Economic growth and development becomes much more cooler and awe inspiring when you think of it less as "line goes up" and more as "increasing productive power of the species".

“AI services” will just become “services” but better in 3 years. And people will pay more for better services, which will become a permanently higher share of total expenditures, as goods continue to experience technological deflation.

I won't say Kremlins are too smart for this bullshit (they aren't; besides, China is itself hedging due to the greater value of European markets and engagement, so all is fair). But it reads like a wet dream. Russians as a shield against Chyna. Very novel idea.

The one unique feature of Palace at Baroda (built in the 1800s, relatively new) is the stained glass frescoes of Hindu motifs. This was an Roman technique that became associated with Gothic architecture but this is the first & only time I've seen it being used for Hindu motifs.

Beautiful Iranian brickwork ceiling in the Shiraz underground metro

The internal market of the US is big enough that it will probably be able to muddle through this new era of Chinese technological competitiveness by tariff-walling key industries. But the smaller EU countries are kind of cooked

Fact: Marco Rubio is Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. He is now in Geneva with the US Army Secretary negotiating with the Ukrainians on what is largely being seen as a document that halts the fighting in Ukraine giving Russia concessions like control of Ukrainian

Involution and overcapacity in *checks notes* money laundering fees down to 1-2% from 7-10%. Incumbents seething as usual

I don't think archaelogical ruins should be "restored", I think they should be perfected.

Back I come from a weekend in Manchester: A perfect antidote to UK declinism here. It might not be as rich as, say, London or Dublin, but it manages to feel much more lively. I can even play count-the-cranes and unlike most UK cities there are some! There's life in the North.

my takeaway from location reveal day is that mostly everyone is who they say they are, with a few obvious exceptions that everyone intelligent already clocked. the long term consequence will be that you can’t just blame foreign interference for cultural trends

The "super children" born by gene selection will be hagwon-maxxers. For those of us who aren't currently winning the PSAT-Ivy-Prestige employment game, nothing will change.

Remember the lady who posted "every morning my husband and I drink coffee in our garden and talk for hours" She was ripped apart. Now the reactions are positive. I guess people moved on from the *Denial* stage to "I also desperately want someone I can talk to for hours"

According to the Ottoman legislation on succession, a Muslim cannot bequeath their land to their children or parents if they are not Muslim. And inversely, a non Muslim cannot bequeath their land to their children or parents if they’re Muslim.

It’s kind of fucked up that historians that best utilize value-form theoretic views of social transformation aren’t Marxists.

The number of births in Sri Lanka is still declining in 2025 and stands around 5% lower than in 2024. Using the new census data, I recalculated the TFR for 2024 at 1.47 (I previously thought 1.45). This year, it will drop further to around 1.4.

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I’d rather pull the “May I meet you?” line than try this BS.

Unfortunately no X at the time so people couldn't brag about how eating with bare hands was in fact some long-standing German tradition that couldn't be replaced for some reasons.

The Byzantine princess Theophanu shocked the Western Europeans (HRE Germans) because she was using a fork to eat instead of using her bare hands.