Month: April 2025

From a comment on Scott’s blog post, Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know: I moved for a while to a central European country and was impressed with the criminal justice system and the low level of crime/high level of compliance, despite the high amount of migration. The biggest thing I noticed… Continue reading Why UK/European-style policing would not work in the US

I saw this post by Moldbug, “Harvard to the Finland Station.” The author sees Trump’s ultimatum to Harvard as a segue or opportunity to reform the institution. I see zero possibly of this happening, sorry to say. He writes: As a longstanding critic of that ancient institution, I want to critique the Trump administration’s letter… Continue reading There is no ‘Harvard reform’ moment

I saw this article by Auron MacIntyre defending the tariffs, “‘I, Pencil’ defined free trade — Trump’s tariffs are writing the sequel.” Even though I broadly agree with the author’s politics, this article is pretty bad. He begins by likening the exploding Hezbollah walkie talkies to America’s reliance on Chinese imports for defense: A shocking… Continue reading Tariffs will hurt regular people, not elites

It has been a little over 2 weeks since ‘liberation day’, when Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs against many countries. I wrote a 3-part series about this (here, here, and here) in which I predicted the tariffs would not be as bad as forecasted. My position has also always been that the tariffs were an unforced… Continue reading The left is still crying wolf about the tariffs

I saw a this post going viral on Reddit, “Why do I gain 5 lbs just looking at bread but my friend eats like a raccoon in a Taco Bell dumpster and stays fit?” The fact many many people have observed this and can thus relate, explains how the post went so viral. We all… Continue reading Individual differences of metabolism are real and matter

I saw this tweet going viral: I would overwhelmingly prefer being caned to being imprisoned for a year, and I expect most people would share my preference, but the one is considered cruel and unusual and the other is considered normal. Opt-in corporal punishment is a sensible approach. https://t.co/A8W0oQHVOi — TracingWoodgrains (@tracewoodgrains) April 11, 2025… Continue reading Caning, punishment, and prison: more thoughts

I saw this going viral, How University Students Use Claude. As to be expected, the main issue is cheating: As I discuss here, AI-generated essays should be easy to detect if the teacher is paying attention, such as the teacher taking a more active role. Other ways to mitigate it include requiring students to submit… Continue reading AI-generated writing: cheating and its detection

Item #1. Trump announces 90-day pause on tariffs; stocks surge. It looks like I was right to buy the dip, having done so Monday morning on FNGA. Here is what I said: “I have begun buying leveraged tech stocks on the dip this morning to take advantage of this great overreaction. My favorite: FNGA.” I… Continue reading The Daily View 4/9/2025: Trump Pauses Tariffs for 90 Days, Stocks Surge

I saw this post from Brian Chau: I Was Wrong About Trump’s Tariff Strategy The evening of April 1st, an editor and I were working on the finishing touches on an article about Trump’s tariff strategy. “Keep updated with what happens with the tariffs,” one late-night message read. The next morning, Trump blew… pic.twitter.com/UL93eXTopM —… Continue reading Trump Tariffs, take 3: Why the economic fallout will not be that bad

The stock market selloff continues to intensify, with stocks down 6% on Friday on top of Thursday’s losses. This was an unforced error on Trump’s part. He cannot blame the left for this. One way to frame this is that Trump is running a sort of experiment on the US economy. He picked the most… Continue reading Trump Tariffs, Take 2: Why it Will Not Return Jobs and Factories to America