Category: Travel

The new UAPs report

You will find it here, 45 pp. of text plus lots of footnotes.  Overall it is a nothing burger.  You’ll find plenty of (justifiable) claims that there are no dead bodies, no alien spacecraft have been recovered, no technology is being reverse engineered, there is nothing to Roswell, and so on.  Here is from the executive summary:

AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.

That is certainly true.  What you won’t find in this report is any mention of Nimitz, Gimbal, or any of the other more puzzling cases about observed objects — on multiple sensors with independent verifications — that defy current explanation.  No real discussion of the more serious pilot eyewitness reports (and no, these pilots are not saying they saw aliens, they are reporting they cannot explain what they saw).  On p.26 you will find the concession: “A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics.  AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings.  AARO’s research continues on these cases.

So overall there is no reason to revise whatever your current views might be, at least provided those views were not the crazy ones in the first place.  If anything, perhaps you should do a slight Bayesian update toward believing in a real puzzle, given that in a 45 pp. report the government is not willing to directly explain or even confront the most anomalous cases.

But does he care about on-time performance?

While the 17-year-old does indeed live on trains, he does so entirely legally. And with a surprising amount of comfort.

Lasse travels 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He travels first class, sleeps on night trains, has breakfast in DB lounges and takes showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres, all using his unlimited annual railcard.

The self-employed coder technically has no fixed abode and appears to really enjoy his unusual way of life, something which he chronicles regularly on his blog, Life on the Train.

Here is the full story, via John McLennan.  It costs him about ten thousand euros a year.  And he reports:

‘My favourite route leads through the Middle Rhine Valley between Mainz and Bonn. Here the trains always travel very slowly along the river. It’s a beautifully picturesque route that stretches at the foot of the vineyards. The view outside is wonderful.’

I can second that judgment.

Is a $600 a night hotel room better?

Lucy Huber and Alex T. debate that question, and they both seem pretty skeptical.  (I am surprised to see Alex’s view, I might add.)  I would not pay that much for a room, but sometimes when I am invited to events I end up staying in places that I suspect are in that price range, or higher.  I think they have a few big advantages:

1. Location, location, location.  What is a good beach hotel in Miami or Miami Beach these days?  I’m not sure, I don’t even love the beach.  But many people do — the Four Seasons room down there is going for over $1300 a night.  (It is odd to me to pick on $600 a night — in some places that is cheap!)  The best locations in London and Paris are expensive too.  If you have some business appointments, and only two days in Paris, is it so crazy to shell out such money to stay right where you want, so you can sneak into the Louvre during a break?

2. Concierge tickets.  At a very good hotel, the concierge can get you all sorts of reservations and tickets that otherwise would not be available.

3. Swimming pool.  It might be heated, or much better.  The on-site shops can be much better too, which matters for people with less flexible time budgets than mine.  Gyms I find do not vary so much in actual practical quality, though they vary a great deal in attractiveness and general mood.

4. They might have much better business and conference facilities, noting that some very expensive hotels don’t have those at all.

4. The hotel restaurants will be much better (and more expensive of course).  Much better breakfast too, and that is the meal you are least likely to eat out.

5. Some hotels are marvelous architectural landmarks.  I was very impressed by the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah when I visited.  I had only a meal and a tea there, both expensive but worth it.  Google claims “prices from $1,330,” for a room that is, but I suspect the variance of actual price is pretty high.  In any case it ain’t cheap.

6. The beds are more comfortable and the rooms are bigger.

7. The WiFi is less likely to go out, or if there is a problem you will get help more quickly.

8. In Malta only a few hotels have wonderful views.  I wonder what they cost.

So it’s not just status, you genuinely get a lot more for your money.  If you can afford it and have those priorities, that is.

I do, however, have two gripes about very expensive hotels.  First, the staff can be overly solicitous.  The worst version of this is when they want to knock on your door or call you too many times to see how things are going.  I also don’t like how they sometimes reorganize your things, in addition to cleaning up the room.  Do I really need my shoes to be put into the closet?  Second, sometimes the tech-laden shower and room lighting systems are so complicated I find them difficult to operate.  Boo hoo!  Not even a first world problem.  But in those cases perhaps the $400 a night hotel would have been better.

What should I ask Fareed Zakaria?

Here is Fareed’s home page, here is Wikipedia:

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria…is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly paid column for The Washington Post. He has been a columnist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International, and an editor at large of Time.

He was managing editor of Foreign Affairs at age 28, briefly a wine columnist for Slate, and much more.  His new book Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present is very classically liberal, and in my terms “Progress Studies”-oriented.

So what should I ask him?

My Conversation with the excellent Ami Vitale

Here is the audio, visual, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

Ami Vitale is a renowned National Geographic photographer and documentarian with a deep commitment to wildlife conservation and environmental education. Her work, spanning over a hundred countries, includes spending a decade as a conflict photographer in places like Kosovo, Gaza, and Kashmir.

She joined Tyler to discuss why we should stay scary to pandas, whether we should bring back extinct species, the success of Kenyan wildlife management, the mental cost of a decade photographing war, what she thinks of the transition from film to digital, the ethical issues raised by Afghan Girl, the future of National Geographic, the heuristic guiding of where she’ll travel next, what she looks for in a young photographer,  her next project, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: As you probably know, there’s a long-standing and recurring set of debates between animal welfare advocates and environmentalists. The animal welfare advocates typically have less sympathy for the predators because they, in turn, kill other animals. The environmentalists are more likely to think we should, in some way, leave nature alone as much as possible. Where do you stand on that debate?

VITALE: It depends. It’s hard to make a general sweeping statement on this because in some cases, I think that we do have to get involved. Also, the fact is, it’s humans in most cases who have really impacted the environment, and we do need to get engaged and work to restore that balance. I really fall on both sides of this. I will say, I do think that is, in some cases, what differentiates us because, as human beings, we have to kill to survive. Maybe that is where this — I feel like every story I work on has a different answer. Really, I don’t know. It depends what the situation is. Should we bring animals back to landscapes where they have not existed for millions of years? I fall in the line of no. Maybe I’m taking this in a totally different direction, but it’s really complicated, and there’s not one easy answer.

And:

COWEN: As you know, there are now social networks everywhere, for quite a while. Images everywhere, even before Midjourney. There are so many images that people are looking at. How does that change how you compose or think about photos?

VITALE: Well, it doesn’t at all. My job is to tell stories with images, and not just with images. My job as a storyteller — that has not changed. Nothing has changed in the sense of, we need more great storytellers, visual storytellers. With all of those social media, I think people are bored with just beautiful images. Or sometimes it feels like advertising, and it doesn’t captivate me.

I look for a story and image, and I am just going to continue doing what I do because I think people are hungry for it. They want to know who is really going deep on stories and who they can trust. I think that that has never gone away, and it will never go away.

I am very happy to have guests who do things that not everyone else’s guests do.

My Conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang

Here is the audio, video, and transcript, here is the episode summary:

Rebecca F. Kuang just might change the way you think about fantasy and science fiction. Known for her best-selling books Babel and The Poppy War trilogy, Kuang combines a unique blend of historical richness and imaginative storytelling. At just 27, she’s already published five novels, and her compulsion to write has not abated even as she’s pursued advanced degrees at Oxford, Cambridge, and now Yale. Her latest book, Yellowface, was one of Tyler’s favorites in 2023.

She sat down with Tyler to discuss Chinese science-fiction, which work of fantasy she hopes will still be read in fifty years, which novels use footnotes well, how she’d change book publishing, what she enjoys about book tours, what to make of which Chinese fiction is read in the West, the differences between the three volumes of The Three Body Problem, what surprised her on her recent Taiwan trip, why novels are rarely co-authored, how debate influences her writing, how she’ll balance writing fiction with her academic pursuits, where she’ll travel next, and more.

Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: Why do you think that British imperialism worked so much better in Singapore and Hong Kong than most of the rest of the world?

KUANG: What do you mean by work so much better?

COWEN: Singapore today, per capita — it’s a richer nation than the United States. It’s hard to think, “I’d rather go back and redo that whole history.” If you’re a Singaporean today, I think most of them would say, “We’ll take what we got. It was far from perfect along the way, but it worked out very well for us.” People in Sierra Leone would not say the same thing, right?

Hong Kong did much better under Britain than it had done under China. Now that it’s back in the hands of China, it seems to be doing worse again, so it seems Hong Kong was better off under imperialism.

KUANG: It’s true that there is a lot of contemporary nostalgia for the colonial era, and that would take hours and hours to unpack. I guess I would say two things. The first is that I am very hesitant to make arguments about a historical counterfactual such as, “Oh, if it were not for the British Empire, would Singapore have the economy it does today?” Or “would Hong Kong have the culture it does today?” Because we don’t really know.

Also, I think these broad comparisons of colonial history are very hard to do, as well, because the methods of extraction and the pervasiveness and techniques of colonial rule were also different from place to place. It feels like a useless comparison to say, “Oh, why has Hong Kong prospered under British rule while India hasn’t?” Et cetera.

COWEN: It seems, if anywhere we know, it’s Hong Kong. You can look at Guangzhou — it’s a fairly close comparator. Until very recently, Hong Kong was much, much richer than Guangzhou. Without the British, it would be reasonable to assume living standards in Hong Kong would’ve been about those of the rest of Southern China, right? It would be weird to think it would be some extreme outlier. None others of those happened in the rest of China. Isn’t that close to a natural experiment? Not a controlled experiment, but a pretty clear comparison?

KUANG: Maybe. Again, I’m not a historian, so I don’t have a lot to say about this. I just think it’s pretty tricky to argue that places prospered solely due to British presence when, without the British, there are lots of alternate ways things could have gone, and we just don’t know.

Interesting throughout.

Ben Casnocha on food procedures in Tokyo

  • No matter how many people sit at a table, generally only one menu will be put down at the table, for the group to share. What could explain this cultural norm?
  • There’s a bag container next to each table to put your briefcase or bag or jacket. Without fail — a bag container. Is it to keep your individual bag clean? Or to keep the floor clean and tidy for the collective aesthetic?
  • Even in meals where they offer western cutlery, I encountered multiple instances of forks eschewed in favor of spoons. Spoons to eat a salad, for example. Always few knives — not as dramatic as in Singapore (which never offered knives) but still scarce.
  • Too many tourists stress about finding “the best” ramen place, the best sushi, the best whatever. Don’t do that. Just wander around and walking into random restaurants that seem popular with locals and using Google Translate to scan the menu. Rolling the dice works in Tokyo.
  • Many casual restaurants have table dividers to allow single patrons to eat alone without having to make eye contact with anyone else at a shared table. There’s something a bit eerie about a restaurant full of people — mostly businessmen — slurping their noodles in otherwise silence, head down, talking to nobody, even as they all share a table.

Here is the full post, mostly about Tokyo more generally.

My Conversation with the excellent Patrick McKenzie

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary:

Tyler sat down with Patrick to discuss signature fields on the back of credit cards, whether bank tellers or waitstaff are more trustworthy, the gremlins behind spurious credit card declines, how debt collection and maple syrup heists should change your model of the world, Twitter’s continued success as the message bus for government and civil society, crypto vs traditional money transfers, the intended desolation of bank parking lots, why he moved to Japan and how it affected his ambition, why Tether hasn’t collapsed, the internet as a Great Work, how he’s experiencing reverse culture shock after returning to the US, what he’ll learn about next, and more.

Excerpt:

COWEN: How did the maple syrup heists change your overall view of the world and of humanity? What’s the model update?

MCKENZIE: Going back to “evil is an actual thing in the world,” I often assume that large, well-regarded, professionalized industries have a rate of crime associated with them which rounds to zero. I would assume agriculture is relatively heavily regulated. Maple syrup is an agricultural product. The only buyers of maple syrup by the containerful are “real companies.” Therefore, I would expect rounds-to-zero supply-chain fraud in maple syrup.

But it turns out that the amount of supply-chain fraud in maple syrup is actually quite higher than zero. The chain of custody for cars of maple syrup is much less regimented than you would expect that chain of custody to be. There are smaller buyers of maple syrup — not on the scale of you or me, but on the scales like a boutique maple syrup refinery — who just don’t do as many checks as the large producers or suppliers, et cetera, do. So, it is possible to steal millions of dollars of maple syrup and sell it on the black market, which blew my mind.

This rhymes with how Tide, the well-known detergent in the United States, is used as a commodity on the criminal and semi-criminal/system deal, less criminal undergrounds, in that Tide can be resold. Online marketplaces are getting a lot of the attention, but the traditional way to use Tide as a currency for people who have less access to dollars was to resell the Tide to a corner bodega.

Since the corner bodega can easily verify that the Tide hasn’t been tampered with because the Tide seal is on it, and has basically unlimited willingness to do small-dollar transactions that make money, that was a way to recycle Tide which had been stolen — or which had been acquired by means that were not stealing, but also not exactly the official way of getting Tide — and recycle it into the more or less legitimate economy, insofar as we think that the corner bodega is more or less legitimate, which I think is a complicated story.

And:

COWEN: Why are bank parking lots usually so empty?

MCKENZIE: Oh, this is a straightforward result from queuing theory, if you can believe it. Queuing theory/operation science, by the way, tremendously under-understood by many people to whom it is professionally relevant, be that as it may. When you think of your typical stop-in at a bank, you go in, perhaps you deposit a check, perhaps you talk to the teller. You probably think, “I will have three minutes of dwell time.” So, you expect to be in and out. But the thing that the bank really wants to optimize for is new account opening.

New account opening requires 30 to 60 minutes plus of dwell time, depending on what type of account you are opening. Then when you back out that variability, it turns out that gratuitously over-provisioning the parking space almost all of the time maximizes for not losing new account opening at a few very limited windows per year. Those very limited windows can make or break the branch’s ability to contribute to their larger financial institution.

The number of accounts a bank actually opens per year in terms of checking accounts per branch — that is a number that one can have access to in various places. Depending on the bank and the locality, et cetera, it’s between 200 and 500. So, if you turn away a single customer or two customers in a row to open accounts because you had three parking spaces where you could have had seven, you’ve done a very outsized amount of damage to your financial institution, and thus over-provision the parking in all the places.

Definitely recommended, interesting throughout.

Are cities for tourists or residents?

And at what margin?

A new ideological struggle is brewing, yet we have not yet recognized it as such.  The question is to what extent cities are for tourists, or for their current residents.  Here is a report from Vermont:

A Vermont town known for its autumn foliage has closed its roads to the public for the season, citing an overwhelming amount of influencer tourists.

The select board of Pomfret voted to close Cloudland Road and Barber Hill Road to non-residents from Sept. 23 to Oct. 15. That also blocks access to the popular Sleepy Hollow Farm, a private residence that many tourists try to visit.

New York City has placed severe restrictions on AirBnb, causing hotel room prices to skyrocket.  Here is more from Jerusalem Demsas.

Amsterdam has sent out warnings, designed to discourage British tourists from visiting the city for sex, drugs, and drink.

As for the Continent, The Times of London reports:

Beaches, restaurants and estate agents have been attacked by radical anti-tourism groups throughout mainland Spain and the Balearic islands this summer…Flares were let off in restaurants, tourists’ bike tyres were slashed and hooded activists besieged a sightseeing bus.

Venice may be charging day trippers five euros a pop, and I’ve seen calls for raising that price by 5x or more.  That is one set of obstacles that probably makes sense, due to congestion and wear and tear on the city itself.

Cruise ships are becoming less popular at many places around the world.  How about this from Florida? (NYT):

Activists flooded City Commission meetings, protested on the dock, collected signatures and managed to pass three ballot measures in 2020 imposing stricter controls to protect the marine environment and limit [cruise ship] passengers to 1,500 a day…

Maybe this one is a coincidence, but Japan is hiking the price of its bullet train pass for tourists by seventy percent.

China is schizophrenic on tourism, on one hand easing visa requirements but on the other managing payments in the country isn’t getting easier.

Obviously the right answers here are on a case-by-case basis.  But political economy tells us that chosen policies will tend to overemphasize the interests of the voting residents, and underemphasize the interests of the visitors.

Plenty of these anti-tourist stories are making the news, but we’ve yet to see this part of a more systemic pattern.  And that pattern is going to intensify, if only because voters are aging, nationalism is ascendant, and protectionist sentiment is on the rise.

I am also pleased to tell you all that the world is full of underexplored spots — try Salta or Kosovo for a start.  Or in a major, heavily-touristed city of your choice, just walk ten or fifteen minutes away from the beaten track, if that.

It is snobby and elitist and self-satisfying to speak up against tourism, but in the future we will need a movement to defend the practice.

The cities meme

This is making the rounds on Twitter, so I thought I would serve up my somewhat unusual, not quite playing the game by its rules answers:

City I hate: Do I hate any cities?  I don’t think so.  I do recall being disappointed in Invercargill, New Zealand.  I expected a cool, end of the earth vibe, but it was mainly a boring dump.  Probably it has improved.  Can I even call it a city?

City I think is overrated: Isn’t almost everything good underrated?  But perhaps I am disillusioned with Milan.

City I think is underrated: By outsiders?  Los Angeles.  Residents however pay a lot to live there.

City I like: Busan

City I love: Berlin, Singapore, London

City I feel most myself in: Fairfax County

City I still need to visit: Capetown, Bordeaux, Vilnius, Caracas, Santiago, Cuba, and Tblisi.  Muscat too.

City I dream of living in: Fairfax County

My Conversation with Fuchsia Dunlop

Here is the audio, video, and transcript, conducted over a long meal at Mama Chang restaurant in Fairfax.  Here is the episode summary:

As they dined, the group discussed why the diversity in Chinese cuisine is still only just being appreciated in the West, how far back our understanding of it goes, how it’s represented in the Caribbean and Ireland, whether technique trumps quality of ingredients, why certain cuisines can spread internationally with higher fidelity, what we can learn from the different styles in Indian and Chinese cooking, why several dishes on the table featured Amish ingredients, the most likely mistake people will make when making a stir fry, what Lydia has learned managing an empire of Chinese restaurants, Fuchsia’s trick for getting unstuck while writing, and more.

Joining Tyler, Fuchsia, and Lydia around the table were Dan WangRasheed GriffithFergus McCullough, and Sam Enright.

Here is one excerpt:

WANG: Yes, that’s right. If I can ask a follow-up question on this comparison between India and China. Maybe this is half a question also for Tyler. Why do we associate Indian cuisine so much more with long simmers, whereas Chinese cuisine — of course, it is a little bit of everything, as Fuchsia knows so well, but it is often a little bit more associated with quick fries. What is the factor endowment here of these two very big countries, very big civilizations having somewhat divergent paths, as we imagine, with culinary traditions?

DUNLOP: That’s a really interesting question. It’s hard to answer because I don’t really know anything about Indian food. I did have a really interesting conversation with an Indian who came on my tour to Yunnan earlier this year because I was speculating that one of the reasons that Chinese food is so diverse is that the Chinese are really open-minded, with very few taboos. Apart from Muslims eating halal food and some Buddhists not eating meat, there’s a great adventurous open-mindedness to eating.

Whereas in India, you have lots of taboos and religious and ritual restrictions. That’s one reason that you would think it would be a constraint on the creativity of Indian food. But this Indian I was talking to, who’s a food specialist — he reckoned that the restrictions actually forced people to be more creative. He was arguing that Indian food had all the conditions for diversity that Chinese does.

In terms of cooking methods, it’s hard to say. Again, I don’t know about Indian food, but the thing about China is that there’s been this intense thoughtfulness about food, really, for a very long time. You see it in descriptions of food from 2,000 years ago and more.

In the Song Dynasty, this incredible restaurant industry in places like Hangzhou, and innovation and creativity. I suppose that when you are thoroughly interested in food like the Chinese and thinking about it creatively all the time, you end up having a whole plethora of different cooking methods. That’s one of the striking things about Chinese cuisine, that you have slow-cooked stews and simmered things and steamed things and also stir-frying. That might explain why several different methods have achieved prominence.

COWEN: Before I comment on that, Lydia, on the new dish, please tell us.

The dishes are explained as they were consumed, the meal was excellent, of course the company too.  A very good episode, highly rated for all lovers of Chinese food.  And here is Fuchsia’s new book, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, self-recommending.  And here are previous MR mentions of Fuchsia, including links to my two earlier CWTs with her.

Space Tourism Revisited, Again

One of the advantages of writing a blog for 20 years is that you get a feel for what is new and for what seems new but is actually old. Space tourism falls into the latter category. I wrote my first piece on space tourism in 2004 when Burt Rutan was predicting 100,000 space tourists annually in 10 years. In contrast, I argued that rockets were far too unsafe a technology on which to build a tourism industry:

The problem is safety. Simply put, rockets remain among the least safe means of transportation ever invented. Since 1980 the United States has launched some 440 orbital launch rockets (not including the Space Shuttle). Nearly five percent of those rockets have experienced total failure, either blowing up or wandering so far from course as to be useless. The space shuttle has a slightly better record of safety — it was destroyed in two of 113 flights. There are lots of millionaires willing to spend one or two million dollars for a flight into space but how many will risk a two to five percent chance of death?

Ten years later there weren’t 100,000 space tourists but Richard Branson was predicting a more modest (!) 10,000 space tourists by 2022. Well, 2022 came and went and space tourism has yet to get off the ground. Overall, rockets still look very unsafe. Is anyone surprised? Blue Origin, for example has had 1 total failure in 22 flights, 4.5%. SpaceX has by far the best record with–generously not including test flights–1 total failure in 289 Falcon flights, .34%. That’s great and especially impressive given that Falcon flies much higher than other rockets! But wingsuit flying, no one’s ideas of a safe sport, is still safer than a SpaceX flight! (.2%) and commercial airlines are running at many orders of magnitude safer at .00034%.

Thus, after 20 years, I don’t see much reason to update. Like climbing Mount Everest or wingsuit flying, we might see a few flights a year catering to the rich and foolhardy but we have a long way to get before we get fat guys with cameras in space.

Low Income Drivers Gain from Congestion Pricing

Cody Cook and Pearl Li write:

….there is disagreement about the distributional effects of highway toll lanes. On one side, policymakers refer to dynamic tolling as “value pricing” and emphasize that it provides choice to drivers (Samdahl et al., 2013). On the other side, opponents are concerned that “Lexus lanes” enrich the wealthy at everyone else’s expense (Astor, 2017; Rosendorf, 2018). Evaluation of these perspectives depends on two empirical objects: the distribution of driver preferences and what we call the “road technology”—the relationship between traffic quantities and travel times. When one lane becomes tolled, drivers substitute from the newly priced lane into the remaining unpriced ones, increasing travel times in the unpriced lanes. High peak-hour prices may also induce drivers to substitute toward driving off-peak (or not at all), which can increase average speeds when the road technology is convex. Finally, since tolling changes the predictability of travel times, having the option to take the priced lanes can serve as insurance against worse-than-expected traffic conditions.

In this paper, we study the aggregate and distributional impacts of dynamic tolling. To do this, we bring together data on toll transactions, historical traffic conditions, and driver characteristics from the I-405 Express Toll Lanes in Washington State. We begin by presenting two sets of descriptive facts: first, aggregate speed and throughput increased after the introduction of tolling on this highway, and second, low-income drivers face advantageous trade-offs between price and travel time savings in the toll lanes. Next, to quantify the equilibrium effects of tolling, we build and estimate a model of driver demand, the road technology, and the pricing algorithm. In particular, the demand model incorporates the features of dynamic tolling highlighted above: choices of where and when to drive, as well as uncertainty about prices and travel times. Using the estimated model, we find that low-income drivers in fact gain the most from status-quo tolling, and we explore how equilibrium outcomes would change under counterfactual pricing policies.

Pearl Li from Stanford is on the job market.