I am not going to repeat the news. But man, things are really, really bad and getting worse in America. It’s all so unendingly stupid and evil. The tech industry is being horrible, too. Wishing strength to the people who are much more exposed to the chaos than I am.
A Confederacy of Dunces was such a perfect novel. It was pure escapism, over-the-top comedy, and such an unusual artifact, that was sadly only appreciated posthumously.
Very earnestly I believe that despite greater access to power and resources, the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a man” is much smaller than the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a woman.”
This article on the distinction between patriarchy and men was an interesting read. With the whole… politics out there, it’s easy to go off the rails with any discussion about men and women and whether either have it easy or hard. The same author wrote this good article about declining male enrollment in college. I think both are worth a read.
Whenever I read this kind of article, I’m reminded of how limited and mostly fortunate my own experience is. There’s a big difference, I think, in how vigorously you have to perform your gender in some red state where everyone owns a pickup truck, versus a major city where the roles are a little more fluid. Plus, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have a lot of friends and genuine open conversations about feelings with other men. I wish that was the norm!
David Lynch was so great. We watched his film Lost Highway a few days after he passed, and it was even better than I had remembered it.
Norm Macdonald’s extremely long jokes on late-night talk shows have been getting me through the days.
This song by the The Hard Quartet – a supergroup of Emmett Kelly, Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Matt Sweeney and Jim White. It’s such a loving, tender bit of nonsense, very golden-age Pavement. They also have this nice chill song:
I came across this SML album via Hearing Things, which has been highlighting a lot of good music.
It’s a pretty good time for these independent high-quality art websites. Colossal has done the same for the art world and highlights good new art: I really want to make it out to see the Nick Cave (not the musician) art show while it’s in New York.
There’s a lot of chatter in the media that software developers will soon lose their jobs to AI. I don’t buy it.
It is not the end of programming. It is the end of programming as we know it today. That is not new. The first programmers connected physical circuits to perform each calculation. They were succeeded by programmers writing machine instructions as binary code to be input one bit at a time by flipping switches on the front of a computer. Assembly language programming then put an end to that. It lets a programmer use a human-like language to tell the computer to move data to locations in memory and perform calculations on it. Then, development of even higher-level compiled languages like Fortran, COBOL, and their successors C, C++, and Java meant that most programmers no longer wrote assembly code. Instead, they could express their wishes to the computer using higher level abstractions.
Eventually, interpreted languages, which are much easier to debug, became the norm.
BASIC, one of the first of these to hit the big time, was at first seen as a toy, but soon proved to be the wave of the future. Programming became accessible to kids and garage entrepreneurs, not just the back office priesthood at large companies and government agencies.
Consumer operating systems were also a big part of the story. In the early days of the personal computer, every computer manufacturer needed software engineers who could write low-level drivers that performed the work of reading and writing to memory boards, hard disks, and peripherals such as modems and printers. Windows put an end to that. It didn’t just succeed because it provided a graphical user interface that made it far easier for untrained individuals to use computers. It also provided what Marc Andreessen, whose company Netscape was about to be steamrollered by Microsoft, dismissively (and wrongly) called “just a bag of drivers.” That bag of drivers, fronted by the Win32 APIs, meant that programmers no longer needed to write low-level code to control the machine. That job was effectively encapsulated in the operating system. Windows and macOS, and for mobile, iOS and Android, mean that today, most programmers no longer need to know much of what earlier generations of programmers knew.
This was far from the end of programming, though. There were more programmers than ever. Users in the hundreds of millions consumed the fruits of their creativity. In a classic demonstration of elasticity of demand, as software was easier to create, its price fell, allowing developers to create solutions that more people were willing to pay for.
The web was another “end of programming.” Suddenly, the user interface was made up of human-readable documents, shown in a browser with links that could in turn call programs on remote servers. Anyone could build a simple “application” with minimal programming skill. “No code” became a buzzword. Soon enough, everyone needed a website. Tools like WordPress made it possible for nonprogrammers to create those websites without coding. Yet as the technology grew in capability, successful websites became more and more complex. There was an increasing separation between “frontend” and “backend” programming. New interpreted programming languages like Python and JavaScript became dominant. Mobile devices added a new, ubiquitous front end, requiring new skills. And once again, the complexity was hidden behind frameworks, function libraries, and APIs that insulated programmers from having to know as much about the low level functionality that it was essential for them to learn only a few years before.
Big data, web services, and cloud computing established a kind of “internet operating system.” Services like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Stripe made it possible to do formerly difficult, high-stakes enterprise tasks like taking payments with minimal programming expertise. All kinds of deep and powerful functionality was made available via simple APIs. Yet this explosion of internet sites and the network protocols and APIs connecting them ended up creating the need for more programmers.
Programmers were no longer building static software artifacts updated every couple of years but continuously developing, integrating, and maintaining long-lived services. Even more importantly, much of the work at these vast services, like Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, was automated at vast scale. Programs were designed and built by humans, not AI, but much of the work itself was done by special-purpose predecessors to today’s general purpose AIs. The workers that do the bulk of the heavy lifting at these companies are already programs. The human programmers are their managers. There are now hundreds of thousands of programmers doing this kind of supervisory work. They are already living in a world where the job is creating and managing digital co-workers.
In each of these waves, old skills became obsolescent—still useful but no longer essential—and new ones became the key to success. There are still a few programmers who write compilers, thousands who write popular JavaScript frameworks and Python libraries, but tens of millions who write web and mobile applications and the backend software that enables them. Billions of users consume what they produce.
Suddenly, though, it is seemingly possible for a nonprogrammer to simply talk to an LLM or specialized software agent in plain English (or the human language of your choice) and get back a useful prototype in Python (or the programming language of your choice). There’s even a new buzzword for this: CHOP, or “chat-oriented programming.” The rise of advanced reasoning models is beginning to demonstrate AI that can generate even complex programs with a high-level prompt explaining the task to be accomplished. As a result, there are a lot of people saying “this time is different,” that AI will completely replace most human programmers, and in fact, most knowledge workers. They say we face a wave of pervasive human unemployment.
I still don’t buy it. When there’s a breakthrough that puts advanced computing power into the hands of a far larger group of people, yes, ordinary people can do things that were once the domain of highly trained specialists. But that same breakthrough also enables new kinds of services and demand for those services. It creates new sources of deep magic that only a few understand.
The magic that’s coming now is the most powerful yet. And that means that we’re beginning a profound period of exploration and creativity, trying to understand how to make that magic work and to derive new advantages from its power. Smart developers who adopt the technology will be in demand because they can do so much more, focusing on the higher-level creativity that adds value.
AI will not replace programmers, but it will transform their jobs. Eventually much of what programmers do today may be as obsolete (for everyone but embedded system programmers) as the old skill of debugging with an oscilloscope. Master programmer and prescient tech observer Steve Yegge observes that it is not junior and mid-level programmers who will be replaced but those who cling to the past rather than embracing the new programming tools and paradigms. Those who acquire or invent the new skills will be in high demand. Junior developers who master the tools of AI will be able to outperform senior programmers who don’t. Yegge calls it “The Death of the Stubborn Developer.”
My ideas are shaped not only by my own past 40+ years of experience in the computer industry and the observations of developers like Yegge but also by the work of economic historian James Bessen, who studied how the first Industrial Revolution played out in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts during the early 1800s. As skilled crafters were replaced by machines operated by “unskilled” labor, human wages were indeed depressed. But Bessen noticed something peculiar by comparing the wage records of workers in the new industrial mills with those of the former home-based crafters. It took just about as long for an apprentice craftsman to reach the full wages of a skilled journeyman as it did for one of the new entry-level unskilled factory workers to reach full pay and productivity. The workers in both regimes were actually skilled workers. But they had different kinds of skills.
There were two big reasons, Bessen found, why wages remained flat or depressed for most of the first 50 years of the Industrial Revolution before taking off and leading to a widespread increase of prosperity. The first was that the factory owners hoarded the benefits of the new productivity rather than sharing it with workers. But the second was that the largest productivity gains took decades to arrive because the knowledge of how best to use the new technology wasn’t yet widely dispersed. It took decades for inventors to make the machines more robust, for those using them to come up with new kinds of workflows to make them more effective, to create new kinds of products that could be made with them, for a wider range of businesses to adopt the new technologies, and for workers to acquire the necessary skills to take advantage of them. Workers needed new skills not only to use the machines but to repair them, to improve them, to invent the future that they implied but had not yet made fully possible. All of this happens through a process that Bessen calls “learning by doing.”
It’s not enough for a few individuals to be ahead of the curve in adopting the new skills. Bessen explains that “what matters to a mill, an industry, and to society generally is not how long it takes to train an individual worker but what it takes to create a stable, trained workforce” (Learning by Doing, 36). Today, every company that is going to be touched by this revolution (which is to say, every company) needs to put its shoulder to the wheel. We need an AI-literate workforce. What is programming, after all, but the way that humans get computers to do our bidding? The fact that “programming” is getting closer and closer to human language, that our machines can understand us rather than us having to speak to them in their native tongue of 0s and 1s, or some specialized programming language pidgin, should be cause for celebration.
People will be creating, using, and refining more programs, and new industries will be born to manage and build on what we create. Lessons from history tell us that when automation makes it cheaper and easier to deliver products that people want or need, increases in demand often lead to increases in employment. It is only when demand is satisfied that employment begins to fall. We are far from that point when it comes to programming.
Not unsurprisingly, Wharton School professor and AI evangelist Ethan Mollick is also a fan of Bessen’s work. This is why he argues so compellingly to “always bring AI to the table,” to involve it in every aspect of your job, and to explore “the jagged edge” of what works and what doesn’t. It is also why he urges companies to use AI to empower their workers, not to replace them. There is so much to learn about how to apply the new technology. Businesses’ best source of applied R&D is the explorations of the people you have, as they use AI to solve their problems and seek out new opportunities.
Sam Schillace, one of the deputy CTOs at Microsoft, agreed with my analysis. In a recent conversation, he told me, “We’re in the middle of inventing a new programming paradigm around AI systems. When we went from the desktop into the internet era, everything in the stack changed, even though all the levels of the stack were the same. We still have languages, but they went from compiled to interpreted. We still have teams, but they went from waterfall to Agile to CI/CD. We still have databases, but they went from ACID to NoSQL. We went from one user, one app, one thread, to multi distributed, whatever. We’re doing the same thing with AI right now.”
Here are some of the technologies that are being assembled into a new AI stack. And this doesn’t even include the plethora of AI models, their APIs, and their cloud infrastructure. And it’s already out of date!
But the explosion of new tools, frameworks, and practices is just the beginning of how programming is changing. One issue, Schillace noted, is that models don’t have memory the way humans have memory. Even with large context windows, they struggle to do what he calls “metacognition.” As a result, he sees the need for humans to still provide a great deal of the context in which their AI co-developers operate.
Schillace expanded on this idea in a recent post. “Large language models (LLMs) and other AI systems are attempting to automate thought,” he wrote. “The parallels to the automation of motion during the industrial revolution are striking. Today, the automation is still crude: we’re doing the cognitive equivalent of pumping water and hammering—basic tasks like summarization, pattern recognition, and text generation. We haven’t yet figured out how to build robust engines for this new source of energy—we’re not even at the locomotive stage of AI yet.”
Even the locomotive stage was largely an expansion of the brute force humans were able to bring to bear when moving physical objects. The essential next breakthrough was an increase in the means of control over that power. Schillace asks, “What if traditional software engineering isn’t fully relevant here? What if building AI requires fundamentally different practices and control systems? We’re trying to create new kinds of thinking (our analog to motion): higher-level, metacognitive, adaptive systems that can do more than repeat pre-designed patterns. To use these effectively, we’ll need to invent entirely new ways of working, new disciplines. Just as the challenges of early steam power birthed metallurgy, the challenges of AI will force the emergence of new sciences of cognition, reliability, and scalability—fields that don’t yet fully exist.”
Bret Taylor, formerly co-CEO of Salesforce, one-time Chief Technology Officer at Meta, and long ago, leader of the team that created Google Maps, is now the CEO of AI agent developer Sierra, a company at the heart of developing and deploying AI technology in businesses. In a recent conversation, Bret told me that he believes that a company’s AI agent will become its primary digital interface, as significant as its website, as significant as its mobile app, perhaps even more so. A company’s AI agent will have to encode all of its key business policies and processes. This is something that AI may eventually be able to do on its own, but today, Sierra has to assign each of its customers an engineering team to help with the implementation.
“That last mile of taking a cool platform and a bunch of your business processes and manifesting an agent is actually pretty hard to do,” Bret explained. “There’s a new role emerging now that we call an agent engineer, a software developer who looks a little bit like a frontend web developer. That’s an archetype that’s the most common in software. If you’re a React developer, you can learn to make AI agents. What a wonderful way to reskill and make your skills relevant.”
Who will want to wade through a customer service phone tree when they could be talking to an AI agent that can actually solve their problem? But getting those agents right is going to be a real challenge. It’s not the programming that’s so hard. It’s deeply understanding the business processes and thinking how the new capability can transform them to take advantage of the new capabilities. An agent that simply reproduces existing business processes will be as embarrassing as a web page or mobile app that simply recreates a paper form. (And yes, those do still exist!)
Addy Osmani, the head of user experience for Google Chrome, calls this the 70% problem: “While engineers report being dramatically more productive with AI, the actual software we use daily doesn’t seem like it’s getting noticeably better.” He notes that nonprogrammers working with AI code generation tools can get out a great demo or solve a simple problem, but they get stuck on the last 30% of a complex program because they don’t know enough to debug the code and guide the AI to the correct solution. Meanwhile:
When you watch a senior engineer work with AI tools like Cursor or Copilot, it looks like magic. They can scaffold entire features in minutes, complete with tests and documentation. But watch carefully, and you’ll notice something crucial: They’re not just accepting what the AI suggests…. They’re applying years of hard-won engineering wisdom to shape and constrain the AI’s output. The AI is accelerating their implementation, but their expertise is what keeps the code maintainable. Junior engineers often miss these crucial steps. They accept the AI’s output more readily, leading to what I call “house of cards code” – it looks complete but collapses under real-world pressure.
In this regard, Chip Huyen, the author of the new book AI Engineering, made an illuminating observation in an email to me:
I don’t think AI introduces a new kind of thinking. It reveals what actually requires thinking.
No matter how manual, if a task can only be done by a handful of those most educated, that task is considered intellectual. One example is writing, the physical act of copying words onto paper. In the past, when only a small portion of the population was literate, writing was considered intellectual. People even took pride in their calligraphy. Nowadays, the word “writing” no longer refers to this physical act but the higher abstraction of arranging ideas into a readable format.
Similarly, once the physical act of coding can be automated, the meaning of “programming” will change to refer to the act of arranging ideas into executable programs.
Mehran Sahami, the chair of Stanford’s CS department, put it simply: “Computer science is about systematic thinking, not writing code.”
…precision in articulating the problem correctly gets even more important. An agent as a corporate frontend that provides access to all of a company’s business processes will be talking not just to consumers but also to agents for those consumers and agents for other companies.
That entire side of the agent equation is far more speculative. We haven’t yet begun to build out the standards for cooperation between independent AI agents! A recent paper on the need for agent infrastructure notes:
Current tools are largely insufficient because they are not designed to shape how agents interact with existing institutions (e.g., legal and economic systems) or actors (e.g., digital service providers, humans, other AI agents). For example, alignment techniques by nature do not assure counterparties that some human will be held accountable when a user instructs an agent to perform an illegal action. To fill this gap, we propose the concept of agent infrastructure: technical systems and shared protocols external to agents that are designed to mediate and influence their interactions with and impacts on their environments. Agent infrastructure comprises both new tools and reconfigurations or extensions of existing tools. For example, to facilitate accountability, protocols that tie users to agents could build upon existing systems for user authentication, such as OpenID. Just as the Internet relies on infrastructure like HTTPS, we argue that agent infrastructure will be similarly indispensable to ecosystems of agents. We identify three functions for agent infrastructure: 1) attributing actions, properties, and other information to specific agents, their users, or other actors; 2) shaping agents’ interactions; and 3) detecting and remedying harmful actions from agents.
There are huge coordination and design problems to be solved here. Even the best AI agents we can imagine will not solve complex coordination problems like this without human direction. There is enough programming needed here to keep even AI-assisted programmers busy for at least the next decade.
In short, there is a whole world of new software to be invented, and it won’t be invented by AI alone but by human programmers using AI as a superpower. And those programmers need to acquire a lot of new skills.
There is so much new to learn and do. So yes, let’s be bold and assume that AI codevelopers make programmers ten times as productive. (Your mileage may vary, depending on how eager your developers are to learn new skills.) But let’s also stipulate that once that happens, the “programmable surface area” of a business, of the sciences, of our built infrastructure will rise in parallel. If there are 20x the number of opportunities for programming to make a difference, we’ll still need twice as many of those new 10x programmers!
User expectations are also going to rise. Businesses that simply use the greater productivity to cut costs will lose out to companies that invest in harnessing the new capabilities to build better services.
As Simon Willison, a longtime software developer who has been at the forefront of showing the world how programming can be easier and better in the AI era, notes, AI lets him “be more ambitious” with his projects.
Take a lesson from another field where capabilities exploded: It may take as long to render a single frame of one of today’s Marvel superhero movies as it did to render the entirety of the first Pixar film even though CPU/GPU price and performance have benefited from Moore’s Law. It turns out that the movie industry wasn’t content to deliver low-res crude animation faster and more cheaply. The extra cycles went into thousands of tiny improvements in realistic fur, water, clouds, reflections, and many many more pixels of resolution. The technological improvement resulted in higher quality, not just cheaper/faster delivery. There are some industries made possible by choosing cheaper/faster over higher production values (consider the explosion of user-created video online), so it won’t be either-or. But quality will have its place in the market. It always does.
Imagine tens of millions of amateur AI-assisted programmers working with AI tools like Replit and Devin or enterprise solutions like those provided by Salesforce, Palantir, or Sierra. What is the likelihood that they will stumble over use cases that will appeal to millions? Some of them will become the entrepreneurs of this next generation of software created in partnership with AI. But many of their ideas will be adopted, refined, and scaled by existing professional developers.
In the enterprise, AI will make it much more possible for solutions to be built by those closest to any problem. But the best of those solutions will still need to travel the rest of the way on what Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir, has called “the journey from prototype to production.” Sankar noted that the value of AI to the enterprise is “in automation, in enterprise autonomy.” But as he also pointed out, “Automation is limited by edge cases.” He recalled the lessons of Stanley, the self-driving car that won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005: able to do something remarkable but requiring another 20 years of development to fully handle the edge cases of driving in a city.
“Workflow still matters,” Sankar argued, and the job of the programmer will be to understand what can be done by traditional software, what can be done by AI, what still needs to be done by people, and how you string things together to actually accomplish the workflow. He notes that “a toolchain that enables you to capture feedback and learn the edge cases to get there as quickly as possible is the winning tool chain.” In the world Sankar envisions, AI is “actually going to liberate developers to move into the business much more and be much more levered in the impact they deliver.” Meanwhile, the top-tier subject matter experts will become programmers with the help of AI assistants. It is not programmers who will be out of work. It will be the people—in every job role—who don’t become AI-assisted programmers.
This is not the end of programming. It is the beginning of its latest reinvention.
On April 24, O’Reilly Media will be hosting Coding with AI: The End of Software Development as We Know It—a live virtual tech conference spotlighting how AI is already supercharging developers, boosting productivity, and providing real value to their organizations. If you’re in the trenches building tomorrow’s development practices today and interested in speaking at the event, we’d love to hear from you by March 5th. You can find more information and our call for presentations here.
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.To Westminster Hall, where it was full term. Here all the morning, and at noon to my Lord Crew’s, where one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and, discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some that in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and that do feed upon larks, which they take thus: They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouths uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson up to the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. He is a great traveller; and, speaking of the tarantula, he says that all the harvest long (about which times they are most busy) there are fidlers go up and down the fields every where, in expectation of being hired by those that are stung.
Thence to the office, where late, and so to my chamber and then to bed, my mind a little troubled how to put things in order to my advantage in the office in readiness to the Duke’s orders lately sent to us, and of which we are to treat at the office to-morrow morning. This afternoon, going into the office, one met me and did serve a subpoena upon me for one Field, whom we did commit to prison the other day for some ill words he did give the office. The like he had for others, but we shall scour him for it.
Pattern: Two or more parties are struggling to cooperate.
Transformation: Model the situation as a Prisoners’ Dilemma. If it fits, apply Thinkie Put Skin In The Game or iteration to break the impasse.
To recap, Prisoners’ Dilemma is a game where 2 parties are arrested. If neither confesses, they both go free. If one confesses & the other doesn’t, the sque…
Boeing announced Monday it lost $523 million on the Starliner crew capsule program last year, putting the aerospace company $2 billion in the red on its NASA commercial crew contract since late 2019.
The updated numbers are included in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," Boeing wrote in the filing.
In 2014, NASA picked Boeing and SpaceX to develop and certify two commercial crew transporter vehicles. Like SpaceX, Boeing's contract, now worth up to $4.6 billion, is structured as a fixed-price deal, meaning the contractor is on the hook to pay for cost overruns that go over NASA's financial commitment.
Sometimes it’s fun to be right about big, important predictions. This is not one of those times. A year ago, I wrote that “a vote for Trump is a vote for chaos”, arguing that a second Trump term would feature constant battles between the President and the nation’s institutions:
So far, not all of my specific predictions have been borne out — we haven’t yet seen Trump launch attacks on the court system, the electoral system, the Fed, or the U.S. Military. But it has been only two weeks since Trump’s inauguration. Give it time.
But the institutional chaos that Trump has unleashed just in his first two weeks has been considerable. For example, as I predicted in that post, there is a huge purge underway at the FBI:
FBI personnel braced for a retaliatory purge of the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency, as President Donald Trump appeared ready to fire potentially hundreds of agents and officials who’d participated in investigations that led to criminal charges against him…David Sundberg, the head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, is also being fired…Sundberg…oversees some of the bureau’s most sensitive cases related to national security and counterintelligence….[T]hose investigations could stall, at least temporarily, if a large number of agents are suddenly removed…
Administration officials are reviewing records to identify FBI personnel who participated in investigations of the January 6 assault on the Capitol by his supporters…That could potentially involve hundreds if not thousands of agents, including those who interviewed and investigated rioters who were later prosecuted…
There is no precedent for the mass termination of FBI personnel in this fashion.
The FBI is trying to resist the purge, but there’s little doubt that Trump will prevail in the end; he is, after all, the chief executive.
Trump is also firing the federal prosecutors who prosecuted the January 6th insurrectionists. Whether that turns into a general purge of the Justice Department remains to be seen.
But these purges are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s also the tariffs that Trump announced he was slapping on Canada and Mexico. After the leaders of those countries sent some extra troops to beef up border security, Trump delayed the tariffs for one month. But the uncertainty created by the constant threat of major tariffs on America’s most important regional allies — and by the simple knowledge of Trump’s willingness to create those tariffs — will remain.
Then there was Trump’s attempted freeze on federal grants and loans. After mass confusion and a major outcry, Trump walked the policy back:
President Donald Trump rescinded an order freezing an array of federal grants, loans and financial assistance — a dramatic reversal after days of uncertainty and anxiety rocked governments and nonprofit organizations…The abrupt move — only two days after the freeze was first announced — quickly drew parallels to the chaotic policy roll-outs that regularly unfolded during Trump’s first administration…
The blanket freeze on all federal grants sparked confusion in Washington and state capitals, with the potential to disrupt a massive segment of federal spending that is relied on by local governments, schools and police departments across the country. The federal government awarded more than $1.2 trillion in grants alone last year, and another $2 trillion in loans.
What Trump has unilaterally frozen is all U.S. foreign aid — an unprecedented move that totally upends America’s relationship with many poor countries. The pause is supposedly only for 90 days, but Trump has moved to eliminate USAID, the government agency that administers most of America’s foreign aid. He’s being helped by Elon Musk, who has declared that USAID is a “criminal organization”. The abrupt cutoff of foreign aid could throw America’s relations with poor countries into chaos, just as Trump has already damaged relations with Canada, Mexico, and Europe.
Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) — not actually a government department, but just a bunch of guys Elon sends out to boss around the civil service, with Trump’s blessing — has been doing much more than dismantling USAID. Elon’s people have been given access to the payment systems that the U.S. uses to send out Social Security and other government payments. They’re using this access to go through government payments line by line, looking for items they think are wasteful or unnecessary. The WSJ reports:
The Treasury Department has agreed to give Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to a payment system that distributes trillions of dollars in entitlement benefits, grants and tax refunds to Americans each year…Musk and DOGE have moved aggressively to exert control over the federal government’s back-office functions since Inauguration Day, following a cost-cutting blueprint he used when he bought Twitter. Musk has shown an eagerness to dive into agencies that make the administration run. That includes the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human-resources arm, and the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings…
A person familiar with the arrangement said DOGE representatives won’t have direct authority to stop individual payments or make other changes, describing their access as “read only.” Bessent approved the arrangement on the condition that the DOGE representatives’ activity be documented and monitored. DOGE representatives intend to review the overall efficiency of the payment system, the person said.
It’s highly irregular to give political appointees access to the entire operations of the government, but it hardly seems like the “coup” some progressives are claiming. There are reasons to be concerned over data privacy and security, but allegations that Musk has taken over the government seem overblown.
A far more disruptive move, as I see it, is if Trump decides not to spend the money that Congress has authorized. Presidents actually used to do this all the time — it’s called “impoundment”. Congress passed a law in 1974 to make impoundment illegal, but Trump may try to challenge the constitutionality of that law in court. If he wins, it would be a major loss of power for Congress, and a gain for the presidency. At that point, DOGE’s decisions on wasteful spending items might go from suggestions to the law of the land, and lots of checks might stop going out in the mail.
And in addition to throwing America’s government operations, trading system, and foreign relations into chaos, Trump is already causing chaos on a more granular, local level. He gave an order to open up two California dams, apparently based on the notion that this would make California a wetter place and decrease wildfire risk. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The winter is California’s rainy season, meaning that you want to fill reservoirs for the rest of the year, rather than letting the water escape downstream. And the water that Trump released won’t even flow to Southern California; it’ll go to the Central Valley. Trump backed off of the idea and shut the dams again after panicked locals complained.
Anyway, that’s just the first two weeks. Welcome to the next four years.
I think we need to ask a basic question: How did America arrive at such a sorry juncture in its history? Why did we decide to elect a President who wakes up every morning thinking of new ways to throw the nation into disarray? I have some thoughts on that, and on how we might get out of this mess. But first, because I had some success predicting what Trump would do once he was elected, I thought I might share some thoughts on what kind of chaos he’ll create next.
If these predictions are frightening, my apologies. In fact, I think they’re a lot less dire than if Trump were the fascist autocrat his critics believe him to be, but they’re still not particularly fun.
Total bankruptcy filings rose 14.2 percent, with increases in both business and non-business bankruptcies, in the twelve-month period ending Dec. 31, 2024. This continues an ongoing rebound in filings after more than a decade of sharply dropping totals.
According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 517,308 in the year ending December 2024, compared with 452,990 cases in the previous year.
Business filings rose 22.1 percent, from 18,926 to 23,107, in the year ending Dec. 31, 2024. Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 13.9 percent to 494,201, compared with 434,064 in December 2023.
Bankruptcy totals for the previous 12 months are reported four times annually.
For more than a decade, total filings fell steadily, from a high of nearly 1.6 million in September 2010 to a low of 380,634 in June 2022. Total filings have increased each quarter since then, but they remain far lower than historical highs.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.The need for skilled professionals in social services has grown significantly. More individuals and families rely on trained workers for mental health support, crisis intervention, and community resources. However, entering this field traditionally requires strict schedules, in-person classes, and geographic relocation. These challenges have made it difficult for many to pursue careers in helping professions.
Fortunately, modern education programs are breaking these barriers. This article explains how modern educational programs are breaking barriers.
The demand for professionals in this field continues to increase. Many communities lack adequate support services, leaving individuals without access to the help they need. Mental health challenges, substance abuse, homelessness, and child welfare concerns are just a few areas where trained workers play a crucial role. Government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and healthcare facilities all rely on professionals who can assist. As these needs grow, so does the importance of accessible education programs that can train a new generation of workers ready to make a difference.
Pursuing a degree has not always been easy for those with jobs, families, or other commitments. Many traditional programs require students to attend classes in person, making it difficult to balance education with everyday responsibilities. Finding a flexible learning option is essential for those looking to advance their careers without sacrificing their current obligations. Online programs are getting popular today for this very reason. If you wish to pursue a career in social work, consider enrolling in an online MSW program. It offers high-quality instruction, hands-on learning opportunities, and the same rigorous coursework as in-person classes. Students can complete their studies from home while gaining the skills needed to support individuals and communities.
Many universities now offer degree options that accommodate students’ unique schedules. Online and hybrid programs allow learners to study at their own pace, making it easier to manage work and family commitments while earning a degree. Students can choose between part-time and full-time study, depending on their availability. These flexible formats help working professionals advance their education without putting their careers on hold. By eliminating the need for relocation or rigid class schedules, more people can enter the field and gain the qualifications needed to make an impact.
Inclusive education benefits both students and the communities they serve. Programs that attract students from different backgrounds help create a workforce understanding a wide range of cultural perspectives and life experiences. Online learning has made it possible for people from all regions and walks of life to access quality education. By breaking location-based barriers, modern programs ensure that more individuals can join the field, leading to a more diverse and well-rounded workforce.
Education in this field must go beyond textbooks and lectures. Practical experience is essential for preparing students to handle real-life challenges. Programs that integrate hands-on learning allow students to apply their knowledge in meaningful ways. Field placements, case study simulations, and community-based projects give students the opportunity to practice problem-solving in real-world settings. These experiences help build confidence and prepare graduates for the responsibilities they will face in their careers.
Technology has transformed how students prepare for careers in social services. Online learning platforms, virtual classrooms, and case study simulations allow students to develop the skills they need in an engaging way. These tools help bring real-world scenarios into the learning environment, giving students hands-on experience before they enter the workforce.
Collaboration tools and video conferencing also help students connect with peers and instructors, even in an online setting. Many programs use these features to create a supportive learning environment. As technology continues to evolve, it will further improve how students gain practical knowledge and interact with different aspects of their training.
There are many career paths within this field, and modern programs offer a variety of specializations to help students find the right fit. Areas such as clinical counseling, school-based support, healthcare advocacy, and policy reform provide opportunities for professionals to focus on specific interests. Advanced degree programs now allow students to tailor their education to match their career goals. Whether someone wants to work in mental health, child welfare, or crisis intervention, there are specialized courses and fieldwork opportunities to support that path. These options ensure that students receive training relevant to their future roles.
Practical experience is a key part of preparing for a career in this field. Even in online programs, universities ensure that students complete field placements to gain real-world exposure. These placements allow students to work in hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies under the supervision of experienced professionals. Many schools partner with local agencies to provide hands-on learning in a student’s own community. This setup allows online learners to apply their studies while receiving valuable mentorship. Field placements bridge the gap between theory and practice, making graduates better prepared for the challenges they will face in their careers.
Higher education can be expensive, but many programs offer financial assistance to help students manage costs. Scholarships, grants, and employer tuition reimbursement programs make earning a degree more accessible. Some universities also provide flexible payment plans or reduced tuition for online learners. For many students, online programs are a cost-effective alternative to in-person degrees. Students can save money on housing, transportation, and other expenses without the need to relocate or commute. These financial advantages make education more achievable for a wider range of individuals.
The way people prepare for careers in social services is constantly evolving. New advancements in online learning, virtual training, and community-based education will continue to improve how students gain the skills they need. As technology advances, students will have more opportunities to engage with real-world scenarios from anywhere. Additionally, shifts in social policies and community needs will shape the future of education in this field. Programs will continue adapting to ensure students are ready to address emerging challenges, making education more relevant to the demands of today’s workforce.
Modern programs are making education more accessible, flexible, and effective. With online learning, specialized career paths, and hands-on experience, students can gain the training they need without traditional barriers. These advancements ensure more people can enter the field and contribute to meaningful change.
As education continues to evolve, future professionals will be better prepared to meet the growing demand for support services. Breaking barriers in learning helps create a stronger workforce, leading to better outcomes for individuals and communities in need.
Photo by Phillip Goldsberry via Unsplash
The post Breaking Barriers in Social Work: The Power of Modern Programs appeared first on DCReport.org.
When writing posts for this newsletter, I like to have a clear focus and offer a tightly argued thesis, backed by data. This, however, won’t be that kind of post. If I had to summarize the state of affairs right now, I would quote Charlie Brown: “Aaugh!”
Here’s where we are as a nation right now:
1. We may be in the middle of a trade war. Or maybe not
2. We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis. No maybe.
3. We may be in the midst of a sort of digital coup, which might as a side consequence cause large parts of the federal government to cease functioning at all.
The unifying theme here, I guess, is that the federal government has been taken over by bad people who also are also stunningly ignorant.
Start with the maybe/maybe not trade war. The Trump administration was, to all appearances, ready to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico last night. This would have been self-destructive (and also a violation of past agreements) even if our neighbors didn’t retaliate. And both made it clear that they would retaliate. These are real countries, with real patriotism and pride, and they weren’t ready to be bullied.
And Trump folded. OK, supposedly the tariffs are only on hold for a month, but some wags are already joking that “tariff month” will become the new “infrastructure week.”
And supposedly both Mexico and Canada made some concessions in return for the tariff hold. But there’s really nothing there; neither country is doing anything it wouldn’t have done without the tariff threat. The U.S., on the other hand, agreed to crack down on weapons shipments to Mexico. Trump will spin this as a victory; low-information voters and some intimidated media outlets may go along with the lie. But basically America backed down.
So is Trump the classic bully who runs away when someone stands up to him? It definitely looks that way.
Let’s be clear, however: this isn’t a case of no harm, no foul. By making the tariff threat in the first place, Trump made it clear that America is no longer a nation that honors its agreements. By caving at the first sign of opposition, he also made himself look weak. China must be very pleased at how all this has played out.
And as I argued the other day, the now ever-present threat of tariffs will have a chilling effect on business planning, inhibiting economic integration and damaging manufacturing.
Still, the trade war didn’t happen, at least so far. But the constitutional crisis is in full swing.
Yesterday Elon Musk, after spending the weekend denouncing the U.S. Agency for International Development as “evil,” a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” and a “criminal organization,” announced that the agency was being shut down. Now, Musk isn’t the president — at least I don’t think he is; he isn’t even a government official.
But Donald Trump has confirmed the move, which is illegal and unconstitutional. No qualifying language, no “might be” or “some say” evasions, please. Congress passed a law establishing USAID as an independent agency, and the president can’t abolish it unless Congress passes new legislation to that effect.
It seems almost beside the point to ask what this is about, but still: What’s this about? If this is supposed to be about saving money, here’s the role of USAID in the federal budget:
Source: Congressional Budget Office, Congressional Research Service
So why is Musk such a hysterical enemy of the agency, whose main purpose is providing humanitarian aid? There may be some backstory here, in which USAID somehow once interfered with a Musk project. And Musk is surely banking on public innumeracy: abolishing an agency sounds as if it will save a lot of money, and few voters understand how small $40 billion is in the federal context.
But my guess is that in Musk’s worldview the mere fact of trying to help people in need makes you a radical-left Marxist who hates America.
My final point is a bit trickier, because we don’t yet know how it will turn out. Musk associates have been given access to the U.S. Treasury’s systems that control all federal payments, from grants to nonprofits to Social Security checks to salaries of federal workers.
The potential for mischief here is immense. The courts may have told the Trump administration that it can’t freeze spending mandated by Congress, but Musk’s people, who haven’t shown much reverence for the law, might well just ignore the courts and not cut the checks.
And they could go beyond cutting off programs the Musk/Trump administration doesn’t like. Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming.
Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could.
For the moment they probably can’t. The federal payments system is immensely complex, and like most government infrastructure has been financially squeezed for decades. So it’s cobbled together, much of it running on old hardware and even older software, kept functioning thanks to old hands and institutional memory. The 20-somethings Musk is deploying to take over, locking out those old hands and pushing aside the people who know how the system works, almost surely don’t understand enough to politicize payments right away.
As Nathan Tankus, the go-to expert on these matters, says,
I 100% believe that the primary barrier to Elon Musk gaining control of the Treasury payments system is COBOL.
For readers mystified by the reference, COBOL is a very old programming language that was once pervasive in the business world but in which hardly anyone under 60 knows how to program — yet is still widely used in government. (During Covid, the state of New Jersey put out a frantic call for people who knew COBOL to implement expanded unemployment benefits.)
But this observation raises another concern. What if the Musk people — Muskovites? — try to muck with systems they don’t understand, believing that they’re super smart and can master everything with the help of a little AI? It’s not hard to imagine the whole federal payments system — including, by the way, servicing of federal debt — crashing.
So much damage — to U.S. credibility, to the Constitution and the rule of law, and possibly even to the very functioning of the government. And Trump only took power 2 weeks ago.
MUSICAL CODA
Links for you. Science:
NIH, Other HHS Divisions Told to Terminate Contracts or Grants Because of ‘Gender Ideology’
Analysis: In confirmation hearing, RFK Jr. diagnoses a nation’s health ills but fails to prescribe remedies
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
Will bird flu spark a human pandemic? Scientists say the risk is rising
Astronomers discover 196-foot asteroid with 1-in-83 chance of hitting Earth in 2032
Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research
Other:
Oppose, Oppose, Oppose — and Do It Loudly
Senior U.S. official to exit after rift with Musk allies over payment system (this could be really bad)
Now Is Not The Time To Determine Who Is Responsible For What (“…there’s something in between [being dishonest] and ‘carefully choose an issue, do one cable news hit, fail to hear the applause, and move on.'”)
Eliminating DEI isn’t just racist — it’s segregationist
Government Tech Workers Forced to Defend Projects to Random Elon Musk Bros
Democrats flip Iowa state Senate seat in deep red Trump country
Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems
Choose Your Fighters
RFK Jr. Completely Fumbles Basic Facts in Confirmation Hearing
DC has been a leader in residential tenant protections. Here’s how it could better protect small business tenants
Elon Musk Offers Federal Workers an Unauthorized Buyout
The Trump White House Wants A Court Challenge Over Frozen Funds
Morning Briefing
How Utterly Useless Is the Trump Administration?
White House Says We Were Out of the Loop—ON EVERYTHING
AG Brian Schwalb Accuses Petra Management of Gaming D.C.’s Housing Voucher System
Deep Impact
In Tense Call, Governors Push Schumer to Fight Harder Against Trump (Schumer et alia won’t save us)
Trump’s Secret Weapon Has Always Been Status Anxiety
Trump’s Administration Is Taking Down Sites About Gender Identity All Over the Internet
Why Former Followers Of Her Guru Fear Tulsi Gabbard As Director Of National Intelligence
RFK Jr.’s Family Dissents. I Hope the Democrats Do Too.
Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral
Don’t Be Fooled: The Funding Freeze Drama Is Not Over
Breaking Down OPM’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Email to Federal Workers
MAGA’s revenge of the mediocre: Trump’s war on federal workers targets the meritorious
Echoes of Grace, a Sora promotional video by OpenAI
Generative AI progress has definitely slowed down. But that just means it’s gone from breakneck to merely full-tilt.
The most dramatically transformed realm in creative AI is video generation.
Sora is the biggest player and has many interesting and unique features.
Kling is the best video generator on the market right now.
Runway has made good advances and is a perennial player.
Google’s upcoming Veo 2 is looking like it could leap ahead of the competition.
AI video generation is fun but it still seems very much in the toy category. I struggle to find a purpose for AI video in my work. It’s too error-prone, too uncanny, too generic. I have similar feelings about image generation, although I think that technology is farther along.
So video and image generation aren’t that useful yet. What is?
There are three categories I’ll be covering in the next few posts. Here’s the first.
In 2024, AI music generation suddenly made the leap from dreadful to decent. To be clear, you won’t be cranking out bangers with AI. But AI music can work well in soundtracks for video production and podcasts. In these contexts, you’re not seeking bangers. You want a mood, a beat, or even just filler. Tracks like this don’t need to sound good in isolation or in their entirety.
For example, this Suno-generated track has lots of issues. It’s flat, it doesn’t take you on a journey, parts are awkward, it’s often boring. I wouldn’t listen to this. But as accompaniment for a video, it’s evocative and has a vibe. I could work for with it.
Is AI music better than stock? Definitely not. But if you need music and have no budget, AI music might work for you.
If you’d like to get started with AI music generation, Suno and Udio currently lead the way. Both offer free plans.
Up next: the dark horse of creative AI
I have had it write a number of ten-page papers for me, each of them outstanding. I think of the quality as comparable to having a good PhD-level research assistant, and sending that person away with a task for a week or two, or maybe more.
Except Deep Research does the work in five or six minutes. And it does not seem to make errors, due to the quality of the embedded o3 model.
It seems it can cover just about any topic?
I asked for a ten-page paper explaining Ricardo’s theory of rent, and how it fits into his broader theory of distribution. It is a little long, but that was my fault, here is the result. I compared it to a number of other sources on line, and thought it was better, and so I am using it for my history of economic thought class.
I do not currently see signs of originality, but the level of accuracy and clarity is stunning, and it can write and analyze at any level you request. The work also shows the model can engage in a kind of long-term planning, and that will generalize to some very different contexts and problems as well — that is some of the biggest news associated with this release.
Sometimes the model stops in the middle of its calculations and you need to kick it in the shins a bit to get it going again, but I assume that problem will be cleared up soon enough.
If you pay for o1 pro, you get I think 100 queries per month with Deep Research.
Solve for the equilibrium, people, solve for the equilibrium.
The post Deep Research appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Update 7:32 p.m. EST (0032 UTC): SpaceX confirmed deployment of the fifth WorldView Legion satellite.
Shrouded in a layer of thick fog Tuesday evening, SpaceX launched the latest pair of WorldView Legion satellites on behalf of Maxar Intelligence, a division of Maxar Technologies. The two satellites launched into a mid-inclination Earth orbit (MEO) following separation from the Falcon 9 rocket.
Liftoff of the mission, dubbed Maxar 3 by SpaceX, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened at 6:13 p.m. EST (2313 UTC). It was SpaceX’s second Falcon 9 launch of the day.
SpaceX used the Falcon 9 first stage booster 1086 to launch this mission. It was its fourth flight after previously launching as a side booster on the GOES-U Falcon Heavy mission and then as a Falcon 9 booster on two Starlink missions.
Less than eight minutes after liftoff, B1086 touched down at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, marking the 48th booster landing at LZ-1 and the 405th booster landing to date.
The first WorldView Legion satellite (fifth overall) was deployed following the conclusion of the second burn of the Falcon 9 upper stage roughly 47 minutes after liftoff. There will be two more burns of the Merlin vacuum engine before the other satellite is deployed about one hour and 50 minutes into the flight.
The two WorldView Legion satellites were manufactured by Maxar Space Systems, another division of Maxar Technologies. The company announced their arrive in Florida in early January to begin final processing ahead of the launch.
The two satellites were shipped from Maxar Space Systems’ factory in Palo Alto, California. Once on orbit, they will complete the company’s first block of satellites.
The twin spacecraft are designed to augment the company’s 30 cm-class satellite imagery capability. There are currently four WorldView Legion satellites operating in MEO and six other satellites in a Sun-synchronous orbit.
“With 3.6 million sq. km. of 30 cm-class collection capacity per day, Maxar will continue to lead the industry by offering customers the highest image quality and geometric accuracy available on the commercial market,” Maxar Intelligence said in a statement. “In fact, no other provider will have this amount of 30 cm-class capacity available.”
Maxar makes its images available through either a Maxar Geospatial Platform (MGP) Pro subscription to access individual images or through its Vivid Advanced Baseman for “a seamless view of Earth.”
With satellites now in sun-synchronous and mid-inclination orbits, the Maxar constellation has more capacity for tasking than ever before—an increase of 85% over the mid-latitudes of Earth!
: This GIF illustrates the MIO orbits of four WorldView Legion satellites.
Read more… pic.twitter.com/337YuBWtsL
— Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) December 3, 2024
What are the best sources to read on US AID, and its costs and benefits? I am not interested in your anecdotes and adjectives, please offer serious research sources only. Thank you.
The post US AID bleg appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Click on graph for larger image.
The second graph shows light vehicle sales since the BEA started keeping data in 1967. As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvious, but I remember when they weren’t obvious to me on the other side of the table! It has become clear to me that there are some subjects that should be covered as part of any professional degree and are not only not taught and not discussed, but most otherwise highly qualified graduates are completely unaware of their existence.
I have previously written about improving resumes, becoming a well-rounded engineer by cultivating curiosity about the productivity of large groups of people, and escaping academia. This post is intended to help early career candidates and generally ambitious people find their footing on the career ladder. General topics covered here include hiring process, building a track record, generating value, performance management, avoiding career limiting moves, and building resilience. I will update this post over time. The usual caveats apply.
The ostensible purpose of the hiring process is to match available jobs with available candidates. Like everything else, this process is ruled by incentives. You must understand that the recruiters you are dealing with are engaged in a sales process. They are paid by an organization and their job is to sell a candidate to a hiring manager. The hiring manager is the person who formulated the job rec that you have responded to, and the person who ultimately decides whether or not to hire you – you should know who they are!
Recruiters are usually lovely, socially adept people who understand their place in this hierarchy, and are seldom very technical. To drive this point home, I screened a technical recruiter candidate a few months ago – someone I had worked with before, with more than ten years of experience performing technical recruiting for a range of companies, who had hired hundreds of engineers – and couldn’t tell me when they last handled a screwdriver, and had never touched a soldering iron, not even once in their entire life.
So a common mistake I see, particularly in academics transitioning to industry, is they try to sell a recruiter on their intelligence. This is unnecessary, because if you have an academic background, the recruiter will have no difficulty selling the candidate to the hiring manager on the basis of intelligence. Instead, they’re trying to avoid The Lemon.
The Lemon is the former academic or any other candidate who checks most of the skills boxes but, when presented to the hiring manager, so disgusts them that they lose trust in the recruiter – which endangers the recruiter’s livelihood. So the recruiter is also looking closely for red flags. There is a perception, not entirely unmerited, that academics often turn out to be egg-headed time wasters in industry. Hiring the wrong person is an expensive, time consuming mistake. Ex academics (and fresh graduates) need to be self aware about this stereotype and aggressively signal that they know how to get to the point! See the section on generating value below.
Failing to understand what the job rec is asking for and what a resume is meant to look like – big red flag! If you can’t understand how to produce a single standardized page of text for your future manager, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to correctly intuit what job output they want. And, in the sorts of jobs you want to have, no-one should have to spell anything out for you.
A recruiter or hiring manager is looking for evidence that you can do the job. The only statistically robust predictor of job success is a track record of having successfully done that same job in the past. Everything else, the 8 layers of interviews, the resume, the cover letter, the degree, etc – statistically rounds to zero in terms of predicting on-the-job success.
If you have a track record of working at multiple well-regarded businesses on top line projects with growing responsibilities, a good reputation, and consistent performance, you are set for life. If you’re good enough, you can name your price, recruiters will constantly call you, and you can easily retire at 40 if you want.
If you have a track record of bouncing from failing project to failing project at failing companies with long periods of unemployment and no former colleagues who will say nice things about you, you’ve dug a deep hole it’s really hard to get out of. Track record is important.
If you are an early career candidate or are switching fields, you won’t have a legible track record, so it’s necessary to build social capital some other way, and to provide signals that are suggestive of potential without necessarily being as statistically robust as having actually done the thing over and over. Writing at least five blog posts on a subject of your technical obsession is a really great way to build social capital that you’re a thoughtful person who can execute self-directed goals. It’ll also help the AIs know who you are when they take over.
Most hiring managers of fresh grads are looking for ambition. It doesn’t matter if you have a 4.0 GPA and 3 excellent internships, if you aren’t hungry to learn and build you’re not going to get very far. Ambition, like other social characteristics, is contagious. Hang out with other ambitious people and get in the habit of translating thoughts to action.
They’re also looking for self-awareness. If you don’t understand your strengths and weaknesses, you can’t really integrate with a team, and you don’t understand how you bring value to the organization. By far the most common reason that an otherwise strong candidate will not advance at Terraform is that they evince no understanding of their weaknesses. “My weakness is that I care too much about the project and work too hard” is a bad answer. For early career candidates, your shiny degree does not mean you know everything, and while it’s fine to be proud of your school, arrogance by association is a huge red flag. You know almost nothing – in some cases you know just enough to get a toehold on the lifelong journey of learning.
There seems to be a recent trend among the Zoomer fresh grads to talk about the importance of “work-life balance” in their career goals. I understand where this comes from, and I’ve seen the negative consequences of overwork. But I’ve never met anyone who “prioritizes work-life balance” who is anywhere near that threshold. Perhaps this meme originates in intraspecific competition, since the ambitious who shut it out can run rings around the people who think that their early 20s are a good time to screw around, instead of building a solid track record.
The first gig out of school is the first rung of the ladder. Whatever you do, it’s critical to make that first line item of your resume strong enough to get to the second. If you learn, grow, and build in your early 20s, then you’ll be pulling in a great salary by the time you’re 30 and have a technical foundation upon which to build a work-life balance for the rest of your life. If you screw around for years and don’t develop tangible evidence (the sort of thing that a recruiter can use to convince a hiring manager that you’re the real deal!) that you can succeed on projects in the real world, you are much more likely to fall out the back of the industry, and enjoy work-life balance during long periods of unemployment.
I’ve also seen a number of recent grads sit on the job market for months or years waiting for the perfect job. This is a mistake. A gap on your resume that can’t be accounted for reeks of failure and a lack of desirability for your skills. You should start trying to line up job opportunities well before graduation, pick the best opportunity you have, and commit to it. You can take two weeks of vacation without a month-gap in your resume, but make your leisure time count. Your resume must provide evidence of strong demand for your skills.
Even if you have a degree in mechanical engineering, if all that’s hiring is a technician job, do that. There’s nothing undignified about working with your hands and my best engineers have all worked for years on the shop floor – they have an intuitive understanding of what is easy and what is hard in a way that the math+degree+CAD jockeys don’t. Being unaccountably unemployed is worse than having a low paid low prestige job in an unrelated field, that you succeeded at. I worked at a theme park for a while after high school, not exactly glamorous!
If you can’t work for whatever reason, make your search time count. We’ve had strong candidates who graduated right at the cusp of a recession, who then started a business customizing ATVs, and bootstrapped a business in a few months that they were able to sell when a prospective employer took notice of their grit and determination. On the other hand, I’ve screened people with a recent software engineering degree who, when asked what code they’d written other than that required for a particular class, had nothing. Imagine deciding to spend your career writing code but being so uninterested in it you literally never did it unless someone told you to! Mark Zuckerberg wrote code for hundreds of websites starting in middle school like a man possessed – and it worked out for him!
Whatever your first job is, no matter how banal or unprestigious, make it count. Two strong years of effort, getting projects over the line. Generally, 2-3 years in a particular job before switching shows commitment, unless you get a much better offer your existing employer is unable to match – this shows you’ve leveled up rapidly, not that you’re an opportunistic flake! Don’t take this too far, your job hopping needs to provide more evidence of skills in demand than the sort of opportunism that screws over a team that just tried to on board you.
I cannot overstate how important developing a track record is. Terraform is full of people with weird backgrounds who worked their way up, demonstrating versatility and fortitude. No-one has waltzed in here with a great GPA from a prestigious school without a track record of achievement.
Okay, you’re hired! Congratulations. But you don’t have tenure, the fun is just beginning. It’s not enough to perform well enough that you’re never quite at the top of the list of the “departure lounge” – the underperforming employees due to be fired. You only have 40 or so years of professional work to get shit done! Every minute counts.
A common misconception is that your job responsibilities consist of showing up on time, not starting fights with other employees, complying with regulations, and doing what you’re told. If you want a job like this, there are plenty of minimum wage jobs out there. But high agency people need to internalize responsibility for making sure they’re on track to generating exponentially increasing levels of value in an organization, and building a track record of achievement and promotion.
Doing only what you’re told doesn’t generate exponential value. You need to understand how you fit into your team and how your team fits into the organization as a whole – use your technical skills to analyze this complex machine. Then you need to understand what the bottlenecks are and go fix them. They exist because they’re either subtle and not understood or, more likely, they’re ugly annoying forever problems that are low prestige and dirty work. This is the best place for new hires to cut their teeth, to learn the ropes, to understand how things really work, to build a reputation for getting shit done no matter what. There is a lot of alpha in dirty jobs.
If you make a habit of generating lots of value, sooner or later you’ll be noticed by senior management. They may start borrowing you for special projects or other more challenging assignments. The social mores and value prop in senior management is quite different to ground level engineering. You should read a few books about it, socialize with leadership on their terms (a round of golf, say, or learn the scores of their favored team), and recalibrate how to deliver the value they need – which is usually some variation on uncontaminated real world information, delivered in an actionable way.
Generally speaking, technical staff can develop their career along two tracks: Individual contributor or management. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
If you’re obsessed enough with your technical field to remain an authority for your entire life, and work in a company that’s big and stable enough, and your technical field doesn’t suddenly become obsolete, the “technical fellow” track can buy you a great life, typically with upper middle class levels of income and sometimes even equity.
If, on the other hand, you find the general problem of getting lots of people to work together efficiently more interesting than whatever you started out doing, management is a good track. The advantage of management is that, along with higher stress and greater responsibility comes generally higher compensation, and the skills are more legible and portable outside of a particular company. This is not always true, particularly if your company is a huge moribund bureaucracy in the process of going out of business. The logical extreme of this is Japan, where it’s so unusual for people to switch company that it’s usually cause for suspicion – and a contributing factor to decades of economic stagnation! Managers find growth in bloody wars and swift promotions – the dynamic parts of the economy.
If you’re lucky in a good job, your managers (who are your proximal customers for your output) will give you direct feedback on your work and suggestions for improving both the process and the final product.
This can hurt your ego, and it is natural to decide that they are wrong/idiots/misinformed rather than accept the feedback. This is vanity – a sign you care more about your feelings than about being excellent. It is possible, of course, that they are wrong/idiots/misinformed, but even if they are, this attitude is not useful. It is not a growth mindset. It will not get you closer to success in your current workplace, and if it is a pattern between workplaces then future prospective employers will see it as a habit of getting sideways with them, which will lock you out of good companies. There’s also a market for low quality employers!
What is true is that your managers are busy, constantly fighting fires, and can definitely see more of the big picture than you can. They will seldom have the time to convince you, or to fully read you into some big, hard to describe issue. If you’re unable to intuit the big picture from your surroundings, you need to rely on their allocation of your labor if you want to succeed.
Occasionally, you’ll have the opportunity to work for, with, or even manage people who are truly exceptional. If they offer you mentorship or feedback, it is extremely valuable. I have lost count of the number of times an outsider has spent 90% of our meeting telling me all about internal technical details at Terraform or about some project I previously led. To be fair, this is usually not job candidates, but I’m always surprised by the lack of self-awareness (a key hire-ability attribute) required to consume valuable face-to-face time with lecturing rather than asking questions. I’m thinking “if you just shut your mouth you might learn something” but I’m usually too polite to say it.
I’m far from an authoritative source of information on almost anything, but in a small handful of areas I am an, or even the, world expert. I consult on these topics in my copious (lol) free time, and I really enjoy providing mentorship in topics where I can level people up quickly.
One of my main frustrations during my time working at NASA was that I would occasionally get to solve a very nasty technical problem in days rather than months, and instead of managers asking me how I did it and can I show them or my colleagues, I would get told off for messing up the schedule and creating a vacancy in my work program. If this is happening to you in your workplace and you are ambitious and agentic, start planning your next move.
Plenty of super smart capable people get stuck within organizations and don’t advance, regardless of talent or achievements. Why?
It’s not enough to have mastered your job to get moved up. You also have to build trust with your management. It doesn’t matter how good you are at the mechanics of your job, if your management and colleagues don’t trust you, they’ll see you as a loose cannon and try to find ways to offboard you. I have been in this position before – and clueless about it. My job was saved because I had become critical infrastructure for too much of the system, but I was still marginalized and unable to advance, because I had broken (spectacularly!) the trust of management.
How? There are many ways. But it’s harder to do if you always uphold the golden rule – always make your boss look good. It’s not because it’s your job to burnish their reputation, but because if you think about how your work impacts their work and position, you have a greater chance of developing the sort of self-awareness needed to advance in an organization. I have lost count of the number of times someone I knew thought they were being super clever by forcing their manager’s manager to change their plans by resisting, or starting a political fight, or collecting signatures, or whatever.
Occasionally, this is the correct course of action. More often, it’s an ego driven effort to be a pain in the ass and then rub management’s face in it, and it’s a supremely career limiting move! You literally can’t be promoted to your manager’s level without the approval of your manager’s manager. If you were a giant asshole to them, they’re going to be finding ways to punish you, not promote you. The golden rule of power is to never power struggle, especially not if you don’t have power.
It’s extremely unusual for the senior person in this interaction to change their mind and decide they must have been wrong – even if their Professional Managerial Class culture means they conceal their frustration and annoyance. They will not forget. Going out of your way to make anyone else’s job harder, including unsympathetic senior management, will mark you out as a trouble maker. There is a time to let the bridges you burn light the way, but not until your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) is glorious retirement.
Oddly enough, there is extremely little intersection between people who are organizationally competent enough to not fear being fired for delivering unpleasant truths, and the barely-employable who constantly sabotage their own career by mouthing off about stuff they should know better about. It’s a maturity thing.
Large organizations function on trust established by a track record of hassle-free execution of critical activities. Don’t tell your boss’s boss to fuck off if they’re disrupting your meeting – if they’ve taken the time to jump in they have a good reason, and in all likelihood 5 or 10 minutes of their attention is more likely to unblock a 6 month problem than to derail your ordinarily zero productivity meeting.
Everyone suffers setbacks. If you’re ambitious and dedicated, you’re signing up for more and larger failures. One of my favorite interview questions is “what’s the most expensive thing you’ve broken?” and the answers can blow your mind. If you’re on the forefront of the economy, you will be part of organization that is generating at least millions of dollars of revenue per employee per year, and most of that value creation is in the hands of a minority of the people involved (Price’s Law). In software, “breaking prod” is a classic way to burn through millions very quickly, but every industry has ways to fail in recoverable ways that still involve many zeros.
If you can’t handle failure, if you don’t develop resilience, you’re going to have a bad time.
Ultimately, this is about developing the emotional maturity to roll with the punches, to have grit, to sweat and try and persevere until you succeed. I know a lot of successful people. Some are brilliant, some are rich, and some are very good looking. All of them have cultivated the ability to persist through substantial discomfort, and to never give up. Conversely I know plenty of otherwise talented people who folded like a house of cards at their first major setback and have yet to achieve anything like their potential.
There are various ways to actively improve your resilience. Part of it is social contagion, like ambition. Spend time around people who get bruised for fun (physically active sports, etc) and you can start to enjoy Type 2 fun in the moment. Work in a job that involves endless rejection (a phone bank, for example). Whatever it takes to get over the part of your ego that presupposes that the universe owes you anything for existing. Everything in our world was built by someone, who had a vision for what the world could be and worked tirelessly until it was so.
Another way to improve resilience is to deliberately and consciously set yourself challenging tasks, and then retrospectively grade your performance. I am constantly surprised by how little consistent effort is needed to make progress on tasks, even ones for which we have no natural talent. For example, it is often said that learning a new language as an adult is hard, because children learn language and children are pretty silly. Babies learn to walk because they get up and fall down a thousand times until it comes naturally. If you practice a language every day for 15 minutes, you can get conversational in less than a year. A year is not that long – I know people who have spent decades lamenting that they can’t read French. Start today!
It is both an annoying and a liberating thing to realize that if you’re working out, nothing much is happening until your heart rate goes up and you begin to sweat. On the other hand, all it takes is getting up a sweat to make progress. You can do it literally anywhere!
DTE Energy is disconnecting thousands of customers while increasing rates and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, according to a new report. Despite growing energy affordability concerns, the company has continued investing in natural gas and opposing community solar, even as its profits surged 41% in 2024.
The report, released by the Center for Biological Diversity, analyzed shutoff data and financial records from six major utilities, finding that DTE cut power to 150,000 customers in 2024—most during the summer—while paying $607 million to shareholders.
Advocates say the company’s business model prioritizes profits over affordability and reliability, with rate hikes and time-of-use pricing disproportionately impacting low-income households. Meanwhile, DTE continues investing in gas-fired power and fighting policies that could expand community solar access for residents struggling with high bills and frequent outages.
Fossil fuel-driven heating, climate disasters and utility rate hikes often hit vulnerable populations hardest, said Selah Goodson Bell, energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity and co-author of the report.
“Extreme temperatures force customers to use more electricity to keep their homes cool or warm,” Goodson Bell told Planet Detroit.
He said this disproportionately impacts low-income areas and communities of color, where residents are subjected to the urban heat island effect and have homes with poor insulation that cost more to heat or cool
The report analyzed shutoff and financial data from six major utilities to assess the impact of business practices on customers. It found that DTE was shutting off power to tens of thousands of customers during summer months while corporate earnings soared.
Meanwhile, DTE has continued to invest in natural gas infrastructure. It has also floated the need for more gas generation, which would add to human-caused global heating. And the utility has fought community solar efforts that advocates say could help improve affordability and reliability for customers.
DTE shut off gas and electric service to 378,000 customers between 2020 and October 2022. In 2024, the rate of shutoffs increased. DTE shut off electric service to 150,000 customers for nonpayment, with most disconnections occurring between May and September. Only one of the six utilities listed in the report shut off power to more customers than DTE.
Last summer’s utility shutoffs in southeast Michigan coincided with above-average temperatures and the introduction of time-of-use rates which increased energy costs for customers during the hottest parts of the day. In Detroit, average temperatures in May, June, and July ranked among the top 3% ever recorded.
Time-of-use rates can deepen inequities by making electricity more expensive when demand is highest, disproportionately affecting vulnerable households, the report says. It describes them as a “regressive attempt to mitigate the summer surge in energy demand and relieve pressure on the grid.” A 2019 Ohio State study also found that such pricing “disproportionately impact[s] the energy bills and health of vulnerable households.”
The report notes that DTE rate increases added $774 million in costs to customers between 2015 and 2019. Further increase followed with a $368 million rate hike in 2023 and $219 million increase in 2025.
While DTE’s rate hikes have made electricity less affordable for customers, its profits have risen. From January to September the company reported $1.1 billion in net income – a 41% increase from the same period in 2023. According to the report, just 3% of the $607 million DTE delivered to shareholders during that period would have prevented all 150,000 of last year’s shutoffs.
DTE spokesperson Amanda Passage told Planet Detroit in a statement that the company is committed to keeping bills affordable.
“DTE and its agency partners offer a variety of assistance options to help those in need, including payment plans that fit their budgets. Last year alone, we connected customers to nearly $144 million in energy assistance,” she said.
DTE promotes its phase-out of coal and carbon-neutrality goals, but ratepayer advocates say the utility’s ongoing investment in natural gas and opposition to community solar harm residents and the climate.
Goodson Bell said DTE’s business model, which allows the company to earn a return on equity for its shareholders based on capital expenditures, incentivizes the company to invest in building new infrastructure – like gas plants that add planet-warming emissions.
He pointed to DTE’s deep ties to the fossil fuel industry as a key driver for continued gas investments, noting that DTE CEO Jerry Norcia recently led the American Gas Association, a gas industry lobbying group.
“If you don’t have a business model that appropriately accounts for health costs, for climate, for energy efficiency etc. then the utility is just going to keep building more and more,” he said.
Michigan advocates have previously criticized the utility and regulators for focusing on capital improvements at the expense of ongoing maintenance, like tree-trimming, which may do more to improve reliability but won’t earn shareholders a return.
Passage, with DTE, said the company is working to reduce emissions by phasing out its use of coal by 2032 and looking to meet the state’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2040.
Yet, the report says DTE is not only continuing to invest in fossil fuel generation but also opposes community solar, where residents subscribe to offsite solar arrays and receive bill credits for the energy produced.
DTE opposed two community solar bills introduced in the Michigan Senate in 2023 that contained a 30% carve out for low-income customers. Advocates argued the legislation would help residents save money and improve reliability, while a report from Michigan State University said it would have created an estimated 18,500 jobs and brought in $1.4 billion in investments over the next 30 years.
Goodson Bell said it’s especially egregious that DTE continues to fight community solar despite the utility’s poor reliability, which has a disproportionate impact on low-income areas and communities of color.
“To both squeeze money out of ratepayers and limit their access to the very things that could improve their lives, it’s particularly exploitative,” he said.
This article first appeared on Planet Detroit and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Photo by JK Nair, Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN SUPPORT OF DCREPORT’S NONPROFIT MISSION
The post DTE Profits Soar as Customers Face Shutoffs, Rising Rates and Fossil Fuel Expansion appeared first on DCReport.org.
1. Congestion Pricing Tracker update, sigh…Economists like to think they are useful, but if the initial policy is not right you can expect the results to be disappointing, as these are so far. It is true congestion prices that work, not “cordon prices.”
3. North Koreans at McDonald’s.
4. Redux of my sovereign wealth fund column for Bloomberg. I am against the idea for the United States, while recognizing that any arbitrarily small version of it will appear to make sense.
5. Trump’s CEA nominee wrote a long memo on how to restructure the global trading system. I turned to o1 pro for comment.
6. Peter Coy is ending his NYT newsletter.
7. Scott Alexander update on model cities.
8. My Bloomberg column on the economics of the Luka trade.
9. Economist Richard Nelson has passed away.
The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Interesting analysis:
We analyzed every instance of AI use in elections collected by the WIRED AI Elections Project (source for our analysis), which tracked known uses of AI for creating political content during elections taking place in 2024 worldwide. In each case, we identified what AI was used for and estimated the cost of creating similar content without AI.
We find that (1) half of AI use isn’t deceptive, (2) deceptive content produced using AI is nevertheless cheap to replicate without AI, and (3) focusing on the demand for misinformation rather than the supply is a much more effective way to diagnose problems and identify interventions.
This tracks with my analysis. People share as a form of social signaling. I send you a meme/article/clipping/photo to show that we are on the same team. Whether it is true, or misinformation, or actual propaganda, is of secondary importance. Sometimes it’s completely irrelevant. This is why fact checking doesn’t work. This is why “cheap fakes”—obviously fake photos and videos—are effective. This is why, as the authors of that analysis said, the demand side is the real problem.
Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in December was 0.59%, up from 0.56% November. Freddie's rate is up year-over-year from 0.55% in December 2023, however, this is below the pre-pandemic level of 0.60%.
Freddie's serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.17% in August 2020 during the pandemic.
Fannie Mae reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in December was 0.56%, up from 0.53% in November. The serious delinquency rate is up year-over-year from 0.55% in December 2023, however, this is below the pre-pandemic lows of 0.65%.
The Fannie Mae serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 5.59% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.32% in August 2020 during the pandemic.
The number of job openings decreased to 7.6 million on the last business day of December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, hires and total separations were little changed at 5.5 million and 5.3 million, respectively. Within separations, quits (3.2 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.8 million) changed little.The following graph shows job openings (black line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.Links for you. Science:
Medical Research Depends on Government Money – Even a Day’s Delay in the Intricate Funding Process Throws Science Off-Kilter
Private emails show RFK Jr. making false claims about Covid-19 shots, linking vaccines to autism
National Science Foundation freezes grant review in response to Trump executive orders
Exploiting the fitness cost of metallo-β-lactamase expression can overcome antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens
Machine learning-based classification reveals distinct clusters of non-coding genomic allelic variations associated with Erm-mediated antibiotic resistance
Avian flu strikes second biggest US egg producer
Other:
Who Goes MAGA?
The MAGA terror has begun. Their leader is glorifying political violence and weaponizing the threat of it.
Axios, Welcome To The Resistance
Compelling Mass Civil Servant Resignations Will Create Chaos. Twitter is not a model for government reform
Trump’s Most Lawless Action Yet. Pausing funds appropriated by Congress is a deliberate taunt to draw a legal challenge that the White House’s most radical architects think will give them unilateral spending power.
CVS Is Turning Locked Shelves Into an Excuse to Make You Download Its App
Pete Hegseth’s Worldview Is Even Worse Than His Personal Behavior
The Bogus Justification for AI Uptake and the Real Reason for the Scam
I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again
Collins Council Report: The Council Chambers Turn Into a Courtroom During Trayon White’s Expulsion Hearing
Philip Low, long-time friend and peer of Elon Musk, posts open letter calling him out for what he is.
What Senators Should Know About HHS Nominee RFK Jr.’s Ties to German Far-Right
Democrats gain nothing by compromising with Trump
Fallout from Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons spreads on Capitol Hill
A Raw Milk Magnate Has Spent Years Fighting Public Health Agencies. Will RFK Jr. Take His Side?
The Lost City: Their homes were destroyed. Their communities are gone. How can the people of Los Angeles rebuild?
Trump said he’d bring prices down on Day One. That hasn’t happened
Gangster’s Paradise: Appearing with alleged gang members. Freeing hundreds of violent felons. Declaring open season on former government employees who are targeted by terrorists. How do you think this ends?
Trump’s perceived enemies brace for retribution with plans, dark humor
How Not To See. A Front Row Seat To The Inauguration
Don’t Prop Up The Corrupt Trump Regime: The moral hazard of median-voter pandering and limp Democratic resistance.
Trump Aide Karoline Leavitt’s Ugly Biden Smear Bodes Badly
USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House
Trump Has Caused A Constitutional Crisis
Gabbard and RFK Jr. Were Nominated to Destroy, Not to Lead
Bernie Sanders rips RFK Jr. for ties to anti-vaxx baby merch
Some stars explode in slow motion.
My take is that there is an evolving new consensus on the minimum wage. Namely, the effects of the minimum wage are heterogeneous and take place on more margins than employment. Read Jeffrey Clemens’s brilliant and accessible paper in the JEP for the theory. A good example of the heterogeneous impact is this new paper by Clemens, Gentry and Meer on how the minimum wage makes it more difficult for the disabled to get jobs:
…We find that large minimum wage increases significantly reduce employment and labor force participation for individuals of all working ages with severe disabilities. These declines are accompanied by a downward shift in the wage distribution and an increase in public assistance receipt. By contrast, we find no employment effects for all but young individuals with either non-severe disabilities or no disabilities. Our findings highlight important heterogeneities in minimum wage impacts, raising concerns about labor market policies’ unintended consequences for populations on the margins of the labor force.
Or Neumark and Kayla on the minimum wage and blacks:
We provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of minimum wages on blacks, and on the relative impacts on blacks vs. whites. We study not only teenagers – the focus of much of the minimum wage-employment literature – but also other low-skill groups. We focus primarily on employment, which has been the prime concern with the minimum wage research literature. We find evidence that job loss effects from higher minimum wages are much more evident for blacks, and in contrast not very detectable for whites, and are often large enough to generate adverse effects on earnings.
Remember also that a “job” is not a simple contract of hours of work for dollars but contains many explicit and implicit margins on work conditions, fringe benefits, possibilities for promotion, training and so forth. For example, in Unintended workplace safety consequences of minimum wages, Liu, Lu, Sun and Zhang finds that the minimum wage increases accidents, probably because at a higher minimum wage the pace of work increases:
we find that large increases in minimum wages have significant adverse effects on workplace safety. Our findings indicate that, on average, a large minimum wage increase results in a 4.6 percent increase in the total case rate.
Note that these effects don’t always happen, in large part because, depending on the scope of the minimum wage increase and the industry, large effects of the minimum wage may be passed on to prices. For example here is Renkin and Siegenthaler finding that higher minimum wage increase grocery prices:
We use high-frequency scanner data and leverage a large number of state-level increases in minimum wages between 2001 and 2012. We find that a 10% minimum wage hike translates into a 0.36% increase in the prices of grocery products. This magnitude is consistent with a full pass-through of cost increases into consumer prices.
Similarly, Ashenfelter and Jurajda find there is no free lunch from minimum wage increases, indeed there is approximately full pass through at McDonalds:
Higher labor costs induced by minimum wage hikes are likely to increase product prices.4 If both labor and product markets are competitive, firms can pass through up to the full increase in costs (Fullerton and Metcalf 2002). With constant returns to scale, firms adjust prices in response to minimum wage hikes in proportion to the cost share of minimum wage labor. Under full price pass-through, the real income increases of low-wage workers brought about by minimum wage hikes may be lower than expected (MaCurdy 2015). There is growing evidence of near full price pass-through of minimum wages in the United States….Based on data spanning 2016–20, we find a 0.2 price elasticity with respect to wage increases driven (instrumented) by minimum wage hikes. Together with the 0.7 (first-stage) elasticity of wage rates with respect to minimum wages, this implies a (reduced-form) price elasticity with respect to minimum wages of about 0.14. This corresponds to near-full price pass-through of minimum-wage-induced higher costs of labor.
You can draw your own conclusions about the desirability of the minimum wage, but the fleeting hope that it raises wages without trade-offs is gone. The effects of the minimum wage are nuanced, heterogeneous, and by no means entirely positive.
The post The New Consensus on the Minimum Wage appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Maya Chouikrat, Algeria, to support training for an international olympiad of informatics team.
Mercy Muwanguzi and Kwesiga Pather, Uganda, for sanitation robotics to be used in medical centers.
Johan Fourie, South Africa, Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University, to write a graphics novel on classical liberalism in a South African context.
Ken Opalo, Associate Professor, Georgetown University, for blogging on African economic development.
Katharine Patterson, Botswana, to support graduate internship in robotics research at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Cyril Narh, Ghana, for general career development.
Jon Ortega, travel grant to Silicon Valley.
Alex Kyabarongo, Uganda, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Makerere University, to pursue graduate school in the USA for biosecurity.
Joshua Regrello, Trinidad and Tobago, first Steelpannist to perform on the Great Wall of China, Guinness Record Holder for longest steelpan performance, for general career development.
Liam O’Dea, London/Argentina, data science research into parliamentary records of the Caribbean for the last 200 years.
Joshua Payne, undergrad at University of Chicago, for research into mRNA vaccine optimisation, and career development.
Abdoulaye Faye, Senegal, developing Catyu, a firm that designs remotely operated robots.
Deveron Bruce, Barbados, PhD candidate at UWI, to support research in political reform in the Caribbean.
Tony Odhiambo, Kenya, undergrad at MIT, for enhanced training of top performers in mathematics olympiads in Kenya.
Sebastian Naranjo, Panama, PhD candidate at Renmin University of China, to support research on the diplomatic relations of China in Central America.
Ivoine Strachan, Bahamas, for research into designing and developing a VR bodysuit
Phumiani Majozi, South Africa, to establish a think tank promoting classical liberalism in South Africa
Pearl Karungi, Rwanda, for research into redesigning menstrual products.
Emmanuel Nnadi, Nigeria, Microbiologist, to support visiting research at the University of Waterloo in phage therapies.
Youhana Nassif, Egypt, to support an animation and arts showcase in Cairo.
Frida Andalu, Tanzania, to support visiting research in petroleum engineering at the University of Aberdeen.
Rupert Tawiah-Quashie, Ghana, to support his research internship at Harvard University concerning symbolic reasoning in AI models.
I thank Rasheed Griffith for his excellent work on this, and again Nabeel has created excellent software to help organize the list of winners, using AI.
Those unfamiliar with Emergent Ventures can learn more here and here. The EV African and the Caribbean announcement is here and you can see previous cohorts here. If you are interested in supporting this tranche of Emergent Ventures, please write to me or to Rasheed.
The post Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean winners, sixth cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Last month, DeepSeek released its R1 reasoning model (now apparently named DeepThink), with capabilities similar to OpenAI o1. What’s important about DeepSeek isn’t its benchmark results; there are a number of models on the same level as o1. What’s important is that it appears to have been trained with one-tenth the resources of comparable models. Throwing more hardware at a problem is rarely the best way to get good results.
Viasat won its first task order under the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO) satellite services contract
The post U.S. Space Force awards Viasat $3.5 million satellite services contract appeared first on SpaceNews.
NASA has directed a set of science committees to pause their work, citing recent Trump administration executive orders, a move that canceled one meeting and put others on hold.
The post NASA pauses work of science groups, citing Trump executive orders appeared first on SpaceNews.
In a rapidly evolving space industry defined by mounting competition and compressed timelines, CubeSpace (CS) is transforming satellite control for SmallSats. A global leader in satellite Attitude Determination and Control […]
The post CubeSpace: Revolutionizing Satellite Control for the SmallSat Market through Latest Investment appeared first on SpaceNews.
The leaders of Canada’s most populous province are holding off on a threat to scrap a $68 million Starlink contract for remote satellite connectivity this summer, after U.S. President Donald Trump delayed planned tariffs on the country by at least 30 days.
The post Ontario tables Starlink contract threat as US delays Canada tariffs appeared first on SpaceNews.
The proposed “Iron Dome for America” system is heavily reliant on space-based sensors and potentially controversial space-based interceptors
The post Top Pentagon contractors poised for gains as Trump pushes missile shield expansion appeared first on SpaceNews.
Wyvern is publicly sharing 25 images from its Dragonette hyperspectral satellites.
The post Wyvern unveils free hyperspectral datasets appeared first on SpaceNews.
At a Dec. 18, 2024, ESA council briefing, the Director General, Josef Aschbacher, said the agency would strive in 2025 to “simplify’” the long-standing principle of geo-return. According to that […]
The post Will ESA’s ‘fair contribution’ reinvigorate Europe’s space ambitions? No, it won’t. appeared first on SpaceNews.
Boeing took more than a half-billion dollars in charges on its CST-100 Starliner program in 2024, bringing its cumulative losses on the vehicle to just over $2 billion.
The post Boeing reports Starliner losses of more than half a billion dollars in 2024 appeared first on SpaceNews.
A clinical trial is good news.
The NYT has the story:
F.D.A. Approves Studies of Pig Organ Transplants for Kidney Patients
The research offers hope to tens of thousands of patients with kidney failure who are on a long waiting list for an organ transplant. By Roni Caryn Rabin Feb. 3, 2025
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to two biotechnology companies for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into people with kidney failure. If successful, these studies could lead to the broader use of cross-species transplantation, a dream of medical scientists for centuries.
One of the companies, United Therapeutics Corporation, will begin its trial with six patients, but that number could eventually rise to 50. The other, eGenesis, said it would begin with three patients and grow the study from there.
...
"Over the past three years, five patients have been known to receive organs from pigs engineered by these companies — two who received hearts and three who received kidneys. But these surgeries were not part of a formal clinical trial.
...
"The United Therapeutics study, which is expected to begin midyear, will start with six patients who have been on dialysis for at least six months but do not have other serious medical problems. There will be a three-month waiting period between each transplant so that doctors can learn from the outcomes.
If the first six transplants are successful, the trial will expand to include up to 50 participants in what is called a phaseless trial — a type of study that combines the traditional Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials and can lead directly to approval."
- by Peter Harrison
Like a lot of the rest of the federal government right now, NASA is reeling during the first turbulent days of the Trump administration.
The last two weeks have brought a change in leadership in the form of interim administrator Janet Petro, whose ascension was a surprise. Her first act was to tell agency employees to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility contracts and to "report" on anyone who did not carry out this order. Soon, civil servants began receiving emails from the US Office of Personnel Management that some perceived as an effort to push them to resign.
Then there are the actions of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Last week he sowed doubt by claiming NASA had "stranded" astronauts on the space station. (The astronauts are perfectly safe and have a ride home.) Perhaps more importantly, he owns the space agency's most important contractor and, in recent weeks, has become deeply enmeshed in operating the US government through his Department of Government Efficiency. For some NASA employees, whether or not it is true, there is now an uncomfortable sense that they are working for Musk and to dole out contracts to SpaceX.
Two new independent estimates of revenue from SpaceX's Starlink Internet service suggest it is rapidly growing, having nearly tripled in just two years.
An updated projection from the analysts at Quilty Space estimates that the service produced $7.8 billion in revenue in 2024, with about 60 percent of that coming from consumers who subscribe to the service. Similarly, the media publication Payload estimated that Starlink generated $8.2 billion in revenue last year.
These estimates indicate that Starlink produced a few hundred million dollars in free cash flow for SpaceX in 2024. However, with revenues expected to leap in 2025 to above $12 billion, Quilty Space estimates that free cash flow will grow to about $2 billion. SpaceX is privately held, so its financial numbers are not public.
Yes, but can your rainbow do this?
From TPM Reader NL …
I called Senator Warner’s office to get a sense for what they are doing to raise the salience of Elon Musk’s illegal takeover of the Treasury Payments system.
The very polite staffer said that Senator Warner will be issuing a statement soon. She politely explained that this is how members of Congress communicate their position.
Dude, these people are just lost. They don’t get it or don’t want to get it.
There are many ways to skin a cat. But statements that go out via press release are meaningless. That is no longer how news works. Full stop.
I wrote a series of posts over the weekend about how to make sense, politically, strategically and even emotionally of the unfolding crisis of governance in DC. Here’s a piece about messaging and morale and another on Trump and Musk’s “shock and awe” strategies. After reading those posts, a number of TPM Readers have asked, okay, what are we supposed to do? Or what are our electeds supposed to do? I want to dig into this more later, but in this post I want to give as best a quick answer to that as I can.
We start with a piece in this morning’s Punchbowl which is simultaneously encouraging and gobsmackingly disheartening. The headline reads: Democrats ask: Why would we help Trump and the Republicans?. Most of you are probably thinking, you’re just getting to this question, guys? Well, they are. As they should, though it’s far more tentative than it should be. I suspect that’s about to change.
Let’s repeat the core fact. Republicans are in charge. As I explained here, the levers Democrats have over any of this are very limited. This is fundamentally a battle over public opinion, one in which the opposition needs to be making the case about the disastrousness of Trump’s policies. But there are levers. And they need to use them. Because even those tiny levers are key to that larger battle. Talk in itself is meaningless. Begging especially is meaningless. In fact, on its own it can be demoralizing — same old, same old, just performatively illustrating either the inability or unwillingness to act.
Right now in Washington, DC, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are dominating literally everything. That will start changing quickly, at least in a limited way, in the courts. But the overriding need is for Democrats to get a seat at the table. And they can do that in several ways. The biggest way is that Republicans will need help to pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling. The rubber starts meeting the road on that front next month. Real soon. You can talk as much as you want. But the White House and congressional Republicans absolutely need that help. And Democrats need to be crystal clear that the answer is absolutely no help — without meeting their conditions. That’s where you get the seat at the table.
What are the conditions? I’m still trying to figure out precisely what I’d do if I were calling the shots in the minority. But there are two fronts to think about: there are the immediate crisis issues and the overarching political arguments Democrats need to start making right now and continue making right through next year’s elections. Both are critical and they need to be wound together as a public message. But it’s important to think of them separately.
The crisis part of this is that Trump needs to stop breaking the law. The nonsense of trying to unilaterally shut down whole parts of the government, cancer research and everything else has to stop. The whole Musk operation. No more breaking federal laws. There’s a budget. The President can’t ignore the law. How to make that argument? Musk gave a bunch of kids access to your monthly Social Security check and all your financial data. They can stop anyone’s check at any time. That’s the central message. That has to stop. The larger political message is that Trump is taking away your health care and starting a trade war to jack up your prices all so that he and his billionaire friends can get huge tax cuts. Remember that the clearest poll data we’ve gotten since the inauguration is that “billionaire advisors” are super unpopular and Musk specifically is very unpopular. That’s the outline of the whole message. You’re about to lose a lot of stuff — your health care coverage and a bunch of money to inflation — so Elon and Trump and their pals can get a tax cut.
The next point is that you don’t just yank the brakes on the train to stop the train from going forward. You do it to show you have power. That gives some hope to your supporters. It also drives press coverage which is almost universally based on actions, things that change things and drive new facts that become new news. Seat at the table. Same difference. Nothing drives news like being able to drive new events. That’s critical.
The other point is one we’ve made before. All power is unitary. Democrats need that seat at the table. You do it with the most electric and unifying issue. That is almost certainly the tariffs and Musk’s spending freezes in the short-term and health care cuts in the medium term. But what about the simultaneous crises in deportations, or the shutdown of USAID, the illegal firing of federal workers, or all the other predations? I strongly believe that all that matters is what gets Democrats to the table. Power is unitary. What checks Trump’s currently untrammeled power is all that matters, whatever has the best shot at it. An increase in power on one front applies on every other front. Power on grinding the budget mechanisms and debt ceiling negotiations to a halt increases Democrats’ extremely limited power everywhere else. This is simply a cardinal point to understand about politics: all power is unitary. You don’t gain it or lose it in one place and leave it unaffected in another. That’s not how it works. This isn’t a panacea by any means. We’re heading into a withering storm. But those are unquestionably the most unifying points to focus on and the political power and momentum Democrats gain there will apply to every other issue as well.
So what should or can someone individually do? If Democrats are starting to ask, why should we help?, I would want to send the message that they absolutely shouldn’t. This isn’t a hard message. Get your hands off my parents’ Social Security checks and stop looking at their financial data. No help on anything until the law breaking stops. Period. No debt ceiling help. No budget help. And remember — Democrats can grind the Senate to a halt at any time by refusing unanimous consent to new business. No help on anything until the law breaking stops, and hands off the parents’ Social Security checks. Or yours. That’s a strong message.
(This post has been written quickly. I’ll try to sharpen some points later. But I wanted to get this post up quickly.)
Sometimes it’s not just about what wins. It’s also about losing well. A good loss emboldens your supporters rather than demoralizing them. As I tried to explain a couple days ago, fundamentally Democrats are now heading into a titanic battle over public opinion that will take months if not years. That’s what this will finally come down to. But this is, I’m pretty certain, where to start. No help until the law breaking stops and Musk’s toadies get their hands off everyone’s money. And if Republicans ignore the demand? Fine. No help. Good luck with your budget and the debt ceiling.
NOTE: As I have for 25 years, I welcome your responses, which you can send to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com. If you’re a government worker or anyone else who has sensitive or confidential information to share about what’s happening inside the federal government you can reach me via encrypted mail at joshtpm (at) protonmail dot com or via Signal at joshtpm dot 99. Please only use these encrypted channels for confidential communication.
OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell released a memo this afternoon to agency heads which says that “provisions of collective bargaining agreements that conflict with management rights are unlawful and unenforceable.” The memo addresses telework issues. At least for now the memo remains online on this government server. The title of the memo is ‘Guidance on Collective Bargaining Obligations in Connection with Return to InPerson Work’.
Speaking of cheating, my favorite book from Trump’s first term was Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat, which I linked to, with an excerpt still available at The Guardian, when it came out in 2019. I’ve been a fan of Reilly’s writing since I was a teenager and he was the back-page columnist for Sports Illustrated; this is the book Reilly was born to write. I just picked my copy off my shelf and started to re-read it, and got sucked right back in. Posting this link is my way of forcing myself to put it down until tonight.
(Main link here is an Amazon affiliate one, which will make me rich if you purchase through it. If you prefer not to buy books from Amazon, here’s a link to Bookshop.org.)
Drew Harwell, at The Washington Post (gift link, via Harwell himself on Bluesky — which seemingly uses a ludicrously long 397-character token in the URL):
But after poring over his live-streamed gameplay, online sleuths recently made a shocking accusation: Musk had cheated. They suspected that he had pursued a widely mocked tactic known as “boosting,” paying strangers to play his character and rake in loot so that, when he logged in, he could face challenges with the most powerful gear.
Musk fought the allegations before ultimately confessing in messages this month. “It’s impossible to beat players in Asia if you don’t,” he wrote. A few days later, his character could be seen chasing treasure through the game’s sulfuric caverns while Musk was in the Capitol Rotunda, attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Every cheater’s story is the same: “I’m not cheating, and I’m offended you’d accuse me.” Then, presented with incontrovertible proof, “I had to cheat because everyone else is cheating so it’s the only way to win, and anyone who isn’t doing it is a simp.” But the simple truth is that cheaters are rotten people, and most people naturally despise cheating.
But watching Musk’s streams, Jake began to suspect foul play. The billionaire did amateurish things, such as failing to drink mana flasks when he needed them and trying to pick up items when his inventory was full. And he made comments that struck devoted players as clueless, saying, for instance, that his character’s “Hand of Wisdom and Action” gloves, which rank among the game’s most valuable items, “could be better.” A normal gamer could write these off as simple flubs in the heat of battle, Jake said. But Musk was supposedly a global grand master, and gamers at that level don’t make these kinds of mistakes.
“It’s like if you said you’re the number two truck driver in the world … and when you try to get the truck to turn on, the windshield wipers start going,” Jake said. “It just felt like there was no way this guy did this.”
When Jake posted a thread on Reddit documenting Musk’s “suspicious” gameplay, the accusations kicked up a firestorm, with “Path of Exile 2” fans scraping through the streams Musk had posted to X for clues of what some were calling his “stolen valor.” [...]
By paying someone else to earn him his high-level gear, they said, he had removed most of the challenge — only to boast how quickly he had beaten others who played fair and square. One poster on a Diablo subreddit called it “unbelievably pathetic” that the world’s richest man would feel “the need to cheat” in a video game to “claim he is good at something” most people “couldn’t care less about.”
It’s the boasting that’s most revealing.
It’s a trope as old as fiction itself that villains cheat at everything. Auric Goldfinger cheated at golf, famously. And in Ian Fleming’s Moonraker (but not the movie), the whole plot was driven by M’s suspicion that mysterious millionaire (the billionaire of the 1950s) industrialist Hugo Drax was cheating at cards at their gentlemen’s club. He assigned Bond to figure out how he was cheating, and Bond stumbled into Drax’s plot to annihilate London. Drax, you see, is in fact a Nazi. And his industry: rocketry.
Ezra Klein in an audio essay/transcribed column at The New York Times:
That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. [...]
What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.
It is easy and quick, often instantaneous, to destroy things. It is hard and slow work to build new things, and often even harder and slower work to improve existing ones.
I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.
That’s the optimistic take — Trump and his new administration are trying to manically (or is it maniacally?) punch their way to a first-round knockout. They’re utterly unprepared for a 15-round grueling slog. The pessimistic take is that the first-round knockout might happen.
The ultimate power in America isn’t our political or legal systems. It’s our culture. Our collective attitudes. We, collectively, are quite obviously very bad at history, because we, collectively, clearly forgot how chaotic a Trump presidency is after just four years, and we forgot how much we dislike chaotic leadership. But we know what we don’t like and we’re vocal about it. He’s not doing anything to increase his slim margin of popularity, and is already doing a lot of things to lose it. He was never once popular during his first term — not at the start, not in the middle, and definitely not at the end. Right now is the most popular he’s ever been, with a net approval of around zero. That’s the high water mark for Trump — just ever so barely popular enough to win an election.
The subtitle is “Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development,” and the authors are Jan Kulveit, et.al. Several of you have asked me for comments on this paper. Here is the abstract:
This paper examines the systemic risks posed by incremental advancements in artificial intelligence, developing the concept of `gradual disempowerment’, in contrast to the abrupt takeover scenarios commonly discussed in AI safety. We analyze how even incremental improvements in AI capabilities can undermine human influence over large-scale systems that society depends on, including the economy, culture, and nation-states. As AI increasingly replaces human labor and cognition in these domains, it can weaken both explicit human control mechanisms (like voting and consumer choice) and the implicit alignments with human interests that often arise from societal systems’ reliance on human participation to function. Furthermore, to the extent that these systems incentivise outcomes that do not line up with human preferences, AIs may optimize for those outcomes more aggressively. These effects may be mutually reinforcing across different domains: economic power shapes cultural narratives and political decisions, while cultural shifts alter economic and political behavior. We argue that this dynamic could lead to an effectively irreversible loss of human influence over crucial societal systems, precipitating an existential catastrophe through the permanent disempowerment of humanity. This suggests the need for both technical research and governance approaches that specifically address the risk of incremental erosion of human influence across interconnected societal systems.
This is one of the smarter arguments I have seen, but I am very far from convinced. When were humans ever in control to begin with? (Robin Hanson realized this a few years ago and is still worried about it, as I suppose he should be. There is not exactly a reliable competitive process for cultural evolution — boo hoo!)
Note the argument here is not that a few rich people will own all the AI. Rather, humans seem to lose power altogether. But aren’t people cloning DeepSeek for ridiculously small sums of money? Why won’t our AI future be fairly decentralized, with lots of checks and balances, and plenty of human ownership to boot?
Rather than focusing on “humans in general,” I say look at the marginal individual human being. That individual — forever as far as I can tell — has near-zero bargaining power against a coordinating, cartelized society aligned against him. With or without AI. Yet that hardly ever happens, extreme criminals being one exception. There simply isn’t enough collusion to extract much from the (non-criminal) potentially vulnerable lone individuals.
I do not in this paper see a real argument that a critical mass of the AIs are going to collude against humans. It seems already that “AIs in China” and “AIs in America” are unlikely to collude much with each other. Similarly, “the evil rich people” do not collude with each other all that much either, much less across borders.
I feel if the paper made a serious attempt to model the likelihood of worldwide AI collusion, the results would come out in the opposite direction. So, to my eye, “checks and balances forever” is by far the more likely equilibrium.
The post Gradual Empowerment? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
The LBJ Presidential Library, regarding a largely ad-libbed address Lyndon Johnson gave to a group of 150 non-incumbent Democratic candidates for Congress in 1966:
He talked about the difference between Republicans and Democrats: “We’re for something, and they are against everything. Mr. Rayburn was asked one time, ‘What do you think — after 50 years — is the primary difference between the Republican and Democratic parties? Is it the tariff?’
“‘No.’
“‘Well, what is the difference?’
“Mr. Rayburn replied, ‘I’ll tell you the easiest and best explanation — one that I have observed, and I came here during Woodrow Wilson’s administration. They hate all of our Presidents.’
“He said, ‘I didn’t hate Harding. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t hate him.’ He said, ‘I didn’t hate Coolidge. I thought he was totally inadequate to the responsibility, but I used to go down and eat scrambled eggs and just watch him. He never said anything. You couldn’t tell what he thought of anything.’
“He said, ‘I didn’t get angry with Hoover. Everything in the country folded up and we had bread lines all over the country and everybody in the Southwest was chasing rabbits in order to eat. But I didn’t hate him. We tried to help him. But look what they did to Roosevelt when he came in. They were after his wife. They were after his daughter. And they finally got down after his dog.’”
And LBJ pointed toward the South Lawn where his beagles were kept and said: “And I’ve got three of them out there to jump on if they want to.”
He talked about the difference between constructive action and obstructive action: “Any jackass can kick a barn down. But it takes a carpenter to build one.”
Much has changed in the last 60 years. Much has not.
Speaking of books, Simon & Shuster announced a new one:
Apple isn’t just a brand; it’s the world’s most valuable company and creator of the twenty-first century’s defining product. The iPhone has revolutionized the way we live, work and connect. But Apple is now a victim of its own success, caught in the middle of a new Cold War between two superpowers.
On the brink of bankruptcy in 1996, Apple launched a new strategy to outsource its manufacturing. After experimenting in eight countries, nearly all of its operations were lured to China by the promises of affordable, ubiquitous labour. As the iPod and iPhone transformed Apple’s fortunes, their sophisticated production played a seminal role financing, training, supervising, and supplying Chinese manufacturers — skills Beijing is now weaponizing against the West.
Apple in China is the sometimes disturbing and always revelatory story of how an outspoken, proud company that once praised “rebels” and “troublemakers” — the company that encouraged us all to “Think Different” — devolved into a silent, passive partner to a belligerent regime that increasingly controls its fate.
I’ve long been a fan of McGee’s work as the Financial Times’s Silicon Valley correspondent. Two years ago, the Financial Times ran a good two-part series by McGee that seemingly started him down the path to this book: “How Apple Tied Its Fortunes to China”, and “What It Would Take for Apple to Disentangle Itself From China”. Both are worth reading. This chart from the first report shows just how reliant Apple remains on Chinese manufacturing, and this one from the second shows just how remarkably profitable the iPhone is.
Starting a restaurant is an exciting but challenging venture that requires careful planning, creativity, and strategic execution. From conceptualizing your restaurant’s theme to managing operations efficiently, every aspect plays a crucial role in determining its success. With the right approach, you can turn your passion for food into a profitable business. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to launching a successful restaurant.
Before diving into logistics, you need to establish a clear restaurant concept. What type of cuisine will you serve? Will your restaurant have a casual or fine dining ambiance? Your concept should reflect your target market’s preferences and align with current food industry trends.
Once your concept is defined, create a solid business plan. This plan should include:
Opening a restaurant requires significant capital investment. Whether you’re self-funding, seeking investors, or applying for loans, having a detailed financial plan is essential. Consider exploring crowdfunding platforms or restaurant incubator programs for additional support.
Location is a critical factor in a restaurant’s success. Look for high-traffic areas with good visibility and accessibility. Ensure that your chosen location aligns with your target audience and provides adequate space for kitchen and seating arrangements.
Every restaurant must comply with legal requirements. Make sure to obtain the necessary permits and licenses, including:
A well-designed restaurant enhances customer experience and operational efficiency. Focus on comfortable seating, attractive decor, and an optimized kitchen layout that allows smooth workflow.
Investing in high-quality kitchen appliances and a robust management system is key to streamlining operations. One of the most crucial investments is a restaurant POS system, which helps with order management, payment processing, and reporting. Additionally, consider inventory management tools and online ordering platforms.
Your staff plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction. Recruit experienced chefs, waitstaff, and managers who align with your restaurant’s culture. Provide thorough training to ensure exceptional service and efficiency.
Digital marketing is essential for attracting customers. Set up a professional website, optimize your Google My Business listing, and engage with customers on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Offer special discounts, happy hour deals, and loyalty programs to encourage repeat customers. Collaborate with food influencers and local media to boost visibility.
Plan a grand opening event to create buzz around your restaurant. Offer free tastings, live music, or exclusive discounts to attract customers. Continuously collect customer feedback and make improvements to enhance their dining experience.
Starting a restaurant is a rewarding but challenging journey. By carefully planning each step—from concept development to marketing—you can increase your chances of success. Stay adaptable, embrace technology, and prioritize customer satisfaction to build a thriving restaurant business.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN SUPPORT OF DCREPORT’S NONPROFIT MISSION
The post How to Start a Successful Restaurant: A Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on DCReport.org.
From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Stay Flat Despite Underlying Market VolatilityWe know that mortgage rates are driven by financial markets and we know that financial markets have experienced volatility amid the roll-out of new tariffs over the weekend. But rates are starting the current week right in line with Friday's latest levels (themselves, little-changed from any other day last week). [30 year fixed 7.05%]Tuesday:
emphasis added
The culture scene is total madness. As Billie Holiday warned long ago: “Nothing is what it once used to be.”
So Madonna is working as a standup comedian.
Somebody bought a Van Gogh at a Minnesota garage sale for fifty bucks.
The luxury Disney Star Wars hotel—where families paid $20,000 for a stay just a few months ago—is now boring office space.
Old ladies in Japan are trying to get sent to prison.
And just when you thought it can’t get worse….Olive Garden starts replacing its famous breadsticks with hot dog buns.
Is nothing sacred?
I try to make sense of it all. I do that for my own sanity. And for you, too, in my arts and culture briefings.
So let’s analyze the latest happenings….
A few weeks ago, Billboard warned that vinyl record sales were collapsing—and had dropped 33% in just one year.
The next day, new ‘improved’ numbers were released. These showed vinyl sales had really grown 6% during the last year.
But the RIAA released different numbers saying that vinyl sales were up 17%.
Then, just a few days ago, Digital Music News reported that nobody really knows what’s happened with vinyl in 2024—because the method used to track sales has changed.
“Therefore, independent retail physical sales under the new methodology for 2024 are isolated and no trending is provided versus 2023.”
This leaves us in an uncomfortable spot. Official numbers show vinyl sales in 2024 declined versus 2023. But we’re asked not to compare them.
We’re all left with guesswork.
Let me state the obvious (that few dare say): When you see huge industries that don’t know if they’re growing or shrinking, that’s a warning sign.
So I’m sticking by my previous assessment.
The vinyl opportunity is huge, but the major labels are killing it.
Most of their back catalog is still unavailable in vinyl—even after 15 years of the vinyl revival.
Prices are far too high. Labels could make vinyl more affordable, and turn it into a mass market product. But instead they’re fattening margins by selling albums as luxury products.
They are destroying the business. So if the market isn’t flattening (or declining) already, it will be soon.
You don’t see advertising here on Substack—hooray!—because the business model is based on subscriptions.
That’s great news for me, because I’ve insulted almost every possible advertiser, corporation, and nation state here at The Honest Broker.
Freddy Krueger has more friends on Elm Street than I do on all of Madison Avenue.
But some Substack writers are much friendlier than me, and are now selling ads. More will soon do the same.
They don’t have to share this revenue with Substack, and some of the deals are very lucrative—much higher than what blogs can charge.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
An affiliate link or mention could cost as little as $100, a few paragraphs can bring in up to $5,000, while sponsoring a single edition of a newsletter with a subscriber base of more than 75,000 might run $20,000, authors and media buyers said.
Twenty grand to sponsor a single issue of a newsletter?
I’m a little surprised, but maybe I shouldn’t be. Substack has become a hot thing in the last year or so, and corporations want a taste of the action.
By the way, I have no plan to sell advertising here at The Honest Broker.
Lawyers joked about this “sad beige lawsuit.” But not anymore.
Two women in Texas battled over their cool beige aesthetic. Each influencer wanted to force the other to switch to some other, brighter color. So it ends up in court.
Gifford accuses Sheil of adopting the same “neutral, beige, and cream aesthetic” that comprises her brand, featuring many of the same products, and copying Gifford’s style and captions.
That’s crazy talk. The whole purpose of influencing is to convince people to imitate your style. How can you possibly sue them?
But the court agreed.
As I walked through Greenwich Village two days after the election, a young man shoved a pamphlet into my hand: “The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide.” It became a viral sensation, providing a roadmap for recognizing and dealing with dictatorship.
That morning, I had intended to visit a café near New York University and edit articles for my Long Island high school newspaper, but I couldn’t. Instead, I repeatedly flipped through the pamphlet, fixated on every point about resisting a dictatorship.
Will Trump become America’s dictator?
American teens have never seen a dictatorship. We hear about places like North Korea and Russia, but it’s so alien to our experience, so abstract, that we have no idea of what it would be like to live in one of the world’s heavy surveillance states under a dictator.
After years of history classes about Axis powers and imperialism, we can see the writing on the walls, with billionaires in Trump’s pockets, including META, run by Mark Zuckerberg, who controls Instagram and Facebook; X, owned by Elon Musk, and now TikTok with CEO Shou Zi Chew thanking Trump for saving TikTok from the ban Congress voted for at Trump’s insistence.
In 2020, Trump wanted a TikTok ban for fear it endangered our national security. In 2025 he says he wants to keep TikTok because he’s become a star of its short videos.
That’s Trump in a nutshell — he runs on an “America First” platform, but our safety takes a backseat to his vanity.
Soon I expect to see algorithms favoring the hard right while suppressing voices that helped Harris and Biden gain popularity. If no one on social media can hold Trump accountable or stop his destructive actions he is taking, how will we stop him?
Trump’s claims for the next four years are frightening, to say the least. He wants to make Canada the 51st state, change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, buy Greenland, or perhaps go to war with our NATO ally, Denmark, which owns that icy island. He has even hinted that he would use physical force to take over the Panama Canal, falsely claiming it is now run by China.
Will Trump become America’s dictator?
Trump is known for using fear tactics to mobilize voters, convincing them that there is a deep state cabal, labeling LGBTQ+ people American predators, denouncing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as an indoctrination plan, and alleging there would be no country today had Kamala Harris been elected.
Amazingly millions of people, including many of my generation, believe Trump’s nonsense or at least embrace it because they are narrow minded, fearful people.
What kept me from finishing editing our school newspaper was Trump’s thoughts about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hunger for land and Putin’s immorality, which increased his power. During his first presidency, Donald Trump became very buddy-buddy with the international war criminal who brutally invaded Ukraine, intentionally bombing hospitals, schools and other peaceful institutions.
In 2022, Trump said, “The smartest one gets to the top. That hasn’t worked so well recently in our country. But they ask me, ‘Is Putin smart?’ Yes, Putin was smart. And I thought he was going to be negotiating. I said, ‘That’s a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 soldiers on the border.’”
I contemplated how Trump would approach his second term when he doesn’t have to worry about looking good for re-election. Of course, that assumes Trump will leave office when his term ends in 2029.
My history teacher told me last year that “the president’s main concern in his first four years is re-election.” I figured Trump must have been operating under that mindset as well, just not very well since he lost to Biden in 2020 after fumbling the COVID-19 pandemic challenges.
But now that Trump is elected, he wants to become the one who is feared. He has already stated he will fire “woke” generals.
Is Trump’s overarching goal to expand U.S. territory into Mexico, Canada, Greenland, and Panama?
A few weeks ago, in Florida, Trump said he wouldn’t rule out using military force to gain control of the Panama Canal. “I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said. “It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.”
The relationship between Panama and the U.S. over control of the Panama Canal has been tumultuous, to say the least. The U.S. first gained rights to own and operate the canal in 1903, with the Hay-Herrán Treaty with Columbia, which controlled Panama then.
Control has fluctuated over the century, with the rotation of presidents in both the U.S. and Panama. However, as of 1999, the canal was controlled by the Panamanians under a treaty upheld by our Supreme Court.
Now, a quarter century later, Trump may seek to shift the balance again, alleging that the Chinese run the canal, which is not true.
On the same day, Trump mentioned his scheme to acquire Greenland: “We need Greenland for national security purposes.” Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, meaning Denmark does not govern the Greenlandic people.
Don Jr., Trump’s oldest son, even paid a visit to Greenland, which Trump described in a written statement: “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
However, Greenland officials refused to meet with Don Jr. and said he visited as “a private individual.” Trump’s statement misled about what his son’s visit, suggesting it was official even though père Trump at the time was just a private citizen.
It also seems that the people of Greenland do not want to become U.S. subjects. Fox sent a reporter to Greenland to ask the opinions of locals. One man stated, “The United States used to be a place that was sort of admired here, and basically all the goodwill that they used to have is almost gone now.”
Finally, Trump’s most farfetched conquest is making Canada the 51st State. He has been taunting our northern ally, calling them “The Great State of Canada” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “Governor.”
With Trudeau stepping down, Trump may try to move in, whether through economic or military means. I wouldn’t rule out even the cruelest of tactics as something Trump could employ.
Interestingly, Trump’s willingness to ignore diplomacy and respect is truly frightening for the American people if we look at other modern dictators, like Vladimir Putin and President of China Xi Jinping, we can see similarities to Trump’s expansionist plans.
Putin wants to rebuild the old Soviet Union. From 1945 until 2014, Russian borders were stable. Then Putin’s “little green men” with no insignias on their uniforms invaded Crimea. He insisted they weren’t his soldiers until they had control, and then he said they were his.
Putin had a puppet regime in Kyiv until 2014, when the people rose and ousted the kleptocrat. He had built an enormous palace behind a high wall and dumped records in a lake he had built. Journalists trained by Investigative Reporters & Editors America persuaded divers go into the freezing February water to retrieve papers and called for trucks to flash freeze the documents (otherwise, bacteria would eat the paper). That was how journalists proved that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chief, got $12.7 million in cash from the puppet.
The United States intelligence community also stated with “high confidence” that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. This was allegedly done at Putin’s request.
President Xi wanted to expand into the South China Sea by building artificial islands while also pushing for control of Taiwan and Tibet.
Trump’s claims to sovereign territory in Greenland and Panama could give him a dictatorship if he follows through, including on his claimed right to use armed American troops against American citizens.
But maybe nothing will happen. After all, Trump’s promises are hardly ever fulfilled, such as his promise to decrease inflation and then his promise to decrease grocery prices: “I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he said, changing his tune after winning election last fall. And then there’s that wall at our southern border that he promised but never built.
However, Trump’s new platform seems reinvigorated to the detriment of American citizens. He has appointed unqualified “yes men” as top government officials and threatened to use military power to get what he wants.
America’s students need to pay attention.
The post Dictatorship In The Making appeared first on DCReport.org.
After musique practice I went to the office, and there with the two Sir Williams all the morning about business, and at noon I dined with Sir W. Batten with many friends more, it being his wedding-day, and among other froliques, it being their third year, they had three pyes, whereof the middlemost was made of an ovall form, in an ovall hole within the other two, which made much mirth, and was called the middle piece; and above all the rest, we had great striving to steal a spooneful out of it; and I remember Mrs. Mills, the minister’s wife, did steal one for me and did give it me; and to end all, Mrs. Shippman did fill the pye full of white wine, it holding at least a pint and a half, and did drink it off for a health to Sir William and my Lady, it being the greatest draft that ever I did see a woman drink in my life.
Before we had dined came Sir G. Carteret, and we went all three to the office and did business there till night, and then to Sir W. Batten again, and I went along with my lady and the rest of the gentlewomen to Major Holmes’s, and there we had a fine supper, among others, excellent lobsters, which I never eat at this time of the year before. The Major hath good lodgings at the Trinity House. Here we staid, and at last home, and, being in my chamber, we do hear great noise of mirth at Sir William Batten’s, tearing the ribbands from my Lady and him. —[As if they were a newly-married couple.]— So I to bed.
One explanation of the gender wage gap is taste discrimination, as in Becker (1957). We test for taste discrimination by constructing a novel measure of misogyny using Google Trends data on searches that include derogatory terms for women. We find—surprisingly, in our view—that misogyny is an economically meaningful and statistically significant predictor of the wage gap. We also test more explicit implications of taste discrimination. The data are inconsistent with the Becker taste discrimination model, based on the tests used in Charles and Guryan (2008). But the data are consistent with the effects of taste discrimination against women in search models (Black, 1995), in which discrimination on the part of even a small group of misogynists can result in a wage gap.
That is a new NBER working paper by Molly Maloney and David Neumark.
The post Does the Gender Wage Gap Actually Reflect Taste Discrimination Against Women? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
So far, the real effects of purging anyone in the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors who took part in investigating January 6 or the various criminal, civil or impeachment probes of Donald Trump’s behaviors remains clouded.
Forcing a widespread retributive cleanout of FBI agents strictly over personal loyalty to Trump may well be found illegal eventually, but meanwhile, Team Trump will be assured of its own righteousness of actions — even if that comes at the price of law enforcement readiness and national security. Aren’t these the same forces that Trump wants to stop the crime he sees as rising?
It’s beyond ironic that non-legal dismissals would come in the agencies charged with law enforcement.
From news reports, we know that nine top FBI officials have been ordered to resign or be fired, a dozen or so prosecutors associated with Trump cases are gone and plans for reassignment and reorganization of scores more are underway. The FBI has been told to prepare lists of those who may have been involved, however tangentially, in investigations related to Jan. 6 or Trump-related cases including holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
From all accounts, those lists could reflect thousands of FBI agents across the country who will face dismissal to satisfy Trump’s personal pique. There are consequences:
–Disclosure of the purge by agency acting heads makes testimony offered at Senate confirmation hearings by Kash Patel as head of the FBI and Pam Bondi as Attorney General lies under oath to avoid retaliatory action against staff without specific violation of employee standards. But no Republican senator has yet said so out loud.
–The purge means losing lots of institutional knowledge and specific investigatory work on national security issues both in the FBI and Justice, where units that work on such cases are being targeted. By any measure, we are less safe than we were a month ago.
–The efforts at “cleanup” are bullying, clumsy, and do not reflect standing procedures for dismissals.
Besides spotlighting Trump’s continually expanding power grab, what is on display is destruction of any sense of independence of FBI and Justice investigations from the White House’s outwardly political agenda. “I do not believe the current leadership of the Justice Department can trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” wrote Emil Bove, acting head of Justice.
The dominant questions at the Bondi and Patel confirmation hearings centered on what each would do to maintain independence from the White House at a time when Trump wants to bend law enforcement and intelligence agencies to his will. The answer, we see, is that might trumps right.
Under specific questioning about dismissing FBI personnel, Patel said, “I’m committing to you, senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”
Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, gave similar assurances regarding Justice Department employees during her hearing.
What should happen is that Senate committees order Bondi and Patel back and require that they answer for the actions being taken by the agencies that they just swore to keep independent. Either they lied under oath — a crime — or they cannot take the same position going forward and should be rejected as candidates or step aside.
As Trump and Republican senators are fond of repeating, actions have consequences — unless they take the actions, apparently.
Moreover, Trump and his national security team should be challenged on how these moves make us safer as a country, how eliminating a “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department is aided by getting rid of hundreds or thousands of FBI agents and legal staff who were doing their normal professional lives.
Apart from all else, why couldn’t Trump wait a week to have his confirmed heads of department in place? What does this tell us about the ability of Team Trump to manage when they are “solving” one problem by creating more problems?
FBI employees are entitled to receive a proposed punishment or discipline action in writing, and a written justification outlining the security rules or standards of employee conduct they are accused of violating. The employee would then have a two-stage opportunity to appeal a recommended firing or other punishment.
If we cannot trust Patel and Bondi about keeping staffing out of Trump’s political retribution campaign, why should we trust any promises for independence on launching or stopping individual investigations, why should we trust whether they are even hearing about national security cases that they should be following? Why should we trust that they recognize how to manage a staff appropriately or to recruit and train a lot of new people quickly?
Agree or not, we can understand that U.S. Attorney US Ed Martin has dismissed roughly 30 federal prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases in the Washington office over the past four years. Those cases are gone now.
But dismissing upwards of 6,000 FBI agents because they carried out investigation assignments or served the court papers to enter Mar-a-Lago? Even if one accepts retribution as a reality, the scale seems ridiculous.
Losing scores of agents from field offices across the country could significantly deplete FBI staffing levels, affect cases unrelated to Trump and create other problems. New agents undergo intensive screening and a specialized 18-week training program before they can be deployed.
CLICK HERE TO EMPOWER A FREE PRESS THAT WILL PROTECT US ALL FROM TYRANNY
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There did not appear to be an end-of-month boost in demand, either as a rebound from the mid-month weather-related losses or pull-ahead volume in case of still-possible future tariff-related price increases. However, January’s gain marked the fourth straight year-over-year increase in volume and fifth consecutive for the seasonally adjusted annual rate.
Click on graph for larger image.
When democracies die, big business and wealthy individuals often play a crucial role in their demise. They provide a would-be strongman with financial support; their control of or influence over news media ensures that he receives favorable coverage, while his opponents are trashed. They do this because they expect to be rewarded with policies that favor their interests and imagine that they will in effect be shareholders in the new autocracy.
What comes next is familiar to anyone who studies history (which the oligarchs don’t.) Eventually it becomes clear that they don’t own the dictator they’ve helped install; he owns them. Maybe they’ll like some of his policies, maybe they won’t, but in any case they’re not in control — and they soon learn that criticizing the big man isn’t just fruitless, it’s dangerous.
In the past this script has typically taken a few years to play out, but this is the internet age, so right now in America the process seems to be taking only a few weeks.
Donald Trump’s decision to launch an all-out trade war, not with China, but with our neighbors and allies — who are gearing up for large-scale retaliation — probably isn’t the most important thing happening right now. I’ll talk in a minute about what is. But it has certainly come as a wake-up call for business.
It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Actually it is funny if you’re into gallows humor. Trump spent the entire campaign proclaiming that he was a Tariff Man, promising high tariffs and asserting that we were somehow subsidizing Canada and Mexico. Yet businesses and bank analysts blithely assumed that he didn’t really mean it. On Inauguration Day he made a very specific promise: 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico by Feb. 1. Yet the newsletter I receive from Goldman Sachs summarized the day with the headline “A More Benign Tone on Tariffs,” and declared
Despite Trump’s comments, we continue to believe the odds of a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico are low (20%).
And Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, told everyone to calm down about Trump’s tariffs:
If it’s a little inflationary but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it.
Is Dimon getting over it right now?
I have great respect for the economics team at Goldman, which has called many things right over the years. But like many in the business community, they are clearly clueless when it comes to facing the new political reality.
One team I don’t respect is the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal. But they got it right with Friday’s editorial:
The question, however, is, what did they expect? The Journal has spent decades promoting the economic ideas of charlatans and cranks; now it’s upset to find out that cranks are in full control, but they aren’t their cranks. And Trump spent the entire campaign signaling his intention to start a destructive trade war. It’s a bit late to be shocked, shocked that he meant what he said.
What should really have the Journal upset, however, is Trump’s response:
What you need to understand is that in MAGA world, calling someone a “Globalist” isn’t just an insult; it’s a threat of retribution. And I’d put fairly high odds on the proposition that sometime in the fairly near future the Journal will issue an abject, groveling apology for daring to question Trump Thought.
For as I said, the trade war, drastic as it is, isn’t the most important story right now. It takes second place to what looks like a quiet takeover of the machinery of government.
Here’s how it works: Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary — whose selection was, financial types assured me, an indication that Trump wouldn’t go wild — has given associates of Elon Musk, who as far as we know aren’t even government employees let alone officials with the right security clearance, access to the computers at the Treasury department that control the federal government’s financial plumbing — that make payments to contractors, workers, everything.
This situation gives Musk’s minions the ability to download millions of Americans’ private information. But people who understand the system better than I do say that it also effectively gives them control of public spending. Congress may have passed a law mandating that money be spent for some public purpose; but Musk and company may simply, in effect, tell the system not to cut the checks.
If this is really the case, and serious people say that it is, we may already have experienced what amounts to a 21st-century coup. There may not be tanks in the streets, but effective control of the government may already have slipped out of the hands of elected officials.
I’ll have more to say about this once I understand it better, and also as events play out. But meanwhile business goes on — or, in many cases now that the trade war has begun, maybe it doesn’t go on. So let me get back to the tariffs.
As I get ready to hit the publish button, stock futures are down — but not nearly as much as the situation seems to warrant. Investors still seem to believe that there’s a good chance that Trump will use some minor concessions (about what?) to declare victory and dial the tariffs back. As I wrote about the same time Goldman and Dimon were telling us to chill out, this market complacency is a self-defeating prophecy: muted market reaction makes it likely that Trump will continue and expand his trade war.
And even if some of the tariffs prove temporary, the Rubicon has been crossed. We now know that when the United States signs an agreement, on trade or anything else, the president will treat that agreement as a mere suggestion to be ignored whenever he feels like it. That revelation in itself will do huge long-term damage.
All of this was entirely predictable. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.
MUSICAL CODA
The January 2025 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices (SLOOS) addressed changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months, which generally correspond to the fourth quarter of 2024.
Regarding loans to businesses over the fourth quarter, survey respondents reported, on balance, tighter lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans to firms of all sizes. Meanwhile, banks reported stronger demand for C&I loans to large and middle-market firms, while demand for C&I loans to small firms remained basically unchanged. Furthermore, banks generally reported tighter standards and basically unchanged demand for commercial real estate (CRE) loans.
For loans to households, banks reported, on balance, basically unchanged lending standards and weaker demand across most categories of residential real estate (RRE) loans. In addition, standards reportedly tightened for credit card loans and remained basically unchanged for auto and other consumer loans, while demand weakened for credit card and other consumer loans but remained basically unchanged for auto loans. Further, banks reported basically unchanged lending standards and demand for home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).
The January SLOOS included a set of special questions inquiring about banks’ expectations for changes in lending standards, borrower demand, and loan performance over 2025. Banks reported expecting lending standards to either ease or remain basically unchanged and demand to strengthen across all loan categories. In addition, banks generally reported expecting loan quality to improve for loans to businesses but to either deteriorate or remain basically unchanged for most consumer loan types.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.A few things I learned recently:
Casey Handmer's blog
Market Designpip install --user on Debian will override the dependencies of system Python packages(I wrote a a quick gist about my explorations here but Python packaging is a complicated enough topic that I didn’t want to expand it into a whole blog post, it gave me a lot of appreciation for the folks working on this)
Many of us are aghast at the unprecedented dismantlement of the US administrative state. Mass terminations. Website erasure. Removal of watchdogs. Unchecked access to the treasury. All around me, people are trying to connect what’s happening to historical events. Is this fascism? A hostile corporate takeover? A coup? People want a frame both to understand what’s happening and grapple with what’s coming. Most of the people I know are also struggling to figure out where they can take action.
I’ve spent the bulk of my life tracking different dynamics in the tech industry. And, for the last decade, I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside federal civil servants and observing their commitment to American democracy. So as I watch this unfold, a few frames keep coming to mind. Frames that explain both the moment and how we got here. These are not frames that provide me with answers for the future, but perhaps they offer insights that others might be able to build on.
Jenga Politics.
Think about the wooden puzzle known as Jenga, where a tower is made out of criss-crossed wooden blocks. Players are asked to take out pieces of the wooden puzzle from the structure and then place their piece on top, increasing the pressure of gravity on the structure. The goal of the game is get your opponent to take the blame for making the entire system fall.
For years now, this has been my description of the administrative state as we’ve known it. Conservatives primarily take pieces out of the tower while liberals primarily add new blocks to the top. But all have a habit of removing blocks and adding pressures in certain circumstances. Meanwhile, both well-intended advocates and malfeasant ones mess with the blocks along the way.
The role of the civil servants play in the game of Jenga Politics has been to run around with duct tape in an exhausting effort to try to repair the tower before it all topples over. These “deep state” actors are viewed negatively by nearly everyone else by simply trying to keep the tower intact. In response, civil servants have been increasingly handicapped in what they can do to repair the tower. But like masochists, these mission-driven bureuacrats keep trying anyway – even as a range of well-intended and malfeasant actors attempt to make their work impossible. And, as with any system increasingly made of duct tape, their actions keep opening up new vulnerabilities into the system, new sites of potential exploitation. But that’s the point of this game. The mal-intended might not have designed the vulnerabilities, but they’ve studied the tower long enough that they know how to exploit them.
We’ve been playing Jenga Politics for a long time now. Austerity politics and outsourcing are mechanisms to take the blocks out. Administrative burdens and bureaucratic HR requirements have been new blocks placed on top. Meanwhile, lawsuits and weaponized FOIAs have been types of handicaps placed on civil servants – both by well-intended actors and those with ill intent. All have been collectively creating the conditions for a “normal accident,” where one wrong pull can topple the whole thing.
I’ve been anxious of this configuration for years now, but I always assumed that the wrecking ball move would not be so obvious. And yet, here we are. The civil servants aren’t just being handicapped – they’re being excised. Multiple forces are pulling out blocks as fast as they can, happy to watch the whole thing topple. And those who are accustomed to trying to “fix” things by putting pressure on top are at a complete loss of what to do.
My only hope at this point is that the blocks still exist when we get to the other side of this so that a new tower can be built. In reality, I’m concerned that we’re about to watch as kindling is brought in to ensure that the existing blocks are turned into ash.
Dismantlement, Reverse Hockey Stick Style.
The tech industry loves hockey sticks. Late stage capitalism is not simply about linear growth, but exponential growth. Faster, faster, faster. After all, financialized instruments depend on return-on-investment, not just profit. And so we’ve seen countless businesses drive towards sharper and sharper hockey sticks in pursuit of their unicorn dreams. Social media companies that want eyeballs obsess over hockey stick growth in views. Those that want to disrupt an existing business also seek exponential user growth, but they achieve this by purposefully forgoing their profits to capture the market before ratcheting up the costs once their competitors are dead.
For all of the attention paid to the growth curves in these systems, too little attention has been paid to the curves at the start of collapse. These too are often hockey sticks, but in the reverse. When MySpace came undone, the collapse was slow until it was explosive. The economic collapse tends to occur much later than the collapses of trust, interest, and user engagement. And many companies can milk out profit long after the collapse took place, usually by positioning themselves in a particular structural position or through a particular deal. Then they can live on with a much smaller userbase so as to have a long and slow death unless they innovate their way out. Think about Yahoo! or Firefox. They can also persist through lock-in, as grouchy users fail to leave the system because the cost to leaving is just too high.
The end can also be elongated through what we might call corruption. Twitter had been experiencing a long, slow decline for years before Elon Musk took over the company. His actions sped up the collapse, as though he was aiming for failure. As users and advertisers rushed out of the platform, Musk took to blaming everyone but himself. And then he started suing anyone he could think of. Now it appears that he’s gone one step further by making his platform the only place to ask questions and learn about certain kinds of government updates. No matter than he’s banned many journalists from using the site. This takes “lock-in” to the next level.
In the tech context, we see a lot of moves to avoid dismantlement. But tech logics long ago converged with the logics of one segment of the financial sector. The tech industry used to be afraid of the extractive logics of hedge funds and private equity. This is why people like Mark Zuckerberg have a controlling interest in their companies. Tech titans have learned the lessons of financiers and put them to use. Hedge funds and private equity aren’t interested in the underlying organization, innovations, customer bases, or value to society. They’re interested in extracting as much value as possible from a particular configuration. They say that they’re maximizing efficiency, but what they’re really doing is reverse hockey stick dismantlement.
This is Arson.
Both Democrats and Republicans have long loathed the administrative state. For almost a century, conservatives have been crystal clear that they want to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. Yet, liberals have also been caught up in a spiral of making government more “efficient” while labeling civil servants as lazy, stupid, or both. Lyndon Johnson brought in the economists. Bill Clinton outsourced. Barak Obama sprinkled elite do-gooders all across the federal government. Whenever it was their turn, Republicans pushed and squeezed civil servants into a corner. Both added administrative burdens, not just to achieve their policies but to make life worse for civil servants. No politician has truly appreciated civil servants in recent decades, even as those individuals wake up every day and try to keep the administrative state alive.
Given this, I shouldn’t be surprised that the Democrats are doing almost nothing to protect the civil servants as the heart of the administrative state right now. But I am none-the-less horrified by some of the rhetoric I hear in some quarters. One frame is particularly disturbing to me, especially on the heels of the nightmare in Los Angeles. I am stunned that anyone can argue that this is a healthy fire that will make way for new growth. This is not brush burning. This is arson.
The administrative state was in a precarious place after the first Trump Administration. As much as I love many people who went into the Biden Administration to “build back better,” I was repeatedly frustrated with friends who rejected my pleas to focus on improving the underlying infrastructure. Over and over, I was told that the Administration could not prioritize the administrative state because so much else was needed. Fixing the administrative state would need to wait. And then I was told that all was solved. There were executive orders and changes to OPM and OMB. I shook my head, unconvinced but also unable to convince anyone that the tower was toppling. As I was cut out of conversations, I knew that I had failed to be pursuasive. And so I just had to cross my fingers.
But here we are. The prioritized projects of the last Administration were easily dismantled. And the precarious structure of the administrative state is now even more on the brink. I was hoping that there would be enough resilience in the system to withstand the first tsunami. As I watched horrible cruel policies roll out, I watched as civil servants gritted their teeth and focused on protecting the systems they devoted their lives to ensuring could help the American people. And then the first true breech happened.
Amidst all of the news of all of the horrible actions of this Administration, it’s hard to explain the significance of political appointees accessing the Treasury’s systems and locking out civil servants. Systems like this are the protected jewels of the Jenga tower, the ones that civil servants obsess over protecting regardless of who is in power. They are like the key node in a social media network, after which the decline spirals out of whack. Many journalists recognized this, breaking the news at the top of their respective outlets. The Trump Administration also realized this, quickly announcing gobsmacking tariffs to shift the media’s attention. After all, the public is more interested in tariffs (and ICE) than esoteric technical systems that keep the government functioning. But the ashen look on the faces of civil servants I know said it all. It has been a hard two weeks for them, but, regardless of the legal dynamics, turning over access to the core systems at the heart of an administrative state to a wrecking ball is really really bad.
It’s All One Big Game.
Trump is all about spectacle. But all around him are gamers. And not just any gamers – gamers who are happy to destroy their opponents at any costs, regardless of the societal consequences. Gamers who see such destruction as a source of their power, rooted in their visions of masculinity. Gaming has long been entangled with masculinity, even before there were video games. Sports, gambling, and the stock market are all gaming practices known for expressions of masculinity. Gaming in the context of computing offered an alternative form of masculinity, one that was deeply empowering to so many geeks.
Bannon is an old skool gamer. And Musk never stops reminding us of his passion for gaming. But these guys aren’t just any gamers. They’re trolls who sharpened their claws during #GamerGate. Their version of gaming took on a toxic and abusive form long ago, one seeped in aggression and hate. The men’s rights movement wasn’t simply about allowing men to feel comfortable in their own identities; it was about justifying the oppression and abuse of anyone who dared to suggest that other lives might be valuable. It didn’t take long for a coalition to form around those invested in claiming power through oppression, justified by grievance. But within this ecosystem, the gamers are gonna game.
War, politics, and financial markets are often viewed as games that attract all sorts of problematic behavior. The very idea of a society is to create rules and guardrails, checks and balances. But gaming logic has always been about pushing those edges, exploiting the gaps, and finding the secret passageways. For decades, we’ve struggled to contain war mongers, corrupt politicians, and fraudulent scammers, although we’ve had mixed success. But this crew of gamers is playing a different game. And so we are going to need a whole new strategy for containing their destructive tendencies. In their minds, we’re the mob boss that must be defeated. We aren’t going to change this configuration by simply trying to give the mob boss more weapons. Instead, what’s our next move?
To make matters more complicated, there’s not just one game at play right now. Different actors in this melange are playing at different games. There are divergent ideas of what the “win” state is. And this has led people to be very confused about what’s happening. Is this about financial gain? Is this about power? Is this about a particular vision of the future? Or is this just downright fuckery because you can.
I don’t have answers.
Like everyone else, I’m stunned by everything I’m hearing. I don’t have a clear-eyed path forward. But I am trying to understand and frame what I’m seeing. And I relish others’ frames too.
Here is the year-over-year in house prices according to the ICE Home Price Index (HPI). The ICE HPI is a repeat sales index. ICE reports the median price change of the repeat sales. The index was up 3.4% year-over-year in December.There is much more in the newsletter.
Source: ICE Home Price Index (HPI)
• Annual home price growth edged slightly higher in December, closing out the year at +3.4%There is much more in the mortgage monitor including an extensive analysis of the financial impact of the California wildfires.
• That marks the lowest calendar year home price growth of any year since 2011 when the housing market was nearing its trough following the Great Financial Crisis
• In fact, 2024’s growth was a full percentage point below the +4.4% growth seen in both 2014 and 2018, which were previously the lowest growth years in the past decade
• The modest uptick in December’s annual home price growth rate was a result of softer price gains in late 2023 rolling out of the backward-looking 12-month window, rather than a strengthening of prices in December
• On a seasonally adjusted basis, prices rose by 0.2% in the month, roughly equivalent November, and slightly below October, following the brief dip in 30-year rates to near 6% in the lead-up to the Fed’s 50 bps rate cut in September
• If current seasonally adjusted monthly gains persist, the annual home price growth rate is poised to begin cooling again in the early months of 2025
Work is healing, so let’s get back to it. I’m enthralled with what we’re discovering as we steadily build our catalog of fast radio bursts (FRB), close to 100 of which have now been associated with a galaxy. These are transient radio pulses of short duration (down to a fraction of a millisecond, though some last several seconds), the first being found in 2007 by Duncan Lorimer, as astronomer at West Virginia University. Sometimes FRBs repeat, although many do not, and one is known to repeat on a regular basis.
What kind of astrophysical processes might be driving such a phenomenon? The leading candidate appears to be supernovae in a state of core collapse, producing vast amounts of energy as stars more massive than the Sun end their lives. Out of such catastrophic events a type of neutron star called a magnetar may be produced, its powerful magnetic field pumping out X-ray and gamma ray radiation. Young, massive stars and regions of active star formation are implicated under this theory. But as we’re learning, magnetars are only one of a possible range of candidates.
For the event known as FRB 20240209A, detected in 2024 by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), has dealt us a wild card. Remember, a single FRB can produce more energy in a quick burst than our Sun emits in an entire year. This one has repeatedly fired up, producing 21 pulses between February and July of last year. And the problem with it is that it has been traced to a galaxy in which star formation has ceased. That finding is verified by data from the Gemini North telescope and the Keck Observatory using its Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS).
Yuxin (Vic) Dong is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and second author on one of two papers recently published on the event:
“For nearby galaxies, there is often archival data from surveys available that tells you the redshift — or distance —to the galaxy. However, in some cases, these redshift measurements may lack precision, and that’s where Keck Observatory and the LRIS instrument becomes crucial. Using a Keck/LRIS spectrum, we can extract the redshift to a very high accuracy. Spectra are like fingerprints of galaxies, and they contain special features, called spectral lines, that encode tons of information about what’s going on in the galaxy like the stellar population age and star formation activity. What’s really fascinating in this case is that the features we saw from the Keck/LRIS spectrum revealed that this galaxy is quiescent, meaning star formation has shut down in the galaxy. This is strikingly different from most FRB galaxies we know which are still actively making new stars.”
Image: The ellipse shows the location of the FRB and the crosshairs point to its host galaxy, taken with the Gemini North telescope from Maunakea. Credit: Shah et al.
It turns out that FRB 20240209A is coming from a galaxy fully 11.3 billion years old some 2 billion light years from Earth. This is painstaking work and quite productive, for the papers’ authors report that the galaxy is both extremely luminous and the most massive FRB host galaxy yet found. Moreover, while FRBs that have been associated with their host galaxies are usually located deep within the galaxy, this one occurs 130,000 light years from galactic center, in a region with few stars nearby.
When you’re dealing with a new phenomenon, finding similar events can be productive. In this case, there is one other FRB that can be placed in the outskirts of a galaxy, the spiral M81. While FRB 20240209A occurred in an ancient elliptical galaxy, it like the M81 event is far from areas of active star formation, again raising the possibility that FRBs have causes we have yet to pin down. From the Eftekhari et al. paper:
Since the first host associations, investigations into FRB host demographics have offered valuable insights into the origins of FRBs and their possible progenitor systems. Such studies remain in their infancy, however. With the development of interferometric capabilities for various FRB experiments and the promise of hundreds of precisely localized events, the discovery landscape for new and unforeseen hosts and environments presents considerable potential.
And as the paper notes, FRB 20240209A isn’t the first FRB that challenges our assumptions:
Indeed, the connection of a few FRBs with remarkable environments, including dwarf galaxies (S. Chatterjee et al. 2017; C. H. Niu et al. 2022), a globular cluster (F. Kirsten et al. 2022), and the elliptical host of FRB 20240209A, implicate exotic formation channels as well as older stellar populations for some FRBs and demonstrate that novel environments offer significant constraining power for FRB progenitors. A larger sample of host associations will further uncover intriguing diversity in host environments and may identify interesting subpopulations or correlations with FRB repetition, energetics, or other burst characteristics, contributing to a clearer understanding of FRB origins.
Image: CHIME detectors. Credit: CHIME, Andre Renard, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto.
Clearly we have a long way to go as the FRB catalog grows. Senior author Wen-fai Fong, who was involved in both papers, likes to talk about the surprises the universe has in store for us, disrupting any possibility of scientific complacency. Instead, we are often confronted with yet another reason to revise our thinking, in what Fong refers to as “a ‘dialogue’ with the universe” as we pursue time-domain astronomy, the analysis of changes in brightness and spectra over time so suited for mysterious FRBs.
The papers are Shah et al., “A repeating fast radio burst source in the outskirts of a quiescent galaxy,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 979, No. 2 (21 January 2025) (full text) and Eftekhari et al., “The massive and quiescent elliptical host galaxy of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20240209A,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 979 No. 2 (21 January 2025). Full text.
1. The world’s most elite sober coach? (FT…his fees seem low to me?)
2. El Salvador planning on releasing many from prison?
3. An early version of portfolio theory, from the late 19th century. French, of course.
4. Deep Research okie-dokie. It is amazing. And a wee bit of data. And another relevant comment.
5. Ezra on the blitzkrieg strategy (NYT).
7. “525-Lb. Bear Discovered Under Evacuated Altadena Home Too Fat to Tranquilize.”
8. Gemini and Cursor in the federal government?
The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occur due to impacts, falls, or accidents that harm brain function. Cases are rising due to increased sports participation, road accidents, and aging populations prone to falls. Greater awareness and improved diagnostic tools also contribute to reported cases, highlighting the urgency of prevention and effective care strategies.
A traumatic injury is any injury that affects how the brain works. Different kinds of brain injuries are classified according to how they affect the brain. Speaking with an injury lawyer may help you move forward with your case and help you receive compensation. Generally, brain trauma falls into the following categories:
The physicians will categorize the injury based on the underlying factors such as the patient’s mobility.
According to the CDC, several population groups are more likely to suffer from a traumatic brain injury. They include:
Did you know you can suffer from a mild traumatic injury and have no idea? Yes, these injuries can manifest in different ways, and some patients have no idea what the problem is.
The injury may sometimes manifest in a delayed fashion with mild signs such as impulsive behavior, blurry vision, nausea, vomiting, irritable behavior, and headaches. Some family members even report a change in the patient’s personality.
Different circumstances may cause a brain injury, such as a bad accident. While we expect such injuries to be related to severe incidents, several factors, such as age, medications, and others, may increase the chances of a traumatic brain injury from a minor accident.
Several factors can lead to a traumatic brain injury, such as the ones listed below:
The consequences of brain injuries depend on the severity of the injury. Some brain injuries only last a few days, and others last years to a lifetime. Statistics show that most people with mild injuries recover safely at home, while people with moderate or severe injuries need proper care to recover safely.
Traumatic injuries experienced in childhood might have far-reaching consequences. This is because they may disrupt a child’s development and limit their activity to participate in activities pertaining to youth like sports.
Such injuries may affect a child’s behavior, health, ability to participate in activities, and self-regulation. In summary, traumatic brain injuries experienced in childhood need proper care and monitoring to reduce the effects they may have on the patient’s development.
Treatment for a brain injury will, for the most part, be determined by the kind of problem. When you get to the emergency room, the doctors will start by evaluating your injury using clinical and radiographical procedures.
Once thoroughly evaluated, the treatment procedure will be determined by the kind of injury and its severity. Luckily, only about 20 percent of brain injuries require some form of operation. For the most part, patients are closely monitored with imaging procedures.
Over the years, treatment for traumatic brain injury has significantly improved. Today, Hospitals have state-of-the-art equipment capable of detecting brain swelling in the early stages. Therefore, the capacity of hospitals to detect small to mild brain injuries is nothing compared to what it was, say, a decade or two ago.
Evidently, traumatic brain injury cases are on the rise across the United States. The surge may be due to risk factors such as age and underlying medical conditions. Moreover, the increase in road accidents may also have a role to play. Unfortunately, recuperating from a traumatic brain injury can take time and long-term medical care.
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The post Traumatic Brain Injuries: What Is the Cause? Why Are Cases Rising? appeared first on DCReport.org.
Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in January after 26 consecutive months of contraction, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM® Report On Business®.This suggests manufacturing expanded in January. This was above the consensus forecast.
The report was issued today by Timothy R. Fiore, CPSM, C.P.M., Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee:
“The Manufacturing PMI® registered 50.9 percent in January, 1.7 percentage points higher compared to the seasonally adjusted 49.2 percent recorded in December. The overall economy continued in expansion for the 57th month after one month of contraction in April 2020. (A Manufacturing PMI® above 42.3 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index was in expansion territory for the third month after seven months of contraction, strengthening again to a reading of 55.1 percent, 3 percentage points higher than the seasonally adjusted 52.1 percent recorded in December. The January reading of the Production Index (52.5 percent) is 2.6 percentage points higher than December’s seasonally adjusted figure of 49.9 percent. The index returned to expansion after eight months in contraction. The Prices Index continued in expansion (or ‘increasing’) territory, registering 54.9 percent, up 2.4 percentage points compared to the reading of 52.5 percent in December. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 44.9 percent, down 1 percentage point compared to the 45.9 percent recorded in December. The Employment Index registered 50.3 percent, up 4.9 percentage points from December’s seasonally adjusted figure of 45.4 percent.
emphasis added
This is yet another story of commercial spyware being used against journalists and civil society members.
The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised.”
It is not clear who was behind the attack. Like other spyware makers, Paragon’s hacking software is used by government clients and WhatsApp said it had not been able to identify the clients who ordered the alleged attacks.
Experts said the targeting was a “zero-click” attack, which means targets would not have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.
Construction spending during December 2024 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,192.2 billion, 0.5 percent above the revised November estimate of $2,180.3 billion. The December figure is 4.3 percent above the December 2023 estimate of $2,101.3 billion.Private spending increased and public spending decreased:
The value of construction in 2024 was $2,154.4 billion, 6.5 percent above the $2,023.7 billion spent in 2023.
emphasis added
Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,688.5 billion, 0.9 percent above the revised November estimate of $1,674.1 billion. ...
In December, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $503.6 billion, 0.5 percent below the revised November estimate of $506.2 billion.
Click on graph for larger image.
The second graph shows the year-over-year change in construction spending.
Click on graph for larger image.
This second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.He has passed, here is one obituary.
The post Robert Paul Wolff, RIP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Or maybe Mao trying to exterminate sparrows. This is just bonkers (boldface mine):
Water managers were relieved Thursday evening after the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to back off of a sudden decision earlier in the day to dump massive amounts of water from Kaweah and Success lakes.
Water managers said they got about an hour’s warning from the Army Corp’s Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at “channel capacity” by Thursday night.
Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that’s 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it’s 3,500 cfs.
Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.
“We were able to get them to back off that,” said Eric Limas, General Manager of the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts, of the Army Corps. “They’ll still be releasing water sometime tonight, but it will be a smaller amount, which will increase tomorrow.”
…Some people interviewed for this story speculated that the move was political on the part of the new administration, a kind of water “flex,” but declined to elaborate…
But the Army Corps typically works with downstream agricultural users to allow them to keep a bit more water in the lakes to hedge against dry years, such this one is shaping up to be.
Kaweah River Water Master Victor Hernandez said Lake Kaweah’s winter capacity is 12,000 acre feet, but had been allowed to go up to 39,000 acre feet after an aerial snow survey showed the watershed currently only has another 45,000 acre feet in snow cover.
“Even if everything came down at once, it would only be enough to fill the reservoir halfway,” he said. “We were on track with the Corps working with the models and forecasts and doing our planning and then I get a call at 2:15 p.m. telling me they were going to channel capacity.”
It’s clear Trump’s babbling about how he turned the water on for southern California to fight the forest fires led to this. Mind you, water is still being wasted by this policy–no one will be able to use this water.
We’re going to have four years of this, and this didn’t need to happen.
In 1994 I published Genetic Testing: An Economic and Contractarian Analysis which discussed how genetic testing could undermine insurance markets. I also proposed a solution, genetic insurance, which would in essence insure people for changes in their health and life insurance premiums due to the revelation of genetic data. Later John Cochrane would independently create Time Consistent Health Insurance a generalized form of the same idea that would allow people to have long term health insurance without being tied to a single firm.
The Human Genome Project completed in 2003 but, somewhat surprisingly, insurance markets didn’t break down, even though genetic information became more common. We know from twin studies that genetic heritability is very large but it turned out that the effect from each gene variant is very small. Thus, only a few diseases can be predicted well using single-gene mutations. Since each SNP has only a small effect on disease, to predict how genes influence disease we would need data on hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, and millions of their SNPs across the genome and their diseases. Until recently, that has been cost-prohibitive and as a result the available genetic information lacked much predictive power.
In an impressive new paper, however, Azevedo, Beauchamp and Linnér (ABL) show that data from Genome-Wide Association Studies can be used to create polygenic risk indexes (PGIs) which can predict individual disease risk from the aggregate effects of many genetic variants. The data is prodigious:
We analyze data from the UK Biobank (UKB) (Bycroft et al., 2018; Sudlow et al., 2015). The UKB contains genotypic and rich health-related data for over 500,000 individuals from across the United Kingdom who were between 40 and 69 years old at recruitment (between 2006 and 2010). UKB data is linked to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), which maintains detailed records of health events across the lifespan and with which 98% of the UK population is registered (Sudlow et al., 2015). In addition, all UKB participants took part in a baseline assessment, in which they provided rich environmental, family history, health, lifestyle, physical, and sociodemographic data, as well as blood, saliva, and urine samples.
The UKB contains genome-wide array data for ∼800,000 genetic variants for ∼488,000 participants.
So for each of these individuals ABL construct risk indexes and they ask how significant is this new information for buying insurance in the Critical Illness Insurance market:
Critical illness insurance (CII) pays out a lump sum in the event that the insured person gets diagnosed with any of the medical conditions listed on the policy (Brackenridge et al., 2006). The lump sum can be used as the policyholder wishes. The policy pays out once and is thereafter terminated.
… Major CII markets include Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, India, China, and Germany. It is estimated that 20% of British workers were covered by a CII policy in 2009 (Gatzert and Maegebier, 2015). The global CII market has been valued at over $100 billion in 2021 and was projected to grow to over $350 billion by 2031 (Allied Market Research, 2022).
The answer, as you might have guessed by now, is very significant. Even though current PGIs explain only a fraction of total genetic risk, they are already predictive enough so that it would make sense for individuals with high measured risk to purchase insurance, while those with low-risk would opt out—leading to adverse selection that threatens the financial sustainability of the insurance market.
Today, the 500,000 people in the UK’s Biobank don’t know their PGIs but in principle they could and in the future they will. Indeed, as GWAS sample sizes increase, PGI betas will become more accurate and they will be applied to a greater fraction of an individual’s genome so individual PGIs will become increasingly predictive, exacerbating selection problems in insurance markets.
If my paper was a distant early warning, Azevedo, Beauchamp, and Linnér provide an early—and urgent—warning. Without reform, insurance markets risk unraveling. The authors explore potential solutions, including genetic insurance, community rating, subsidies, and risk adjustment. However, the effectiveness of these measures remains uncertain, and knee-jerk policies, such as banning insurers from using genetic information, could lead to the collapse of insurance altogether.
The post Genetic Prediction and Adverse Selection appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
- by Derek Jonathan Penslar
Civil service in the U.S. may not be dead yet, but it's suffering from potentially lethal attacks.
The Pendleton Act of 1883 established the current civil service system, as a market design solution to reduce corruption in government employment, and to protect government employees from political retaliation .
From https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pendleton-act
"The Pendleton Act provided that federal government jobs be awarded on the basis of merit and that government employees be selected through competitive exams. The act also made it unlawful to fire or demote for political reasons employees who were covered by the law. The law further forbade requiring employees to give political service or contributions. The Civil Service Commission was established to enforce this act."
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From protectdemocracy.org:
The civil service, explained , byAlex Tausanovitc, Michael Angeloni ,William Ford,Erica Newland, June 11, 2024
"For nearly 150 years, federal law has sought to ensure these employees are hired and fired based on merit and are empowered to exercise independent judgment without fear of political retaliation. These legal protections help the government to serve the public as a whole, rather than a president’s personal or political agenda.
...
"For most of the 1800s, the federal government largely operated under the “spoils system,” wherein new presidents had a free hand to remove and replace federal employees — and they did so “wholesale,” generally to reward political allies. At the time, customs houses and the postal office were among the most important government services, and both were rife with corruption.
The spoils system became synonymous with graft and degraded critical government services.
"Beginning with the enactment of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which instituted a competitive hiring process and protected workers from partisan-based removal, the U.S. government slowly developed a professionalized, public-oriented civil service. The Pendleton Act was followed by a series of statutes and regulations that culminated in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which largely created our current “merit system.”
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And now (from the NYT):
Education Officials Placed on Leave in Trump’s Sprawling Effort to Curb D.E.I. By Erica L. Green and Zach Montague, Feb. 1, 2025
- by Aeon Video
This advice rhymes with this.
A delight, as usual.
(My one suggestion for 2025’s list: My Dad’s Chips. Holy hell are these good potato chips. I’ve got a particular weakness for the French Onion ones. Chef’s kiss. Distribution seems mostly limited to the northeast for now.)
Often I don’t write particular posts because I feel it is obvious to everybody. Yet it rarely is.
So here is my post on o1 pro, soon to be followed by o3 pro, and Deep Research is being distributed, which uses elements of o3. (So far it is amazing, btw.)
o1 pro is the smartest publicly issued knowledge entity the human race has created (aside from Deep Research!). Adam Brown, who does physics at a world class level, put it well in his recent podcast with Dwarkesh. Adam said that if he had a question about something, the best answer he would get is from calling up one of a handful of world experts on the topic. The second best answer he would get is from asking the best AI models.
Except, at least for the moment, you don’t need to make that plural. There is a single best model, at least when it comes to tough questions (it is more disputable which model is the best and most creative writer or poet).
I find it very difficult to ask o1 pro an economics question it cannot answer. I can do it, but typically I have to get very artificial. It can answer, and answer well, any question I might normally pose in the course of typical inquiry and pondering. As Adam indicated, I think only a relatively small number of humans in the world can give better answers to what I want to know.
In an economics test, or any other kind of naturally occurring knowledge test I can think of, it would beat all of you (and me).
Its rate of hallucination is far below what you are used to from other LLMs.
Yes, it does cost $200 a month. It is worth that sum to converse with the smartest entity yet devised. I use it every day, many times. I don’t mind that it takes some time to answer my questions, because I have plenty to do in the meantime.
I also would add that if you are not familiar with o1 pro, your observations about the shortcomings of AI models should be discounted rather severely. And o3 pro is due soon, presumably it will be better yet.
The reality of all this will disrupt many plans, most of them not directly in the sphere of AI proper. And thus the world wishes to remain in denial. It amazes me that this is not the front page story every day, and it amazes me how many people see no need to shell out $200 and try it for a month, or more.
The post o1 pro appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
“Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want,” wrote David H. Levy, an amateur astronomer who discovered 23 comets. These cosmic visitors can indeed be pretty capricious. We never know exactly how long a comet will be visible in the sky.
In January, the southern hemisphere had a captivating visitor in the form of the comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS). It looks magnificent in this Picture of the Week by Juan Beltrán, one of our engineers, who took it on 20 January at our Paranal Observatory in Chile. Just last year, another comet was also caught on camera visiting ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. These so-called non-periodic comets only stick around in our skies for a few weeks. If you miss your photo opportunity, your next chance may be a few thousand years later…
As comets approach the Sun they warm up, and the ice in them sublimates, meaning it goes directly from solid ice to gas. Dust particles are also released, and the solar wind and radiation push this gas and dust away from the Sun, creating extended tails. Although astronomers can calculate and estimate how long a comet will be visible, sometimes they surprise us, either by disappearing sooner, or by actually surviving their trip near the Sun relatively intact, saving their typical tail of gas and dust.
For C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) that tail may fade quickly. The comet reached perihelion — the point where it is closest to the Sun — on 13 January 2025. At that point, it was only 13 million kilometers away from our star. But it is now moving away, and there are signs that the nucleus might have fragmented even though the tail is still visible. If you are in the southern hemisphere you can still try to catch it towards the west after sunset; otherwise check our webcams!
Links:
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bots attacks and brute force attempts?
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