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[sustainableyadayadayada]

blue-green roofs in the Netherlands

Blue-green roofs seem like a good idea. Beautiful green roofs have popped up all over the world: specially selected plants growing on structures specially designed to manage the extra weight of biomass. Amsterdam has taken that one step further with blue-green roofs, specially designed to capture rainwater. One project, the Resilience Network of Smart Innovative Climate-Adapative Rooftops, or…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

a pacifist perspective on the Russia-Ukraine war

Here is one perspective from “The North American Peace Movement” on the Ukraine war. Initially, there was less clarity regarding the events in Ukraine of February 24, 2022. With research and reflection, most of the movement came to understand the conflict did not begin that day. The supposedly “unprovoked” Russian intervention in Ukraine was sparked by NATO moving closer and closer to the…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

Latinos for Trump?

Alongside the narrative that the Republican Party is a white supremacist party, we hear a narrative that Latino voters are shifting toward Trump. This matters because they make up about 15% of U.S. voters. I’ll share a few thoughts: First, the U.S. Census has revised how it asks people if they identify as Latino over the years, and is considering revising it again. This makes it a little hard to…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

more fun with the CIA World Fact Book: Israel and Iran

All numbers here are as reported in the CIA World Factbook, except the last row which is me calculating GDP times % of GDP spent by the military. IsraelIranJordanSaudi ArabiaEgyptPopulation9 MIllion88 Million11 Million36 Million109 MillionGDP Per Capita (PPP)$44,400$15,500$9,500$50,200$12,800Ginni Index38.640.933.745.931.9Unemployment Rate3.7%8.8%19%5.6%6.4%Average Life…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

a strike on Iran, oil and commodity prices

According to the (paywalled) Financial Times, an Israeli and/or US military strike on Iran could involve half a dozen important oil producing countries as well as snarling shipping traffic. This would seem like particularly bad news for Biden as Americans fuel up their planet-burning behemoths for the “summer driving season” followed by the fall voting season.

[sustainableyadayadayada]

trade "fragmentation" vs. AI?

One interesting thing in the IMF report I mentioned recently forecasting a significant productivity slowdown: the positive effects of AI on productivity and the negative effects of inefficient trade technology were shown offsetting each other. Meanwhile, Eric Posner is concerned that humans will have psychological difficulties leaving lives of leisure after the AI-driven productivity revolution,…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

is the world in a depression?

According to the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, maybe. And not just since Covid, but the world has been slowing since the 2008 financial crisis. They say it’s due to demographics (aging population, shrinking work force), “misallocation of resources” (low capital investment?), “fragmentation” (moving away from free trade?) and slowing innovation as measured by total factor productivity. Well…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

America's "ambiguous" Taiwan policy

This article explains the U.S. policy of being intentionally vague about defending Taiwan. It is all about maximizing deterrence. Historically, the idea was both the deter China from any attack, but also to deter Taiwan from a declaration of independence that would be likely to provoke an attack. Going forward, this article suggests arming Taiwan to the teeth and encircling China by stationing…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

bird flu in cows

A strain of flu infecting wild birds now seems to be pretty widespread in cows. The concern is not so much that cows will infect humans, but that this shows the virus can evolve and spread from birds to mammals, where it can evolve again. It doesn’t sound too dangerous in its current form given the vaccines available.

[sustainableyadayadayada]

March 2024 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ralph Nader says the civilian carnage in Gaza is an order of magnitude worse than even the Gaza authorities say it is. Which is almost unthinkably horrible if true, and makes the Israeli public statements about collateral damage seem even less credible. However even handed you try to be in considering this war could be a proportionate response to the…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

April election poll check-in, or "it's just the fading price shocks in gas and groceries, stupid"

Here’s where we stand as I write this on April 3, 2024. Sure, there are all sorts of reasons the polls might be wrong and it is a long time until election day…but I would rather be ahead in the polls and saying that than behind, wouldn’t you? Or even behind and getting less behind. STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent Real Clear Politics Poll Average (as of 4/3/24)ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +5.2% (March 1:…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

free trade vs. migration

“Free trade” seems to have gone out of fashion at the moment. But this article in The Conversation makes the point that easing trade restrictions with countries sending large numbers of migrants to the U.S. could help. And not just at the margins – the study this article says that reducing restrictions on just textiles from just six countries could potentially reduce migration to the U.S. by…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

Turchin's End Times

I got through Peter Turchin’s book End Times. It is definitely an interesting book. To summarize, organized human societies tend to develop a “wealth pump” whereby the wealthy and powerful influence the rules of the game to appropriate an ever larger share of a society’s wealth and power for themselves, at the expense of ordinary people. “Ordinary people” is not just the median or what we think…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

R.I.P., Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge died on March 20, 2024. I am not sure it is necessary for a person to have a “favorite author”, and I might not give the same answer every day, but if pressed I might come up with Vernor Vinge. I stumbled first across his essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era around the same time I stumbled across Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

Netanyahu

This is an article from 1996 in something called the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. Here are some facts about Benjamin Netanyahu as reported by this article. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia. (I looked up elsewhere, and it was Cheltenham high school. This is a public school district in a not particularly posh area.) Then MIT. He was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, at…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

weather forecasting

This is interesting. It is not 100% clear to me what the measure of accuracy is below, but the plot shows how much weather forecasting has improved over the last 50 years or so. A 3-5 day forecast is highly accurate now, and 3-5 are not that different. It’s interesting to me that there is such as large drop off in accuracy between a 7 and 10 day forecast – that is not necessarily intuitive, but…

[sustainableyadayadayada]

immigration by the numbers

This post on a blog called Demography Unplugged is a nice piece of data journalism. I have been trying to figure out if there is really a “border crisis”, or if challenges that are typical at the border are being exaggerated and cherry picked in an election year. Measuring immigration is tricky, and this article explains how people try to do it. Basically, you want to know net migration, which…