Category Archives: Web Article Review

How problematic is U.S. national debt?

Here’s a plot from Gemini, not fact checked by me or any other human. Thanks Gemini!

I’ve always thought reporting “debt as % of GDP” is dumb. What really matters is how much interest payments on the debt are relative to the size of our economy. Or, in a more rational, less political environment, that is all that would matter – but in our real world politics matters a lot, and because politics limits our government’s ability to use taxes to pay the debt, debt payments as % of tax revenue also matter.

So…after World War II interest payments on the debt were very high, but this wasn’t a big deal because the economy was growing very quickly. In the 1980s and 1990s, interest payments spiked as interest rates spiked and growth slowed down. Eventually interest rates came down and got us out of that particular pickle. But now, from the plot we can see that current interest payments as a % of GDP are spiking to a similar level to how they did in the 1980s and 1990s. Interest rates are higher than they have been in recent decades, but not crazy high like in the 1980s. The difference really is the size of the debt relative to the economy. We can hope for faster growth to get us out of this one – there is some hope for AI-led productivity gains, but at the same time we have our government shooting itself in the foot by gutting research, development, and education spending, the historical underpinnings of our nation’s growth, while also blowing enormous sums on reckless, illegal wars of aggression with no end in site, and actually reducing taxes on affluent tax payers and corporations. We have inflation and interest rates both seemingly ramping up. So the situation does indeed seem pretty dire. Do I really even have to suggest solutions here? Sure, don’t stand in the way of the AI thing, but also don’t put all our eggs in that basket and do the opposite of all the obviously stoopid policies I just mentioned.

coal and China

Yale Environment 360 explains the situation with coal use in China.

Paradoxically, China is at the same time the biggest installer of renewable energy, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the biggest user of coal. One explanation for this conundrum is a national concern over energy security: Coal is the only fossil fuel that China is not obliged to import, either through vulnerable pipelines or along sea routes that pass through precarious choke points like the Straits of Hormuz. China has an abundant supply of coal, boasting about 13.3 percent of the world’s recoverable coal reserves, and, importantly, it is the one fossil fuel that Chinese planners know will remain abundantly available, regardless of any tensions in China’s East Asia region or military action in the Middle East, the region that supplies China with nearly half its oil. This means that despite China’s role as a renewable energy superpower, coal has continued to play a leading role in its energy system. 

They talk about a decrease in “energy intensity”, which is energy use per unit of GDP. So the economy is growing, energy demand is growing, and renewables and battery technology are able to keep up with some but not all of that growth. Hydroelectric is a big part of their energy strategy, and that has been affected by drought recently. There are also complicated reasons why their grid is not run as efficiently as it could be.

My main impression is that it all sounds so…rational. Compared to the U.S. government which at the moment appears to be corrupt, immoral, and just bat-shit crazy.

medieval castles and scalders

Here’s a fun video on the defenses of medieval castles. Basically, they were designed to be very difficult to take militarily.

Sadly, “medieval scalder” is a job that has been made obsolete by modern life, replaced by something like “ballistic missile launch technician”, which itself is soon to be replaced by Terminators. Chris Farley and Macauley Culkin, 1991. RIP Chris Farley. Macauley Culkin is 45.

March 2026 in Review

In fast-moving current events as I write on April 4, 2026…I have nothing left to say about the stoopid war in Iran and our stooopid war criminal “leaders” who chose this path. I tell my children “stupid” is a bad word that nice people don’t use, and I don’t use it lightly here. I just hope when I am reviewing April 2026 a month from now at least the part where human beings are dying daily from shooting and blowing up is over.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The idea of the lone psychopath developing a bioweapon in their garage with AI assistance is very scary. I outlined some proposals out there for how to deal with this issue, but none are really completely satisfying. Of course, nuclear proliferation is always a close runner-up.

Most hopeful story: I took my first Waymo rides in the Phoenix area in March, and I observed Waymo being tested in Philadelphia. I would like to live in a society where transportation is oriented around walking, cycling and other very light personal vehicles, and public transportation. But given that the U.S. is unequivocally not headed in that direction, I think autonomous vehicles are going to be a win for safety, mobility, and the environment in most U.S. cities.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I finally got around to reading The Singularity is Nearer. Kurzweil is very big on cultured meat, vertical farming, 3D printing, and generally using computer simulation to super-charge scientific and technical progress in many areas. Then there are his weird ideas about nanobots in our brains allowing us to upload our brains to the internet sometime in the 2030s – sounds crazy at first, but I could sit down and name a few things that sounded crazy a decade ago and are now commonplace. I mused about when the robots are coming now that we seemingly have their AI brains ready for transplant. I mused about the seeming paradox that AI is increasing demand for dirty fossil fuel energy and its attendant impacts while also representing some possibility of a longer-term solution to those problems. It seems like slowing down the deployment of AI is not on the table, so the important question becomes how long is “longer-term” – if measured in single digit years, we just may pull through, but if measured in multiple decades, we may be sunk. Anyway, I brainstormed a list of specific areas of research AI may be able to boost: incremental improvement and deployment of today’s solar, wind, battery, electrification, and electric grid technology; fusion power; safer, more cost-effective and scalable fission power; space-based solar technology; cutting edge materials science and energy storage technology; and fundamental research into the mysteries of the universe, which also comes with attendant risks.

more on augmented reality glasses

In China, you can rent them to try out. Students are using them to cheat on tests (surely teachers will catch on to this soon?). They are still expensive and heavy at the moment.

The glasses scan the questions and display answers on the lens. “Any subject that I may fail at,” she said, requesting the use of a pseudonym so she could speak freely. Some schoolmates have rented her glasses to use in exams.

AI-powered smart glasses have become a multibillion-dollar industry. The glasses, priced from $270 to more than $1,000, are generally equipped with cameras and audio features, powered by large language models. Those with screens can display text or images with augmented reality effects…

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently connected Rokid glasses with ChatGPT 5.2. A tester wearing the glasses scored in the top five in a class of over 100 students. The research group is also developing systems that help teachers detect AI glasses, Zili Meng, an assistant professor at the university, told Rest of World. 

deflation and oil price shocks

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.

Will autonomous vehicles increase congestion?

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:

  • Autonomous vehicles shouldn’t need to maintain the same “safe following distance” human drivers are supposed to maintain, which is based on slow human reaction times. So the autonomous vehicles should be able to travel closer together (from front to back) than human drivers at a given speed, and do this safely.
  • They also should be able to travel closer together from side to side. Our standard 12-foot travel lanes allow a lot of space for human drivers to weave wildly and unpredictably from side to side, which of course we do. Keep your arms, legs, heads, and pets inside the vehicle at all times, please!
  • Most vehicles are parked most of the time, so that much more space is required for vehicle storage than for moving vehicles. Not only this, but enormous amounts of empty space are required between parked vehicles for human drivers to maneuver the vehicles in and out of storage. Computers drivers will need much less space for maneuvering and will be infinitely patient.

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.

Are we forgetting about robots? (or Brute’, where are you when we need you?)

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.]

how did nuclear weapons proliferate to Israel?

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:

  • France wanted access to scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project and later moved to Israel. These scientists were given access to French nuclear sites and data in return for their help in building the French nuclear program.
  • In 1956 France built a heavy water reactor for Israel at Dimona. They also supplied the uranium-separation technology needed to fuel the reactor. A heavy water reactor can be used for civilian power generation, but can also turn uranium into plutonium.
  • A heavy water reactor also needs a substance called…heavy water. In the mid-1960s, the French government got cold feet about supplying more nuclear materials to Israel. The UK took over and supplied the heavy water, uranium and plutonium. Argentina, South Africa, and Belgium ALSO supplied some nuclear material to Israel. In South Africa’s case, it was part of a civilian power agreement that included weapons inspections, however the weapons inspections part of the agreement was never fully implemented. In the Belgian case, Israeli operatives essentially hijacked the material in a Dr. Evil-style act of high seas piracy. The US is far from blameless – nuclear material was stolen from a classified site near Pittsburgh, FBI/CIA investigations pointed to Israel, and the administration chose to cover this up. Most of this is backed up by declassified documents.
  • At some point (no year given in the article), Israel conducted an atmospheric nuclear weapon test off the coast of South Africa.
  • Under Eisenhower, the US looked the other way or even actively covered up all this activity. However, JFK openly tried to impose weapons inspections on Israel. Mr. Kirk never uses words like “Israel killed JFK”, but he implies it. I can certainly see a point of view where losing a nuclear deterrent could be seen as an existential threat, and therefore worth killing to prevent. I would just note that several parties had motive, means, and opportunity to kill JFK. Under the Johnson administration, weapons inspections took place, but always on a schedule announced well in advance, and with negotiated agreement as to areas of the site weapons inspectors would not try to access. Later US administrations have maintained a doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” where they just don’t comment on Israel’s nuclear program. Much of this is based on recently declassified documents.
  • Israel today is believed to have 100+ nuclear warheads (different numbers from different sources; but this is still A LOT for a small country – the US and Russia have a few thousand each, while China has about 600 and the UK and France have 200-300 each). Israel has the “nuclear triad” consisting of nuclear bombers, German-supplied nuclear submarines, and long-range nuclear missiles capable of hitting pretty much anywhere in the world supplied by…the French.

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.