When Boris Yeltsin visited a Texas supermarket in 1989, he first thought he was in a potemkin village. Then he changed his mind about communist economies.
Smallpox Eradication Day was December 9th. Jai has an excellent post about it, which I reflected over here.
All along you've said "you need to go to college so you can get a good job" but the system was not designed to raise producers, it was designed to raise consumers. Well, here we are. Why are you surprised that they need consumer stamps? Why are you surprised they moved back in with you? "We did the best we could." No you did not, I was there, I saw it. You borrowed against their future, and they can't pay it back. And now you're yelling at them.
The risk of positive thinking. Specifically, visualizing your success may reduce your odds.
American Scientist on chimpanzee hunter behaviors.
Discussion of far-left entryism in Australian politics.
Old RibbonFarm post about community boundaries.
Ars Technica: SpaceX is continuing with plans for worldwide satellite Internet.
The election take to end all election takes. Everyone else can stop now.
Speaking of Trump, Scott Alexander is optimistic about public health appointees, though these are more likely Peter Thiel's handiwork than Trump's.
From the SSC subreddit, an alternative perspective on academic tenure.
Planetary Resources, which hopes to mine asteroids in the near future, made a deal with Bayer to do remote sensing for the agricultural industry. It's pretty tentative for now, but I'm glad there's an intermediate business plan for some of these long-range firms.
