Asteroid Threat
1. The great Scott Wheeler on Stephen Sondheim (Free Press).
2. Is space the most underrated policy area?
3. On the USAID and deaths debate. Hardly the final word, but an injection of sanity into what has been a low quality debate. Here is commentary from GPT Pro. In a few years we might have some accurate estimates.
4. Using LLMs in economic history.
5. Measuring economic growth through the valuation of human life.
6. Brooklyn Coffee Shop showcases my book The Complacent Class.
The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
The temptation to use artificial intelligence (AI) to cheat is shaking up elite universities in the United States. Professor Roberto Serrano, who is the Harrison S. Kravis University Professor of Economics at Brown University, has detected a massive fraud in one of the classes he teaches, ECON 1170, an advanced undergraduate course in mathematical economics. He has conclusive evidence that at least 50 students cheated on the March midterm exam, making it the biggest known scandal at Brown and in the entire Ivy League, which brings together the East Coast’s eight most elite private universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth College and University of Pennsylvania.
When he reported the case to high-ranking officials at Brown, he got a cold reaction. The response from the president, he said, was absolute silence. The dean did not comment either until Serrano took the case before the Academic Code Committee.
Here is the full story, via Anecdotal.
The post AI cheating on math econ at Brown appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
It’s almost hard to remember nowadays, but before the pandemic a lot of us were worried about falling business dynamism in the United States. For whatever reason, Americans just weren’t starting companies — either high-growth startups or small businesses — at the rate they used to. Much ink was spilled discussing possible reasons for the trend, and potential levers for reversing it.
Then the pandemic came, and the trend shifted almost overnight. Suddenly, Americans were creating new businesses again:
Notably, even in 2024 the trend in business applications showed no sign of reverting to its pre-pandemic level. The shift seems at least partly durable.
No one knows exactly why new business creation has surged in recent years. But one possibility is that technology has made it possible for people to start businesses with a lot fewer employees. Stripe Economics has an interesting blog post about the rise of “solopreneurs” — independent businesspeople who don’t employ anyone else at their businesses:
The upshot is that there’s a big trend to “solopreneurship”, and that the pandemic accelerated the shift:
Solopreneurship has been increasing since 2008, both in absolute terms and as a percent of new business formation. Some of this is due to legal changes. The Obamacare exchanges make it easier for solopreneurs to buy their own health insurance. The Qualified Business Income deduction, the simplified home-office deduction, and other tax changes have made it more favorable to be a solopreneur.
On top of that, the internet made a lot of solo business models easier to execute, from dropshipping businesses to YouTube channels to subscription-based email newsletters. I am a solopreneur myself — Noahpinion is an S-corporation. Substack made it incredibly easy for me to sell and deliver content online, Twitter/X made it incredibly easy for me to market that content, and Stripe made it incredibly easy to receive payments — all without hiring anyone.
The team at Stripe Economics argues that this latter trend is just getting started. Thanks to AI, the number of business models that can be executed by single individuals is growing rapidly:
An agent can now help you find the best tools for your business and handle your integration with minimal support….The recent growth in nonemployer businesses shows a positive relationship with industry-level AI adoption…
Part of the reason businesses historically tended to be built by groups was that a single individual rarely possesses all the skills needed in the entrepreneurial journey. Whether it’s how to evaluate or size a market, code an app, price a product, write and execute a marketing campaign, or close a deal, AI (and AI-augmented software) can fill many of the gaps that founders previously turned to another human for. Or, as Sam Altman so succinctly put it: “revenge of the idea guys.”
We think this phenomenon is the true engine of the AI surge in business formation we’re seeing today. The availability of this breadth of on-tap assistance allows anyone with sufficient motivation to go it alone. Given this, we think the 20% figure is a floor rather than a ceiling in terms of AI impact.
This makes sense. It’s pretty clear that one big reason to have a multi-person company has always been individual specialization. But Claude is far more versatile than any human being, so in the age of AI agents, specialization will probably be less important in many cases.
Even in the (many) cases where that doesn’t allow one person to run a company all by themself, it will tend to push companies toward lower headcount. Kim and Koning have a new working paper showing that “AI-native” companies now being created tend to have about 25% fewer employees than their peers.
This is important, because it bears on the future of human employment — the question that’s currently on almost everyone’s minds. It raises the possibility that self-employment is the future of employment. It’s easy enough to imagine a future in which relying on a group of other humans for your economic sustenance won’t be as important — instead, we’ll all be like little private ship captains, ordering around our crews of AI agents.
That future is easy to envision because it’s the logical endpoint of a trend that had already been going on for quite some time: the rise of corporate outsourcing. Whether it was manufacturing supply chains strung out across dozens of countries, or companies hiring subcontractors to do their payroll or their IT or their accounting, or corporations paying SaaS providers for software products, companies generally do a lot less of their work in-house than they did half a century ago.
The rise of outsourcing — both domestic and foreign — was enabled by improvements in transportation and communication technologies. Shipping crates and the internet made it easy to turn local production networks into regional or global ones. The internet made it easy to find contractors, verify their reputability, communicate with them, and monitor them to verify their work.
That fit very well with the leading economics theory of outsourcing: transaction cost theory. First advanced by Ronald Coase in the 1930s and later refined by Oliver Williamson and others, transaction cost theory says that companies exist because it’s sometimes cheaper and easier to execute transactions in-house than at arm’s length.
Consider the process of paying the workers at a factory. In 1937, for a company to get some other company to handle their payroll would have been a very arduous process. You would have had to look up payroll contractors in the phone book, ask around to find out whether each one had a good reputation, have their representatives come by your factory to get information about how many hours each worker had worked, and so on. Far easier to just walk down the hall to your own payroll division and have them do it.
But by 2007, this calculus had switched — thanks to the internet, it was fairly easy to do all that stuff at arm’s length, online. This allowed specialization at the level of the firm rather than at the level of the division or the employee — in other words, corporate outsourcing.
That’s just a story, of course. But in general, transaction cost theory is strongly supported by empirical evidence; in cases where we can measure transaction costs, they do seem to affect the decision to in-house versus outsource. Bergeaud et al. (2023) find evidence that the internet drove a wave of outsourcing in France, for example:
Does domestic outsourcing react to technological change? We study the staggered diffusion of broadband internet in France in the 2000s, and show that connected firms increased their outsourcing expenditures while decreasing the diversity of occupations they employ in-house…Overall, we show that the deployment of new technologies stimulated domestic outsourcing in this context[.]
There are other theories about why companies choose to do things themselves versus buying them from someone else, but many of them — incomplete contracts theory, agency theory, relational contracting theory, etc. — overlap substantially with transaction cost theory. The informality, close monitoring, and long-term relationships that form within a company can all be seen as ways of decreasing transaction costs.
A lot of people are assuming that when it comes to transaction costs, AI will work like the internet, only more so. (In fact, I find “AI will be like the internet, only more so” to be one of the most common tacit assumptions in AI discourse in general.) AI can read, understand, and analyze your business’s website in an instant — or dispense with the need of a website entirely. It can scan the entire internet to assess whether your business is a trustworthy contractor, or even contact you directly to find out. It can absorb nearly unlimited reams of business data, in order to monitor that you’re doing a good job. And so on.
It’s easy to see how this might lead to a world of total outsourcing and solopreneurs. But at the same time, it’s possible to imagine that AI will increase transaction costs between companies.
The simple reason is that AI doesn’t just analyze information; it also creates it. Yes, an AI can search the web for payroll outsourcing companies and get an idea of which are reputable by researching everything that has ever been said about each. But by the same token, an AI can create a new company, give it a website, and invent a bunch of other companies and reviewers to make it look legit. And then if and when your AI pays that AI’s fake company to do your accounting or whatever, the fake company can just take all your money and vanish in a puff of smoke.
AI-driven fraud is already happening, at scale. Here’s a BBC story from last year:
Unscrupulous foreign firms are using AI-generated images and false back stories to pose as family-run UK businesses to lure in shoppers…Customers say they feel “completely ripped off”…Consumer guide Which? said the growing use of AI tools was making it possible for fraudsters to mislead the public on an “unprecedented” scale.
If human consumers can be fooled, so can human purchasing agents and procurement specialists. “OK,” you respond, “I’ll just get an AI to do the purchasing and procurement. Problem solved.”
But here we are, back in the realm of transaction costs. You might need a frontier AI and a lot of expensive tokens to check the ever-expanding galaxy of fake companies in a way that would allow you to make a reliable outsourcing decision.
Nor would it even necessarily take fraud and manipulation in order to make arm’s-length transactions between AIs unreliable. Human beings are relatively consistent over time — if I do business with you today, I can be reasonably sure that doing business with you tomorrow will be similar, because your knowledge and skills and character etc. are all going to be roughly the same.
This is not generally true with AI — at least, not with the AIs that exist today. They are ephemeral creatures; their ability to maintain the same goals, personalities, and capabilities over the weeks or months or even years of a business-to-business contractor relationship has yet to be demonstrated. So in the world where everyone doing business is an AI agent, even if your company verifies that it’s dealing with a real and honest contractor, that verification might not hold for long.
If AIs remain inconsistent over time, trust will therefore have to be reestablished from scratch every so often, and that could be expensive. In fact, we’ve already seen an example of just how expensive constant re-verification of trust can be: Bitcoin. In order to do away with the need for intermediaries like banks to verify transactions, Bitcoin has to reestablish trust between counterparties every time a transaction is performed. As Eric Budish has shown, constant reestablishment of trust is incredibly expensive in terms of electricity, which basically dooms Bitcoin’s use as a medium of exchange.
So AI doesn’t have to be an unreliable partner in order to put an end to the world of ubiquitous online contracting that we’ve built over the past three decades. All it has to be is a partner whose reliability is expensive to verify.
If AI brings about a world of higher transaction costs, due to the inherent unreliability of long-term arm’s-length dealings between AI agents, then the AI age will probably be one of bigger companies. Internal procedures for verifying trustworthiness — the AI equivalent of walking down the hall and knocking on the door of your own internal corporate division — might be the new equivalent of the informal long-term relationships that lower transaction costs within a typical human-staffed company.
In a post back in April, I predicted that Japan-style “salarymen” occupations — ever-shifting irregular bundles of tasks within a single big company — might be a more important kind of job all around the world going forward. But the transaction cost theory of the firm could give us another reason to expect the same. If only big companies can establish internal trust cheaply, then many humans — whatever kind of work they’re still doing 10 or 30 years from now — will be working for big companies.
That doesn’t mean solopreneurship is a temporary trend or a dead end. There are probably many lines of business in which long-term trust between agents carrying out specialized business processes is not a big deal. In those areas, solopreneurs will flourish. We may thus see a bifurcated distribution of company sizes and job types — a vast horde of solopreneurs, and a few monster companies employing huge numbers of wage earners.
I will now explain why at least 50% of your team finds your current All Hands to be a waste of their time. They believe:
Now, I will describe how to build an All Hands that will exceed their expectations. Let’s define the All Hands:
There’s an important organizational inflection point when you need the All Hands. The basic definition is, “The whole team — together.” If you’re a leader of a team of seven, then you might think your team meeting is your All Hands and — strictly speaking — that’s correct, but that’s your team or staff meeting. Not an All Hands.
The whole team — together. This is a required meeting when the whole team is no longer able to be together organically. Is that 50? Maybe? Is that when they no longer fit in one room easily? Probably? The inflection point varies as a function of the company, but this is a required meeting because it mimics what you did instinctively when you were a smaller team, and that’s a good place to start.
When it’s you, Frank, Aki, Liz, Gigi, and Joshua sitting in the same room cranking on your start-up, what are the events that everyone needs to regularly understand?
In the same room, it is relatively easy to gather much of this information. You look around, see that Liz is on the phone closing her new head of engineering, and you think, “Go, Liz! I liked her candidate a lot.” Then you look over at Gigi, who has been quiet for two days and hasn’t smiled in four, and think, “She is the most focused designer in the world. I can’t wait to see what she’s done with our logo.” And so on.
The ebb and flow of information in a group of humans decreases as a function of population size. With growth, your ability to organically discern what is going on within the team decreases1.
It’s not just the ebb and flow of information, but the chance that Critical Piece of Information X reaches Correct Person Y. Each additional human creates another opportunity for important information to not reach its intended recipient.
As the senior leader, it’s trivial to forget this simple math because there’s a firehose pointed straight at your face. Your challenge is not the absence of information, it’s the abundance. Your challenge is picking out the signal from the noise while also not drowning.
The firehose is the primary reason for my first piece of structure guidance: pick a format for your All Hands and stick with it. Here’s the format I’ve been using for a couple of decades:
I’ll explain the intent of each section in a moment, but the important thing to know right now is your structure will be different than mine, and that’s just fine. The point is not following my lead, but consistency. Anyone who receives an invite to this meeting understands broadly what to expect out of the meeting. Senior leaders who randomly do All Hands with fluid agendas at a time that suits them stress the team. When the unexpected and unexplainable meeting shows up, they instinctively think, “Uh oh. Someone’s in trouble.”
We open with Hello. Nothing fancy. Over the years, a simple hello seemed empty. I wanted to do a little more than say hello while folks were still gathering and getting into the All Hands mindset. At the last gig, I followed Hello with a single slide called “Tree Talk,” where I spent a few minutes teaching the team something interesting about trees. One slide, a few facts. Totally irrelevant to the team, but absolutely essential to the culture.
Why? Because I believe curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. I don’t want the team sitting there as I drone on about things they already know; I want them to see what I care about. I care a lot about trees, but I care more about the team understanding the value of curiosity.
This is often the most boring part of the presentation, except when it isn’t. This is a picture of your organization. “The org chart.” Your job is to describe what has changed since the last time you threw this up on the screen with a little color commentary.
The bulk of the presentation is not you, but some or all of your direct reports. What are they going to discuss? Up to them. The greatest hits:
There are more.
We haven’t discussed the length of your All Hands, and now is a good time. The maximum amount of time is 90 minutes. Frequency? Minimum is once a quarter.
I’m talking timing right now because Act 2’s size is a function of the number of direct reports. Three? They should all have a slot — seven minutes per direct, but they’ll end up using 10. Anything more than three and you’ll need to devise a rotation between directs.
Back to their agenda. You should roughly know what they are going to talk about, but don’t micromanage it. It’s their schtick. If they screw it up, give them feedback.
You’re building the humans who will replace you. All the time. This is one of the many ways you do that.
For Act 3, you want to bring in someone else for a fireside chat. Who? Depends on your team or your company. Start with known folks who are obvious co-conspirators. Folks you personally know with an existing rapport. Write 10 or so questions that you want to ask them, and send them the questions a week before. Warn them that you might go off-script — because you might — and see if they are OK with such vibes.
When you get to the External Speaker portion of the All Hands, sit down next to them and start asking the questions. The most important advice? Listen to their answers. By far, the most interesting bits of this interview are the new things you discover via the conversation.
After you’ve done a handful of familiar folks and have a well-refined set of questions, start asking humans you don’t know. Folks you’ve heard of that the team has worked with, but don’t know. My favorite one? I had the CEO show up once as a mystery guest. Fascinating 30 minutes.
Which reminds me. Tell no one who the speaker will be, except the humans who must know.2
A controversial take, but an earned one. If I’m doing a talk at a conference, the Q&A portion of the presentation is my favorite. The questions quickly tell me how well I delivered the core messages of my talk. Even the random ones that have very little to do with my talk.
All Hands meetings are a different beast. Yes, it is a series of presentations and, yes, there are core messages delivered, but the large surface area covered in ninety minutes plus the size of the audience usually means questions:
However, you must create one more venue for the team to ask questions. Think Slack, your favorite message app, or via staff meetings. Even if you don’t, don’t worry, the important questions will find you.
Being social is work. Especially for engineers. We’d much prefer to be jamming at our desktop. Each time I’ve landed at a new gig where there was no culture of All Hands, I was disappointed by the attendance at first. 50% or worse.
Yes, you can order donuts, and more will show up, but the real draw should be the presentation.
They should leave with the lesson: This is where I will learn.
A regular All Hands meeting is inoculation. You are inoculating your team with quality information. This information will be used to disassemble gossip, rumors, and lies. This information will answer questions before they are asked. This information will remove noise so the human can focus on why they are there — to build.
I am, generally, ambivalent towards AI. There is no doubt it has become a very powerful tool for development in the last year, but it also comes with many dangers, both for us individually (e.g. the slow dulling of our intellects) as well as collectively (e.g. environmental concerns, increasingly expensive personal computing, etc.)
In “Code is Cheap(er)�, I warn about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice problem, where a developer becomes reliant on AI and is unable to understand and properly address issues that come up in the systems they are building.
In this article I want to go through a specific interaction that I had with AI while maintaining hyperscript to show the strengths and weaknesses of AI in general and to demonstrate The Sorcerer’s Apprentice problem (which I narrowly avoided) in particular.
For some background, hyperscript is an alternative interpreted scripting language for the web. It is, ironically, written entirely in JavaScript.
It is a strange piece of software: I intentionally broke many of the rules of parsing when writing it as an experiment to see how things would work out.
Some examples:
It is not an approach I would recommend for most programming languages, but it has worked out pretty well for this project.
Yet another demonstration that there are indeed multiple ways to skin the cat in software.
Our story begins when a user reported a regression when upgrading to the 0.9.91 release. The following expression no longer parsed properly:
fetch `{% url 'trade:get_symbol_data' %}?symbol=${symbol}` as JSON
In particular, the as JSON was binding too tightly and trying to convert the string literal into JSON before it
was handed to fetch instead of doing what the user expected (and what it did previously) namely fetching the
given url with the results treated as JSON.
This sort of binding conflict is a classic problem in parsing.
Because hyperscript is an xTalk style language and inherits many of the ambiguities of English, this problem is all the worse in it.
The first thing to do was to investigate why this regression occurred.
This is an area where I am typically going to lean on AI to help.
I use Claude, and it did an admirable job finding the root cause: in 0.9.91 I had been overly aggressive in refactoring the go command to reuse/share logic with the fetch command.
I had extracted a common method for both of these commands to use, parseURLOrExpression(), but, in doing so, I
accidentally expanded the grammar after the fetch command to include the general expression, er, expression.
The as keyword has a meaning in expressions: it is a conversion expression,
allowing you to convert between types:
set x to "42" as Int
But the as keyword is also a modifier of the fetch command, telling it how to convert the response:
fetch https://hyperscript.org as Text
(Perhaps this fact makes you throw up a little bit in your mouth. Good.)
The crux of the issue was that, inadvertently in the refactor, I had made the parser parse an expression after a fetch keyword
which was now consuming the as keyword as an expression, rather than allowing it to be a modifier for fetch.
With the help of Claude I was able to figure this out in a few minutes, much faster than if I had had to figure it out on my own.
AI was very helpful in finding the cause of the problem.
In fixing the problem, however, it was much weaker.
I will admit here I was being lazy and asked AI for a solution, so complaining about those solutions feels a bit, well, lazy, but I still think the string of events is informative, so let’s go through exactly what happened.
The first suggestion that was given was to parse what is called a “string-like� leaf first, then fall back to a full expression:
return this.parseElement("stringLike") || this.requireElement("expression");
This fix would have solved the immediate problem presented by the user.
However, it was very specific to the reported bug and wouldn’t have fixed the general case, such as if someone uses a variable as the target of a fetch:
fetch $url as JSON
I rejected this proposal because of this: too hacky and not general enough.
(Note that the hyperscript parser has plenty of organically supplied hacks in it, so this may have been the pot calling the kettle black.)
The second proposal was more interesting: add a noConversions flag on the parser, set it around the URL parse, and have
AsExpression.parse bail when it is set:
// AsExpression.parse()
if (parser.noConversions) return;
This will horrify many parser engineers because it makes the hyperscript parser context-sensitive.
Good.
The hyperscript parser was already context-sensitive.
In looking at this fix and thinking for a second, I realized that we already had the hacky context-sensitive infrastructure we needed without introducing a new flag on the parser, but Claude had missed it.
In the hyperscript parser we have a notion of “follows�, that is, tokens that are claimed by a “higher up� parse element as a follow token.
The hyperscript parser is (a somewhat strange) recursive descent parser, and this allows a parse element (usually a command) to “claim� a keyword, and expressions won’t match against them during parsing.
As an example, the when feature uses or as a separator rather
than as a logical connective in its declaration:
<div _="when $x or $y changes put it into me"></div>
(I can hear many parser engineers closing this window in anger. Good.)
It turns out that this feature could be used to achieve what we wanted: rather than adding a new flag to the parser
we could push as as a follow, then parse the expression, then pop it as a follow.
This would prevent the AsExpression from parsing, while still allowing most general expressions such as variables to work.
I pointed this out to Claude and, in a frisson of excitement, it told me that I was “absolutely right!� and set about using this technique to fix the bug.
Claude added the correct code to the parseURLOrExpression() which fixed the issue generally without adding any additional
parser infrastructure.
Good to go.
However, as I was reviewing the change, I realized that the new fix was overly broad: both fetch and go shared
this method, but only fetch used as to signal a modifier.
The existing fix prevented the perfectly valid use of as conversion expressions in go commands as well.
So I implemented the final fix myself, in FetchCommand#parse():
parser.pushFollow("as");
try {
var url = parser.parseURLOrExpression();
} finally {
parser.popFollow();
}
if (parser.matchToken("as")) {
...
Here I narrowed the special case to only the fetch command, leaving go parsing unaffected.
This ended up being my final answer to the bug.
Along the way I had Claude generate some tests for the various cases.
There is a good existing test suite for hyperscript, and Claude did a good job of creating small, focused tests that showed the problem and that the fix was working properly.
Another area AI appears to work well.
OK, so what is interesting about this fairly mundane bug fix story?
I think it is interesting to see where AI did well, namely in investigation and test creation, and to contrast that with where it didn’t do so well: coming up with a clean solution.
If I had not been familiar with the hyperscript parser and its infrastructure this fix could have easily led to technical debt being accrued in the project: another hacky parsing corner case, another bit of state on the parser, etc.
Technical debt, I assert without evidence1, grows exponentially, and therefpre it is very important to minimize it in your projects.
This story shows how having a human in the loop, working with an agent and with a good understanding of the underlying infrastructure, can be much more effective in controlling complexity than an agent left to its own devices.
Some people will look at the hyperscript code base and scoff at the notion that controlling complexity was ever a consideration at all. I am sympathetic to that view.
However, in this example we can see in a concrete scenario how complexity was restrained, at least a bit, in fixing an admittedly embarrassing bug, by a knowledgeable human working with an AI agent.
This is a situation where, rather than being a sorcerer’s apprentice and blindly accepting the solutions AI proposed, I was acting as a sorcerer (I hope that’s not too arrogant to say!) demanding a correct solution that better fit the existing codebase’s architecture.
I understood the problem and saw the correct solution and was able to work with AI to achieve it and then verify the solution with the help of AI-generated tests.
This is in contrast, I hope a good contrast, with some forms of vibe coding currently being pushed in which developers (or whatever) appear to pride themselves on not understanding what is actually going on.
Another thing occurred to me as I was going back over this experience.
I am an older developer, having turned 50 this year. As developers get older the reality is that we tend to “lose our fastball�, at least to some extent.
Practically, for me, this has meant two things:
It turns out that AI directly addresses both of these issues.
With respect to memory, while I can’t remember everything I used to be able to, I can understand things again very quickly with appropriate, er, prompting. AI is very good at helping me with this, and it lets me switch between open source projects and work projects much more efficiently than if I didn’t have it.
With respect to the long hours, AI is able to grind in a way that, even as a young developer, I would have had a difficult time keeping up with. This means, for example, I can have a much more extensive test suite for my projects than I would have otherwise.
Looking at the tests that Claude generated in this case, they are more extensive than what I probably could have mustered the energy to do myself.
So AI has addressed two fundamental (relative) weaknesses I have developed as an older developer.
On the other hand, I am very worried that it is also enabling a more general regression in my overall intelligence. This is something that occurs naturally as you age anyway. AI reliance may accelerate this process however and I have to say, looking back at this story, I’m a bit ashamed of how long I leaned on Claude before just doing the right thing darned myself.
This is an area I am still trying to navigate myself.
I wanted to write up this series of interactions because I thought it captured some of the good and some of the bad of AI assistance in coding. It demonstrated the value of a reasonably competent developer in the loop working with an AI agent, and also showed the danger of blindly accepting the first (or second) solution that an AI agent suggests to a problem.
I hope that it is useful to you as you develop your own thoughts and strategies around AI agents.
–
This was revealed to me in a dream.
Reading lists are interesting both for the books they describe, and for what they say about the list makers. Here are a dozen interesting-looking books from people at the venture capital firm Andreeason Horowitz (aka A16Z).
A reading list for the deeply curious
Part one of our summer reading list: 12 books on technology, markets, AI, code, and the systems behind change. a16z crypto
Four of the twelve recommended books come under the heading How markets are designed.
These are those:
Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work by Alvin E. Roth
“My doctoral advisor, Al Roth, has been thinking for decades about ‘repugnance’ – why some people prefer that some markets should not exist. In Moral Economics, he tackles the motivation for these prohibitions and the trade-offs they force, head-on. And he explores, in particular, how such non-market norms emerge and sometimes later collapse — limitations on alcohol and drugs, and, in a completely different category, same-sex marriage have all been relaxed in recent years — and what this means for making markets in the future.” – Scott Duke Kominers, research
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
“Acemoglu and Robinson’s central thesis, that inclusive institutions drive prosperity while extractive ones cause stagnation, maps surprisingly well onto crypto. Decentralized protocols are essentially an attempt to hard-code inclusive institutions: open access, no gatekeepers, rules enforced by code rather than by whoever’s in power. The book is a great lens for understanding why certain blockchain ecosystems thrive while others are captured by insiders. A must-read for anyone thinking seriously about governance, whether at the nation-state or protocol level.” – Kira Song, finance
An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets by Donald MacKenzie
“Sociologist Donald MacKenzie’s An Engine, Not a Camera is nominally a book about financial economics, but its real subject is more provocative: What happens when theories stop describing the world and start changing it? MacKenzie traces how academic models of markets escaped the university and became embedded in the markets themselves. First published in 2006, it remains relevant today in a number of contexts — not least because of the recent interest from TradFi in crypto. But I wanted to read it again because of the book I’m working on with colleague Robert Hackett, about how computer science theories acted on the world.” – Tim Sullivan, editorial
A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward O. Thorp
“Growing up, I was obsessed with the movie 21 and the idea that you could actually use math to beat the house. This book is the autobiography of the man who essentially started it all. Edward Thorp went on to apply those same principles to Wall Street, becoming the father of quantitative investing. It’s an incredible story about using pure logic to disrupt rigged legacy systems, which perfectly captures the same builder mindset we see in crypto today.” – Ben Wu, talent
Daniel Agee, an early member of the team at Glass, writing on the Glass blog:
It’s not lost on us that Om’s photography, often taken in frozen lands in or around the arctic circle, was the polar opposite of his personality. While he focused on subtle shapes and hidden landscapes, he was the sun of any group he was in. Folks just naturally fell into his orbit.
Agee’s lovely piece is replete with photos by Om.
A veteran of the internet publishing space, he was one of the first to take the now well-worn path of technology writing into venture capital. When we briefly explored raising a small round of VC funding after our launch to support our growth, Om was our first call. He answered and immediately said, “I love you guys, I’ll invest the money if you want it, but don’t fucking do it. What you have is special. Don’t fucking ruin it.”
That’s Om. Simple and to the point. That simplicity showed up in his photography practice. Strip away everything from a photograph, down to the bare minimum of contrast or shadow. What do you focus on? What do you see? How can something so simple be so fulfilling?
That is exactly how Om spoke. Always. To the point. Why waste time? Why mince words? Why make someone guess what you really think? Our instincts say otherwise, but it’s not rude to be blunt. Unmoderated honesty is a profound courtesy.
Matt Mullenweg:
Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast “regular” everywhere he went. He wouldn’t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren’t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory created connections not just in San Francisco, but all around the world wherever we traveled. (I need to pull the stats, but we went to five continents together, including Antarctica.)
He loved people and their stories.
And:
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Om is the deep appreciation of craft. When he took an interest in photography or pens, he would somehow find his way to the most obscure, highest-quality expression of that form. “What Would Om Want?” is a question I will always ponder. I want to craft products that would make Om proud.
If you’re going to get into something, you ought to pursue it to its full extent. If you’re not interested enough to do that, don’t bother getting into it. Find the few things you love; don’t waste your time on the many things you merely like.
Matt is keeping a wonderful list of links to other remembrances and tributes to Om.
Clay Risen, writing for The New York Times (gift link):
Mr. Malik started his blog just as the dot-com bubble burst, leading to a recession that also took down many of the journalism start-ups that wrote about tech, like The Industry Standard and Inside.com. He was among the most prominent of the writers who quickly filled the gap, covering Silicon Valley with a mixture of hot scoops and sharp opinions that quickly made Gigaom a must-read.
“The Android OS leaves me feeling like one feels three hours after having Chinese food: a tad empty,” he wrote in a 2010 post that neatly summarized Google’s struggles to move beyond its roots as a search platform. “Google has to learn the art of engagement — something particularly challenging.”
Lovely, warm, accurate and fair obituary. This pulled snippet is a great one. Early Android as Chinese takeout is such a deft analogy, and the piece really isn’t about Android specifically but Google institutionally. Not speeds and feeds, but can they make products with a soul? With heart? Om’s pessimism was obvious, and I’d say, prescient.
He had a rare ability to see around corners, and to pick out from the horde of new companies the ones that were going to make real change. He was an early champion of Slack, the workplace messaging service, and in 2006 he was the first blogger to write extensively about Twitter. He was not a fan.
Back in the day Letterman had a recurring bit called “Is This Anything?” They’d bring someone or something on stage and then Dave and Paul would render their up/down judgment: was that anything? The answer, more often than not, was no. The Letterman bit was a gag. But that’s basically what tech journalism is — especially back in the heyday of startups. Every startup believes it’s something and wants the press to think it’s something. Most of the time, it’s not something. Once in a while it is. Om was so goddam good at identifying the somethings.
Long before Facebook came in for attacks from both the political left and right, he called out, during a 2013 interview with Bloomberg TV, what he said was “absolutely an air of amorality” on the part of its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. In the same interview, he criticized the venture capitalist John Doerr for “patently trying to hijack the political process.”
He was right early, and right often. You can say now that everyone knows there’s “an air of amorality” at Facebook institutionally and with Zuckerberg personally. In 2013 that was not a common refrain. Just a year earlier, Apple had added Facebook account integration at the system level in iOS 6.
Sean Hollister, writing for The Verge (gift link):
If you’ve visited a cannabis club in Spain, [Sammy] Azdoufal says, chances are your photo ID was among them — and possibly your phone number, address, your favorite strains of cannabis, and how much you consumed each month while there. Azdoufal says celebrities are in the database, too, and visitors from all over the world, including 30,000 from the United States. “They have famous people,” says Azdoufal. “People who don’t want everyone to know they smoke weed.”
But when Azdoufal decompiled that PuffPal app, he explains in his report, he discovered that Nefos had no meaningful level of security. He discovered a secret key for the Stripe payments platform sitting inside the app in plain text. He discovered he could pull up any member’s profile just by changing one number. If those profiles included their phone number, home address, passport, and weed preferences, he now had access to them too.
And then, he discovered that those passports, drivers licenses, and photo IDs were stored at public URLs as simple as this:
https://ccsnubev2.com/v8/images/_{club}/ID/{user_id}-front.jpgThose clubs were uploading 5,000 new photo IDs with these insecure URLs every day, Azdoufal tells me.
Azdoufal’s full report on the leak, including the ease with which he discovered it, is worth reading.
Note what happened. A high-value credential — a passport — was used in an ancillary low-value authentication system: ID verification for cannabis dispensaries. And it’s the low-value system that got hacked, putting the high-value credential at risk.
Access to cannabis clubs has to be age verified. The security ought not be shit, but age verification is part of the industry. But now think about the legislation being proposed and passed around the world requiring age verification for just doing anything online. These sort of identity leaks are the inevitable result.
In a New York Times piece, “All Men Are Created Equal, Not Everyone Agrees“, Kim Phillips-Fein correctly critiques the current trend of rich men who disparage equality and want us to give way to whomever they take to be the exceptional few. She quotes billionaire Peter Theil and others that there are such special people, themselves included of course, whom we should defer to. She defends equality but points out that unfortunately notable people throughout U.S. history have disputed the idea that all are equal. It’s the same ridiculous and horrendous mistake that Ayn Rand made, which will be describe.
First, “All men” should obviously be shortened to “All”. All genders, all colors, all sexuality, simply “All”. The Times piece implies that but let’s state it explicitly.
Second, as the piece points out in quotes from various men, they confuse the meanings of equality. They claim that because not all have the same intelligence or productivity, that equality is therefore a myth. Well of course not all have the same capabilities or temperaments. The equality staked out in the Declaration of Independence is equality of value. Bright or not, greatly productive or not, each is a human deserving, no, requiring the full respect, and treatment-with-value as every other. That these men of claimed brilliance stumble over this simple distinction highlights their shortcomings. History shows that those same blind spots have created catastrophes.
To explain, let’s look at how this is all a repeat of the mistake Ayn Rand made. A mistake so absurd and deplorable as to, again, highlight its own shortcomings.
Well over a decade ago I read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. Long before reading it I had known her philosophy, Objectivism, and felt it had some truth but was incomplete. Knowing that, I never felt the need to read her novel. When I did read it I was surprised at it’s core theme. The core thing that she expresses relentlessly, almost without pause, throughout her long novel, is her complete contempt for almost all people.
It’s supposed to celebrate the individual, but just like in real life, actions speak louder than words. In her story there are maybe 25 people in the whole U.S. who are virtuous, productive and capable. All of the other 99.9999 percent are idiots who couldn’t even feed themselves if not for the work of this handful of worthies.
This is not some exaggeration. This literally is the story. The brightest man goes about finding all the other men who can think and are productive (they are almost without exception men), and convinces them to leave society and live in their own compound. Their expressed purpose is they think society is so messed up it deserves to collapse, and that if this small group withdraws it will collapse. Indeed the end scene is several of them flying over New York City watching as transportation and power and lights fail. Society disintegrates into chaos with, we’re given to understand, starvation and all the worst results you can imagine. All because this handful of people withdrew and the rest of us idiots are incapable of keeping the lights on without them.
A philosophy of productiveness, of initiative, of responsibility for oneself is exactly correct as far as it goes, like one side of a coin. The side of the coin she missed has most of the value of everything from the teachings of Jesus, to the philosophy of the Western World in the constitution. Her extreme elitism stands in contrast to the open compassion of Jesus, and to our constitution. To our central idea that we hold all people in such high esteem that the sanctity of every individual is our core. That the sanctity of the wisdom of the people, through democratic elections, is the foundation of our government. She claims to believe that, but her book tells a different story.
It is the bulk of the people, workaday people, whose industriousness, ingenuity, and character creates pretty much everything worthwhile. Their relentless building, generation upon generation, of cultures, economies, societies, cities, philosophies. Far from being unable to feed ourselves or keep the lights on, we are the ones who grow the food and literally do keep the lights on. Who did she think she was and how did she come to be so bizarrely arrogant and blindly ignorant? How does one come to think that the very people who grow all the food and do all the work couldn’t keep things going if not for the “blessed” presence of her and a few who think too much of themselves? If Musk and Theil and some of their fellows wanted to leave now, leave their companies to the direction of others, and go live in a compound away from the rest of us, they are welcome to it.
Adding a note here about the current crop of uber-rich, it is also the work of the many that created the wealth owned by the few rich men now claiming superiority. As directors they may have ambitious ideas and state the goals but then every step of carrying that out is done by competent, workaday people. The many built the wealth that those rich few now stand on to claim their superiority.
Unfortunately, it is often those few that are exceptionally effective who are too good at amassing power. They leave the workaday people with less than what their work should gain them, get them frustrated, play on their fears, play groups off each other, and end up undermining the good world that the work of the bulk of the people creates.
Rand’s one-sided coin, her philosophy of logic without heart, is dangerous. In her story not only do her elites withdraw, some actively sabotage the work of the many, under the idea that their collapse is needed in order to have a clean start toward a better future. Better in the eyes of one person, Ayn Rand. That’s the exact same mistake Mao Zedong made in China, starving millions, certain it was necessary in order to lead them to a better future. There is nothing more dangerous than moral certainty without heart.
We humans, we many, contain both, logic and heart. Our ideas are great because they have both, from New Testament compassion to the democracy and rights in our constitution. Rand missed that. Missed it in a most extreme way. Missed the best 99.9999 percent of it.
Now this current crop of uber rich want to repeat all of that mistake.
They are amazingly good at some things, at amassing money, and spearheading organizations of engineers to build spaceships and satellite networks and the like. At the same time they readily demonstrate that they are very bad at some essential human skills and understanding.
Take Elon Musk’s DOGE project to radically cut government spending. Wantonly hacking away at parts of an organization in the “move fast and break things” mode and then building new things as you go is a great way to advance a technology company. But it’s a terrible way to approach governing when the “break things” part is real peoples’ lives who may be ruined in the mean time.
Musk either didn’t know that, which would emphasize that his skills do not extend to human leadership, or he didn’t care, which would be worse. It verifies that even though these men are uber-accomplished they have flaws which disqualify them from leadership regarding the lives of the many.
Mao Zedong, as noted, was also amazingly capable and accomplished. He rose from being a peasant to leading the people of the most populous country to completely transform it. But, oops, the holes in his understanding of humanity led him to impose policies that created a famine that killed 40 million people. In a current parallel, there is a very credible estimate that when the DOGE project mostly eliminated U.S.A.I.D., the foreign aid agency, it resulted in 600,000 additional deaths worldwide, in the first year.
Being good at some things does not qualify one to mess with peoples’ lives. The fact that these current uber few don’t even seem to have a sense of what their limitations are, that they are too un-self-aware to know that they don’t know, is such a fundamental disqualification they would be terrible choices for most high positions. Yes, let them lead companies. But don’t let them anywhere near the governing of the people.
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The post Uber-Rich Repeat Ayn Rand’s Deadly Mistake appeared first on DCReport.org.
Writing in the QJE, Derenoncourt, Kim, Kuhn, & Schularick argue that today’s black-white wealth gap can be explained by differences in initial conditions from over a hundred and fifty years ago, i.e. slavery. But there is an important, and glaring objection: in the age of immigration (1850–1924) millions of whites immigrated to the United States with essentially no wealth and yet they caught up to the “heritage” whites quite quickly and indeed today are richer than heritage whites.
Brian Marein collects and carefully analyzes the data:
Persistent racial wealth inequality in the United States is often attributed to the intergenerational transmission of historical wealth disparities. However, inferring the determinants of long-run inequality from group-level data is complicated by the arrival of 30 million Europeans during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1924), who are by construction included in average white wealth despite having no direct claim to the wealth accumulated by earlier Americans. This paper accounts for this compositional change in the white population by documenting wealth dynamics among European immigrants and their descendants. Cash-on-arrival data show that immigrants began with substantial wealth deficits relative to the native-born. Yet by the late twentieth century, these deficits had closed, as indicated by comparisons between the descendants of later-arriving Southern and Eastern Europeans and those of longer-established Northwestern Europeans. This pattern implies rapid intraracial wealth convergence, in contrast to the slower convergence observed across racial groups. A stylized model shows that these differences can be largely accounted for by income. These findings demonstrate that large wealth disparities do not mechanically persist when groups have access to comparable economic opportunities.
If initial conditions don’t explain the wealth gap then the most likely explanation is an income and/or savings gaps. I am reminded of an earlier politically incorrect paper of the year by Nathaniel Hilger and see also my review of his book The Parent Trap.
The post Politically Incorrect Paper of the Day: The US Racial Wealth Gap appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
A wide range of Democratic voices are in the process of shaping new political language to move their party, and the country, forward. James Talarico is one of those new voices. On Friday, June 26, he delivered his official acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from Texas at the Texas Democratic Convention held in Corpus Christi.
He began by invoking Barbara Jordan, a lawyer who in 1972 became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Texas. A brilliant orator, Jordan delivered a statement on July 24, 1974, from her seat on the House Judiciary Committee during President Richard Nixon’s impeachment that is considered one of the most powerful speeches in U.S. history. “My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total,” she said. “And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.”
After tying himself to both the state’s multicultural history and its defense of democracy through Jordan, Talarico used a different vision from Jordan to make his case for the future. He recalled that Jordan said “the soil and spirit of Texas” made her feel that she could accomplish whatever she wanted, “that there are no limits.” Talarico used Jordan’s embrace of the American dream to anchor his own new political vision for the twenty-first century.
It is a vision that resonates beyond Texas.
Talarico rooted himself firmly in Texas’s past and present. He emphasized that he is an eighth-generation Texan whose family arrived in the region when it was still Mexican. “We may not have always been wealthy or well educated,” he said, “but we always served our state.” His ancestor Elijah Stapp signed the Texas Declaration of Independence that declared the region free from Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna, risking everything, Talarico said, “to defy a tyrant.”
That independence cost Stapp dearly. Four months after he signed the document, Santa Anna’s army destroyed his home, leaving him, his wife, and their six children destitute. But Stapp was undeterred. He wrote to his neighbors, “Any duty that my bodily strength would enable me to perform, either in public or private, that would advance the cause of Texas, I feel anxious and ever ready to perform.”
“Texans don’t like tyrants,” Talarico said, “And we don’t surrender easily.”
Bringing that theme to the modern era, Talarico told the story of his mother, “a seventh-generation Texan from Laredo,” who left an abusive relationship to make a life with her infant son. “That’s what it means to be a Texan,” he said. “We are strivers and builders and dreamers of all colors and creeds of all backgrounds and beliefs. It’s in our blood.”
“Texas is big,” Talarico said. “Big hair, big hearts, and big dreams. Our athletes are beloved across the globe. Cowboys, Astros, Spurs. Our musicians, our musicians are so iconic, they only need one name. Willie. Selena. Beyoncé.”
“But the current political landscape is too small for Texas,” he said. “Texas used to be known for our hospitality…. Friendship across tribes, friendship across divides. That’s what makes Texas so great. We’re this big mash-up of all these different people, all these different cultures, all these different friends. Think about, think about Tejano music. If you’re listening to a Selena song, you’re hearing Spanish vocal styles from northern Mexico. But you’re also hearing polka dance rhythms from Czech and German immigrants. This uniquely…Texan ability to welcome new friends and new ideas has made us one of the most exciting and innovative states in the country.”
“We’re the state that put a man on the moon,” Talarico said. “We’re the state that pioneered ranching and energy and computers. We’re the state that gave this country Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, LBJ, and the Great Society. We’re the state that put breakfast in a taco.”
Then Talarico turned to the present. “[T]oday, we face a new threat,” he said. “Our state is being taken over by a new kind of tyrant: billionaire megadonors. They’re not invading with an army. They’re just buying the system. The billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they are turning neighbor against neighbor. Weakening that spirit of friendship that makes Texas so great. They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, so we don’t notice that they’re picking our pockets. It is the oldest strategy in the world. Divide and conquer.”
“But,” he said, “Texas will not be conquered.”
Talarico accused “these new tyrants” of looking out of state “to find puppet politicians who were willing to do their bidding.” He said they picked his opponent, Ken Paxton, “the most corrupt politician in America,” who was “born in North Dakota, raised in California, and has a place in Hawaii.”
“Listen,” Talarico said, “I believe anyone can be a Texan.” That identity lives “not in the boots or in the truck,” but in people’s hearts. But the billionaires and “their puppets have the wrong state of mind. Their hearts and their dreams are just not big enough. We let these small men get their hands on our big state. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. The kind who make themselves feel big by making everyone else feel small.
“These men, they took all the money and power they could grab, and they set out to shrink Texas down to their size. They’re shrinking our Texas economy with job-killing tariffs. They are shrinking our Texas public schools with private school voucher scams. They’re shrinking our healthcare, so it covers less and less. They’re shrinking our paychecks and how much those paychecks can buy. And they’re shrinking our power by attacking our God-given rights at the ballot box and redrawing our districts to keep themselves in power. They have been shrinking Texas for three decades now. But that ends this year in this election.
“In November, we can make Texas big again,” Talarico said. “We can make Texas friendly again. We can make Texas, Texas, again. We have the chance to take back our state from those billionaire mega donors and their puppet politicians who stole it from us.”
“This isn’t a partisan thing,” Talarico said as he pointed out that Republicans and Democrats came together to impeach Paxton, and he reminded people that Sam Houston, the first president of the Texas Republic, told people to “do right, and risk the consequences.” “What would Sam Houston think about the small men who are shrinking Texas?” Talarico asked. “What would Sam Houston, who put Texas before himself, say about Ken Paxton, who puts himself before Texas? What would Sam Houston say to all of us at this critical moment in Texas history? I think he would say, do right, and risk the consequences.
“There’s an old country song by Gary P. Nunn, called ‘What I Like About Texas.’ In the song, he lists the rivers and the bluebonnets, the music and the food. But ultimately, he settles on one answer. He says it’s the spirit of the people who share this land. The spirit of Barbara Jordan. The spirit of my mom, the spirit that’s in this room. The feeling that we can accomplish whatever we want to….
“This election shouldn’t be about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party,” Talarico said. “It should be about chasing a vision of what our state can be. Texas schools that are the envy of the nation. A Texas economy that is second to none, and Texas families that are stronger and healthier than ever before. It won’t happen overnight. But a giant state deserves giant dreams. We are— We are bigger than extremism. We’re bigger than partisanship. We’re bigger than corruption. Texas is bigger than all of those things. Because it’s not just a state. It’s a state of mind….
“Texans don’t like tyrants. And we don’t surrender easily. Tonight, standing before you, to accept your nomination for the United States Senate, I make the same commitment to you that my ancestor made 200 years ago. Any duty that my bodily strength would enable me to perform, either in public or private, that would advance the cause of Texas, I feel anxious and ever ready to perform.”
—
Notes:
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/impeachment/my-faith-constitution-whole-it-complete-it-total
YouTube:
This was the fifth week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and it’s been quite a week. For me, this week’s videos, taken together, illustrate both the complexity of U.S. history and how many different individuals have used many different approaches to change that history.
On a more personal note, they also show how many wonderful people have come together to brainstorm, write, edit, film, cut, and produce this project. It’s not every week you get to jump from Emily Roebling to Jimi Hendrix with a whole bunch of cool stops in between, and it took a lot of people to make such a journey possible.
You can follow the project at the sites listed below, or under “videos” at my own YouTube page: Heather Cox Richardson. Or just wait until I send out the week’s roundup.
A reminder, too, that we are asking people to post a video saying “I am America” to social media with the hashtag #WeAreAmerica250 (so we can find them).
Follow Along | #WeAreAmerica250
Substack | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Bluesky | Threads
Maria Shriver is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer, a bestselling author, and former First Lady of California. She is the founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement at Cleveland Clinic and The Sunday Paper, and the co-founder of MOSH. Shriver tells how her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, inspired by her sister Rosemary, founded the Special Olympics movement from a backyard camp built on dignity and inclusion.
Senator Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaii was the first elected female senator from her state and the first Asian-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Senator Hirono shares the legacy of U.S. Representative Patsy Mink, who fought tirelessly for gender equality in American education.
Representative Stacey E. Plaskett is the first person in a territory to be named a Ranking Member of a Select Committee and is serving her 6th term as a delegate to the House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Dr. Peter L. Salk is an American physician, professor, and public health advocate. Peter previously served as president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving and extending the contributions of his father, Dr. Jonas Salk. He shares how a team of researchers and millions of everyday Americans came together to defeat polio.
Rebecca Solnit is a celebrated American essayist, author, historian, and activist known for her influential works on feminism, social change, and resilience. Solnit speaks about Willa Cather, the Nebraskan novelist who captured the romance and struggle of immigrants in the Midwest.
Harrison Ford is an award-winning actor whose iconic performances across more than six decades have solidified him as a pillar of American cinema. Ford looks back at the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that put thousands of unemployed men to work improving America’s parks and natural lands.
Senator Tina Smith is a leading advocate for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northern Minnesota. Last year, Senator Smith introduced the Boundary Waters Wilderness Protection Act to put permanent protections in place for the area, the first bill of its kind since 1978.
Jim Obergefell is a leading LBGTQ+ activist, speaker, producer, author, and wine entrepreneur. Here he stories the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case, which guaranteed the marriage rights of same-sex couples across the United States.
Tracey Enerson Wood is a celebrated bestselling author known for bringing the forgotten history of women to light. In her novel The Engineer’s Wife, she tells the true story of Emily Warren Roebling, who completed the Brooklyn Bridge despite tremendous obstacles.
Alex Edgar is the Youth Engagement Manager at Made By Us, where he leads Youth250, the national effort to include youth voices in America’s past, present and future story. Edgar profiles Jacob Riis, the immigrant journalist and photographer whose unflinching images of New York’s tenements pioneered the use of photography for social reform.
Cameron Katz is the Head of Content + Partnerships at Made By Us, the national network connecting young adults to history and civic life through more than 750 museums, historic sites, libraries, and archives. Katz honors Frances Perkins, the labor secretary whose response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire led to Social Security, the minimum wage, and the forty-hour work week.
Justice Brown is a Youth250 Bureau member at Made By Us, the national network connecting young adults to history and civic life through more than 750 museums, historic sites, libraries, and archives. Brown discusses the powerful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that Jimi Hendrix performed at his closing Woodstock set.
Follow Along | #WeAreAmerica250
Substack | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Bluesky | Threads
Human prosperity depends on nature, but no global metric has captured this with precision. Enter the Nature Relationship Index
- by Yadvinder Malhi
We’ve taken one small step towards robot police officers: a drone capable of disarming a suspect:
In a June 22 video posted on the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Instagram page, an officer wearing goggles can be seen operating a drone to retrieve a knife from an armed suspect hiding inside a cluttered house. “After not responding to negotiators, a drone was deployed inside the residence,” the post says. “Drone pilots located the suspect hiding in a corner of a garage” and then used a high-powered magnet attached to the drone to grab the knife out of the suspect’s hand. In the video which is soundtracked by the “Mission: Impossible” theme song—the intercepted knife can be seen spinning around in the air as the drone carries it back to the deputies.
Slashdot thread.
When 13 billion years of the cosmos get condensed into 10 epic minutes, when in the timelapse do you think humans appear?
- by Aeon Video
(Glasgow, UK) Glasgow-based space engineering company Craft Prospect has been selected for inclusion in the inaugural edition of The Sunday Times Scotland Fast 50, a new annual list recognising some […]
The post Craft Prospect selected for The Sunday Times Scotland Fast 50 appeared first on SpaceNews.
HELSINKI — China has established a national very low Earth orbit industry alliance, as multiple satellites demonstrate sustained operations below 300 kilometers and propulsion startups attract investment. China established a […]
The post China establishes VLEO industry alliance as satellites demonstrate sustained low-orbit operations appeared first on SpaceNews.
It’s a 4-week, high-velocity production sprint for undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent graduates who want to build something real this summer.
You’ll learn how to identify a project, make steady progress, get support from mentors and peers, and create tangible, public-facing work you can actually show future employers.
Hack Your Summer is partly a reaction to the internship crisis facing US college students this year. There are way fewer available internships than usual, as companies have reduced their hiring ambitions and teams have less capacity to coach interns.
Hack Your Summer provides an alternative path for the many students who didn't catch one of those rare internships.
A second (free) cohort starts on July 13th, and the deadline for students to apply is July 8th. They're also accepting volunteers to help mentor the students.
Tags: careers
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Transcript
It’s kind of hard to believe, but the original Borat movie was 20 years ago. It’s time for a second sequel. And I already have the title. It would be Corruption for Make Benefit Glorious Family of Trump.
I hope that some of my listeners are young enough to not remember the original Borat movie. But it was a mockumentary, a satire, in which Sacha Baron Cohen pretended to be a journalist from Kazakhstan investigating and interviewing Americans about American mores. It was not about Kazakhstan, although he did insult the country along the way.
The reason I think about it is that today’s New York Times has a piece that reports, investigative reporting, on an immense mining deal in Kazakhstan, which, what do you know, turns out to be a big profit center for the Trump sons and also the sons of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.
Check out the investigative reporting for the details, but basically here’s another one, another big one.
It’s part of an immense series of corrupt deals, often with petrostates — which Kazakhstan is — that financially benefit Donald Trump and his family and some of his cronies and cabinet members as well and their families. It’s all on a truly epic scale.
This is a message I have been trying to get across. I don’t think many people even now understand just how much of a departure what’s happening now is from past US history. I still see people saying we might be, could be heading for another Gilded Age. But we have a level of concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people that is something like three times what it was at the peak of the Gilded Age. We’re in a super duper Gilded Age.
And I sometimes hear people say, well, could we be returning to old kinds of corruption? Might we have another Teapot Dome scandal? Well, my God. Teapot Dome was a scandal actually involving mineral rights and bribes during the Harding administration, although not bribes to the president’s family, which is, again, something entirely new. The scale of the bribes was about $500,000: adjusting for inflation, that’s something like $9 million today.
So how much has Trump enriched himself since returning to the White House about 500 days ago? The answer is certainly more than four billion dollars, almost certainly more than four and a half, maybe five billion dollars. Divide that by 500 and we basically have a Teapot Dome sized corruption scandal on an average day under Trump.
So it’s basically day after day of scandals as big or bigger than Teapot Dome. Our corrupt grandfathers, great-grandfathers were pikers compared with this, just as the Gilded Age robber barons were pikers compared with the modern-day tech bros.
This is obviously not good. It’s actually quite horrifying. How did we so quickly descend into becoming a truly massively corrupt country on a level that we used to think of as being associated only with tinpot dictators in the third world? And yet here we are.
This ought to be a political issue and it ought to be a legal issue as soon as the government is back in the hands of people who actually take the rule of law seriously. Again, without going into the details of the deal, it’s surely illegal. I mean, it’s illegal under the Emoluments Clause. Probably since there are definitely Kazakhs on the take as well, it’s illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is just, it’s illegal up the wazoo.
Of course, it will not be prosecuted as long as Trump is in the White House. But forget any Democrat who isn’t promising to go after this massive corruption when they regain power. If they don’t, then none of this matters, but that should be a core part of anybody’s platform.
I’m not a political expert — sometimes I think nobody is — but my God, again, this corruption is so blatant. And it does resonate with people. It’s really clear that corruption at the top and the sense that ordinary people are paying the price while people with power enrich themselves is an effective popular issue. That is actually the issue that brought Viktor Orban down in Hungary, which is one of the hopeful signs for what may happen to America going down the pike.
So here we are, just to remind you that this scandal, it’s a huge thing. It’s page one in the New York Times, but in a way it’s actually kind of ordinary, since even this size of scandal is happening every few weeks these days.
Do not make the mistake of treating what’s going on as in any sense normal. This is hugely abnormal, and I believe that the American people will understand that it’s abnormal even if pundits get bored of talking about the corruption. So drive it home, maybe for make benefit American people instead of the Trump family.
On college campuses around America, old-fashioned blue books are making a comeback.
Around a century ago these standardized booklets for written exams were introduced by Butler University in Indianapolis. For many former students of a certain age — myself included — the sight of a blue book can generate anxiety and even nightmares. And many former instructors — myself again included — recall the tedium and strained eyesight of trying to decipher students’ handwriting. So it was an improvement when exam-taking shifted from paper to computer. Or so it seemed at the time.
Now, however, students are using AI to write essays and answer questions on take-home exams, as well as taking in-person exams on their computers. As a result, an AI-arms-race has developed between instructors and students. Concerned that students are not doing the work themselves but are simply copying and pasting AI output, instructors have begun using AI programs to detect students’ use of AI. Inevitably, there are now AI programs that students can use to outwit the instructors’ AI detection programs.
So, not surprisingly, many instructors are going back to handwritten in-class exams, generating a sudden boom in the demand for blue books. Ominously, even the return of in-person testing may not solve the problem of testing in the face of AI: Cheating using AI glasses is on the rise in Asia and will doubtless spread worldwide.
My concern here isn’t about testing; it’s about learning. The objective of testing is to further learning, and there is growing concern (as well as evidence) that students’ use of AI damages their capacity to learn. And what we really mean by learning is the ability to think. Students who rely on large language models to answer questions won’t learn how to think by reasoning through the evidence to form a conclusion. As a result, they will be unequipped to deal with situations in which AI either can’t provide an answer or provides misleading answers.
In short, there are good reasons to worry that what we’re calling artificial intelligence will adversely affect the development of our natural intelligence. Moreover, in the case of basic learning, those adverse effects may be virtually irremediable.
The rise of generative AI isn’t a complete departure from an ongoing process of outsourcing human judgment and understanding to external models. Rather, generative AI is just a further step in a process that began a generation ago with the launch of Google search and accelerated with the rise of smartphones. However, ChatGPT and Claude Code ratcheted that process up to a much more rapid pace.
Granted, each stage of this process has brought obvious short-term benefits to those using the new technologies. Yet these benefits have come at the cost of real, measurable long-term damage to human understanding and cognition. And AI, which is already creating a crisis in education, will almost surely make the damage much worse.
Beyond the paywall I will address the following:
1. A brief history of outsourced cognition
2. The sharp deterioration in learning with the advent of smartphones
3. The AI cognitive crisis
4. Will cognitive losses due to AI lead to a new form of inequality?
HumanAgent in the loopI dislike the phrase “human in the loop” because it cedes authority to the machines. Let’s flip the narrative. It’s our loop, we work the same way we always have, now we recruit agents to join the team. An agent-assisted process need not be a black box that takes in prompts and emits features. [...]
Let’s do agentic software development like that. Not as a loop we’ve been excluded from, instead as one we invite agents into.
— Jon Udell, “Doctor, it hurts when agents create unreviewable PRs.” “Don’t do that.”
Tags: jon-udell, coding-agents, generative-ai, agentic-engineering, ai, llms
Most pharmaceuticals involve high upfront costs, to discover and test the drug, and very low marginal costs. Another pill can be printed almost for free.
That cost structure favors health systems, such as that of Britain, that try to pay lower for services. They can end up getting a relatively good deal from price discrimination. After all, they can be served at low marginal cost, at least for those ttreatments.
Now imagine a biomedical future where many more treatments are based on the sequencing of your individual genome, and then the development of specific treatments personalized to you. Obviously it will depend on developments, but very likely those remedies will have relatively high marginal costs.
In that setting the British approach to health care procurement and pricing will work less well. It is the well-capitalized, “overspending” systems, such as the United States, that will have an easier time making the adjustment.
“The rising relative advantage of well-capitalized health care systems” is a neglected trend, because it makes a lot of earlier elite pronouncements about health care economics look a bit off.
The post Will future biomedical advances be low marginal cost? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Workplace technological changes were instrumental in creating new tasks for women over the last century. This paper studies the adoption of the typewriter into US workplaces. Exploiting exogenous variation in typist demand across sectors, I document that the typewriter increased women’s labor force participation, leading to lower rates of marriage and fertility. These developments stemmed from a transition of White women from households into office work and an indirect crowding-in effect drawing Black women into household services. Acting as a “meeting technology,” the typewriter reshaped social interactions, enabling White women to marry above their socioeconomic backgrounds and achieve upward mobility.
That is from a recent paper by Myera Rashid. Via Kris Gulati.
The post Typewriters and fertility appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
At first glance, it may look as though we’re about to enter the Milky Way. However, today’s Picture of the Week actually features the road sign indicating the entrance to the ALMA Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is operated by ESO together with international partners, studies the light from the coldest corners of the Universe.
Water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere readily absorbs the millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths of radiation that ALMA observes. This is why ALMA is located in one of the driest and highest places on Earth, on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Andes, at an impressive altitude of 5000 metres.
ALMA has given us some of the most detailed images of our Milky Way, showing among other things filaments of dense clouds of gas and dust at its core. Unlike our eyes, or a camera like the one that took this photo, ALMA uses a technique called interferometry that allows us to see fine details of distant celestial objects. By combining the light captured with each of the 66 high-precision antennas in its array, ALMA works as a single telescope with a diameter equal to the farthest distance between antennas.
While not being able to physically reach the glowing band of our galaxy seen in this picture, images like the ones produced by ALMA are some of the closest "gateways” we have to admire the Milky Way and its constituents.
Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun.
Editor’s note: In honor of America’s 250th birthday, Earth Observatory is revisiting stories about the landscapes that helped shape U.S. history. The images and text on this page were originally published on September 14, 2014. Explore the full collection here.
The song is familiar to every American, but the moment and place where it was composed are less so.
On April 24, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this view of Baltimore, Maryland, and its harbor. Fort McHenry and its star-shaped ramparts—the place where “that star-spangled banner yet wave[d],” on September 14, 1814—stand at the entrance to the city’s Inner Harbor. The area was a pivotal battleground in the War of 1812.
In September 1814, British naval and ground forces advanced on the city of Baltimore, emboldened by the August 24 burning of the White House and the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. On September 12, British forces landed at North Point, 5 miles (8 kilometers) southeast of Baltimore (just off the lower right of this image), and engaged American troops in several small battles. By September 13, the land forces approached the city of Baltimore but were repelled by U.S. Army and Maryland militia forces assembled behind a mile of earthworks and trenches along Hampstead Hill—near what is now known as Patterson Park (image top center).
On the morning of September 13, British naval vessels set up positions roughly at the point where this image is labeled Baltimore Harbor. They began a 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, staying far enough offshore to hit the fort with rockets and cannonballs but out of the range of American artillery. Unable to subdue the fort, and hampered by several merchant vessels that were intentionally sunk in the harbor, the British forces ended their attack on the morning of September 14.
The Battle of Baltimore moved a young American lawyer and negotiator to write a song entitled “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” Francis Scott Key had spent the night of September 13 on a British vessel in the Patapsco River, working to secure the release of American prisoners of war. Local legend in Maryland holds that the HMS Tonnant was anchored roughly where the Key Bridge is now located, giving Key a direct view toward Fort McHenry and “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” that “gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” On September 14, a clean 30 by 42 foot American flag was raised over Fort McHenry “by the dawn’s early light.”
Key’s four-verse song was published on September 20, 1814, in the Baltimore Patriot and the Advertiser. The battle hymn was eventually renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and was declared the national anthem in 1931.
Beyond its pivotal role in the War of 1812, Baltimore has long been an important seaport on the East Coast of the United States, particularly because of its proximity by road and rail to inland agricultural and industrial hubs in the Midwest. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay, the city is now home to more than 600,000 residents. According to some media reports, nearly one-quarter of the jobs in the Baltimore area are related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. It is home to the Space Telescope Science Institute, the operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Michael Carlowicz.
Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.
Marshy, sandy terrain and an impassable inlet helped colonial forces repel British forces during a pivotal battle on the barrier…
In a precursor to Memorial Day, people in Charleston, South Carolina, honored fallen Civil War troops with flowers, songs, and…
Along the northeast side of the Capital Beltway in Maryland, green spaces weave through the developed landscape.
The post Star-Spangled City appeared first on NASA Science.
(Lord’s day). Early in the morning my last night’s physic worked and did give me a good stool, and then I rose and had three or four stools, and walked up and down my chamber. Then up, my maid rose and made me a posset, and by and by comes Mr. Creed, and he and I spent all the morning discoursing against to-morrow before the Duke the business of his pieces of eight, in which the Treasurer makes so many queries.
At noon, my physic having done working, I went down to dinner, and then he and I up again and spent most of the afternoon reading in Cicero and other books of good discourse, and then he went away, and then came my brother Tom to see me, telling me how the Joyces do make themselves fine clothes against Mary is brought to bed. He being gone I went to cast up my monthly accounts, and to my great trouble I find myself 7l. worse than I was the last month, but I confess it is by my reckoning beforehand a great many things, yet however I am troubled to see that I can hardly promise myself to lay up much from month’s end to month’s end, about 4l. or 5l. at most, one month with another, without some extraordinary gettings, but I must and I hope I shall continue to have a care of my own expenses.
So to the reading my vows seriously and then to supper. This evening there came my boy’s brother to see for him, and tells me he knows not where he is, himself being out of town this week and is very sorry that he is gone, and so am I, but he shall come no more. So to prayers, and to bed.
I hear stories from readers—some of them sad, but many bring me great joy. Below is a very inspiring email I received earlier this week.
So many of us are trying to live more mindfully. And it’s hard to do nowadays. We rely on technology, but it has turned on us. It’s intrusive and manipulative—isolating its users, while promoting passivity and addictive behavior.
I’m trying to help people live better lives in this hostile environment. That’s the main purpose behind The Honest Broker. When I get an email like this, it makes me feel like it’s not all in vain.
I’m sharing this with permission—but leaving out the author’s name.
Dear Ted,
I am writing to express my gratitude for your work and for being an Honest Broker. In an attempt to illustrate my thanks, I’d like to briefly describe the wonderful effect you have had on my life.
Since discovering your Substack in 2021-2022, I have begun to turn my life around by making significant improvements to my quality of life and, subsequently, the lives of those around me. This is in no small part due to the influence of your books and articles.
The feeling I frequently get when I read your writing is along the lines of “He gets it,” or “Someone finally said it,” and “This needed to be said.” I would describe this to a friend as “Ted is able to express in words things that I feel and know to be true but am unable to describe myself.” Maybe that’s just the mark of a greater intellect or of a talented writer in general. But, to me personally, it is as if I had an understanding friend. This is something I needed and came to me at a time when I felt I had none.
For the past several years you have served as a much needed role model. I greatly admire your world view and relate to your experience as a musician finding your way. In 2022-2023, while reading Music to Raise the Dead, a copy of From Ritual to Romance jumped out at me from the racks at a thrift store. Around the same time, I picked up a copy of The Golden Bough and Battle for the Mind by W. Sargent as well as Solitary Confinement by Christopher Burney. These ideas were swirling about in my head, as I was also drinking heavily as usual, when a line from The Honest Broker jumped out at me. One of your friends had recently gotten sober, and you mentioned that it had been “deserving of your highest praise.” When I read that line, some willingness appeared within me that was not traceable before. At that moment I considered seeking help for my drinking problem.
As I write this, I have been sober for 2 years and 10 months. I have been wanting to write this letter to you for about as long. In lieu of going into more detail, I want to thank you again for your amazing body of work that influenced me, gained my trust, and continues to give me hope.
I have so many questions I would like to ask, but I feel selfish writing them here. I am sure you will continue to inspire myself and others with your writing, and for that I am content.
This serves as eloquent testimony for the real purpose of arts and humanities, and why I’m such a fervent advocate for them. You don’t pursue them to pass tests or drop names at a cocktail party—but to live a wise life, a mindful life, a good life.
There are people everywhere who are doing just that. Their stories aren’t told in the media or made into motion pictures, but they are far better role models than movie stars or pop singers.
Here are some links to provide context for this reader’s letter.
This email came from a conservatory-trained pianist at an early stage in her career:
If you can share, I’d be really interested to know: You probably get many requests to participate in various projects—how do you decide which projects to say yes to and which to decline?
My response:
First, I always try to give priority to my ‘big picture’ long term projects—even though they may not bring in any income at the time. This can cause a lot of pain and suffering in the short term, and external circumstances can force our hands at times. But if we don’t fight for our long term goals, who will?
For a while, I had a rule that I would always spent at least one day per week on projects that were my own choice, not something anyone hired me to do. Over time I shifted even more of my focus and energy to my pet projects. (Nowadays I turn down almost everything that doesn’t fit with my own objectives—but I didn’t get to that degree of autonomy overnight.) We all need to be able to pay our bills, so sometimes there are limits on our ability to manage your own daily schedule.
But you should spent a significant amount of time thinking about where you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years. And then make sure you are taking steps in that direction.
There were long periods in my life when I had very little control over my schedule. But even in those difficult days, I found some time every week to chase my dreams. That might mean pursuing them on weekends or late at night, but I refused to give up on them. Many of those dreams did became realities—but only because I never abandoned them, and kept building my pathway to them week after week.
Probably the key difference between me and most other writers is: (1) I go to great lengths to avoid projects ‘assigned’ to me by other people, maybe almost to an extreme, (2) I am always thinking about what I want to do as part of my long term vocational plan, and (3) I make decisions that others tell me are stupid, because I’m willing to walk away from a significant short term opportunity. But I know I need to do this if I hope to achieve the higher goals I’ve set for myself.
I hope this helps.
This next question came from an esteemed music writer: He wanted to know how I had “defied the odds” in my relationship with Stan Getz, who is frequently portrayed as an irritable and irascible individual—and he mentions that he had heard this from many sources, including Getz’s ex-wife Monica.
Here’s my response.
Links for you. Science:
The horseshoe crab has protected our health for decades. Now it’s time to return the favor.
Nearly 160 U.S. Troops Sick With Flu In Texas After Hegseth Axed Vaccine Mandate
The bobcat is the only wildcat in Mass. So why are so many people sure they’re seeing mountain lions?
This Controversial Substance Is Suddenly Being Called A Health Product By RFK Jr. — Doctors Aren’t Celebrating (Kennedy is insane)
‘A weird result from an already weird hominin’: Archaeologists discover all Homo naledi skeletons found in South African cave are female
COVID Vaccine Linked to New Side EffectBenefits, Especially in Older Adults
A New Antibiotic Idea From An Old Source
Other:
AI is driving an already expensive housing market nuts in San Francisco
Shock and Awe in Moscow
Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes
Those World Cup “Hydration Breaks” Have Fox Rolling in Dough
‘Every time you turn around, there’s a new price increase’: US small-business optimism plummets
Trump Still Has a Bad Case of Obama Envy
The Media Keep Making This Mistake About the Iran Talks
How the Prairieland ‘Antifa’ Verdict Threatens the Anti-Trump Resistance
Legendary TV Director James Burrows Dies At 85
He despises Jews, admires Hitler—Now, he’s starring in videos for a Tenn. candidate for governor
Eli Lilly gave extraordinary obesity drug access to a 79-year-old patient. Who was it?
Keir Starmer Proves that Triangulation is a Dead End
Reflections on the Reflecting Pool
It’s The Corruption, Stupid. A generational opportunity to bridge the digital divide was hijacked by Republicans and converted into a giant slush fund for the country’s richest technofascists.
Vandals used box cutter or knife to cut 290 or 300-foot “slit” in lining of Reflecting Pool
Obama, Trump, And The Outmoded Politics Of Indirection
Vandalism at the Reflecting Pool? Yes—It Was Committed by Donald Trump
New photos show first look at Kennedy Center facade without Trump’s name
The Reflecting Pool Water’s Fine. It’s easy being green.
Trump Blames Vandals for Reflecting Pool Problems. Internal Records Tell Another Story. The documents do not indicate that the peeling blue coating and algae blooms were caused intentionally.
Why MAGA buys Trump’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool hoax. The GOP base would love to arrest people who laugh at them
Fixing the Democrats’ Toxic Brand Starts With Being on the Ballot
A Look Inside the Welcome Bags Planned for White South African Refugees
Mosquitoes, already? Blame cars
Elon Musk ordered to give deposition as ‘vote buying’ scheme bites him
Georgia Goes MAGA in the Republican Senate Primary
The New York Times helped turn trans rights into political controversy, analysis finds
The Banality of Peter Thiel’s Evil
Apple is charging you more and blaming AI data centers. That’s a big deal.
How a New York Primary Wound Up at the Center of the AI Storm (Bores lost)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Sunday carrying a multi-ton, radio-broadcasting satellite for SiriusXM’s to replace two aging satellites in geostationary Earth orbit.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 10:25 p.m. EDT (0225 UTC), the opening of a four-hour window. The rocket flew on an easterly trajectory upon leaving the launch pad.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 80 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the launch window that improves to 90 percent as time goes on. Meteorologists are watching for interference from cumulus and anvil clouds.
“Flow aloft will be weak and variable, supporting daily storm motions that will be seabreeze and outflow dependent. This erratic nature of storm motion is more evident in today’s model runs, suggesting a higher risk of storms lingering closer to the coast later into the night,” launch weather officers wrote. “However, remnant storms and clouds should slowly diminish as the night wears on during both the primary and backup launch opportunities.”
SpaceX launched the mission using its Falcon 9 booster with the tail number B1085. This was its 17th flight having previously launched NASA’s Crew-9, RRT-1 for the U.S. Space Force, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, Fram2, SiriusXM’s SXM-10, the MTG-S1 weather satellite for Europe, EchoStar XXV, and nine Starlink missions
A little more than 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1085 landed on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This was its 158th successful landing, tying it with the now retired vessel, ‘Just Read the Instructions’, which is being used for Starship operations.
The SXM-11 satellite, weighing about 15,000 pounds (7.5 tons), was deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage a little more than half an hour after launch.
It was manufactured by Lanteris Space Systems, a subsidiary of Texas-based Intuitive Machines. The company, formerly branded as Maxar Space Systems, was acquired by Intuitive Machines in January 2026 for about $800 million.
The SXM-11 and SXM-12 satellites were built to replace SiriusXM’s XM-5 and the Sirius FM-5 satellites, which launched in 2010 and 2009 respectively.
“After years of planning, engineering, testing, and collaboration, SXM-11 is set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and begin its journey to orbit,” SiriusXM wrote on its LinkedIn page. “As the most powerful high-powered satellite in SiriusXM’s fleet, SXM-11 will help enhance signal reception, expand coverage in Alaska, and support the delivery of audio entertainment and information services across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.”
The 230-foot-tall (70.1 m) satellite is based on the IM-1300 satellite bus. With its solar panels extended, the spacecraft spans 106 feet (32.3 m).
SiriusXM said about 60 percent of the 7.5 ton satellite’s mass comes from the fuel onboard. The last of these satellites, SXM-10, which launched in June 2025, is estimated to remain in service until 2040, according to a financial disclosure from SiriusXM to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
1. Why were the Covid vaccine trials so quick?
2. Sumner on Greenspan, Giannis, and more.
3. 100 best books of the 21st century? (NYT).
4. AI and the crisis of classical liberalism.
5. The memory tax, good thing supply is elastic.
6. Is Teortaxes solving for the political equilibrium?
7. Frank Lloyd Wright house for sale in TN for $1.6 million.
The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Welcome back. Toe update: two weeks after stubbing my toe it’s still a little painful but gradually less so each day. It was definitely more than a standard stubbing. I’ve been trying not to put too much weight on it, and avoiding any cardio exercises, and skipping things like lunges at the gym that would require bending and weight-bearing. A bit bored of it now.
§ Early in the week I changed my three main web projects from using pre-commit to prek, a drop-in Rust-based replacement. The only real reason – apart from a promised speed increase – was that pre-commit doesn’t support dependency cooldowns. I use them in uv and this meant I’d occasionally have different versions of things like ruff installed which caused problems. It was easy to switch and seems to work fine.
I found several closed issues on the pre-commit project with people asking for cooldown support, each of which was closed with a terse note explaining that it duplicated an existing issue. I couldn’t find any existing open issue so I had no idea if it was worth waiting for pre-commit to add support or not. Onwards.
§ I have a load of music videos in the Music app on my Mac which I rarely watch. I realised I could move them over to my Plex library instead and then I might actually put them on the telly occasionally. It took me quite a lot of trial and error before I finally realised that you can only nicely have Plex handle music videos if you also have it handle your audio music files – you need to have at least some audio files by an artist before their music videos will appear in the interface.
This seems bizarre to me and I can only assume it’s due to some old coding decision that would be problematic to fix or undo. You can have a library of music videos treated as general video files but then Plex won’t do anything nice with automatically fetching metadata etc. and treating them as music.
§ Then the week’s heat arrived in earnest and I spent a few days hunkering inside in the dark like a caveman. A caveman maintaining a rigorous routine of opening and then closing windows, closing and then opening curtains, as the sun made its way around his, er, detached cave.
We had 30+ºC daytime temperatures, only a degree or two cooler than London most days, which was unusual. This only lasted a few days but, with the humidity, it was too, too long. The heat upstairs gradually increased over the week, resisting attempts to cool it down in the early morning. I’m very lucky I didn’t have to actually do much but even so, the idea of those conditions going on for a couple of weeks in the future is 😬.
My sister was staying for a few days so we had several days of activities with our Mum. Our place might have been too warm but that was nothing compared to an upstairs room in a care home with little in the way of air movement. Eesh. But it’s OK, there are proposed targets: “by 2040, all residential care homes should be able to maintain indoor temperatures between 16ºC and 26ºC.” (PDF) That’s OK then.
The weather finally changed on Friday afternoon and it was such a relief. Heat and humidity dropped, a breeze picked up, and we could sit outside marvelling how cool it was. We wouldn’t normally have thought it was “cool” but by comparison, oh, wonderful.
We’d put off a trip to Small Breeds Farm Park until Saturday and it was much better than we expected in terms of how well organised and put-together it was. Quite chill, nice staff, lots of eager sheep and goats, and many staring owls of various kinds. Recommended, especially late in the afternoon as most visitors head off.
Me and my sister sorted through several boxes of things brought here from the beach hut plus a couple of things that had originally been in the two caravans our family had since we were kids. I found it quite hard going. This continuation of sifting through our pasts, deciding over and over again what to keep, what to throw away, what someone else somewhere might want. Dismantling our past. I don’t keep that much myself – what’s the point? A few odd familiar things as mementoes. The rest of the past disappears and I float on into a future I find hard to imagine.
§ I’m gearing up to start scything the lawn/meadow soon. Usually I’d spread this over short stints across July and August but this year I’ll need to get much of it done before the end of July when we have a family party here.
Today I went out and pulled up dozens and dozens of ragwort plants, which is bad (“its poisonous nature makes it a serious weed of paddocks and pastures”). We do this every year so I think there’ll be fewer the following year because we’re not giving them a chance to drop their seeds. And yet.
I still need to finish the lawn edging, and to finish demolishing the concrete pond (never mind re-making a new pond). Both of which projects have been on hold due to my stupid toe and this week’s infernal heat.
§ We gave Alice and Steve a go this week because Nicola Walker is always worth watching. Unfortunately the rest of the show wasn’t really. The tone was a bit weird, mostly all jokey comedy with her absolute fury coming from somewhere else. And the characters were all pretty thin, especially the young people. All quite odd so we stopped after two episodes.
And we watched The Sheep Detectives (Kyle Balda, 2026). I’m not whoever the target market is but I can only review it as I find it, and that was not good. I can’t be bothered to say any more. If you’re 10 you’ll probably love it.
§ OK.
I usually wait until at least 2 years have past to re-up a post, but events this week are just getting so crazy that I felt like I had to rerun this post I wrote about Europe and air conditioning last summer:
Europe is at a very high latitude, and people think of it as a cold place that doesn’t need AC. But climate change is increasing the frequency of punishing, brutal heat waves all across Europe, and the region’s lack of AC is causing huge numbers of deaths and vast amounts of suffering. This year things are worse than ever before, as Beth Gardiner reports:
Already this summer, two major heat waves have broiled Europe. During the first, Ireland, France, and the United Kingdom sweated through their hottest-ever May temperatures. A month later, France notched its two hottest days and its hottest night since records began: Thermometers soared past 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the west and 104 degrees in Paris. Spain reported its two hottest June days since at least 1950, and Britain, where temperatures reached 99 degrees, recorded its three hottest June days. The temperature in Basel, Switzerland, hit 100 degrees. Germany and Austria are enduring heat in the 90s, and braced for worse as the weather moves east. Temperatures this high can be life-threatening: More than 200,000 people have died because of heat in Europe in just the past four years, the World Health Organization estimates.
Robinson Meyer has some great statistics about how few Europeans have AC:
Even many hospitals lack AC, leaving patients lying in pools of their own sweat (and dying in droves).
Regular Europeans are hitting the breaking point. 8 out of 10 people in France — the country hardest hit by the most recent heat wave — want their country to install AC in houses, schools, and public transit. Parisians are rushing out to buy AC units as fast as they can:
And fights are even breaking out as supplies run short.
But even as regular Europeans desperately scramble for the life-saving relief of air conditioning technology, European elites have been trying to keep their people from getting the relief they need. Germany’s public broadcaster is running a campaign to dissuade its citizens from getting AC, on the grounds that AC’s energy use exacerbates climate change:
Meanwhile, some people at Germany’s Federal Environmental Ministry claimed (falsely) that portable air conditioners don’t work.1 In the UK, a “Professor of Sustainable and Resilient Cities” went on TV to claim (falsely) that air conditioning can’t beat a heat wave. Last year a “senior lecturer in healthy buildings” told British citizens to try applying yogurt to the outsides of their windows to cool their houses. A British news program told British citizens that using AC is “selfish”:
There are innumerable similar episodes of European elites spreading blatant disinformation about AC, actively interfering with AC installation, or demanding that their citizens die for a minuscule climate benefit. Perhaps the single most ludicrous story was that the people who run the European Commission decided to cut off AC for their lower-level employees, while keeping the AC on for themselves:
The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave…Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.”
The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above…
“It’s like feudalism,” a Commission official working on a lower level of the Berlaymont, granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO on Friday, referring to the fact that upper floors housing commissioners got to keep their AC on. A second official agreed it was a “disgrace.”
I know it’s become common to say that America’s elites don’t care if their people suffer and die, but I find it hard to even imagine American government officials doing something like this.2
Why are European elites so insane about air conditioning, even as regular Europeans desperately yearn for the technology? This was the subject of my post last year. Part of it is the poisonous ideology of “degrowth”, which tells Europeans that they can save the planet through their own personal suffering (which of course they can’t). Part of it is cognitive dissonance — if elites reverse themselves after crusading against AC for so long, it forces them to admit they made a mistake. Part of it is the desire not to lose face in front of the Americans, who were far earlier to adopt AC.
But I think part of it is simple cultural conservatism — the idea that using AC would change European culture in strange and unacceptable ways. Cultural conservatism might be a big part of why some cultures eagerly adopt new and superior technologies, while others turn up their noses and refuse.
Anyway, here is my post from last year:
Many years ago, I was watching a nature show. It was about some hunter-gatherers on some Pacific island. The film crew went right up and talked to one of the hunter-gatherers about his life — hunting, gathering, finding and killing witches among his fellow tribesmen, and so on. But as they talked, I realized that there must be a giant video camera right in the face of this tribesman. And he wasn’t even reacting to it. What was this strange, unnaturally shaped object, made of strange unknown materials, and potentially possessing magical powers? Didn’t he wonder? And didn’t he ask himself if he could get something like it, and use it for whatever these strange foreigners were using it to do?
I often think about the example of the tribesman and the video camera. It’s a small version of a story that happens again and again, on a far grander scale, determining the fate of entire nations and geopolitical systems of power: absorption of foreign technology. Most of the things you use on a day-to-day basis were not invented in the country in which you live (even if you live in America). They were invented all over the world, and one crucial reason you have access to them is that your society deemed it fitting to allow those technologies into the country.
Adopting foreign technologies sounds like a no-brainer, but there are lots of risks involved. Hierarchies of power and status can be disrupted, creating political chaos. Existing economic relationships can shift, creating unexpected winners and losers. But perhaps most frighteningly, foreign technology can change a country’s traditional culture.
One Pacific island civilization that was determined to absorb foreign technology without letting it change their culture was Japan. When the “black ships” from the West arrived in the 1850s and demonstrated how helpless Japan was in the face of foreign powers, the country’s leadership (after a brief civil war) decided that their only choice was to absorb foreign technologies and institutions. But they wanted to preserve Japan’s traditional culture as well. They thus came up with the concept of “wakon yosai” (和魂洋才), which translates roughly as “Japanese soul, Western technology”. Over the course of the next century and a half, Japan intentionally strove to preserve elements of its unique culture even as it reshaped its society around new gadgets and production processes.
Travel to Japan today, and I guarantee that unless you are staying in a very backwoods rural place, the room where you stay will have an air conditioner. It will almost always be a “mini split”, or wall unit, looking much like the image at the top of this post. It will be quiet, but powerful enough to keep your room cool even in the increasingly hot summers that Japan now suffers due to climate change. This is a technology never available in Japan’s premodern days, and yet it has been near-universally embraced with no apparent degradation to the country’s traditional culture or national pride.
Europe is different. Data sources differ, but nobody puts AC usage in Europe (or the UK) at more than around 20%. This technology, which almost all Japanese people enjoy, is one that most Europeans do without.
You might think Europe is simply too far north to need AC. But latitude is no longer the defense against heat that it used to be, because climate change is stalking the region:
With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000.
So the death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America. If you think guns are an emergency in the U.S., you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency.
Most of this death is preventable. The technology that prevents it is air conditioning. Barreca et al. (2016) find that heat deaths in America declined by about 75% after 1960, and that “the diffusion of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in hot day–related fatalities”. Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it.3
And yet Europe has not done this. The official reason — at least, where one is given — is that AC uses electricity, which contributes to climate change. For example, this is from a 2022 article in MIT Technology Review:
Climate change is making extreme heat the norm across more of the world, increasing the need for adaptation. But in the case of AC, some experts are concerned about how to balance that need with the harms the solutions can cause…
[M]any Europeans are hesitant to welcome air conditioners with open arms. “Seeing AC as a solution to heat waves and to climate change is of course a bit problematic because of the energy that’s being used,” says Daniel Osberghaus, an energy and climate economics researcher at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Germany.
Today, cooling devices like ACs account for about 10% of global electricity consumption—and since most of the world’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels, that’s a significant chunk of worldwide emissions. Because of their massive energy use, “they do get a bad reputation,” says Kevin Lane, an energy analyst at the IEA.
Many other stories also mention climate as a reason Europe resists AC. Green organizations like the World Resources Institute, which have a lot of influence in Europe, consistently recommend far less effective “passive cooling solutions” due to emissions concerns. And European regulations do block AC, by mandating that newly built buildings be carbon-neutral. (This in addition, of course, to good old NIMBYism also blocks AC installation, especially in the UK.) Tyler Cowen writes:
European governments do a great deal to discourage air-conditioning, whether central AC or window units. You might need a hard-to-get permit to install an AC unit, and in Geneva you have to show a medical need for it. Or in many regions of Europe, the air conditioner might violate heritage preservation laws, or be illegal altogether. In Portofino, Italy, neighbors have been known to turn each other in for having illegal air-conditioning units. The fines can range up to €43,000, though most cases are settled out of court by a removal of the unit.
In fact, Andrew Hammel alleges that Germany has raised climate-based opposition to AC to the level of an ideological crusade. Here are some excerpts from his thread:
I believe attitudes toward air-conditioning are class markers in many European countries. Air-conditioning is seen as prototypically American, and that’s important…
The urban haute bourgeoisie -- bureaucrats, public media executives, NGO employees, humanities grads, journalists, professors, lawyers, judges, etc. -- are the holdouts [in terms of installing AC]…
First of all, *every one* of these people has a story about visiting the USA and nearly freezing to death in an over air-conditioned store or office. Every. Damn. One…To these people, A/C is the ultimate American solution to a problem. Instead of accepting nature as it is, Americans use expensive, wasteful technology to artificially change the environment to fit their fat, lazy lifestyles. They insist on defying and conquering nature, not “cooperating” with her. And they don’t care if they cook the planet while they do so…
[T]he European urban haute bourgeoisie turns it into a rigid ideological aversion to any form of air-conditioning…These people regard these decisions not just as their personal lifestyle choices, but rather as a *model for all of society*. They regard themselves as a revolutionary vanguard of advanced ecological consciousness which must aid the less enlightened to reduce their carbon footprints. And these people *run German society*…Urban planners and people who create construction codes in Germany are also brigadiers in the anti-A/C jihad…
Which is why it’s pretty common on sweltering days to hear Germans complain about the “goddamn ‘eco-this’ ‘organic-that’ pencil pushers” who continue to force them to sweat for hours in overheated hospitals, classrooms, and offices.
This is immediately recognizable as the poisonous ideology of degrowth. Degrowth frames climate change as a problem of personal overconsumption and extravagance to be curbed by austere self-restraint and government policy, rather than as a technological problem to be overcome by installing green energy. This is foolish, of course — it leads to human suffering while not doing much to actually curb climate change. But it’s very popular in northern Europe.
The climate-based crusade against AC is a little infuriating, because it probably kills a lot more people than the reduced emissions save. Right now, Europe is responsible for only about 13% of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, meaning that the climate impact of installing AC all over the region is pretty minimal. Does anyone think that incredibly tiny margin of emissions reduction is really worth tens of thousands of lives a year?
But from reading anecdotes like Hammel’s, I kind of suspect that there’s a second, deeper reason why Europe so far refuses to install AC: protection of traditional culture. The thing about German elites pooh-poohing AC as an unnecessary American extravagance suggests that some Europeans view lack of AC as quintessentially European culture — a tradition by which Europeans can define their own uniqueness vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Many articles about Europe’s strange reluctance to use AC hint at this attitude. For example, here’s CNN:
A big part of the reason [they don’t install AC] is many European countries historically had little need for cooling, especially in the north…“In Europe… we simply don’t have the tradition of air conditioning… because up to relatively recently, it hasn’t been a major need,” said Brian Motherway, head of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Inclusive Transitions at the International Energy Agency. [emphasis mine]
And here’s Euronews:
The rest of this story lies in history and culture…Southern Europe built its cities to cope with heat: thick walls, shaded windows, and street layouts designed to maximise airflow…That’s also why white paint dominates the picturesque skylines of Mediterranean places like Santorini in Greece or Vieste in Italy: The bright surfaces reflect sunlight and radiant heat, helping interiors stay cooler…In northern Europe, on the other hand, summers were once mild enough that cooling was rarely needed…Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk. Many Europeans still believe exposure to cold air can make you sick, and the stereotype persists that AC is for rich people.
And the WSJ reports that there are widespread superstitions about the dangers of this technology that most of the rest of the world uses every day:
In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called “thermal shock,” resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest. That would be news to Americans[.]
Even if climate is the official, intellectual reason for Europe refusing live-saving AC, the idea that AC goes against Europe’s traditional culture is probably an important underlying motivator.
(This trend isn’t unique to Europe, of course. Americans may pride themselves on being more futuristic than the Europeans, but they still haven’t adopted Japanese washing toilets in significant numbers, and so their quality of life has suffered in small ways that, having never experienced the luxury of this foreign technology, they cannot even comprehend.)
Whatever the reason, the resistance to AC technology is making Europe a more impoverished civilization. It’s a major reason why Europe now feels shabbier and more hardscrabble than America, despite its beautiful old cities and low crime rates.
Europe needs to emulate societies that embrace the technological future. Japan is a good one, but an even better example might be Singapore. That city-state’s legendary founder, Lee Kuan Yew, believed that air conditioning was the crucial technology that allowed his country to become one of the richest on the planet:
“Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.
Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”
Europe would do well to listen to his advice.
Absorption of foreign technology simply makes the difference between a poor society and a rich one — between a technologically advanced society and a backward one. Most countries have their blind spots here, but Europe’s spasmodic rejection of air conditioning is far more costly than most.
In fact, portable air conditioners with a single tube are less effective than other types of air conditioners, because they create a pressure differential that pulls some hot air in from outside. Window units, mini splits, heat pumps, and central AC do not suffer from this problem. You can also get a portable unit with two different hoses, which greatly reduces the problem. But that being said, portable air conditioners DO cool a room down.
Though we do see the occasional NYT op-ed urging Americans to swear off AC. Fortunately, no one listens to this crap.
This is actually a bit of an overestimate, since the European households who already have AC are probably ones who need it more.
The deserted remains of Ingles Plaza sit on a stretch of U.S. Highway 70, destroyed by flooding from tropical storm Helene with only dirt and construction equipment to mark what was once home to Swannanoa’s only grocery store and post office.
At an intersection nearby, a hand-painted sign reads, “Wanted Swannanoa Post Office” above a photo of community members lined up outside the shuttered building. After months of closure, the post office was recently demolished after Ingles, who leased the building, opted not to reopen the facility.
Swannanoa, a small unincorporated community of around 5,000 residents roughly 10 miles east of Asheville, North Carolina, is largely considered to be Helene’s “ground zero” by Buncombe County officials. When tropical storm Helene devastated Western North Carolina in September 2024, Swannanoa endured large-scale destruction.
More than 18 months later, the community is still recovering. But while the strip mall has been cleared of debris, there is no new post office to anchor it. Instead, residents are redirected to the Grace Station Post Office in North Asheville, nearly 13 miles from the old site and a long journey’s worth of hassle for residents. And they’re not alone.
In fact there are six post offices still shuttered across Western North Carolina, a region that houses 11% of the state’s population. Since Helene, residents in those communities have been deprived of reliable mail, furthering their sense of lingering aftermath from the storm.
“Some people will never really totally recover,” said Dan Slagle, 73, a retired postal worker who has lived in Swannanoa since 1979. “But it put this community of people closer together. And we just can’t let our post office leave us.”
Slagle is the culprit behind the “Wanted” sign and has spearheaded community efforts to bring the post office back as part of his work with the Swannanoa Grassroots Alliance. In his Swannanoa home, he has boxes filled with hundreds of papers, print-outs of correspondence with officials, reopening notices and personalized postcards.
“It’s a service that has been for the U.S. population for over 250 years, before we were even a country. It’s mandated that you get delivery six days a week, but it’s not mandated that every little nook and cranny has to have a post office,” said Slagle. “The Postal Service is one of the centers of communities. 28778, that’s the zip code for all of us that live here. All of us can congregate at the post office, and it’s a community service, just like the grocery store… which we don’t have.”
Although some federal post office buildings damaged by the storm have recently been restored and are now fully operational — Chimney Rock and Barnardsville are examples — Swannanoa is one of several communities where the post office needs to be relocated because the original site was damaged beyond repair.
According to a statement from United States Postal Service representative Philip Bogenberger, “offices in Micaville, Swannanoa and Marshall require relocation since the buildings were damaged beyond repair. In Micaville, the building was washed away. In Swannanoa and Marshall, the property owners opted not to repair the facilities. The relocation process continues for those offices, and our goal is to find alternate locations nearby for each office.”
In other communities, including Plumtree, Fleetwood and Green Mountain, the post offices damaged by Helene are set to reopen. However, the constant back-and-forth has caused confusion and mail delays for customers frustrated and exhausted with the delay.
| Post Office Location | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chimney Rock | Reopened Feb. 2026 | Full retail & P.O. box service restored |
| Barnardsville | Reopened | Fully operational |
| Swannanoa | Relocation pending | Demolished; residents sent 13 mi. to Grace Station |
| Marshall | Closed | Residents rerouted 38 mi. round-trip to Weaverville |
| Micaville | Relocation pending | Building washed away entirely |
| Plumtree | Set to reopen | Timeline unclear |
| Fleetwood | Set to reopen | Timeline unclear |
| Green Mountain | Set to reopen | Timeline unclear |
“Marshall is the county seat for Madison County. People have to drive to Buncombe County, to a different county to get their mail,” said Gina Mashburn Heath, a mother of three who lives in Marshall. “And you cannot mail anything out in our area.”
All Marshall residents were redirected to Weaverville, a 38-mile round-trip. “Weaverville is a small town. How nuts for the Weaverville post office to also have all, like most, a big chunk of Madison County and Barnardsville, which is in Buncombe, and Alexander, which is in Buncombe, as well as all their own mail.”
A month after the flood, Swannanoa residents were redirected to a mobile unit down the road in the town of Oteen. Two months after the storm, an undated notice appeared on the door of the mobile unit informing residents that they would be relocated to Grace Station, where they have been ever since. There was “no postal person listed or contact,” said Slagle.
The original Swannanoa Post Office building was a leased facility that sustained significant damage from floodwaters. But Ingles Market Inc., a regional supermarket chain that owned the property, chose not to repair it and took it off the market, forcing USPS’s relocation. According to federal law, the Postal Service can only lease properties that are actively on the market.
A full 18 months after the storm, in March 2026, customers received a USPS relocation card in the mail, inviting them to send comments on a new proposed relocation, without specifying a site for the relocation. USPS clarified the 45-day comment period ended April 19, 2026. Now, Swannanoa residents await a finalized relocation site.
In the aftermath of Helene, 21 post offices in Western North Carolina were forced to close their doors after sustaining major damage. According to a statement from USPS, 15 have reopened in the 18 months since. The Chimney Rock Post Office is the latest, and is providing full retail and P.O. box services.
State officials, including North Carolina Republican Sen. Ted Budd and Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards, who represents North Carolina’s 11th congressional district, have advocated for the restoration of the shuttered post offices to varying degrees. In September 2025, Congressman Edwards led an amendment that would require USPS to produce a concrete plan on reopening the closed facilities and reestablishing service.
“Hurricane Helene devastated much of our rural infrastructure, including local post offices that serve as lifelines for our communities. While significant progress has been made to rebuild across Western North Carolina, the restoration of postal facilities has lagged,” Edwards said in a statement. “That’s why I led an amendment requiring the U.S. Postal Service and its Office of Inspector General to provide Congress with a clear plan and timeline to reopen these facilities and fully restore service.”
Earlier in the year, he raised concerns about the inoperable post offices to USPS Inspector General Tammy Hull, but was met with vague restoration plans. “Several post offices remain inoperable, forcing residents to travel up to an hour to access services,” said Edwards to Hull in an April 2025 General Government Subcommittee hearing.
More recently, in March 2026, United States Postmaster General David Steiner testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the financial future of USPS, proposing Congress grant the Postal Service “greater legal authority to make retail network changes.”
Main Street, the central business artery that runs through Chimney Rock, a mountain town around 25 miles southeast of Asheville, is home to the town’s sole post office. Service was restored on Feb. 23, 2026, after nearly 17 months.
Peter O’Leary, Chimney Rock’s mayor and the owner of Bubba O’Leary’s on Main Street, recalled how residents had to open P.O. boxes in order to receive mail. “If you want your address to be Chimney Rock, you have to have a P.O. box. I couldn’t just walk across the street or down the street and get my mail. I had to actually get in a vehicle and drive,” said O’Leary.
Shelly McCormack’s family has owned Riverwatch Bar and Grill on Main Street for 27 years. She said the absence of a post office created a headache for her parents and other business owners. “It was being sent to Lake Lure and then it would have to be forwarded back to Hendersonville,” said McCormack. “It was just unclear.”
Max Brown, a college student who works at Riverwatch Coffeehouse and Gift Shop, grew up in Chimney Rock but moved to Asheville two months before Helene. When the Chimney Rock post office closed, people not only experienced delays, but postal employees also lost their jobs. “A lot of the postmasters, after the storm hit, didn’t think that the post office was coming back, so they had all left. I think there’s only one or two there now that were here before the storm,” said Brown.
McCormack said she’s enthusiastic to see the post office fully functional again. “We have just made leaps and bounds in terms of progress since Helene took place. And we’re just so happy to see the post office back open, to be able to use it again.”
But other communities are still in the thick of restoration, with no end in sight. Marshall is another town with no post office, along with several other municipal buildings still not in existence 18 months later. The fire department, police station, town hall and courthouse buildings were all damaged by the flood and are now abandoned, while services have relocated to temporary buildings.
“It just adds to the discombobulation of everything that all those services that were housed downtown, as they should be, are now just in some random trailer or a room of a commercial building that’s unused,” said Mashburn Heath. “It’s like a game of hide and seek to try to find your basic municipal services.”
The building that housed the Marshall post office was privately owned and leased by the U.S. government. The former owners, an elderly couple unable to afford the costs of rebuilding, sold it to a local family. According to Mashburn Heath, the family bought it with the intention of having a functioning post office downtown again.
“If the idea was to abandon the downtown, we should not have let all the small business owners put so much time and energy and money into rebuilding,” said Mashburn Heath. “We brought our town back, with grassroots effort, and we’re there supporting people best we can with their businesses.”
Post offices have served as a vital means of communication for people for centuries. During Helene, digital communication was temporarily destroyed. Without cell service or internet access, many found themselves cut off from the rest of the world in an unprecedented blackout that in some places, lasted weeks.
Mashburn Heath recalled how difficult it was in the early days after losing her home, when she couldn’t get things in the mail. It’s hard “when you can’t get those important pieces of information, bills, documents, things that people even want to send you, to give you support while all this is going on.”
“We do a lot digital, but honestly, Madison County doesn’t last digital. In some places. A lot of us here love Madison County for that reason. It’s like, we’re kind of purposefully away from it all,” said Mashburn Heath. “People lost their computers, they lost their tablets. They lost their files. Mail is absolutely crucial … people needed to replace their documents and everything.”
According to the United States Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent regulatory agency, the Office of Public Affairs & Government Relations liaisons with Congress and other government agencies about high-level matters involving USPS, including service interruptions.
Slagle, who worked at the Swannanoa post office for 25 years before retiring in 2003, was a constant and familiar face for the community. “I saw a lot of people every day, and when they came through the door, it was always ‘Hey, how you doing?’ And I guess I remembered their P.O. Box number better than I remember their name,” he reflected.
The post Going postal: Residents refuse to give up the fight to have mail services restored appeared first on DCReport.org.
Excellent use of AI to create relatively accurate and realistic tours through history. Chloe is an engaging and personable guide–a fact of some importance.
Hat tip: Kevin Bryan.
The post Chloe vs. History appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
As part of it's Dealbook feature, the NYT yesterday included this conversation about The moral economics of prediction markets
"The economist Al Roth, a professor at Stanford University, shared a 2012 Nobel Prize for his work in market design and matching theory. He spoke with Sarah Kessler about his latest book, “Moral Economics,” which offers a framework for understanding controversial markets, and how it applies to prediction markets. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
Your book explores what you call repugnant markets — meaning some people don’t think they should exist — like prostitution, surrogacy and drugs. How do prediction markets fit in?
When I think about repugnance and prediction markets, I think back to when Darpa proposed a policy prediction market that became characterized as a terrorist prediction market, and people really objected to that.
That objection was sort of misplaced. It would be great if terrorists who were planning attacks wanted to tip their hand by betting on them in advance. But also, if you were a terrorist who knew about the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and you wanted to make money, you wouldn’t bet on a prediction market. You would short United Airlines and American Airlines.
What do you make of all the reports of insider trading on prediction markets?
The reason we forbid insider trading in securities markets is to give people confidence in them. Securities markets have an important financial function that is threatened by insider trading, and I’m not sure that prediction markets necessarily do.
What worries me about the current state of prediction markets and Washington insiders is more the blurring of private and public functions. I don’t think that being an associate of the president should allow you to bet on a Truth Social post by President Trump. That is very bad public policy, but not necessarily an indictment of prediction markets per se.
Do you have an opinion on whether prediction markets should be regulated by the C.F.T.C. or state gambling authorities?
Futures markets, like securities markets in general, play other roles in society. If you’re a farmer who’s growing wheat, a futures market allows you to sell your wheat before you’ve planted it, which allows you to buy the fertilizer and make plans. That’s one role for federal regulators.
The contract has a delivery date. It says on a certain day a freight car is going to deliver potatoes to me. If, for example, someone tried to corner the potato market by reserving all the freight cars so that you wouldn’t be able to deliver on the contract, the regulator could intervene.
With prediction markets, there’s nothing that has to be delivered. It’s just that someone has to adjudicate whether the bet was a yes or a no. That requires maybe some kind of regulation, but that seems more like a customer relations thing.
Is there anything that you would change about the design of prediction markets?
I have some ideas about what we can do about gambling and addiction. An appropriate regulator or consumer protection agency could start to require that apps allow you to put a limit on your betting.
Before the game starts, you can say to the app: When I’ve lost a hundred dollars, shut down. Don’t let me make any more bets.
And that might help some people just the way bartenders are supposed to stop serving you if you’ve had too much to drink. "
Microsoft’s Xbox blog:
Effective August 1, 2026, we will be updating prices worldwide. The price of XBOX consoles will increase by US$100 for 512 GB models and US$150 for 1 TB models. We will also be sunsetting our 2 TB model.
Last October, we increased XBOX console price by $20-$70 in the U.S. We hoped another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last several months working with suppliers on options. Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5× and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027. The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles. Unlike phones, computers, speakers, and other consumer devices, consoles are typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make.
I’m not offended they’re increasing prices. I’m offended only that they want people to style “Xbox” in all caps. And cry me a river regarding that “typically not sold at a profit” line they love to pull out.
What’s most telling is that Microsoft is sunsetting the high-end Xbox model with 2 TB of storage, not the low-end 512 GB one. High-end configurations typically have the highest profit margins. Not in this crisis, however. That’s similar to the way that Mac Studios with the M3 Ultra are now only available with the base RAM configuration: 96 GB. When the M3 Ultra chip debuted in March 2025, Apple offered upgrades to 256 and 512 GB of RAM for $1,600 and $4,000 respectively. Now they don’t offer those tiers of RAM at any price. The only way to buy a Mac Studio with more than 96 GB of RAM is to buy a used one — which eBay sellers are offering for $25,000 to $30,000.
Demetri Sevastopulo and Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times (paywalled, alas):
Apple is lobbying the Trump administration for clearance to buy memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese company that the Pentagon has put on a blacklist because of alleged connections to the People’s Liberation Army, according to six people familiar with the matter. [...]
Apple is not barred from buying chips from CXMT, or YMTC, another Chinese memory chipmaker. But the Pentagon has put both companies on its Chinese Military Company blacklist. The so-called 1260H list contains dozens of Chinese groups with alleged ties to the PLA that undermine US national security. [...]
Congress would probably object strongly if the administration blessed Apple purchases from CXMT, which is the Chinese national champion. “Apple choosing to partner with a Chinese military company would be a grave mistake,” John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House China committee, told the FT. “Helping the [Chinese Communist Party] succeed in its plans to dominate critical supply chains will make our country’s tech industry and economy more dependent on China at a time when we must build secure tech supply chains with our allies,” Moolenaar said. [...]
One former official warned the US risked losing another industry by letting Apple buy memory from a group that receives Chinese subsidies.
“Trump can show the courage to keep American memory alive for our security and our competitiveness or pour it down the drain so [Apple chief executive] Tim Cook can squeeze out a few more points of margin.”
In Apple’s announcement of the company’s imminent leadership transition, they said that in his new role as executive chairman, “Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.” It occurs to me, more and more, that Cook might be no less busy than he was as CEO.
Grace Kay and Theo Wayt, writing for the paywalled-with-no-gift-links The Information:
xAI launched an upgraded video model last week, highlighting how it’s pushing ahead with its own visual efforts even as it brings in outside help to compete with rivals in areas like coding. SpaceX also touted the popularity of its AI video tools ahead of its blockbuster IPO. What SpaceX didn’t mention, however, is that much of the consumer demand stems from Grok’s looser content rules, which have made it a major destination for generating pornography and other racy content.
Indeed, two recent xAI employees estimated that well over half of Grok’s overall traffic was driven by pornographic images and videos, adult role-play chats or other NSFW activity. On forums for Grok users, many of the most popular posts are porn. Users can generate visuals in several ways, including picking the video models through the consumer app or tapping them through other Grok products.
Maybe that’s a sustainable business model. But I don’t think it’s what SpaceX hype investors think they’re putting their money into. If they renamed the companies to SpaceXXX and xxxAI it might dampen enthusiasm for the stock, but make more clear what they’re selling.
Sean Hollister, writing for The Verge (gift link):
Since the Magnavox Odyssey came out in 1972, game consoles have been built with the same basic goal: to effortlessly play proprietary games on a TV screen. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have spent decades essentially selling the same product. A few consoles could do more, but the formula you know and love remains buy box, plug into TV, insert game, play.
The Steam Machine aims to be something bigger. It’s a vision of a box with fewer restrictions and an almost endless catalog of games — for those willing to spend nearly twice the price of a PlayStation 5.
That’s right. Today, Valve has announced the Steam Machine will start at $1,049 without a gamepad or $1,128 bundled with one, but you aren’t getting a significant boost in performance over the 5.5-year-old Sony PS5 you can still buy today. Even after three price hikes, a vanilla $650 PS5 offers sharper images in Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered in my tests. So how can Valve possibly charge over a grand, you might ask?
It’s because the Steam Machine is, let’s say, a PC-plus. It’s a PC that acts more like a console than any you’ve used before. It’s incredibly cool and quiet, so much smaller than a PS5, surprisingly smooth, and completely navigable with any modern gamepad you own. You don’t need a mouse, keyboard, or even Valve’s own touchpad-equipped Steam Controller to download, launch, or play games. Joysticks do the job.
The price is eye-opening, but that’s the theme across all consumer hardware this year. It’s hard not to root for Steam with its expanding hardware ambitions, but Hollister’s review shows just how far they have to go to achieve “plug it in, insert game, play” simplicity.
I wanted to share a small observation about the interweaving worlds of AI, oligarchy, monopoly and – more distantly, but only a bit – autocracy. Over the years I’ve written regularly about the intersection of technology and journalism and the business models which underlie journalism. Because of TPM I had a front row seat to many key events, trends, dead ends and more in the evolution of the business of models of digital journalism over more than two decades. I’m not sure I knew more than anyone else, certainly lots of people knew more than me about the details of particular areas of knowledge. But I was up close and had a good view of the big picture. What set me apart somewhat was that there were very few people working so closely and obsessively with these evolving business models (a matter of pure necessity) who was also a full time writer. In any case, those of you who’ve been TPM Readers for many years will know a lot of that writing. (I have a post coming in the next few days which will add a new chapter to that, TPM’s place in those evolving or declining business models, and I hope you’ll take a moment to read it.)
About a decade ago I wrote a lot about Google’s evolving monopoly role in the advertising business. But what I always worked to keep front and center in that writing was that Google was significantly different from the other emerging platform monopolies in that its DNA and profit centers were built around the open internet. Facebook is a walled garden. It always was. Ideally it wanted you to spend every minute on Facebook. Apple was and is also a walled garden, albeit a more lovely one. Google’s DNA was different. Its wealth and power began with search. And search requires things you want to search for, which is to say other places to go besides Google websites. Now, in practice not everything Google did was just like this. But, big picture, this made Google a very different operation than Facebook, to cite one very big example. Its profound monopoly power in the digital advertising world grew directly out of its power in search. And even after that monopoly power was firmly entrenched its advertising business was heavily weighted toward non-Google websites subcontracting to Google the right to run its digital ads on those websites.
So, for instance, a site like TPM would say to Google, you can run ads you sell in these parts of our site. Over time, it was more and more Google selling those ads rather that other players selling them using Google’s ad architecture. (See the linked TPM post above for more details about what I’m talking about.) And as their monopoly power grew they took a bigger and bigger share of the money. But even then the whole operation was built on cutting substantial checks to a lot of websites every month. So even as Google was building its dominance over the advertising industry, grabbing up more and more of the money and undermining digital journalism business models it was also, simultanously, sustaining them with those checks. It was a complicated story. That again, very different from Facebook, which ran ads on its own site and kept every dime.
I try not to look at these things in moralizing terms. The difference was structural. Google’s first products were built on and required the open internet and that put the open internet in Google’s corporate DNA in a fundamental way.
Fast forward to today.
Google, like the other platform monopolies and a few newcomers like Anthropic and OpenAI (the so-called ‘hyperscalers’), are major players in and spenders on AI. You’ve no doubt noticed that nowadays when you Google something they start off with an AI-based answer to your question. On my phone I’ve noticed that that is the entirety of what I get and I actually have to X out the summary to get to search results. These summaries or answers can be hard to ignore because often they’re pretty useful. If I have a basic question, concrete and discrete, it can often answer it for me. I don’t like what they’re doing here. But like everyone else I’m busy and I’m usually not going to ignore the answer on principle when they’ve given me the answer I need.
I noticed just in the last few days (perhaps I only just noticed but I think it’s at least fairly new) that those summaries/answers now end with some conversational/folksy line that is something like, “What’s your next question?” or “Do you want me to go deeper on the information you’re trying to find?”
In other words, they’re trying to move the summary that leads the search results to something more like a closed loop chatbot conversation akin to what you do with ChatGPT or Claude. Or to put it more crisply, search is being used to launch what is really a new product which is very much like ChatGPT or Claude. I’ll say again, I’m not moralizing about this. I’ve found Claude very helpful and powerful and I recently became a subscriber to the Claude app which I now have on my iPhone. But there’s a big picture here that is important to recognize: Google is making a decisive move away from the open internet. They are building their own closed information garden and that’s a decisive shift away from the model that undergirded all of the company’s history down until the last couple years. Because Google is so big and has such a dominant role in architect of the internet that’s a decisive shift for the future of the internet as well.
This shift is already having devastating effects on digital journalism and all websites. Indeed, I’ll give Google credit. When I searched this question Google’s AI summary started with this sentence. “News websites are experiencing a severe, structural collapse in organic search traffic, primarily driven by search engines transforming into self-contained answer platforms via Artificial Intelligence (AI).” (The source link for that statement links to this.) For what it’s worth, this doesn’t have much impact on TPM because search was never a meaningful source of traffic or audience for us – that’s because of a mix of the ephemeral nature of most of what we publish (it’s old news in a few days or hours) combined with the fact that we simply never invested or focused much on search. But for the industry in general it’s a big, big, big deal.
Now, one could argue whether these two things are directly related. But they are certainly part of the same evolution. At first Big Tech’s move to the right was focused on Musk, Thiel, their circles and acolytes and then people like Mark Zuckerberg who saw the MAGA light leading up to the 2024 presidential election. But recently Google cofounder Sergei Brin has moved decisively in the MAGA direction as well. He’s not in the full white nationalist shit-posting mold of Elon Musk. At least not yet. But it’s a big shift away from the image, political giving and political culture Google’s founder-leaders had for most of the company’s history. Brin’s big hobbyhorse is funding opposition to a California wealth tax and in a move both to avoid those taxes and as kind of a MAGA signifier he recently relocated to just across the California border, set up his new home on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
Everyone has their own particular political evolution. With Brin it’s some part wealth taxes, some part the trend in his billionaire social circle, some (fairly cringey) part a succession of MAGA trophy girlfriends and wives. At the end of the day though he is part of a simpler, truistic story: the fantastically rich, who derive their wealth from entrenched monopolies tend to be on or migrate to the right.
Which brings me to a final point. There’s a long, complex and mostly inconclusive literature in the history of technology over whether particular technologies have an inherent politics embedded within them – some more liberationist or autocratic. I’m not going to settle that question here and I’m not sure it has any fundamental answer. Suffice it to say that in the here and now and in the real world the issue with AI isn’t necessarily AI itself so much as the fact that AI is being introduced, one might say forcibly injected into our society under the control of a handful of centibillionaires whose wealth is based on entrenched platform monopolies and who increasingly see control over the state and its regulatory powers as critical to the perpetuation of their wealth. In that sense what I’ve described above is unsurprising and all part of the same story of the increasing marriage of extreme wealth, Big Tech, AI and the coalescing American oligarchy which is allied with the political forces of autocracy.
Bernie Sanders, posting on Twitter/X Thursday (don’t complain to me that he doesn’t use his Bluesky account):
Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is “unavoidable” after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks.
These price hikes aren’t unavoidable. They’re unacceptable.
It boggles the mind how anyone could post this and not question the common sense napkin math of a company spending 3× its annual profit on stock buybacks. That’s theoretically possible, I suppose, but obviously unsustainable. A company would have to burn through a cash hoard or incur massive amounts of debt to spend 3× its profit on anything. It makes no sense. Someone who doesn’t consider the common sense of those numbers probably shouldn’t be spouting off on anything related to economics. And of course Apple files an annual report with the SEC, easily searchable via the web, which plainly shows that the company spent $89 billion on stock repurchases last year, and paid shareholders $15 billion in dividends. Those numbers make sense for a company that earned $112 billion in profit.
I suspect Sanders is so ignorant of basic economics that he sees the ampersand in his tweet as additive — that Apple made $112 billion in profit and spent $310 billion in buybacks and thus had something like $420 billion of money “in the black” with which they could eat the cost of rising RAM and SSD components. But they’re not additive. Stock repurchases are purchases. If Apple actually had spent $310 billion on stock buybacks last year — which, to repeat, they most certainly did not — even Karl Marx might excuse them for raising prices on their products this year, because they’d be in a $200 billion hole they needed to dig out of.
But such concerns, obvious to anyone who’s taken an Econ 101 course in college, seldom stop ideologues.
Putting aside Sanders’s factually incorrect and nonsensical $310 billion figure, let’s just consider this general scenario: A company makes a product that consists of essential components they must purchase from suppliers. Something happens — outside the company’s control — that causes those essential components to rise in price significantly. Therefore the cost of goods for the company’s product increases significantly. What should the company do? Raise prices and pass those increased costs on to their customers, maintaining the same level of profit for themselves? Or hold prices steady and eat those costs, accepting lower profits or even negative margins, so that customers remain unaffected?
One can hold logically consistent views at both extremes. At one end, the belief that business is business and higher costs naturally result in higher prices passed along to customers. At the other end, the belief that companies should put the welfare of their customers ahead of their own profit seeking. Perhaps you think the answer is somewhere in-between: somewhat higher prices and somewhat lower profit margins. What you cannot do is hold a philosophically consistent logically coherent view where your answer to how a company should respond in such a scenario is contingent on what the “something happens” is that caused component prices to rise.
When the “something happens” is a global RAM and SSD shortage resulting from the AI datacenter capex spending spree, Sanders’s tweet makes clear that he’s of the opinion that Apple should eat these costs.
But when the “something happens” was Trump’s tariffs, Sanders argued that (emphasis added) “Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are not the way to do it. We do not need a blanket and arbitrary sales tax on imported goods which will raise prices on products that the American people desperately need.” And again: “Trump’s blanket tariffs will just raise prices for American consumers and hurt our relationships with allies, undermining our global position.” Not “might” raise prices. “Will” raise prices.
Sanders arguing today that Apple should eat the entire cost of rising RAM and SSD components makes no more sense than this tweet from Donald Trump a year ago:
Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!
Sanders’s tweet is better punctuated and capitalized, but it’s the same illogic. Zero economic sense, 100 percent ideological wishful thinking. Yelling angrily doesn’t make your argument any more compelling or coherent.
From the bottom of Rolfe Winkler’s report for The Wall Street Journal Thursday, on Apple’s unprecedented price increases (gift link):
Apple’s price hikes arrived the day after Micron Technology, the big American maker of memory and storage, reported blowout quarterly earnings, touting gross profit margins that topped 80%. Shares jumped 16% after the close and appeared likely to power a Thursday rally among semiconductor stocks. [...]
In an interview Wednesday night, Micron Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said the company couldn’t make investments during the memory market’s last downturn, when Micron’s gross profits went negative, in part because certain customers took advantage to pay rock-bottom prices.
“We told a couple of the customers who were being very aggressive with pricing at that time that this is not constructive,” he said, without naming Apple, adding that low prices discouraged capital investments. “A lot of the industry investments got shut down in 2023 because of really poor pricing and really poor margins.”
I overlooked this segment when I read (and linked to) Winkler’s report Thursday. It really does seem clear that Sadana is blaming Apple for not cutting Micron any slack when the supply/demand curve for RAM had a different look in 2023. I’m sure Micron’s current 80 percent margins are here to stay this time, so getting a few jabs in at Apple will never come back to bite Micron and Sadana.
From a September 2022 letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, co-signed by Marco Rubio (then a Republican senator from Florida, currently secretary of state) and Mark Warner (Democratic senator from Virginia):
We write to convey our extreme concern about the possibility that Apple Inc. will soon procure 3D NAND memory chips from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-owned manufacturer Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). Such a decision would introduce significant privacy and security vulnerabilities to the global digital supply chain that Apple helps shape given YMTC’s extensive, but often opaque, ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and concerning PRC-backed entities. In addition, we write to convey that any decision to partner with YMTC, no matter the intended market of the product offerings developed by such a partnership, would affirm and reward the PRC’s distortive and unfair trade practices, which undermine U.S. companies globally by creating significant advantages to Chinese firms at the expense of foreign competitors. Last year, the Biden Administration described YMTC as China’s “national champion memory chip producer,” which supports the CCP’s efforts to counter U.S. innovation and leadership in this space.
The “no matter the intended market of the product offerings” bit was a reference to Apple’s plan only to use Chinese RAM chips for iPhones sold in the Chinese market. I wouldn’t want Chinese RAM in my iPhone any more than I’d want to buy a “Chinese DSLR” as my camera.
Anyway, Apple’s 2022 attempt to get an OK for this went over like a lead balloon, meeting sharp bipartisan opposition. Rubio is today the most influential man in the Trump administration in foreign affairs.
Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.
But a report by Michael Scherer of The Atlantic about Trump’s remodeling of the West Colonnade is perhaps an even better representation of the Trump presidency. In March, Trump tore up the light brown Tennessee flagstone that paved the walkway in the West Colonnade that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office and replaced it with polished black African granite carved in Italy. When a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the remodeling, Trump answered: “Paid for by me.”
But, as Scherer discovered, that was a lie. He examined National Park Service budget documents showing that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, all part of a $1.3 million project that includes new hardware for nearby doors. Last year, Scherer reports, the National Park Service spent $347,503 to replace the stucco on the colonnade wall so Trump could hang pictures of the U.S. presidents alongside plaques featuring his own opinions of them. Documents say the project was a “Rush project at request of POTUS.”
Scherer explains that Trump has redirected taxpayer money from national parks around the country to his own projects, leaving the parks unable to make needed repairs or hire staff. Expected funding for more than 900 Park Service projects never arrived—including $424,000 to replace a guardrail on the edge of a cliff in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park that National Park Service employees identified as “a significant safety hazard for visitors.” For some parks, nearly 70% of approved funds have been pulled back.
Trump has also pulled National Park Service staff to Washington, D.C., for his Freedom 250 events, a crisis because the Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office. In his 2027 budget, Trump calls for cutting staff by another 3,967 full-time employees, or 31%.
That budget also asked for another $10 billion to beautify Washington, a sum that Scherer notes is nearly eight times as large as all the money spent on National Park Service projects in 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee stripped that request out of its marked-up version of the president’s budget.
The administration appears eager to keep what’s happening in the national parks out of sight. Early this year, the Department of the Interior instructed its employees that they could not share information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands, instead redirecting all such information through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Communications.
As outdoors writer Wes Siler reports in his Wes Siler’s Newsletter, the Interior Department “manages the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those agencies are responsible for about 20 percent of all land area in the United States, hundreds of millions of annual visitors, and spend annually $88.6 billion taxpayer dollars.”
As Jake Spring reported in the Washington Post, more than 300 million people visit America’s national parks each year, and about 350 of them die (not always from accidents). In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, warning others from the area. Now the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it.
It did not release the information that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12 of this year. NPS employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of extreme heat on the same trail.
The profligate use of our tax dollars for whatever Trump and his cronies want while the American people suffer is at least as representative of Trump’s reign as is the peeling, algae-filled, militarily guarded Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
This president and administration are turning the extraordinary resources of the American people—the things we the people have created over decades with our effort and our tax dollars—to their own ends. We are paying for their theft with a significantly diminished country, and even with our lives.
On May 29, 2026, the administration proposed dramatic changes to the awarding of federal research grants. Rather than continue awarding research grants on the basis of a merit system established through rigorous peer review, the administration proposes to base federal research grants on approval by political appointees.
It refers to an executive order Trump signed in May 2025 that said previous governments had “politicized” science with their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, concern about climate change, and incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion in scientific studies and called for a return to “a gold standard” of scientific research.
The lead driver of the proposed change is the Office of Management and Budget, directed by Christian nationalist Russell Vought. Vought was a key author of Project 2025, and the plan will empower his team in the executive branch to divert tax dollars to channels he approves, rather than those scientists support. The proposed changes limit foreign collaboration, and if the government decides a grant is failing to “effectuate program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest,” the OMB can yank the grant.
Americans created world-class research universities and institutions during and after World War II as it became clear that it was more cost effective for the federal government to award grants to those researchers doing work their peers recognized as the best in the country, rather than trying to create such labs for the government. Relying on businesses, they realized, would limit scientific and medical research to avenues that promised to produce short-term profits. So they developed a web of universities and scientific institutions where tax dollars could be allocated only to those doing superior work in areas that offered long-term scientific and medical advances.
In the process of doing that work, university researchers share their discoveries with each other and train the next generation of scientists, creating an extensive network of scientific advances that generate new products and new treatments, and that has made the United States a world leader.
The American people paid for that system with their work and their money. Now Trump’s hand-picked loyalists want to dismantle it to advance their own ideology. As economist Paul Krugman noted in February in his newsletter, destroying faith in science and experts leaves people open to the idea that they should reject “the establishment” and instead follow right-wing leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Krugman also notes that, according to McKinsey, spending on wellness in the U.S. alone amounts to about $500 billion a year. Americans paid close to $70 billion for nutritional supplements alone.
And as the administration tears up the system, people die. An ardent supporter of Secretary Kennedy, Dr. Joseph Mercola, has urged parents to be skeptical of Vitamin K shots for newborns, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since 1961. Right-wing figures pushed those concerns, and Kennedy has refused to recommend the shots, which prevent catastrophic bleeding in newborns.
In May, Duaa Eldeib of ProPublica reported that parents increasingly are refusing the shots and that newborn deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding are on the rise. Mercola has now publicly and strongly changed his previous stance.
It’s not just babies at risk. After World War I the so-called Spanish Flu decimated U.S. soldiers coming home from the war, and as Cristina Stassis of Air Force Times reports, since the 1950s the military has required that service members be vaccinated against the flu. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the requirement “overly broad and not rational” and complained that it would “weaken our warfighting capabilities.”
Just two months later, more than 220 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas came down with the flu. One sick trainee died of a medical emergency; an investigation of the cause of his medical emergency is underway.
When Hegseth changed the requirement, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), an Air Force veteran, noted that “[t]he reason it was mandatory was to enhance readiness.” Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), who represents the district where Lackland is located, posted that Hegseth’s ending of flu vaccinations “was a reckless decision that put troops in harm’s way and undermined our military readiness.”
Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that after the outbreak, the Air Force required vaccines for all the recruits at Lackland.
Just as administration officials are tearing up the scientific research Americans have built over the last 80 years, Hegseth is also tearing up the U.S. military, which Americans have built with their blood and treasure since 1775.
Filip Timotija of The Hill noted that since he took over at the Pentagon last year, Hegseth has gotten rid of more than two dozen senior military leaders with little or no explanation. Those include General C.Q. Brown Jr., the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s chief of naval operations; Admiral Linda Fagan, the commandant of the Coast Guard; General Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff; and General James Mingus, the vice chief of staff of the Army.
Last week, Hegseth added General Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, to that list. Donahue has had a storied career and commands wide bipartisan support in Congress. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) called the firing “yet another unforced error from a Secretary leading the Pentagon with bro-culture bravado rather than restraint, humility and careful stewardship of the finest fighting force in the world.” Hegseth “is more interested in purging people he perceives as insufficiently loyal than empowering proven patriots who can actually lead,” Tillis wrote. “It’s sophomoric. It’s unserious. And it’s bringing great harm to our Department of Defense.”
That lack of seriousness has given us Trump’s debacle in Iran, where the U.S. and Iran are trading strikes again over Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. Benoit Faucon, Summer Said, Costas Paris, and Robbie Grammar of the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Iran expects a payoff of $40 billion a year in payments for security, safety, and environmental services from vessels crossing the strait, leaving Iran stronger after Trump’s war than before it.
Tonight, Trump made apocalyptic threats against Iran, posting that “United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN! It is very possible that they will never learn! There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
Administration officials and their cronies are turning the country we worked so hard to build into a vehicle for building their own power and their own wealth, and Republicans in Congress have steadfastly refused to stop the looting or even to investigate. So lax have they been that last month, Emily Davies of the Washington Post reported that White House lawyers had begun private briefings for administration officials on how to prepare for congressional oversight in case Democrats win the midterms.
Yesterday House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), a Trump loyalist, warned a crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C.: “If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats—y’all, impeachment’s not even the big concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, and friends—half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you. Ok, we’re gonna win. We’re gonna win the midterms.”
—
Notes:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/06/national-parks-trump-white-house-renovations/687700/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/restoring-gold-standard-science/
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/brief-history-federal-funding-basic-science
https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/why-federally-funded-research-so-important
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/flu-outbreak-air-force-base.html
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5941693-hegseth-ousts-general-donahue-pentagon/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/27/world/live-news/iran-war-strikes-trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/reflecting-pool-america-250-trump/687716/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/04/white-house-briefs-staff-midterm-losses/
https://www.propublica.org/article/vitamin-k-shot-joseph-mercola-reversal-babies
X:
michaelscherer/status/2070545059355689188
JoaquinCastrotx/status/2067772807199535297
SenThomTillis/status/2070175173735522480
Bluesky:
Twelve minutes long:
“One stop shopping” for why AI will not put everyone out of work.
The post My ARC talk on AI and jobs appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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Transcript
For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America. He was running a large part of the government’s budget. And during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence. I mean, really evil and really incompetent on enormous scales. And why aren’t people talking about it more?
Hi, I’m Paul Krugman, doing a brief follow-on to my discussion that was posted earlier today with Ro Khanna, the Congressman from Silicon Valley, who’s a very interesting guy in many ways.
One of the things that has made him especially interesting in the last few days is that he said something entirely reasonable, which is that if Democrats retake Congress, they should hold investigations into the role of Elon Musk as head of DOGE, the sort of not exactly but effectively government agency, in destroying USAID, the agency that was the principal channel for aid to the most desperate, poorest people in the world.
That’s entirely reasonable, and Khanna went on to say that there are credible estimates that the cancellation, the destruction of Doge has led to millions of unnecessary deaths, including millions of children — which is exactly true. There are studies that say that there is both in the field evidence of widespread death as a result of the cancellation and, of course reasonable health models. Because what do you think happens when you cut away tens of billions of dollars of aid to people who are living right on the edge? So of course it’s a reasonable thing to say.
Musk, of course, responded not by saying, no, it’s not true or something like that. He did say that not a single person has died because of those cuts, which is utterly implausible. But he also went on to say that he was going to sue Khanna, though he hasn’t actually so far, and that Khanna should be in prison for saying — not even saying that Musk killed people, but that there are studies that say that he killed people.
It’s quite evil and so much for free speech. Musk is very much like Trump, somebody who can dish it out but can’t take it, can’t even handle the kind of criticism that any public figure should expect to receive. Honestly, you shouldn’t be at all in the public domain unless you’re prepared to deal with a lot of insults and accusations. When you have the kind of role that Musk did that would come with the package even if he had done a decent or non-catastrophic job.
But of course he didn’t. And so let’s talk first about the evil.
It’s not just that Musk more or less personally set out to destroy this aid agency set out to cut off healthcare, nutritional assistance, just basic necessities of life for millions and millions of extremely desperate people. But he did so callously, carelessly, he even actually tweeted out, oh, “I just fed USAID to the wood chipper and I could have gone to some great parties instead.”
What can you say? This is an extraordinarily evil act. It came in the context of somebody who made enormous promises about what he was going to do. People have kind of forgotten that Musk came into DOGE promising to find trillions of dollars in waste, which he would eliminate, none of which happened. Overall, it’s pretty clear that DOGE actually worsened the budget deficit at least a little bit.
He also made specific claims along the way, most notably his claim that there were something like 20 million dead people receiving Social Security benefits. That was because the 19-year-olds that he put in positions of great influence, the Muskrats, whatever you want to call them, didn’t understand government databases. You know, you get parachuted into an agency with access to the computer system but absolutely no knowledge of what the agency does or how it does it and then couple that with a kind of arrogance — believing that these people must all be stupid and I can just sit down for a day or two with their data and find vast waste and fraud.
Well, nobody in a position of responsibility should believe that kind of thing.
It’s possible that Big Balls and his other hench people actually believed that they knew what they were doing. But my god, if you’re put in charge of a hugely important government function, you don’t assume that everybody there is an idiot and that your neophyte attaches have somehow stumbled on things that nobody else noticed.
And of course, Social Security is so pervasive, such a large part of everybody’s life, that the idea that there could be tens of millions of dead beneficiaries and nobody has noticed it, that’s completely crazy. You even wonder, did Musk really believe that? Does he even have a notion that some things are true and some things are not?
But in any case, there you are. And so it was a total disaster. He left the government not, clearly not because Trump thought that he was too extreme, too bad a guy, but because it was so clear that he did not know what he was doing.
And the reports of alleged savings from DOGE: it was starting to get embarrassing because it was so easy for news organizations to find out that the claims were utterly false, that none of what they claimed was happening was actually happening.
So he left. and then he goes back to his companies and becomes at least temporarily a trillionaire with an enormous public offering. Why didn’t people think that his record with enormous public responsibility was somehow relevant to his financial future?
I mean, if a guy who can convince himself that there are 20 million dead Social Security recipients, who can convince himself that you can massively slash foreign aid and it’s all waste and fraud and nobody will be hurt — why would you trust that person to run a company? And furthermore, the character flaws that are revealed here — flaws is what too weak a word, but anyway — when you have somebody who refuses to acknowledge uncomfortable reality, refuses to acknowledge error, who responds to any perfectly truthful statement that reflects badly on him by saying, I want that guy put in jail. — those are not the character traits that make for an effective manager. If you can’t accept that you are ever wrong, how are you ever going to get things right?
Because things will go wrong, and you will make mistakes. We all do. So all of this seems terribly relevant, and yet it says something, I guess, about America that people piled in to SpaceX stock, although some of that has come off now. It really was clearly an early frenzy, a fear of missing out frenzy.
There are now reports that SpaceX also sold bonds, which itself is a little troubling. Why should they be needing to go into debt right away? What is that about? And those bonds have already lost some of their value, which is much more serious than the stock coming down. When bonds lose value, that’s because people think that there is now a risk that this company might default, might not be able to honor its promises. So seeing those bonds start to trade at a discount almost immediately is a pretty bad sign for the company. But again, why did anybody believe any of this?
Musk is a horrible, terrible person and has the blood of millions of children on his hands. Let’s be clear. Yes, it’s not something that has been proven, but it’s close to. It’s so overwhelmingly likely that it clearly has to be true. And he’s also a weak personality — very much like Trump again — he can’t take criticism, he can’t admit error. So what does it say ultimately about our society that so many people are willing to throw money at this guy and that they’re so willing to forgive the incredible failures that he carried out, the incredible disaster of his time in a position of public responsibility. And I don’t really know the answer to that.
There’s a real question about how it is we got at our current age of irresponsible oligarchs and with so little public backlash. And it’s starting to develop. But still, the fact that Elon Musk is still in business, let alone the world’s richest man, is in some sense an indictment of all of us.
On that happy note, take care.
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Ro Khanna represents a large part of Silicon Valley, and not surprisingly is a very smart guy. Perhaps more surprisingly, he’s also a very interesting progressive, who has drawn considerable ire from the tech lords, with Elon Musk most recently calling for his imprisonment. I caught up with him Friday:
TRANSCRIPT:
Paul Krugman in Conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna
(recorded 6/26/26)
Paul Krugman: I’m talking again to Rep. Ro Khanna, the Representative for Cupertino, as it were, representing the heart of Silicon Valley in ways that don’t always please the tech oligarchs. I had planned to ask about AI, but there’s so much going on and Ro is right in the middle. So, welcome to this interview.
Ro Khanna: Well, I’m honored to be back on. I usually just read you to learn, but I’m glad we’re going to get to have another conversation.
Krugman: As it happens, tech-related politics is really central now. And you seem to be in the middle of at least three big issues: Elon Musk, AI generally, and the California Wealth Tax Initiative. I want to talk about all of those, but maybe let’s start with Elon Musk, who has called you evil, which is a great honor. Do you want to talk about that controversy and where you came in here? Because I think it’s very interesting.
Khanna: Well, he’s called me evil, he’s threatened to sue me, and he’s threatened to jail me. I have this quaint idea, Paul, that in a democracy, Elon Musk should have one vote. He doesn’t seem to think that, and the reason he has been so triggered is that I not only cited a Lancet study—which said that his USAID cuts could potentially lead to the deaths of 4.5 million children and over 10 million adults—but I also cited an Atul Gawande/ Boston study showing that some of these deaths have already taken place. This triggered him, not just because I cited these studies, but because I said he’s going to have to come before the House Oversight Committee when we take back the majority; we’re going to have the power to subpoena him. And, of course, defying a congressional subpoena could lead to contempt of Congress and penalties. And so he’s been spending the last few days obsessively tweeting about me. You would think if you had $1 trillion, you’d have better things to do, but this is what’s occupying him.
Krugman: Yeah, let’s back up a bit. One of the things that I found really kind of astonishing in the whole discussion—and obviously, SpaceX went public and there was amazingly little discussion of Musk’s role at DOGE where he was a quasi-government official. I guess it was kind of weird what the legal basis for all of that was—but this had immense impacts. And as you say, one of them was that he just, more or less by personal fiat, eliminated USAID, which is our premier aid agency. Do you have any thoughts just generally about what Musk did at DOGE? I think it’s a hell of a story, so let’s start with that.
Khanna: The keywords you used were “by personal fiat.” I mean, he literally went there, didn’t consult Congress, didn’t report to Congress, and just started cutting programs that Congress had explicitly authorized. And no one stopped him. We voted to subpoena him, but he defied coming in and explaining anything to Congress. By some accounts, he cut 83% of the programs that were at USAID. And some of these programs are to feed some of the poorest people in the world; some are to provide medicines to some of the poorest people in the world. So, you literally had the world’s richest person hurting the world’s poorest people. And he was doing it with no accountability, in defiance of Congress.
Congress then fortunately restored some of these programs, so he was not able to end all of them. But the USAID programs are a shadow of their former self. They now are scattered in administration, and many were so disrupted that these academic studies have shown that it potentially could—or in some cases already has—led to the deaths of some of the poorest people and children in the world.
Krugman: Yeah, the important thing is what he did. But the attitude also at the time... I think he said something like, “Oh, I just fed USAID to the wood chipper, and I could have gone to some great parties instead,” as if it was, you know, annoying that he had to go out there and cut off medical aid for millions of children.
Khanna: Yeah, it was total arrogance. He said it was all fraud, but of course, he then didn’t have the guts to come before Congress or the American people and explain where he found fraud. He didn’t consult any of these programs. It’s not like he was on a plane to Africa or a plane to other parts of the world where these programs were being administered. And for someone who was going to go after cuts to the federal budget, instead of starting at the Department of Defense, which is 65% or so of the discretionary federal budget, he decides to start with an administration with less than 1% of the federal budget. It was a purely ideological agenda that, turns out, has real-world consequences—especially with this Ebola outbreak. I mean, one of the things he cut was the oversight and testing in places like the Republic of the Congo, and now we’re seeing the consequences.
Krugman: And his reaction has been really quite over the top, considering, you know, if you’re any kind of public figure, you expect to be facing criticism.
Khanna: It’s just denial, right? I think he said that not a single person has died because of his cuts, which is totally implausible. He said, “there’s not a single documented case.” And he said that everything he cut was simply a fraud, and that these academic studies are totally fraudulent. Granted, the Lancet study is a model of what could happen, but the Atul Gawande study is actually a documentation of actual deaths that have taken place. And there are a lot of anecdotal statements which Nicholas Kristof and a lot of people have reported on.
Krugman: And now he’s threatening to sue you. Presumably, I don’t think we’re that far gone that there’s any chance that such a suit would prevail, but how much of that is an actual burden on you?
Khanna: Well, I put it into Grok to see how strong a case Elon has, and Grok doesn’t think he has a very strong case. So there’s that.
Krugman: In case anybody doesn’t know, Grok is Elon Musk’s or xAI’s LLM. It’s a competitor to ChatGPT and Claude, except it’s not really a competitor because it’s awful, right? But yeah.
Khanna: I would have a better case of defamation given what he has said about me. But, of course, I believe in free speech, Paul. I thought he did, too, and I would never think of suing someone for calling me a robber or calling me names. That’s the First Amendment. But I’ll tell you what it does: it creates a doubt in other people who are on the Oversight Committee—you know, “Is this really worth the bother? Should we really criticize Musk?” So that’s one thing.
Obviously, Musk has more than one vote. He’s got millions of dollars that he can spend on candidates, but now it turns out it’s not enough for him to just have the ability to support Super PACs; he also wants to be able to intimidate any public official who dares to go against him. It’s not just that he would spend money against them, but that he could actually sue them. And so if you’re a member of Congress, you’re thinking, “Well, do I really want this fight? Or maybe we could just focus on the hundred other issues.” So, it’s less about the headache for me and more about the signal he’s sending to other elected officials.
Krugman: So you aren’t trying to do a GoFundMe for a legal defense or anything like that? Because I know people who have faced other spurious lawsuits and it’s actually cost them money, even though there’s no chance of it prevailing. They feel that they do need to hire people, but you’re not in a position where you are personally feeling liable? Or are you just well-positioned to sort of weather this?
Khanna: Well, he hasn’t sued yet. If he does sue, it will be a drain on resources and we would have to raise funds. We would. But I don’t want to have people do something before there is an actual lawsuit. We’ll see what he does. But that’s exactly what his strategy is, whether it’s against someone like me or just a message to others that he has unlimited resources and he can make your life very, very difficult.
Krugman: Okay. And he’s also called for you... I guess there was nothing specific about why, but for you to be put in jail, which is even more amazing.
Khanna: Yes. And ordinarily you would kind of laugh it off because he’s a private person with no power. But of course, in this administration, him calling for that and the way the Justice Department works—there are political motives to how they’ve been operating. I mean, they have the governor of California and his wife that they’re threatening along with Adam Schiff... the list is long how they have operated.
Krugman: Yeah. I’m a friend of Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve and for her, this has been much more. She was, in fact, targeted and all of that by essentially the same gang. So yeah, it’s quite something. Just the last bit: Musk has also then gone out with this claim that USAID somehow is responsible for COVID, and also went full-in on the conspiracy theories about COVID. Do you have any comment on that, just since it came up in this context?
Khanna: It’s so nonsensical. I don’t even understand what he’s talking about. I think what he is trying to argue is that the lab that some people believe was the testing ground for the virus somehow is connected to USAID, but he just puts these things out there with no evidence and for ideological reasons. The reality is the large part of USAID was to help poor people with food and medicine, and it had support from everyone from George W. Bush on.
Krugman: Yeah. I’m pretty sure that USAID doesn’t actually spend money creating labs in China.
Khanna: I’m 99% sure that’s true. I mean, Paul, you and I usually check things before we say something definitively. Elon doesn’t have any of those filters, so he’s just throwing these things out there.
Krugman: Yeah. It’s pretty terrifying. The world’s richest man with a very strong political in with the U.S. government and... just, wow. Well, that was in the news so I thought I’d ask.
Khanna: He does have a huge platform, right? I mean, he has 240 million followers. So him saying, “Okay, I’m going to sue Khanna. Khanna is a horrible, evil human being,” you know, has more reach by far than when I go on Meet the Press or ABC News. And he’s putting out basic falsehoods, so it’s a real danger.
Krugman: Yeah. Okay, let’s move on. So the technology of the moment is AI. Last time we talked, which is a while back now—I mean, a while back in tech time, anyway—we were talking about crypto, and there’s a little bit of the distracted boyfriend thing where people are looking now at AI instead of crypto. But AI does look really much more substantive. You can actually almost start to see its impact on productivity, maybe on layoffs. So it looks like a serious technology. And you’ve been staking out a position which is calling for a lot more intervention and regulation. Do you want to talk about what you think is happening and what needs to be done?
Khanna: Well, so far, AI has been enriching tech lords and tech billionaires, but it’s caused deep anxiety with ordinary Americans. And I would argue that there are four things we need to do. We need to first care about jobs. Now, here’s the good news, Professor Krugman: it used to be that the people who cared about a jobs program were folks in de-industrialized communities—blue-collar, or people who had lost factory jobs. Now you have kids at Brown, kids at Yale who are worried about whether they’re going to have a job. So I think there’s an opportunity for a broad coalition to have the most ambitious jobs agenda in a generation.
And what does that look like? I would say first, it means taxing agentic AI more than we tax human workers. This is not my idea; it’s Daron Acemoglu’s idea, which is basically that the tax code is biased towards capital. If you have to hire someone, you’ve got to pay their health insurance and you’ve got to pay a payroll tax. If you want to have an agentic AI worker or a robot, you don’t have to pay that. So, neutralizing that tax code.
Second, we should—and I’ve argued this—have a “Work for America” program, a federal jobs program for young people out of school, out of trade school, or out of college to rebuild communities, maybe to come to the federal government. Maybe they go to a community that they didn’t grow up in. This can be akin to military service and can help rebuild not just the physical infrastructure of America, but the social infrastructure.
Third, bargaining power for employees. So, not just go retrain them, but give them an actual say in the company if there are going to be layoffs. What role will they have? If there’s going to be displacement, what jobs would they have? Are they going to get a share of the profits from the increase in AI productivity? Are they going to get time off with the increased productivity?
And finally, a sense of ensuring that jobs are there, that there’s intervention in having humans in the loop in various jobs—whether that’s the four million truck drivers and thinking about their role, or whether it’s jobs making decisions about people’s healthcare or making decisions about their finances.
Krugman: So, yeah, I mean, a few things to unpack here. One is, obviously, nobody really knows what this is going to be, but we are starting to see, or we think we’re seeing, real job impacts and income impacts from AI. Probably. If you had to say, where would we be seeing these things first? It would be kind of in your district, right? So, what do we actually see? What are you hearing from your own constituents?
Khanna: First, it’s much harder to get hired into these tech jobs. There’s a lot of anxiety from 21-, 22-, and 23-year-olds and their parents. The job market used to be, even at a place like Stanford, “Okay, I’m going to get 10 or 15 offers before I’m done with my senior year.” Now, they’re lucky to get a job, or it’s much harder to get a good job.
Second, there have been a fair amount of tech layoffs. Now, some people are arguing that was because they overhired in the pandemic and they’re correcting for that, but it’s hard to imagine that AI is not at least part of the factor in that, and that it’s not just a correction for overhiring.
And then third, just the sense of what the new jobs in these tech companies are going to look like in terms of being able to implement AI or use AI, and what computer science is going to look like in different schools.
Krugman: Yeah, it is interesting what you just said, which is that we have a better chance of getting action because the jobs at stake here are sort of high-education rather than blue-collar work. In a way, that’s an indictment of our politics—that in some sense, we think Stanford graduates feeling aggrieved carry more weight than ten blue-collar workers in Ohio. But on the other hand, it is really striking, right? Obviously, you’re hearing from people who are just seeing that entry-level jobs are not there. To what extent is this actually manageable? Can we channel this, or is this technology just going to sweep away efforts at, particularly, job retention?
Khanna: I do think it’s manageable in that there are a lot of human tasks, in my view, that can’t simply be automated: goal setting, team building, and the origination of customized new ideas for settings. And there’s a lot of work, public work, that can be done—whether it’s opening new parks, whether it’s helping represent people who are underserved, whether it’s making government services better, whether it’s providing counseling, whether it’s providing teaching, or whether it’s providing childcare. So, in my view, there is a role for a robust federal jobs program, and it could help in de-industrialized areas and for factory jobs.
And we should keep in mind, we wanted to do this years ago when we saw the devastating effects of globalization, but our politics, for whatever reason, didn’t allow it. And now you have a much broader set of people with anxiety. Of course, it’s not the Great Depression when FDR had 20 to 30% unemployment and a total collapse in demand, but it is one where you meet an average person who’s concerned about it. And I think there is polling showing 30 to 40% of Americans are anxious about jobs. That seems to me to provide a moment where a politician coming with a jobs agenda or intervention in the free market would have a reception which, in a lot of the last 30 or 40 years, has been very hard to get. People just say you’re interfering in the markets.
Krugman: Just to say—I mean, you kind of implicitly said this—but in effect, you’re calling for something like a WPA (Works Progress Administration) or CCC, ‘30s-style, but at least in part for tech workers, not just for people with shovels, but people doing skilled—I hate that word—but high-education-content work. Have you put any kind of numbers to this, or is it just a general outline at this point?
Khanna: I wrote an op-ed called “Work for America” in The Wall Street Journal, and it was about $50 billion a year, which I said you could fund through an AI token tax. And it would be hiring anyone out of high school or out of college for jobs to open a park, to help with their local community, to teach, or to come to the federal government to do something. What I was particularly excited about is that kids growing up in Fremont, in my district, could go to Middletown, Ohio, to do something there so that you’re building things. And it would help for folks who may be displaced.
And I explicitly said it was inspired by FDR’s Works Progress Administration, which hired 8 million people. Of course, that’s where the “boondoggle” idea came from, because some people back then said some of those jobs weren’t real—they were criticizing it. But my understanding, and you’re a better student of history, is that it did work in creating meaningful employment and many meaningful projects, and certainly helped the social infrastructure of the country.
Krugman: I want to come back to jobs in a second, but you’re basically at least accepting as a strong possibility that this technology is biased towards capital and away from labor. Are you seeing that? Is that really what’s happening?
Khanna: We’re certainly seeing it in terms of the explosion of wealth in my district and with billionaires. And we’ll get to the idea of a billionaire tax, but I mean, they have reaped massive amounts of benefit from the AI revolution, and we haven’t been seeing that for the average worker or even the average tech worker. They’re not reaping the rewards in the way that a few people have.
And you’re seeing this also in terms of, certainly, the difficulty in entry-level jobs. I mean, when I was at Suffolk University and giving one of the commencement speeches, the line that got the most applause was when I said we need to tax agentic AI more than human workers. Young people are concerned about AI, and I don’t think their fears are totally irrational; I think they’re finding the job market to be harder. And I have a lot of cases in my district of people at these tech companies who are being laid off or told that they need to be let go. Now, you talk to the tech leaders and they’ll say there are other factors too—they’ll cite overhiring in the pandemic, they’ll say they’re just adjusting. So, I don’t know if there are academic studies that show it’s correlated completely to AI, but I certainly think it is one of the variables. And I think there was one study at Stanford showing that for young people in automatable jobs, AI had contributed.
Krugman: Okay, you gave a commencement talk and got a positive response, unlike Eric Schmidt and, there have been multiple instances, but I guess Eric Schmidt is the famous one, the former CEO of Google, giving a commencement address in which he started to talk about AI and immediately got massive boos from the students.
Khanna: I took the opposite tack. I said AI is not doing your generation a good service, and it’s something that we need to be tackling—not preaching all the benefits of AI. And it was a surprise to me because that was not the place where I expected to get applause. It was not the central part of my address, but the two places that got the most applause were calling for a billionaire tax and calling for a jobs program and taxing AI, which I was almost going to keep out of it because I thought, “Is that too political?” But the students, actually, that’s what resonated with them.
Krugman: And so, at least conceptually, there are two separate issues. There’s a wealth tax, which I want to get to in a bit, but you’re talking about essentially—you call it a token tax—a tax basically on the use of AI. Are we able to implement that? Do you think it can be done reasonably well?
Khanna: I do. It seems to me that’s the easiest thing because right now there’s a cost, of course, to the use of AI. And there’s a large debate, by the way, about what that cost is because it’s fairly expensive. It turns out it’s fairly expensive in terms of the energy consumption of AI; it’s expensive in terms of the capital expenditure for data centers, which is a whole separate conversation. And so, the question of labor displacement, I think, also depends upon how much AI costs actually come down or don’t come down. But right now, companies are paying a lot for the use of these tokens, which is basically the output of AI when you type something into ChatGPT. And so, if you just put a tax on that, that would both disincentivize automation and would raise revenue.
Krugman: I’m not aware of an earlier parallel where there was something—sort of an output of machinery at some level—that could be compared in a way with labor. And of course, aside from income taxes, the FICA on every paycheck shows that we tax labor. And you’re just saying that we should do something for the stuff that’s coming from AI capital, right?
Khanna: Yeah. That’s exactly right. And simply put, the idea right now is that it’s not just that people have a higher degree of variability because you could get sick, you need to be with your kids, or you have to pay health insurance. We’re not taxing what these tech people are saying is labor-replacing, and so we should tax that.
Krugman: Okay. Now, people’s immediate reaction is, “Oh, but we’re in a competitive race with China.” What’s your answer to people who say, “Oh, you know, if we start to tax this stuff, we will forfeit the lead to other countries. It’s a great international race.”
Khanna: Well, first of all, even China is changing its policies. I read recently that some of the court decisions in China are saying you can’t lay off people based on AI, and they have almost 18% youth unemployment. When I went there, a lot of the young folks didn’t want to work in the factories, and they’re concerned about losing jobs. So, I think China itself is realizing that having just unregulated AI is not healthy for society.
The second thing is we want to compete with excellence. That’s always been the American aspiration—that we want to have products that have the highest standards. We want to have high safety standards, the highest set of standards in terms of privacy. So, if we’re producing AI that is safe, where agentic AI isn’t going to go do crazy things and isn’t going to engage in surveillance, then that should be something that we can export and be a model for the world. I don’t think we have to have a race to the bottom in the type of AI we produce.
Krugman: Okay. And AI that’s safe, which, of course, is one of the big concerns. Any thoughts on the runaway models? Grok, which you mentioned, apparently was used for targeting in Iran with not-very-good results. Are you hearing anything, or is there any movement on intervention—basically congressional action to try and avoid some of these dangers from AI?
Khanna: There hasn’t been, because this administration has basically said, “Let the tech billionaires do whatever they want.” The only time they’ve shown any interest in regulation is with Mythos, Anthropic’s latest model, which could detect cyber vulnerabilities. And it’s unclear whether their concern is simply motivated by the unsafety of Anthropic’s model or is retribution because Dario Amodei got into a fight with Pete Hegseth. But other than that issue, the administration has basically said, “Do whatever you want.”
And it’s really scary because usually, even by these tech leaders’ own worries, they say, “This is transformational. This is going to change the world. This is the most important technology since fire.” Well, if that’s really the case, we have a federal agency for electricity, we have a federal agency for nuclear weapons and nuclear power—why wouldn’t we have a federal agency for AI, on your own terms? And yet there’s been no effort to do that.
Krugman: Okay, for listeners, by the way, Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic. The two big models out there are OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude, which is Anthropic. Most of the buzz that I’m hearing about usability involves Claude, but Anthropic is politically not that aligned with the administration and has particularly said that it will not allow its AI to be used for autonomous weapons, and that has made them on the outs. And it’s really very hard, right? When the administration lays down rules or policies on AI, you can never tell whether they’re really concerned or whether they’re just trying to punish a company that isn’t on their side. That’s what you’re saying about Mythos, right?
Khanna: Exactly. And I mean, given the administration’s history in general on retribution across so many places, but also in this explicit retribution against Anthropic... there, Amodei basically said that he didn’t think technology should be used in a way that would violate privacy. He didn’t think AI should be used to make decisions about what to strike without human judgment. Hegseth didn’t like that; they had a whole fight. And so now that they have Mythos, it may be that there really should be regulations and export controls because this technology is explosive and could cause cyber vulnerabilities. The problem is we don’t know, because the administration also has a motive for retribution, and they’ve lost the credibility of any independence.
Krugman: Yeah, that makes it especially hard now. All right. It’s actually amazing how much impact Anthropic’s products are having. I’ve been talking with senior financial types on stuff, and it’s amazing how often I hear, “Well, I was thinking about that, so I asked Claude.” It really is shocking how—you know, we’re not talking about saying, “I had my staff go and look it up,” it’s, “I went and asked Claude myself.” So, like it or not, this is the world we’re in now.
Okay, it seems to me that your whole vision is a step beyond. I mean, if you go back to actually quite early on when they were still making apocalyptic warnings and Sam Altman was saying, “Oh, well, given AI, we’re going to have to have something like—” I don’t think he exactly used these words, but something like, “We’re going to have to have taxes on capital to pay for universal basic income.” And that’s kind of the Silicon Valley vision. But your idea is more that we should have taxes on the wealth that’s been created to help provide for job programs. So, it’s not just that we’re going to give people money so they can sit at home and let the machines do stuff, but we’re going to subsidize ways that give people work.
Khanna: Absolutely. And that work could be childcare, it could be home care, it could be new types of industry, it could be helping provide better government services, or it could be doing something meaningful in the community. I believe we have the need for productive work, and that the federal government should play that role.
And by the way, the hypocrisy of some of these tech folk saying, “Just tax me so we can have universal income”—well, they’re not willing to pay the tax. I mean, when you look at Sam Altman’s proposal on universal basic income, which is, “Take a 2% tax on my company every year in terms of equity shares,” if you just did the math on that, after five years, maybe every year, each American would get about a $1,000. That’s not exactly universal income. So, I’m not for just taxing and giving everyone a check and saying work doesn’t matter. I don’t think that’s a healthy society, but they’re not even willing to do the first part of that, which is pay the tax. It’s just empty rhetoric.
Krugman: Yeah. I always had a problem that these proposals for UBI—even if they raised enough money—the amounts are not enough to live on, and also just collecting what we used to call welfare is not a substitute for actually having meaningful work.
So, let’s talk first about the California proposal for a one-time wealth tax, which you are supporting, but is amazingly controversial even within the Democratic Party. Tell me about the proposal and some of the criticisms.
Khanna: There are three million people in California who risk losing their healthcare because of the big, ugly bill that Trump passed, which everyone acknowledges cuts Medicaid and cuts the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. So, that’s a fact that everyone acknowledges—that these folks are going to lose their healthcare. The second fact that people acknowledge is that there are about 200,000 healthcare workers—nurses, aides, hospital workers—who are going to lose their jobs.
And what this program, this ballot initiative, says is: let’s have a one-time 5% tax on billionaires. There are about 250 of these billionaires. Their worth, as Gabriel Zucman’s work shows, is about $2 trillion. That is the equivalent—and I’m not saying it’s the same thing—but it’s the equivalent of about half of California’s GDP. There are 250 people who are worth that. And if you tax them one time at 5%, you could literally raise about $100 billion and make sure that we cover all of these Californians, and that we don’t lose 200,000 jobs.
The ballot designers went and said, “Okay, let’s just do 2%,” and that proposal was rejected. That would have raised $40 billion and staved off the crisis for two years. And so now we’re going to the ballot on this. These 250 billionaires, by the way, have made about 150% over the last three years. Their wealth has increased 150% largely because of AI, and yet they’re not willing to pay a 5% one-time tax to make sure that Californians don’t lose healthcare.
Krugman: It always astonishes me how small the number of people that we’re talking about is, right? It still annoys me when people talk about the 1%, because we’re talking about a tiny, tiny fraction of 1%—just 250 people in California. But it’s a quite significant amount of money that could be raised by such a tax, right? So, the first question people ask is: won’t they all just decamp, leave? What would be the possibilities for avoidance—not evasion, since evasion is illegal, but avoidance is not—so that everyone won’t just pull up stakes?
Khanna: So, first of all, we have actual data on this. We know that in Q1 of 2026, 85% of venture capital in America went to California—the highest ever. And this is months after the state ballot initiative was announced, and when you’re seeing reports of Sergey Brin and others leaving. So, in terms of capital investment into California, it has only increased since the announcement of the ballot initiative. And that’s obvious; no one thinks that the AI revolution is happening in Miami or happening in Austin. It’s happening in Silicon Valley. It’s happening in my district and the surrounding areas. So, you may be losing some individuals, but you’re not losing the capital into Silicon Valley, and that’s just what the data shows.
The second thing is, okay, maybe you lose some of these individuals, but as Zucman’s work has shown, these billionaires are only paying about 2.5% of the total general fund in California. And the reason they’re paying so little is because they basically weren’t being taxed—I mean, they don’t have income. And so, if you lose a few people, it’s not some devastating blow to the tax revenue of the state, and you’re not losing the capital investment.
And the final point is, if you haven’t moved already, you’re subject to the tax the way it was designed: it’s one-time, and it’s based on whether you were in the state by the end of last year or not.
Krugman: Okay, that’s really important. It’s a retroactive tax, in a way. It is a levy, but that’s kind of okay, so there would be no possibility of people avoiding it. But I guess one criticism has been that while they can’t avoid this tax, they won’t pay income tax in the future. But you’re saying that they basically weren’t paying income tax before.
Khanna: And the irony of it is, what’s the point of making money? Part of it is you get to do things that you want to do. One of the most basic things that people want to do is live where they want to live. And the idea that you would be a billionaire and then not want to live where your family is, or where you like, or where you grew up, or where you find it most fulfilling simply because of tax considerations seems to be quite ironic. And the truth is that there are a lot of billionaires who will grumble and say all of that, but aren’t going to be leaving California.
Krugman: One of my favorite lines was about the attempts to turn Miami into the new Wall Street. There was some Wall Street guy who told Bloomberg, “The trouble with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida.” There’s a California version of that.
So, this would be a one-time California thing. Do you have a vision for what an attempt to kind of make AI and just general technology less of something for a few hundred people would look like? What would America 2035 look like if we could have a Ro Khanna vision of policy?
Khanna: We would have a new social contract. We would be taxing these billionaires and trillionaires, and that would raise about $4 trillion if you did it at 5% a year. You would have other basic taxes—have an actual effective corporate tax rate that is at least 28%; right now, they’re not even paying 21%. You would have capital taxed the same as ordinary income. You would have a step-up in basis. You’d raise that revenue rate—
Krugman: We should mention “a step-up in basis.” Why don’t you explain what it means?
Khanna: Well, that’s when these people die and their kids get their estate. But if they had huge stock appreciation in their lives, their kids don’t have to pay taxes on that stock appreciation.
Krugman: Yeah. We’ve got a system in which a large part of capital income is basically never taxed. So you’re talking about eliminating that.
Khanna: Why would we have a system that’s already capital-biased, where basically, if you have this capital, you’re making money in your sleep and you’re paying less taxes than someone who’s a doctor or nurse or a factory worker who pays ordinary income tax?
That should be leveled.
And when people say, “Do billionaires deserve what they make?” I don’t deny that they have built something often of value, and that they’re hard-working, and that they’re entrepreneurial. I’m just saying that the system—because of the way we tax capital less, because of the way that corporate taxes aren’t really collected, because of the fact that we don’t have a wealth tax, because of the way we have allowed the estate tax to operate—has allowed for the accumulation of extraordinary wealth beyond what a system with a rational tax code would allow.
And so if we had a rational tax code, we’d have all of this revenue, and then you could do things like having universal childcare at $10 a day, having a thousand new trade schools, having free public college (which we had in California in 1960, and in many places as well), having a jobs program, making sure that we had a livable wage and union bargaining power, and expanding healthcare. I mean, I’m ultimately for a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system, but at least expanding it, doing things like dental, vision, hearing, and making sure that we had drug negotiation.
All of this is to say something very simple: when I go around the country and I say Elon Musk has become a trillionaire, I’m met with huge boos. And when I talk about these tech billionaires, huge boos. That was not always the case in America where people would just boo successful business leaders. It should be a wake-up call that most people don’t think that their lives are improving, even though we’re generating more wealth than ever before. And my view is: why can’t we have a society, if we’re generating all this wealth, where most Americans feel like they have more economic security? And how do we do this?
And the last point I would say is, I’m the nice guy. I’m 49 years old, about to turn 50. You know, the folks in their 30s, the folks who are winning in New York, they’re not as nice as me saying, “Okay, let’s just have a new social contract.” They want to rip the total system down. They’ve had it. They want a total revolution. And so, either we’re going to have this transformation, or we’re going to have a far more radical new generation that is totally upset at society.
Krugman: So, you’re basically saying you can do these reforms, you can do something that will spread the benefits, create societal sharing, or the pitchforks and torches will be coming for you. Is that a good way to summarize it?
Khanna: [Laughs] That’s my message. I’ll say pay it as an anti-revolution tax. But you know what? Even in my district, Paul, when I have town halls and I say, “What do you think of a billionaire tax?”—and I remember in one of the most affluent districts in the world—90% of folks will raise their hand: “Yes, it’s a good idea.” To your point, this is not talking about the 1%. I can’t do the math, but the 0.0001%. Everyone wants them to pay taxes. The doctors do, the investment bankers do. And then there will be people who say, “No, Ro, I disagree.” I say, “Why is that?” And they’ll say, “Well, why is it just 5%? I want 20%.” I mean, they’re not thinking of the wealth tax necessarily and what consequences that would have.
But this is the sentiment, not just in Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Ohio; this is the sentiment in my district. And I think a lot of people are oblivious to the anger and the anxiety young people have. They can’t buy a house, they have huge debt, they don’t think their lives are going to resemble their parents’, and don’t understand why that’s the case in a nation that’s producing so much wealth.
I mean, you’ve done a lot of work on this, and I’d ask you, in development economics and often in the developing world, there’s a trade-off between economic development and economic fairness, right? But it seems to me what’s so ironic in our case is that trade-offs don’t need to exist. We’re producing all this wealth; it’s simply a matter of values that we’re not allowing most Americans to have economic security.
Krugman: That might be a good coda here. I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that we don’t seem to be facing a trade-off. It really is the case that in almost every respect except the wealth of a few hundred people, this kind of fairness agenda looks positive. So, how are you feeling about the politics of it? Do you think you’re getting traction?
Khanna: I do. You know, they poured in $1 million-plus against me with my primary opponent [a Democrat who opposed the wealth tax]. And California’s a weird system: Democrats, Republicans, we all run together. I got 62%, my challenger got 6%, and the Republicans got the rest. So, I think that was a bit of a wake-up call for some of these folks that, you know, democracy still works. And I’m very, very optimistic heading into the midterms that this central idea of fairness is one that’s resonating with many people. And I am confident we’re going to take back the House.
Krugman: Okay. The congressman from Silicon Valley says democracy may still work. I think that’s a really optimistic punchline.
Thanks so much for talking with me.
There is talk of this with the pending change in PM, but I would not do it. I am quite aware that a) not all of the privatisations went well, and b) American data indicate that state-owned utilities do not seem very economically different than, or less efficient than, privately-owned utilities. Especially for water, where the natural monopoly elements are especially strong.
Nonetheless massive restructuring will be needed to make all of these companies, no matter who owns them, “AI companies.” That will require capital raises and pay scales that will be difficult for the public sector to pull off. So right now renationalisation would be a mistake.
Most generally, I would say the returns to resource mobility will be rising significantly.
The post Renationalising British utilities appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
It’s hot in London so I’ve been seeing a lot of handheld portable fans, usually with a strap so you can hang it round your neck.
My faves are the ones with thermoelectric coolers in the middle of the fan: a small plate that is so cold that it is covered with icy condensation. It’s the Peltier effect (the plate is really hot on the back) and the first time I’ve seen a thermoelectric cooler in the wild.
Here’s a thermoelectric handheld fan on Alibaba. Three quid each if you’re buying over a million.
A fan looks like a fan because of the mechanism used for the movement of air.
I’ve been meditating this week on what motivates form in product design.
Hey free concept: AirPods with built-in Peltier thermoelectric coolers so the buds are ice-cold in your ear holes.
A fan moves air; electronic products move data. That can motivate the form just the same.
Durrell Bishop’s Marble Answer Machine (watch the video):
marbles dropping out of an answering machine could form an intuitive physical interface. This work later became the seed for a new movement called Tangible User Interfaces.
Each marble is a message that you can place in the player dish, put aside to keep for later, and so on. So sophisticated and so immediately understandable. (“Legible” as Durrell say.)
But what about when a product can do anything? Like a phone?
We end up with anonymous slabs of black glass.
Before movie theatres there was the Kinetoscope (Wikipedia) "an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window."
The Kinetoscope came out of Thomas Edison’s lab and established the idea of reels of film, and also film as “content” to be manufactured and distributed.
But it was a single-viewer device: you leant down and put your eyes to the viewer.
The act of peeping – the form is motivated by the human interaction.
Or for the necessity of the affordance: a possible interaction that must been seen as a possible interaction. (Affordances as previously discussed.)
BTW:
I recently discovered via the sf journal [Foundation] (issue 152) that:
Thomas Edison, using his Kinetoscope, is credited with producing (though not directing) … the first filmed sneeze (1894), the first filmed kiss (1896).
The egg timer that looks like an egg is the best product design of all time.
The traditional kind of hourglass timer that uses sand, on the other hand, is rubbish:
But what to do you use it for?
Measuring time, sure. A lot of stuff. It can do anything (related to waiting for a period of time).
But does an initial use come to mind?
You have to think about it – aha eggs! Or you have to learn it. Ultimate the sand timer is abstract.
Like an empty ChatGPT window?
AI can do anything too.
But I opened my ChatGPT just now, and look how hard they work to give you ideas of what to do. Mine suggests: Write an email, create a painting, give me ideas…
If the hourglass timer were designed like that, they would print on the side:
So cumbersome.
Whereas!
The egg timer that is shaped like an egg.
Form follows function – but also where and when and how.
And then once you have timed your eggs, you have in your mind this new hammer of “timing” and you see immediately everything else you can time.
So another motivation for form is to imply the first context of use, even if - and especially if - the product can be re-purposed or adapted for other contexts by the end user, once they have internalised the function of it.
It is genius. I aspire to design a product this perfect.
The egg timer shaped like an egg was invented and patented by Lucio Oliveri in 1982. U.S. Design Patent No. D276,705 (expired).
More posts tagged: filtered-for (124).
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure and industrial technology. This week we look at Trump refusing to sign a housing bill, the high cost of US-made doors, slow trucking, why we stopped making new land, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
The ROAD to Housing Act has now overwhelmingly passed both chambers of congress (358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate). [NBC News] But in a last minute twist, Trump has said that he won’t sign the bill until another piece of legislation, the SAVE America Act, passes first. “Hours after his own aides praised the bill and promised the president would sign it, Mr. Trump instead canceled a scheduled event at the Capitol. Eschewing an opportunity for rare bipartisan accord, the president opted to turn the bill into political leverage, aiming to force Congress — and members of his own party — to bow to unrelated demands over voting restrictions and the war with Iran.” [NYT] Not exactly clear how this will play out, since (theoretically) there’s sufficient votes to overcome a presidential veto.
Claims from the WSJ that the cost of homeownership is rising faster than overall inflation, though the sourcing here seems a little thin to me. [WSJ]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released technical findings on the causes of the collapse of a condo building in Surfside, Florida in 2021. Apparently the failure was in large part due to failing to conform to building codes when the structure was built (due to both design and construction errors), which carved away what should have been a substantial safety margin in the loading applied to the building. [NIST]
One issue I worry about with stagnant construction productivity is that without being able to drive down costs by way of technical improvements, builders in a competitive market might be more incentivized to cut costs at the expense of quality. We’ve previously noted that the largest US homebuilders seem to have a rapidly rising rate of construction defects, and that trend seems to be continuing. “D.R. Horton and Lennar, the two biggest builders in the U.S. by total volume, have experienced the biggest surges in potential legal costs. Lennar’s self-insurance reserve, earmarked for liabilities that insurance won’t cover, rose 21% in fiscal 2025 to $336.9 million, according to the company’s annual financial statement. D.R. Horton’s reserves for legal claims, which include expectations for future claims, rose 57% to $1.1 billion from the end of fiscal 2022 to the end of fiscal 2025.” [WSJ]
A provision in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure package requires that any infrastructure funded with federal dollars use US-produced construction materials. “Infrastructure” includes homebuilding, so any homes built or funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development are hit with this requirement, which can dramatically drive up the construction cost of these homes. “Outfitting a 40-unit building with standard imported door sets runs about $67,000. The only American-made equivalent is a hospital-grade product built to keep germs off surfaces in an operating room, and it is priced like one: $546,000. More than eight times the cost, to open and close the same doors…On the Davenport job, the only compliant elevator the team could find cost about $75,000 more than the standard unit. The switchgear and the HVAC told the same story: the American product existed, but only at a premium.” [Substack]
Works in Progress on how smashing NIMBYs created modern capitalism. [Works in Progress] And Works in Progress on how Europe’s housing problems are worse than America’s. [Works in Progress]
The Mexican government wants to build a locally produced, inexpensive EV. [Gizmodo]
An open letter against California’s AB2047, which requires 3D printers to have detection algorithms to prevent the manufacture of firearms. “AB2047 requires every 3D printer sold in California to run a DOJ state-certified “detection algorithm” - a technology that can not reliably exist. If passed, it would pull a tool used in thousands of schools, libraries, labs, and small businesses out from under our communities.” [3D Printing Nerd]
US EV manufacturer Lucid lays off 18% of its workforce, right on the heels of a 12% layoff earlier this year. [CNBC]
On the other end of the spectrum, Chinese EV sales in Europe seem to be surging. “Leapmotor’s sales surged 465.1% in May, while Chery and BYD jumped 244.1% and 136.6%, respectively. Among other manufacturers, Geely and SAIC recorded increases of 12.6% and 13.9%.” [Reuters]
How Slate got the price of its EV truck down to $25,000. [Heatmap] Others have pointed out that despite the hype, this isn’t that much cheaper than an entry level Ford Maverick. [Ford]
SpaceX flew its final Starlink mission of the month aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday morning.
The Starlink 17-40 mission will add another 24 broadband internet satellites to SpaceX’s low Earth orbit constellation. The company has more than 10,700 satellites currently in obit in order to statistics tracked by astronomer and orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East occurred at 9:09 a.m. PDT (12:09 p.m. EDT / 1609 UTC). The rocket flew on a south-southwesterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
SpaceX launched the Starlink 17-40 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1088, making its 17th flight. Previous missions for this booster were NROL-126, Transporter-12, SPHEREx, NROL-57, and 12 Starlink deliveries.
A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1088 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the 206th landing on this vessel and the 630th booster landing to date.
During the first half of 2026, has launched its Falcon 9 rockets a total of 75 times and of those, 59 were in support of its Starlink constellation.
Here’s a breakdown of SpaceX’s Starlink launches per month versus its total for that month:
Up by 4 o’clock and a little to my office. Then comes by agreement Sir W. Warren, and he and I from ship to ship to see deals of all sorts, whereby I have encreased my knowledge and with great pleasure. Then to his yard and house, where I staid two hours or more discoursing of the expense of the navy and the corruption of Sir W. Batten and his man Wood that he brings or would bring to sell all that is to be sold by the Navy.
Then home to the office, where we sat a little, and at noon home to dinner, alone, and thence, it raining hard, by water to the Temple, and so to Lincoln’s Inn, and there walked up and down to see the new garden which they are making, and will be very pretty, and so to walk under the Chappell by agreement, whither Mr. Clerke our Solicitor came to me, and he fetched Mr. Long, our Attorney in the Exchequer in the business against Field, and I directed him to come to the best and speediest composition he could, which he will do. So home on foot, calling upon my brother’s and elsewhere upon business, and so home to my office, and there wrote letters to my father and wife, and so home to bed, taking three pills overnight.
Links for you. Science:
Researchers identify harmless algae behind bloom at Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Out-of-Control Icebergs Are Wreaking Havoc on the Oceans
Military services again requiring recruits to get flu shots as Air Force outbreak grows. In April, Hegseth said the flu shot would be optional for military personnel.
Texas screwworm detections resume after week-long pause
Mushroom Behind ‘Tiny Human’ Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics
Ending respiratory infections: Introducing Intercept, a $500M bet to make respiratory infections like colds and flu a thing of the past.
Is science self-correcting? Not in this Elsevier journal.
Other:
The Big Tent
Don’t Overestimate the Pink Tide
Even Trump Can’t Sell This Crappy Iran Deal
Trump’s Surrender at Versailles
Shorting God
Why did one of the richest industries on Earth need more money?
A Trillion Dollars Isn’t Worth It If You Have to Be Elon Musk
Cyclist arrested at Reflecting Pool is former Olympian who denies vandalism claims
The Committee To Save The World
Federal judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit seeking voter data from Maryland
Daters say AI dependence gives them the ick
Kennedy Center says it isn’t required to seek new programming after judge blocks closure
‘We created a monster’: companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets
How the Trumps seek to expand their real estate empire in Europe
Kennedy Center says it will stay open for now, but is not booking new shows
Judge Rules Blacked.com Can Sue Meta for Scraping Its Porn
Trump Resurrected the Statue of a Slave Owner. Its Pedestal Cost Taxpayers $527K.
Vote Blue No Matter Who Update
Salesforce’s Internal AI Leaderboard Has Teams Competing for Little Trophies
A Most Excellent Victory, Sir
Trump’s New Leak in the Back Reflecting Pool Legend
What Are You Going To Do About It
US Senate passes war powers resolution challenging Trump’s Iran war authority
Sure, Whatever, Man
The Department of Just Trump: An eye-opening conversation with Maya Wiley, the renowned lawyer and civil rights activist, about the president’s plans to contest the midterm elections, his legal assault on nonprofits, and her pressing thoughts on Platnergate.
Why Cities Go Socialist (good, but misses how thier moderate opponents are mediocre)
The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI
MAHA Faces the R.F.K. Rumor Mill
Top Democrat Seems Sour After Mamdani-Backed Candidates Oust House Incumbents
To Bibi or Not to Bibi?
Blackpool Central was the world’s busiest station in 1911. It was the station with the most platforms to close in UK in the Beeching cuts of 1964.
That is from the recent fun book Lancashire: Exploring the Historic County that Made the Modern World, by Chris Moss. And I enjoyed this paragraph:
I’ve never felt or fully understood the alleged tension between Lancashire and Yorkshire. The latter’s residents have good reason to boast, as they do with gusto, even if the ‘God’s own count(r)y’ schtick is wearisome nonsense. Yorkshire is the UK’s largest county. It has three national parks, two national landscapes (the new name for AONBs) and some of the most dramatic stretches of thePennine range. Like Lancashire, it reaches from the hills to the coast. There are fundamental differences. Lancashire is Irish and Atlantic. East Yorkshire is European and North Sea-facing. Yorkshire is Anglican and past tense. Lancashire is Catholic and forward-looking. Lancastrians go in sideways; Yorkshire men, at least, barge in frontally.
I consider this book to be properly subjective.
The post Blackpool fact of the day, observations on northern England appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
1. Can we create more prodigies in the empirical sciences?
3. How did Europe become the world champion of heat deaths?
4. New, The Journal of Economic Freedom.
5. Siena (Houston) fact of the day.
6. John Burn-Murdoch on economic growth (FT). And a chart from the piece.
7. Economist David Holtz is now studying agents at OpenAI.
8. What Dean Ball wants to do.
The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
A child receiving medical aid in dying clearly arouses more repugnance than when an adult accesses MAID. But surely that isn't because we think that a child dying in agony can tolerate it better than an adult. Difficult cases should make everyone think more clearly about their positions.
The NYT has the story:
The Netherlands Records Its First Assisted Death of a Child Between 1 and 12
Physician-assisted death for terminally ill children in that age group has been allowed in the country since 2024. By Claire Moses
" A doctor in the Netherlands assisted in the death of a terminally ill child aged between 1 and 12 for the first time, a Dutch minister told lawmakers.
"Sophie Hermans, the minister of health, welfare and sport, disclosed the death in a letter this week to the Dutch House of Representatives. Assistance in death for children in this age range has been legal under certain rules since 2024.
"She wrote that it had been reported late last year to an expert committee that reviews such cases, and was its first notification for a child between 1 and 12.
"Ms. Hermans’s letter referred to “a termination of life” without giving specifics.
...
"In 2020, the Dutch government announced plans to allow doctors to end the lives of terminally ill children who are under 13 years old. Hugo de Jonge, the health minister at the time, predicted that the rule — which went into effect in 2024 — would facilitate the deaths of about five children a year.
"
Before the rule change, the country already allowed doctors to assist the deaths of people who are over 12 or less than a year old as long as their parents had consented.
...
"In Colombia, assisted death is allowed for children between the ages of 6 and 12, so long as the child understands the concept of death. Belgium also allows children to die with the help of a doctor."
Before getting into links, a few comments on recent events:
Alan Greenspan was clearly one of the greatest Fed chairs, perhaps the greatest. But I evaluate his tenure a bit differently than many other pundits. Here are a few contrarian views:
While Greenspan did a great job producing stable NGDP growth during his tenure (1987-2006), there is no reason to believe that he would have done better than Bernanke during 2008, indeed his public comments about monetary policy during 2008-09 suggest that he was just as off base as the Fed.
On the other hand, Greenspan gets way too much blame for the 2008 financial crisis, which was not caused by “deregulation”, whatever that means. Indeed the regulators were pressing banks to do more high risk lending. If you want more regulation, does that mean you wanted the regulators to press banks harder to make subprime loans? Or are you assuming disinterested, omniscient regulators? The financial crisis was caused by a combination of moral hazard (FDIC and Too-Big-To-Fail) plus tight money. Greenspan’s biggest mistake in this area was the 1998 LTCM rescue, which slightly worsened moral hazard.
Don’t think of 1987-2006 as the “Greenspan era”, think of it as the “NeoKeynesian consensus era.” It wasn’t just the Fed, almost all the major central banks figured out how to do inflation targeting using a Taylor principle-type approach, and this largely explains why other developed countries had the same sort of inflation targeting success as America during this period.
In 1996, Greenspan spoke of “irrational exuberance” in the stock market. Years later, that warning was viewed as a prescient call, even though he was pretty clearly wrong. Stocks were not overvalued in 1996. This is just one of many examples of how human thinking is biased toward finding “bubbles” where they do not in fact exist.
Greenspan’s strongest attribute was his willingness to take seriously the information contained in asset prices.
Posts by Marcus Nunes, Lars Christensen, and Stephen Kirchner have good discussions of Greenspan’s legacy.
As a Milwaukee Bucks fan I cannot help commenting on the recent trade of Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat. Casual fans have begun underrating Giannis in a couple ways. First, he gets blamed for the recent decline of the Bucks, which is actually due to the fact that 10 years of horrible drafting, bad trades, and bad injury luck produced a team lacking in talent. Second, people overestimate how often he’s injured. He only completely missed one playoff due to injury, plus a few isolated playoff games in other years, including the title year (2021.) In his 13 regular seasons, last year was the first time Giannis missed a lot of games, and that was partly due to the team holding him out when healthy in order to tank. He is an injury risk due to his age, size and style of play, but his injury history is not that bad. The amazing 2021 recovery from a severe knee injury right before the finals shows that he’s a quick healer. The betting market agrees with me—pushing Miami up to #5 in title odds (ahead of Denver), and disagrees with casual fans who view him as overrated. He’s clearly still a top 5 player, closer to #1 than #6. This will be the standard view by late November. (Boston understood, offering Jaylen Brown plus two firsts for Giannis.)
Last year, I discussed the fact that mixed race players were increasingly common in the NBA. I noticed that 5 of the top 13 picks in this year’s draft had one black parent and one white parent, including Milwaukee’s two picks (at #10 and #13.)
And now for my links:
The media won’t report this:
Oops, the Economist is part of the media, so I guess the media will report it.
Andrew McCarthy has a good piece on how to think about abuse of power. Hard to excerpt, but the key point is that illegal acts aren’t necessarily impeachable, and impeachable offenses aren’t necessarily illegal.
The US isn’t the only country shooting itself in the foot. Here’s Bloomberg:
China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals in private firms, requiring them to get approval from relevant authorities before embarking on overseas travel.
The government is targeting talent within the AI sphere, including startup founders, researchers, and executives, and adding individuals to the list based on assessments of their critical importance to the country.
The restrictions risk undermining the ability of AI firms in China to recruit and retain talent, and may force engineers with global ambitions to choose between staying home or going abroad earlier in their careers.
What sort of society would actually allow freedom of choice?
Walk into three different bars in Tokyo, and you may have three completely different experiences: one bar thick with cigarette smoke, one with a sealed glass smoking room humming in the corner, and one entirely smoke-free.
Within regulatory boundaries, the choice often lies with both the owner and the customer: Proprietors decide what kind of space they want to run, and patrons decide which environment they prefer.
When I’ve suggested that the US adopt this sort of system, I’m invariably told that it “won’t work”.
Words of wisdom from Matt Yglesias:
I wish labor would reflect more on the reality that almost all of the growth in the United States is happening in right-to-work states.
Some of that is because businesses prefer to invest in right-to-work states. But that’s not all of it. If it were the case that union-friendly labor laws had just devastated the economies of the Pacific Coast and the Northeast, then those states would be cheap. But demand to live in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Maryland and California remains robust. If it were easier to build houses and apartments in those states, more people would live in them. If more people lived in them, a non-zero number of jobs would move with them. More jobs in states with union-friendly labor laws would create more opportunities to organize.
It would also mean much healthier pension situations for the large public-sector unions in those states.
The Bloomberg headline below caught my eye:
US Airlines See Robust Demand Even as Consumer Confidence Falls
Headline should read: US Airlines See Robust Demand Even as Surveyed Consumer Confidence Falls. I see no evidence that actual consumer confidence is falling—shoppers certainly are not acting as if they lack confidence.
Noah Smith reports that Claude is a neoliberal:
AI investor and founder Arram Sabeti recently asked Claude what policies it would enact in order to “fix everything” in America. . . . Claude’s answers were:
1.YIMBYism (upzoning, pro-housing deregulation)
Land Value Tax
Permitting/NEPA reform
Carbon tax and dividend
Repeal the Jones Act
Paying people to donate kidneys
High-skilled immigration
Reciprocal FDA approval agreements between rich countries
Reduce occupational licensing
Ranked-choice voting
This is pretty much just a list of neoliberal hobbyhorses.
A few comments. First, I entirely agree with Claude. Second, at least some of those views (selling kidneys, carbon tax/dividend, etc.) are unpopular.
Have you ever traveled to a strange foreign country where you know nothing about the culture? That’s what happens to everyone if you live long enough. In my email box I saw this headline and subhead from The Free Press:
Tough Love: Will I Get Canceled for Dating a Freshman?
A 22-year-old wants to ask out his 18-year-old classmate but fears campus backlash: ‘They’d label it predatory, and I’d be staring down the barrel of cancellation.’ Our advice columnist weighs in.
I did not read the article. I’d rather go to my grave not knowing what this is all about.
So blue states seem less suicidal:
And yet studies suggest that leftists are less happy. The left reminds me a bit of this quip from Annie Hall:
Life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.
If Matt Yglesias is correct, then he and I comprise fully one third of all humans who have read Capital in the Twenty-First Century, cover to cover:
If you are one of the six people who actually read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” then you’ll know that the primary concern he raises in the book is specifically about this heir question.
Of course Piketty is French, and if a European Bill Gates tried to give $100 billion to charities fighting disease and poverty in Africa, instead of giving the money to his spoiled kids, they’d probably put him in jail. Speaking of which, this item in The Economist caught my attention:
Employment in the sector rose about 6% in 2024, the last year measured, according to Confindustria Nautica, an Italian yachting-industry association. It may yet stay afloat: one broker notes that America, the biggest market, is growing in spite of the oil crisis. Since last July, Uncle Sam considers vessels majority-owned by American firms tax deductible.
Tax deductible? Long time readers know that I have an unhealthy obsession with the idea of using a progressive consumption tax to shrink the size of superyachts by 25%. But even if I’m wrong, should superyacht buyers pay a 0% tax rate on purchases made with before tax income while rowboat purchasers must pay an 8% sales tax with purchases made using after-tax income?
Here’s The Economist:
This symbiosis between life insurers, reinsurers and private-asset managers (which these days often own or work closely with the other two) is dubbed the “Bermuda triangle”, after the Caribbean jurisdiction where it has blossomed.
I suppose “Bermuda” does sound a bit Caribbean. How about renaming the island Prospero, to avoid confusion? Rich countries should have rich sounding names (think Luxembourg and the UAE), and of course there’s a theory that The Tempest was loosely based on a shipwreck in Bermuda.
Or perhaps East Carolina?
12. This tweet caught my eye:
It’s worth mentioning that Orange County (southeastern area on the map) is far better governed than LA County. You notice the difference immediately when crossing into LA County (Long Beach) on the 405.
Utopia is living in a politically purple part of coastal California. (Unfortunately, the OC is more boring than LA—not for young people.)
The Economist has an eye-opening graph, especially given that Texas is a conservative oil and gas state:
A new paper by Xiwen Bai, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Yiliang Li, and Francesco Zanetti has this abstract:
We study how global supply chain disruptions affect monetary policy transmission. Post-pandemic evidence indicates surging transportation costs, goods-market imbalances, and rising prices. We develop a model in which logistical bottlenecks (upstream slack coexisting with downstream shortages) steepen the aggregate supply curve. This convexity amplifies price responses to monetary policy while dampening output effects. Threshold VAR and Local Projection estimates are consistent with this mechanism: during disruptions, contractionary policy reduces prices more at smaller output cost, easing the stabilization trade-off.
This makes sense, although I’d focus on the role of labor markets. The fact that there was a labor shortage in 2022-23 made it easier to bring down inflation with a more contractionary monetary policy. If a labor market goes from normal to weak you tend to get a recession. Going from overheated to normal doesn’t necessarily trigger a recession.
Matt Yglesias has a good analysis of the horseshoe theory of politics:
One is temperamental. Most people who work in politics have a kind of mainstream disposition. They probably have a few opinions that are way outside the consensus, but those opinions aren’t strongly held or aren’t about things that they feel passionately about. Their general approach to life is to try to make incremental progress on relatively mainstream issues. Extremists aren’t like that — they have an oppositional attitude toward authority and end up having that in common with each other.
Another is negative polarization. There are two kinds of people who really, deeply, and profoundly hate Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries: Republicans, and people on the far-left. This ends up being something that they have in common with each other. Pair a far-leftist up with someone from the far-right who hates mainstream Republican Party leaders and they end up having enemies in common, which is a good way to start making friends.
A third is ideological. There is a “liberal center” to American politics that believes, fundamentally, in a positive-sum cooperative world. Then there are illiberal zero-sum tendencies floating around that tend to sort themselves on the basis of whether they blame foreigners for everything or whether they blame rich people for everything, but they have that zero-sumness in common. And of course many things — like trade — implicate both foreigners and rich people.
We frequently read about China’s massive military build-up and Europe’s pathetically low levels of spending. Thus, you may be surprised to learn that China’s military spending has fallen below 2% of GDP at a time when the EU’s military spending is up to 2.1% of GDP, and is still rising.
The two regions have roughly equal size economies, although China’s is larger in PPP terms.
Very good news from the FT:
Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10mn people, delivering a surprise defeat to a rightwing initiative that had appeared neck and neck in opinion polls until just days before the vote.
Projections on Sunday showed the initiative losing by roughly 54 per cent to 46 per cent, a significantly stronger result for opponents than suggested by recent polls, which had indicated a tight race in the final days of the campaign.
The proposal, backed by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), would have made Switzerland the first country to impose a formal cap on its population. It sought to limit the number of residents to 10mn, from about 9.1mn today, and would have required the government to take measures to curb population growth once the population reached 9.5mn.
Iran War analysis from Noah Smith:
Before the war, Iran didn’t control the strait, simply because it didn’t realize it could. Drone technology had advanced to the point where Iran was able to shut down Hormuz, but Iran didn’t know that until the U.S. attack forced it to try the risky and desperate move of actually shutting down the strait. The gambit paid off spectacularly, and now Iran knows that modern drone weaponry gives it an advantage it didn’t have in previous decades. So it controls Hormuz.
It’s kind of wild to step back and consider how good of a position Iran’s leaders are in now, compared to the situation before the war. Iran had lost most of its proxy armies in the Middle East — Hezbollah, Assad, most of Hamas. The regime had been rocked by massive nationwide protests, which it only managed to quell by murdering tens of thousands of innocent Iranian citizens. The country’s economy was slowly dying. Now the leaders are firmly entrenched in power, their economy will be revived, and they find themselves the masters of Hormuz for the first time.
. . . A final silver lining is that the U.S. may step back from the Middle East in general, as I’ve long been urging.
And from Matt Yglesias, you can’t make this up.
Jessica Riedl has an excellent piece explaining why AI is unlikely to solve our budget problems:
Unfortunately, like all the other "easy solutions" to budget deficits, AI is highly unlikely to produce the trillions of dollars in annual fiscal savings necessary to avert the hard decisions. Betting America's fiscal future on AI is wishful thinking.
The job impact of AI is overrated:
Two main economic concepts apply to the rise of AI in the legal industry: the lump of labor fallacy and the Jevons paradox.
The lump of labor fallacy is the mistaken belief that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the economy. Under this view, if AI eliminates a category of tasks, the people who did those tasks are simply left without work. History tells a different story. Many of the ten most common jobs from the early 20th century no longer exist in any recognizable form. Yet employment has expanded dramatically. Many of the jobs that exist now, including roles like AI data scientist or prompt engineer, didn’t exist then because the conditions that created them hadn’t yet arrived. Every major technological shift ultimately results in a larger total number of jobs, even when it disrupts specific roles.
Meanwhile, the Jevons paradox states that when something becomes cheaper and more efficient to use, total consumption of it tends to increase, not decrease. The original example involved coal. As steam engines became more efficient, requiring less coal to operate, there was a widespread expectation that coal consumption would decrease. Instead, it multiplied. Cheaper engines led to more engines being used in more places.
No idea what this means, but FWIW:
Works in Progress is full of great articles. One of them describes Spain’s successful urbanism (until recently):
For the price of one mile of the New York’s Second Avenue Subway extension, Spanish builders covered the entire 35-mile 1995–1999 expansion of the Madrid Metro.
Adrian Wooldridge on Swedish reforms:
A succession of neoliberal governments re-engineered the model from top to bottom. Sweden reduced its public spending as a proportion of GDP, cut the top marginal tax rate radically and dismantled taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. It introduced a universal system of school vouchers, invited private schools to compete with public, allowed private companies to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly and donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy, keeping a downward pressure on debt and deficit, and swapping a retirement system with defined benefits for one with defined contributions while making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy. All more Milton Friedman than Bernie Sanders.
A sentence I never expected to read:
Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gay face up to a year in county jail.
Oscar Wilde would have had something clever to say about that.
From the FT:
Russia has accused the US of abandoning efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine after Donald Trump appeared to be shifting again in favour of Kyiv.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said the US was “seemingly stepping back from the role of an objective mediator” in the war and had “forgotten” about Trump’s own statements last year inching towards Moscow’s position.
Instead, Trump was “hugely impressed and enthusiastic” about Ukraine’s recent campaign of long-range strikes on targets deep inside Russia at last week’s G7 summit, said two people briefed on the private discussions among the leaders. Trump at that summit also agreed to increase sanctions on Russian energy.
Trump values strength and the Ukraine is getting stronger. Ethics? Not so much.
Most people I speak with believe that saving Social Security will require a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts. It would seem that those “most people” come from a rather unrepresentative group, perhaps 5% of the population:
It is not just Washington inertia that makes reforms tough. In polling conducted by YouGov for The Economist, 71% of respondents believe Social Security spending should be increased, more than for any other category of government spending. In the same poll, 45% say it should be increased a lot. The proportion who wish it to be reduced is just 5%, slightly less than the share of Americans who believe that covid-19 vaccinations were used to microchip the population.
Only 5%? Now suppose you asked people if they favored raising taxes. How many would say yes? Suppose you asked people how many favored allowing Social Security to go bankrupt. How many would say yes? Would the three options add to 100%?
Or is a better interpretation of the data that there is no such a thing as public opinion.
Why is Matt Yglesias my favorite center left pundit? In back-to-back tweets he nails the essence of what’s going on. First this:
Chicago’s left already staged a successful insurgency, but the incumbent left-wing mayor who led the successful insurgency is an unpopular failure so people don’t talk about him anymore.
Question is whether the reformist counterinsurgency will spread from SF to the Windy City.
And then this:
There’s been an interesting trajectory since Bernie’s 2015 era pitch that “democratic socialism” meant “policy like Denmark” to the current situation where left policy proposals look nothing like actual Danish tax policy.
We’ve gone from “be more like Denmark” to “be more like Venezuela”. At the same time, the right has gone from “be more like Switzerland” to “be more like Hungary”.
I generally agree with “The Unpopulist”, but not this time:
Court packing is authoritarianism.
I refuse to insult the Turkish people by calling their country “Türkiye”. Only banana republics insist on foreigners calling their country by the local name. It’s a sign of weakness and insecurity. You don’t see residents of places like Germany, Spain and China insisting that we call their country Deutschland, España and Zhōngguó.
Just one more reason (out of dozens) why JD Vance should never be president.
What would you say if someone invited you to this Orange County restaurant?
No . . . ?
Wednesday night, after President Donald J. Trump refused to sign a landmark bipartisan housing bill into law and melted down at a midday lunch at which he shouted at senators, Senate Republicans appeared to try to mollify him by voting against advancing a war powers resolution the Senate passed the day before.
The Republican senators’ apology for their brief flash of independence was not enough for House MAGA loyalists. Trump said he would not sign any more legislation until the Senate passed the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE or SAVE America Act, to limit voting before the 2026 election. According to Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), members of the far-right Freedom Caucus said that if Trump wasn’t going to sign any measures into law, there was no reason to debate any more. They voted against procedural measures to enable the House to conduct business. Unable to accomplish anything, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent House members home on Thursday.
Stansbury noted: “[N]obody has ever seen a Congress like this before. It is truly a bizarre time here in Washington, DC…. This is not good. This is not good for our country. It is not good for our communities. It’s not good for our democracy. It’s not good, just for basic common sense and basic human dignity. Like, these guys need to get it together.”
The turmoil in Washington, D.C., reflects the changing world of American politics as the Republicans become a far-right party that embraces white nationalism while those Americans standing firm on the nation’s historic democratic principles jockey to create a political system that will represent their movement.
On June 25 the Supreme Court allowed Trump and his administration to end the legal status of more than 350,000 people who are in the United States under temporary protected status, or TPS, after fleeing wars and violence in Syria and Haiti. The six right-wing justices cited procedural reasons for their decision, but Trump loyalists read it as an endorsement of their white nationalism.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “This country doesn’t have a future if we don’t end birthright citizenship…. One way or another, this nation has to end birthright citizenship.”
Yesterday, at a Faith and Freedom Coalition town hall in Washington, D.C., Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), the third-ranking Republican in the House, made the white nationalism of the Republican Party clear. He said: “Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe…. You know what? I would argue that I never did care, but I’m done being careful, even the least bit careful…. [Somalis] don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
Eric Henderson of CBS News notes that Emmer has moved dramatically rightward in the past decade. In 2016, Emmer told NPR that the Somali community in Minnesota was among “the fastest-assimilating populations that we’ve had.” “I’m going to say it out loud,” he said, “when you move to a community, as long as you are here legally, I am very sorry, but you don’t get to slam the gate behind you and tell nobody else that they’re welcome. That’s not the way this country works.”
The once grand Republican Party has become a party of radical extremists, coalescing around white nationalism.
Meanwhile, voters in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in New York rejected two established Democrats in favor of newcomers with more progressive policies. In response, as Isaac Arnsdorf and Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported, Trump is trying out midterm messaging that calls Democrats “hard core, godless communists.” “They’re animals,” Trump said of his political opponents today in a speech to Christian conservatives at a convention of the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington. “We have to stop this, this horrible thread of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”
Trump’s rhetoric shows just how far to the right American politics have slid.
Communism is a political ideology that calls for public ownership of major resources as well as the means of production, so that the state, rather than private individuals or corporations, owns factories, farms, mines, and so on. In theory, although seldom in practice, the state then redistributes wealth according to need.
Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.
Unlike communism, the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced from 1933 to 1981 was very popular, and those opposed to the Trump administration appear to be starting to demand such a government again.
Their views are a response to the extremes of wealth in today’s United States. Mary Cunningham of CBS News reported in January that the third quarter of 2025 showed the top 1% of households in the U.S. owning 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. That’s the highest share they’ve had since the Federal Reserve started tracking household wealth in 1989. That means the wealthiest 1% held roughly as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion.
At the same time, according to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, fewer than half of Americans say they can afford health care. Since the Republicans cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds in last July’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 4.7 million Americans have lost food assistance, about 11% of those previously enrolled in the program.
“People are really unhappy,” former senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is running for the Senate seat J.D. Vance vacated when he became vice president, told Scott MacFarlane of MacFarlane News today. “They believe the system’s rigged. They see corporations making more and more money,… corporate executives taking more and more of those dollars for themselves, stock buybacks, bonuses, compensation of all kinds. They know they’re working harder than ever…and they know that…more money’s going out than coming in.”
A Brennan Center survey released in early June showed that 92% of Americans worry about corruption in government. That number includes 90% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats, and 93% of Independents. Seventy-nine percent of those polled want a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections. Sixty-six percent of Americans think the government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care versus 33% who say it does not.
The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality through regulation and taxation, and operates the segments of society that people need to survive, like transportation, utilities, and health care.
Across the country we are seeing Democratic candidates calling for an end to government corruption; the breaking up of monopolies that hurt workers, farmers, and consumers and shut entrepreneurs out of markets; protection for workers and consumers; universal health care; and an end to big money in politics. These policy demands are not radical; they are firmly within the political tradition not just of the Democrats, but also of the Republicans.
In 1956 the Republican Party platform approvingly quoted “the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln” that “[t]he legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”
The platform went on to affirm the party’s determination “that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.”
It called for “unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government.” Honesty was “an indispensable requirement of public service,” party officials said.
The Republicans of 1956 also said they were “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance—improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”
They called for helping foreign countries strengthen their economies and supported “U.S. participation in an international fund for economic development.” “We shall continue,” they said, “vigorously to support the United Nations” and to maintain U.S. military strength “as a deterrent to aggression and as a guardian of the peace…for these objectives only.”
Then the Republican Party platform addressed the needs of workers. Quoting President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it said: “Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.”
The platform noted that Republicans had worked to raise the minimum wage and to expand Social Security and unemployment, workers’ compensation, and retirement benefits. They supported the growth of labor unions, and collective bargaining.
They would, they said, “continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will: [s]timulate improved job safety of our workers; [c]ontinue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;...improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;...[a]ssure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;” extend minimum wage laws; [c]ontinue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;” and “[p]rovide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment.”
“The Republican Party believes that the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people is as important as their economic health,” the platform said. “It will continue to support this conviction with vigorous action.”
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/supreme-court-temporary-protected-status-ruling-00975658
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-three-decades-federal-reserve/
https://abcnews.com/Health/fewer-half-americans-afford-healthcare-gallup/story?id=133967735
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/us/politics/trump-intel-steel-minerals-china.html
Facebook:
Bluesky:
atrupar.com/post/3mp53ucsqms26
In conjunction with OpenAI, here is a short piece by me on how to use GPT Pro for travel and a few other matters. Excerpt:
6. Learn what to look for in an art museum
I’m visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts. Which pictures in particular should I be looking for, and what is some useful context for viewing them?
Why was this chat valuable? “After two visits in three days, I would second the advice I got from this chat.”
Here is the link to the answer. And know when to ask it to read the local newspapers for you, to learn about a place.
There are some good photos in the piece, including some hitherto unpublished photos of Spinoza.
The post An infovore shares his chats appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Joanne Paul is a historian at the University of Sussex, author, and a go-to Tudor expert on YouTube. She tells Tyler she’s drawn to the 16th century because it sits between the medieval and the modern, and because its paths not taken are a way of asking whether our own world had to turn out this way. Her biography Thomas More: A Life takes its subject in that spirit, refusing to reduce More to either martyr or monster.
Tyler and Joanne discuss how More influenced Erasmus, what to make of Utopia, why fear drove More’s persecution of heretics, how Holbein’s portraits of More and Cromwell differ, what movie depictions get wrong about More, how his execution was viewed at the time, how the Tudor period paved the way for Shakespeare and the scientific revolution, the surprising social mobility of the period, how the City of London governed itself and where that clashed with the Crown, Joanne’s upbringing in Canada and what drew her to English history, what she thinks sits beneath a lot of Britain’s current stagnation, the subject of her next book, and much more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: As you point out in the book, and you’re well aware, he oversaw the persecution of heretics. He oversaw torture. He was misogynistic when he wrote about women. Was he just a bad guy? Is that the correct picture of More, or am I supposed to admire him? He took a stand on principle, and he died, but what was the principle, really? To defend Catholicism, which then was also an instrument of torture?
PAUL: As a historian, I take one of my principles as to not try to put people into a box of good or evil.
COWEN: I’m not a historian. Should I just dislike him?
PAUL: No, I think you should be interested in these contradictions. I think you should be interested in the complexity that is the human experience. I think we should ask questions about why someone who is clearly very educated, clearly very intelligent, clearly very worldly in many ways, has also these beliefs that we rightly and should condemn. With Thomas More, I think he comes to these beliefs out of a place of fear. I think that’s something that we should take note of. He was afraid of what he would consider the Lutheran heresy. He was afraid of how it would lead to the breakdown of his society, and he was convinced by those people who held that to be the case.
I think that there are important lessons in that for us today, the way that we can become convinced that a group will lead to the breakdown of our society, that fear can lead to that hatred and indeed that violence. I think that’s an important lesson. If we just reject, oh, he was bad, then I don’t think we understand the way in which someone like Thomas More can become convinced that way. In terms of his role in opposing heresy, yes, he advocated for the persecution of heretics. He thought it was right and just that they were burned at the stake. I think that at times his role in that has been overstated, and I think we just need to understand what it was in historical reality.
He imprisoned heretics. He interrogated them. We don’t know if he tortured them. That was something he was accused of at the time. He said he didn’t. I don’t know that we’ll ever find evidence either way on that. There were three cases that he oversaw as Lord Chancellor of those who were burned at the stake. I only say that because I see on social media and the like and people presenting me with the suggestion that hundreds were put to the flames by Thomas More personally. I just think we have to understand what it is that we are actually talking about.
And:
COWEN: What precursors of the scientific revolution do you see, other than education? That’s coming in the 17th century. Is there more emphasis on calculation or measurement or accounting? What are the roots in the Tudor period?
PAUL: A lot of that comes from the Renaissance, as indeed humanism does. There’s this reintroduction of a lot of classical texts, an advocacy for reading these classical texts, particularly Greek texts and learning Greek. A lot of it is coming from an engagement with Greek mathematics and science. The other thing, and this is something I really emphasize when I’m teaching the scientific revolution with my students, is that we have to remember that the scientific revolution isn’t this grand triumph of science over religion or mysticism or what have you, that these two things very much go hand in hand through the 16th and into the 17th century.
The scientific method, for instance, comes from alchemy, which we might think of as an occult science. The methodology for scientific experimentation comes out of this desire to find the philosopher’s stone. Someone like John Dee is this polymath, as well as this occultist, Francis Bacon, has his interests in these sort of mystical elements as well. The growth and interest in what we might think of as mystical texts, a lot of them having to do with Judaism, as well as these Greek texts, comes together to form, I think, something that looks like the foundations of the scientific revolution.
A good episode with many points of interest. And I enjoyed Joanne’s recent book Thomas More: A Life.
The post My Conversation with Joanne Paul appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Om died two days ago, after a long battle against a bum heart.
Om and I often sat next to each other at Apple keynotes. This was not at all surprising or odd, insofar as we’d been friends for 20 years. Folks at Apple PR knew that we were close, and would often pair us together in post-keynote media briefings. I always enjoyed being paired with him. He asked keen questions. He saw through bullshit. He found holes in arguments. He took everything in. When I felt overwhelmed, he seemed serene. Om always seemed serene, period. His own photography reflects his presence.
Also, he was funny and fun. Profoundly generous. A good person to be around. A great person to know and be known by. He knew everyone and everyone knew Om. A lot of the people I know in this racket, I know through Om. Every time he’d introduce me to someone, he’d embarrass me with praise for my work. He greeted everyone with a compliment and whatever he said, he meant it. He had kind words to offer everyone because he had a gift for recognizing good things about everyone. He didn’t have an insincere bone in his body, which made him intensely lovable as a friend, and fiercely acerbic and accurate as a critic of technology. “He did not mince words” and “Everyone loved him” do not usually apply to the same person. They did with Om.
He was, of course, a Yankees fan.
So, no, it was not odd that he and I gravitated toward each other at Apple events. But the fact that Om continued to be invited to these events, with a media badge, was in fact unusual. He had stepped away from day-to-day journalism and became an investor back in 2014. A decade later, he was still on the short list of top invitees to events at Apple. His reputation warranted that respect. His ongoing writing and analysis — right up until the very end — continued to earn it. So of course Om continued to be invited to, and attend, these events. He was Om Fucking Malik. His presence improved any room, and lifted everyone’s mood. He made grumps smile. You couldn’t help it.
When he stepped aside from his namesake website GigaOm in 2014, Om wrote:
“Now it is time for the next chapter,” wrote Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees shortstop and my 2nd favorite Yankee (behind Bernie Williams), sharing his intention to retire at the end of 2014. “I have new dreams and aspirations and new challenges. And I want the ability to move at my own pace, see the world and finally have a summer vacation.”
I relate to Jeter’s desire to find life outside of work. Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news.
It is a unique type of addiction that only a few can understand, and it is time for me to opt out of this non-stop news life. After five years as a “venture partner,” I am joining True Ventures as a partner, and thus bringing an end to my life as a professional journalist.
Om, somehow, went straight from new-media wunderkind to éminence grise of tech journalism. Back when he was blogging, he blogged hard — multiple breaking-news posts per day, every day, while he was working as an acclaimed reporter for Business 2.0, Forbes, and Red Herring. That’s not what he did for the latter half of his career at all. He began changing his pace and perspective after suffering a heart attack in 2008, at the age of 42. He knew what he wanted to change, he told us he was going to change it, and then he did it. Thinking about his career transformation brings to mind the great Donald Knuth’s remarks regarding email:
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.
What email is to Knuth, the 24-hour news cycle was to Om. He’d had enough, and recognized it. He no longer wanted to be on top of things. He wanted to be on the bottom of things. He transformed himself from the bloggiest of quick-trigger bloggers into the most thoughtful of essayists. He went from documenting what was happening, as it happened, to explaining why. He was very, very good at that — he saw things through a singular perspective and expressed his thoughts with a singular voice.
Om was never impressed by who someone was, what they’d previously accomplished, what grand wealth they’d garnered, or stature they’d achieved. It’s human nature to be overwhelmed by awe in the presence of great people. Om was not. To impress Om, you needed to deliver impressive new work. He was impervious to riptides of hype. Those are superpowers in this racket.
I texted him on June 1 to coordinate meeting up at WWDC the next week. That’s when he filled me in that he’d been hospitalized in the ICU at Stanford since mid-April, and the situation was dire. He needed a heart transplant or he wouldn’t live. I knew he’d been dealing with health issues in recent years, but I had no idea it had become so acute. We’d been chatting regularly for weeks — largely because he’d been so prolific of late, on topics exactly aligned with my own recent attention. He’d been doing some of the best writing and analysis of his career this year — but for the last few weeks, unbeknownst to me, and most of the world, that writing was from a bed in the ICU.1 This is going to sound cornier than a bucket of Jiffy-Pop, but it is a profound irony that a man with such a big and beautiful figurative heart could have such a lousy literal one.
I apologized for calling out his website in my “What Is a Dickover?” interactive essay, which I hadn’t warned him about, and had posted just three days before he told me of his medical plight. He told me not to worry, I was right, it was annoying, and he’d fix it. I didn’t think he’d get to that. But I checked today, and it’s gone.
Om didn’t keep his health crisis secret, per se. He kept it private. That was very Om. He was generous and effusive, often ebullient, always intense. But he was, in many ways, inscrutable. Private. Contemplative. Comfortable with himself, and by himself. I’ve never met anyone like Om Malik. They broke that mold after minting one.
I seldom ask anyone for professional advice, but when I did, I often asked Om. We did not do exactly the same thing, he and I, but we did close to the same thing. He understood what I do — or at least, what I try to do here — in a way that few others could. Among those of us who came of age in the first decade of blogging, who aspired to make it a career, the common route was to go from independent blogging to a salaried byline at an established big-name publication with roots in print as a magazine or newspaper. Om went the other way — from acclaimed reporter in top-shelf print magazines to turning GigaOm into a phenomenon. I never saw Daring Fireball as a stepping stone to greater things. I wanted only to make Daring Fireball a great thing. Om recognized that. In one of my earliest memories of meeting him — I think when I was working at Joyent, circa 2006 — we discussed publishing and new media and my own ambitions. He told me I should just keep doing what I was doing. Establishment media was a bloated slow-moving mess, he said. The future, he was absolutely certain, would be controlled by creators building their own brands and reputations, not subserving a legacy media publication. I told him I had no such plan. He said, “Good. You don’t need them. They need you.”
Om loved good coffee, nice watches, exotic pens, Apple products, the media industry, photography (both the art and the gadgetry), and the New York Yankees. So, yeah — he and I always had more to talk about than time to talk when we were together. Always. But it was the Yankees we talked about most. He loved about the Yankees what I love about the Yankees — that they embody the pursuit of excellence. Not just winning, but winning the right way. The Yankees play in Yankee Stadium, not Shitco Cellular Service & Financial Bank Park. He got angry about the Yankees by what gets me angry about them. Not when they merely lose. That’s baseball. But when they get cheap, or stupid, or both. (You did not want to get Om started on Hal Steinbrenner, who is definitely cheap and possibly stupid.)
We attended a handful of games together at the Stadium. One time, he told me the most amazing story. When he first immigrated to New York in 1993, and was hustling to make a career in journalism in the U.S., he supported himself with a job selling luggage across the street from (old) Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. If you’ve ever been to New York, you know those stores. He worked at one. He didn’t know anyone in New York, let alone anyone in the U.S. business or technology news media. And he didn’t know a damn thing about baseball. So, on many days, he’d work all day and into the early evening, and then go across the street and buy a cheap seat in the upper deck and watch the Yankees. You’re never alone in a stadium. He learned baseball, and he fell in love with the Yankees on the cusp of the remarkable Jeter-Rivera-Pettitte-Posada dynasty. Om’s favorite player of that era was the serene Bernie Williams, of course. (Mine was Paul O’Neill, the hothead. Of course.)
I said, “I’ve always wondered about those stores. There’s so many of them. Does anyone actually buy luggage at those places?”
“John, you would be surprised. But they do not sell themselves. You have to sell them. It is hard work. The people who buy suitcases in those stores buy them there because they want to argue about prices. It is a fight every day.”
In Om’s telling, the threads were all infused. His lonesome isolation as a young immigrant, 7,000 miles from his birthplace. Falling in love with baseball (in general) and the Yankees (in particular) at just the right time — a crash course in American culture and an antidote to loneliness, rolled into one pinstriped package. His burning ambition to break into major U.S. journalism. And the daily humbling grind of selling suitcases on the hot summer sidewalks of the Bronx.
Om didn’t sell suitcases for long. But I’ll bet while he did, he was pretty fucking good at it. He didn’t wait for his future to arrive. He made it happen. Careers — hell, our entire lives — are like those suitcases. They don’t sell themselves.
He not busy being born is busy dying, wrote Dylan. Om Malik wasn’t busy dying even when he was dying.
I will forever be thankful that, somehow, I had the inkling to tell Om how good his recent writing was, before he told me his health was in such dire straits. Don’t hold back on telling people they made something you love or admire. Om himself was remarkably generous in that regard. ↩︎
Reed Albergotti and Ben Smith, reporting last night for Semaphor:
The decision, in a letter sent Friday afternoon to Anthropic, is a major de-escalation in the confrontation between the Trump Administration and one of the world’s most valuable private companies. Two weeks ago the administration imposed export controls on Mythos, leading to a shut down of the model and its cousin Fable 5 after warnings from Amazon and other companies that they could be “jailbroken” for malicious purposes.
The letter is silent on Fable 5, a weaker version of Mythos that was briefly the most powerful AI model widely available to consumers. People close to the talks said they are moving toward releasing Fable as well, though that timeline is unclear. [...]
Lutnick’s letter marks the beginnings of a new regulatory regime that gives the US government control over the release of frontier AI models.
A completely ad hoc policy of “Whatever the White House says, goes” is the makings of a terrible regulatory framework for AI. This would be true no matter who was president at the moment. But it’s particularly disastrous for this administration, which is both utterly transactional and staffed from top to bottom with anti-science know-nothings confident that their “ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.
Howard Lutnick is making these determinations? I mean come on.
OpenAI yesterday:
We’re beginning a limited preview of the GPT‑5.6 series: Sol, our flagship model; Terra, a balanced model for everyday work; and Luna, a fast and affordable model. Terra has competitive performance to GPT‑5.5 while being 2× cheaper and Luna brings strong capability at our lowest cost.
GPT‑5.6 Sol launches with our most robust safety stack to date. We strengthened protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber requests, and repeated misuse, and spent multiple weeks finding weaknesses, pressure-testing our system, and hardening it against real-world attacks.
We believe in broad access, and we plan to make GPT‑5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna generally available in the coming weeks. As part of our ongoing engagement with the U.S. government, we previewed our plans and the models’ capabilities ahead of today’s launch. At their request, we are starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners whose participation has been shared with the government, before releasing more broadly.
Stephanie Palazzolo, reporting for The Information (and posted to X) regarding an internal Q&A hosted by CEO Sam Altman:
The reason for the staggered release, Altman explained: The federal government asked it to do so. Altman said that this was the best path for widely releasing the model as soon as possible, said one of the people. In a Thursday memo, Altman told staff that the government would be “approving access customer by customer during this preview period” for GPT 5.6. He added that he hoped there would be a more general release a “couple of weeks later” if all went well. [...]
Even so, after OpenAI had shared its plans for the limited release with top government officials earlier this week, Altman still received a call from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick cautioning the company against launching without receiving approvals from other agencies, according to a person familiar with the call.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the U.S. government should have regulatory approval over frontier AI models. It’s absurd to think this should be run by an apparatchik with zero AI expertise like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
AI regulation should be thoughtful, measured, consistent, objective, and deeply informed. It should not be impulsive, impetuous, petty, uninformed, subjective, inconsistent, and transactional. The latter, however, is what we’re getting.
Why is the Cigar Galaxy billowing red smoke?
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week to promote Auth.md, their new open protocol for AI agent registration. (Who’d have thunk that I’d be getting paid to promote new uses for Markdown 22 years after releasing it?)
Sign-up forms were built for humans in browsers, so how do AI agents programmatically register with services? That’s the question Auth.md aims to answer. It’s a single Markdown file you host at your domain that tells agents how to register your users, which flows you support, what scopes you expose, and how credentials get issued. It’s like robots.txt but for agent registration.
Cloudflare, Firecrawl, and Resend have already adopted it.
An open protocol authored by WorkOS. Read the spec.
Market Design
