California Weather Imagery
Lots of things coming, one tomorrow, but a quick shot of some striking weather imagery: the water vapor loop of
Archives
The Lithium Boom, Retractions, Real Estate, and Skateboarding
What the rise of skateboarding, the lithium boom, a spate of research paper retractions, and Canadian real estate tell us about the world.
Monday Roundup: Regional Conflicts, LLMs, Premier League, Snow Deficit, etc.
On airports, snow droughts, the rise in global conflicts, and more.
Risks, Immortal Finns, and Congressional Stability
In this post I examine the actuarial structures of various groups—from Finnish 8-year-olds to Congress—and the implications. It includes an interactive tool I designed to let people play with risk models.
Sic Semper Tyrannis: Stuck in a Timeline
When consensus predictions don't pan out, it is always worth noting. That is why it is so striking how little attention it is getting that we had the future of technology dead wrong.
Revenge Effects in Waste, Fast Fashion, and EVs
Technology often has unintended consequences that reduce the benefit of the technology itself. I wrote about a variant of this in my posts about Stanley Jevons, but in this note we abstract up a little and talk about revenge effects in more general terms.
The Wisdom of Teamsters, plus Product Traps and Housing Bombs
What happens when people decide an occupation is toast? This is an important question given what we see happening in many occupations that once looked appealing, and now, post large language models (LLMs), look less so.
Running to Not Stand Still: AI, Nuclear Power, and Florida
Some updates on AI, energy, Jevons paradox, and how we are not even running to stand still in some complex systems