The numbers don't back up this narrative. Poor, indebted countries have higher birthrates.

There's no statistical correlation between debt and TFR. The only strong correlation is female years of education. And it's a negative correlation.

If you look across countries, the variable that correlates most strongly with TFR is years of female education (-0.82 correlation).

So raising TFR would mean fewer women at university, fewer abortions, and more teen pregnancies. The exact opposite of current policy.

I was in Seoul last year, and it was a choice between Google Maps (all coordinates out by 50m+) and Naver (most labels in Korean). Such a hassle.

Anthropic was putting out a lot of PR just before their capital raise. Maybe they bribed Spotify to join in?
Anyway, the raise was successful, so hopefully the hype will die down for a while.

Yeah, the Chinese military aren't that stupid. Being purged is unpleasant, but being executed is worse. And your children will probably be punished too.

I was a big fan back in the day. But to be honest I've never used it since Wikipedia arrived.

We all know that "safe" in this context means silencing content that you, personally, disapprove of. How is that compatible with open source, where anyone can fork an "unsafe" version?

If alcohol had a material impact on life span, you'd expect Muslim communities to have a longer life span. Which they don't.

Other factors, such as obesity, exercise, genetics, and access to health care, drown out whatever impact alcohol might have. So I plan to keep drinking.

???
2: Use the rare earth metals to make some magnets
3: Use the magnets to make some motors
4: Profit!

If the US bans Chinese drones, China will probably respond by banning the export of drone motors. So America won't have any American drones either.

Almost as stupid as the Nexperia seizure. Always consider how the other party will respond.

A good example ... except for the "EU regulates" bit. In this case it was US anti-trust regulations that knee-capped iRobot.
Although the EU may have regulated anyway if the Amazon deal progressed.

Bending Spoons now owns both Meetup and Eventbrite. I'm surprised it didn't raise an antitrust red flag.

I wonder if there's a noperthedron equivalent of a manhole cover

With these sorts of stories, it would be a good idea to specify which version of TikTok it refers to. As an Australian, I don't really care what happens to the US version.

It'll take at least 5 years for China to pull ahead in semiconductors and commercial airliners, but otherwise Krugman's thesis is basically correct. And I hate agreeing with Krugman ...

The US will never catch up in cars, drones, batteries, solar panels. nuclear power, shipbuilding, steel, copper, aluminium, rare earths, or electricity generation.