Thursday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Why did hats fall out of fashion?

2. Vero on U.S. industrial policy (NYT).

3. Deepfakes are not yet such a problem.

4. Arnold Kling on Minerva.

5. Rolf Degen on “popular belief.”  And asparagus.

6. What the 1888 tariff debates were about.

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Tabarrok to the Pillory

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1. I suppose a more plausible thesis than the one that John Kennedy killed off hats by not wearing one to his inaugural. (FTR, JFK had on a topper and Mrs. Kennedy a pillbox that day. They removed it for the oath of office and the address, as did everyone standing around them).

john

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Hats are alive and well at the Kentucky Derby!

john

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Now that I think of it, my sister and her friends have a monthly "fancy hat" party, cycling among the group to host the party. Several friends and co-workers seem to sport hats on a regular basis even on nice days.

jus de carotte peau jaune

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Hey great blog! Does running a blog like this take a
great deal of work? I have virtually no understanding of
coding but I was hoping to start my own blog soon. Anyhow, should you have any recommendations or tips for new blog owners please share.
I know this is off subject however I simply needed to ask.
Thanks a lot!

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Ted Craig

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Yes, but that theory gives rise to the theory that it was really the haberdashers who were behind his assassination.

Matt Young

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Truman done it?

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Anon7

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But virtual hat tipping remains in fashion. H/T Cowen.

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thebritishmedicaljournal

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1 who donna lika hats?
3. we are gonna take the position that
if you can fool cnn with a fake pee tape
you will probably be able to fool cnn with deep fakes

5 got it
so this time the sociology dept did a study about how people
" feel " about how pee smells?

thebritishmedicaljournal

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just a couple edits
got it
so now theres
measles in California where goopypoutrow lives
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/measles-strikes-california-residents-after-flight-with-sick-passenger/ar-BBUuTyh?ocid=spartandhp

themeasles

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go west young morbillivirus,
callifornia kindergartens
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/kindergartens-vaccines-medical-exemptions-calif-13085811.php

pretty low vaccinate rates

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rayward

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1. My father always wore a hat, and he had a closet full of them. He looked good in hats. I disagree that the model T was the major reason people stopped wearing hats. It was central heat and air conditioning. The model T contributed to the phenomenon because people in cars got to their destination much faster. In the days of hats, the climate was cooler (even in Florida), and hats kept the head warm. I remember my grandmother warning me that I would catch a cold, or worse, with an uncovered head. As for women and hats, my sister in law wears hats that belong in the circus; most hats worn by women seem to come from the circus. My mother often wore hats, and always in church: Paul in Corinthians instructed women to wear a head covering in church. Even if she didn't wear a hat in church, she would wear a veil on her head. My late brother in law believed that baldness in men was caused by wearing caps, which restricted the flow of blood in the scalp. It made sense to me. He never wore a cap and had a very thick head of hair. My hat's off to him.

Thelonious_Nick

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I thought it was hippies that made hats unfashionable. At least in the movies, most men seem to be wearing hats even in the early 1960s, way after the Model-T. I recently re-watched North by Northwest (1959)--lots of hats. All the old Twilight Zone episodes (58-62, I think?) have men in hats. Then the hippies came along and decided that hats were what their dads wore when they went to the office, man.

I saw an article a few years ago (maybe on this very website?) discussing how boxer shorts went out in the 1960s in favor of briefs for that exact reason--baby boomers didn't want to wear the same kind of underwear as their parents. Whitey tighteys are free and easy, baby, not stuck up like your old man. Hats were probably the same thing.

Thelonious_Nick

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Sorry to respond to myself, but this just occurred to me. Maybe all those 1960s hairstyles had something to do with it. Men were proud of their long hair or afros or whatever, and didn't want to cover that up, or found hats more uncomfortable with all that hair.

Taeyoung

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I wear hats fairly regularly (particularly in summer), but I do think hairstyles are a part of this. Hats are fine if you have short cropped hair, are bald, or have that old-fashioned "wet look" hairstyle with the macassar oil (or that side-shaven SS-man look that is apparently popular with hipsters). If you keep your hair loose, even if it's fairly short and parted neatly, then after just an hour or so walking about with a hat, your hair is going to come out of that hat looking lopsided and weird. Or at least, such is the case for me.

rayward

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Yes, it's a condition called hat head.

educationrealist

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Hair, not head. "Hat hair".

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Anonymous

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Then, for millennials, boxers came back into style and wearing briefs in the locker room was associated with being the nerdy, effeminate kid in 80s movies who the bullies picked on. Weirdly circular.

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PaulD

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I recently watched NxNW, too. In addition to hats, men wore suits more often during the fifties (confirmed by photos of my father during that time). Of course, nobody looks as good as Cary Grant in a suit - https://clothesonfilm.com/cary-grant-grey-kilgour-suit-in-north-by-northwest-1959/

rayward

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of course, Grant's suits didn't look like they were designed for Pee-Wee Herman. They actually fit him.

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Known Fact

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My granddad was a hat exec -- "millinery" as the biz was called -- and he did just fine through the early 60s. Then he sadly saw the handwriting on the wall. I think hats' demise began when people started seeing their hair as a signifier of identity.

Hats now are often worn with a layer of retro tongue-in-cheek, like the top hats and tail on Procol Harum's Grand Hotel album cover, or those Cat in the Hat things. And of course for ladies at the racetrack!

anonymous hat

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my mother's bridal business relies on the millinery industry to accentuate her designs: this will probably be a constant in the bridal niche.. While they have may lost popularity among model T drivers, the hat market probably flourished elsewhere, especially in any "special occasion" markets, like today's ie "royal weddings". Am looking forward to space hats.

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anonymous

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1. The word sunglasses does not appear on that page. There are other reasons to wear a hat (rain, sunburn) but for historic foundations, keeping the sun out of your eyes has to be right up there. And of course at the beach.

Less life outdoors, the sunglasses option, utility lessened. Though I still wear a hat for durations outdoors, or to keep rain off glasses

anonymous

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So it occurred to me to use Google ngram to compare sunglasses to hats. Not much of a connection, but it looks like hats fall off when nobody suspended. Not with autos. Not with Kennedy. With the end of WWII.

ngram

Postwar cultural shift? Much more casual clothes after discarding uniforms?

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The Anti-Gnostic

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#1 - My grandfather told me everybody stopped wearing hats when John F. Kennedy was elected. But Truman and Eisenhower weren't really consistent hat-wearers either.

I think they just went out of fashion, like knee breeches or cravats. It's another thing to keep track of and keep cleaned.

Did the old mercury process play a role?

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Moo cow

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#5. So many questions...but...never mind.

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EverExtruder

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#3 Yet

#4 Really glad to see an emphasis on training for 'critical thinking' skills. This is so sorely lacking today.

#5 Ew

#6

Jeff R

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#3: if they're deep enough fakes, you wouldn't know whether they'd become a problem or not, right?

EverExtruder

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What's going to end up occurring is people that need to will begin secretly self-recording themselves at all times as a defense against potential image/audio manipulation, very much in the same way some people have begun recording their interactions with the press to prevent 'clever' editing.

The problem is that it A) only creates an arms race within the technology and B) essentially creates a they said/they said between two different versions, potentially both of them deep-fakes. It will end up that the context and overall credibility of the people involved will likely give people their ultimate determination, but not without doing huge damage on the front end.

I'm reminded of this whole Smollett hoax. It came out during the expose that what he was ultimately trying to do was get his 'fake' assault caught on that camera that only caught the Nigerians walking away but they didn't time it right and instead of getting the assault, it only 'caught the Nigerians walking away'.

Imagine what scumbags like him could do if they were actually able to 'perform' such a hoax with this technology? His intention was to start a riot, which it would've promptly done had it not been for his and his companions bone-headedness.

raj

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I think there can be a cryptographic solution to the "arms race" problem. I.e. record yourself 24/7 and broadcast a hash of the video at some interval so it can be verified if the need arises.

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rayward

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3. Deep fakes are just one more nail in the reality coffin. Soon enough, everyone will be a doubting Thomas. And blackmail will be the coin of the realm. If one can't believe one's lying eyes, who is one to believe? Donald Trump? You betcha. Propagandists in the past never had it so easy.

Anonymous

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"If one can' believe one's lying eyes, who is one to believe?"

Ironic given that video and film themselves were prime forms of propaganda for the Nazis and Soviets, not to mention all sides during WWII. We've dealt with forged texts, altered photographs, faked recordings, and other media before that made it easy to turn off your brain and switch to the "this must be the truth" shortcut. It's just that, since the introduction of home video cameras (think the video of Rodney King being beaten) and especially since everyone got video cameras on their phones, video has acquired some sacred status as a kind of unimpeachable truth, even though video is and always has been extremely easy to manipulate through perspective and editing. It's about time that sacredness got kicked down a notch by the exposure of its limitations; in that regard, I welcome the development of "deepfakes".

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Cytotoxic

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Au contraire I think a plethora of fake information makes blackmail very difficult. "You want to email what photos of me with the dog? I already generated a million of them with my DeepFakeFactory". Everyone will have so much faked noise surrounding them the signals will be lost.

Taeyoung

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That's kind of my view too -- I tend to think the Trump pee tape story was fake, but by this time, it is absolutely 100% guaranteed that there is a Deepfake floating around somewhere out there corroborating the pee tape allegation (and worse, I'm sure). Even if it were real, how could you trust a video coming out of a Russian hotel?

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Jonfraz

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Odd, no mention of the cap here, which is still worn.

chuck martel

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OK, I'll do it.

Maybe you've wondered about the slow-to-die phenomenon of the ball cap worn backwards. What could this dopey variant of haberdashery possibly signify? Some people probably think that it's a fad from the eighties that refuses to go away. Actually, there's another, more sinister explanation.
The costumes of dim bulb American males have been influenced by the dress of the Muslim ummah. The Muslims are coordinating their attempt to take over dar al-harb, beginning with Western headgear. It's hard to say how far this might go. It seems unlikely that US fraternity boys will make the Muslim thobe a part of their campus wardrobe but the backward ball cap was unpredictable decades ago as well. Maybe the near future will include thobes with college insignia to match the backward ball cap.

Known Fact

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The thing I don't get is all the guys who now wear those tight little knit ski caps all the time, even in warm weather and even indoors. This is supposed to look hip or masculine in some way?

Anonymous

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"all the guys"

The ski caps are now even more popular among girls, if you do a cursory review of instagram or take a glance inside a teen apparel store. They were big for guys back around 2010, then crept over to women starting 5 years ago. Thus why most of the guys still wearing ski caps are a bit older. Trendy male hair now is shorter and more styled, which would get messed up by a ski cap (which mess hair up even more than a regular hat), but the shaggy 70s hair, with length and sideswept bangs, that was popular amongst young guys 10 years ago wouldn't get messed up, nor would the close all-over buzz cut that was popular then get messed up. Since girls have longer hair generally, the ski cap mostly doesn't mess up their hair.

God of Thunder

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I am eagerly awaiting the moment when “not caring” and “wearing whatever the hell I want” comes into fashion again.

msgkings

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Usually arrives with your first Social Security check

Rebarbativsky

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+1

Thiago Ribeiro

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amerika
you live in the deep surveillancestate/hi uv environment
you need to wear a hat
if you live in brazil&travel to brazil
also you shoulda wear a hat

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Jonfraz

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Caps worn backward or askew is a ghetto and gangsta fashion in origin. Nothing to do with Muslim garb.

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anonymous

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4. We learn quite easily at scale and by uniform methods. We do that every time we read a book, or watch a documentary, or lately, take an online course. Given the scalability of the process, it's not surprising that some should shoot for really big markets, with say the reach of an Apple or a Facebook.

Do we stop to say "oh no, Apple is too centralized?"

Well some of us do, but not the same ones worried about Minerva, I think.

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Faze

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In the 1960s, hair became the new hat. Simple as that. The Kennedy bush kicked it off. Unless you were alive at that time, you wouldn't appreciate the impact of seeing that forelock on an authority figure of that stature. The Beatles took it to the next level.

Hats and caps came back along with close cropped hair in the late 1980s and 90s - the backwards facing baseball cap being the avatar.

Anonymous

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I don't even believe that Kennedy kicked it off: if you look at pictures, video, and illustrated art of the ideal "modern male" from the 1950s, they all have impressive forelocks. Kennedy was the culmination of that trend, fitting since politics often catches up to culture after about a decade.

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RPLong

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Wait, Kennedy's what kicked it off...?

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spencer

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I'm bald and like a hat but quit wearing one ( broad brimmed) because the head rest in cars made it almost impossible to wear a hat while driving. The head rest was introduced as a safety feature, but it also coincided with President Kennedy going hat less. So what was the real cause, fashion or convenience.

Tabarrok to the Pillory

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but it also coincided with President Kennedy going hat less. So what was the real cause, fashion or convenience.

1. He didn't go hatless. He had a topper

2. Headrests appeared in cars not in 1961 but about 10 years later.

3. I manage to drive in a hat. Not sure why one of us is having problems and the other isn't.

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Viking

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#4: I was hoping for a discussion of Heinlein's Minerva

"Minerva – intelligent computer used to run the planet Secundus"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Robert_A._Heinlein_characters#M

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Hazel Meade

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#6. Thanks for this link. Interesting to see that Matt Yglesias appears to be on the side of free trade, and that Vox is still more informative than the average "conservative" news site.

Viking

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It's a fair bet that Vox and Matt Yglesias will be against Trump's agenda regardless of previous ideology.

Hazel Meade

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And we can use that to our advantage. It's amazing how many people will switch positions on a subject to remain in lock step with their tribe - and against the opposing tribe. And then if you can force them to defend that position, they'll get even more adamant and entrenched in it. (Though the best thing you can do is convince them that it was all their idea in the first place. )

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The Anti-Gnostic

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"Free trade" is a conceptual model. It doesn't actually exist, and its closest approximation, Mediterranean free city-states trading commodities with each other, would be considered repulsive to social engineers like Yglesias and Klein.

Cytotoxic

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"It doesn't actually exist"

Yes it does. Whenever two or more individuals voluntarily trade with each other without having money stolen from them, it's free trade. Doesn't matter whether it happens on Craigslist or over the world.

The Anti-Gnostic

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Agreed. When a Venetian merchant trades gold ducats for silks from a Damascus merchant, that is probably the closest to free trade the world will ever get. Add in governments, fiat currencies, tariffs, regulations, treaties, etc., and no trade is "free" and frictionless at this point--the government/central bank footprint is ubiquitous.

When Yglesias and Klein say "free trade," they mean managed trade. They would find the anarchic maritime system of the Mediterranean city-states unfathomable and repulsive. They probably didn't even have minority set-asides environmental impact statements back then.

Hazel Meade

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They would find the anarchic maritime system of the Mediterranean city-states unfathomable and repulsive.

And you wouldn't?
Trump's basically advocating for minority set-asides for steel-workers. Gotta give those steel workers their piece of the pie, right? It's only fair that America set aside certain protected classes of jobs for the beleaguered working class white man.

The Anti-Gnostic

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I'm aware of your hostility to working class white men. But there is no longer any such thing as "free trade" just like there's no such thing as "cheap labor." I suggest you pay your welfare at the cash register instead of through HHS. And if your team is going to try and rig the game for immigrants, then my team is going to try and rig it for the native stock. This is the future we chose.

Cytotoxic

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You keep repeating this BS and it keeps not being true. All that junk you just mentioned is neither here nor there. Party A wants to sell stuff to Party B. Nothing else really matters; the trade is free. Even if it wasn't it does not remotely justify further intervention.

"I suggest you pay your welfare at the cash register instead of through HHS."

FO, and take your poor steel workers with you. Congrats: you're getting automated out of existence. The game isn't rigged, at least not against you in this arena. You just lose, the future wins.

The Anti-Gnostic

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Party A wants to sell stuff to Party B. Nothing else really matters; the trade is free. Even if it wasn't it does not remotely justify further intervention.

Yes. That's exactly what happens in the libertarian ideological Petri dish. Here in Reality, of course, frictionless trade is hypothetical and there are always externalities. And sorry, but there's no more frontier to stomp off too, so you're stuck with us. And you can automate every job out of existence but people on the left side tail will keep breeding, and you won't be able to sterilize or kill them off fast enough. I expect though that they will be bribe-able into two kids apiece with a universal stipend. Life is complicated.

Hazel Meade

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Really whats the "externality" of me buying some steel from a guy in China? Other than "Waaaa! You didn't buy steel from MEEEEEEE!" coming from working class white guys.

Incidentally, my only beef with them is that they vote for shit like this. They were voting for it when they were labor union thugs voting D, and just because the letter beside the name of the guy they are voting for changed, doesn't mean the bullshit is any different. It's still socialist protectionist crap, no matter who is championing it.

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Hazel Meade

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Steel workers will keep breeding if we keep subsidizing their jobs too. I'm not exactly sure why paying for their welfare at the cash register is supposed to be preferable to writing them a welfare check. At least with the welfare check they will have some free time to maybe do some side labor under the table and add to the economy instead of being a net drag on it.

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PD Shaw

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In 1888, the federal government got all of its revenue from tariffs and an excise tax on alcohol. Today, the federal government is funded largely from taxes on income and payrolls of its citizens. Are these both forms of theft in your p.o.v., and why wouldn't taxing things you want less of (imports and sin), necessarily be inferior to taxing things like incomes and jobs?

Cytotoxic

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There is no reason to want fewer imports. That's just economic illiteracy.

If we must tax, a tax on land is probably least harmful followed by taxation of consumption.

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catter

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Those Venetian and Damascene merchants were doing their deals in markets that were highly regulated and taxed. They paid for (eg) the right to bring their goods into the market, the use of specific currencies. Braudel covers this in overpowering detail.

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anonymous

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against Trump's agenda?

I too oppose white collar crime families dabbling in corrupt politics.

Anonymoose

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So you oppose government in general, I see?

anonymous

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Sometimes. The mistake is giving up your ability to discriminate. 65% percent of Americans think Trump committed crimes before being elected. 45% think he has committed more in office. I'm in both groups, but even skeptics, supporters, should worry about what they've wrought. Whether standards have been eroded.

Personally, I think we are all grading this guy on way too low a curve.

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PD Shaw

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If it was truly informative, Yglesias would have addressed how McKinnley won the 1896 Presidential election, in what is often considered a re-aligning election, on a platform of higher tariffs.

Trump may be guilty of massaging history to support his positions, but so is Matt.

M

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Yglesias is a guy who openly admits on twitter that he wants people who support his positions but are factually wrong not to be corrected, and wants people who don't yet who are factually correct to be portrayed as wrong.

I wouldn't trust him to tell the truth on just about any issue. He and and the Free Traders uber alles folks (no security considerations, no distribution questions, no developmental economics) are welcome to each other. His economic history here is doubtful on those grounds alone; he is the partisan hack's partisan hack.

Hazel Meade

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And the Trumpists are welcome to have you, developmental economics and "distribution questions", included.

M

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And I would be happy for it if they did. But, the anti-"Unilateral Free Trade Uber Alles" guys have intellectual resources like Dani Rodrik (distribution questions), Ha Joon Chan (developmental), Robert Lighthizer (national security), and many, many more far better than the hack journo Matt Yglesias. I doubt they need me, any more than anyone anywhere needs your ahistorical notions of reality.

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Cytotoxic

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The National Post is better, if that counts. Vox is bad and tripping over the exceedingly low bar you've set doesn't change that.

Hazel Meade

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You're correct that right-wing online media sets a low bar to pass.

I'm not sure if National Post passes it, but since it's Canadian I suppose it might be innoculated somewhat from the virus infecting America's political discourse.

Vox has it's issues but at least they don't regularly indulge in insane conspiracy theories aimed at whipping partisan fanatics into a foaming-at-the-mouth rage. (There are left wing sites that mirror Britbart et. al. in that way, but Vox isn't one of them).

Cytotoxic

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The National Post is a classy affair. Financial Post is even better you should read them. Their photography and illustrations are far better than other newspapers.

The NP started off too hot and zealous for its own good made a lot of stupid embarrassing mistakes. Then they toned it down way to much under the reign of a really bad top editor named Jonathon Kay. Now they're pretty much just right. The Canadian Right is not great but far healthier than its American counterpart.

Re: conservative media = 2 decades of the US right flushing its brains away with increasing vigor. It's incredible how something so promising did so much damage. The left could not hope for an enemy as retarded as the one it has. The stage is set for Prog-Dem dominance lasting a generation at least, if not two. All that can be done with the 'conservative media complex' is to wait for its fans to go to the glue factory and burn what's left to the ground.

Hazel Meade

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All that can be done with the 'conservative media complex' is to wait for its fans to go to the glue factory and burn what's left to the ground.

My sentiments exactly.

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Terry richards

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Conservative news is a sham industry and super provincial. Vox being better than Newsmax or Fox News or Breitbart is setting the bar for excellence pathetically low....

Now Vox being better than the Gaurdian, the Economist, Financials Times or even any of the GMU blogs is something many would have a hard time proving....

Hazel Meade

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Yeah, exactly. Non-retarded libertarians and conservatives are forced to read center-left websites because the "conservative" ones are universally garbage.

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john

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#3
"In any of these cases, attackers had the motive and the resources to produce a deepfake video. The technology is cheap, easily available, and technically straightforward. But given the option of fabricating video evidence, each group seems to have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Instead we saw news articles made up from whole cloth, or videos edited to take on a sinister meaning.

It’s a good question why deepfakes haven’t taken off as a propaganda technique. Part of the issue is that they’re too easy to track. The existing deepfake architectures leave predictable artifacts on doctored video, which are easy for a machine learning algorithm to detect. Some detection algorithms are publicly available, and Facebook has been using its own proprietary system to filter for doctored video since September. Those systems aren’t perfect, and new filter-dodging architectures regularly pop up. (There’s also the serious policy problem of what to do when a video triggers the filter, since Facebook hasn’t been willing to impose a blanket ban.)"

Questions.
1) Do we know how many were attempted?
2) A picture might we worth 1000 words but if you only need 10 or 20 words to start the rumor and debate is a deepfake worth the effort?
3) Now the fakes leave easily identified artifacts. Tomorrow?

I am not going as far as to say ban the technology. That will do no good. But blowing off the potential seems a bit premature.

Additionally I would wonder if there is also not a more cumbersome effort that would be the same as money laundering works -- but just yet there is not need for the effort as text works just fine an is low cost.

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chuck martel

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6. Grover Cleveland was a rare example of a US president that had at least a particle of integrity.

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Marc Cohen

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If you look at archival footage of baseball games the suit and hat wearing crowd begin to disappear in 1963 and are all but gone by 1967 so I highly doubt the Model T had anything to do with it.

dearieme

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Nor would JFK explain the vanishing of the hat in Britain in the 60s.

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athEIst

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I highly doubt the Model T had anything to do with it

The hearse had a lot more to do with it. Those who were dying off in the sixties wore hats literally until they died. I don't own a hat.

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dearieme

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I see that the author subscribes to the erroneous notion that the assembly line was invented for Ford. If he can't get that right why should I bother with the rest of it?

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Willitts

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1. Interesting but not very well sourced or argued. While Model T roofs could be folded down, they didn't have to be. Lowering the top increases the need for a hat, not lowers it, as I discovered while living in California.

I'd suggest that indoor plumbing had greater influence on hat demise. People began to increasingly shower every day, and hats mess up the hair. Before that, people heavily greased their hair.

The US military has doggedly maintained the hat tradition. Umbrellas are taboo in the Army.

Anonymous

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This is an interesting theory. Hair stripped of oils, the natural result of shampoo, is especially likely to be messed up by the elements and by hats due to its dryness. If I wear a winter hat on a day on which I have shampooed, my hair is noticeably more messed up than if I wear a winter hat and haven't washed my hair for 2 or 3 days.

Willitts

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That is exactly my experience too.

Another theory: longer hairstyles just dont jibe with hats. My barbers said that the 60s and 70s nearly wiped out the barber industry. If people were flaunting their mullets, hats would be less prevalent. Coincides temporally with the Kennedy hypothesis but is more plausible.

Anonymous

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"longer hairstyles just don't jibe with hats"

This one I am not sure I agree with, long hair can look good with the right face and hat, but your use of the word "flaunt" reveals a hidden truth: many men with longer hair want to prominently display their hair and give it pride of place. Hiding it under a hat, even partially, distracts from a full mane of thick, long hair. This would have been especially true back in the 60s and early 70s, when the wild man "Give me a head with hair/Long, beautiful hair" look was in vogue amongst counterculture types and just about anyone who didn't want to look like a square.

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Donald Pretari

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#1...Hats were replaced by berets, weren't they?

Willitts

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In the US Army? Yes, for dress wear and garrison. They still wear helmets, patrol caps, and boonie hats in the field. Going hatless is a huge no no, except on flight lines and indoors.

The beret is a form of hat.

Donald Pretari

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Noted...

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Matt Young

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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/quantum-monism-could-save-the-soul-of-physics/

Two of the others are not that interesting, since one is not really a multiverse but rather different regions in our own universe, and the other one is based on the highly speculative idea that matter is nothing but math.

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The complete theory is what physicists are looking for. The last one, that it is all math is the tree concept, tree trunk round makes the branches and roots together form a sphere. A bunch of physicists are pushing this, but they remain the minority.

However, the 'All math' concept works great in computer networks and auto-pricing.

Matt Young

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To see the connections, consider facebook and JPM, both of which are working on automated finance networks, with auto setting of interest charges, asynchronously. The math formula could be called double sided option trading in which there is no safe rate. Instead, we get direct computation of options via matching of deposits and loans, a revolutionary concept, actually.

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spencer

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Why do cowboy's 10 gallon hats always turn the brim up on the side rather than the front and back?

So 3 of them can sit in a pick-up truck without having to take off their hats.

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rayward

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4. Some good criticisms, but I think he misses the big picture: universal higher education, whatever its shortcomings, worked fine when economic opportunities were broader. Today, those middle management, sales, local banking, family business, and similar positions don't exist, or not in sufficient numbers to match the number of graduates with a degree but little preparation for the rigors of today's economy. The real issue is whether higher education as we know it (e.g., large public universities) can survive if the less serious students choose not to pursue it because the expense is far greater than the potential reward. What happens if the thousands, millions, of freshmen don't show up at State U in the Fall? One need not limit one's review to the terrible results of the graduates of the for profit schools to realize that higher education, including higher education at many well-known universities, is in trouble. And no university is immune from that criticism. America is a rich nation, and could afford millions of college students studying less rigorous subjects while having a good time at the fraternity and at sporting events. Those days are limited. What's the answer? Does Kling offer one? Do the universities who turn out thousands and thousands of graduates with little hope for a good career? Is it necessary to name those universities for them to get serious? To embarrass them and their faculty?

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mkt42

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1: I agree with the comments that it was hairstyles and fashion, rather than the Model T, that droves hats out of fashion. It is interesting to suggest, as some comments here have, that those fashions in turn were driven or enabled by technologies such as indoor plumbing and daily showers.

3: Tyler's headline is accurate. Deepfakes haven't been a problem yet, but it may simply be a question of waiting for the write opportunity.

5: The researchers may be gunning for an Ig-nobel prize.

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Joe

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5. I think that similar dynamics apply to people’s olfactory enjoyment of their own gas. I don’t think I’m all that weird or abnormal for finding the smell of my own gas interesting. I wouldn’t want to smell it all the time, and too much is too much, but in general I feel privileged to be exposed to novel smells, rich with information about myself and my digestive tract.

Thiago Ribeiro

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got it
ur creepy & scary

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ant1900

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Deepfake videos look pretty fake. The real threat is static photos.

Have you seen the Elon/Rock mash up? It's creepy. It's gonna be a problem, and I would be it'll be an issue in the 2020 race

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Matt Young

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Due in large part to surplus revenues from the tariffs, federal spending reached one billion dollars for the first time during his term. The spending issue in part led to the defeat of the Republicans in the 1890 mid-term elections. Cleveland defeated Harrison for re-election in 1892, due to the growing unpopularity of the high tariff and high federal spending.

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Me getting schooled by wiki. I never looked that closely.

The tariff hikes were 50%. Why didn't voters like the high spending levels? 1890, money was all paper, illiquid difficult to distribute, so big business was likely first in lint. This is my guess.

Speaking of which, we now have a couple of senators who think Congress should put up a billion dollars to invest in LGN to Europe. So the problem of, 'first in line' still exists.

But I digress. Note some parallel, the Dems lost four of five elections, I think, since Obamacare taxes. High spending, high taxes. The other issue was the german vs english in unified language. Both parties agreed on the gold standard. And, we had already gone off and on it a few times, so monetary regime change, including partial default, is always on the table. Voters, interesting. I think Trumps advantage is he is the 'hold your nose and vote for Nixon' candidate. He be re-eleced because the fear of cartels, fear of AOC, fear of taxes, and he has no plans for another volatile entitlement. But government back there, and out here, are simultaneously broke, California flat, economically zero growth at the moment. So the other fear, fear of recession appears right at election time. We have had some massive layoffs, not quite recession size, a few days and weeks ago. We have discovered that no one plans on paying that federal interest bill. So we will test the MMT theory soon.

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liberalarts

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Today asparagus research, tomorrow Super Sugar Smacks research!

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EdR

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#4 - Minerva

I love the reference to Stepford wives - so appropriate. Since the goal of the higher education game is the credential and it's signalling value, students are incentivized to play the game, get the assignments done, pass the tests, and forget what you learned. Knowledge is not the goal, nor is passion for learning the driving force. I used to tutor students in math. When I tried to explain a concept, show the derivation, outline a proof, or in anyway pass on understanding, I would see their eyes glaze over, the pupils change, and the student would frequently say "I just need to get this assignment done" or "I just need to pass the test".

It's all about the credential.

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