BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-04-21 Fr

TInker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 1999; the continued Twitter dumpster fire; Dan Drezner says smart things about global south apologetics for Vladimir Putin; Cory Doctorow, Monica Potts, Ed Zitron, Shak...

ONE VIDEO: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 1979:

Far superior to the later, shorter movie, I think:

ONE IMAGE: Over on Twitter:

When people said six months ago that Elon Musk had outsourced management of Twitter to @catturd2, I thought they were joking. But no:

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MUST-READ: What Are Global South Thinkers Smoking?

I still do not understand why people in the global south—especially Nigeria and Egypt, but every place sensitive to global food prices—are not screaming for an immediate cease-fire and re-opening of Ukraine green belt exports. The failure to focus on the human misery. Being caused by this consequence of Putin's attack is one of the things that he's going to keep this destructive war going longer:

Dan Drezner: Some Questions for the Global South: I'm not entirely sold on their current set of stylized facts about the world…. Rao writes, “aggressive economic sanctions imposed by wealthy countries on Russia have generated costs, including higher food prices, for people who are far removed from the war in Ukraine.” This echoes laments made by other Indian observers like Pratap Mehta that the sanctions against Russia are as big of a problem as the invasion itself. I have written a little bit about economic sanctions in my day, and am perfectly willing to acknowledge their overuse. On this claim, however, my response is: what in the world are you smoking? As the Congressional Research Service recently noted, “U.S. and EU sanctions do not prohibit the exportation of agricultural commodities from, to, or involving Russia. Transactions involving agricultural trade are exempt from financial sanctions.” The sanctions have imposed, at best, a modest transaction cost on agricultural trade with Russia. On the other hand, you know what has really elevated food prices? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine! Since the latter country is a vital source of food exports to the Global South. it sure seems like blockading Ukrainian ports, attacking grain storage facilities, and stealing Ukrainian food has contributed way more to higher food prices in the Global South. Why aren’t leaders of the Nonaligned movement speaking out more about how Russia’s war bears primary responsibility? Could it be because they are swallowingRussian narratives?…

Very Briefly Noted:

1. Itamar Drechsler & al.: Banking on Uninsured Deposits: ‘A run equilibrium is absent at low interest rates but appears when rates rise because the deposit franchise comes to dominate the value of the bank…. The bank… faces a dilemma: it cannot simultaneously hedge its interest rate risk and liquidity risk exposures…. [The problem] can be addressed with an optimal capital requirement that rises with interest rates…

2. Kristian Blickle: Specialization in Banking: ‘Banks "specialize" by concentrating their lending disproportionately into one industry. This specialization improves a bank’s industry-specific knowledge…. Specialization counteracts a well-documented trend in reduced lending by large banks to opaque small and medium-sized enterprises…

3. J. Anthony Cookson & al.: Social Media as a Bank Run Catalyst: ‘Preexisting exposure to social media predicts bank stock market losses in the run period even after controlling for bank characteristics related to run risk...

4. Dylan Patel & Gerald Wong: TSMC’s Heroic Assumption—Low Utilization Rates, Fab Cancellation, 3nm Volumes, Automotive Weakness, AI Advanced Packaging Demands, 2024 Capex Weakness…

5. John Gruber: Warren Buffett on Apple: ‘Buffett, famously, isn’t technically minded. But I think that helps him understand Apple’s value. He’s right: Apple’s moat is customer loyalty, and that loyalty is earned through user experiences that other companies can’t match…

6. Brian Potter: How did solar power get cheap? II: ‘It shows the enormous potential of learning curve effects…. But… getting solar PV competitive… took many decades, and required hundreds of billions of dollars of both public and private investment that no one firm, no one country could fund alone.,, an illustration of how difficult it can be to disrupt a mature, entrenched technology…

7. Chad Orzel: Top 40 Radio and the Punditsphere: ‘Someone is always just tuning in, having narrowly missed the last round of the argument, and they’re happy to hear it…. This used to bother me more, but since coming around to the realization that I’m not the audience for this, I’m much more chill…

8. Ed Yong: Long COVID Is Being Erased—Again: ‘What was once outright denial has morphed into a subtler dismissal…

9. Zoë Schiffer & Casey Newton: So much for Elon Musk’s everything app: ‘Suspending emergency accounts, enabling anti-trans speech, and other stops Twitter is making in its pursuit of X…

10. Celia Mattison: Draculas, Ranked…

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¶s:

Shakked Noy & Whitney Zhang: Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence: ‘We assign occupation-specific, incentivized writing tasks to 444 college-educated professionals, and randomly expose half of them to ChatGPT…. ChatGPT substantially raises average productivity: time taken decreases by 0.8 SDs and output quality rises by 0.4 SDs. Inequality between workers decreases, as ChatGPT… benefit[s] low-ability workers more. ChatGPT mostly substitutes for worker effort rather than complementing worker skills, and restructures tasks towards idea-generation and editing and away from rough-drafting. Exposure to ChatGPT increases job satisfaction and self-efficacy and heightens both concern and excitement about automation technologies…

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Ed Zitron: Fire Mark Zuckerberg: ‘When Mark Zuckerberg announced in October 2021 that Facebook would now be known as “Meta,” many people fell for several astonishingly obvious lies. As I said: “Zuckerberg has absolutely no clue what he is building and you are a fool if you think otherwise. This is not a plucky startup founder or a journeyman finding his feet, but a guy who has the majority of voting power in a publicly-traded trillion-dollar enterprise who is giving a ‘forgot to prepare for this meeting’ style speech…”. Now, less than two years after the name change, Meta is pivoting again, with Zuckerberg saying that Meta’s “single largest investment is advancing AI and building it into every one of [their] products].” What happened to “the next frontier of connecting people?” What does artificial intelligence have to do with “bringing people together,” or “designing technology around people,” or “dedicating more energy to the metaverse than any other company in the world?” What happened to the “successor to the mobile internet” that would bring about an “exciting new chapter” for the company formerly known as Facebook? What happened to Zuckerberg’s big plans for AR glasses? Oh, that’s right, they canceled them to save money that I assume is now being put into artificial intelligence. And they’ve stopped pitching the metaverse to advertisers, replacing it with their TikTok clone (Reels) and, of course, an artificial intelligence-based advertising product called Advantage+ that “uses machine learning for targeted ads”…

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Cory Doctorow: Chokepoint Capitalism: Five Books: ‘A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back… Bruce Schneier…. Chokepoint Capitalism… a book I co-authored with copyright scholar Rebecca Giblin…. Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff…. Responding to the Right by Nathan Robinson…. Monopolized by David Dayen…. Break ‘Em Up by Zephyr Teachout…

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Melanie Reid: The Forgotten Girls by Monica Potts review—America’s abandoned underclass: ‘Two bright little girls, Darci Brawner and Monica Potts, best friends growing up in the foothills of the Ozarks…. A-grade students, avid readers who vied for top spot throughout school, winning creative writing prizes. In each other’s houses they spent evenings poring over an atlas, dreaming of where they would go to college. Thirty-five years later, one girl, the one who escaped and found success, returned home to write a compelling, page-turning “is she dead yet?” saga of the other—the one who didn’t escape, whose life has become a train wreck, destroyed by drug addiction…