March-2026 links
Around 15% of 16-24 year olds in Britain are jobless and not studying.
More confirmation of my demand-side theory of misinformation: the effects of changes to social media algorithms are not robust. We complain about media bias, yet we actively seek it. The market is just providing what the consumers want.
These covert tactics remind me of how authoritarian regimes engage in transnational repression.
Likewise the notion that climate change is a looming existential crisis seems inconsistent with people moving to places supposedly at risk of rising sea levels, even without insurance. Implied market activity suggests we're fine. The effects arise slowly, so plenty of time to adapt. Of course adaptation and mitigation decisions feature as costs in these models, yet opportunity costs are everywhere. Should my decision to dine out yesterday be counted as a cost to the cinema industry?
Gen Z is embracing sobriety (also I'd like to see these figures adjusted for the Muslim population). Use of most drugs has at least halved, with opiate use almost non-existent. Cocaine and horse tranquilizer use has doubled however, and I'd argue that coke is a substitute to amphetamines. Unlike in America, the market for prescription stimulants like adderall is also almost non-existent here (again charlie is the default).
A what point is it established that Russia is losing badly?
Complete pass through in levels may not translate to percentages. It's crucial to get the basic conceptualisations correct.
This is how large the implications of crime policies are. Our leaders can make our communities much safer if they really want to…
Cool research design. Maybe addiction to the screen is more costly than I thought.
We've seem unusually large figures for the economic costs of NIMBYism not withstand replication before, yet even if the effect sizes are much lower, permitting is still a substantial tax on housing.
AI is not featuring in the productivity statistics yet due to slow adoption?
Great thread on heart disease. Ageing remains the primary risk factor, and standard pharmacological treatments successfully alleviate the condition. Cholesterol is less of an issue (due to statins), yet obesity and glycemia much more so.
Another reason to substitute dairy for plant-based variants.
Not my field, but what I can gather from this is that you can improve the scalability of quantum computing by harnessing the properties of spin.
The fact that fertility rates fluctuate over time should give us cause for optimism?
Ageing is bad for the brain. A large part of why I want to decelerate it.
The latest scapegoat for unaffordable housing amongst the economic illiterates appears to be institutional investors.
HDI scores are also very similar between these countries. Poland has a Southern European standard of living now. A tale in conditional convergence.
Gene editing as a means to cure addiction? Never occured to me until now, yet seems rather intuitive in hindsight.
Grade inflation: AI edition?
Most jobs bundle multiple tasks, some that cannot be automated. In addition, you may need to verify the AI output. These intra-job frictions affect the substitutability of AI vs human labour.
The great awokening was bad for shareholder returns, which explains in part why it receded. Hopefully the corporate world will learn from this and remain neutral in today's moral panic.
Mental health conditions account for a large share of PiP claimants, which is a large factor as to why inactivity is so high here. Hopefully this'll be taken as a sign to reform the system?
"The Nigerian government implemented the Import Substitution Policy". So it's not dependence on external trade that's the root of Nigeria's problems, but rather the usual statism that plagues Africa. Whether rents promote moral hazard amongst elites is a different question altogether though.
Buddhism maintains a pacifist reputation in large part due to lower coopting of states than other faiths. In general, I do wonder why abrahamic faiths have been so successful at spreading, and cultivating institutional backing, relative to others.
About 1/5 of the Spanish population is foreign, yet Spain seems a relatively safe and peaceful country to me, and one of the fastest growing economies in the EU too. If critics of multiculturalism were right, we wouldn't expect this.
Do ethnic minorities invest more in signalling to compensate for statistical discrimination?
AI is coming for the graduate premium in all the other countries where it holds.
For lower-income groups, the college premium has fallen outside the UK too. They're the greatest beneficiaries of gov subsidies for uni education, so I see this as evidence of the signalling channel dominating the human capital channel.
Many authoritarians today deploy decentralised thugs to do their bidding. Colectivos in Venezuela, Wagner and other mercenaries for the Sahel juntas, Putin and international organised crime groups. Does this help promote an image of populist legitimacy?
Fantastic work DOGE! Note that entitlements are a large part of why federal spending is so high in the first place.
Almost everyone with liver disease either eats or drinks too much. An entirely preventable tragedy with smart lifestyle choices. Don't be one of those people!
My theory on this is that social media is causing less but better matches. Overall, probably a Pareto improvement.
Dry counties are becoming a relic of the past. Prohibition is no longer legally sanctioned, yet increasingly voluntarily endorsed.
Yes this matches my priors exactly. The fact that fertility is healthy amongst the Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Mongols, Central Asians, and arguably US conservatives, means humanity will continue. The issue isn't extinction, but slower growth or innovation.
I wonder if much diagnostic drift is a function of diagnosing those with anxiety problems as autistic? So what looks like high-functioning autism might be just social anxiety plus introversion in practice?
No taxation without representation: democracy started out as a libertarian project.