Month: August 2024

Yesterday I happened to come across a tweet about how we were all so crushed by work these days that we had no time to cook meals etc. Is this true? Here's some data on how many hours employed people work each day:

Over the past two decades, the number of people holding down multiple jobs has declined, and the number of hours worked each day has increased about four minutes.

In other words, not a lot has happened. We work almost exactly as much as we did 20 years ago, and holding down multiple jobs is also almost exactly the same as 20 years ago (though down on a trend basis).

There are other issues, of course, like employers who screw with their workers by refusing to set a schedule each week, or requiring them to close up one day and then open up the next. And I don't know how these numbers look if you bin them by income level. Still, in the most general sense, the work environment today for must of us hasn't changed in at least two decades.

This is pretty damn impressive:

Over the course of five years, obese people in the control group had a 3.5% chance of dying. Similar people in the group that took GLP-1 drugs (like Ozempic) had only a 0.75% chance of dying.

What's more they found that the GLP-1 group had lower risk of ischemic heart disease, heart failure, arrhythmias, hypertension, stroke, atrial fibrillation, acute kidney injury, and allergic reactions.

They're going to start putting this stuff in the water supply before long.

The Wall Street Journal says today that plug-in hybrids are finally getting popular. Let's check on that:

If you stop right at March and squint a bit, as the Journal does, it might look like plug-in hybrids are doing a little better than EVs. But why cherry pick? We have figures through last month, and it's pretty obvious that plug-in hybrids had only a fleeting few months of success. Since the start of 2022, plug-in hybrid sales have increased 86% compared to 135% for full EVs. Over the past year, sales are down 4% compared to flat for EVs.

Come on, folks. Stop writing trend stories that aren't backed up by reality.

If you're interested in such things, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld wrote a few days ago in the New York Times about a writing competition with ChatGPT. Based on reader input, she chose a few themes (lust, regret, kissing) and details (middle-aged protagonist, flip-flops) and then set out to write a short story. A Times editor worked with ChatGPT to write a competing story.

As it happens, I was pretty sure I could tell which was which, and I was right. Oddly, there were two things that stood out to me. The first is obvious: the Sittenfeld story included odd, unexpected quirks that made it lively, while the ChatGPT story was sort of dull and predictable. But the second reason is that the Sittenfeld story felt awkward in places and made me want to break out my blue pencil. The prose in the ChatGPT story was merely workmanlike but hardly ever seemed objectionable. Sittenfeld basically agrees:

Overall I found it to be proficient on a sentence level but clichéd, and also shallow in sentiment. To me, there’s just something missing — like the literary equivalent of fat-free cookies or a Ken doll’s genitals.

Of course, one might say it's remarkable that ChatGPT could even come close to the level of an accomplished real writer. It's also fair to point out that ChatGPT is very sensitive to its prompts. A different editor that offered different prompts and iterated a few times might have produced something better.

And, as Sittenfeld acknowledges, there's another big difference: she took a couple of weeks to write her story and then had to spend more time paring it down to 1,000 words (the agreed length). ChatGPT wrote its story in 17 seconds and hit the length requirement right on target.

For now, this experiment shows that AI still isn't close to the best humans in creative fields. But it also shows that AI isn't all that far behind. Bewarned.

Here's an interesting tidbit you might not know: who is the least warlike recent US president? In the following list you get one point added for each war you started and one point subtracted for ending someone else's war. I've included only sizeable wars that featured either American boots on the ground or substantial air activity. If it was just occasional drones or missiles or a few dozen advisors, it doesn't count. Here's the scorecard:

• Reagan: +2 (Lebanon, Grenada).
• Bush: +3 (Panama, Iraq, Somalia).
• Clinton: +2 (Bosnia, Haiti, ended Somalia, Kosovo).
• Bush: +3 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia).
• Obama: +2 (ended Iraq war, Libya, Niger, ISIS).
• Trump: -1 (ended ISIS).
• Biden: -3 (ended Afghanistan, ended drone strikes, ended Niger).

This doesn't paint the whole picture, of course. Some wars are bigger than others. Some are multilateral. And events are different from administration to administration.

All that said, however, George W. Bush was our most interventionist president. He's technically tied with his father but his wars were considerably bigger and longer-lasting. Joe Biden has been by far the least interventionist president of our lifetimes.

Be careful with these micro-summaries that are ubiquitous on Twitter:

In fact, Vance explicitly agreed that tariffs can raise prices. But he says that's offset by job gains:

It causes this dynamic effect where more jobs come into the country. Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer you gain in higher wages, so you're ultimately much better off. You have more take home pay, you have better jobs.

This is a more sophisticated argument in favor of tariffs, but as it happens, it's just as wrong. Economists are pretty unanimous about the basic shape of things: tariffs can increase employment in the industries that get protection, but this is offset by decreases in other industries and by retaliatory tariffs. The net effect on jobs is almost always negative. Here's a sampling of research results:

• Joint Economic Committee: "Research shows that tariffs eliminate more jobs than they create."
• Tax Foundation: "We estimate [Trump's] proposed tariffs would reduce...hours worked by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs."
• Autor et al.: "The net effect of import tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, and farm subsidies on employment in locations exposed to the trade war was at best a wash, and it may have been mildly negative."
• World Bank: "US tariffs and retaliatory tariffs had negative impacts on job postings. In contrast, the protectionist impact of tariffs on US jobs is indistinguishable from zero."
• New York Fed: "Given the history of protecting industries with import tariffs, we can conclude that the 25 percent steel tariff is likely to cost more jobs than it saves."
• Brookings: "When economists have attempted to add up the net effect of Trump’s tariffs on jobs, any gains in importing-competing sectors appear to have been more than offset by losses in industries that use imported inputs and face retaliation on their foreign exports."
• Federal Reserve: "Our results indicate that tariffs have been a drag on employment and have failed to increase output.... For manufacturing employment, a small boost from the import protection effect of tariffs is more than offset by larger drags from the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs."

This is all in addition to a unanimous consensus that tariffs reduce GDP and cause significantly higher prices for consumers:

The absolute best you can say about Trump's tariffs is that (a) they will be a huge tax on US consumers, (b) they will slow economic growth, and (c) maybe, just maybe, they'll have no impact on jobs. But most likely they'll reduce employment too.

This is maybe not the smoothest translation ever, but apparently Israel has launched a massive preemptive attack on Hezbollah along Lebanon's southern border:

Presumably the planned Hezbollah operation was the long-awaited Iranian retribution for Israel's recent assassinations. Hezbollah has well over 100,000 rockets in its arsenal, so this could end up as a very long, very destructive expansion of the war.

Let us investigate the vast history of lying by Gov. Tim Walz as alleged by the Trump campaign:

• Retired from the National Guard as a command sergeant major.
  He did rise to the rank of command sergeant major, but upon retirement his rank reverted to master sergeant.
• Had children via IVF.
  Walz almost always refers only to "fertility treatments," but a couple of times has used the term IVF. In fact he and his wife underwent IUI, commonly referred to as IVF but actually a different, more affordable fertility treatment.
• Won an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce (2006).
  It was the Junior Chamber of Commerce,
• Taught in China for a year through a program at Harvard University  (2006).
  It was a program affiliated with Harvard.
• Earned the title of Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year (1989).
  He did indeed earn this award, but so did 51 other people. I'm not sure how this counts even under the strictest definition, but I'm including it for completeness.
• Referred one time to "weapons of war, that I carried in war" (2018).
  Has admitted this was a misstatement.
• Denied he had been drinking when he was pulled over in 1995 for speeding (2006).
  Possibly the only serious falsehood, from 18 years ago. However, he corrected the record himself six years ago when he ran for governor.

This is a pretty desperate list. Added up, it's maybe 10% as much as a single routine lie from Donald Trump. But YMMV.

Here's something I never expected to see:

Katy Y.Y. Tam, a postdoctoral psychology researcher and boredom expert....

Huh. And ironically, I imagine that studying boredom is pretty fascinating.

Anyway, this is from a story about mindless switching between TikTok videos. Tam says this is an attempt to relieve boredom that backfires: the more you do it, the more bored you get.

This doesn't really surprise me. The fact is that there's not much original content on TikTok. The vast majority of "creators" are just pushing out the same me-too stuff as everyone else. It's practically designed to be boring, which is why TikTok videos are so short. Their creators know perfectly well that nobody would watch one of these things if it went on for 30 minutes.

What's interesting, I think, is that this kind of mindless switching is exactly the opposite of highly mindful switching, aka "going down a rabbit hole." When you're switching quickly but doing it with a purpose, it's easy to get obsessed. This is where so many weirdo conspiracy theorists come from.

So: switch mindlessly and end up with unrelieved boredom. Switch with a purpose and end up a lunatic. Maybe we all just need to work on developing longer attention spans.

How do wars end? Lots of different ways. One of the most common is also the simplest: the losing side surrenders and sues for terms. Needless to say, these terms are often harsh.

Wars can also end via negotiated settlements, usually mediated by a third party. In these cases the losing side often avoids the harsh terms of formal surrender but nonetheless is forced to accept a small fraction of what it wants.

Surrender and negotiation have one thing in common: both sides, but especially the losing side, have to stop fighting.

The Arab-Israeli War¹ has been ongoing for 80 years or so. The Arab side that started the war has lost. They've lost over and over and over, and they have no chance of changing that. They are outmatched in conventional terms, and even if, somehow, they were able to turn this around, Israel has nuclear weapons available in the last extremity. Put simply, the Arab side literally has zero chance of ever winning.

But they refuse to surrender. So the war continues, and Israel's defense becomes steadily more brutal in an effort to finally force surrender. None of this is necessarily fair. It is, however, the way the world works and always has.

The Arab-Israeli War will end when the Arab side surrenders. So far, only Egypt and Jordan have effectively done this, and they've had peaceful relations with Israel ever since.

The same thing will happen with any other organization or state that recognizes reality and surrenders. The terms of this surrender have gotten worse over the years as the fighting has continued, but that's to be expected. They'll get worse still as long as the fight goes on.

Like it or not, this is the only endgame. Short of Carthage-like annihilation, the Arab side has lost as thoroughly as any side has ever lost in history. They need to surrender and then rely on the US and Europe to help them avoid the harshest possible terms from Israel. It's the only way this ever ends.

¹This should be "Arab plus Iranian," but there's no good word for that. Just assume that Iran is included in all references.