The era of cheap smartphones is ending due to a global memory shortage driven by AI's massive demand for memory chips. This has caused a steep price increase for consumer electronics, pricing out mill…
The decades-long trend of consumer electronics becoming cheaper and more powerful is ending due to a global memory shortage. This shortage is caused by the massive demand for memory from the AI indust…
Toto, best known as the world's largest toilet manufacturer, has seen its stock surge 60% in 2024 due to its "advanced ceramics division" becoming its most profitable business. This division produces …
Language models develop strange quirks, like OpenAI's GPT-5.1 becoming obsessed with referencing "goblins," due to a process called "chunky post-training" and overfitting. During training, the models …
Airlines are a consistently unprofitable industry, with the sector as a whole destroying investor value and failing to cover its cost of capital since U.S. deregulation in 1978. It uses the 2026 colla…
In many sub-Saharan African countries, families spend exorbitant amounts on elaborate funerals, often costing the equivalent of an annual income or more, due to cultural expectations of prestige and r…
The proliferation of low-quality, AI-generated scientific papers is driven by a "citation revolution" that prioritizes quantitative metrics over genuine discovery. This incentive system encourages sci…
The electronic spreadsheet, particularly Microsoft Excel, is a profoundly influential yet unloved tool that reshaped the American economy. It enabled the rise of financial engineering and transformed …
While ATMs initially did not reduce bank teller employment (contrary to predictions), the widespread adoption of smartphones—particularly the iPhone—eventually led to a sharp decline in teller jobs by…
Widespread panic over AI causing mass job loss is misplaced, comparing it to the sudden shock of COVID-19 in February 2020. The author contends that while AI will be transformative, it will not lead t…
Weekly roundup of the author's reading, covering three main topics: the challenges of using formal languages like Lean for AI-driven mathematical proofs, the history of the GLP-1 drug class and the bi…
GDP statistics in many poor countries are often unreliable, citing examples like Nigeria and Ghana, where methodological changes (such as updating base years) caused reported GDP to suddenly increase …
New weekly posting schedule, with longer articles on Mondays and Fridays and casual notes on Sundays. It summarizes the author's recent readings, including the novel *Zama*, the book *Poor Numbers* on…
Papua New Guinea's official 2022 population estimate of 9.4 million was based on an extrapolation from a flawed 2000 census, as the government deemed its 2011 census unreliable. A leaked UN report, us…
In 2021, economists Arvind Subramanian, Justin Sandefur, and Dev Patel published influential findings showing that poor countries had begun catching up to rich ones, heralding a "new era of unconditio…
Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan dictator, was abducted and taken to New York to face trial, which the article argues is a relatively fortunate outcome compared to other despots. The piece contra…
The author's home was burglarized, and they tracked their stolen computer via Apple's Find My app to Market Street, a notoriously dangerous area of San Francisco. Despite providing the live location t…
According to a recent article by Max Roser of *Our World in Data*, the decades-long trend of declining global extreme poverty is expected to halt and reverse after 2030. This is because the majority o…
The persistent economic divide between northern and southern Italy is primarily caused by the historical prevalence of malaria in the south. It explains that malaria, spread by mosquitoes in hot, wet …
Hypothetical murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and focuses on the online reaction, where his death was treated as a spectacle. It criticizes social media users for endlessly sharing and …