversy appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. “Prisoners have long used contraband cellphones to pull off all manner of scams from the inside. But in attempting to build and sell a house from behind bars, Murray allegedly took things to a new level of sophistication.”  Link here, recommended. 2. Charlie Songhurst is one of the smartest people I know.  Podcast with him, recommended. […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Cases in the Nordic country have declined sharply over the past few days and on Tuesday only 283 new cases were recorded. That contrasts with a torrid month of June when daily numbers ran as high as 1,800, eclipsing rates across much of Europe, even as deaths and hospitalisations continued to decline from peaks in […] The post Sweden fact of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Older people are less pessimistic about the health risks of Covid-19. 2. “…these results document that voting rights, when combined with elected, rather than appointed, chief law enforcement officers, can lead to improved treatment of minority groups by police.” 3. “We find that opposing effects of patience (positive) and risk-taking (negative) together account for […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Health officials praise Laos after coronavirus-free declaration (some new concerns here, so far nothing major) Cambodia has zero reported deaths, broadly consistent with anecdotal evidence too. Vietnam reports 14 new cases, all imported.  Broader record of zero deaths. No new Covid cases in Thailand Tuesday. Have you noticed that those four countries are right next […] The post Southeast Asia coronavirus update appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Harvard will be teaching solely on-line this fall (with some students in residence), yet charging full tuition rates.  Many commentators are thus suggesting this supplies evidence for the signaling theory of education. But not exactly.  The signaling theory, taken quite literally, is that education is a very difficult set of hurdles to surmount, and if […] The post Signaling vs. certification at Harvard appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The subtitle is How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. I agree with the author’s claim that climate change is not an existential risk for humanity.  Still, both the title and subtitle bother me.  The alarm does not seem to be a false one, even if […] The post *False Alarm*, the new book by Bjorn Lomborg appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Fast-tracking your smart kid does not make them less happy, either short run or long run. 2. How to get people to wear masks/condoms. 3. “HIV-positive patients receiving TDF/FTC have a lower risk for COVID-19 and related hospitalization than those receiving other therapies.”  And quick survey on RNA vaccines. 4. “Anxieties surrounding Chinese interference […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

On my recent trip to India, just before the world went into lockdown and disarray, Shruti Rajagopalan and I visited Amit Varma’s studio in Delhi to record an episode of his podcast, The Seen and the Unseen. Our paper, Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State served as the jumping off point but we discussed a […] The post The Seen and Unseen: Rajagopalan and Tabarrok appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea.  Yes compelling, and a sufficiently influential book that you should read it.  But aren’t you ever tempted to ask: has anyone ever behaved like that? 2. Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History.  An elegantly written book, offering an optimistic take on human nature […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to […] The post Signaling virtuous victimhood as indicators of Dark Triad personalities appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

It is “crystal clear” drunk people can’t – or won’t – socially distance, a police chief has warned after scenes showed huge crowds packed into Soho in central London. John Apter, chair of the Police Federation, said he witnessed “naked men, happy drunks, angry drunks, fights and more angry drunks” while on shift in Southampton […] The post Alcohol is again the culprit appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. “Belgium was the worst-hit country per capita in Europe. They did systematic testing for #SARSCoV2 in long-term care facilities, just reported…o symptoms were reported in 6,244 *(74.8%)* of 8,343 people who tested positive”  Link here. 2. Scott Sumner on Joseph Conrad. 3. “On a per-capita basis, of the European majors only Germany has done […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

…Big Five Conscientiousness was not found to correlate with mask wearing in a sample of thousands in Spain during the coronavirus epidemic (Barceló & Sheen, 2020). This was not treated by the authors as any kind of falsification of the Big Five, or even evidence against it. The abstract noun “conscientiousness” has a rich meaning, […] The post On some limitations of personality psychology appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Didn’t Mises insist on that proposition in his Theory of Money and Credit?  The claim always bugged me, as it is true only tautologically.  Here is one counterexample: In a remote area of Papua’s Pegunungan Bintang regency, purchasing staple commodities will put a far bigger dent in your wallet than in most other areas of Indonesia. […] The post “The purchasing power of money is the same everywhere” appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

There’s only one problem: An increasing number of players do not seem very interested in being guinea pigs in this experiment. At first the secessions were a trickle. Now they are picking up steam. Davis Bertrans, arguably the second-best active player on my home team the Washington Wizards, will not play because he doesn’t want […] The post The NBA’s reopening is a warning sign appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Atlantis? 2. Podcast with Mary Hirschfeld on Christian economics, and with transcript. 3. What Scott Sumner has been watching. 4. The Sisyphean cycle of technology panics. 5. The 25 best movies of 2020? The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

When Thomas Jefferson included a passage attacking slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence it initiated the most intense debate among the delegates gathered at Philadelphia in the spring and early  summer of 1776.  Jefferson’s passage on slavery was the most important section removed from the final document.  It was replaced with a […] The post The Deleted Clause of the Declaration of Independence appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I went there once, I think in 1988.  To me it was a nightmare, aesthetically and otherwise.  The art of the monument was “not even as good as fascism.”  (Various Soviet-era memorials are far superior as well.)  I am not into the whole cancelling thing, but I didn’t feel I needed to pay additional homage […] The post The merit of Mount Rushmore appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

By the time someone gets to be chief executive of a successful firm, they have generally been trained out of saying anything surprising in public. So I was positively astonished Monday when I saw Patrick Collison, the CEO of payments firm Stripe, tweet that “As a US business (and tech) community I think we should be significantly […] The post Megan McArdle on Patrick Collison on China appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Here is the excellent Bartley Madden interviewed on the FDA and Free To Choose Medicine. See also Bart’s rejoinder to a critique of Free To Choose Medicine in Japan published in Science. The post Madden on the FDA appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

I will be doing a Conversation with him, so what should I ask?  Here is part of his official bio: Nicholas (Nick) Bloom is the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow of SIEPR, and the Co-Director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. […] The post What should I ask Nicholas Bloom? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

…BMW is planning to move some features of its new cars to a subscription model, something it announced on Wednesday during a briefing for the press on the company’s digital plans. …now the Bavarian carmaker has plans to apply that model to features like heated seats. BMW says that owners can “benefit in advance from […] The post Deconvexifying the car, car feature markets in everything appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. Profile of Nathan Tankus.  And Clockwork Orange review. 2. The growing influence of Sci-hub. 3. Somerville, Mass. recognizes polyamory (NYT). 4. France bans Dutch bike TV ad for creating ‘climate of fear’ about cars.  “The French advertising code prohibits the exploitation of fear and suffering in commercials.” 5. “…a novel song sung by white-throated […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

One of my favorite countries, this is from the newspaper: DESPERATE to get his taxi badge, a man bought a $500 used typewriter and donated it to the Licensing Office… The seller, who asked not to be named, wrote: “So funny story. I had a typewriter for sale on Facebook marketplace for some time. I […] The post Tales from Trinidad barter markets in everything appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Why not internalize the relevant externalities by bringing the two together?: We estimate the benefit of life-extending medical treatments to life insurance companies. Our main insight is that life insurance companies have a direct benefit from such treatments because they lower the insurer’s liabilities by pushing the death benefit further into the future and raising […] The post Combining life insurance and health insurance appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

It seems the virus mutated in Europe and became significantly more contagious (though not more dangerous per unit dose): The Spike D614G amino acid change is caused by an A-to-G nucleotide mutation at position 23,403 in the Wuhan reference strain; it was the only site identified in our first Spike variation analysis in early March […] The post New evidence that amino acid mutations matter for contagiousness appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

1. A massive star has disappeared without a trace. 2. The Roy and Paul Romer WSJ “keep our schools open and test” ad.  Yet the CDC recommends against entry testing for higher education, see these Bergstrom tweets.  Deeply irresponsible. 3. The culture that was Finland — until now! 4. Alabama students are throwing Covid parties. […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

They are reopening campus for the coming semester and here is one reason why: …the finding from Cornell researchers that holding the semester online potentially could result in more infections and more hospitalizations among students and staff members than holding the semester in person would. A study by Cornell researchers concluded that with nominal parameters, an in-person […] The post Cornell understands the equilibrium appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Here is the transcript and audio, here is the opening summary: Annie joined Tyler to explore how payoffs aren’t always monetary, the benefits and costs of probabilistic thinking, the “magical thinking” behind why people buy fire insurance but usually don’t get prenups, the psychology behind betting on shark migrations, how her most famous linguistics paper […] The post My Conversation with Annie Duke appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and here is part of the explanation: The danger lies in the potential for ratchet effects. If hardly anyone is eating out or going to bars, you might be able to endure the deprivation. But once others have started doing something, you will probably feel compelled […] The post Why American lockdown exceptionalism? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.