Getting wealthier, Innovation & Eruption, turmoil at ChatGPT, and Cannoli. Don't forget the cannoli.
RWL #371
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday! For the first time, all of our kids were either working or with the boyfriends for Thanksgiving, and with our dog having recently gone over the rainbow bridge, we found ourselves without any obligations for either Thanksgiving or the following days, so we spent the day with the wife’s family south of Boston, and then headed into Boston on Black Friday. We stayed in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood for the night, and got to go to Seaport’s holiday fair, Snowport (pic above). Then Saturday we took a food tour on the Freedom Trail through Boston. If you come to Boston, you have to walk the Freedom Trail. It celebrates Boston’s role in the American Revolution. The Old North Church where the famous “One if by land, and two if by sea” lanterns were hung is in Boston’s North End.
You know what else is in Boston’s North End? Some of the best cannoli west of Rome! The North End has been Boston’s Italian-American neighborhood for about a hundred years (before that, it was an Irish neighborhood, and before that, well, Paul Revere lived there). Though since the end of the Big Dig it has been getting gentrified, you can still get fabulous Italian food. We went to Cafe Vittoria on our tour and had fresh-filled (the only way to have them) cannoli. Because we were on a tour, we were able to sit on the empty half of the restaurant - I loved how charming it was. We’ll definitely be back. Highly recommend both the Freedom Trail and cannoli at Cafe Vittoria.
(Cafe Vittoria)
It’s hard to believe, but we have about 17 days left to the semester. My big focus then becomes getting the juniors ready for their internship applications. That’s mostly what I will be doing during the break.
As usual, willing good for all of you, and see you Sunday with a new essay!
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Read
What: Noahpinion, Great news about American wealth
Why: Noah Smith is an economics blogger I have been following on and off for many years. In this post he summarizes Fed and Treasury 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which shows Americans are much better off after the pandemic than in the period leading up to it. From the post:
Basically, the 2022 numbers — which you can see summarized in the Fed’s report — tell a really encouraging story. In a nutshell:
Americans’ wealth is way up since before the pandemic.
The increase is very even across the board, with people at the bottom of the distribution gaining proportionally more than people at the top.
Inequality is down, including racial inequality, educational inequality, urban-rural inequality, overall wealth inequality.
Debt is much less of a problem.
There’s even some surprising good news about income as well as wealth.
Worth skimming through the whole thing. Some quick grab graphs in there give good insight.
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Watch
What: Eddie VanHalen explains and demonstrates his guitar technique (about 3 minutes)
Why: I have recently been listening to Van Halen whenever I drive to my jiu-jitsu class - specifically Panama and Right Now are on my BJJ playlist. It’s fun, positive energy music. But I share this short video not because of my love of the classic rock of my teen years, but for how Eddie explains the origin of his innovations. He couldn’t afford the technology - the wa-wa pedals, etc. - so he had to find other ways to get dynamic sounds out of his guitar. Innovation often comes from trying to compensate for something missing. This is a wonderful story and demonstration.
And thus we have Eruption:
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Listen
What: Hard Fork, Mayhem at OpenAI + Our Interview With Sam Altman (90 min)
Why: OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT. Last weekend the board of OpenAI fired its founder and CEO. Then things went nuts for a while. Then the board was ousted, and the founder is back as CEO.
You may not be paying attention to the politics in Silicon Valley, and normally I don’t much either, but OpenAI is at the center of a future shock coming to our world. It’s not clear why the (previous) board fired the CEO, but the speculation is he was pushing AI faster than they were willing to go for safety reasons (we don’t want Skynet):
But we also really, really want all potential productivity gains that AI will (and already is) bring(ing) us.
Should the CEO have been booted? Hard to say. But he’s back and we are going full throttle.