5. But ultimately, the real reason to do it is simply quality of life. In learning to read, a child learns to learn. They understand the teacher-student role better. They can read instead of watch TV. And literacy has a noticeable effect on their psychology too:

The wonderful David Deutsch shows how to blow up the seemingly fast-expanding belief that “they” are keeping huge secrets from “us”: in reality, he points out, such conspiracies would be hard to keep.
(This strategy worked very well with JFK theories.)
youtu.be/EozCoAeMPTA?t=…

JPE editor Timothy Taylor, interesting and authoritative as ever, surveys options for #taxing #wealth . Summary: Less optimistic than I expected. Some options are probably worth pursuing; just don’t imagine they’ll transform your jurisdiction’s budget.
conversableeconomist.com/2024/04/23/thr…

Over the decades I have slowly realised this: an under-recognised aspect of many historical problems is that most people know very little history.

The 'evolution is just a theory' argument assumes that science is a search for certainty and that theories are supposed to be turned into ‘justified true beliefs.’

But science is a search for good explanations, and explanations are always open to improvement.

Hegel baffled people at the time too. 'I can't figure out whether he's brilliant or crazy' has long been a popular view. (I suspect he just discovered a way of talking that impressed students and would keep him employed at the university.)

Just think, you’re out there one night, minding your own business, trying to steal some livestock, when you see THAT hurtling towards you…

Well, I don’t know the fact of the matter about how the brain works, and I don't think neuroscientists do either. But I'm not hostile to the idea that the hardware of a brain works better when one is young. I just don't think it's relevant to anything. I read somewhere that it's

Mark Di Stefano ft.com/content/5da527…

Editors who are not @LenoreTaylor: when some junior reporter comes up with a story that raises constitutional law issues, ask: what does Professor Anne Toomey say?
She’ll be helpful, clear and accurate. You’ll help your reporters to not look like amateurs.
youtu.be/4bnaBIvHPx0?si…

Economists see inspiring John Oliver segment on debt relief, conduct a randomized trial to forgive $169 million in medical debt, find this has no effect on quality of life or future financial distress at all.

We should all be way more skeptical of bipartisan efforts to crack down on something as definitionally woolly as online 'misinformation' and 'disinformation', particularly in the wake of trauma/terror attacks. Knee jerk legislating on speech is so so worrying.

long awaited ukraine military aid bill passes easily in the house

The theory that foreign buyers are creating homelessness by buying up sprawling Killara Federation homes on huge blocks is … well, I can sort of see a mechanism, but the quantities are just too small to conceivably have much effect.

First reports on this suggested the posts were removed because they contained graphic violence. This note seems to suggest there was more to it, but does not spell out what. Slightly disturbing implications for either Twitter or the commissioner, but which?

It’s kind of encouraging that communism has now receded so far from daily life in most of the world that people can get away with using “communist” the way most people use “Neanderthal”. The word has been drained of almost all meaning.

I hadn't known about this Swedish success: 'Over the past 10 years, 501 companies have listed in Sweden, more than the total number of IPOs in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain combined, according to Dealogic data.' ft.com/content/edc1bb…

What does it tell us about gender when we find that Wikipedia, with its open editing process, has 90% male editors? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia…