‘Stacking: Josh Barro (& Sara Fay) Join þe Horde
& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-01-13 Th
CONDITION: Ukraine:
At least as I see it, the DonBas is pretty alienated from Kyiv and Lviv and Odessa—and pretty attracted to Moscow. It makes no sense to me to promise that NATO soldiers will die to preserve the rule of Kiev over Donbas. I think it may makes sense to draw the line at Kyiv and Lviv and Odessa:
Daniel Larison: The Insanity of Russia Hawks: ‘Farkas is proposing waging a war on Russia’s doorstep where they have virtually every advantage…
First: ‘Stacking: Josh Barro (& Sara Fay) Join the Horde
Here we have:
Josh Barro: This Is Very Serious: ‘I try to write for people I disagree with…. I was for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary and so were most Democratic primary voters. Yet my normie position—an apparently “contrarian” one if you looked on Twitter in January 2020—was weirdly absent from the commentariat…. I am contrarian in relation to that subculture, but not to our overall politics or society, within which I sit closer to the median than most other people you will hear from in the press…. My intention with this newsletter is to offer… coverage that punctures conventional wisdom on politics, business, the economy, and mayonnaise…. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you’ll get my Very Serious takes on politics, business and the economy. On Wednesdays… the Mayonnaise Clinic, a weekly dialogue with readers…. On Fridays we’ll release the Very Serious with Josh Barro podcast…. On some Saturdays, you’ll get my unsolicited opinions about cooking, shopping, traveling and entertaining, all of which you may be doing wrong…
LINK:
And:
Josh Barro: Today in the Mayonnaise Clinic: Why is Josh a Democrat?: ‘Why do I complain about Democrats so much? First… I want Democrats to win, and I think a lot of the things they are doing are interfering with that goal. Some Democratic officeholders—and many of the liberal activists those officeholders have failed to gain enough distance from—have taken wacky positions…. They also haven’t done enough to show voters they’re taking inflation seriously, though President Biden and his team have gotten better on that lately, which I appreciate. I think public dissatisfaction with Democrats on these issues is going to be a way bigger determinant of who controls the government in coming years than the number of ballot drop boxes in Fulton County or whatever procedural issue liberals are obsessing about this week. While “Republicans are worse” is a good enough reason for me to vote Democratic in the midterms, I don’t think it’s going to be a good enough reason for enough voters to get Democrats over the top by itself. And that’s why I’ll be pushing for my party not to screw up…. And you’ll be hearing more on that from me in coming weeks…
LINK:
Yes, Josh Barro and editor/producer Sara Fay have joined the ‘Stacking horde. And I at least expect to learn a lot from them. Why? Because I already did, before they started this “Very Serious” venture. And because I know where they are coming from and understand it: they do not want Democrats to do stupid s—- that pointlessly alienates median voters, and they do not want Democrats to do stupid s—- that is counterproductive policy that leaves the country worse-off. I am not always going to agree with them as to what is stupid and not-stupid, but I do not have to worry that there is some editor who wants “the appearance of balance” or some source that needs to be beat-sweetened in the background pulling the strings.
That they are joining is good news about the ‘Stack as a… we might as well call it a “Web3 public sphere”. But how is the ‘Stack doing at that, which I have decided is its world-historical task?
Restart the computer. Anonymize the browser. Make sure Apple Private Relay is on. This is as close as I can get to a zero-information client showing up at <http://substack.com>. I do so, and what do I see? A few hoops jumped through, and I see six featured recommendations:
Indigenous Wire: Journalist Rob Capriccioso is behind this new Substack focused on Indigenous policy, politics, media, and sovereignty. By Rob Capriccioso…. Cobie: Cryptocurrency expert Cobie writes about what he’s learned about crypto over the past decade, along with his thoughts on the future…. B O S S B A R I S T A: Ashley Rodriguez brings her barista background to this podcast and newsletter exploring workplace equity and empowerment in the service industry…. LogoArchive’s Newsletter: A weekly design newsletter dedicated to researching and sharing the fascinating stories behind modernist logos…. The Signal From David Katznelson: This music industry veteran is on a daily quest to unearth inspirational and exciting articles, poetry, records, and ideas…. The Half Marathoner: Half marathon expert Terrell Johnson is behind this newsletter and community devoted to the ways running helps us find meaning. By Terrell Johnson…
All save Terrell Johnson’s are characterized as “Launched…”, which I think means that they have less than 100 (paid) subscribers. Terrell’s is characterized as “hundreds of subscribers”—but whether that means more than 100, or 200 or more, I do not know.
Let’s look at the upper tail: ‘Stacks with “tens of thousands of subscribers”. I think there are :
Politics:
Letters from an American… the history behind today's politics. By Heather Cox Richardson · Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
The Dispatch: Fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture – informed by conservative principles. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $10/month
TK News by Matt Taibbi: Regular news and features by award-winning author and investigative reporter. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
Bulwark+: Analysis and reporting on politics and culture in America. No partisan loyalties. No tribal prejudices. Tens of thousands of subscribers/ $10/month
Glenn Greenwald: Independent, unencumbered analysis and investigative reporting, captive to no dogma or faction. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
Unreported Truths: Independent, citizen-funded journalism. By Alex Berenson · Tens of thousands of subscribers · $6/month
Common Sense: Honest news for sane people brought to you by Bari Weiss. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
The Weekly Dish: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," - Orwell. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
Slow Boring: Passion and Perspective from Matthew Yglesias. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $8/month
Popular Information: Independent accountability journalism. By Judd Legum · Tens of thousands of subscribers · $6/month
Steady: Hopefully we can build a safe harbor amidst a sea of noise. Please join me. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
Dr. Mercola's Censored Library (Private Membership) Join the private membership of Dr. Mercola's Censored Library today to begin accessing must-read information you won't find anywhere else.
Food & Drink:
a newsletter: recipes. stories. unsolicited advice. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $5/month
Podcasts:
The Pomp Letter: The best daily newsletter analyzing the business, finance, and technology industries. Join 210,000 subscribers by signing up below. By Anthony Pompliano · Tens of thousands of subscribers · $10/month
Faith:
Tipping Point Prophecy Update: In this inspired newsletter, Jimmy Evans and other experts explore biblical prophecy, walking you through the many parallels between today's world and the End Times. Tens of thousands of subscribers · $7/month
Crypto:
The Bitcoin Forecast by Willy Woo: A solid forecast of Bitcoin's price moves using blockchain data. Willy Woo is an industry pioneer of on-chain analysis; more than 700,000 investors follow him for his data-rich insights. Thousands of subscribers · $150/three months
Bankless: The ultimate guide to DeFi, NFTs, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. Join 120,000+ others on the Bankless journey. We blend money and tech insight to help you level up your open finance game. Let's front-run the opportunity! Tens of thousands of subscribers · $22/month
That looks to be 17. There also look to be about 120 more with “thousands of subscribers”. That’s a $7 million/year top-tier revenue slice. (No, I have no idea how large the long tail is.) I also get the distinct impression that the second tier are much better information sources than the top tier—too many tuned-up echo-chambers in the top tier, while the people with merely “thousands of subscribers” seem more likely to know their stuff, be trying to inform, and not to be grifters of any sort. But even with the top tier, I do think that you get better true-information value from these than you do from, say, the Atlantic Monthly—let alone CNN.
What I do find remarkable and depressing about this “Web3” phenomenon is that the different ‘Stacks do not seem to be spending much time engaging with each other. For that to start happening would, I think, would be a clear win for all. If it is going to endure, it needs to be a conversation, and not a set of silos…
One Audio:
Eric Newcomer & Phil Libin: No One Wants to Spend Any Amount of Time With a Plastic Thing Strapped to Their Face: ’Why the founder of Evernote and Mmhmm thinks the metaverse is “obvious bullshit”:
Very Briefly Noted:
Caroline Mimbs Nyce: You Should Still Try to Avoid COVID Right Now: ‘1. You can help reduce the burden on hospitals…. 2. Better treatments to help the most vulnerable are on the way..3. Getting it now doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get it again… <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/caroline-mimbs-nyce/>
Robert Shrimsley: For Boris Johnson, The Party Really May Be Over This Time: ‘Increasingly Tories are wondering if the only choices left to them are a surgical strike or lingering death… <https://www.ft.com/content/75134d52-071f-42b6-bef5-ea89b5ff4a0f>
Jonathan Bernstein: What Biden’s Voting Rights Speech Did & Didn’t Do<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-12/what-biden-s-voting-rights-speech-did-and-didn-t-do>
Barry Eichengreen: Submerged by COVID: ‘Major economic forecasters like J.P. Morgan and S&P Global Ratings are painting a rosy picture of emerging markets’ growth prospects this year. But there are multiple reasons to believe that the consensus view will soon prove to be unsustainable… <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/unrealistically-rosy-forecasts-for-emerging-economies-this-year-by-barry-eichengreen-2022-01>
Jeff Su & al.: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSM) Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript <https://news.alphastreet.com/taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-co-ltd-tsmc-q4-2021-earnings-call-transcript/>
Nicole Hemsoth: HPC at the Heart of TSMC’s Growth: ‘The “HPC” designation in the headline likely caught the eye of those in the supercomputing world but for TSMC , high performance computing (HPC) includes all high-end server processors, from CPUs to GPUs, no matter what the end use cases… <https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/07/16/hpc-at-the-heart-of-tsmcs-growth/>
Joseph A. Lewnard & al.: Clinical Outcomes Among Patients Infected with Omicron (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV–2 variant in southern California <https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf>
Mike Bird: ’Big study of ~70k Covid cases showing Omicron’s far lower severity of outcomes vs Delta: Symptomatic hospitalisation –53% Median hospital stay length –70% ICU admission –74% Mortality –91% Major effects among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients <https://t.co/xxxlYanRVL> <https://t.co/3fsdd1OLIR>…
Bob Wachter: ’A) “Everyone will be exposed to Omicron” B) “Everyone will get Omicron” They’re different. (A) promotes appropriate caution till surge ends: boost, N95, outdoor>indoor. (B) promotes counterproductive behavior as hospitals are overwhelmed. Biggest difference: A is true. B is not…
Noah Smith: Web3 Had Better Not Be Transaction Cost Hell: ‘Lots of transaction costs aren’t paid in dollars—they’re paid in seconds of effort, in the mental cost of attention-switching, and in the hassle and stress of keeping things in mind. Web3 should focus on stuff that allows people to pay fewer of those costs, rather than stuff that forces them to pay more…
Joseph Politano: The Inflation Outlook: ‘The result has been an unprecedented jump in prices for durable goods relative to services. When I say unprecedented I mean it—a jump of this size has never occurred in American history…
Matthew C. Klein: Where Have the “Excess” Savings Gone?: ‘It’s mostly in bank accounts held by the highest earners, plus housing. Also: digging into the weakness in dividend income… LINK:
Heather Cox Richardson: January 11, 2022: ‘Trump loyalists in Michigan and Arizona also submitted false certificates to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) declaring Trump the winner of Michigan’s and Arizona’s electoral votes. In Arizona, they actually affixed the state seal to their papers…
John Holbo (2010): Libertarianism, Property Rights, & Self-Ownership<
Paragraphs:
Duncan Black: What The F— Is Wrong With These People: ‘I’m often reminded (this is a fuzzy half invented memory at this point because it was a long time ago and I am old, so I won’t say who) of an economist who helped drive post-Soviet Russia into the ditch who, when asked about what went wrong, angrily said something like, “We told them to do 5 things and they only did 4 of them!!!”… His brilliant plan for a transition to a capitalist utopia required doing 5 things precisely right, and if they only managed to do 4 of them… THEY HAD NO ONE BUT THEMSELVES TO BLAME. There’s a petulant, “f— it, taking my ball and go home,” attitude with this, rather than, “it’s my responsibility to deal with this imperfect mess even if the people aren’t all doing exactly what I tell them to do”:
A senior administration official argued an effort to send N95 or KN95 masks to Americans would make little difference because ‘half the country won’t wear any mask.’ ‘It may be popular in certain corners of Twitter, but for masking to work as a public health tool, people need to actually wear them…’” Plenty of people wear masks, plenty of people are willing to wear masks, all of those people would happily wear better masks. Polls show lots of support for wearing masks, and even if there are corners of the country where this is not the majority view, it’s still a substantial minority view and every little bit helps. Another reason to do it, like many other things, is to signal that it’s important, to model behavior by putting resources behind it…
LINK: <https://www.eschatonblog.com/2022/01/what-fuck-is-wrong-with-these-people.html>
Toni Morriso: Ten Steps Towards Fascism: ‘1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion. 2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy. 3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works. 4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification. 5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy. 6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process. 7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology. 8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy — especially its males and absolutely its children. 9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence. 10. Maintain, at all costs, silence…
LINK: <https://kottke.org/22/01/toni-morrisons-ten-steps-towards-fascism>
Anil Seth: We Are Beast Machine: ‘We Are Beast Machines_: ’Perceptual experiences are not simple read-outs of a world, or of a body. They are active constructions in which the brain’s top-down, inside-out predictions about what’s going on are continuously calibrated by sensory signals flowing in the opposite (outside-in) direction. By treating sensory signals as prediction errors, and trying to minimize them everywhere and all the time, the brain settles and re-settles on a continuously evolving best-guess of the causes of these sensory signals, and this best guess is what we consciously perceive. The distinctive thing about experiences of emotion and mood is that the relevant causes are to be found within the body, rather than out there in the world…. The brain has no direct access to physiological states of the body, and so these states have to be inferred through best guessing…. All of our perceptions and experiences, whether of the self or of the world, are inside-out controlled and controlling hallucinations that are rooted in the flesh-and-blood predictive machinery that evolved, develops, and operates from moment-to-moment, always in light of a fundamental biological drive to stay alive…
<https://nautil.us/issue/111/spotlight/we-are-beast-machines>
Matthew Yglesias: Jamaica & the Case for Energy Abundance: ‘Noah Smith did an interesting post just before Christmas on what’s worked and what hasn’t for Jamaica…. The tl;dr is that Jamaica hasn’t really managed to get on the manufacturing train to supplement and complement their tourism sector (which is a notorious development dead end) and natural resource exports…. This saga does seem to me to intersect with an obsession of mine: energy abundance…. What’s Jamaica’s problem here? Well, a majority of their exports are made up of bauxite, a material that’s used to make aluminum. This is lucrative enough to keep the value of Jamaica’s currency high and make it a bad place from which to do very low-end globally competitive manufacturing. But the blessing of even the lowest-end manufacturing is that it gets you on the path of export discipline where you can move up the value chain from apparel to light goods to more advanced products. Bauxite mining, by contrast, is a road to nowhere…
LINK:
PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY Content Below:
A piece—that for all that it is seven years old—badly needs more work. It will, I think, become a key part of my extended-notes justification of my treatment of Friedrich A. von Hayek in Slouching Towards Utopia. So I have until September 6 to whip it into shape. But OBJECTS IN YOUR CALENDAR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR:
That's a frightening list of high subscriber Substacks. A few grains within a mountain of chaff.