10 Weekend Reads for January 18-19

OnlyFans hot girls, demographic trends, and ants vs. humans

Dear Friends,

“I’m trying something new—let me know what you think!”

Songs I liked

Including a new single from 2023 Portola Festival crowd favorite Little Simz. And don’t miss Ballaké Sissoko’s killer cora solo toward the end of track 7!

10 Weekend Reads

1. Get Over Yourself — Happiness podcaster Laurie Santos on what works to get out of your head and let go of personal optimization:

   1. Flow state: e.g. writing, weaving, photography

   2. Meditation: detach from your own thinking

   3. Engrossing physical activity: Running, martial arts, even metal detection

   4. Psychedelics: I endorse

   5. Journaling: Put the thoughts on paper, they leave you alone.

   6. Team sports: Yes, even pickleball 😋

   7. Collective culture: concerts, movie theaters, book clubs

2. My Year as a Hot Girl for Hire by Eliza McLamb — An entertaining and depressing look at how a witty college grad became a well-paid ghost-writing messenger for OnlyFans influencers. Lonely men pay to chat with women they believe are hot influencers. Speaking of which, check out this fascinating/depressing Bloomberg documentary on “Love.ai” (starting at 10:50):

3. Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality. New McKinsey report on the social and economic implications of demographic change. Fascinating throughout.

4. A new CBO report projects US deaths will exceed births in 2033, earlier than originally forecast. (Very readable, as far as government reports go.) Meanwhile, China’s population shrank for the third straight year.

5. Singapore is turning to AI to care for its rapidly aging population. By 2030, one in four people in Singapore will be over 65. So they’re using microphones and AI to detect when older people are sad and then giving them AI robots for company. 😬

Parasocial relationships with care robots can worsen loneliness in the long term if the robots replace interaction with humans. “When technology fills the care deficit and starts replacing real human connection, that should concern us.”

Could we try something more human, like:

6. Care communities that blend senior living with college campuses and daycare centers offer an alternative for a more social generation of retirees. Bloomberg profiles Belong Villages and other “care communities” that combine elder care and daycare centers for busy parents. They feature Home Match, which connects empty-nesters with spare rooms and college students in Berkeley.

7. RMI’s latest report on the energy transition: temperatures are rising fast while the cost of solar and battery components has come down nearly 50% in the past year, blowing past previous forecasts.

8. American ‘Oligarchy’ Decried by Biden Gained $1.5 Trillion in His Term — It was a very good four years for the richest 0.1% of the U.S. But it was also pretty good for the bottom 90%. Also, how crazy that total US household wealth has grown 8x since 1989!! Even Galbraith would have been shocked by today’s “Affluent Society.”

9. It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism — Scott Alexander admits that he loses a bit of credibility every time he earnestly considers the economic implications of infinite AI robots smarter than humans. This essay is as enjoyable for how his mind works as the wild scenarios he explores.

10. Ants vs. humans: Solving the piano-mover puzzle: "People stand out for individual cognitive abilities while ants excel in cooperation." — Finally, some clever researchers challenged ants and humans to move a large object without verbal communication and the ants won.

A quote I liked

“The dumber the disagreements, the better the world actually is.”

~ Morgan Housel

True:

Have a great weekend!

David