Category: Food and Drink
Santa Marta, Colombia notes
The Santa Marta region of northern Colombia has, within a ninety minute radius, the Caribbean, the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, desert with plentiful cactus, and rain forest. The diversity of birds is remarkable, which is what induced my sister to suggest this locale for our trip. We showed up wondering “how to find the birds,” but before that sentence was finished, some birds swooped down and stole part of our breakfast.
The “Tower” is a wonderful lookout point in Minca, a small town about thirty minutes away from Santa Marta. You stand in an elevated gazebo, surrounded by beautiful mountains, and watch various birds go by. The host family doesn’t even charge you for the drink of water. Until not too long ago, Minca was a “no go” zone, ruled by drug lords and guerrillas. Now there is a very peaceful revenue-generating compromise, with a lid on all the violence. British women visit and order avocado toast, before setting off on their birding tours.
My sister has seen dozens of “lifers” on this trip, namely birds she had not seen before. For me they are almost all lifers, except the pigeons.
You can take a several hour small boat trip to see a village on stilts, Pueblo Palafito. The locale supports 1000 or so people, all using water taxis to get around and mostly working as fishermen. It is not near anything else, and their power source is solar, due to a gift from the Italian government. This was the highlight of the trip. I am told families there typically average five children, and the schools were indeed full of enthusiastic young people. Best is this video, you don’t need to understand the Spanish.
In the city of Santa Marta there are two (!) separate monuments to the 1958 Smith-Corona typewriter, both at major intersections. They are intended as a tribute to the region’s best-known author Gabriel García Márquez.
The local economy is too dependent on coal export, but overall it feels bustling and reasonably prosperous.
The best food there is seafood, most of all fish and shrimp, in addition to coconut rice and various forms of plantains. You can eat very well here but I would not stray from the area’s basic strengths. Maracuya juice is consistently good. I don’t usually order desserts, but here they are consistently interesting and original, often using honey, or sometimes waffles.
I would strongly recommend the Marriott hotel there, the one on the beach. It is essentially an $800 a night quality place, with very direct beach access, but at far, far lower prices. And you end up with the ocean and also the three swimming pools pretty much to yourself. (Where is everyone?) For the entire trip, and for the hotel, safety levels are just fine.
This is what the Caribbean should be, but rarely is. Visiting Santa Marta, as a trip, is so far ahead of most better-known beach outings it isn’t funny. From Virginia I can fly to Colombia in about five hours, and then Santa Marta from Bogotá is a mere 90-minute extra flight.
It is a common trope that genetic influences on individual behavior strengthen as people age. If you take a trip with your sibling, you will see further evidence that this is true.
It is rare for me to get on a plane for reasons that have basically no work components. That said, it is also easy to get work done here.
AI passes the restaurant review Turing test
Surprisingly easy, it turned out. In a series of experiments for a new study, Kovács found that a panel of human testers was unable to distinguish between reviews written by humans and those written by GPT-4, the LLM powering the latest iteration of ChatGPT. In fact, they were more confident about the authenticity of AI-written reviews than they were about human-written reviews.
Here is the full story, via Sarah Jenislawski.
What should I do in Cape Town, South Africa?
I won’t be there for long, but what should I see and what should I eat? How is the general level of safety these days?
I thank you all in advance.
The Screwworm
The Atlantic: Screwworms once killed millions of dollars’ worth of cattle a year in the southern U.S. Their range extended from Florida to California, and they infected any living, warm-blooded animal: not only cattle but deer, squirrels, pets, and even the occasional human. In fact, the screwworm’s scientific name is C. hominivorax or “man eater”—so named after a horrific outbreak among prisoners on Devil’s Island, an infamous 19th-century French penal colony in South America.
For untold millennia, screwworms were a grisly fact of life in the Americas. In the 1950s, however, U.S. ranchers began to envision a new status quo. They dared to dream of an entire country free of screwworms. At their urging, the United States Department of Agriculture undertook what would ultimately become an immense, multidecade effort to wipe out the screwworms, first in the U.S. and then in Mexico and Central America—all the way down to the narrow strip of land that is the Isthmus of Panama. The eradication was a resounding success. But the story does not end there. Containing a disease is one thing. Keeping it contained is another thing entirely, as the coronavirus pandemic is now so dramatically demonstrating.
To get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. Every week, planes drop 14.7 million sterilized screwworms over the rainforest that divides the two countries. A screwworm-rearing plant operates 24/7 in Panama. Inspectors cover thousands of square miles by motorcycle, boat, and horseback, searching for stray screwworm infections north of the border. The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before.
A reminder that civilization takes work. Excellent piece by Sarah Zhang. Read the whole thing.
Hat tip: Stone Age Herbalist.
The Fiscal Impact of Low-Skill Immigration
Low-skill immigrants have low wages and thus don’t pay much in taxes but they do use some government services, especially education for their children. What’s the net fiscal impact? The National Academy of Sciences did a detailed scenario analysis looking at the impact over 75 years, thus including second and third generations. Overall the NAS concluded that the net fiscal impact of the average immigrant was positive. The impact was negative, however, for immigrants with just a high school education and even more so for immigrants with less than a high-school education.
Two recent papers qualify this conclusion. The NAS study estimated the direct fiscal effects of an immigrant–what do they pay in taxes and what do they take out in services? Immigration, however, has indirect effects on the native born population. In the The Case for Getting Rid of Borders I wrote:
The immigrant who mows the lawn of the nuclear physicist indirectly helps to unlock the secrets of the universe.
More prosaically, low-skill immigrants can complement higher-skilled native labor, increasing native productivity. Go to any fine restaurant in DC, for example, and you will typically see a native-born front of the house and a Mexican born back-of-the house. As Tyler quipped at lunch recently, all restaurants in the United States are Mexican restaurants only the type of food they are cooking changes. The opportunity to hire Mexican cooks increases the number of restaurants and the opportunities and wages of the native-born front of the house. Higher native wages mean higher taxes so there is a beneficial indirect fiscal effect of low-skill immigration.
A recent paper by Colas and Sachs, The Indirect Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration finds that under plausible assumptions the indirect effects are large enough to make the net effects of immigration positive for almost all US immigrants.
My excellent colleague Michael Clemens makes another similar point about capital. When a profit-maximizing firm hires more labor it also hires more capital. Capital pays taxes. Thus, immigration raises the taxes paid by capital and when you add that indirect effect to the calculation it also shows that the net fiscal impacts of low-skilled immigration are plausibly positive.
The fiscal benefits of low-skilled immigration aren’t a big reason to support low-skill immigration but the new literature on the indirect effects should take one worry off the table.
As a takeaway, it’s important to recognize that the fiscal benefits arise because low-skilled immigrants are gainfully employed. The U.S. excels at integrating people into the workforce. We need to keep this in mind when thinking about labor policy including minimum wages, occupational licensing, E-Verify, access to banking, education, and driver’s licenses and so forth. We could easily turn fiscal benefits into fiscal costs by making it more difficult to employ immigrants (and workers more generally). Employing immigrants benefits both them and native citizens. America’s open markets play a pivotal role in this success. Let’s keep it going.
The world of labor shortages, the culture that is alcohol
Drunken-driving deaths in the U.S. have risen to levels not seen in nearly two decades, federal data show, a major setback to long-running road-safety efforts.
At the same time, arrests for driving under the influence have plummeted, as police grapple with challenges like hiring woes and heightened concern around traffic stops.
Here is more from the WSJ. “About 13,500 people died in alcohol-impairment crashes in 2022…” Here is my earlier post on the culture of guns and the cultural of alcohol.
Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
What I am nostalgic about
With a group of friends I was having a chat about the merits of the current vs. past America. Battle of the Ancients and Moderns! I generally favor current times, but not unconditionally. So I promised them a list of what I missed from the past. To be clear, these are personal judgments, not claims about net social value. I’ll also offer comments on features from the past that many miss, but I do not. Here goes:
1. Visiting Borders in its heyday. Nowadays I have to go to London to have comparable experiences.
2. That you could just show up at various venues, pay modest prices, and see incredible performers. For instance I saw Horowitz and also McCartney at his peak. Leo Kottke at his peak. Pierre Boulez. Many more. Such experiences are hardly gone, but in terms of cultural resonance the earlier times were much better. How did I fail to go see Miles Davis!?
Similarly, you could just go see Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, Derek Parfit, and many other famous figures. No current economist or philosopher is comparable in this regard.
2b. Note that in some areas, such as NBA basketball, there are more “must see” players today than in any earlier era. Or say tech titans. So I am not favoring the nostalgic perspective per se, but for music, economics, and philosophy the nostalgic perspective on live performance is correct.
3. There were more and better museum art exhibits to see before 9/11. Much of that has to do with insurance rates and the ease of international agreements.
4. Good seafood was cheap and readily available.
5. Reading the Far Eastern Economic Review in its heyday.
6. Awaiting the arrival of a new issue of the Journal of Political Economy, knowing it would have exciting new ideas.
7. Many, many locations were better to travel to and visit. Amsterdam is one obvious example. But by no means is this true for all places, India for instance is better to visit today than before.
8. Hollywood movies used to be better, though global cinema overall is doing fine.
9. Very recently there are too many parts of the world you really just can’t visit, Iran and Russia most notably.
10. Mainstream media was much better, noting I nonetheless would rather have the internet. Still, I miss the quality of cultural reviews, local news, and several other features of normal newspapers.
11. San Francisco of the 1980s and Miami Beach of the 1990s.
12. So many intellectuals could afford to live in New York City, and indeed Manhattan. The city was overall more interesting, though worse to live in or to have to deal with.
13. Parking was much easier, even in Manhattan. I used to just get parking spots, even in the Village or Midtown. Now I would never bother to look.
14. The emphasis on personal freedom in American popular culture of the 1970s and 1980s.
15. Paperback editions of the classics were so often far superior in earlier times. Nowadays most of them look and feel like crap.
A few things I have no nostalgia for:
1. I feel America today is overall a higher-trust society, admittedly with the picture being somewhat complex. American cities certainly are much safer, and most of them look much better.
2. I prefer current airport procedures to those before 9/11.
3. Young people are overall smarter, and arguably more moral.
4. Just seeing white (and sometimes black) people everywhere, except a few cities on the coasts.
5. The seafood issue aside, food in America is obviously much much better.
6. I can’t think of anything in the category of “how people interacted with each other” that I preferred in earlier times.
7. I don’t miss having more snow, quite the contrary.
8. Medical and dental care are far superior, obviously.
What else should be on these lists?
Samuelson-Stolper, writ anew
At Sansan Chicken in Long Island City, Queens, the cashier beamed a wide smile and recommended the fried chicken sandwich.
Or maybe she suggested the tonkatsu — it was hard to tell, because the internet connection from her home in the Philippines was spotty.
Romy, who declined to give her last name, is one of 12 virtual assistants greeting customers at a handful of restaurants in New York City, from halfway across the world.
The virtual hosts could be the vanguard of a rapidly changing restaurant industry, as small-business owners seek relief from rising commercial rents and high inflation. Others see a model ripe for abuse: The remote workers are paid $3 an hour, according to their management company, while the minimum wage in the city is $16.
Here is more from the NYT, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Why is there a movement to ban lab-grown beef?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:
…let me offer another theory: The anti-lab-grown-meat movement is about conservative cultural insecurity — the fear that, without the force of law, some conservative cultural norms will fade away…
Imagine that lab-grown meat proves feasible at a reasonable cost. It might end up as cheaper than beef from a cow, and it might also be better for the climate. In such a world, there might be growing pressures to abandon real meat for the lab-grown kind. There could even be a political movement to tax or ban real meat, similar to carbon taxes or plans to phase out fossil fuels.
Currently there is no momentum in that direction. For all the talk of vegetarianism and veganism, the percentage of Americans who practice those beliefs seems to be roughly flat. Many Americans like eating meat, for better or worse. But if real meat had a true substitute, perhaps the political calculus would differ.
This is the real fear — not of lab-grown meat itself, but of the changing culture its popularity would represent. Whether conservatives find the meat substitute to be adequate is beside the point. Society would have decided that some of their most cherished beliefs can be disposed of. Both humankind’s dominion over nature, which runs strong in the Christian strand of conservative thought, and the masculinized meat-eating culture — more specifically, the meat-grilling culture — would be under threat.
If artificial meat is banned, of course, none of that can happen.
In one sense, critics of conservatism should be heartened by the campaign against lab-grown meat. If I were a mainstream animal-rights advocate, I would revise upwards my estimate of my own power and influence.
I then consider how we might use science to arrive at a better resolution of these disputes.
When does provenance justify a consumption experience?
Konstantin emails me a question:
Hey Tyler! You said you tried coffee just once, at a coffee ceremony in an Ethiopian village, as coffee probably originates in Ethiopia.
What else would you try (or do) only due to its provenance?
What else have you tried or done only due to its provenance?
I used to always try the local foodstuffs, no matter what the expected quality, for instance that terrible fermented dish in Iceland. I guess I have stopped doing this? (“I’ll just have the beef rendang, please!” No monkey brains either. I do however make a point of trying new dishes I think I will enjoy.) In the case of coffee, I felt it would be rude to refuse. Plus after all these years I was curious what coffee tasted like.
More generally, I am a fan of consumption experiences tied to what Konstantin calls provenance. If you are in Japan at the right time of year, it makes sense to walk up Mount Fuji. The fact that the mountain has a special status in Japanese lore makes the experience more valuable, even if you don’t believe in Japanese lore per se. It is one way of “connecting” yourself to Japan, and seeing how that connection feels.
When I was younger, I took a cable car in San Francisco, even though I didn’t find the experience an intrinsically valuable one. Frankly, it bored me, but I also don’t regret doing it. Think of the underlying model as “trying to approach a native culture from as many different angles as possible.” You also should try the angles they put forward as focal. Even though those angles may not in fact be the most relevant or focal ones. How important are cable cars for understanding San Francisco? I am not sure, but if they are irrelevant that too is an angle you might try on for size. And then take off. When you are done, you can always walk over to the local bookstore.
Lockean homesteading for goats, bonus added
The mayor of an Italian island is attempting to solve an animal overpopulation problem with an unusual offer: free goats for anyone who can catch them.
Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of Alicudi, in Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, introduced an “adopt-a-goat” program when the small island’s wild goat population grew to six times the human population of about 100.
Gullo said anyone who emails a request to the local government and pays a $17 “stamp fee” can take as many goats as they wish, as long as they transport them off the island within 15 days of approval.
“Anyone can make a request for a goat, it doesn’t have to be a farmer, and there are no restrictions on numbers,” he told The Guardian.
He said the scheme is currently available until April 10, but he will extend the deadline until the goat population is back down to a more manageable number.
The mayor told CNN that officials will not investigate the intentions of prospective goat owners, but “ideally, we would like to see people try to domesticate the animals rather than eat them.”
Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Rules for Tri-State Italian food
Piers emails me:
You’re a NJ native and great at finding good restaurants.
So what are the rules for finding good old school American Italian restaurants? Not like modern farm to table places full of natural light in Brooklyn or SF, you know what I mean?
Review aggregators are useless. Horrid “egg noodles and ketchup” places get high scores just for being family run.
It is harder and harder to find such places. I think the Latino-ization of the New Jersey heartland largely has been a good thing, and also a good thing for food (Peruvian!), but it hasn’t helped Italian dining very much. More and more New Jersey Italian places sell to the upper middle class, rather than to the diehards. I have two pieces of advice:
1. Go to a classic heartland road, such as Rt.17 or Rt.46, and try to learn which places still have Mafia ties, or had them recently.
2. Go to a town in the heartland, and ask a person working at a fire station. Heed the answer only if that person has a New Jersey accent.
As a side remark, the good places have either “too good but tacky” decor, or poor, not good enough decor. Either way, it should not feel pleasant, that is a sign the ravioli and lasagna will be ordinary. And you can always resort to Staten Island, the Bronx, and parts of Connecticut, in that order.
If you need to ask what “the heartland” means, you shouldn’t even be trying to eat this food, just drive to Kearny and opt for the lomo saltado or maybe something Brazilian, Dominican or Puerto Rican in Paterson.
What should I ask Brian Winter?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. Here is his bio:
Brian Winter is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a seasoned analyst of Latin American politics, with more than 20 years following the region’s ups and downs. He lived in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico as a correspondent for Reuters before taking on his current role in New York, where he is also the vice president of policy for the Americas Society and Council of the Americas. He has been called “the best foreign expert on Brazil of this moment” by GloboNews. Brian is the author of several books including Why Soccer Matters, a New York Times bestseller he wrote with the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé; The Accidental President of Brazil, co-authored with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso; and Long After Midnight, a memoir about trying (and failing) to learn to tango in Argentina. He is a regular contributor to television and radio, the host of the Americas Quarterly Podcast and a prolific barbecuer and chef. Proficient in Spanish and Portuguese, Brian speaks frequently about Latin America’s past, present and future to investors and general-interest audiences. Follow him on Twitter @BrazilBrian
So what should I ask him?
San Francisco dining
Dwarkesh brought me to the very good Sizzling Pot King, 139 8th St, San Francisco, genuine Hunan food and yes I have been to Changsha. Don’t walk there though, take an Uber or better yet a Waymo. Dwarkesh was kind enough to call me one for the trip back to the hotel. When I asked for jazz music, I was shocked to hear a very high quality Bill Evans trio cut, not some popular slop.
The Guam restaurant on Mission — Prubechu — is quite interesting and serves largely the indigenous Chamorro food. It is rare that I have the chance to try an altogether new cuisine, in any case I would eat there again.
Netherlands fact of the day
The country, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, not only accomplished this feat but also has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions…
The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.
Here is the full article, via S. The article is interesting throughout. However here is a more recent piece on the Dutch nitrogen revolt.