Networkism
Networked Capital
- Two link taxes 1, 2 (h/t Ben Evans). Link taxes will become more prevalent. Just like taxing data as oil, taxing links will happen. Will happen even more so as we get blockchain-based Internet of Money, so can programmatically represent edges (links) and nodes (pools).
On #1, in Australia, from Ben Evans: Making news media dependent on political patronage, as well as the question of why it should be internet companies in particular that pay (as opposed to general taxation, if you think this is a general public good).
On #2, in France: Law: if you use snippets from other sites when you link to them then you have to pay, so Google removed the snippets from Google News. Now the competition authority says that since Google has market dominance this is anti-competitive, and wants to force Google to put the snippets back and to pay for them. Again - if you want Google (or Facebook) to subsidise newspapers, better to be honest and make an actual tax, and accept all of the questions you need to resolve about how it works, rather than inventing fake revenue lines.
- Fast Grants 67 awards for $12M
- $7M from coalition of folks (Ford Foundation++)
- Future Perfect on Gates and COVID. Rob Reich paraphrased: "In general, you want philanthropic capital for long time horizon experiments that are then scaled up by the market/state. Not as full on disaster relief."
Networked Info
- On Jacina Ardern's (good) leadership. She hosts authentic sessions on Facebook Live. Remember, our info mediums determine the kind of charisma that the political system optimizes for. (e.g. Eisenhower optimized for radio.) A Trump-like figure was inevitable given Twitter (he tells it like it is). An AOC-like figure was inevitable given Instagram. Jacina follows that trend—authenticity. From the article:
People feel that Ardern “doesn’t preach at them; she’s standing with them,”
She appeared in a well-worn sweatshirt at her home (she had just put her toddler daughter to bed, she explained) to offer guidance “as we all prepare to hunker down.”
While Ardern conducts more formal and conventional daily briefings with other top officials and journalists, she puts her personal touch on these as well. “Trump does his briefings, but that’s a different kind of show,”
- The rise of online and pseudonymous peer review. Project Evidence (on lab outbreak), Balaji reviews Santa Clara antibodies (more)
- Vi Hart (bachelor's in music, but genius math communicator) is part of Harvard's working group for reopening US. 12min explainer video of the plan here.
- Interesting language on #FireFauci petition: It is time we focus on the Immune Health of the American people, which Big Pharma has zero interest in advancing.
- Facebook To Alert Users Who Interact With COVID-19 Misinfo. (But tried in the past by redirecting fake news to Snopes and had no effect.)
- Everywhere School
Networked Orgs
- Etsy Always Open and #StandWithSmall
Old Centralized Institutions
- Zeynep on why WHO failed (but why we shouldn't defund it)
- Americans still have (weirdly, imo) high trust in CDC
- US now broken into 4 regional blocks
COHERENT PLURALISM
- SSC media failure and on sensemaking in uncertainty. In summary: look at forecasts (metaculus etc.) and act on both sides of forecast given EV.
- Reading comments to understand people
- Synesthesia as a form of empathy
BENTOISM and POST-CAPITALISM
Future Us (Climate Change, etc.)
- South Korea to implement ~Green New Deal. (Carbon neutrality by 2050.) Also see this Race to the Top tracker (by country) of carbon neutrality by 2050. [+1 "race" language.]
- Pandemic’s visual affect might help climate?
- "Shock Doctrine". Environmental rules being broken post-crisis.
- "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." What to do with $0 oil?
- Citigroup is Latest Major US Bank to Rule Out Funding for Arctic Refuge Drilling. (Sierra Club activism!)
Now Us (Stakeholder Capitalism, Coops, etc.)
- Amazon Sick Out. [Rhys: Interesting how they combine COVID, Climate Change, and SJA. Would love to hear numbers here. I heard low numbers on Instacart strike, like well under .01% of shoppers. Though media gave lots of attention.]
- Saavy Coop is first platform coop to take VC money (from IndieVC)
- Just Capital's COVID tracker
- Evergreen Cooperatives. A Cleveland-based network of coops. Started in 2008, does laundry, solar, farming, etc. Works with "anchor institutions" like universities and government.
- Business Roundtables issues letter to WH pushing for Safety First.
- Nice NYT interactive on the great decoupling
Other
- All COVID commercials are the same (4min)
- The normal science of happiness agents
- Ratio of financial assets to GDP has risen from ~3% to 6% in last 50 years: a financialized political economy where the preservation of asset prices is our government’s primary objective.
- Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting
- The Unsustainability of Lockdown Socialism
- Anand's new show, A Seat At The Table, interviewing AOC++
GENEROSITY and ABUNDANCE
- #ShareYourCheck raises $330,000
- Future Perfect on how to donate/help with COVID
- GiveDirectly starts city-based COVID funds
- Shake Shake, Harvard, etc. return loans.
- UBI: A new plan to get $1,000 to 100,000 families in the next 100 days. (has raised $55M of $100M.)
AMBITIOUS FRONTIER PEOPLE
- What @vgr is reading
- What @pmarca is reading
- Journal of Controversial Ideas (from Peter Singer++) is accepting papers.
BLOCKCHAIN
- Libra moves to country-specific coins with a basket Libra coin, institutes network-level AML monitoring, and switches from permissionless governance plan to market-driven. (Also, progress on China's CBDC.)
COVID
Food
- Continuing on last week's notes on food shortages, here are two articles from the Guardian and NYT on it. 2x-ing from 130M with acute food shortages, to 260M. An extreme case of the downsides of closing: “Instead of coronavirus, the hunger will kill us,” said Mr. Singh, who was hoping to eat his first meal in a day.
- Good overview of food shortages. Metaculus estimates there is a 10% chance that a major metropolitan area in the US, EU, or the UK will experience a food shortage due to COVID-19 by Jun 6, 2020.
- The need to rethink industrial farming
- On food and regulation (why we can't get retail food at home)
Actionable
- How to do cross-house mixing
- Stay away from A/C indoors
- Reminder that 50% of COVID transmission happens in the 2-3 days before symptoms. #Masks4All!
Data
- Cost-benefit: 2 to 4 job losses per coronavirus case averted and 108 to 275 jobs losses per life saved during this short-run post-treatment period. (More cost-benefit, consumption vs. deaths.)
- Instagram co-founders r(t) from last week is now a full website https://rt.live/ (Critique.)
- Total deaths as indicator, not COVID deaths. Economist and NYT
- Debate over IHME model
- Graph of occupations on COVID risk vs. salary. Give the risky ones more money!
- Math of Herd Immunity (related econ models on CA's difficult opening up given low overall infection rate).
Contact Tracing
- MA's $44M plan to do contact tracing (w/o apps)
- Schneier on contact tracing
- Structure of social networks correlates to physical networks. Obvious, but helpful.
Other COVID
- Anti-Mask League of 1918
- Sarah Constantin on variolation: What we don't know is whether a dose low enough not to cause severe symptoms is also high enough to cause immune protection against subsequent infections.
- Frontline Foods. More COVID win-win marketplaces / clearing houses. (Here, paying restaurants to deliver to medical professionals.)
- 89 winners of 19k person COVID hackathon
- Most recent "COVID future plan" from Ed Yong
- Markets in Everything: Etsy is selling 200,000 face masks from 20,000 sellers.
- EMH and COVID
- Metis: "The village on Java island has deployed a cast of "ghosts" to patrol the streets, hoping that age-old superstition will keep people indoors and safely away from the coronavirus.'
- Intense COVID hospital pix. NYT
- Burning Man going virtual. Submit ideas here.
- Which locations can open first? Graph of Danger vs. Importance.
- JPMorgan reopening plan, involves building herd immunity among the young
- Amazing vid of Angela Merkle. I'm jealous.
GameB
- Rebel Wisdom has done a bunch of "Situational Assessment" interviews recently with Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Greenhall, etc. recently.
EVENTS
- BKC convo between Zittrain and Microsoft President. April 29
- Online EA Events
FUN
- A combination of a place to store your grief + r/thebutton
- Bright nights, lonely crowds.
- Modding Half-Life to make Twitch-based theater
- XKCD on Coronavirus Charts
- https://zooooom.us/
- Spotify allows artists to fundraise on site directly
- Pudding thread of best COVID data viz
- COVID-19 Dreams Survey
- Airbnb Online Experiences
The Onion
- DMT Researchers Advise Maintaining 6-Foot Distance From Own Body
- Health Experts Say Coronavirus Originated In Promiscuous Bat Who Slept Around A Lot
- Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive
- Shortage Of Supplies Forces Surgeon To Wear Boxing Gloves For Operation
Other
- EA: What are the key ongoing debates in EA? Including: Does EA pay enough attention to climate change? Has EA has ossified in its philosophical positions and organizational ontologies?
- Progress Studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_principle and https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/31/societies-change-their-minds-faster-than-people-do
- Paul Romer and antirivaly
- Anti WHO and https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01107-z