Gongol.com Archives: September 2025
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September 1, 2025
Labor Day isn't an expressly patriotic holiday in the same fashion as Independence Day or Memorial Day, but it tends to attract a fair amount of flag-waving on its own as people celebrate with parades, lake days, and other outdoor events. It isn't uncommon to hear a few patriotic songs in the air on the holiday, either. ■ One of the best of those themes is Neil Diamond's "America". And it has become increasingly evident that there are two camps among Americans who hear it: One hears a joyful anthem of hope when Diamond sings that "Everywhere around the world, they're coming to America". ■ A different camp hears those same words and concludes that it's a threat. More often than not, there's an aspect of economic jealousy involved. It's a faulty conclusion for many reasons, not least of which that the history of the country has always been one of immigration and assimilation. But it's also particularly faulty in light of the holiday. ■ Nobody has ever been able to disentangle the identity of America from the notion of work. This is a country that invites and encourages hard work and the collection of the fruits of one's own labors. The proof of that is found in our continuing struggle to heal the nation's original sin of slavery, when people were inhumanely deprived of their liberty and forced into servitude. There will long be work to do to heal that wound. ■ We have to conclude that for everyone else, America has broadly held the promise of opportunity born out of one's own work. Those who hear Neil Diamond and think of hope are the ones who are right, of course. The whole point is that everyone brings something new and fresh to the community. In the words of the song, they've "got a dream they've come to share". ■ Most people end up spending most of the income they produce, and saving (or investing) what remains. That should mean to us that new arrivals in a big economy like ours are simply going to "grow the pie" -- they will do work, but they'll put others to work with what they consume. It's really quite improbable for people to be displaced from the economy by new arrivals; the growth is shared, whether it's intentional or not. It's a mark of strength and honor that we invite people to join the dream and share in the resulting growth.
Stop the bots from breaking the Internet
AI content-crawler bots now comprise a huge share of web traffic, slowing down browsing for everyone
Real costs to political pressure on the Federal Reserve
"[P]olitical pressure shocks increase inflation strongly and persistently [...] increasing political pressure 50% as much as Nixon for six months increases the U.S. price level by 8%"
September 2, 2025
What Dick Portillo did with his buyout cash
The guy might be even better at making investment decisions than at making sausages. And he was really good at the sausages.
A nuclear power plant in Michigan with an 800-megawatt capacity is about to be restarted, making it the first in the country to be officially restarted. 800 megawatts is a big chunk of electricity: The Lower 48 States have been oscillating between about 400,000 and 600,000 megawatt-hours for the past week, about 100,000 of which have come from nuclear plants. The Michigan restart probably won't be the last, either: The Duane Arnold plant near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is also in line for a restart. ■ The Palisades plant has a number of credible detractors, and reasonable objections should be faithfully reviewed. But we also need to account for the knowledge that nuclear power is a decidedly stable source of carbon-free electricity, and if we're going to get ahead of the consequences of generations of fossil-fuel use, then we need to electrify even more of the economy and do it without emitting more carbon. That means renewables and nuclear power, hand-in-hand. ■ There's a lot of optimistic talk about small modular reactors -- simplified, scaled-down nuclear plants -- including at the site where the Michigan plant is being rebooted. They're talking about installing twin 300-megawatt units there, for another 600 megawatts total. As long as the power isn't entirely sucked up by new demand from data centers (a very real issue), then the restart and expansion ought to be a net social positive.
Mick Ryan, Australian retired-general-turned-war-theorist, has observed that the latest giant military parade through Beijing was mainly devoid of surprises, though Ryan does note that China's capacity for developing and manufacturing new military hardware seems to have expanded quite a bit. The whole affair was a spectacle for the purpose of spectacle, featuring front-row seats for Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. ■ In the modern era, big military parades like this are generally put on for chumps: A victory parade is one thing, but a parade to show off big guns and big missiles is really just a way to burn through a whole lot of cash in return for (usually) mandatory applause. That doesn't mean China's arsenal isn't potentially impressive, nor that the US should ignore the consequences of our own hostile behavior towards nations that ought to be easy friends of ours. (This is, for instance, a really stupid time to be cutting off funding for Radio Free Asia and other levers of public influence abroad.) ■ But a parade doesn't reveal anything about whether a country has organized its military in the right way to win conflicts. The top-down orientation of China's People's Liberation Army is a strategic deadweight, especially compared with the way that the United States has historically encouraged and rewarded initiative at lower levels of leadership. ■ The other thing masked by the mere spectacle and showmanship of a parade is the thoroughly unstable superstructure of China's military. The People's Liberation Army isn't sworn to protect the country; it's there to preserve, protect, and defend the Communist Party. There's no way to make that a stable platform in perpetuity. ■ That doesn't mean it can't stick around for a long time (it obviously already has), but we should never overlook the role of morale in successful warfare. And to fight for the preservation of a self-serving party is a different motive than to fight for one's country. No parade can truly reveal the effects of that kind of moral decay.
September 3, 2025
Want more housing? Zone for tiny homes.
Broadening the definitions of housing rules makes it easier to put people into shelter
Atlanta's going to lose its dead-tree paper
At the end of the year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution goes all-digital
"A strong Ukrainian military is the strongest security guarantee there is"
Once again, Kaja Kallas (currently at the EU) has the clearest view of the situation
When autocrats are shooting the breeze, what topics are on their minds? A "hot mic" moment captured between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping seems to have answered that question: they're talking about trying to live forever. ■ It's not an especially deep philosophical desire; few human feelings come closer to universality than the fear of death. Almost everyone has it. ■ Nor is it especially advanced thinking: Even without taking a sojourn to the weirder corners of transhumanism, there have been lots of widely-reported advancements in bio-engineering, even including steps towards 3D printing of brand-hew organs using healthy donor cells from the intended recipient. ■ Thinking hopefully about these possibilities isn't weird on its own. If we could reliably and cheaply create rejection-resistant organs from our own cells, that could be transformational for health and life-changing for millions of deserving people. Some wild things have been happening in medical technology, and that tends to spark imaginative forecasts about the future. ■ What is weird, though, is that despite all their trappings of power, neither of the politicians involved in the conversation comes across as a deep thinker -- or even a modestly bright one. Normal people might well muse aloud about the possibility of living to 100 or 150, and might even give a fleeting thought to what it might mean to live forever. (Again, nothing new: Immortal characters have factored into human stories since the very first gods and demigods.) ■ Deep thinkers with great power here on Earth, though, would naturally stop to consider the consequences of their own choices. Specifically: Am I building a world in which I would be welcomed a century from now? ■ A person can live for a century and still be missed when they are gone -- think of Betty White, Bob Newhart, Norman Borlaug, or any number of beloved grandparents and great-grandparents. But all of these souls are missed because they intentionally left behind good in the world while living. ■ That's not the way Xi or Putin will be remembered, and they certainly ought to know it. Joseph Stalin was born in 1878 and Mao Zedong was born in 1893, which would bring them both under the 150-year mark even today. Surely both would have faced serious consequences for their barbaric decisions by now. The successors to those genocidal dictators are making similar evil in the world today, and the world shouldn't forgive them, now or 100 years from now.
September 4, 2025
Microsoft has released its late-1970s version of BASIC as an open-source project.
Las Vegas hits a 6-month losing streak
Six straight months of declining tourism. There was a 12% drop in July alone. Locals attribute it to a combination of economic anxiety at home and a drop in tourism from abroad.
Government plans to rescind policy punishing airlines for being late
With the airlines running closer to full capacity than was the case for 70 years, it's hard to avoid delays. There just isn't a great deal of slack in the system.
September 5, 2025
Kiefer Sutherland wants to bring back Jack Bauer
The original series was of a time and place. We should probably leave it there.
September 6, 2025
Even if they don't know what it means in detail, most people probably recognize version numbering associated with the names of computer programs and apps: v.1.2.3 or v.10.8.91. The point of these is to tell us at what stage a program has been locked down and released with major updates (the first numeral), minor but important ones (the second numeral), and basic maintenance updates (the final numeral). ■ Versioning is an important concept within computer programming, because it's a significant reminder that no program is ever going to work flawlessly on version 1.0. It simply doesn't happen. Steps must be taken that are iterative; the first draft is never completely right. ■ Pop culture gives us plenty of examples of artists who seem to have great ideas that spring forth fully formed on the first draft. And it's entirely possible that some people have the gift of seeing great paintings projected, complete, onto a blank campus or imagining entire songs before pounding them out on a keyboard for the first time. (Think of Paul McCartney spontaneously composing "Get Back".) ■ This artistic expression, though, should not be taken as a substitute for how to really get things done. It discourages the rest of us if we imagine that an idea must be perfect on its first try and that all will be well once we simply get the performance out. ■ This creates a sense of failure when a first draft doesn't look exactly right, and it's not just this or that draft of a creative work that matters. It means the same thing when we're building human institutions. We have to be able to look at our problems and realize that we will have to take steps -- versions, even -- to get to desirable results. ■ We need fortitude and endurance and persistence in order to get things to go right, and we have to realize there will be further versions down the road. Most further versions should be steps forward, but occasionally a new version is an unexpected step back. That doesn't mean the project stops: It means a period of intense debugging. ■ We need to take the hint from the programmers and realize that a perfect end state is never going to happen: Circumstances will see to that. A lot of life -- personally, socially, and politically -- can be viewed as an exercise in updating versions. One has to be ready to implement a freeze from time to time, not because the product is perfect, but because sometimes you have to be satisfied that enough progress has been made that it's time to consolidate some gains.
September 9, 2025
At what point do we declare a reading crisis?
Reuters: "Over 30% of U.S. students in their last year of high school lack basic reading skills [...] 45% of high school seniors lack basic math skills". Surely we should call this a crisis by now.
A murder arrest more than 30 years later
DNA connects a newborn left to die in 1992 to the mother, who now faces first-degree murder charges. This is exactly why safe-haven laws are so important.
China is finding buyers for its airliners
Airliners are highly complex systems, even at the 90-passenger size, so it's worth watching as China develops a homegrown industry in large aircraft. Boeing and Airbus have held a duopoly on the really big airliners, with Embraer holding its own in the smaller range, perhaps especially after Mitsubishi shut down its regional jet program. ■ The aircraft themselves will almost certainly prove themselves airworthy enough (flight is pretty unforgiving of flaws), and most of us won't be able to credibly gauge whether they're particularly good or bad. Don't just watch the product itself, watch what's being learned about how to do really complex things. ■ Just as has been the case with the development of China's aircraft carriers, it's not just the output, but the process that is worthy of note. That process forms a whole different discipline from the technical and engineering management of tangible things like civil works projects. In an increasingly contentious international economic and security environment, it's wise not to underestimate the value of learning how to make those abstract systems go.
Protest burns Nepal's parliament building
The BBC offers a head-snapping observation: "So far, the protesters have not spelt out their demands apart from rallying under the broader anti-corruption call. The protests appear spontaneous, with no organised leadership."
States can't grow if their cities don't
A study regarding Nebraska's state economy warns that Omaha and Lincoln are falling behind comparable metro areas in job growth rates. It also notes "that Omaha and Lincoln account for roughly 60% of Nebraska's jobs and wages". People overstate a lot of things about lazy divides like "red state" and "blue state", but the reality is that virtually every state is a combination of large (even dominant) metropolitan areas and lots of smaller communities, and everyone has a vested interest in the broad well-being of all types of places.
September 11, 2025
We indulge quite a bit in wide-eyed awe at the pace of technological progress in our world today, but it's worth noting that not all progress is advanced by technology. Just 75 years ago, more than half of the world's adult population was illiterate. Half. And that was a colossal increase over 1900, when four out of every five adults worldwide were illiterate. ■ These facts do overlap with technology, too, because prior to Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph and Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in the 1870s, nobody had ever heard another human voice recorded or transmitted over either time or distance. (Recordings were made as early as the 1850s, but nobody had figured out a playback mechanism). ■ So we must consider that the world of just 150 years ago -- merely five familial generations, by the usual estimation -- was overwhelmingly limited to what was transmitted orally. Some specific countries attained higher literacy rates earlier than others, but access to the basic tools of literacy was frequently controlled as a means of subjugation in the world of not that long ago. ■ A world of oral communications is very different from a literate one. When we think we are among friends who will probably forget most of our scurrilous rumors and unhinged overreactions, we say different things than what we might choose to chisel in stone or publish in a newspaper. The habits are different, the guardrails are lower, and the discipline is far less in evidence. ■ It wasn't a mistake to bring literacy to the masses; it was one of the greatest victories in the history of striving for human potential. But it hasn't been a long time for the new conditions to prevail and retrain culture. ■ In 1960, the world adult literacy rate was 42%. And just three or four decades later, we suddenly had the Internet, on which anything could be published or shared in an instant with the entire globe, in printed words or in audio (or video). The tools at hand encourage instant reactions, big emotions, quick snippets, and hot takes -- effectively reverting back to the pre-1870s world of oral communications, but suddenly with a permanent (and worldwide) record. ■ As we marvel at what technology can do, it's equally important to ponder what behaviors we indulge and encourage with our social rules. As we have become more literate, we should have been freeing ourselves from what dragged down our ancestors in the earlier era of oral transmission -- rumors, bias, and tribalism. Every word spoken, sentence written, or act undertaken constructs the world to follow. Never in all of history has that impact been magnified like it is today.
September 12, 2025
"Goodness should be accompanied by wisdom"
It's hard to imagine just how head-spinning the pace of progress must have seemed in the United States around the turn from the 19th into the 20th Century. Reliable electrical service was exploding on the public scene, alongside the first American-made automobile (1896). The new century ushered in the first long-distance radio broadcasts (1902), the airplane (1903), and the first standards for safe drinking water (1905). ■ We flatter ourselves in thinking that we are the first generation to experience dramatic technological changes with big social consequences. It's been done before. But we truly deceive ourselves if we think that what matters most is how smart we think the changes will make us. ■ In 1900, the governor of New York, one Theodore Roosevelt, wrote a magazine article proposing, "Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character [...] in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character; and if between any two contestants, even in college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the right side is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the other way, it is the character side that will win." ■ 125 years later, the same is true: Character is still more dispositive than any other factor in life. Our eagerness to discover computer-aided "superintelligence" had better not overtake our interest in forming better people. ■ We can't afford to be shell-shocked by change any more than our forebears could have done so in 1900. A lot of people with bad intentions are grasping every prospective weapon in reach, because they see personal advantage in it. ■ Good people need to double down on the centrality of good character while at the same time seeking to level up on their ability to use it. It's hard work, but that's our duty. In Roosevelt's words, "it is of much more importance for the good of mankind that our goodness should be accompanied by wisdom than that we should merely be harmless."
September 13, 2025
Russia's incursion into Polish airspace with at least 17 drones was several things. But on one thing, Polish leadership is emphatic: It was not a mistake. ■ Russia has obviously been using drones relentlessly in its attacks against Ukraine. And Ukraine does share a border with Poland. But if the Russian ambassador to the UN says their drones couldn't have reached Poland by accident, then it's time to assume that what happened was a deliberate probing attack. ■ As dreadful as this is to contemplate, we are compelled to assume it is true unless proven otherwise. The perpetrator has done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt. ■ It's an awful reality that the whole continent of Europe is under much more of a direct threat than was the case for the last 30 years. A test of Poland's air defenses isn't just a goof or a lark -- it's an obvious escalatory step. NATO needs to be clearly and unambiguously unified in putting Russia on notice that an attack on one is an attack on all.
September 14, 2025
The best day at Wrigley Field since Ferris
Every era needs heroes who distinguish themselves with displays of bravery and self-sacrifice. But a good society that treasures what's good for the individual should reserve a place for some characters who publicly walk an unashamedly joyful path. ■ For a long time, America had Betty White, a person so popular she only accrued a 3% disapproval rating (presumably concentrated among people who misunderstood the question). The seat has been vacant since her passing at the end of 2021. ■ Perhaps, though, her crown can be perched atop the head of Anthony Rizzo, the Major League Baseball player who just retired as a Chicago Cub. Rizzo, who will forever be featured on the highlight reels of the Cubs' 2016 World Series win, managed to have the most charmed day at Wrigley Field since Ferris Bueller. ■ He threw the first pitch. He sat right in the path of a home run ball drilled into the bleachers. He led the Seventh Inning Stretch alongside Eddie Vedder and Cindy Crawford. ■ But in addition to having one of the best days ever at a ballpark, he managed to shed a little light on a good cause, too, wearing a jersey bearing the signatures of child cancer patients. Betty White had the cause of animals; Anthony Rizzo, himself a cancer survivor, has a long life ahead to model joy and be an ambassador for the indisputably worthy cause of children facing cancer. His popularity will probably always lag a bit in Cleveland, but even Betty had a tiny contingent of detractors. For the rest of us, though, it's good to have sincerely likeable people to remind us that "the pursuit of happiness" is a worthwhile thing in its own right.
September 15, 2025
Technology columnist Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal observes, "One way I'm different than 10 years ago is, even when I feel I have some expertise on a topic, I'm hesitant to weigh in, because I know how *dangerous* knowing a little (but not the full story) can be", adding that his observation is "a thank-you note to those who are ready with deep domain area expertise and can articulately weigh in when their moment comes". ■ One of the distinguishing characteristics of knowledge in the digital era is the prevalence of quantification. It is as though the old managerial proverb, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it", has been applied wholesale to how information is evaluated. It started, to some extent, when Google first began scoring websites on the basis of backlinks from other sites as a partial indicator of quality. ■ Quantification spread through all sorts of other mechanisms (upvotes/downvotes, for instance), and has reached its apogee (thus far) in the large language models that are so big and active that they are tilting the scales of electricity demand. ■ The comments from Mims value what we might call "encyclopedia knowledge" -- not what necessarily appears in an encyclopedia, per se, but knowledge that is valued because it has the approval of someone with credible authority. Encyclopedia editors don't put knowledge to a popular vote; they check with subject-matter authorities. An unpopular answer is no more right nor wrong because of its unpopularity. Quantification matters not one bit to the truth. ■ Our contemporary problem is that there is no way to readily reconcile the encyclopedia-knowledge approach with a quantifiable methodology like what drives an LLM. ■ The high-minded approach applauded by Mims is not only incompatible with quantifying or scoring knowledge, it's expressly contradictory. If the people with real knowledge intentionally hold back until a subject is squarely within their domain of competence, then they will usually be lapped by people running a race to be first and loudest. The resulting imbalance of content gives the advantage to quantifiable frequency -- saying things a lot, rather than waiting to say them with authority.
September 16, 2025
Plant perennials and watch the roots
Anyone with a talent for keeping plants knows that the visible part above the soil is never more than half of the story. It's what gets noticed, of course, but the attention it gets is disproportional to the real tale. ■ The health of what's below the surface matters as much as anything you can see. What happens below is especially important to sustaining life through harsh seasons like winter: A good root system for a tree can be seven times the size of the leafy crown. ■ Activity in most plants doesn't have to be visible for growth to take place. A plant will need sunlight eventually, but flowers and leaves are generally disposable, while a healthy root structure is not. To the uninitiated, what's visible can become a distraction. ■ It's surprising how much "green thumb" advice applies to human relations just as well: Plant perennials once and you'll reap rewards for years to come. Find what will survive the winter and come back stronger when the days grow longer. Don't mistake a bunch of visible foliage for health below the surface. Consider the whole system.
September 18, 2025
Long-haul newspaper delivery routes
The Quad City Times of Davenport, Iowa, will cease printing at its local press on September 30th and outsource printing to a sister publication under Lee Enterprises: The Times of Northwest Indiana. ■ In good weather, it's a 3-hour drive down Interstate 80 from Munster, Indiana, to Davenport, Iowa. It's not the first printing-press consolidation undertaken by Lee, nor is it the only long-haul newspaper delivery route: The Kansas City Star, for instance, is printed in Des Moines. ■ It is unclear what point remains to printing a daily newspaper that starts the morning already older than a gas station tuna salad sandwich. The Des Moines production site prints 15 different newspapers. No matter how ably a production manager is able to mass-produce those various editions, there's no way to get them all printed unless at least some of them have deadlines that land sometime before network TV prime time. That has obvious detrimental effects for the timeliness of the news being reported. ■ In parts of the Des Moines area, the Register is delivered by carriers during a window between midnight and 1:00 am, only for the papers to sit on front steps until sunrise, containing nothing fresher than what appeared on the 10:00 pm local news the night before. ■ If dedicated local printing is no longer an economic possibility, then there's really only one playbook that makes any sense for most newspapers in America: (1.) Go all-digital for the daily "edition". (2.) Publish a bunch of high-value, narrowly-targeted electronic newsletters (not Axios-style morning bullet lists, but real original reporting conveyed in high-quality writing). (3.) Finally, publish just one really well-thought-out weekly print edition, full of high-quality photography and journalism that's deserving of a quality typographic layout. There are still plenty of stories that are much better told on an attractive printed page than on any smartphone app, but probably not enough to justify killing a bunch of trees seven days a week.
September 19, 2025
In case the troubles of the world ever get you down, a helpful perspective-generating exercise is to read the scientific research which concludes that the entire population of human beings once hinged on just 1,280 breeding individuals -- a population about equivalent to the enrollment of the smallest high school in the Central Iowa Metropolitan League. In other words, quite the bottleneck. ■ The human species survived, and thanks in part to the persistence of spontaneous mutations in our genes, our ancestors between that bottleneck and today managed to differentiate well enough that we don't all look alike. It could have gotten pretty monocultural there. ■ But while thanking our lucky stars that we managed to persist through and beyond that near-extinction event, we ought to ask ourselves whether we're doing right by that great good fortune. Other humans are not the enemy: Nature is. ■ Nature's chronic indifference to our fate (at the level of the individual as well as the species) is what endangers us most. Nature blows up volcanoes that can block out the Sun and showers down deadly rocks from space. Nature has been known to send killer pandemic viruses our way, too. ■ There are two menaces who should be recognized as the obstacles to human progress: One intentionally brings pain to others, out of greed, bloodlust, malice, or some other deviance. The other concentrates attention on exaggerated differences among us, creating strife and conflict where none need exist. ■ Whenever those menaces gain influence, attention, or power, they sap our already finite supplies of human energy that could otherwise be put to work solving the problems of nature and its never-ending threats to our survival. We only have a limited amount of time, a limited number of brains, and a limited supply of resources. Whatever of those we waste on sadism and cruelty and petty tribalism are no longer available to solve our greater problems, and that brings shame on us.
September 20, 2025
It may not be especially tasteful to laugh at the misfortunes of others, but watching what happens (and how people react) when things go wrong can be a tough temptation to resist -- as long as we know that nobody faced real peril from the incident. Nobody died when Mark Zuckerberg's live demo of Facebook's AI-powered glasses went sideways. That creates a pretty good permission structure for the rest of us to point and laugh. ■ Buggy demonstrations aren't necessarily a reason to run away from a product (though they might ratchet up a sense of "caveat emptor"). But if it comes to light that erroneous assumptions are guiding the creators, that might be another story. ■ Zuckerberg, who still controls a majority of voting shares in Meta/Facebook and thus is empowered to do anything he wants with the company, has hyped the glasses by saying that those who don't get them may fall to a "significant cognitive disadvantage". Those are strong words. ■ Even assuming that artificial intelligence goes through several more generational-scale improvements, there's a very real hazard in assuming that it would be "cognitively" advantageous to have it beamed into one's retinas all day. There are certainly discrete tasks for which glasses acting as a permanent heads-up display could be advantageous: It might be nice, for instance, to be able to read a book while taking a walk outside. ■ But real human cognition is characterized by incomplete thoughts, sentence fragments, and abstractions that we imagine taking shape in the world around us (it's one reason why people often break eye contact when telling a story -- they're reconstructing fragments of memory in the imagination). If we're not careful to leave lots of room for those incomplete thoughts, we're likely to bungle the whole process of thinking. ■ Trying to gain "cognitive advantage" by dragging a computer into the loop, in part to make more of those thoughts seem complete, is a surefire way to miss the point. The real impairment may come from introducing a digital interlocutor with no sense of when to shut up.
September 21, 2025
An initiative led by a professor at the University of Northern Iowa is getting area men together for "Men's Sheds", gatherings to learn new skills or participate in service activities. It's an effort to address problems of social isloation that tend to get pretty bad among adult men in America, particularly after retirement. ■ Fraternal organizations used to take up a lot of this space, but they've been in a deeply regrettable decline for decades. It would be a symptom of better civic health if people spontaneously formed and sustained these kinds of activities, but if they're not doing it, the university deserves applause for stepping in to help pilot-test the model. ■ Young men with nothing productive to do have been recognized as a social hazard since at least the time of ancient Greece. But older men without ties to community and productive activities are a poorly-recognized danger to themselves: A whole bunch of pathologies are tied to growing old and under-attached. ■ The real challenge is in finding ways to scale up an effort like this. A university town ought to be, relatively speaking, a fantastic place to age -- with more than the usual number of cultural, educational, and social events. But a lot of people choose to age in place far from college towns. Then it becomes a problem of both access and initiative.
Language-software company Babbel claims its use has fallen by half since the early 2000s.
Touchscreens: Great for phones, calamitous for cars
Drivers need to be able to do things without taking their eyes off the road. Touchscreens are just about the worst possible interface for those activities. Bring back dials, knobs, and switches!
Cambridge University claims its Peterhouse hall was the second building in all of Britain to get electric light -- in 1884
September 24, 2025
Stock-market index funds are widely used for retirement savings, and for good reason: Their passive approach to investing, coupled with relatively low administrative costs, insulates them from much of the oversized "take" placed on actively-managed investments. Money managers are very good at assuring themselves a substantial return on investment, even when they can't guarantee the same for their clients. For a very large share of investors, the best bet is to buy into index funds and reinvest for a very long time. ■ One oddity of index funds, though, is that they are generally weighted by market capitalization. That is, the biggest companies are held in the largest amounts. A titanic index fund like the Fidelity 500 Index Fund or the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund won't hold equal numbers of shares (or total share value) in each of 500 different companies; they hold the companies with the highest total market value (number of shares times price per share) in the largest amounts. ■ For both of those funds (the two largest index funds, according to MarketWatch), and for many others, more than 20% of their value is being carried in holdings of just four companies: Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. This should have the economically-minded on something of an alert. Not only is that a lot of weight to be putting on a very small number of companies, it's a heavy concentration in a field subject to a lot of speculation. Nvidia is huge because it is the hottest domestic name in artificial intelligence. ■ But that industry is almost entirely speculative -- its future is utterly unknowable. And people are paying more than 50 times earnings to get a piece of Nvidia. While it doesn't mean that the market is wrong about that company's future, it does mean that a whole lot of things must go right in order for the price to be justified. ■ For perspective: 25 years ago, General Electric (then the definitive diversified industrial conglomerate) was the biggest holding in Vanguard's S&P 500 index fund, representing 4.5% of assets. The top four holdings in the year 2000 crossed three industrial sectors and made up less than 13% of the total fund -- meaning that the index (and the fund tracking it) were much less susceptible to volatility in just one top company or sector. Things were even more diversified by 2002, after the dot-com tech bubble popped (which was back when tech firms were concentrated more in the Nasdaq than in the wider market). ■ We can and should hope that things turn out for the best and that market fanaticism is ultimately justified by fantastic performance. But history doesn't care much for hope, and the lots-of-nest-eggs-in-one-basket approach runs the risk of turning out very badly for a great number of Americans.
September 25, 2025
The antidote to doomscrolling is in your hands already
Curiously, one of the best tools for counteracting the allure of the doomscroll comes in the form of a widely-used Amazon device: The humble Kindle reader. ■ The various Kindle models make use of one of the best yet most-underused inventions around: Electronic ink. E-ink is gentler on the eyes than light projected from a screen, offering an experience that is less taxing on the brain. And what too few people realize is that you don't have to pay Amazon for everything you read on the Kindle. ■ Both the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg make thousands of books available for free. Many or even most are out of copyright -- which quite often means they are also out of print. But they have been carefully digitized and can be exported in just a couple of easy steps to any Kindle reader. ■ What we too often forget is that much of what we acquire in high school and even in college is a survey of information, not a deep dive. We become familiar with famous historical names without realizing that many of them wrote books that may be worth reading. In a huge number of cases, old problems sound a whole lot like modern ones. That's because our circumstances change, but human nature rarely does. ■ Thanks to the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, we can go back and check the work of our predecessors. Some of it is garbage. But surprisingly often, there are thoroughly relatable perspectives to be found in the materials they have pulled off the dusty shelves and made accessible to our convenient devices. ■ There's great reward to be found in reading these old books. Reading them on a modern digital device -- for free! -- is a tremendous antidote to doomscrolling. Many a modern person will come to regret hours lost to TikTok or Snapchat, but few people have ever resented the choice to spend time reading books. That we can do so for free is a marvelous gift that a small but dedicated cadre of people have made to the human family.
September 27, 2025
A common way to sign-off from a broadcast news story is to ask for audience feedback. It's often phrased something like, "We'd love to know what you think! Send your comments to..." ■ The instinct to solicit feedback is perfectly natural. Giving people the sense that they contribute to creating the product is a terrific way to build audience loyalty, and most people who place themselves in the public eye are either wired or conditioned to think of feedback as a form of applause. ■ But most of the time, the sign-off is driven by a faulty call to action. "What you think" is often irrational, unhelpful, or inadequately informed. Opinions are among the cheapest space-fillers on Earth -- a perpetually renewable resource. Most really don't need to be amplified. ■ A considerably better question would be, "What did we forget to ask?" It is not a question designed to provoke the same amount of response. But it would be a more useful prompt, because journalists and interviewers should always be interested in improving the questions they ask. The general public usually does not possess the expertise required to offer high-quality commentary. ■ The average member of the public is, however, well-positioned to know what questions pique their own curiosity. Moreover, journalists ought to welcome good-faith efforts to help them identify their own blind spots.
A study of more than 22,000 people found that people who are conscientious, active, and generally agreeable turn out to have a lower risk of mortality than their peers who do not. It's not an especially shocking result: Being careless would seem to have obvious deleterious effects on one's health and safety, and the importance of remaining active is among the central premises of most geriatric care. ■ What's interesting comes from the conclusion of the study: Particular personality traits taken individually have "little incremental predictive power" relative to mortality, but "the aggregated predictive value of items was stronger". In other words, it's not the individual factors so much as the collective basket of the right ones that matters. ■ The person who happens to be "active", "lively", "organized", "responsible", "hardworking", "thorough", and "helpful" is thus the person probably in the most enviable position. It does seem almost odd that these traits, which would seem to have life-preserving merit individually, are perhaps most protective as a sort of cohesive disposition. While the study's authors have discouraged readers from taking the conclusions as deterministic, is it really that hard to conclude that those traits are worth inculcating in young people? ■ Human nature is powerfully entrenched at the species level, and many of us express at least a few pretty strong characteristics that are obvious practically from birth. But we're not really born learning to express the very specific traits underneath the "Big Five"; that is, there's a pretty good chance that one is born naturally inclined to be somewhere on the extroversion scale, but being specifically "active" or "lively" comes at least in part out of practice. The practice may simply consist of being in the right environment to take advantage of opportunities to be that way.
September 28, 2025
Complaining about the habits of youth is one of the most time-honored traditions in all of human history. What in particular the elders complain about changes from generation to generation, but typically it has something to do with social skills: Signs of respect, work ethic, or something alike. One of the concerns most prevalent today is the worry that young people simply don't know how to talk to one another (or to older people) without the presence or intermediation of a smartphone. ■ The simple art of conversation feels very much under threat. For all of the legitimacy that there may be to that complaint, there seems to be something missing from the conversation: The question of what any complaintive elder is doing about it. ■ Conversation is a skill, and like any other communication skill, whether it's writing or reading or flagging a message in semaphore, conversation requires practice. For every complaint lodged about the apparent inability of youth to engage in conversation, the question ought to be posed, "Well, then, what are you doing about it?" ■ Elders need to ask themselves whether they participate in real and sincere conversations with younger people, or whether they spend more time either haranguing the youth in question or, perhaps worse, putting on a transparently insincere show (the gold standard for which might forever be Steve Buscemi's "How do you do, fellow kids?"). ■ It's important to model this art of conversation without appearing (or being) insincere or trite. And if any part of that feels unnatural to elders, then we should take it as a sign that perhaps we are leaving the much-maligned youths unattended and unaided in a quest to improve themselves to meet expectations without guidance. ■ Certain low-hanging conversational fruit will almost always fall flat: Youth culture will almost always seem foreign and weird to anyone over about the age of 30, much as prior generations' youth culture have typically seemed unfashionable (at least until selectively reappropriated, like reviving an old fashion in clothing or sampling a classic song in a new hit). ■ So we have to find ways to introduce conversations and ask questions, conduct interviews, and perform the basic functions of verbal exchange without defaulting to subjects that have unimaginative answers. Likewise, elders have to resist the urge to make every interaction an uncomfortable flashpoint ("Put that phone down! Why can't you just talk to us?"). ■ Who doesn't rely upon a crutch from time to time in a social circumstance? There's not that much difference between resorting to "Nice weather we're having" as a safety icebreaker and retreating to the security blanket of a smartphone screen rather than strike up a conversation. If we simply make fun of the crutch, then we're not going to do anything productive to help bridge the gap and introduce those new skills. ■ Shame on us if all we do is make fun of people younger than us for spending time on their phones if we aren't affirmatively (and helpfully!) engaging with them in social circumstances, in workplace environments, and in daily life. Adults need to model how adolescents are ultimately going to be accepted as peers among their elders, because it always happens sooner than we think. It's entirely our own fault if they turn out to be terrible conversationalists because we haven't given them the encouragement and practice to be better.