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I'm curious, what do you mean by this?

It's true that the writers of the economist are frequently glib. This is compounded by their very strict style guide and editors. Everything sounds paradoxically very distinctive and generic, and it reads like it's all written by the same person. So I can relate to your GPT comment too.

But they very rarely get the big picture wrong. Geopolitics, global economic trends, American politics from a distance, etc. I don't think 5 books on this or pop science that are why most people read it.

So I agree with you, but I also like the paper a lot.

Factoid tidbit: The popular, groovy, timeless, excellent Inspector Norse by Todd Terje was made *entirely* with the sources from the ARP 2600. Drums and all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjXsc0UjdQ

I don't work in the field. But there is a theory unmentioned here that I'm convinced by, at least in part. Homo sapiens weren't necessarily just smarter than neanderthals and other proto-humans. There is a lot of evidence, much of it recent, that neanderthals were very intelligent indeed.

But Homo sapiens worked together. They were smarter in a more communal way. This can go a long way towards accounting for both their dominance of other archaic humans and the delay between their emergence on the world stage and the development of civilization.

The sapient paradox seems to me to make two assumptions. Intelligence is sufficient for civilization, and Homo sapiens were exactly the same species 60,000 years ago as 20,000.

I can't answer your question directly. But a while back I did study up on the 100-year solar flare (i.e. the equivalent of the 100-year flood). I was curious exactly how bad this would be for society.

As I recall it would be bad and do a lot of damage in the short term. Lots of things, especially in communications, would obviously be damaged and very expensive to fix. But hard drives would mostly be ok and therefore the most crucial pillars of society would emerge intact.

I could never get into that podcast even though I have a strong interest and want to delve into the empire's history. In being disappointed by History of Rome's "sequel" I doubt I'm alone. Though I will check out this specific episode since I'm intrigued by this book; thanks for the heads-up.

Fun little story. I'm not sure I agree with the closer. Some people are mentally ill, some people are just assholes, and some people are both. (Good chess players are of course overrepresented in all three clubs.)

> It was an early manifestation of the P word, which would progressively take and hold Fischer in its clutches for the remainder of his life.

That's a very cool hobby and you got some cool results which I'm sure you're proud of. I wonder if you might briefly explain your technique?

Indeed. This site is nauseating.

>Someone with a net household income of about £65,000 or $100,000 will live to an average age of 85 in England, but only 80 in the US.

£65 != $100. The difference is nearly $20,000. How could the author make this mistake. It made it past the FT editors? I must be missing something...

The caterpillar turns to mush. Its nervous system seamlessly morphs into a new one. Many neurons are retained, some are pruned, and some new ones are formed.

This is why certain memories can be retained and certain ones can't.

The most -- or, only -- fascinating thing about this article is that NPR doesn't compress their stream when sending it out to local stations.

Everyone compresses. Especially in FM radio. And if you know people downstream of you will compress your content, then generally you do it first, so you have control over how it's done.

Apparently the NPR way, at least in 2015, was to throw up their hands and give complete control over multiband compression to the local stations, which is kind of interesting.

*fewer words, mr. professional writer

jk ... but only sort of

This is a good summary. It's not new, if you've been paying attention, but it is worth watching.

One thing surprising to me was Hersh's in-passing comment about the dire inevitability of Ukrainian defeat. Certainly he's right that the American public, press and government are fairly homogeneous in their support for Ukraine. To say the least, his questioning of the long-term effectiveness of that support -- and it's price -- goes against the prevailing grain and my own uninformed assessment of the war. It's food for thought.

Am I the only one who's lately had the sudden urge to take a ride in a zeppelin?

Paradoxically it feels like a relic and thing of the future. Floating across the Atlantic seems like it'd be so much fun.

Maybe this whole thing is an ingenious marketing campaign by big-blimp.

haha, I wonder how would your dad feel about you calling them expresso machines?

Yea this pretty much sums it up. Although it seems clear to me that the nordic states were either in the loop or involved in the operation. As for the rest of NATO and the media, it took them a few days to assess the situation and shut up.

good job!

haha, so the first military aircraft shot down over the US was a case of friendly-fire. The Union shot down it's own reconnaissance balloon, although technically the balloon was a civilian device.

Japan launched about 10,000 of these. Some made it as far east as Michigan. It's such a comically bad idea, but when you're at war, you're at war.

I suppose the architects of this plan really more intended to terrorize than do any actual damage. Of course, it failed on both accounts. This was the single explosion to cause real damage, and the US propaganda machine never would have allowed terror to spread anyway.

you spent half a year in japan and speak the language?

It's often omitted that the historicity of Ibn Battuta's travels is very much in doubt.

Like Marco Polo, he likely either fabricated portions of his travels or retold others' stories as his own.

Not that his works weren't immensely valuable to posterity.

These data exist but in many cases it is expensive to obtain. Even complete historical data for the SP500 is not a trivial thing to find.

(ETF current holdings, I believe, are legally required to be published)

Do you have a source for this?

I couldn't find this particular piece of data published anywhere, but I did a little math and arrived at an annualized rate of inflation for the last 6 months of 5.85%, well above the 2% target.