A game-theoretic model of why AI automation might be a trap: each firm's rational choice to automate erodes the aggregate demand all firms depend on. The Nash equilibrium is slow-motion collapse.
Tariffs continue to be a major topic of debate. The author examines what happened to countries that closed their borders and protected domestic industry with the promise of strength and self-sufficiency. The historical record is surprisingly consistent.
When Saks Fifth Avenue put out feelers to sell off pieces of BergdorfGoodman, I took it as a very bad sign.
Bergdorf is the crown jewel in that portfolio. Anytime you see a corporation pawning off its winners to fund its losers, they're in very, very deep trouble.
I'm working on an app to make testing available to all brick and mortar retailers (proofpod.ai).
The most difficult technical challenge has been designing a pipeline to fully automate choosing test & control locations using synthetic difference-in-differences.
A phrase I liked to describe what we're doing with LLMs is "building a personal panopticon". The benefits are immense but you're placing a huge bet on the landlord of the tower.
I've taken one of the electric roll-on/roll-off ferries that cross from Denmark to Sweden over the Øresund strait. Zero fumes, zero vibration, incredibly quiet. Awesome to see this tech being used for longer crossings.
James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is a useful lens here. Scott argues that modern states flattened human complexity into legible categories so they could govern: surnames, maps, censuses, standardized occupations. You lose a lot of nuance, but in theory the trade-off is that the state can then build institutions that serve the public.
AI feels like a more extreme version of that flattening, but without the civic purpose that justified it. You end up with legibility without legitimacy. That’s the part I think we don’t have a good framework for yet.
If you already know how to touch type, I recommend using software to mirror your keyboard when the spacebar is held down. I lacked the use of my dominant arm for a few months while recovering from an injury, and by week 3, mirroring no longer required conscious thought.
Muscle mass is lost quickly during detraining, but the additional myonuclei gained when someone puts on muscle are retained for much longer, potentially years. Myonuclei govern protein synthesis, so when training resumes, muscle returns more quickly.
> How would it be possible to fix the problem at the expense of the lower working class?
Not sure if you intended to phrase your question as you did, but if you give cash to the unhoused to rent housing, that takes supply from the bottom of the rental market if you don’t build any more.
Builders tend to build for those that can afford to pay and don’t target the bottom of the market.
Most stock of low-cost housing is due to building neglect or depopulation rather than being purpose-built, in a free market anyway.
Even if there are 10 beds and 10 people, if 9 people can afford to pay 2000 for their beds, and that last one can only afford 500, that last one is still going homeless
Because the person selling the last bed is going to want around 2000 for it, just like the other 9 are paying
Edit: and no, telling them they have to give up that bed for 500 is not a real option
Taxes have made our modern societies possible, so yes they are often the answer to a problem. The American insistence taxes are wrong or "theft" is a malign view that, if adopted widespread, would destroy the ability of most democracies to function.
If you force owners to artificially reduce rent for a single class of properties (here: cheap flats made for the homeless) the rent for others go up a bit.
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