Wednesday Links
Wendy's, Communist Basketball, & More
1. “A Democratic consultant who worked for a rival presidential campaign paid a New Orleans magician to use artificial intelligence to impersonate President Joe Biden for a robocall that is now at the center of a multistate law enforcement investigation.” Yes, this story is just as insane as it sounds.
2. Recommended for parents: “Children should be kept as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.” The idea is that by taking small risks on their own (and learning the consequences), kids are better able to protect themselves long term.
3. Justice Alito asked, “I mean, if your – if – let’s say YouTube were a newspaper, how much would it weigh?” Seriously, see page 29 of this transcript. I’m starting to think the courts might not be equipped to rule on cases involving modern technology.
4. 78% (6,852) of the noise complaints filed against Reagan Washington National Airport in D.C. were made by a single household. That’s about 19 per day. Four households in Colorado accounted for 96% (4,653) of the noise complaints against Denver international airport. Similarly, 60% of all challenges against books in public school libraries in 2021-22 came from just 11 people.
Community feedback is overrated. Democracy isn’t about caving to the loudest complainers. Notably, this isn’t a uniquely American issue; one person filed over 23,000 noise complaints about the Dublin Airport in 2023.
5. Wendy’s announced that they’re introducing dynamic pricing to their menu in 2025 (like how Uber has surge pricing). This is awful marketing. Restaurants have used dynamic pricing for longer than I’ve been alive—it’s called Happy Hour. (Wendy’s has tried to clarify this)
6. The tight labor market is causing employers to reconsider educational requirements for certain jobs. “The share of US job postings requiring at least a college degree fell from 20.4% to 17.8% in the last five years, opening doors for the 64% of US adults without a bachelor’s degree.”
Similarly, Maryland, Colorado, Utah, Alaska, Georgia, and Pennsylvania (and probably some other states?) have all made efforts to drastically reduce college degree requirements for public jobs.
7. A new paper argues that high interest rates explain why consumer sentiment is so low despite an otherwise strong economy and falling inflation. It makes the specific point that measures of inflation don’t reflect higher borrowing costs, and that consumers are bummed out that they can’t afford cars, houses, etc.
8. There’s a basketball move called the euro step. As the name suggests, it was popular in Europe first, came to the NBA during the 2000s, and is now a staple of the game.
Apparently Fidel Castro used the euro step so much against Che Guevara in the early 1960s that Che started to question his commitment to the revolution. “Yes, it leads to a basket, but at what cost to the communal spirit?”
9. 2023 was good for natural gas and solar but bad for wind and coal.
10. Goldman Sachs’s chief economist has been one of the better forecasters over the past few decades. Goldman now expects that home prices will increase 5.5% in 2024.
What’s Next
As always, we’ll have Week in Review out on Friday for our paying subscribers. If that’s not you and you want it to be, just click the button below.