1. I frequently argue that the money/happiness correlations are misleading, that it is happiness causing prosperity. An expert on happiness now suggests that there is abundant evidence for that proposition:
Choosing to engage in practices like building strong social connections and finding a purpose that fuels you is what actually leads to happiness and fulfillment, not achieving a specific financial goal, Brooks emphasizes.
But being happier in life can lead to financial increases and success, Muller says. “Happiness is the thing that’s actually causing us to succeed,” she notes.
A 2005 systematic review of 225 papers found that being happy can lead to success in different areas of life including income and health.
2. The FT says markets don’t believe that China will invade Taiwan:
An invasion of Taiwan would severely disrupt global chip supply and also have an impact on China, which like the rest of the world relies heavily on TSMC for its supply of advanced chips. The country is TSMC’s third-largest revenue contributor by geography, accounting for nearly a tenth of TSMC’s sales.
A good measure of foreign investor anxiety — the premium that TSMC’s US-listed American depositary receipts trade at compared with the stock listed in Taiwan — suggests investors are becoming increasingly sanguine about geopolitical risks. These trade at more than a 20 per cent premium to local shares for the current quarter, the widest gap in more than a decade.
That sentiment is mirrored in Taiwan, where locally listed TSMC is the most bought stock by overseas investors. Nvidia has also added support by announcing plans to increase its investments in the island.
I’m not so sure about that. All I know is that if China does invade it will do so knowing full well that this makes it likely that it will lose the AI race to America.
3. During the late 20th century, airliners were much safer than cars. Nonetheless, you’d have a major accident every few years, often involving well over 100 deaths. In the 1990s, for example, well over a thousand people died in US air crashes. Ditto for the 1970s and 1980s. Since 9/11, the record of US airliners has become almost insanely good, with only 476 deaths over nearly 23 years. Most of those were in a December 2001 Airbus crash that killed 265, and almost all of the rest were in small commuter planes.
The star for recent US flight safety is Boeing, which has seen only about 10 US deaths since 9/11, only one of which (AFAIK) was due to mechanical problems. If someone in late 2001 had predicted this sort of Boeing safety record for the next 22 1/2 years, they would have been laughed out of the room. Why have Boeing airplanes become so astoundingly safe? Some of you know more about this than I do; please provide explanations in the comment section.
Bonus points to anyone who can explain why almost everyone disagrees with me, viewing Boeing airplanes as having a poor safety record. (Of course given my forecasting record, you can expect a Boeing crash any day now.)
BTW, anyone who says, “Yeah, US Boeing flights are super safe, but flying a Boeing plane in Ethiopia remains dangerous” will be banned for life.
4. In the future, everyone will be rich.
Even today, we drive cars that are far better than the Cadillacs and Mercedes of yesteryear. Ditto for our TVs and phones. I can get Asian food in a strip mall that’s better than an elegant NYC steakhouse of the 1950s. But what about big ass diamonds?
Have no fear. The price of really big diamonds is falling fast. For less than $1500, you can get a 3 carat diamond with pretty good cut, color and clarity, due to rapid progress in lab grown diamonds. (No, these are not cubic zirconia; they are real diamonds. Even experts cannot tell them from natural diamonds without a magnifying class.
5. Biden finally does something good:
To be eligible, the spouses must have lived in the United States for 10 years and been married to an American citizen as of June 17. They cannot have a criminal record. The benefits would also extend to the roughly 50,000 children of undocumented spouses who became stepchildren to American citizens.
Imagine you are a child that has grown up in America, does well in school, and doesn’t even remember the country in which you were born. Then at age 18 you are forced to return to live in what Trump calls a “shithole country”. Biden’s action is great news.
6. And the Senate just voted 88-2 to make it easier to build nuclear power plants.
7. When will AIs be able to do scientific research? It’s already begun!
8. Like Noam Chomsky (and Franco), Hong Kong is not dead yet.
PS. Why two exclamation points in the post title? Nostalgia for when I was young:
