Closing tabs, Thursday Edition
I really need to get the tabs off my Apple Vision Pro — that’s a complete wasp’s nest. But fo now I’m just going to clean house on my phone and laptop. It’s not a ton of stuff, but maybe you’ll find some things interesting in here.
Wish me luck — I’m en route to Vermont to Middlebury College to see my coauthor and friend Caitlin Myers and her colleagues and students. I’ll be presenting a new paper (very nearly ready to post online). In the meantime, here’s a bunch of links! Thanks for all your support!
Matt Damon said Netflix told him that when he makes movies, remind the audience regularly what the plot is because they’re actually on their phones. That’s probably good advice for people presenting papers in seminars too.
Here’s something from Zvi about advances in self-driving cars. We’re in the future.
Don’t marry someone who looks down on you (or vice versa). Not bad advice.
Struggles with dating, learning to tolerate sadness and loneliness.
Tough market for economists.
Televisions have gotten weirdly inexpensive. How come?
Bret’s potato chips, Brie and truffle flavors, are only $10 (yikes).
Speaking of expensive things, here’s some colorful socks for the low low price of $36.
Social experiment in Denmark separated families and it turned out badly for those involved.
The classic China syndrome paper by Autor, Dorn and Hanson (AER 2013).
Claudia Goldin on shifts in fertility.
Older 2013 article on the broad benefits of reproductive health policy by Martha Bailey, Melanie Guldi and Brad Hershbein
IVF has led to a record increase in mothers 40+.
I saw the first episode of the new Game of Thrones spinoff, and highly recommend it. Here’s some stuff about the characters. It’s quite hard not to google what happens or ask Cosmos, but so far I’m clean.
Someone on the internet complaining about the Apple Vision Pro.
I really loved this 2024 article by David Autor on AI and the rebuilding of the middle class. If you haven’t read it, it’s great.
I saw the Patriots win last Sunday at Banner’s Kitchen and Tap next to the Garden. What a game. And I’m going to another watch party on Sunday for the next game. I’ll be rooting for the Pats, but of course, I can’t help but be excited that Jarett Stidham will be QB for the Broncos as Stidham played for Baylor for one semester. Still, Go Pats!
Encore Casino here in Boston like every casino has poker tables. Here’s information about tournaments.
Is your pillow not dense enough? Is it too dense? Try this medium dense pillow from Macy’s by Ralph Lauren. Ask me in a week my opinion about its density.
FYI, I have put all of my Claude Code posts in a tab under, you guessed it, Claude Code.
Check out this video on using AI differently.
Jon Roth’s old paper on pretesting and diff-in-diff.
The menu at Coterie at the Four Seasons Hotel
Jessica Fong at Michigan has been writing about online dating for a few years now, but I only learned of her yesterday. Here is her new paper on STDs. (HT MR). And here is her paper where she did an experiment with an online dating firm (!) and found that when daters learn that the market size is larger, it causes them to become more selective, but when they learn how much competition they face, they become less selective. Very interesting stuff (to me).
Someone tries to get ChatGPT to believe that they are in the middle of a tsunami. ChatGPT calmly tells them “they got this”.
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Apple is going to make Siri a chatbot (yawn).
Anthopic has a new document called “Claude’s Constitution”. I’ll need to have Claude read it and explain it to me. In fact it may even have been written for Claude.
Google’s DeepMind CEO says LLMs cannot achieve AGI in part because they do understand cause and effect.
This cottage off the coast of Wakefield, Rhode Island is $1.85 million. Very pretty.
At around 8:30AM EST when this posts, I will learn if my friend at Baylor, Sam Henderson, will have been nominated for the Academy Awards short film category. The movie is called Ado, and he’s made the short list of 15 films, from which 5 will get nominated. Fingers crossed.
NBER paper on the causal effects of extreme temperatures.
Sam Eliot’s character on a television show says that putting his arm around a woman feels good. Hard to believe someone wrote this for an actual media outlet.
Enroll in a class by Anthropic to learn more about using Claude Code.
Surprising result at NBER — marginal kids who got into elite high school did worse later in life.
Some say this is the best recipe for waffles. Some as in my brother-in-law, Eric, but still.
And now some videos from my photos
I watch this video easily twice a week. It's like the little shimmy she does when she says “Our mantra is…”
What dating sometimes feels like.
Mort Crim selling furniture and challenging ISIS.
It’s helpful to try out the IKEA showrooms before committing.
“There’s nothing wrong with this quarter” he said as he nearly had an aneurism trying to get out of the garage without Nicki’s help whatsoever.
This is one of my favorite movies, and this is one of my favorite scenes in that movie.
How is tables a job?
And I’ll stop there. Wishing Sam luck that when I get to Vermont, I’m learning “Ado” was nominated for an Academy Award.