~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (560)

1. Does generative AI support the MAGA aesthetic style? (NYT) 2. Would you rather have married young? 3. Possible improvements in teen mental health? 4. LLMs produce funnier memes than the average human, though not as funny as the top humans. 5. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is another good Zambian movie, here is the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. You might think that this was an absurd thing to believe given that babies cry and exhibit all the features of pain and pain avoidance. Yet, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the straightforward sensory evidence was dismissed […] The post What Did We Learn From Torturing...

I could not get the emojis to reproduce in legible form, you can see them on the original tweet. Here goes: The Less Wrong/Singularity/AI Risk movement started in the 2000s by Yudkowsky and others, which I was an early adherent to, is wrong about all of its core claims around AI risk. It’s important to […] The post Roko on AI risk appeared first...

Dogs can’t talk, but their body language speaks volumes. Many dogs will bow when they want to play, for instance, or lick their lips and avert their gaze when nervous or afraid. But people aren’t always good at interpreting such cues — or even noticing them, a new study suggests. In the study, the researchers presented […] The post How well do humans understand dogs?...

1. A hyper-curiosity theory of ADHD. 2. The religious are more skeptical about the moral character of scientists. 3. “Magpies and Crows Are Using “Anti-Bird Spikes” to Make Their Nests.” 4. Clampdown on DeepSeek? 5. Most externalitlies problems are solved by technology, not coordination. 6. “Their new report also highlights the increasing use of drones […] The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on...

Highly speculative, but I found this of interest: This article explores the hypothesis that modern East Asian populations inherited and maintained extensive psychosocial adaptations to arctic environments from ancestral Ancient Northern East Asian populations, which inhabited arctic and subarctic Northeast Eurasia around the Last Glacial Maximum period of the Late Pleistocene, prior to back migrating southwards into East Asia in […] The post Arctic Instincts? The Late Pleistocene Arctic...

Without a doubt, since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revolutionized our view of the early universe, but its new findings could put astronomers in a spin. In fact, it could tell us something profound about the birth of the universe by possibly hinting that everything we see around us is sealed […] The post Was our universe born inside a...

In one particularly eye-opening statistic, the share of adults who are unable to “use mathematical reasoning when reviewing and evaluating the validity of statements” has climbed to 25 per cent on average in high-income countries, and 35 per cent in the US. Here is more from John Burn-Murdoch at the FT. The post Have humans passed peak brain power? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

1. System override. 2. The pop music kill rate. 3. Politicians have to learn how to use AI advisors. 4. Estimating local gdp everywhere. 5. What the Trump administration demands from Columbia University.  And more from the NYT. 6. Daniel Kahmeman’s assisted suicide (WSJ). 7. Police officer steps in when alligator stops pizza delivery in […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

It sometimes happens that a patient needs a non-commercially-available form of a drug, a different dosage or a specific ingredient added or removed depending on the patient’s needs. Compounding pharmacies are allowed to produce these drugs without FDA approval. Moreover, since the production is small-scale and bespoke the compounded drugs are basically immune from any […] The post The Shortage that Increased Ozempic Supply...

In the last decade, large financial institutions in the United States have purchased hundreds of thousands of homes and converted them to rentals. This paper studies the welfare consequences of institutional ownership of single-family housing. We build an equilibrium model of the housing market with two sectors: rental and homeownership. The model captures two key […] The post Institutional ownership of single-family housing appeared...

From the NYT: The part of this research that really blows me away is the realization that our environment is, in part, made up of the genes of the people around us. Our friends’, our partners’, even our peers’ genes all influence us. Preliminary research that I was involved in suggests that your spouse’s genes […] The post Dalton Conley in genes-environment interaction appeared...

The welfare contributions of new goods and free goods are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the contributions of these goods and introduce a new framework and metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their […] The post A new measurement for the value...

1. What explains the global Islamic revival? 2. Sofia Gubaidalina, RIP (NYT). 3. Europe’s oldest universities that are still open. 4. Civic Future Talent Programmes. 5. Do we need a more assertive Congress? 6. Ruxandra on fertility. The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to H. No they weren't. I've had plenty of Syrians ... by Anti-GnosticIn reply...

It seems this ought to happen soon, though it is not (yet) a major news item.  Iranian air defenses are severely disrupted, though not forever.  The “Hezbollah counterattack” has been more than neutralized, and no alternative deterrent has been put in its place.  That too may be temporary.  Israeli public opinion is still close in […] The post When will Israel attack Iranian nuclear...

Despite arrests and legal aggression from the Greek Orthodox Church, the First Hellenic Polytheist Temple in 1700 Years is now open. Located near the village of Kalliani in the Peloponnese, in the wild mountains of Arcadia, Pan is once again being honored in his native lands. The Wild Hunt reported in Pagan Community Notes on February […] The post Ross Douthat, telephone! appeared first on...

From Samuel Watling, in the new Works in Progress: By the early 1900s, Progress and Poverty was more popular than Shakespeare among Labour MPs. In 1910, the Liberal government of Henry Asquith implemented a tax on increases in land value and undeveloped land with a view to reforming Britain’s system of property taxes. Asquith’s gambit failed […] The post The failure of the land value...

Sir Keir Starmer is abolishing NHS England as Labour embarks on the biggest reorganisation of the health service for more than a decade. The prime minister said that scrapping the arm’s-length body would bring “management of the NHS back into democratic control” and reduce spending on “two layers of bureaucracy”. He said the quango, responsible […] The post More British DOGE appeared first on...

Chad’s PM2.5 levels were more than 18 times higher than the WHO guideline, with mineral dust in the Sahara Desert as the primary source of air pollutants. Here is the full article, most of all noting that six of the world’s ten most polluted cities are in India.  Via the excellent Samir Varma. The post Chad fact of the day appeared first on Marginal...

1. SSC on Ozempic shortages and compounds. 2. Catherine Rampell joins MSNBC as host. 3. Saturn gains 128 new moons, bringing the total to 274 (NYT). 4. Nicholas Decker on Chad Jones. 5. “Dodge Charger owners are now experiencing an exciting new feature: pop-up ads that appear every time the vehicle stops at a light.” […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Germany opened its doors a decade ago to nearly 1 million Syrians, taking in more than any other country in Europe. Today, some 6,000 Syrian doctors make up the single largest group of foreign-born physicians, filling vital gaps in care at hospitals and clinics from the Alps to the Baltic Sea. That is especially true […] The post Germany fact of the day appeared...

Claire Wang, Cambrige, Mass. whole brain emulation. Minji Kim, high school, Seoul, to build a running app. Collin Juurako, Vancouver, UBC, cryobiology. Stevie Miller, Carnegie Mellon, to write for Works in Progress, general career development. Ruhan Khanna and Louis Merriam, WDC Sidwell high school, to decipher the Indus script. Marwa Mattaii and Anush Mutyala, Vancouver […] The post Emergent Ventures winners, 41st cohort appeared...

Greenland’s centre-right opposition has won a surprise general election victory – in a vote dominated by independence and US President Donald Trump’s pledge to take over the semi-autonomous territory. The centre-right Demokraatit party – which favours a gradual approach to independence from Denmark – achieved around 30% of the vote, near-complete results show… Five of […] The post The election in Greenland appeared first...

1. Lydia Polgreen on Dubai and migration (NYT, a good series from her, ongoing). 2. Open Philanthrpy is starting an Abundance and Growth program. 3. New Will MacAskill project. 4. Co-Reader. 5. “One in four new recruits to the German armed forces drops out within six months of joining, according to the nation’s military watchdog […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...