Favorites October 11th 2022

May 2018, Kyoto

Branko Milanovic @BrankoMilan

But we know that Chinese growth (as China has now become sufficiently rich) is no longer the engine of global inequality reduction. The China effect has reached its end.

This is part of a long thread about global inequality, TL;DR: if we want to continue to pull up the poorest in the world, Africa is without question the place to focus now.

Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks

This is the first time humanity has engineered the mechanics of the solar system. In that sense it is a big deal.

cnn.comThe DART mission successfully changed the motion of an asteroid | CNNThe Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos when the NASA spacecraft intentionally slammed into the space rock on September 26, according to the agency.

Previously I mentioned that NASA had successfully hit the asteroid, now we've confirmed that they indeed changed it's trajectory. They changed it's orbit by 32 minutes, they were going to consider the mission successful if it changed the orbit by 10 minutes.

Stilicho @StilichoReads

The Pareto principle strikes again -- the median American consumes less than one alcoholic drink per week, but the top 10% consume an average of *73.85.* washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…

Uh, how?

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

How it started…

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Russia and China are blocking UN action. Can't imagine why they wouldn't support a democratic uprising...

Musk recently tweeted that Ukraine should negotiate a peace deal with Russia, and proposed terms that were extremely favorable to Putin. Today it came out that he actually called Putin before tweeting, yikes. Tim Lee points out that at least his Right-Wing persona gets Republicans to buy electric cars.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

This is wild. Russia is now *visually confirmed* to have lost more than 80% of the number of tanks it initially deployed in Ukraine.

Threads

• If you want to read more about the threat of nuclear war, there was an interesting interview with an expert in the New Yorker. It's somewhat hopeful, although maybe not the last question. (Even if we don’t have nuclear war now, over the long term the prospect will remain).

• Thread discussing the exact chain of events that lead to Columbus sailing on behalf of Spain. TL;DR: Everyone thought he was a nutcase, but Spain was desperate because Portugal had a head start on exploration/colonization.

• Yglesias wrote up a quick summary of his arguments in favor of speeding up development of Geothermal energy. TL;DR: There are lots of opportunities on federal land, and we can unlock a lot of it by just giving geothermal the same NEPA waiver that oil/gas drilling already gets.