Favorites October 12th 2023

Oct 13, 2023

See new posts Conversation Brian Albrecht @BrianCAlbrecht Ozempic--the new weight loss drug--is an appetite suppressant. No more buying a cart full of Cheetos! Will Ozempic be bad for business? Just think about all those poor companies suffering from less demand! Introducing: The Fixed Window Fallacy — (src)

This is in response to Matt Levine's somewhat jokey article about the possibility that Ozempic would be bad for the american economy. Brian Albrecht took the question seriously, my favorite excerpt was the simple way to tell if something is "good for the economy", you ask "will this change make it less costly to produce value for people?". The final part comparing with dialysis was good too.

See new posts Conversation Nat Friedman @natfriedman Today we are announcing a major breakthrough in the Vesuvius Challenge: we have read the first word from an unopened Herculaneum scroll. The word is "πορφυρας" which means "purple dye" or "cloths of purple." http://scrollprize.org/firstletters Congratulations to 21yo computer science student @LukeFarritor who is the first person to see this handwriting in nearly 2000 years. He has won the $40,000 First Letters prize for this world-historical achievement. We are also awarding a $10,000 First Ink prize to @CJHandmer who was the first person to see ink and multiple letters within an unopened scroll. His work was the basis of Luke's ML model. And @Youssef_M_Nader has won a $10,000 second-place First Letters prize for producing the clearest and most comprehensive images from inside a scroll yet. This has been the dream of many people since the scrolls were first discovered in the 1750s. It is also the result of 20 years of work from Dr. Brent Seales and his team at EduceLab, whose years of dedicated work have made this last mile possible. The $700,000 Vesuvius Challenge Grand Prize is now in sight. Who will claim it? — (src)

There's more at the link, I really like the use of prizes to drive innovation.

Barak Ravid @BarakRavid BREAKING: UN Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told me: "The UN strongly appeals for any such order to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation" Quote Barak Ravid @BarakRavid · 4h SCOOP: Israel tells UN to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip within 24 hours. My story on @axios https://axios.com/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-evacuate-un-ground-operation — (src)

Sounds like that's just over a million people, pretty obviously infeasible. At the same time, Hamas is calling for global jihad tomorrow, so things seem bad. For comparison, the US spent 4 weeks planning before making any military response to 9/11, eventually Al Qaeda leadership was eliminated. Their bombing has already killed over a thousand flattening half a city doesn't accomplish anything. New polling of Israelis show they're pretty fed up with Netanyahu, but I don't see how that will stop him. Egypt responded to the US request for opening their borders to refugees: they are not interested.

Longer Reads

• Long thread about California AB 413, which will ban street parking within 20 feet of an intersection.

Flotsam and Jetsam

– We can't just use monetary policy to fight inflation, we need to make fiscal changes soon (src)
– Recent deficits are pretty serious (src)

– EU Regulation is going to treat Nuclear as a 'net-zero tech', sorta wild that they weren't sure about that. (src)
– China looks to be preparing to do a bit of Keynsianism, good for them (src)
– As much as Israel / Gaza is in the news, the Ukraine war is still much larger by almost any measure. Russia lost an entire armored battalion in the last two days. (src)
– US has a lower inflation rate than any other G7 nation (src)

– Operation warp speed was a big deal, and the people involved had to make serious personal sacrifices (src)
– Advancements in uranium extraction from seawater (src)
– DOJ suing eBay for $2 billion over allowing 'rolling coal' devices to be sold on their marketplace. Maybe license plate covers next? (src)

Tugboat for Today

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