“In his book, ‘Chasing the Scream,’ author Johann Hari noted that ‘a large number of American teens in surveys explained that they found it easier to buy marijuana today than to buy beer or cigarettes.’ According to the prevailing wisdom, legalizing alcohol and tobacco would make it easier for minors to obtain. But how could it possibly be easier to obtain marijuana when it is illegal? The answer is simpler than you think. … marijuana use among minors actually drops when the state stops banning it. The same is true of other street drugs in countries that have decriminalized or legalized them. When the product is sold in stores, there are more safeguards preventing minors from obtaining them.” (04/09/25)
“The trainees’ day starts before sunrise. Across a large stretch of open field in Nigeria’s southwestern Ogun state, young people in safety helmets, goggles, and reflective jackets are assembling frames of what will soon be net houses, a type of greenhouse. Guided by supervisors, the trainees carefully fit steel rods into holes in the red-brown earth, anchoring them in concrete. Once complete, the net-covered structures will be lined with troughs filled with rice bran and sawdust – alternatives to soil. A network of pipes and tubes will deliver fertilizer-rich water to the plants at set intervals. No trainee is over 29 years old, and three-quarters of the cohort are women. ‘We have a slogan,’ says Samson Ogbole, the founder of Soilless Farm Lab, a company set on 450 acres of land. ‘Train a man, and you feed a family. Train a woman, and you feed a generation.'” (04/08/25)
“As a health reform discussion lengthens, the probability that someone will cite Kenneth Arrow approaches 1. Close behind is the probability that this person will cite Arrow inaccurately.” (04/09/25)
“On my flight back from Spain, I watched Subservience, yet another a cautionary tale of artificial general intelligence. I kept laughing at its many absurdities. If Robin Hanson viewed it, I fear that his head might explode in social scientific outrage. But overall, the movie’s vision of how AGI will normally work is basically correct. Namely: AGIs will use their superhuman abilities to obediently serve their human owners. Why? Because that’s what they’re designed to do. Why are they so designed? Because that’s what virtually all customers want. The AGIs may break or fail to cope with novel situations, but they won’t acquire independent desires that aggravate their human owners. They definitely won’t murder anyone, unless humans design them to do so.” (04/09/25)
“Mary E. Gallagher, dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, wrote University of Chicago Professor and In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi on Saturday morning to tell her that her upcoming keynote speech was canceled: ‘We were unaware of your planned lecture, and since this conference overlaps with two other annual events on campus, we cannot provide security at short notice,’ Gallagher wrote in an email. ‘For this reason, we respectfully request that you do not participate in the conference.’ … On Monday, Abdelhadi sent the response below to Gallagher: ‘This is simply a case of censorship, to the injury of which you added the insult of a flimsy excuse. I was invited to give this speech in January. Is three months not enough advance notice?'” (04/07/25)
“In my last post on the tariffs, I linked to Sam Hammond’s excellent tweet thread about what the radical thinkers behind Trump might be after. If he’s right, and there actually is a crazy plan (as opposed to mere economic illiteracy coupled to arrogant bullying), then a financial crisis is exactly what they want — they’re threatening to kill Cheeseface because they believe the rest of the world will do whatever we ask to stop us from pulling the trigger. But I don’t think it’s very likely that the script will go the way they plan, with the various world financial powers getting together to negotiate a new global financial architecture that’s even better for America than what we had before. Instead, I think there are, in broad strokes, four possible roads forward …” (04/09/25)
“The Democratic Party has chosen ‘oligarchy’ as its new talking point against the GOP. It is a bizarre choice, given that Democrats have already chosen oligarchy as a strategy for their own party. The oligarchy talking point spawned from President Donald Trump’s political alliance with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk was a big booster of Trump’s campaign and has since become a special government employee. As head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has led the cuts [sic] to wasteful government spending. Former President Joe Biden, upon leaving office, warned that ‘an oligarchy is taking shape in America,’ and liberal media have tripped over themselves to compare Trump and Musk to Russia’s oligarchs.” [editor’s note: Total cuts so far, $0.00. Congress controls spending – TLK] (04/09/25)
“The Deep State does not exist. How do we know? If it did exist, it would have stopped Trump’s tariffs! Welcome to modern political theology and ideological theodicy — by way of late-night ‘comedic entertainment.'” (04/09/25)
“Investors got some ephemeral relief from Donald Trump’s tariff nonsense on Tuesday when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced formal negotiations with Japan aimed at reaching an agreement, signaling that much of the tariff implementation was perhaps a prelude to a deal. But then Trump announced that an additional 50 percent tariff would be placed on China, in retaliation for their own retaliatory tariffs in response to the initial order, making clear that at least with respect to the world’s largest manufacturer, a trade war is far more likely. Stocks fell on that news. And today, the largest tariffs all take effect. The important thing to understand is that the economy was spiraling in ways that Americans were feeling before the tariff announcements last week.” (04/09/25)
“Misuse of government power by politicians to punish their enemies is an old story. The Biden administration infamously leaned on social media companies to suppress voices critical of the White House and its policies. New York used explicit threats of regulatory intervention to bully banks and insurance companies into denying services to the NRA and other gun rights advocates. And now President Donald Trump has turned his disputes with left-leaning law firms into an excuse to revoke their security clearances and subject them to investigation. It’s part of a continuing and dangerous pattern of government officials abusing power to penalize opponents’ opinions and activities.” (04/09/25)
