The vanishing male writer
It’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.
And then the doors shut.
By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.
Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).
Here is more from Jacob Savage at Compact.
Thwarted arbitrage?
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has intercepted an increasing number of eggs from Mexico, where a carton of a dozen costs about $2. For comparison, the cost in many parts of California is just under $10 per dozen, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Nationally, there has been a 48% increase in eggs being detained at ports of entry this fiscal year compared with the same time last fiscal year, according to CBP. In San Diego, these “egg interception” cases have increased by a whopping 158%.
Every day, more than 200,000 cars cross the border from Mexico to the United States.
…Once confiscated, the eggs are destroyed by officials in oven-sized incinerators.
Here is the full Guardian story.
Saturday assorted links
1. How Rickover built the US Navy.
2. My interview with Reason magazine.
3. The importance of stablecoins to the US Treasury market.
4. Another measure of how automatable your job is. And tweet thread.
5. New AI and economics model from Epoch:
Twitter thread: https://x.com/EpochAIResearch/status/1902802037752111569
Interactive playground: https://epoch.ai/gate
Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04941
6. More on Liu Jiakun, Pritzker winner. Article here.
Wind turbines lower Danish real estate prices
We analyze the impact of wind turbines on house prices, distinguishing between effects of proximity and shadow flicker from rotor blades covering the sun. By utilizing data from 2.4 million house transactions and 6,878 wind turbines in Denmark, we can control for house fixed effects in our estimation. Our results suggest strong negative impacts on house prices, with reductions of up to 12 percent for modern giant turbines. Homes affected by shadow flicker experience an additional decrease in value of 8.1 percent. Our findings suggest a nuanced perspective on the local externalities of wind turbines regarding size and relative location.
Here is the full paper by Carsten Andersen and Timo Hener, via the excellent Kevin Lewis. I rather like how they look, and would gladly buy a home near some, if only for the scenery. Though I would rather have a nearby gas station instead?
Some history of higher education
To Dr. Damrosch, who has studied academic culture at colleges, the current turmoil was vaguely reminiscent of a 1940s episode at the school now known as Iowa State University.
The school’s economics department — in a paper on economic policy for wartime food production — had proposed replacing butter with margarine, said Dr. Damrosch. The dairy industry and its supporters in the state legislature “went ballistic,” he said, pressuring the school’s president to place the department under receivership.
The move triggered an immediate backlash and mass departure of faculty members.
It might have also played a small role in the reshaping of the higher education landscape: At least six professors fled to Chicago, where they helped build one of the most renowned economics departments in the world.
Here is the full NYT piece, mostly about Columbia, via Anecdotal.
Those new service sector jobs, China market of the day
A tour guide is raking in the cash by carrying fatigued females up a mountain.
Xiao Chen, 26, who works at Mount Tai in Shandong Province, China, accompanies tourists on their trek to the peak – but many of his female clients often want to be carried up the last 1,000 steps.
He starts by holding their hand along most of the route and when they become tired, Chen carries them in a fireman’s lift, across his shoulders.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site stands at an altitude of 5,029ft.
Chen reportedly earns more than CNY 300,000 – about $42,000 USD — as a ‘climbing companion’ for his clients, aged between 25 and 40 years.
He climbs the mountain twice a day, earning around CNY 600 – $83 USD – per trip during daylight hours and $54 USD at night.
Here is more from The New York Post, via Greg Roemer. Elsewhere, from the Chinese MIE scene, the excellent Samir Varma points us to “China online shops sell ‘bank soil’ from top institutions for US$120, claims it brings wealth.”
Friday assorted links
1. One report on car-free Tempe, AZ.
2. Speculative new claims about human evolution.
3. Is dark energy evolving? And from WaPo — the universe might stop expanding, big if true.
4. Indian painting sets new auction record at $13.7 million.
5. Update on Ukrainian defenses and drones.
What should I ask Helen Castor?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her. Here is Wikipedia:
Helen Ruth Castor FRSL (born 4 August 1968) is a British historian of the medieval and Tudor period and a BBC broadcaster. She taught history at the University of Cambridge and is the author of books including Blood and Roses (2004) and She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010). Programmes she has presented include BBC Radio 4‘s Making History and She-Wolves on BBC Four. Her most recent book is The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV (2024).
I very much liked her last book in particular. And here is a good interview with her. So what should I ask her?
My first trip to Haiti
This was in 1994, right after the Aristide regime was restored by Clinton. I had traveled a good deal by that time, mostly in North America, Europe, and southeast Asia. But I had never been anywhere truly dangerous. It seemed impossible to visit such places. It is not that I did any serious risk calculation, rather the option simply was not part of my mental toolkit.
But somehow I started thinking about visiting Haiti. It seemed like it would be the most dangerous place I could possibly choose. I had this recurring mental image that I could not even set out on the street without someone coming along and cutting off one of my arms with a machete.
And so I bought my ticket. I suppose I viewed this as a kind of challenge. I also knew that if it went OK, I would end up going to a lot of other places as well.
Not long before the trip, I was on the phone with my friend Christopher Weber, the renowned investor, writer, and Offenbach scholar. I mentioned I was going and next thing you know Chris, being a “bounder of adventure,” was coming along with me.
I arrived in Haiti first. As I walked into the baggage and pick-up area of the airport (lovely live compa music), some men immediately grabbed my bags and took them from me. “Uh-oh.” In fact they brought them to the cab and wanted a tip, and they didn’t want anyone else carrying my bags first. High-trust oases in low-trust countries remains a very interesting topic to me, to this day.
I stayed in Pétion-Ville, the wealthier “suburb” of Port-au-Prince, known for its restaurants and nightlife, and I loved the place. The food, music, and art were all amazing, and they were everywhere. You could find interesting artwork on many of the street corners and for very low prices. A known artist might be selling a work for $200. I bought a political satire piece by Maxan Jean-Louis entitled “Aristide’s Wedding,” showing his semi-forced alliance with the United States military. I also bought “Soccer Angels” by the great Jean-Baptiste Jean, and a Claude d’Ambreville painting of women with basket on their heads, now a Haitian standard. That set me off buying art.
The architecture was amazing — think a more elaborate New Orleans style — but very badly ailing, you could even say collapsing.
My favorite dishes were the “combie hash,” the Dinde (a small turkey, best I have had), and the seafood mixing French and Caribbean influences. The tender conch (lambi) is arguably the Haitian national dish. The rice and beans cooked in mushroom juice was another delight, totally new to me. At the time it was obviously the best food in the Caribbean.
My arms remained intact, and walking around Petitionville required some basic caution but did not feel dangerous. Furthermore, the population at that time was hopeful for the future, so it felt very good to be there. The storytellers communicated an appropriate sense of drama.
After a day of walking around, Chris and I rented a car, which was in retrospect an unsound thing to do. We drove to Moulin Sur Mer, a “resort” on the ocean, originally an 18th century sugar plantation. Only a few other people were staying there and one of them appeared to be a Dominican drug lord family. Inside one of the buildings was a list of all the Haitian presidents, and at times the rate is about one leader per year — “model this.” I recalled Hegel’s adage that governments based on voodoo religion were bound to be unstable.
The water was lovely, but the drive to and from Moulin Sur Mer was not uneventful. On the way back, at a service station, a man pulled a submachine gun on Chris and asked for a rather favorable exchange rate on our gasoline purchase. Another man ran at the car and tried to jump on the roof as we drove past. I still am not sure whether he wanted to commandeer the vehicle or simply was looking for a free bus ride (Haitians frequently ride on the tops of their buses).
In any case we pressed on, and it didn’t all seem that dangerous after all. I went away vowing to return, and indeed over the years I was to make four more trips to Haiti, as it became one of my favorite countries. The next time I went I met Selden and Carole Rodman in the line boarding the flight from Miami, and that was to change my life yet again…
Why Spain’s transition to democracy remains controversial
New podcast series on Latin American political economy, with Rasheed Griffith and Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, all in English.
Thursday assorted links
1. Nowrasteh and Bourne on DOGE.
2. “The paradox of India: Punjab is over 60% vegetarian, but Tandoori chicken and butter chicken are its most popular dishes outside the state. Tamil Nadu is less than 1% vegetarian, but its “pure veg” idly, dosa, sambhar, pongal, etc are its most popular dishes outside the state.” Link here.
3. Trump’s remarks on the Kennedy Center (NYT).
4. Helsinki architecture (NYT).
6. By decisive margins, Americans want Trump to adhere to court rulings.
Caleb Watney on risk and science funding
Right now, DOGE is treating efficiency as a simple cost-cutting exercise. But science isn’t a procurement process; it’s an investment portfolio. If a venture capital firm measured efficiency purely by how little money it spent, rather than by the returns it generated, it wouldn’t last long. We invest in scientific research because we want returns — in knowledge, in lifesaving drugs, in technological capability. Generating those returns sometimes requires spending money on things that don’t fit neatly into a single grant proposal.
While it’s true that indirect costs serve an important function, they can also create perverse incentives: When the government promises to cover expenses, expenses tend to go up. But instead of slashing funding indiscriminately, we should be thinking about how to get the most out of every dollar we invest in science.
That means streamlining research regulations. Universities are drowning in bureaucracy. Since 1990, there have been 270 new rules that complicate how we conduct research. Institutional Review Boards, intended to protect people from being unethically experimented on in studies, now regularly review low-risk social science surveys that pose no real ethical concerns. Researchers generate reams of paperwork in legally mandated disclosures of every foreign contract and collaboration, even for countries such as the Netherlands that present no geopolitical risk.
We must also rethink how we select scientific research to fund.
Caleb is co-CEO of the Institute for Progress, here is more from the NYT.
My excellent Conversation with Ezra Klein
Ezra is getting plenty of coverage for his very good and very on the mark new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance. So far it is a huge hit after only a few days. I figured this conversation would be most interesting, and add the most value, if I tried to push him further from a libertarian point of view (a sign of respect of course). Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
In this conversation, Ezra and Tyler discuss how the abundance agenda interacts with political polarization, whether it’s is an elite-driven movement, where Ezra favors NIMBYism, the geographic distribution of US cities, an abundance-driven approach to health care, what to do about fertility decline, how the U.S. federal government might prepare for AGI, whether mass layoffs in government are justified, Ezra’s recommended travel destinations, and more.
Lots of good back and forth, here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Here’s a question from a reader, and I’m paraphrasing. “I can see why you would favor Obamacare and an abundance agenda because Obamacare throws a lot more resources at the healthcare sector in some ways. It did have Medicare cuts, but nonetheless, it’s not choking the sector. But if you favor an abundance agenda, can you then possibly favor single-payer health insurance through the government, which does tend to choke resources and stifle innovation?”
KLEIN: I think it would depend on how you did the single-payer healthcare. Here, we should talk about — because it’s referenced glancingly in the book in a place where you and I differ — but the supervillain view that I hold and your view, which is that you should negotiate drug prices. I’ve always thought on that because I think in some ways, it’s a better toy example than single payer versus Obamacare.
I think you want to take the amount of innovation you’re getting very, very, very seriously. I’ve written pieces about this, that I think if you’re going to do Medicare drug pricing at any kind of significant level, you want to be pairing that with a pretty significant agenda to make drug discovery much easier, to make testing much easier.
And:
COWEN: What should the US federal government do to prepare for AGI? We should just lay off people, right?
KLEIN: [laughs] I would not say it that way. I wouldn’t say just lay off people. I think that’s some of what we’re doing.
COWEN: No, not just, but step one.
KLEIN: Do you think that’s step one? Do you buy this DOGE’s preparation-for-AGI argument that you hear?
COWEN: I think maybe a fifth of them think that. Maybe it’s step two or step three, but it’s a pretty early step, right?
KLEIN: I think that the question of AI or AGI in the federal government, in anywhere — and this is one reason I’ve not bought this argument about DOGE — is you have to ask, “Well what is this AI or AGI doing? What is its value function? What prompt have you given it? What have you asked it to execute across the government and how?”
Alignment, which we have primarily talked about in terms of whether or not the AI, the superintelligence makes us all into paperclips, is a constant question of just near-term systems as well. I think the question of how should we prepare for AGI or for AI in the federal government first has to do with deciding what we would like the AI or the AGI to do. That could be different things to different areas.
My sense — talking to a bunch of people in the companies has helped me conceptualize this better — is that the first thing I would do is begin to ask, what do I think the opportunities of AI are, scientifically and in terms of different kinds of discoveries…
And this:
COWEN: Let me give you another right-wing view, and tell me what you think. The notion that the most important feature of state capacity is whether a state has enough of its citizens willing to fight and die for it. In that case, the United States, Israel, but a pretty small number of nations have high state capacity, and most of Western Europe really does not because they don’t have militaries that mean anything. Is that just the number one feature of abundance in state capacity?
Recommended, obviously.
The importance of the chronometer
The chronometer, one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, allowed for the first time for the precise measurement of longitude at sea. We examine the impact of this innovation on navigation and urbanization. Our identification strategy leverages the fact that the navigational benefits provided by the chronometer varied across different sea regions depending on the prevailing local weather conditions. Utilizing high-resolution data on climate, ship routes, and urbanization, we argue that the chronometer significantly altered transoceanic sailing routes. This, in turn, had profound effects on the expansion of the British Empire and the global distribution of cities and populations outside Europe.
That is from a newly published paper by Martina Miotto and Luigi Pascali. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.