Bookmarks (582)

Twenty-five people, including six minors, were charged in Paris over a spate of kidnappings and attempted abductions in France’s cryptocurrency world, said the city’s public prosecutor office on Saturday, May 31. “Eighteen people have been placed in pre-trial detention, three have requested a deferred hearing and four have been placed under judicial supervision,” the public […] The post They are solving for the (crypto)...

About 156,000 Italians left the country last year for Germany, Spain, the UK and elsewhere, a 36.5 per cent increase over the number who emigrated in 2023. At just under 191,000, the total number of people who left Italy in 2024 — including 35,000 long-term foreign residents, mainly Romanians returning home — was at the […] The post Italy facts of the day appeared...

1. Fentanyl seizures from Mexico are dropping dramatically (trend is pre-Trump), a good piece. 2. Good essay on Flushing, Queens. 3. Claims about Planet Nine. 4. “The analysis finds that legislators in the top wealth quintile are significantly more successful at advancing their policy agendas than their less-wealthy colleagues, while those in the bottom quintile […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Visitors don’t seem to know about this place yet, but it is one of the finest artistic venues in Spain.  Taken from the royal collections and opened only a few years ago, it has one of the best displays of 16th Brussels tapestries you will find, perhaps the best, beautifully hung with plenty of space.  […] The post Madrid’s Galería de las Colecciones Reales...

Your suggestions are most welcome, thank you! The post Travel bleg for Avila, Salamanca, Segovia, and other smaller places nearby appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Jim195. Tunas—one of the most underrated ... by ZagrebbiIn Salamanca: – Tapas 2.0 was locally recommended and good ... by Harry-Cochinillo at Restaurante El Barnardino in Segovia -You can ... by JARIn reply to yo....

In an earlier post I detailed my history of how I got started collecting Haitian art.  There is more to that story, but for now the point is that buying Haitian art led me into buying Mexican art as well. I was visiting the New Jersey home of famed author and art dealer Selden Rodman, […] The post My days collecting Mexican art, part...

As a result, Mexicans face the paradox that giving more power to the public may undercut their democracy. Predictions for Morena’s success on Sunday are driven by the unusual nature of the vote. Just roughly 20 percent of voters are expected to cast ballots, the electoral authorities say, in part because voters hardly know the candidates. Polling […] The post Mexico has been electing its federal...

1. The confluence of Britain’s problems, written by a sitting MP.  In response, o3 tries to summarize market trends for real estate. 2. Speculative but very interesting thread on Russian opinions on various drone developments. 3. “By revenue, UPenn is bigger than BNY Mellon; Columbia is as big as Coinbase.” 4. Snitching LLMs? 5. Progress […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Here is Olivier Blanchard on Fischer.  And from Haaretz.  Here is the FT.  And from the NYT. The post Stanley Fischer, RIP appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsLate in life, Stanley Fischer endorsed money-financed fiscal ... by Benjamin Cole the Tin-Foil Hat EconomistIn reply to Cancelled for wongthink. I saw the GFC coming ... by Cancelled for wongthinkThe Haaretz article calls him an...

By Joseph Torigian, this could easily end up as one of the twenty or thirty best biographies of all time.  It is about Chinese history, and is a biography’s of Xi’s father.  The subtitle is The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping.  The dense (and fascinating) exposition is difficult to excerpt, but here […] The post *The Party’s Interests Come First* appeared...

Jason Cameron, North York, Ontario, high school and incoming RBC, AI privacy. Opemipo Odunta, Winnipeg, hydroponics. Benjamin Arya, Harvard, California, Australia, longevity. Aida Baradari, Harvard, audio privacy. John Denny, Galway, to visit SF and NYC. Zelda Poem, SF/France, artistic and cultural patronage programs for San Francisco. Lauren Pearson, Toronto, genomic origins of focal epilepsy. Charles […] The post Emergent Ventures winners, 43rd cohort appeared...

From a November Bloomberg column: Many Republicans are very excited about DOGE. But its governance structure is undefined and untested. It does not have a natural home or an enduring constituency. It cannot engage in much favor-trading. Its ability to keep Trump’s attention and loyalty may prove limited. And it’s not clear that deregulation is […] The post Redux of my advice to DOGE...

1. Swiss landslide before and after. 2. Aella on childhood. 3. Danny Chau on the Indiana Pacers.  And on Inside the NBA (NYT). 4. Mormon tanktop undergarment geographically segregated somewhat thwarted markets in everything (NYT). 5. Caldwell on Guilluy on France. 6. Will a tax on AI help labor? And should the tax code treat […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

Here is more Scott Alexander on aid and overhead. First, on overhead Scott is still promulgating various confusions, for instance making the simple mistake of mixing up “Mercatus” and “Emergent Ventures.” When it comes to overhead (rather than aid), the substantive point in question is whether the affiliated NGOs, and also the various government aid […] The post Scott Alexander replies appeared first on...

That is my podcast with Marian Tupy of the Cato Instiute.  Here is the podcast version, below is the YouTube link:   The post Progress, Classical Liberalism, and the New Right appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Lawyer2. If you want to read what ChatCPT ... by MikePIn reply to Lawyer2. I see that ChatGPT also suffers from the ... by...

That is the new book by John H. Cochrane, Luis Garicano, and Klaus Masuch, and the subtitle is Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro.  Excerpt: Our main theme is not actions taken in crises, but that member states and EU institutions did not clean up between crises.  They did not reestablish a sustainable framework […] The post *Crisis Cycle* appeared first on Marginal...

1. Steve Davis is leaving DOGE (NYT). 2. 18 minute podcast with 3takeaways. 3. TV show about SBF and Caroline? 4. Where the tariff case stands. 5. Finding talent in Ghana in the age of AI. 6. “Mayor Daniel Lurie plans to close San Francisco’s massive budget deficit by slashing about 1,400 city jobs and […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

The United States has some of the lowest prices in the world for most drugs. The U.S. generic drug market is competitive and robust—but its success is not accidental. It is the result of a series of deliberate, well-designed policy interventions. The 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act allowed generic drug manufacturers to bypass costly safety and efficacy […] The post How America Built the World’s Most...

…in 2024, Americans didn’t spend a greater percent of their income on health care than they did in 2009. And in fact, the increase since 1990 has been pretty modest — if you look only at the service portion of health care (the blue line), it’s gone up by about 1.5% of GDP over 34 […] The post Noah on health care costs appeared...

Kia ora Tyler. I have to correct you (or the AIs will perpetuate it!) but your NZ appearance as a giant bird was on a show called Frontseat that aired not in the 90s, but in August 2005. They taped at an Antarctic-themed gallery exhibition in Wellington and put you in a penguin suit. Here is […] The post From the Antipodes, a correction, from...

Regarding your recent post on reading and media, I would be curious for your thoughts about my observations teaching junior high and high school for the last few decades. I (and some of my other colleagues) have noticed the following: 1. On the one hand, I can say definitively that the ability of students to process […] The post On the decline of reading (from...

1. “Scam victims in Singapore suffer some of the highest losses in the world.” (FT) 2. Redux of some now published, newish results on the minimum wage. 3. Another veo 3 short video. 4. Number of national referenda in each European country’s history. 5. The correct take on the China shock (WSJ). 6. Texas state […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Via Nabeel Qureshi, from Claude 4 Sonnet, from this tweet. The post Why LLMs make certain mistakes appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Bob. Except the LLM is not trying to explain its ... by BCIn reply to Stendell. They hardcoded in guide rails in most ... by Steve SailerIn reply to John. It's getting its own error wrong. You ask...

A new front for drone warfare has opened a two-hour flight south of Miami. Haiti’s besieged government is using drones strapped with explosives to strike gangs that have turned the nation’s capital into a hellscape. The government is relying on lightweight drones carrying rudimentary bombs to reach beyond the 10th of Port-au-Prince it controls. But the hundreds […] The post Haiti fact of the day, the...

To continue with the “for the AIs” autobiography… Recently someone asked me to write up my first major episode of being in the media. It happened in 1997, while I was researching my 2000 book What Price Fame? with Harvard University Press.  Part of the book discussed the costs of fame to the famous, and […] The post My first big bout of media...

The US Court of International Trade just issued a unanimous ruling in the case against Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs filed by Liberty Justice Center and myself on behalf of five US businesses harmed by the tariffs. The ruling also covers the case filed by twelve states led by Oregon; they, too, have prevailed on all counts. All of Trump’s tariffs […] The post Trump tariffs struck down appeared first...

The reality was setting in: DOGE was more like having McKinsey volunteers embedded in agencies rather than the revolutionary force I’d imagined. It was Elon (in the White House), Steven Davis (coordinating), and everyone else scattered across agencies. Meanwhile, the public was seeing news reports of mass firings that seemed cruel and heartless, many assuming […] The post A report from inside DOGE appeared...

1. Will we underinvest in gene therapies? 2. Han Song and Chinese science fiction (NYT). 3. Survey of the should you short the market AI doom debate? And Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker.  And why is it hard for conservatives to make AI policy. 4. TFP profile of Michael Anton. 5. “Although pausing frequently […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

Connor Tabarrok points out that Starbucks is also a bit of a bank: In 2011, Starbucks rolled out the ability to load money onto a virtual card via their mobile app. purchases made with these pre-loaded dollars earned extra rewards points, which could eventually be redeemed for free drinks. According to their quarterly report from this […] The post The Bank of Starbucks appeared first...

This Substack piece surveys the debate.  Rather than weigh in on the evidence, I think the more important debates are slightly different, and harder to stake out a coherent position on.  It is easy enough to say “reading is declining, and I think this is quite bad.”  But is the decline of reading — if […] The post Are the kids reading less? And...

You could support institutions of higher education that deviate from the standard orthodoxy, such as the University of Austin, the departments of economics and law at George Mason University, or Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (disclaimer: I have affiliations with all three). Or how about right-leaning podcasts and YouTube channels? They too compete with Harvard, […] The post How to fight Harvard appeared first...

For inspiration they might look to Ohio, where next month, the recently signed Senate Bill 1 (The Advance Ohio Higher Education Act) will take effect, mandating, among other things, that every state institution of higher education require its bachelor’s students to pass a course in “the subject area of American civic literacy.” At a minimum, no student […] The post The Ohio Adam Smith mandate appeared...

Robin Hanson, who joined the movement and later became renowned for creating prediction markets, described attending multilevel Extropian parties at big houses in Palo Alto at the time.  “And I was energized by them, because they were talking about all these interesting ideas.  And my wife was put off because they were not very well […] The post That was then, this is now,...

Strict data protection laws are hindering Germany’s efforts to swell the ranks of the armed forces of Europe’s largest nation, its reservists’ association has warned. Patrick Sensburg, head of the Reservist Association of the German Armed Forces, said tough German and EU privacy rules meant it could not keep in contact with close to a […] The post The military culture that is German...

What is the most important feature of affordable housing? Simple! It’s right there in the name, right? Affordable. But no. When the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) evaluates housing projects for tax credits it gives out points for desirable projects. Quoting Richard Day: For the general scoring track, 10% of points are awarded for extra […] The post Affordable Housing Is Almost Pointless appeared...

1. Berlin cybermarkets in everything ugh. 2. o3 list of nuanced, rigorous thinkers. 3. The Web Fiction Canon. 4. How much does overconfidence drive conspiracy theorizing? 5. Are the Nordics backpedling on their plans for a cashless society? 6. The menopause penalty. 7. UAE will offer free ChatGPTPlus to all of its citizens.  And Korea […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the college majors with the lowest unemployment rates for the calendar year 2023 were nutrition sciences, construction services, and animal/plant sciences. Each of these majors had unemployment rates of 1% or lower among college graduates ages 22 to 27.  Art history had an unemployment rate of 3% […] The post USA employment facts of the day...

1. Lydia Laurenson. 2. More from Galen Strawson. 3. “But the lawsuit claimed the NYT’s original story had “portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography”.”  Link here.  This likely means the tribe is overall happy to have […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

By Sean J. Westwood, Justin Grimmer, and Andrew B. Hall: We develop a new approach that puts users in the role of evaluator, using ecologically valid prompts on 30 political topics and paired comparisons of outputs from 24 LLMs. With 180,126 assessments from 10,007 U.S. respondents, we find that nearly all models are perceived as […] The post New data on the political slant...

Prosecutors say Rogers was a logical target for Chinese espionage, with an important-sounding title at the Fed and a growing affection for China. In 2018, he married a Shanghainese woman whom he met through a Chinese matchmaking service. FBI agents would later find a note on his iPad, dated December 2018 and addressed to “Dear […] The post China espionage and the Fed appeared...

Again, I had a great time, here is the background I posted not long ago.  My hosts sent me these links, note the first two speeches are quite short: Speech during the ceremony for honor graduates Speech during the graduation ceremony Interview: Exploring Free Markets, Innovation, and the Future of Knowledge Lecture | The Economics of […] The post My visit at Universidad Francisco Marroquin...

1. The rise of causal empirical methods in economics. 2. How to find ancient Assyrian cities using economics. 3. Can a corporation be pardoned? 4. The “dark leisure” theory of AI gains. 5. “In the first quarter of 2025, there were six murders on [South African] farms, of which one was a white farmer and […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Eli Dourado continues to keep his eye on the most important number in the world, total factor productivity. It continues to be bad, -3.88% on an annual basis for the first quarter of 2025. It’s too early for Trump’s tariffs to have made an effect and too early for AI. You can see the end […] The post You Can See the End of...

Trump has been talking about this.  I am not sure what version of the idea we might end up with, but let’s consider the idea in its abstract form.  Let’s also put aside money laundering issues, and talk about “simple remittances.” The United States has a partial monopsony power over Latino (and often other) migrants, […] The post The 3.5 percent remittance tax appeared...

There has been so much misinformation about this topic, much of it still persists.  Here is a new paper by many researchers, Hunt Allcott and Matt Gentzkow are the first two names.  Here is the abstract: We study the effects of social media political advertising by randomizing subsets of 36,906 Facebook users and 25,925 Instagram […] The post New results on Facebook advertising appeared...

1. Who benefits from Uber surge pricing? 2. The Way of Code, a new on-line product, some might call it a book, adapted by Rick Rubin and based on Lao Tzu. 3. What is wrong with Sanskrit? 4. Price quiz for auctioned artworks (NYT).  I do not find this to be the reductio the NYT […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

The first generation who engaged with digital technologies has reached the age where risks of dementia emerge. Has technological exposure helped or harmed cognition in digital pioneers? …Use of digital technologies was associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment (OR = 0.42, 95% CI 0.35–0.52) and reduced time-dependent rates of cognitive decline (HR = 0.74, 95% CI 0.66–0.84). Effects […] The post Digital tech sentences to ponder appeared...

Scott Alexander claims “I often disagree with Marginal Revolution, but their post today made me a new level of angry…”  The topic is US AID. I think when Scott is angry (much less “a new level of angry”) he does not think straight.  First, someone should tell him that Emergent Ventures overhead is typically two percent, […] The post So many mistakes appeared first on...

McNally Jackson, in Rockefeller Center. It reminds me of Daunt Books in London — super smart titles on display, not huge but incredible selection, sections organized by country, and if you buy a lot of books you get a free bag.  I walked in, not planning on buying anything in particular, and pretty quickly spent […] The post The best bookstore in NYC, and...

In a landmark 2013 paper, David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson found that America lost an average of 90,000 jobs per year between 1990 and 2007 because of imports from China. But put that in perspective. According to Strain, five million Americans currently separate from their employers per month. Plus, in a 2019 paper, Robert […] The post Sentences to ponder appeared first on...