the rise of electoral democracy

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Our World in Data shows is that, while there has indeed been a rollback in the number of democracies and number of people living in democracies over the last twenty years, the trend over the last 250 years or so have been a sharp and relentless uptick in electoral democracies. The US and UK were the first in the late 1700s, but New Zealand was the first to provide true universal suffrage.

I’ve been thinking, there are plenty of examples of rational and reasonably well functioning non-democracies in the world. And there are plenty of messy, imperfect, dysfunctional electoral democracies for sure. The article points out that a lot of electoral democracies exist on paper but have not had truly competitive elections in recent history. But we know the long-term relationship between economic growth and quality of life tracks closely with the rise of democracy, and we know that electoral democracy gives us some insurance against being trapped permanently in the truly terrible governance situations that sometimes arise in both democracies and non-democracies.

Waymo using Chinese EVs

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I’ve seen Waymo testing these vehicles around Philadelphia. It turns out these are Chinese-made, but Waymo adds the self-driving technology itself after importing them. Even after paying the tariff, they are about half the price of the Jaguar vehicles Waymo has been using.

https://electrek.co/2026/08/20/waymo-zeekr-ojai-chinese-ev-robotaxi-all-riders/

Polymarket has predictions of when Waymo will launch in various US cities, and these have ticked up significantly compared to the last time I looked. Chances of launching by end of 2026 (Sunday, August 23, 2026 as I write):

  • Operating now: San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, Austin, Atlanta (the last two dispatched by Uber)
  • > 75%: Tampa, San Diego, Denver, Las Vegas
  • 50-75%: Charlotte, Sacramento
  • 25-50%: Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore
  • < 25%: New York, London, Minneapolis, Seattle, DC, Portland, Boston

I’m glad to see Philadelphia with close to an even chance of launching by the end of the year. I personally wouldn’t bet on those odds, but they tell me that a year from now I will most likely to able to hail an automated taxi in my city, which will increase my safety and the safety of my children by roughly a factor of 10. And that doesn’t count reduced risk for pedestrians or the calming effect these vehicles are likely to have on human drivers.

August 2026 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: There are some dire projections of severe global famine in the next year. This would be due to the Super El Nino affecting important food-growing regions, closure of important grain-exporting ports in Ukraine, and the sudden loss/price spikes for fossil fuels and fertilizers that have already disrupted planting and growing seasons over the past six months, and will continue to do so. It will be similar to an 1877 El Nino that killed over 50 million people. I am a bit skeptical of the most extreme impact projections though because they do not seem to be a majority view, and the collective view of people participating in financial markets does not seem to be anticipating anything this bad. Still, it seems likely that regional famines and high food prices could affect a lot of people, and the worst projections would represent an existential threat that should not be ignored.

Most hopeful story: There is an effective malaria vaccine in use in Africa. It requires four doses, which hampers widespread implementation, but hopefully the numbers of doses will be reduced, eventually to one. In the United States, amid an embarrassing political dust-up over the measles vaccine (happening to involve my state’s governor, who does NOT at this point make the “top 5” list mentioned in the next paragraph), the FDA has quietly approved an mRNA-based flu vaccine.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Election Betting Odds provides aggregated stats across the various prediction market platforms for a few categories including U.S. Congressional and Presidential elections. As I write (September 1, 2026), it is telling me there is a 51% chance the Democrats will take majority control of the U.S. Senate this fall (along with 84% chance of House control). The top 5 2028 Presidential contenders are Vance (21%), Occasio-Cortez (12%), Ossoff (11%), Rubio (10%), and Newsom (9%). I suspect at this point the latter is similar to a poll of “which of these names have you heard of?”. It might be a fairly good prediction of who will actually run, however.

the 1877 Super El Nino

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A Super El Nino in 1877 led to a famine that killed an estimated 50 million people, between 3 and 4 percent of the world’s population at the time. Deaths were concentrated in developing countries including China, India, and Brazil, which I am assuming would have had large populations of rural subsistence farmers at the time.

The article talks about how the impending 2026-2027 El Nino may be comparable in terms of heat and drought, but we have much better forecasting of what to expect and technology to deal with it. The article stops short of discussing how to actually deal with it, but I would assume some combination of stockpiling food in advance, international trade, international coordination and assistance, and (temporarily boosted, long-term unsustainable) irrigation. Also not discussed in the article are the self-inflicted geopolitical events (both the Middle East and Ukraine, which is an important grain exporter) that are making growing and trading food more challenging, right when this is most harmful. You can provide subsidies for farmers and consumers if prices spike, but at some point that will not help if there are really absolute shortages – if that happens, let’s hope it’s shortages of preferred foods rather than a shortage of absolute calories.

Yougov poll of support for bike lanes in US

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A yougov poll of about 1100 Americans shows that people support bike lanes in their communities by a pretty wide margin. Now, you could say this is a small sample size and people who ride bikes might be more likely to have answered. But, it is weighted for demographics and respondents were asked whether they own a car, own a bike, and how often they use these modes of transportation. There are plenty of respondents who do not own or ride bikes. And by a large margin, people support bike lanes. Not only that, they support separated, protected bike lanes, they are willing to give up some parking (but not car travel lanes) to add bike lanes, and they support (the only morally correct view in my opinion) that it should be legal to ride bikes on sidewalks when there are no bike lanes.

Respondents are grudgingly in favor of allowing e-bikes in bike lanes, but majorities oppose scooters, rollerbladers, skateboarders, robots, and people in wheelchairs. Sidewalks ideally should be designed and maintained to support some of these uses, but we all know that does not always happen when responsibility for sidewalks is often pinned on the individual property owner.

So my verdict is that, as is so often the case in our cities, the loudest, angriest voices opposing change create a disproportionate perception that people in general oppose change. And in the case of our streets and sidewalks, choices made by a few cynical public officials and reckless drivers can ruin it for all the rest of us.

mRNA flu vaccine approved

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Amidst the pseudo-science and headlines about vaccines, the FDA has quietly approved an mRNA flu vaccine. Maybe we are not being thrust into a new dark age after all. Maybe it will turn out that science and technology are slowly proceeding below the political radar, and when the political winds shift some new breakthroughs will be there for us.

The approval of mFLUSIVA “demonstrates the continued strength and versatility of our mRNA platform,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a release. The vaccine was shown to be almost 27% more effective against the flu than the standard flu shot. The FDA has authorized mFLUSIVA for adults over the age of 50 after “documented superiority in effectiveness to normal dose flu vaccines,” particularly “for those with underlying diseases,” Jesse Goodman, the FDA’s former top vaccine regulator, said to The Washington Post.

A move toward mRNA vaccines can create a more effective and faster flu shot. Traditional vaccines are “typically generated in chicken eggs” and are “what we call an inactivated flu vaccine,” Hanover Matz, an immunologist at WashU Medicine in St. Louis and the coauthor of a June study comparing the mRNA vaccine to the traditional flu vaccine, said to Science News. Pieces of the virus “are used to teach your immune system how to fight flu,” and “because the virus is raised in chicken eggs, it takes a long time to generate that vaccine.” This method also requires policymakers to “determine what the most likely strains of the flu virus are going to be for the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere,” and they “need to start that production well before the fall to get the vaccine doses ready.” If “there’s a mismatch in strains, there’s really no way they can go back and update the vaccine and change it.”

Besides saving lives that would otherwise be lost to the seasonal flu, this would seem to have potential as a rapid response to a deadly pandemic flu outbreak, which we are always cautioned will inevitably, eventually happen. Like a massive earthquake, it is unlikely to happen in any given year but certain to happen given enough time. The technology fast-tracked by Covid-19 also seems to have clear applications to other viruses. So maybe we can hope for long-awaited vaccines against other dread diseases such as HIV and dengue fever, and maybe progress on bacteriophages to combat antibiotic resistance (where a deadly engineered virus is intentionally unleashed – on deadly bacteria).

the Antichrist!!!

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Some people believe in a literal Antichrist, while some believe “there is a little Antichrist in all of us”, apparently. I would tend to argue for the latter in the sense that the concept of right and wrong are uniquely human and we have certainly shown ourselves capable of both.

However large he looms in modern Christian storytelling, he’s referenced in only four passages of the Bible. The word Antichrist appears nowhere but in one of John’s epistles, which also warns that “even now many antichrists have come,” indicating, as Trelawny puts it, those who reject “that Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah…”

The apostle Paul or one of his disciples, in a letter to the Thessalonians, foresees the rise of “a mysterious figure known only as ‘the lawless one,’ who will gain power by deceiving people through false miracles, and once in power, he will commit his greatest crime of all: ‘He will oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God or worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” For its part, the Book of Revelation adds “the arrival of a monstrous seven-headed beast,” and later, a companion with “the horns of a lamb but the voice of a dragon.” Thereafter comes the “mark of the beast,” 666 — or perhaps 616, Trelawny adds, given that either could be seen as code for Neron Kaisar in Greek or Nero Caesar in Latin, better known as the ancient Roman Emperor Nero.

My favorite literary Antichrist is of course Stephen King’s “Walking Man” from The Stand.

Chinese EVs in Thailand

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This article says the “top 5 brands” for EVs in Thailand are Chinese. BYD is the only one I am familiar with, but I confirm I saw with my own two eyes that there are BYD dealerships and cars on the road in Thailand. They don’t make up a large proportion of cars you see because there are a lot of older vehicles on the road, but if you pay attention to other cars on the road for a couple minutes you can almost always spot one. One thing that surprised me is e-bikes have not caught on. The spike in gas (“petrol”) prices has not made any visible dent in the motorcycle culture. I did however see electric “tuk-tuks”, which are the rough equivalent of golf carts that used to run on filthy lawn mower engines. This is a big win for air and noise pollution levels. In general, Japanese car brands are dominant in Thailand, with the only American brands you see being Ford pickup trucks.

I was also in Singapore (an entirely unplanned, thanks to the self-proclaimed “world’s best airline”) for 24 hours. I did not see any Chinese brands there. The taxis I was in seemed exceptionally quiet and I suspect they were hybrids.

I did not see any autonomous vehicles in either country. This surprised me a bit since Singapore in particular would seem an ideal candidate given the perfect state of the roads, signs, markings, and well-tamed drivers. But even in Thailand, I would say road markings and driver behavior are at least as good as the US, and traffic signals are actually more advanced (generally arrows and count-down timers for all lanes, even in relatively rural areas – seriously, this is not that hard to do.) They must not be allowed as a matter of policy.

will AI end management?

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When you work in an “efficient” modern corporation, you can get the sense that it spend an awful lot of time and money doing things other than whatever the corporation is in business to actually do. This is brilliantly satirized in The Office, where people working in “Corporate” enjoy a higher social status than the people actually handling and selling the office supplies. Anyway, this article first surveys the work of James Burnham, Ronald Coase, and Peter Drucker who all argued that as industries and businesses became more complex, the transaction costs associated with informal operations expanded to the point where professional management coordinating all those moving parts became cheaper. Another way to look at it is that managers gather information centrally and then disseminate it to all the parts of an organization that need to operate in a decentralized manner (which I am referring to “doing what the corporation actually does”, as opposed to “business” being the function of a business.) Now, enter AI:

AI is beginning to automate the very coordination function that justified management in the first place.

Research, writing, software development, legal drafting, customer support, scheduling, project management, and marketing increasingly become services that can be summoned on demand rather than coordinated through multiple managerial layers.

I more or less agree with this, but I think there is a lot of friction and it will take a lot of time. All the things above involve a…lot…of…talking between human beings within the organization and between humans beings in the organization and their customers and contractors. Because language is just not that good a way for us to communicate what we really mean with each other, and a lot of times we don’t even know what we mean until we spend a lot of time thinking and talking and writing it out, bouncing it off each other, and refining it over and over again. AI can speed up all the parts of loop in between these parts, and it can put more information at our fingertips as we are going through this process, but it won’t be able to break this bottleneck in a lot of industries. AI may eventually get this and learn to work with us in a more human – less logical, less literal – but we are not there yet.

our distant ancestors had a third eye

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IMPORTANT PUBLIC SAFETY UPDATE: In my original post below, I suggest you stay at least 30 feet away from an American alligator on land. Experts actually recommend staying 60 feet away. Experts (and I) also recommend taking advice from reputable sources, not random blogs!

Sometimes science is bizarrely interesting. For example:

Deep inside the human brain, a small gland in the middle of the forehead helps keep time. As darkness arrives, the pineal gland helps set the body’s nightly rhythm. But some creatures use the pineal gland as a sort of “third eye”, helping them detect light and shadow, though the organ doesn’t form pictures. Our human lineage lost this ancestral ability millions of years ago.

But a new evolutionary hypothesis suggests that this unassuming organ is the surviving central remnant of the eye from which our two image-forming eyes ultimately arose.

In a review published in Current Biology, researchers from Lund University and the University of Sussex argue that the lineage leading to vertebrates passed through a cyclops-like stage roughly 560 million years ago. The animal was not a one-eyed giant, but probably a tiny, wormlike marine filter feeder with a light-sensitive organ on top of its head. As its descendants returned to active swimming, parts of that central organ expanded sideways and were repurposed into paired retinas.

From my somewhat morbid dissecting experiences in high school, I always found it fascinating that an animal like a frog has basically the same organs I have, and even a worm has many of them. But animal eyes might be the most fascinating of all. I’ve spent plenty of time staring into animals’ eyes – my pet fish for example (is he awake or asleep? hard to tell), the squirrels and birds in front of my house. All these animals are looking me right back in the eyes. The connection between our eyes and insect eyes is even weirder to think about. I’ve looked into crocodile and snake eyes too, at the zoo with a nice thick piece of glass between them and me. I suppose I’ve looked into alligator eyes without that glass, from a safe distance. I’m not sure what the minimum safe distance is to keep from an alligator, and this is not a safe experiment to run. But I would say an alligator 30 feet or so away is not going to bother chasing you down on land, and if it does try you can run faster than it and it will tire quickly. If you are staring an alligator in the face in the water, that is probably the last thing you are going to see.