The late-fall California Office; Tim Brook on the Little Ice Age & the fall of the Ming; very briefly noted; Paul Krugman on inflation pessimism, Jay Kuo on Trump filibustering in court, Robert...
How to fix the internet: "The big idea is that in a future where social media is more decentralized, users will be able to easily switch networks without losing their content and followings. “As an individual, if you see [hate speech], you can just leave, and you’re not leaving your entire community—your entire online life—behind. You can just move to another server and migrate all your contacts, and it should be okay,” says Paige Collings, a senior speech and privacy advocate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “And I think that’s probably where we have a lot of opportunity to get it right.” "
We should all offer extra coffee to Paige Collings. Grasping has been an important part of my online life/education since it's early days. I must confess that whenever I said that "I will leave" if hate speech proliferated here or on Substack in general, I always felt a bit of "golly, what am I gonna do then?" It is good to know that Brad may have the capability to take the entire ship elsewhere.
Retired corporate lawyer here. Concerning Trump’s interpretation of the meaning of “intend,” I’m not saying that he is correct in this case, but there are situations in contract drafting where “intend” is in fact used to identify a course of action that the parties hope will come to pass, and that they will make a good-faith effort to cause to come to pass, without creating an enforceable obligation to make it happen. That’s the idea with a “non-binding letter of intent” or a “memorandum of understanding” that parties use as a preliminary to the definitive agreement in all kinds of transactional settings, e.g., real estate development, mergers & acquisitions.
Alternatively, parties can also use a statement of intent to identify their mutual understanding of what the agreement, which is in fact definitive, means, as an aid to future interpretation, whether by the parties, their successors, or a court. In this specific case, it sounds like this was some kind of conservation easement, in which the only party with any kind of ongoing obligation was Trump and his entities, and the obligation was intended to be enforceable in favor of the grantee (the conservation trust).
I haven’t seen this distinction discussed anywhere, so I am pointing it out. I don’t think Trump’s interpretation is correct in this situation, but what he is saying is the kind of thing that I would expect a real-estate development guy to say, but, I hope, only in the appropriate context.
But unless there was some reason to believe that force majeure would make the "good faith effort" ineffective, that seems to be a very weak reed on whih to rest a valuation...
That’s right. In Trump’s case, if, as I suspect, this was a conservation easement, such an easement would usually be fully effective from Day One, and a statement about intent would more likely serve as an explanation of why the parties have done what they have done, rather than merely a statement of what they intend to do. Also, even if it were a “good faith” future intention, to go out and value the property as if the easement doesn’t exist would be pretty good evidence of bad faith.
Either way, the point would not seem to be anything but a distraction in Trump’s situation.
Cost of Austerity: Two problems: a) failure to control for central bank policies accompanying the austerity; did the central bank allow inflation and employment to fall at the same time b) definition of "austerity" only as spending reduction; tax increases would also reduce deficits if THAT were the concern.
Re: ‘About 70% of the market for semiconductors is actually 12nm and above.
I assume the most economic transistor size changes over time as the economies of scale continue. With hard drives, the sweet spot of $/TB of storage constantly shifts to larger storage and presumably denser storage on the constant disk size.
We may be reaching the limits of Moore's Law for 2D photolithography on semiconductors. However there are other manufacturing posibilities that could circumvent limitations.
Beveridge Curve/Paul Krugman: If I may, instead of plotting vacancy-unemployment (v, u) combos, I have found it useful to plot (v minus u, u) combos. That helps clearly see that the combos in the transition out of the pandemic were big outliers and that the transition back to the main cluster of points has taken a while. If one recognizes those outliers for what they were -- and they clearly were -- perhaps one would not bet too hard that the Beveridge Curve had shifted and that the unemployment rate where v minus u =0 is not at 6%, but closer to 4%. Regardless though, your point about how vacancies have dropped without much of a change in unemployment is salient and flummoxing.
How to fix the internet: "The big idea is that in a future where social media is more decentralized, users will be able to easily switch networks without losing their content and followings. “As an individual, if you see [hate speech], you can just leave, and you’re not leaving your entire community—your entire online life—behind. You can just move to another server and migrate all your contacts, and it should be okay,” says Paige Collings, a senior speech and privacy advocate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “And I think that’s probably where we have a lot of opportunity to get it right.” "
We should all offer extra coffee to Paige Collings. Grasping has been an important part of my online life/education since it's early days. I must confess that whenever I said that "I will leave" if hate speech proliferated here or on Substack in general, I always felt a bit of "golly, what am I gonna do then?" It is good to know that Brad may have the capability to take the entire ship elsewhere.
Retired corporate lawyer here. Concerning Trump’s interpretation of the meaning of “intend,” I’m not saying that he is correct in this case, but there are situations in contract drafting where “intend” is in fact used to identify a course of action that the parties hope will come to pass, and that they will make a good-faith effort to cause to come to pass, without creating an enforceable obligation to make it happen. That’s the idea with a “non-binding letter of intent” or a “memorandum of understanding” that parties use as a preliminary to the definitive agreement in all kinds of transactional settings, e.g., real estate development, mergers & acquisitions.
Alternatively, parties can also use a statement of intent to identify their mutual understanding of what the agreement, which is in fact definitive, means, as an aid to future interpretation, whether by the parties, their successors, or a court. In this specific case, it sounds like this was some kind of conservation easement, in which the only party with any kind of ongoing obligation was Trump and his entities, and the obligation was intended to be enforceable in favor of the grantee (the conservation trust).
I haven’t seen this distinction discussed anywhere, so I am pointing it out. I don’t think Trump’s interpretation is correct in this situation, but what he is saying is the kind of thing that I would expect a real-estate development guy to say, but, I hope, only in the appropriate context.
But unless there was some reason to believe that force majeure would make the "good faith effort" ineffective, that seems to be a very weak reed on whih to rest a valuation...
That’s right. In Trump’s case, if, as I suspect, this was a conservation easement, such an easement would usually be fully effective from Day One, and a statement about intent would more likely serve as an explanation of why the parties have done what they have done, rather than merely a statement of what they intend to do. Also, even if it were a “good faith” future intention, to go out and value the property as if the easement doesn’t exist would be pretty good evidence of bad faith.
Either way, the point would not seem to be anything but a distraction in Trump’s situation.
Del Maestro: "The primary philosophical task of urbanism might just be to convince people that nice places can be normal."
??? I can think of some other things to persuade people of:
a) The development (and BTW it's seldom just "housing") my actually increase local house (land) values.
b) "But that's 'gentrification.'" "Yes. Isn't that great!"
c) If they try to park in front of your house, the city can give you a cut of the time-of-day rate meter.
d) "Would you rather use the revenue generated to reduce your taxes or have more city services?"
e) "More luxury housing makes housing less affordable." "Demand a refund of the money you paid for that Econ 101 class you supposedly passed."
Cost of Austerity: Two problems: a) failure to control for central bank policies accompanying the austerity; did the central bank allow inflation and employment to fall at the same time b) definition of "austerity" only as spending reduction; tax increases would also reduce deficits if THAT were the concern.
Re: ‘About 70% of the market for semiconductors is actually 12nm and above.
I assume the most economic transistor size changes over time as the economies of scale continue. With hard drives, the sweet spot of $/TB of storage constantly shifts to larger storage and presumably denser storage on the constant disk size.
We may be reaching the limits of Moore's Law for 2D photolithography on semiconductors. However there are other manufacturing posibilities that could circumvent limitations.
Beveridge Curve/Paul Krugman: If I may, instead of plotting vacancy-unemployment (v, u) combos, I have found it useful to plot (v minus u, u) combos. That helps clearly see that the combos in the transition out of the pandemic were big outliers and that the transition back to the main cluster of points has taken a while. If one recognizes those outliers for what they were -- and they clearly were -- perhaps one would not bet too hard that the Beveridge Curve had shifted and that the unemployment rate where v minus u =0 is not at 6%, but closer to 4%. Regardless though, your point about how vacancies have dropped without much of a change in unemployment is salient and flummoxing.