“President Emmanuel Macron is pursuing an old Gaullist dream: a militarily and geopolitically autonomous Europe under the leadership of France. The present strategy by which Macron is pursuing this goal is to present France as the military vanguard of Europe in the defense of Ukraine, through the suggestion that French and other NATO troops could be sent to that country …. When this idea was immediately rejected by other NATO governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, Macron doubled down rhetorically by accusing the Germans and others of cowardice. Some have dismissed this as mere cosplay, Macron dressing up as de Gaulle, just as British politicians are incapable of resisting the temptation to pretend to be Churchill. Others have suggested that it is chiefly motivated by domestic politics.” (04/25/24)
“One of the most common arguments against AI safety is: ‘Here’s an example of a time someone was worried about something, but it didn’t happen. Therefore, AI, which you are worried about, also won’t happen.’ I always give the obvious answer: ‘Okay, but there are other examples of times someone was worried about something, and it did happen, right? How do we know AI isn’t more like those?’ The people I’m arguing with always seem so surprised by this response, as if I’m committing some sort of betrayal by destroying their beautiful argument. The first hundred times this happened, I thought I must be misunderstanding something. … But people keep bringing it up, again and again. Very smart people, people who I otherwise respect, make this argument and genuinely expect it to convince people!” (04/25/24)
“Scotland’s Scottish Nationalist Party-led coalition imploded Thursday after a three year-long power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens that kept the SNP in power collapsed in a row over the scrapping of carbon emissions targets. First Minister Humza Yousaf said he had told the Scottish Greens leadership their coalition was over and that he was ending their so-called Bute House agreement, telling a press conference that the compromises the pact involved were no longer worth it. … Yousaf, who replaced Nicola Sturgeon as first minister after she unexpectedly stepped down in March 2023, will now lead a minority government with the 39-year-old hailing the step as a ‘new beginning’ for his party.” (04/25/24)
“In the US, free speech is protected by the First Amendment, which restricts the ability of government to limit citizens’ speech, with exceptions for speech that incites violence, represents a true threat to safety by narrowly defined criteria, or constitutes fraud or defamation. Hate speech, even if vile, is protected under the First Amendment. First Amendment protections don’t apply to private institutions, like many universities, though most universities voluntarily establish free speech rights for their communities. Academic freedom is a more limited concept, protecting scholars, researchers, and educators from censorship, discipline, or retaliation by their institutions. Academic freedom is essential to the pursuit and transmission of knowledge and to critical thinking.” (04/25/24)
“One of the ideas that economists are most sure of is that when the price of something rises, other than due to something that shifts the whole demand curve, the quantity demanded falls. Conversely, when the price of something falls, the quantity demanded increases. This is not controversial in economics. Moreover, it’s so clear that it is part of our mutual understanding, even for non-economists. … The law of demand applies to virtually everything: the demand for steaks, the demand for cars, the demand for houses, and, yes, the demand for labor. That means that when governments raise the price of relatively unskilled labor by substantially raising the minimum wage, the number of unskilled workers employed will fall.” (04/25/24)
“U.S. births fell last year, resuming a long national slide. A little under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, according to provisional statistics released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 76,000 fewer than the year before and the lowest one-year tally since 1979. U.S. births were slipping for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then dropped 4% from 2019 to 2020. They ticked up for two straight years after that, an increase experts attributed, in part, to pregnancies that couples had put off amid the pandemic’s early days.” (04/25/24)
