What "austerity"? econlog.econlib.org

I have an alternative explanation. Progressivism leads to a virtually infinite number of "unmet needs" Patch one hole (say health care) and lots more will pop up, such child care, or free college education. Patch those holes, and still more unmet needs will pop up, such as housing and high speed rail. Combine that with the inefficiency of big government, as well as all the problems identified by public choice models (i.e. special interest groups), and you have a recipe for continual disappointment.

I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous thestar.com

He was a preacher more than a teacher.

Scenes Unseen: The Summer of ’78 nytimes.com

Long-forgotten pictures capture escape and discovery in the city’s parks.

Work habits while traveling marginalrevolution.com

My biggest piece of advice is simply to get something written every day.  No matter what, whether you are traveling or not.  No matter where you are or what you are otherwise doing.  The enemy of academic or writing productivity is “days spent doing nothing,” not “I didn’t get enough written today.”

The distribution of cities, then and now marginalrevolution.com

In today’s developed countries, cities are thus scattered across historically important agricultural areas; as a result, there is a relatively higher degree of spatial equality in the distribution of resources within these countries.  By contrast, in today’s developing countries, cities are concentrated more on the coast where transport conditions, compared to agricultural suitability, are more favorable.

What does living in a dictatorship feel like? kottke.org

It’s a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does. I’ve lived in one dictatorship and visited several others—there are still movies and work and school and shopping and memes and holidays.

Bored People Quit randsinrepose.com

“I’m quitting. I’m joining my good friend to found a start-up. This is my two weeks’ notice.”

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? theparisreview.org

When you’re having a moral feeling, self-congratulation is never far behind. You are setting your emotion in a bed of ethical language, and you are admiring yourself doing it. We are governed by emotion, emotion around which we arrange language. The transmission of our virtue feels extremely important, and weirdly exciting. […] The psychic theater of the public condemnation of monsters can be seen as a kind of elaborate misdirection: nothing to see here. I’m no monster. Meanwhile, hey, you might want to take a closer look at that guy over there.

Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories nytimes.com

Over the past few years, the photographer Christopher Payne visited the factory dozens of times, documenting every phase of the manufacturing process. His photographs capture the many different worlds hidden inside the complex’s plain brick exterior.

21st Century Landscapes medium.com

With the onset of the Information Age, the 21st Century promises to bring another change in the human impact on Earth’s environment. In this image series, Planet explores landscapes unique to this century—high-resolution satellite images of landscapes that have been completely transformed since January 1, 2000.

Life Inside China's Total Surveillance State youtube.com

China has turned the northwestern region of Xinjiang into a vast experiment in domestic surveillance. WSJ investigated what life is like in a place where one's every move can be monitored with cutting-edge technology.

The Gambler’s Ruin of Small Cities (Wonkish) nytimes.com

Are there policy implications from this diagnosis? Maybe. There are arguably social costs involved in letting small cities implode, so that there’s a case for regional development policies that try to preserve their viability. But it’s going to be an uphill struggle. In the modern economy, which has cut loose from the land, any particular small city exists only because of historical contingency that sooner or later loses its relevance.

The History Behind China’s Obsession With Hot Water sixthtone.com

Today, almost every government body, business, and school administrative office in China boasts a hot water dispenser. The nation’s high-speed trains, a source of pride for many Chinese, are all required to have water dispensers capable of providing piping hot water at a moment’s notice. Water bottles may be optional at high-level meetings in China, but a teacup isn’t, and there are often servers tasked with patrolling the room to ensure that nobody goes without hot water. One of the most important standards Chinese people use when judging an organization or facility is whether or not hot water is accessible at all times.

L'Istat conferma che in Italia si legge pochissimo facebook.com

Ricordo ancora una sciagurata campagna per la promozione della lettura di una ventina di anni fa, dove gli spot mostravano un palestrato dall'aria stupida, con il sottinteso messaggio "non fare come lui, che è un bestione". Non funziona così: si legge se si è curiosi, non per essere migliori di altri. Se si è curiosi, si vogliono scoprire parole combinate in modo nuovo (i mondi e le storie si trovano anche nelle già citate serie televisive, e nel già citato aggeggio su cui sto scrivendo in questo momento). Se si è curiosi, si prova a infilare il naso in un libro, di qualsiasi tipo, sì cari, anche Fabio Volo che non ha senso vituperare, perché a tenere a distanza i possibili nuovi lettori è anche quell'aggrapparsi alle tende e quel proliferare di "oh, dove finiremo?", che in non pochi casi sottintende "perdindirindina, perché non leggete ME?". Se si è curiosi, si legge anche l'etichetta dell'acqua minerale come quella che mi sta davanti (e che peraltro riporta in elegante corsivo la leggenda di una ninfa, guarda cosa si scopre). A forza di essere disincantati e annoiati, leggeremo sempre meno, e andremo anche meno in palestra e forse guarderemo anche meno serie televisive. E fatela, questa campagna per la promozione della curiosità, forza.

Di libri non letti, numeri e curiosità ilpost.it

Quei due articoli mi interessano, sono acuti e colti, forse un po’ da addetti ai lavori ma in qualche maniera inappuntabili e allo stesso tempo prevedibili. Rappresentano il completamento usuale quando una notizia scatena grandi passioni. A un certo punto arrivano gli esperti e spiegano, amabilmente e con solidi argomenti, che non è poi successo questo granché, che è sempre stato così, che quello che ci indigna e preoccupa è certamente importante ma non si è modificato molto nel tempo.

If spiders worked together, they could eat all humans in a year nypost.com

That means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all seven billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 400 million tonnes of meat and fish each year.

'Would you be willing?': words to turn a conversation around (and those to avoid) theguardian.com

Choose your words carefully and you can get someone to change their mind, or see you in a new light

How the sandwich consumed Britain theguardian.com

By the end of the 20th century, more people in Britain were making and selling sandwiches than working in agriculture.

It's the ATM's 50th birthday today! thefinanser.com

It was exactly 50 years ago today that the world’s first ATM was unveiled at a Barclays branch in Enfield, London.  As a tribute to the golden anniversary, Barclays has transformed the modern-day Enfield cash machine into gold.  Today, more than half of UK adults use an ATM at least once a week.

52 things I learned in 2017 medium.com

In the UK, marriages between couples over 65 have risen 46% over the last decade.

Sharp drop in net migration of EU citizens to areas outside south-east England theguardian.com

There was a net annual increase of just 2,000 EU citizens in south-west England in 2016, according to the IPPR’s analysis of official figures. The north-west and Wales attracted 4,000 more EU citizens and the north-east, 3,000. The decline was particularly marked in the north-west: in 2015, the region had attracted 16,000 more EU citizens than the previous year.

Myths of the 1 Percent: What Puts People at the Top nytimes.com

In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent. This trend, combined with slow productivity growth, has resulted in stagnant living standards for most Americans.

In 2017, UK water companies still rely on “magic” medium.com

If you had to work out where to dig so that you didn’t cut off the water supply to an entire town, would you rely on a Ouija board for your answer? Probably not, but that is in effect what at least two UK water companies (now ten out of the twelve UK companies, see update below) openly admit to doing in 2017.

At 20 ftrain.com

I started this website 20 years ago, give or take a week. The original address was www.interactive.net/~ford. Eventually it migrated here into the form you see. I took it very seriously for many years and it earned me thousands of readers, thousands of emails, and tons of opportunity. It was better at generating opportunity than money. I drifted away for all the regular reasons.

Why I’ve Had Enough of George Orwell the-american-interest.com

Stranger, too, is the idea that George Orwell was a master of prophecy. And this is not merely a matter of a few false calls. Orwell was a man wholly addicted to tub-thumping socialist augury. The gentleman non-pseudonymously known as Eric Blair categorically announced in 1937 that “the upper-middle class is clearly finished.” He predicted in 1941 alone that: the British Empire would be converted into “a socialist federation of states”; the London Stock Exchange would imminently be “torn down”; Britain’s country homes would be transformed into socialist “children’s camps”; and Eton and Harrow faced immediate post-war closure. He was making claims that were childish even for his time.

Switching Jobs flowingdata.com

This makes sense. At the top with the highest switching rate, you have lifeguards, which I’m pretty sure trends younger and more temporary. Jobs that trend towards higher salary and more training, education, and experience have lower switching rates. Real estate agents are around the middle at about 16 percent.

The "Your Fave Is Problematic" Reading List lifehacker.com

Yes. No one is stopping you from doing anything. You can like and consume their work without liking them as a person. You can even like them as a person, so long as you recognize that they do have problematic issues.

Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors motherboard.vice.com

Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.

A sex therapist on why some men force women to watch them masturbate slate.com

I mean a lot of men who are stuck in these cycles of addictive behavior will say “I was as addicted to the shame as I was to the sex.” It’s about this cycle of “I’m a piece of shit, I do things that make me feel like a piece of shit, and therefore I have corroboration and evidence that I am indeed a piece of shit.” Weinstein may have tried to stop masturbating in front of women and couldn’t, which he may have hated himself for. The behavior becomes this weird kind of tumbleweed where … somebody does stupid things and then it reaches monstrous proportions, which it seems to have done in Weinstein’s case.

How Did New Atheism Fail So Miserably? slatestarcodex.com

While the atheists were going around saying there was no God, the environmentalists were going around saying climate change was real. The feminists were going around saying sexism was bad. And the Democrats were going around saying Donald Trump was an awful person. All of these statements might be controversial somewhere, but meet basically zero resistance in educated urban liberal spaces. All get repeated day-in and day-out by groups of people who make entire careers out of repeating them. And all get said in the same condescending way, a sort of society-wide plague of Voxsplaining.

Tutto il patrimonio storico e culturale tedesco è conservato in due tunnel a prova di bomba atomica ilpost.it

In Germania, vicino a Friburgo, c’è un complesso di tunnel sotterranei dov’è conservato in un grosso archivio di microfilm il patrimonio storico e culturale del paese, nel caso in cui una guerra o un grande disastro naturale mettessero in pericolo tutti gli altri archivi, musei e biblioteche esistenti.

Weinstein e noi distantisaluti.com

Quale che sia la reazione di una vittima di un’ingiustizia, quella persona ha diritto – e noi abbiamo il dovere di darlo – al conforto che, giustamente, proviamo per le vittime. E, altrettanto ovviamente, non cancella le circostanze – come lo stupro – nelle quali la vittima non ha alcuno spazio d’azione. Alcune non hanno avuto la possibilità di chiudersi in bagno. Ma la totale privazione dello spazio d’azione non può essere determinata, ipso facto, dallo squilibrio di potere fra le due persone coinvolte.

First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society technologyreview.com

Then, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages jumped again. “It is interesting that this increase occurs shortly after the creation of Tinder, considered the most popular online dating app,” they say.

A Fair Accusation of Sexual Harassment or a Witch Hunt? mcsweeneys.net

A. A witch hunt B. A fair accusation of sexual harassment