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Tuesday assorted links

1. Digging through the Extropian archives.  By Max T.

2. David French on the Right and masculinity, also relevant for understanding the MR comments section (NYT).

3. One million new galaxies discovered, ho hum.

4. The economics of augmented and virtual reality.

5. Vending machine eggs.  Canadian.

6. Robin Hanson talks to David Wolpe about the sacred.

7. Project NextGen is spared from the budget cuts (NYT).

Monday assorted links

1. Claims about semaglutide.  Not to be taken as endorsement of the claims, one way or the other, but worth further investigation.

2. “In the debate over the value of a college education, the value of the experience students gain from holding officer positions in campus clubs is underrated.

3. Claims that lab-grown meat are worse for the environment.

4. Becky G and Peso Pluma.

5. Ada Palmer on progress.

6. Are AI-threatened jobs held mostly by women?

Thursday assorted links

1. Things we’ve changed our mind about, including New Jersey.

2. In fact I linked to this recently, it is one of my favorite videos (some very real lessons about eroticism in there), but since Tina Turner has passed away here it is again.  RIP.

3. “Creators”?  WTF?  What is wrong with you people??

4. Ten-year gilts back up to Truss/Kwarteng levels.

5. Twelve-minute John Cochrane Bradley award acceptance speech.

6. Update on the prospects for AI regulation.  And Nabeel on Waluigi, Carl Jung, and the Case for Moral AI.

7. Robert Zimmer, RIP (NYT).

Tuesday assorted links

1. Adding world models to language models.

2. The new post-rationalist movement?

3. Katherine Dee visits Saudi Arabia.

4. The new Bernanke and Blanchard study of recent inflation (WSJ), paper should be coming out at some point today.

5. Jolly Swagman 4.5 hour podcast with former Australian Treasury Secretary Ken Henry.

6. Excerpt from “Stranger Love,” the new six-hour opera showing in Los Angeles.  Here is NYT coverage.

Two movies I forgot to tell you about

The first is Are You There, God?: It’s Me Margaret.  In addition to being a good movie, it is pro-American, pro-family, pro-religious tolerance, pro-suburbs, and even pro-New Jersey, none of it done pedantically or with excess self-consciousness.

The second is Polite Society, a British comedy-action-Pakistani marriage film, with a South Asian kinetic feel but ultimately in the Western moviemaking tradition.  One Pakistani younger sister is trying to stop the older sister from getting married, and she persists past a reasonable point.  The whole plot only makes sense if you realize the younger sister has been sexually abused (is it a spoiler if your reader/viewer might not have seen the point in the first place?).  Ultimately this movie is about the very limited range of options facing Pakistani women in British society, even with Western comforts and pseudo-freedoms.

Both are recommended.

Kevin Bryan on LLMs and GPTs for economic research

Here is the talk.  I am waiting for someone to do some background “anthropological” research and field work, and create a fully simulated economy of say a village of five hundred people.  (It is not difficult to have LLMs simulate human responses in economic games.)  After that, the social sciences will never be the same again.

*The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe*

An excellent book by Martyn Rady, here is the passage most relevant to the history of economic thought:

A Norwegian economist and his wife have published a line of bestsellers in the field of economics written before 1750.  Top is Aristotle’s Economics.  Composed in the fourth century BCE, it is still available in paperback.  Martin Luther’s denunciation of usury (1524) is number three.  But there, in the top ten, is an unfamiliar name — Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626-1692), who was a government official in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha in Thuringia.  Seckendorff’s German Princely State (Teutscher Fürsten-Staat, 1656) is a thousand-page blockbuster that went through thirteen editions and was in continuous print for a century.  Although only ever published in German, it was influential throughout Central Europe, shaping policy from the Banat to the Baltic.

I enjoyed this sentence:

Besides his distinctive false nose (the result of a duelling accident), Tycho Brahe kept an elk in his lodgings as a drinking companion.

And yes the book does have an insightful discussion of Laibach, the Slovenian hard-to-describe musical band.  You can buy it here.

Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, third cohort

Dr. Keabetswe Ncube is a Geneticist from South Africa. Her EV grant is for her work in using statistical and genetic inferences to help rural farmers maximize yields.

Frida Andalu is a petroleum engineer by training from Tanzania and a Ph.D. candidate. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing plant-based volatile corrosion inhibitors to mitigate top-of-line corrosion in natural gas pipelines.

Desta Gebeyehu is a biochemical researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing bioethanol-gel fuel from organic waste.

Bobson Rugambwa is a software engineer from Rwanda. After graduating with a master’s from Carnegie Mellon University he co-founded MVend to tackle the problem of financial inclusion in Rwanda.

Sylvia Mutinda is a Chemist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist with her search on strigolactone biosynthesis focusing on countering striga parasites in sorghum farms in Kenya.

Dr. Lamin Sonko, born in the Gambia and raised in the U.S., is an Emergency Medicine physician and recent Wharton MBA graduate. He is the founder of Diaspora Health, an asynchronous telemedicine platform focused on patients in the Gambia and Senegal.

Cynthia Umuhire is an astronomer from Rwanda and Ph.D. researcher. She works as a space science analyst at the Rwanda Space Agency. Her EV grant is to assist her in establishing a knowledge hub for junior African researchers in space science.

Brian Kaaya is a social entrepreneur from Uganda. He is the founder of  Rural Solars Uganda, a social enterprise enabling rural households in Uganda to access electricity through affordable solar panels.

Shem Best is a designer and urban planning enthusiast from Barbados. His EV grant is to start a blog and podcast on urban planning in the Caribbean to spur discourse on the built environment in the Caribbean and its impact on regional integration.

Susan Ling is an undergraduate researcher from Canada. Her EV grant is to continue her research on biodegradable, long-acting contraceptive implants with a focus on Africa, and general career development

Elizabeth Mutua is a computer scientist and Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on an efficient deep learning system with the capacity to diagnose retinopathy of prematurity disease.

Youhana Nassif is the founder and director of Animatex, the biggest animation festival in Cairo, Egypt. His EV grant is for the expansion of the festival and general career development.

Esther Matendo is a Ph.D. candidate in food science from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her EV grant is to assist in her research on plant-based treatments of mycotoxin contamination on maize in South Kivu (one of the main maize production zones in the DRC).

Alex Kyabarongo is a recent graduate of veterinary medicine from Uganda. He is now a political affairs intern at the Implementation Support Unit of the Biological Weapons Convention at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva. His EV grant is for general career development.

Margaret Murage is a Ph.D. researcher from Kenya. Her EV grant is to assist in her research of developing new photosensitizing agents for photodynamic therapy for cancer treatment.

Kwesiga Pather, for design and development of low-cost drones for agricultural uses in Uganda and general career development.

Dr. Sidy Ndao is a materials engineer by training from Senegal. He is the founder and President of the Dakar American University of Science and Technology (DAUST). The university provides a rigorous American-style English-based engineering education to African students.

Chiamaka Mangut is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University from Nigeria. Her EV grant is to fund new field research using archaeobotanical methods to study ancient populations in the Jos Plateau.

Dr. Yabebal Fantaye is Cosmologist by training from Ethiopia. He is the co-founder of 10 Academy, a training bootcamp to assist recent graduates of quant fields to acquire remote data science-related jobs.

For his very good work on these award I wish to heartily than Rasheed Griffith.  And here is a link to the previous cohort of Africa winners.

Wings at the Speed of Sound — a review

Was it Ian Leslie I promised this review to?  Time is slipping away!

Speed of Sound (songs at the link) was much derided upon its release in 1976, and more recently one scathing reviewer gave it a “1” score out of 10.  Yet I find this an entertaining and also compelling work.  At least Eoghan Lyng had the sense to call it “definitely infectious and decidedly hummable.”  But it’s better than that, and I would stress the following:

1. The album very definitely has its own “sound.”  Super clean production, a limpid clarity in the mix, and sparing deployment of guitar.  Not all of that works all the time, but there is a coherence to a production often described as a mish-mash.  The sound of the whole is best reflected by “The Note You Never Wrote,” a McCartney song sung by Denny Laine, placed wisely in the number two slot.  Nothing on either the disc or the original album sounds compressed, rather it all comes to life.  It’s better than the sluggish, overproduced, horn-heavy Venus and Mars.

2. The unapologetic presentation has held up fine, rejecting its own era of albums that were overloaded with ideas, overproduced, and too self-consciously parading their messages.  Speed of Sound is so deliberately unhip you can hardly believe it — who else in 1976 would pay tribute to “Phil and Don” of the Everly Brothers?  And Paul was thanking MLK (“Martin Luther”) when others were still flirting with the Black Panthers.  Surely he was right that “Silly Love Songs” would persist, so maybe people were hating on how on the mark he was.

2. At exactly the same time Wings was evolving into one of the very best live acts of the 1970s, far better than the Beatles ever were.  (Yes, I know it is hard to admit that.)  Their live act sizzled, and yes I did see it back then and I have listened to it many times since.  Check out the YouTube channel of jimmymccullochfan, for instance “Beware My Love” or “Soily,” or how about “Call Me Back Again“?  For Macca, Wings at this time was essentially a live band, and it proved to be his greatest live band achievement of all time (with some competition from his early 1990s shows), most of all pinned down by Jimmy McCulloch on guitar and Paul on bass.

You have to think of Speed of Sound as a complementary valentine to the live shows, a sweeter and more digestible version of what went into the road.  Most of all it is about Paul and Linda, about the maturation of Wings as a group, about opennness to the world and to each other (a recurring Macca theme) and about domestic life, with recurring melancholy thrown in.  Maybe those ideas are not your bag, but at least you can accept this as one piece of the broader McCartney tableau.

Now Macca knew you might not know about the live shows, but he didn’t care.  He figured he was giving you two monster hits (“Let Em In,” “Silly Love Songs”) in the process, and that was good enough.  And yes I agree he was too much the satisficer in this period.

3. The weak songs are “Wino Junko” and “Time to Hide” — 10% less democracy as Garett Jones says!  “Time to Hide” is almost good, but it relies too heavily on horns and then drags on.  “San Ferry Anne” also has a weak use of horns and the melody never quite takes off.  “Cook of the House” goes into a category of its own.  I’ll say only Wings [sic] needed to get this out of its system to move on to other approaches.  I am pleased, however, that the lyrics are fulsome in their praise of domesticity, compare it to Lennon’s effort in an analogous but not similar vein.  I don’t mind “dares to be appalling” as much as many others do.  Frankly, I enjoy this song.

4. Excellent are “Let ’em In,” “The Note You Never Wrote,” “She’s My Baby,” “Beware My Love,” “Silly Love Songs,” and “Warm and Beautiful.”  That is six very good songs on an album, with “Must Do Something About It” as “pretty good.”  The prominence of the former set on Beatles XM satellite radio should not go unremarked, as presumably listeners are not switching the dial away.  These songs are still popular nearly fifty years later.

5. “She’s My Baby” is the most underrated cut of that lot.  It starts before you realize it and it just gets down to business.  Thumping bass, innovative vocal, it keeps on going and then it segues into “Beware My Love.”  Does not wear out its welcome.

6. There is no good reason to mock “Silly Love Songs,” which is a classic, ecstatic in its peaks, and which deploys disco influences in just the right way.  The vocal and bass lines work perfectly, as does Linda’s vocal counterpoint.  It stays vital at almost six minutes long.  Once you step out of your ingrained bias, it is easy to see this is better than many of the classic McCartney Beatle songs.  I would rather hear it than say Lennon’s soppy “Imagine,” which is ideologically ill-conceived to boot.  Macca in this one is sly, mocking, and sardonic too, such as when he subtly refers to the problematic nature of mutual orgasm (“love doesn’t come in a minute…sometimes it doesn’t come at all…”).

7. “I must be wrong” in “Beware My Love” (plus the preceding guitar break) and “I love you” in “Silly Love Songs” are the two highlight moments of the album.

There are definitely disappointments in this work, but it is time we were able to view its contributions with some objectivity.  Wings at the Speed of Sound is an excellent album, still worth the relistens.  And I really am glad that the Beatles broke up — it meant more music from the group as a whole.

Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality

Bryan Caplan’s latest collection of essays, Voters as Mad Scientists: Essays on Political Irrationality is out and, as the kids say, it’s a banger. Voters as Mad Scientists includes classics on social desirability bias, the ideological Turing test, the Simplistic Theory of Left and Right and more. Lots of wisdom in these short essays. Bryan is a pundit who writes for the long run. Here’s one on the historically hollow cries of populism:

History textbooks are full of populist complaints about business: the evils of Standard Oil, the horrors of New York tenements, the human body parts in Chicago meat packing plants. To be honest, I haven’t taken these complaints seriously since high school….Still, I periodically wonder if my nonchalance is unjustified. Populists rub me the wrong way, but how do I know they didn’t have a point? After all, I have near-zero first-hand knowledge of what life was like in the heyday of Standard Oil, New York tenements, or Chicago meat-packing. What would I have thought if I was there?

Yet, Bryan continues, there is a test. What do populists say about the technological revolutions of the 2000s which Bryan has seen with this own eyes?

I’ve seen the tech industry dramatically improve human life all over the world.

Amazon is simply the best store that ever existed, by far, with incredible selection and unearthly convenience. The price: cheap.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media let us socialize with our friends, comfortably meet new people, and explore even the most obscure interests. The price: free.

Uber and Lyft provide high-quality, convenient transportation. The price: really cheap.

Skype is a sci-fi quality video phone. The price: free. YouTube gives us endless entertainment. The price: free.

Google gives us the totality of human knowledge! The price: free.

That’s what I’ve seen. What I’ve heard, however, is totally different. The populists of our Golden Age are loud and furious. They’re crying about “monopolies” that deliver fire-hoses worth of free stuff. They’re bemoaning the “death of competition” in industries (like taxicabs) that governments forcibly monopolized for as long as any living person can remember. They’re insisting that “only the 1% benefit” in an age when half of the high-profile new businesses literally give their services away for free. And they’re lashing out at businesses for “taking our data” – even though five years ago hardly anyone realized that they had data.

My point: If your overall reaction to business progress over the last fifteen years is even mildly negative, no sensible person will try to please you, because you are impossible to please. Yet our new anti-tech populists have managed to make themselves a center of pseudo-intellectual attention.

Read the whole thing and follow Bryan at Bet On It.