Brad DeLong: "The world is certainly not 'flat,' as the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman believes. But, in an economic sense, it is extremely small for non-perishable, non-fragile goods. Every modern factory with outgoing volume large enough for container traffic and a suitable loading dock is next door to every modern warehouse with similar features."
\n" }, { "id": "1623296834", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/06/10/1623296834.html", "title": "Just mention “WWDC” in a blog post this week to unlock it.", "date_published": "2021-06-10T03:47:14+00:00", "content_html": "Manton Reese — because I once asked an acquaintance Douglas Hofstadter's to ask for the definition of recursion and let me know the reply.
\n" }, { "id": "predatory-precarity", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/05/22/predatory-precarity.html", "title": "Predatory precarity", "date_published": "2021-05-22T20:26:44+00:00", "content_html": "Steve Randy Waldman: "If you cut doctors’ salaries in half tomorrow, they would have to sell their mortgaged, absurdly expensive homes. At half their present salary, doctors would no longer be able to afford to live amongst 'peer' professions like lawyers, management consultants, middling corporate executives, and the employees of surveillance monopolists. Doctors would fall precipitously from the social class, embedded in geography and consumption habits, to which many of them even now cling only precariously. More calamitously, they would lose the capacity to produce or reproduce membership in that social class for their children, often the most expensive amenity American professionals seek to purchase."
\n" }, { "id": "the-quiet-end", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/05/19/the-quiet-end.html", "title": "The Bombs That Never Went Off", "date_published": "2021-05-19T08:52:12+00:00", "content_html": "David Frum: "Yet newsworthy or not, you have been living more safely these past three decades thanks to the Nunn-Lugar program—and thanks to the hard work of hundreds of career federal employees whose names you will never know."
\n" }, { "id": "tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/05/14/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept.html", "title": "Tolerance is not a moral precept", "date_published": "2021-05-14T03:37:57+00:00", "content_html": "Yonatan Zunger: "Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact."
\n" }, { "id": "herd-immunity-elusive", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/05/05/herd-immunity-elusive.html", "title": "Herd Immunity Is Humanity’s Great Hope, and It’s Proving Elusive", "date_published": "2021-05-05T01:34:57+00:00", "content_html": "Bloomberg: "...died down once they’d burned through a certain percentage of a herd, so long as new animals weren’t introduced." ... "Humans aren’t cows"
\n" }, { "id": "vaccinations-are-plateauing", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/05/02/vaccinations-are-plateauing.html", "title": "Vaccinations are plateauing. Don't blame it on 'resistance'", "date_published": "2021-05-02T19:24:59+00:00", "content_html": "STAT: "In fact, 'having more information' is the single most important concern expressed by those unsure about the Covid-19 vaccine, according to almost every poll that asks this question."
\n" }, { "id": "you-need-a-plan-b", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/04/25/you-need-a-plan-b.html", "title": "If Herd Immunity Is Your Plan To Beat Covid, You Need A Plan B", "date_published": "2021-04-25T00:20:00+00:00", "content_html": "Stephen Thomas: "The idea would have merit if Covid-19 did not make young people sick, did not require them to access health care resources, or if it was not possible for them to transmit to higher risk individuals. Since none of this is reality, these proposals do not make sense."
\n" }, { "id": "misused-masks", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/04/21/misused-masks.html", "title": "Southwest Accident Shows Passengers Unprepared for Emergencies", "date_published": "2021-04-21T18:34:31+00:00", "content_html": "WSJ: "'That 30-second demo of how to put the mask on properly is such an insignificant portion of most of our lives,' said Mr. Martinez, who used the moments after the window burst to open his laptop and purchase a Wi-Fi connection ..."
\n" }, { "id": "the-nightmare-scenario-for-florida-s-coastal-homeowners", "url": "http://faisal.com/a/2021/04/14/the-nightmare-scenario-for-florida-s-coastal-homeowners.html", "title": "The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners", "date_published": "2021-04-14T05:00:08+00:00", "content_html": "Christopher Flavelle: "What matters, he guessed, will be the first time a mast fails to clear the bottom of one of those bridges because the water level had risen too far. 'These boats are going to be the canary in the mine,' said Cason, who became mayor in 2011 after retiring from the U.S. foreign service. 'When the boats can’t go out, the property values go down.'"
\n" } ] }