sustainableyadayadayada
Sustainable Yada Yada Yada
This is a blog about sustainability, urban design, scientific and technological progress, and what the future may hold. As well as interesting or random stuff on occasion. I'll try my best to avoid politics!
3412 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
mudritskaya
м у д р и ц к а я
mudritskaya
м у д р и ц к а я
101005
fitblr ∥ only good vibes ☼
damcgedwings-blog
♕ 「 sᴏʟᴅɪᴇʀ 」
thetidenopsd-blog
the tide stuff
Text
more fun with the CIA World Fact Book: Israel and Iran
All numbers here are as reported in the CIA World Factbook, except the last row which is me calculating GDP times % of GDP spent by the military.
IsraelIranJordanSaudi ArabiaEgyptPopulation9 MIllion88 Million11 Million36 Million109 MillionGDP Per Capita (PPP)$44,400$15,500$9,500$50,200$12,800Ginni Index38.640.933.745.931.9Unemployment Rate3.7%8.8%19%5.6%6.4%Average Life…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
a strike on Iran, oil and commodity prices
According to the (paywalled) Financial Times, an Israeli and/or US military strike on Iran could involve half a dozen important oil producing countries as well as snarling shipping traffic. This would seem like particularly bad news for Biden as Americans fuel up their planet-burning behemoths for the “summer driving season” followed by the fall voting season.
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
trade "fragmentation" vs. AI?
One interesting thing in the IMF report I mentioned recently forecasting a significant productivity slowdown: the positive effects of AI on productivity and the negative effects of inefficient trade technology were shown offsetting each other. Meanwhile, Eric Posner is concerned that humans will have psychological difficulties leaving lives of leisure after the AI-driven productivity revolution,…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
is the world in a depression?
According to the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, maybe. And not just since Covid, but the world has been slowing since the 2008 financial crisis. They say it’s due to demographics (aging population, shrinking work force), “misallocation of resources” (low capital investment?), “fragmentation” (moving away from free trade?) and slowing innovation as measured by total factor productivity. Well…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
America's "ambiguous" Taiwan policy
This article explains the U.S. policy of being intentionally vague about defending Taiwan. It is all about maximizing deterrence. Historically, the idea was both the deter China from any attack, but also to deter Taiwan from a declaration of independence that would be likely to provoke an attack. Going forward, this article suggests arming Taiwan to the teeth and encircling China by stationing…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
bird flu in cows
A strain of flu infecting wild birds now seems to be pretty widespread in cows. The concern is not so much that cows will infect humans, but that this shows the virus can evolve and spread from birds to mammals, where it can evolve again. It doesn’t sound too dangerous in its current form given the vaccines available.
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
March 2024 in Review
Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ralph Nader says the civilian carnage in Gaza is an order of magnitude worse than even the Gaza authorities say it is. Which is almost unthinkably horrible if true, and makes the Israeli public statements about collateral damage seem even less credible. However even handed you try to be in considering this war could be a proportionate response to the…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
April election poll check-in, or "it's just the fading price shocks in gas and groceries, stupid"
Here’s where we stand as I write this on April 3, 2024. Sure, there are all sorts of reasons the polls might be wrong and it is a long time until election day…but I would rather be ahead in the polls and saying that than behind, wouldn’t you? Or even behind and getting less behind.
STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent Real Clear Politics Poll Average (as of 4/3/24)ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +5.2% (March 1:…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
free trade vs. migration
“Free trade” seems to have gone out of fashion at the moment. But this article in The Conversation makes the point that easing trade restrictions with countries sending large numbers of migrants to the U.S. could help. And not just at the margins – the study this article says that reducing restrictions on just textiles from just six countries could potentially reduce migration to the U.S. by…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Turchin's End Times
I got through Peter Turchin’s book End Times. It is definitely an interesting book. To summarize, organized human societies tend to develop a “wealth pump” whereby the wealthy and powerful influence the rules of the game to appropriate an ever larger share of a society’s wealth and power for themselves, at the expense of ordinary people. “Ordinary people” is not just the median or what we think…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
R.I.P., Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge died on March 20, 2024. I am not sure it is necessary for a person to have a “favorite author”, and I might not give the same answer every day, but if pressed I might come up with Vernor Vinge. I stumbled first across his essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era around the same time I stumbled across Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Netanyahu
This is an article from 1996 in something called the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. Here are some facts about Benjamin Netanyahu as reported by this article.
He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia. (I looked up elsewhere, and it was Cheltenham high school. This is a public school district in a not particularly posh area.) Then MIT.
He was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, at…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
weather forecasting
This is interesting. It is not 100% clear to me what the measure of accuracy is below, but the plot shows how much weather forecasting has improved over the last 50 years or so. A 3-5 day forecast is highly accurate now, and 3-5 are not that different. It’s interesting to me that there is such as large drop off in accuracy between a 7 and 10 day forecast – that is not necessarily intuitive, but…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
immigration by the numbers
This post on a blog called Demography Unplugged is a nice piece of data journalism. I have been trying to figure out if there is really a “border crisis”, or if challenges that are typical at the border are being exaggerated and cherry picked in an election year.
Measuring immigration is tricky, and this article explains how people try to do it. Basically, you want to know net migration, which…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
nuclear reactors on the moon
According to Breitbart (yes, I occasionally peruse Breitbart to see what propaganda spin they are putting on current events and because they occasionally pick up on a story others do not), Russia and China are considering a joint moon research base powered by a nuclear reactor. NASA is also considering a research base powered by nuclear power. This makes sense to me in a technological sense. What…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Biden crumbles to dust
I thought the State of the Union went okay for Biden. No doubt, a medically appropriate dose of a 100% legal methamphetamine prescribed by a doctor could help a person get through something like that.
Oh, but the Onion captures the spirit put out by the other party’s senile candidate so well…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Ralph Nader on Gaza
I haven’t made up my mind on the Gaza situation, and therefore I haven’t talked a lot about it. And I probably shouldn’t, but I want to get my own thoughts in order. You can stop reading here if you want.
The October 7 attacks were horrific and it is entirely understandable why Israel would choose an overwhelming and violent response. In case we forget the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invaded not one…
View On WordPress
0 notes