Category: Uncategorized
Wednesday assorted links
2. Fentanyl is putting Mexican poppy growers out of work (NYT).
4. Did austerity induce Brexit?
5. “Our results indicated that 99.6% of the variability in adolescent girls’ satisfaction with life had nothing to do with how much they used social media.” (NB: not the only perspective on this).
6. “Immigrants who move from a country with a higher GDP per capita have higher mortality rates.“
How to run an Unconference
What are your best tips for running an Unconference? Google and Facebook have put on versions of these, do you know of anywhere on-line that offers their templates?
Tuesday assorted links
1. Psychologist Robert Levine has passed away (NYT).
2. Xi, the great deglobalizer.
4. Claims about Andalusian donkeys.
5. The tech culture that is China: “Bedding equipped with QR codes will allow hotel guests to verify that they are not sleeping in unclean sheets, says the technology’s developer.”
Taipei notes
My other visit here was thirty years ago, and most of all I am surprised by how little has changed. The architecture now looks all the more retro, the alleyways all the more noir, and the motorbikes have by no means vanished. Yes there are plenty of new stores, but overall it is recognizably the same city, something you could not say about Seoul.
Real wages basically did not rise 2000-2016. The main story, in a nutshell, is that the domestic capital has flowed to China. About 9 percent of the Taiwanese population lives in China, and that is typically the more ambitious segment of the workforce.
I am still surprised at how little the Taiwanese signal status with their looks and dress. The steady heat and humidity may account for some of that, though the same is not true in the hotter parts of mainland China.
The Japanese ruled Taiwan from 1895 through the end of WWII, and those were key years for industrial and social development. The infrastructure and urban layouts often feel quite Japanese.
Thirty years ago, everything was up and buzzing at 6 a.m., six days a week; that is no longer the case.
The National Palace Museum is the best place in the world to be convinced of the glories of earlier Chinese civilizations. It will wow you even if you are bored by the Chinese art you see in other places, as arguably it is better than all of the other Chinese art museums put together. How did they get those 600,000 or so artworks out of a China in the midst of a civil war?
The quality of dining here is high and rising. Unlike in Hong Kong or Singapore, Taiwan has plenty of farms, its own greens, and thus farm to table dining here is common. Tainan Tai Tsu Mien Seafood is one recommendation, for an affordable Michelin one-star, emphasis on seafood. Addiction Aquatic Development has superb sushi and is a first-rate hangout. At the various Night Markets, it is still possible to get an excellent meal for only a few dollars.
One can go days in Taipei and hardly see any Western tourists, so consider this a major arbitrage opportunity.
Monday assorted links
1. The citizenship question in Canada.
4. UK roadkill data, badger in the lead. And Oxford weather and climate change data.
Japanese car rental markets in everything
People are renting cars, but then not driving them at all:
One respondent to the company’s survey said they rented vehicles to nap in or use for a workspace. Another person stored bags and other personal belongings in the rental car when nearby coin lockers were full.
In the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, rental cars were also used to recharge cellphones.
”I rented a car to eat a boxed meal that I bought at a convenience store because I couldn’t find anywhere else to have lunch,” said a 31-year-old male company employee who lives in Saitama Prefecture, close to Tokyo.
“Usually the only place I can take a nap while visiting my clients is a cybercafe in front of the station, but renting a car to sleep in is just a few hundred yen (several dollars), almost the same as staying in the cybercafe.”
Here is the full story by Andrew J. Hawkins, via Samir Varma and also Michael Rosenwald.
Sunday assorted links
1. Markets in everything: the “my girlfriend is not hungry” option takes off.
2. Joao Gilberto has passed away, music here.
3. Very good sentences: “The level of supply chain effort and professional polish that goes into the smallest cup of coffee is mind boggling.” From Balaji Srinivasan.
4. Nuns resurrect endangered salamanders.
5. Michael Strain opposes the citizenship question on the Census.
6. “We move from jealousy to hate…” Meet the anti-woke left.
Should the citizenship question be put on the Census?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and here is one excerpt:
Unlike many of those who push for the question, I would like to boost the flow of legal immigration by a factor or two or three. Nonetheless, are we supposed to let foreigners in (which I favor), and give them a rapid path to citizenship (which I also favor), but somehow we are not allowed to ask them if they are citizens? To me this boggles the mind.
The real point is that the Democratic Party has talked itself into an untenable and indeed politically losing rhetorical stance on immigration (did you watch the debates? decriminalize illegal migration? health care benefits for illegal immigrants?), and the Census battle is another example of that. It is no surprise that Trump wishes to keep it alive as a political issue:
Do you really wish for your view to be so closely affiliated with the attitude that citizenship is a thing to hide? I would be embarrassed if my own political strategy implied that I take a firm view — backed by strong moralizing — that we not ask individuals about their citizenship on the Census form. I would think somehow I was, if only in the longer run, making a huge political blunder to so rest the fate of my party on insisting on not asking people about their citizenship.
Not asking about citizenship seems to signify an attitude toward immigrants something like this: Get them in and across the border, their status may be mixed and their existence may be furtive, and let’s not talk too openly about what is going on, and later we will try to get all of them citizenship. Given the current disagreement between the two parties on immigration questions, that may well be the only way of getting more immigrants into the U.S., which I hold to be a desirable goal. But that is a dangerous choice of political turf, and it may not help the pro-immigration cause in the longer run.
Finally:
Countries that do let in especially high percentages of legal immigrants, such as Canada and Australia, take pretty tough stances in controlling their borders. Both of those countries ask about citizenship on their censuses. When citizens feel in control of the process, they may be more generous in terms of opening the border.
If you can’t ask about citizenship on your census, as indeed Canada and Australia do, it is a sign that your broader approach to immigration is broken. I know this is a hard one to back out of, but if your response is to attack the motives of the Republicans, or simply reiterate the technocratic value of a more accurate Census, it is a sign of not yet being “woke” on this issue. America desperately needs more legal immigration.
Saturday assorted links
Should we ban bicycles in major urban areas?
“New Yorkers on bikes are being killed at an alarming rate,” said Marco Conner, the interim co-executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group.
Across the city, 14 cyclists have been killed in crashes this year, four more than all of last year, according to city officials. New York’s streets have seen an increase in bicycling while also becoming more perilous, in part because of surging truck traffic fueled by the booming e-commerce industry.
The mayor himself acknowledged on Monday that the city was facing an “emergency.”
That is from the New York Times, you will find more detail, and some further points of interest, at the link.
Would urban bicycling pass an FDA test of “safe and effective”? Furthermore, as a driver and pedestrian I observe cyclists breaking the law — most of all running red lights — at an alarming rate. And surely we all believe in the rule of law, so why should we allow technologies that seem so closely tethered to massive law-breaking?
I do get that bicycles are driven by cool people who are fighting climate change. Nonetheless, what if self-driving vehicles were connected to fourteen deaths in NYC alone? How would we treat them? Alternatively, what if Facebook owned all of those bicycles?
A long harangue about how the car and truck drivers really were at fault will fail to pass the Coasean symmetric externalities test.
Friday assorted links
1. The Toy Tamer: those new service sectors jobs markets in everything.
2. Would you give up your airplane seat for Wole Soyinka?
3. Why doesn’t “tock-tick” sound right to your ears?
The new and improved Magnus Carlsen
After a few years of only so-so (but still world #1) results, Magnus has I believe won five tournaments in a row this year and he is leading in the sixth, currently running in Croatia.
He recently stated that he has learned some new chess ideas from AlphaZero, but more importantly he has shown up better prepared in the openings than his opponents, probably for the first time in his career. Yet his preparation has taken an extraordinary spin. Other grandmasters prepare the opening in the hope of achieving an early advantage over their opponents. Magnus’s preparation, in contrast, is directed at achieving an early disadvantage in the game, perhaps willing to tolerate as much as -0.5 or -0.6 by the standards of the computer (a significant but not decisive disadvantage, with -2 signifying a lost position). Nonetheless these are positions “out of book” where Magnus nonetheless feels he can outplay his opponent, and this is mostly opponents from the world top ten or fifteen.
So far it is working. One commentator wrote: “Magnus is turning into a crushing monster just like Garry. He isn’t the strangler anymore”
And it is hard to counter someone looking for a disadvantage!
*Fentanyl, Inc.*, by Ben Westhoff
The slightly misleading subtitle is How Rogue Chemists are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic. Why misleading? So many substance abuse books are a mix of hysterical in tone and a disappointing “paint by numbers” in their execution, but this one really stands out for its research, journalism, and overall analysis. To give just one example, it is also a great book on China, and how China and the Chinese chemicals industry works, backed up by extensive original investigation.
Start with this:
Americans take more opioids per capita — legitimate and illegitimate uses combined — than any other country in the world. Canada is second, and both far outstrip Europe. Americans take four times as many opioids as people do in the United Kingdom.
And this:
For many years, Chinese organized-crime groups known as triads have been involved in the international meth trade. But experts familiar with triads say their influence appears to be waning in the fentanyl era. “They’re a shadow of their former selves,” said Justin Hastings, an associate professor in international relations and comparative politics at the University of Sydney…Though ad hoc criminal organizations continue to move drugs in China, major trafficking organizations are rare there, and cartels basically nonexistent. This leaves the market wide open for Chinese chemical companies, who benefit from an air of legitimacy.
As for marijuana and cocaine, they are used by only about one in every forty thousand individuals in China. But the book covers the entire U.S. history as well.
Definitely recommended, this will be making my year-end “best of” list for non-fiction. And yes I did go and buy his earlier book on West Coast rap music.
Thursday assorted links
A simple model of Kawhi Leonard’s indecision
As a free agent, he is being courted by his current team, the Toronto Raptors, as well as the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers (now the team of LeBron James). And the internet is making jokes about him taking so much time for the decision. In Toronto, helicopters are following him around.
Due to the salary cap and related regulations, there is no uncertainty about how much money each team can offer. The offer that can vary the most in overall quality, however, is the one from the Los Angeles Lakers. For instance, if Kawhi is playing in Los Angeles with LeBron James, he might receive more endorsements and movie contracts (or not). If he is waiting on the decision at all, that is a sign he is at least sampling the Laker option, and seeing how much extra off-court value it can bring him. So the existence of some waiting favors the chance he goes to the Lakers. That said, if he is waiting a long time to see how good the Laker option is, that is a sign the Laker option is not obviously crossing a threshold and thus he might stay with Toronto.