Overdose deaths in 2023 fell for the first time since the pandemic axios.com/2024/05/15/dru…

The idea smartphones are responsible for a rise in teenage anxiety, depression and adverse mental health seemed interesting and plausible.

But after hearing David Wallace-Wells talk to Derek Thompson about what the research really shows, I'm far more skeptical: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/are…

The The Wall Street Journal reports on science publisher Wiley
shuttering 19 journals for rampant fraud. In the past 2 years, they've been forced to retract over 11,300 papers.

The incentive structure of science journals and academia is not aligned with truth-seeking.

I've given up on having any conviction about what's going to happen in November.

But if you're committed to the idea that Biden is going to win reelection, and that the polls are over-representing disaffection among unlikely voters, something like this is your Exhibit A.

My take on the green subsidies trade war. Put up tariffs if you must, but the moral, economic, environmental arguments are on the side of those that subsidize green products, not those who want to tax them. project-syndicate.org/commentary/gre…

#healthcare has become 'institutionally incoherent,' and the growth in its administrators is both the result and a cause of that.

Thanks to Derek Thompson and The Atlantic for the inspiration!

kimbellard.medium.com/its-the-admini…

RIP translators. But also, damn, this technology is going to make language barriers obsolete.

New article by me:

The rise in reported maternal mortality rates in the US is largely due to a change in measurement.
ourworldindata.org/rise-us-matern…

The change was adopted by different states at different times, resulting in what appeared to be a gradual rise in maternal mortality.

This seems pretty bad.

How compelling is the evidence that the amount of bisphenols and phthalate commonly used in plastics and packaging are really bad for our health?

This is a truly excellent article about administrative bloat, mission creep, and ideological drift at America's universities.

It is time for a reckoning.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

“The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.” Good stuff from ⁦Derek Thompson⁩ - theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

The US has more lawyers per capita than any OECD country but Italy ... and more suits filed per capita than the UK and Canada combined.