Here’s an article in the Guardian about the Iran war’s impact on Thai rice farmers. It hits home for me because I have a personal connection to the country. I like this quote:
He, and many others, simply hope the war ends soon. “For the people, no one benefits from war,” he says.
In fast-moving current events as I write on March 22, 2026, the insane, illegal war of aggression started by the US in Iran (okay, maybe started by Israel, but it was the choice of the US and our mad leader to enable it) continues to escalate. We have talk of ground troops. We have talk of intentionally targeting civilian water infrastructure, which is a massive and unambiguous violation of international law not to mention common morality. There has been idle speculation at least about the use of nuclear weapons. I hope there will not have been a nuclear exchange by the time you read this. If the world is going to get past this moment and move on to a path leading back toward eventual normalcy, this has to end and the people who caused it have to be held accountable. And now, back to regularly scheduled programming…
This article suggests that the oil price shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 played a role in snapping Japan out of decades of deflation, and that the current shock caused by the Iran war could do the same for China.
Recently I posted a contrarian analysis suggesting that China’s deflation is not a true recession, but rather evidence of a sudden acceleration in manufacturing productivity. This article presents the more conventional picture:
Since the country’s COVID-19 reopening in late 2022, a manufacturing glut and sluggish consumer demand have led to intense price wars that eroded company profits and slowed wage growth.
Where am I going with all this? I don’t know yet – it is something I am struggling to understand.
I had actually never heard of pedestrian level of service, but it appears to be just applying traffic flow modeling principles to pedestrian flow. It is intuitively appealing to me because you can just add pedestrians, cyclists, or whatever mode you want to a transportation model and specify which links in the network are open to which types of “traffic”. Theoretically, you could try to optimize the total flow of people from where they live to the places they need to get to, and not just maximize the flow of motor vehicles. Surely someone must have looked at this. A valid criticism, of course, is that these models can be short-term focused, even looking just at a single weekday peak hour and certainly missing longer-term dynamics like how infrastructure capacity and land use policy affect trip generation over time. Another criticism is that this engineering approach completely misses the quality of life aspects of urban design.
Pedestrian infrastructure assessment: Walkability vs. pedestrian level of service
This paper explores two of the most explored indicators for evaluating pedestrian infrastructure: walkability and Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS). Walkability, typically used by urban planners, emphasises the qualitative aspects of the built environment, such as safety, comfort, accessibility and aesthetics, whereas PLOS, primarily employed by transport engineers, quantifies the operational performance of infrastructure based on pedestrian flow, density and speed. A systematic PRISMA-based literature review was conducted, covering 60 PLOS studies and 55 walkability studies were analysed in terms of definitions, contributory factors, data collection methods and modeling techniques. Despite sharing the goal of promoting pedestrian-friendly environments, these frameworks differ fundamentally in scope, purpose and methodology and are often applied independently. The findings indicate that walkability indicators vary in how factors are measured and allocated across dimensions. Moreover, walkability is treated as a “static” factor, both conceptually and methodologically. Relatively limited research examines how walkability changes over time (e.g., day vs. night) or varies across population groups. Conversely, PLOS generally excludes socio-spatial dimensions, a choice consistent with its original purpose rather than a methodological limitation. Some approaches attempt to incorporate subjective factors, but usually in ways resembling traditional walkability metrics. This study highlights the need for greater standardization in definitions and assessment frameworks, while also identifying challenges that complicate their practical applicability. Their complementary use can significantly enhance the design, evaluation and planning of pedestrian infrastructure, supporting more livable, sustainable and inclusive cities.
Okay, so I got around to reading The Singularity is Nearer by Ray Kurzweil. It is worth a read. It is not really a rewrite or update of The Singularity is Near, and I would still recommend reading that 2005 book first to anyone. I suppose reading it now would require a bit more of a historical lens since some events have already come to pass, and others may not be on the track he envisioned (although surprisingly close consider how much time has passed!) This new book feels a bit more thrown together, and yet it is very interesting. My bullets below are not a summary or review of the book – I’m sure you can find that elsewhere on the internet if you prefer that to reading (or don’t have time to read) the book yourself. These are just a few things I found interesting or surprising enough to bookmark as I was reading the book.
Eventually nanotechnology will enable these trends to culminate in directly expanding our brains with layers of virtual neurons in the cloud. In this way we will merge with AI and augment ourselves with millions of times the computational power that our biology gave us. This will expand our intelligence and consciousness so profoundly that it’s difficult to comprehend. This is what I mean by the Singularity.
In the past I’ve heard him say 1000x. Which is it Ray??? Well, it doesn’t matter does it because we can’t comprehend the difference between 1,000 and 1 million. I can’t comprehend being twice as smart as I am, in fact. Einstein supposedly had an IQ of about 160 so he was only 60% smarter than me if IQ were an adequate measure of anything.
The 2030s and 2040s certainly sound like interesting times, barring any sort of tragic disaster between now and then. At the moment, we need to focus on not derailing our civilization and species to the point that we don’t get to find out.
Yes, autonomous vehicles will increase vehicle miles traveled by about 6% according to at least one set of serious researchers. They say this might not sound like much, but it will be enough to exceed capacity and cause massive traffic jams. Now, I’m sure these are serious transportation researchers who have thought about all the things I mention below, but I’ll mention them anyway:
So put all this together and I think that even if VMT increases, the amount of physical space required for vehicles could be massively reduced. This could be a big win for people, cities, and the environment. If VMT increases because people are able to get around more easily and cheaply, including the elderly, disabled, and parents pushing strollers, in all kinds of weather, this is a win for quality of life. I don’t see artificially restricting mobility as a win for people. I shouldn’t even have to say that reducing death and injury caused by vehicles by a factor of 10 or more is a moral and quality of life win.
Now, I am worried about urban and suburban sprawl getting even worse as it gets easier to get around. I am worried about air pollution and climate change. Add in augmented and virtual reality, and we might also come to care less and less over time what our cities look like to unaugmented eyes. I love compact, walking, cycling, and public transportation oriented urban form. One of the downsides of this form in the past has been a lack of green open space, but massively reduce the amount of space required for parking, and it will open up a lot of space in cities that we will then have choices of what to do with. So it really comes down to policy choices, and different places are going to make different choices, but I don’t see the technology itself as the root problem.
In fast-moving current events as I write on March 15, 2026, the illegal, unauthorized by any legislative body international or domestic, unprovoked US sneak attack on Iran continues to rage. I’ll leave further commentary to others except to say that, in totally unrelated news here on this Ides of March, remember it was SENATORS who had the guts to stab Caesar and try to save the Republic (which didn’t work all that well in the end.)]
Here are a couple headlines we could classify as “things China is doing well”.
China’s Clean Energy Push Has Made It Less Vulnerable to Energy Shocks, Including the Iran War [Is this not obvious? The US could be focusing on ramping up proven technology like electrification of all buildings and transportation, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and battery technology while also funding “moon shot” R&D in areas like materials science and nuclear fusion. We could also be using fission energy and, I hate to say it, domestic fossil fuel production as a bridge to get us over the hump while we scale up in these other areas. If the whole world were doing this we wouldn’t be so dependent on boats moving liquefied dinosaur turds through one little war-torn (by choice of the fools claiming to lead the US government) inlet.]
How China’s AI-Powered Robots Could Reshape the Global Order [Now that disembodied AI has became mainstream, the next somewhat obvious step is to get the AI brains into robots.]
I always had a vague notion that “Israel got nuclear weapons from France”. That is sort of true but not the whole story, according to this article by Kevin Kirk in Naked Capitalism. Now, I have to state for the record that Mr. Kirk sounds knowledgeable and confident to me, but he does not give a lot of references or cite many sources of his information. I will note a few cases where he does. Here is the story he tells:
The idea of “atoms for peace” (originally promoted by Eisenhower), in which countries would be given civilian nuclear energy technology in exchange for agreeing to a strict weapons inspection regime, is appealing to me. But you can see where it breaks down when geopolitical intrigue applies. It’s probably better to get renewable energy ramped up around the world (particularly water-scarce yet sunny countries) and keep pressing towards peaceful fusion technology. And keep pressing towards nuclear arms control before something happens that all of us humans are going to regret as long as our species is around.
This article on a site called ZME Science has some facts and figures on how many birds are killed (in the U.S., I think) by wind turbines compared to other causes.
There are some things you can do to make the wind turbines less bad for birds. But really, it’s the cats and the cars and just the general wanton destruction/displacement of nature by our civilization. Now I’ve depressed myself, as I often do.
This article is about an English teacher trying to figure out how to cope with AI in and out of the classroom. The main ideas seem to be just in-class writing assignments and discussions. This is high school (I think), and one thing that might surprise an older reader is the idea that the teacher spends a significant amount of time reading out loud to students, and also giving them time to read themselves in class. I am not surprised because I see the teachers of my own children in middle school doing this.
I’ve thought about trying my hand at teaching, at some point. I may or may not ever do that, but if so I will have to think about how to use AI in an engineering classroom. I don’t have all the answers of course, but this is a bold new frontier so neither does anyone else. Here is my first attempt at a brainstorming list:
Well, that was just some stream-of-consciousness drivel, wasn’t it? For me, writing and thinking are inseparable. I had some thoughts on this topic in the back of my mind, but now that I have tried to articulate them (without the use of AI), they are more fully formed than they were before I did that. If I were going to think about this more right now, I might ask AI to help me find some more articles and blogs on the subject.
Ever since I read Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, probably some time in the early 2000s, I’ve been concerned about the idea that biotechnology will eventually be available to amateurs. And a few amateurs will be psychopaths or suicide terrorists willing to take down civilization along with themselves. My only real idea for preventing this has been heavy duty government surveillance, somehow tempered by political institutions that keep the government itself from being evil. And of course, we don’t think we want this surveillance, and I don’t really want it, but I haven’t seen clear alternatives.
Here are some suggestions by others. I am not sure if I am convinced, but these are ideas worth thinking about. First, Amodei from Anthropic in his recent TLDR essay The Adolescense of Technology (where he tries to pull a Bill Joy and doesn’t quite pull it off, in my view.) You have to keep in mind that although he seems to be motivated by ethical views, heavy government surveillance is not in the interest of private companies, so his suggestions tend toward self-regulation by industry. Anyway, his suggestions are:
Now, here is an article from Big Think called How to deter biothreats in the age of gene synthesis. What they come up with is to screen all orders of biological materials (like DNA) from the companies that make and sell them to researchers. Screen the orders, screen the customers themselves, and screen for particularly dangerous DNA sequences.
This has to be done internationally, which adds to the difficulty. Even if it is done effectively by most countries most of the time, you will have enterprising countries and criminal organizations out there setting up a black market, just like you do with drugs and nuclear materials. Because it will be profitable to do so. The more effective the clamp down, the higher the risk and potential profit becomes (which is why the war on drugs has not and probably cannot be won, other than by massive and intrusive surveillance of individuals which most people in most countries agree they don’t want. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts and for people caught up in all the violence fueled by the black market created by their prohibition. But they aren’t going to spread like fires through uninvolved and unprepared populations and cause the extinction of our species. Which is why I wonder if accepting some level of intrusive surveillance on individuals is the least evil option as the technology gets more accessible and more dangerous all the time.
Nonetheless, it is probably good to take an “all of the above” approach. If I were feeling optimistic I might say perhaps the existential nature of the threat will prompt some international cooperation and formation of some more functional institutions for cooperation than we have seen over the past decade or so. But maybe it will take some sort of near miss or partially contained disaster for this to happen. (Covid-19 was not bad enough, apparently.)
Let’s close with a few quotes from Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, which anyone who has not read must drop what they are doing and read now:
The 21st-century technologies – genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) – are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them…
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
Joy’s proposed solutions included “relinquishment” of certain technologies we all agree are too dangerous (as we have, to some extent up until now, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons at the nation-state level) and strong protections for whistleblowers in the scientific and technical communities.