This (paywalled) Financial Times article has eye-popping pictures of French towns built in the 1200s and 1300s. Many of these still exist and are going strong today, and people love them. They were small (around a thousand people) and densely populated. They were generally built around a public square with a weekly market. At the time, the article says, feudal lords created the towns as a way of concentrating, controlling, and taxing people, in exchange for greater safety and quality of life. The feudal lord generally owned the commercial and industrial real estate, of course, but the article says this can be a model for development corporations today, with master planning and long-term ownership of business districts. Housing developers in theory can do their short-term thing but pay into these development corporations which are then set up in perpetuity to operate and maintain the commons. Sounds good in theory. Clearly the private markets don’t create the kind of green spaces, schools, etc. that people say they want but then vote against with their actual dollars and housing and transportation choices.
This paper identifies a number of “positive tipping points” on climate change that can help counteract the risk of reaching negative tipping points such as glacier melting and methane release. They identify the shift to solar and wind power, electric vehicles, and heat pumps for heating and cooling buildings. These seem very market- and consumer-driven to me. So these are feedback loops that have been gathering some steam, and maybe governments can do relatively small things to reinforce them in the hopes of getting them to a takeoff point where they are self-sustaining and able to counteract the negative feedback loops that are out there. It is somewhat heartening to realize that the renewable energy and electric vehicle revolutions are farther along outside the US than inside, and we are not getting this impression I believe because of effective oil and gas industry propaganda here. Because those companies and their lobbyists understand these positive feedback loops too, and they are evil or at least amoral in the pursuit of short term profit at the long term expense of human civilization on Earth.
From what I understand (outside this article), adoption of heat pumps and building electrification is farther along in the U.S. than elsewhere. This is interesting – how did we manage to move away from heating buildings with coal, oil, and gas directly decades ago if this decreased the profits of the all-powerful fossil fuel industry? Were they just asleep at the switch, or were the economic incentives just that strong? Is it because we made the choice to fund electric infrastructure through a decentralized, regulated electric utility industry? And once we built that infrastructure, the economic incentives became too strong to resist. Whereas we have not built the infrastructure to support the electric vehicle transition, and the fossil fuel/automobile/highway construction industry is successfully fighting that tooth and nail through propaganda and (legalized, by our corrupt Supreme Court) political corruption. (Remember that currently, highway construction has dedicated funding from gas taxes. And auto dealerships make more money from servicing and repairing fossil fuel powered vehicles than they do from selling them.)
Note the oil and gas industry could have been decentralized and regulated too, that is just not the path we went down a century or so ago. It’s too late for this, but economic incentives are going to push in the direction of building the charging infrastructure, because it is just a better, cleaner, and cheaper way to get around overall. So by pushing for this policy, however strongly and effectively the forces of darkness have been pushing against it lately, we are working to reinforce a positive feedback loop that can eventually tip and become irreversible.
I know, a lot of electricity is still generated with fossil fuels at this point. It is still more efficient from what I understand. And slowly but surely, renewables are chipping away. Add modernized nuclear technology to this mix, like the small modular reactors, and keep pushing toward that longer-term dream of fusion power.
We kind of knew this would happen. IVF has been around and is getting more common, although it’s still expensive. We’re told DNA sequencing means people using IVF can select embryos to reduce the probability of genetic diseases. So far so good. Basic research exists tying genes to traits other than susceptibility to disease, like intelligence and eye color. So it was inevitable that companies would arise offering to let people select embryos tied to these traits, right? And that has now happened. Here is a long rundown of where the state of this industry stands.
The biggest concern, which I share, is that rich people will be able to afford this and nobody else will, so rich people will have even more advantages and the gap between rich and poor will grow. But I do like this quote from the article:
One might object that at least they’re in good company: other products which help rich kids get healthier/smarter/taller/prettier than poor kids include private tutors, gyms, hair salons, health insurance, clothing, books, and food.
Next the article presents the argument that rich people adopting a technology early helps to move it along the path to economies of scale and eventually a cost everyone can afford. This makes a certain amount of sense. But it would make even more sense for governments that care about their people to be the early adopters.
Also, it would be crazy for any forward-thinking government not to cover this; it could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in future health care expenses. In countries with public health care, this comes directly out of the government treasury; even in the US, it’s covered by Medicare after age 65. The government should be begging people to select embryos.
The most persistent cost barrier is likely to be in vitro fertilization itself, a necessary precursor. In the US, 2-3% of babies are born through IVF. For those kids, this is a no-brainer – even if the cost never comes down, the cheaper products are only a fraction of total IVF expense. What about the other 98%? If those parents feel like they have to get embryo selection (and therefore IVF) to keep up, this could be a significant burden. IVF isn’t fun – it requires pumping a woman full of mind-altering hormones for weeks, extracting eggs in a minor surgery, and then implanting embryos in another minor surgery, all with a decent chance that some step will fail and you’ll have to do it all again. It also costs $15,000 in the US (less in poorer countries), and unlike the genetics, the cost has barely gone down in the past twenty-five years.
Israel is cited as a country that is offering universal free IVF to its citizens. And here in the U.S., policies that have favorable long-term benefit-cost ratios just implement themselves, right?
All this is without any form of genetic engineering, remember. You are just selecting within the variation in naturally-occurring embryos. One can imagine accelerating this even more if generations of embryos can be spliced and diced by AIs and robots in a short amount of time. And even more if the actual genes are manipulated. (Ethical issues TBD, but if it can be done, someone somewhere will do it eventually.)
Incidentally, Brave New World is supposed to enter the public domain in the U.S. in 2028. But here is a copy you can buy for only $6000!
Nate Silver has put together a spreadsheet with a comprehensive answer to this question, based on records from 800 flights he personally has taken. You have to be a paid subscriber to his site to get the spreadsheet, but there are plenty of clues in the narrative. It is not crystal clear which factors are additive rather than overlapping.
First, the “base case” is a solo English-speaking American business traveler. Families and people who don’t speak perfect English are inconveniences that can be treated in a stochastic manner. More specifically, this base case is a solo domestic (U.S.) traveler, with TSA PreCheck or CLEAR, and not checking bags. For this base case, the rule is “60 minutes from walking through the airport door to departure.”
For a car commute, round up whatever Uber/Lyft says the trip will take by 30%. [For public transportation, my rule is to take the vehicle before the last vehicle that would get me there just barely on time.]
If parking or returning a rental car, add 15-30 minutes.
Add 15 minutes for a really big, busy airport (like JFK, O’Hare). 5-10 if you use that airport a lot and know it inside and out.
Add 5-10 minutes if you have a connection make. His reasoning: “This might seem silly since it doesn’t affect the departure time at the originating airport. But it raises the stakes for missing your flight. Also, if you arrive at the very last moment, you’ll likely be asked to gate-check your bag, which can get you off to a slower start when making that tight connection.”
Add 20 minutes if you do not have PreCheck/CLEAR, +5 for really big busy airports and -5 for small ones
Add another 20 minutes in bad weather.
For international, add 20-40 minutes if you don’t need to check in at the counter and another 15 (business class) to 30 (economy class) if you do.
Add 20 minutes if you just enjoy relaxing at the airport with a beverage before flying.
Special case: If you’re going somewhere (like Canada) that you need to clear immigration before getting on the plane, you need to allow an extra 30 minutes. Presumably it will save you the same amount at the other end (although in my personal experience, U.S. immigration is about as bad as it gets anywhere I have been.)
Okay, let’s try adding this up for my most common travel cases.
Case 1: A domestic business trip, let’s say I’m attending a 2-3 day conference. I have one bag that fits in the overhead compartment or can be gate-checked. I check in online. Weather is reasonable. I’m going to allow 60 minutes at the airport, +10 because my home airport of Philadelphia is pretty big and pretty busy but I know it well, +25 because I don’t have Precheck and security can be a real cluster-, +20 because I enjoy sitting down and having a beer before flying. That’s 1 hour 55 minutes, so the “2 hour rule” was just about right. I could do PreCheck if I really travel enough to make it worthwhile, and obviously I don’t need the beer, I just want it.
Case 2: An international trip with the family. I am past the stroller/car seat/diaper phase which would add exponential complication – not part of Nate Silver’s computational framework. Let’s say I am traveling in reasonable weather from the nightmare hell (but relatively easy to get to) hub of Newark. 60 minutes + 15 because it’s a nightmare hell hub + 10 minutes because there’s a connection + 20 minutes for security + 60 for counter check in (! – but yes, it can be this bad). I’ll skip that beer because I don’t want to get even more dehydrated on a long haul flight. I get 2 hours 40 minutes, so the “3 hour rule” is not far off.
So in conclusion, for me the 2 hour rule can maybe be shaved to 1.5 and the 3 hour rule to 2.5 if I want to live adventurously. I try to get to the airport by public transportation when I can though, so that adds another layer of likely delays. My rule there is to take the vehicle before the vehicle that would get me there just in time. Sometimes you just have to try to relax and make the most of wherever you happen to be, and not worry so much about the time. If I spent another half hour at home or the office before I left for the airport, what would I really do – either interact with other people or do something on a screen. Traveling is stressful, and it can be good to take a moment between the mad dash to the airport and security line, and the various inconveniences and indignities of actually flying. At the airport, I am more likely to read a book, have a beverage, or unwind a bit before flying if things aren’t too crazy.
Avi Loeb always says the aliens are coming for us. Other people say he is wrong because no aliens have conclusively and obviously showed up since he started making these predictions. The disturbing part is that the objects in question are either showing up much more often than they used to and/or much more often than predicted, or else they have always been showing up and we have just recently developed the technology we need to notice that they are there.
“The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 km, and there is not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object per decade,” Loeb said…
He went on to say he thinks there’s a chance that the object could be engineered rather than naturally occurring…
“[31/ATLAS] may come to save us or destroy us,” he said. “We’d better be ready for both options and check whether all interstellar objects are rocks.”
and we really shouldn’t count on the alien mothership running an easily exploitable version of Windows 95 this time
This blog post from Geekcologist has a fantastic set of links to classic essays and more recent blog posts on ecological topics. As an amateur (albeit an amateur who just spent 3.5 years thinking about the intersection of ecology and engineering and myself wrote about 250 pages on the topic) who cares about the natural world I think it is critically important to try to understand and grapple with these ideas. Because by and large it is not decisions made by ecologists that are determining the fate of our ecosystems. It is the decisions of politicians, bureaucrats, engineers, architects, planners, and businesspeople of all stripes. Even if we have morals that might cause us to make better ecological choices, we don’t know very much about ecology, and we just aren’t thinking about this every day. Meanwhile, if I were going to criticize ecologists I would say they are just arguing with each other in an echo chamber and not getting through to the rest of society. Or, they are probably getting through to us in elementary school, and then the vast majority forget what we learned in elementary school when we turn into serious and cynical grownups. Anyway, a person could spend a lot of time drilling into the links in this one post. Maybe I will try to do some follow up posts on a handful of them.
As an enrolled university student for about three more days, I have access to the Financial Times. The Financial Times did an analysis of World Happiness Index and found that young people across English-speaking countries (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) are sadder than people in Western Europe. Well, that was the headline anyway, but when I look at the graph it is really just the US and Canada that are the outliers, with the US far worse (of course). US people are very, very sad in their 20s and 30s, and then start to cheer up a lot in their 40s. Of course, this is a snapshot in time and it doesn’t actually mean today’s young adults will cheer up, or that today’s older adults were not cheerful when they were younger. Anyway, this author concludes young people are sad because they don’t own houses. I don’t know, I have owned and rented, and both caused me different forms of aggravation and sadness. But not being able to afford the lifestyle you feel you want or deserve, or conversely stressing yourself to the breaking point so your family can just barely afford it, is a recipe for unhappiness. So it may be true that housing affordability is a good indicator of happiness even if not the root cause. And as for old people, of course they own those high-value houses and that makes them happy! Sure, they have to pay property taxes on those houses, and they complain bitterly about paying taxes. They also go to those NIMBY meetings and complain bitterly about new housing construction that might create more supply for young people. But remember that complaining bitterly is also a thing that makes old people happy! (Sorry, I just got ambushed by a very grumpy older relative over something I have no control over, housing related in fact, and I am feeling grumpy myself as I sit here 44 days before my 50th birthday!)
Okay, I’m talking about U.S. Supreme Court justices here. Not to be confused with the Iranian system where an unelected ideological leader for life has the right to overrule the decisions of elected leaders without explanation or question…oh shoot, it is basically the same thing, except we have nine of them!
Anyway, ProPublica has put together a dashboard of data on their required public disclosures. They take a lot of privately-funded trips, most often to speak to students at law schools. That kind of makes sense. But some accept gifts from wealthy individuals, and how can that be anything but corruption? They also write books, and do book tours while in office. This seems strange to me, and I wonder if this sort of thing goes on in other countries. Maybe I can see them writing technical articles in legal journals or trade publications, because other practicing lawyers are going to be interested in what they have to say. But I can also see an argument that they write plenty on the job, and they should put their energy into explaining why and how they came to the decisions on the cases before them.
Anyway, another fun thing is you can click on any justice and see what their retirement portfolios look like. And their retirement portfolios look something like mine, with index funds from companies like Vanguard. Only with more zeros. And real estate tends to be a big chunk – I guess if you own a nice home or two in the New York or DC metro areas and your net worth is only a few multiple millions of dollars (typically 5-10 is what I saw), that one multi-million dollar condo can be a big chunk. Come on, you guys are old and you clearly have a nice retirement setup all queued up. Go for it!
This is basically what it sounds like. The chromosomes come from two people (still referred to as a “mother” and “father” at this point in history) and the mitochondria come from a third (female) person. The egg is implanted in the (first) female who brings the baby to term and gives birth, but I suppose there is no reason this has to be the case. The purpose (at this point in history) is to avoid certain rare genetic diseases, and this has worked effectively and produced healthy babies.
Mitochondrial donation treatment, or MDT, aims to prevent children from inheriting mutated mitochondria. The procedure involves fertilising the mother’s egg with the father’s sperm and then transferring the genetic material from the nucleus into a fertilised healthy donor egg that has had its own nucleus removed. This creates a fertilised egg with a full set of chromosomes from the parents, but healthy mitochondria from the donor. The egg is then implanted into the womb to establish a pregnancy.
I have no moral objection to this. Reproduction was always inevitably going to get higher tech over time. The problem is more that wealthy people will have access and others won’t, unless or except in places where governments make other choices.
This article in Business Insider lists 29 countries that offer some kind of “digital nomad visa”. Be warned this is kind of a junky site with a lot of ads and links. Basically, you have to show that you have a job paying a certain minimum amount and you are allowed to work remotely, and you get a visa to stay often for up to a year depending on the country. There are clusters of countries in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Central America making these offers. Other interesting ones include Spain, Portugal, Greece, Iceland, Japan, and UAE (Dubai). The countries have nothing much to lose if you think about it – this is an inflow of money from outside their borders, i.e. essentially an export just like tourism or full-pay international students. If you lose your job, they can kick you out if they want to, or give you a set period of time to find a new one. Singapore is not on this list, but they have a program along these lines as I recall. Not that normal people with normal jobs can afford to live there for any length of time.
Being independently wealthy would be even better of course, but this might be an option for young people, mid-life crisis people without crushing family responsibilities (do these exist?), or not-quite-retired people who still need or want to work.
