BRIEFLY NOTED: for 2021-02-25 Th
Things that went whizzing by, that I want to remember...
Very Briefly Noted:
Arindrajit Dube: Impacts of Minimum Wages: Review of the International Evidence <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/844350/impacts_of_minimum_wages_review_of_the_international_evidence_Arindrajit_Dube_web.pdf>
Gavekal: Dan Wang: ‘Dan Wang writes on China’s technology progress and the effects of US regulatory actions… LINK: <https://research.gavekal.com/author/dan-wang>
Julia Belluz: Covid–19 Vaccines: The Scientist Who’s Been Right About Them Predicts What’s Next: ‘Hilda Bastian on the most important pandemic vaccine in the pipeline and why we’re on track for annual booster shots… LINK: <https://www.vox.com/22285256/covid-19-vaccine-predictions>
Wikipedia: Cathie Wood: ‘2014, Wood founded ARK Investment Management…. On January 14, 2021, Sam Potter and Claire Ballentine of Bloomberg wrote, “Cathie Wood’s magic touch is so powerful these days she can trigger gains for funds she doesn’t even run.” Wood is also known for having a large following on Reddit… LINK: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathie_Wood>
Diane Coyle: Why Optimism About the Economy Is so Important: ‘Paul Krugman argued some years ago that the balance between looking back to the glories of the past and feeling optimistic about the future would determine how fast an economy could grow… LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/b0efd9fd-c525-4501-b297-bb7e6f230370>
Next: A Video Well Worth Your Watching:
Tony Freeth: The Antikythera Mechanism
A marvelous device, that if we could only understood why and how and why not a flood of such instruments following, we would understand a great deal of the world?
Six Paragraphs:
This, I think, gets it very right: even two weeks after your second vaccination dose, do not get together with all of your friends in a damp, hot basement and have a singing party—wait until the virus is genuinely scotched for that:
Emily Oster: Vaccines & Transmission Redux Redux: ‘What you shouldn’t do—and I think this is really the key to the continued caution in messaging—is get together with all your vaccinated friends in a damp, hot basement and have a singing party. If you have close contact with 1000 people even if they are all vaccinated there is a reasonable chance someone’s carrying some virus around, and they could then carry it out to the rest of us who are waiting on vaccines. In another few months, when cases are lower, this will not be true anymore and we’ll be able to do our hot basement singing…
LINK: <https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/vaccines-and-transmission-redux-redux>
Gertjan Vlieghe: An Update on the Economic Outlook: ‘The effect of the pandemic on the economy has been unusually uneven. We are really not all in this together…. Should we consider… unspent income as “additional income” or “additional wealth”, or something else altogether? A comparison between UK and US income dynamics is instructive…. In the US, on the other hand, the pandemic stimulus cheques and the increase in unemployment benefits have led to a significant rise in household income relative to its pre-pandemic trajectory. That can more reasonably be interpreted as “additional income” for many. Moreover, it has, by design, been spread more evenly across the income distribution….
The degree to which health risks dissipate later this year will be a key factor in determining to what extent savings are retained or spent. The more there are lingering health risks and associated economic uncertainty, the more it is likely that a larger share of the accumulated savings stock will be retained, and that the desired on-going flow of savings will remain somewhat elevated relative to pre-pandemic flows. Given that we have never experienced an economic situation quite like the one we are now in, a wide range of outcomes are possible. I am genuinely uncertain about this, and it is something that reasonable people can disagree on…
Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit: ‘The conference was held at four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when all the region of Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was resonant of carriage-wheels and double-knocks. It had reached this point when Mr Merdle came home from his daily occupation of causing the British name to be more and more respected in all parts of the civilised globe capable of the appreciation of world-wide commercial enterprise and gigantic combinations of skill and capital. For, though nobody knew with the least precision what Mr Merdle’s business was, except that it was to coin money, these were the terms in which everybody defined it on all ceremonious occasions, and which it was the last new polite reading of the parable of the camel and the needle’s eye to accept without inquiry…
Kirsten Devine: Romance Before Bros: ‘A few months further back I wrote a 5 part Valentine’s Day series on romance novels, a feat of insanity that I am going to repeat this year, only I learned my lesson and am starting it at the beginning of January instead ⅔ of the way through. So hopefully unlike last year I’ll make it through mentally unscathed. This time I’m actually reading GOOD romances instead of trashy ones. It’s a lot of work, and do you know why I’m doing this? It’s because romance MATTERS…
LINK: <https://ordinary-times.com/2020/01/05/romance-before-bros/>
Ben Thompson: Creation, Consumption, & Clubhouse: ‘That “something” was a combination of factors: First, it’s much easier to get a group of people together for an informal conversation that requires nothing more than the tap of a button than a formal podcast recording. Convenience matters! It matters more than anything. Second, the rhythm and “feel” of a conversation is just fundamentally different than a produced podcast. Zeynep Tufecki wrote about this difference on her Substack, and it was tangible in this conversation. Third, this room wasn’t simply about those who were invited, but multiple others that raised their hands and joined in, sometimes to riff on stories that came before…
Daniel Ek: On Clubhouse: ‘My fundamental view is that Clubhouse is really two things. It’s a creative format and it’s super-engaging for creators. It’s very interesting with the interactivity, so we obviously pay a lot of attention to all social and interactive features. The second part is the listening part as well. Long term I believe the major trend on the Internet isn’t linear and live programming, but it’s still time-shifted and on-demand, and to that extent I feel very good about where we’re placed, but obviously, to the extent that creators find interesting ways to interact with their audience that’s definitely something that we’re paying a lot of attention to and looking at and experimenting with as well…
Hoisted from the Archives
2010: Is This an April Fool’s Joke?: Charles Lane of the Washington Post:
Some in the antislavery movement were as extreme, in their way, as the Southern “fire-eaters.”… In 1851, a Boston crowd broke into a federal courthouse to free “Shadrach,” a black man being held there by U.S. marshals enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law…. I am not suggesting a moral equivalency between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. But I am suggesting an attitudinal equivalency…
First of all, Shadrach Minkins has a name–which does not deserve to be put into scare quotes. He was a human being. Charles—excuse me, ’Charles’—sees an ‘attitudinal equivalency’ between abolitionists who ‘arrested Minkins from his court officers, carried him off and temporarily hid him in a Beacon Hill attic… Boston black leaders Lewis Hayden, John J. Smith and others helped Minkins escape from Massachusetts, and he eventually found his way to Canada on the Underground Railroad…’ and Jefferson Davis and his ilk who raised armies that killed 400,000 Americans.
I am sorry: those who kill tens of thousands have a different ‘attitude’ than those who set people free without killing anybody. Worst Washington Post writer alive.