Category: Uncategorized
The new equilibrium, solved for
Ticket sales for Chris Rock’s comedy shows have reportedly spiked since Sunday night.
Live event ticketing site TickPick sold more tickets to see Chris Rock overnight than it had in the past month combined, according to a tweet from the company Monday.
Rock is set to perform standup at Boston’s Wilbur Theater on Wednesday. On March 18, the cheapest tickets were sold for $46, but had increased to $411 by Monday, according to TickPick’s public relations representative Kyle Zorn.
Here is the full story. Now solve for the next one!
Who gains and loses status from the war in Ukraine?
Today I will focus on the losers, with another post to follow on those who have gained status. Here goes:
1. An entire generation of German politicians.
2. Those who argued that the Russia misinformation machine was swinging major outcomes such as Western elections. Said misinformation machine just doesn’t seem that good!
2b. Those who argued the UFO footage was possibly of a Russian military craft.
3. Putin. And the coterie of Eurasianist intellectuals surrounding him, including Dugin. And various strands of the American right wing.
4. The anti-nuclear power crowd, and much of ESG more generally. Too much posturing, too few practical solutions and now the whole thing bites.
5. China, with India in contention but working somewhat to remedy the damage.
6. President Obama, for mocking Romney’s concern over Russia, in one of their debates.
7. People who spent most of their time debating The Woke, on either side of the issue.
8. Commentators and political scientists who saw the initial conflict as primarily about the eastward expansion of NATO. Putin’s war aims have shown this to be false (while to be clear Putin does also hate the eastern expansion of NATO). Desire to obliterate and absorb the nation of Ukraine far predates the history of NATO.
9. People who said “the next war will all be about cyber.” There is probably more cyberconflict going on than we are aware of, but still…
Who else?
Tuesday assorted links
2. “The first lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 is headed to auction, with an estimated value of between US$800,000 and US$1.2 million.” Link here.
3. What will the end of subsidies mean for uninsured Covid care?
4. Ezra Klein and Larry Summers (NYT).
5. New and relatively rigorous study of social media and well-being. Small negative effects, highly dependent on age, somewhat dependent on gender. Evidence consistent with causality running in both directions. This is not a zero negative effect, stronger than usual for girls 12-14, and for men 26-29, but overall not consistent with the doomsaying accounts. Here is NYT coverage. Note this from the NYT: ““There’s been absolutely hundreds of these studies, almost all showing pretty small effects,” said Jeff Hancock, a behavioral psychologist at Stanford University who has conducted a meta-analysis of 226 such studies.”
Humor and citations
The data are taken from ecology and evolution papers:
Self-citation data suggest that authors give funnier titles to papers they consider less important. After correction for this confound, papers with funny titles have significantly higher citation rates, suggesting that humour recruits readers. We also examined associations between citation rates and several other features of titles. Inclusion of acronyms and taxonomic names was associated with lower citation rates, while assertive-statement phrasing and presence of colons, question marks, and political regions were associated with somewhat higher citation rates. Title length had no effect on citation. Our results suggest that scientists can use creativity with titles without having their work condemned to obscurity.
The authors of this paper are , , . Via Michelle Dawson. p.s. The paper has a (modestly) funny title — “If this title is funny, will you cite me?”
Marijuana fact of the day
In California, three years into the era of legalization under the Proposition 64 ballot initiative, data indicate that only about one-quarter of weed sold and consumed in the state is legally licensed and that the remaining three-quarters is produced outside legal market channels.
And from a later chapter:
And that is why some people say, and we consider it plausible, that the so-called legalization of weed in some North American markets has illegalized more weed than it legalized.
That is from the new and excellent Can Legal Weed Win?: The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics, by Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner.
Monday assorted links
1. The book that predicted the creator economy (hint: it is by me).
2. “In contrast to official statistics that suggest medical care prices increased by 0.53 percent per year relative to economy-wide inflation from 2000 to 2017, we find that quality-adjusted medical care prices declined by 1.33 percent per year over the same period.” Link here.
3. Good New York profile of Adam Tooze. (And my earlier CWT with Tooze.)
5. MIT restores the SAT/ACT requirement.
6. If Putin tries to poison you, do you get your money back?
The benefits of educational migration
That is the topic of my Bloomberg column, and I offer up a very concrete proposal:
The educational migration idea also has potential for the U.S., though with additional hurdles. American universities typically offer some tuition aid to foreign students, but they could pledge to do more. Imagine if every school in America offered 10 additional zero-tuition slots a year to students from very poor countries. The strain on the facilities of most schools would be minimal, yet with about 5,000 institutions of higher education in America, that could amount to tens of thousands of new slots for educational migrants.
Given the great and justified interest in helping emigrants from Ukraine, the U.S. and other countries might also consider special programs for Ukrainian students. Millions are leaving Ukraine, and while the charitable response has been impressive, over the longer term these individuals will need to find good jobs. Education is one major step toward this end.
And some caveats:
It remains to be seen how readily educational migration can be scaled. Not all students from poor countries have the linguistic and cultural preparation to study in the West. They may require mentoring, and they may have difficulties navigating the university application process. Universities, and the charities working with them, may have to work harder to create admissions tests that are relevant, challenging and secure. Still, they may get better at those tasks the more they try to make educational migration work.
For the original pointer I thank Richard Nerland.
Sunday assorted links
1. “Tobacco ties hinder WHO authorization of Canada’s coronavirus vaccine.” Is there a word for this?
2. Limitations on children innovating.
3. A nuclear expert offers some commentary on nuclear risks.
4. Four Best Picture Contenders are Remakes (NYT).
6. Does misery love company? Oddly perhaps, this study yielded the opposite result that for the general population “happiness hates company.”
Saturday assorted links
That was then, this is now, again Russia/Ukraine edition
Circa 1919, with Ukraine under siege from the Bolshevik armies:
Things, however, did not soon improve. Again to take the case of Odessa, by the end of April electricity was running out. “Thus in one month they have brought chaos to everything,” Bunin snarled, “no factories, no railroads, no trams, no water, no bread, no clothes — no nothing!” In fact the Bolsheviks had inherited the chaos and the crisis; they also inherited — and exacerbated — the free-wheeling brutality displayed on all sides and of which…they were the beneficiaries. To this kind of panache they applied a new moral calculus.
That is from Laura Engelstein, Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War 1914-1921, which as noted yesterday is quite a good book, especially for viewing the Bolshevik Revolution through the eyes of what became the broader Soviet empire.
U.S.A. fact of the day
But the 10 fastest growing counties last year accounted for nearly 80 percent of the national total, a testament not so much to the rapid pace of change in these places, but to the lack of significant growth in the rest of the nation.
Here is more from the New York Times, with useful maps as well. And this:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1506995138173837318
Friday assorted links
The virtues of seaweed collecting
Nineteenth-century seaweed albums have a baked-in melancholy. Despite the best intentions, they do not flatter seaweed. The samples are brittle where the plant was pliant, opaque when once translucent, flaccid where previously ballooned. The displacement from sea to paper steals a measure of the plants’ integrity, and time leaches away the rest. In every respect, the wonders of seaweed have fled the book. And yet, these albums still speak — not of seaweed exactly, but of the collector’s care and devotion. There is a particular kind of eros that thrums between a receptive human and the natural world; the contours and depth of this eros is the true subject of a seaweed album.
Here is much more, interesting throughout, via Jodi Ettenberg.
*Amongst Women*
That is the title of a 1990 Irish novel by John McGahern, well-known in Ireland but as of late not so frequently read outside of Ireland. In addition to its excellent general quality, I found this book notable for two reasons. First, it focuses on the feminization of Ireland, being set in the mid-century decades after independence. An IRA veteran slowly realizes that the Ireland he fought for — a place for manly men — was a figment of his civil war imagination, and not an actual option for an independent, modernizing Ireland. The latter will be run according to the standards and desires of women, and actually be far more pleasant, whether or not Moran likes it. Second, the book is an excellent illustration of the importance of context for reading fiction. The story reads quite differently, depending how quickly you realize the protagonist is an IRA veteran with his wartime service as a fundamental experience. Few readers will know this from the very beginning, but I suspect many Irish readers — especially older ones — will figure this out well before they are told. In general, the very best fiction is context-rich, and this is one reason why many people may not appreciate all of the literary classics.
Thursday assorted links
1. The data are now confirmed for the African Covid heterogeneity (NYT).
2. Ross Douthat on the need for wartime dissent (NYT).
3. Taiwan Ukraine flower markets in everything.
4. Ukraine needs a version of Fast Grants.
5. The current debate over the NIH. A good piece, though it doesn’t think radically enough.