Friday assorted links

1. Pee-Wee Herman comeback in the works.  And building a modern Congressional Technology Assessment Office.

2. Keeping a business running during a pandemic.

3. NBA loses possibly $100 million or more in China revenue.  And: “Our findings suggest that nationalist propaganda can manipulate emotions and anti-foreign sentiment, but does not necessarily divert attention from domestic political grievances.”

4. 25 greatest classical pianists of all time?  A good list, except for Rachmaninov at #1, and I am pleased to have heard virtually all of the moderns in concert.  I would add Leif Andsnes and take off Lang Lang and Clara Haskil. And come on people — Pollini has to be top ten (he is not on the list at all), in spite of his recent age-related decline.  And Grosvenor is a fine pianist, but I wouldn’t quite put him in this exalted territory, replace with Rudolf or even Peter Serkin?  And if you are looking for peaks, Michelangeli surely belongs as well.  Solomon?

5. Ryan Bourne on state capacity libertarianism.  I will note that a possible coronavirus pandemic would likely boost the plausibility of state capacity libertarianism.

6. “…we construct counterfactual growth paths of Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and Greenland in the scenario where they joined the USA at times in history where this might have been a (remote) possibility.”

7. John Cochrane on woke academia, recommended, and horrifying.