fun facts

52 things I learned in 2023.

This list was so interesting that it sent me down many rabbit holes, including visiting the author’s prior lists. One example: “Pheasant Island, a 200-meter long island in the middle of the Bidasoa River between France and Spain, swaps sovereignty […]

profiles of people

Patrick McKenzie and Tyler Cowen in conversation.

Here’s a run-on sentence: “Tyler sat down with Patrick to discuss signature fields on the back of credit cards, whether bank tellers or waitstaff are more trustworthy, the gremlins behind spurious credit card declines, how debt collection and maple syrup […]

retail therapy

A theory of grift.

“Why does the world increasingly seem to be awash in grift? There’s a supply story and a demand story: many of the traits that make people excellent grifters used to have more legitimate applications, but don’t any longer. Meanwhile, there […]

to your health

Heated tobacco is big in Japan.

It’s neither a cigarette nor a vape. The FDA authorized the marketing of it with ‘reduced exposure claim’ a couple years ago, but a patent dispute has kept the device out of the US so far. “Japan’s massive reduction in […]

better doing

Against learning from dramatic events.

“The bread-and-butter of modern news, politics, etc, is having a dramatic event happen, getting shocked and outraged, demanding that something be done, and then devoting a news cycle or Senate hearing to it. We can’t just throw all that out, […]