Favorites January 22nd 2023

Stanford California, January 2022

Eric Reinhart @_Eric_Reinhart

Congress has expanded medical residency spots for only the second time in 25 years, approving 200 additional positions. Amid a huge doctor shortage (estimated to grow to 120k by 2030), this is peanuts. For both domestic and global health, we need more.

bmj.comThe neocoloniality of who cares: US underinvestment in medical education exacerbates global inequitiesThe US has chronically underinvested in medical education and relies on the annual recruitment of thousands of foreign trained healthcare professionals from nations with far greater unmet healthcare needs. This bears partial responsibility for the dire situation India finds itself in during the pand…

TIL: Congress determines how many medical residency spots the US has. wat?

P. D. Mangan Health & Freedom Maximalist 🇺🇸 @Mangan150

New: Viagra, Cialis and other PDE5 inhibitors massively lower all-cause death rates and major heart disease events. Men with the greatest exposure to these drugs had 55% less heart attack risk, and 50% lower all-cause mortality. Compare to statins, with no decrease in mortality

What a deal, two effects in one!

Ethan Mollick @emollick

If you didn't know, it is now trivial to create a video where the character, script, voice & animation are completely created by AI Here is an AI cyborg giving its first TED talk. I did nothing but provide prompts. It took in less than 2 minutes. Not perfect, but improving fast

This is very impressive, although I think when he says it took 2 minutes, he's not including the time for the video to be generated, just the time it took to write the prompt.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

This is good, but we need to make sure not to punk our European allies here. "America first" is a Trumpist strategy; our strategy needs to be that friend-shoring is also a win for us.

Todd N. Tucker @toddntucker

Some signal breaking through the Davos noise this week. “In my view, the Inflation Reduction Act is, by far, the most important climate action after the Paris Agreement 2015,” Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. https://t.co/vDpy79hfH5

I don't want my comments about Manchin in the last email to give you the impression that I think it's good that the IRA favors US manufacturing over European. (Although I am happy to see that Manchin 2023 is to the left of Obama 2013)

Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano

Tracy (𝒞𝒽𝒾 ) @chigrl

#Brazil and #Argentina to start preparations for a common currency Other Latin American nations will be invited to join plan which could create world’s second-largest currency union https://t.co/qAeQWKBTD7 https://t.co/LpydOxppwS

FYI, joining a monetary union with Argentina specifically seems like a very bad idea.

Ethan Mollick @emollick

I think we haven't fully absorbed the fact that careful academic papers have found ChatGPT clearly passes some of the most challenging American professional exams: 🩺United States Medical Licensing Exam 🎓MBA-level Operations exam 🧑‍⚖️The Bar Exam (based on typical exam questions) https://t.co/SIEAVWdf9j

To be clear, it only barely passed these tests, and only if you sorta squint, but Large Language Models are only getting better over time. But they're hard tests that humans have to prep for years to pass.

John Smillie @JohnSmillie42

Imagine it's Sunday morning. You've been allowed to sleep in as long as you want, and you have no chores or responsibilities all day. There's fresh fallen snow on the ground. Your mom makes Cinnamon rolls and serves you breakfast. But you're almost 3, so you are blind with rage.

Threads

• Short thread about today's approval of the NuScale nuclear reactor design. TL;DR: each reactor is approved to operate at 50 megawatts, and they're built in a factory and fit on the back of a truck.

• Short thread about the recent tech layoffs in the context of California's overall economy. TL;DR: bay area is adding jobs on net despite tech layoffs, making up the vast majority of California's recent job growth. Having said that, Dare Obasanjo thinks there will be further rounds of layoffs at many tech companies, and layoffs via email are bad.

• Thread arguing that the west should not be looking to Alexey Navalny to take over Russia and end the war in Ukraine. TL;DR: he'll only be able to come into power once Russia is defeated in Ukraine, at which point there's no reason to push for him specifically to take power. While we're on Ukraine, here's an unnecessarily long thread about how foolish Germany is being by not pushing to defend Ukraine as strongly as the rest of the EU. The French are giving Ukraine their own cute little brand of tanks.

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