The Middle Ages may have been more colorful than usually thought, based on an inventory of garments belonging to people in medieval Valencia.
Memnon of Rhodes says “There is a subset of the US precariat class that is quickly becoming the new face of genteel poverty — characterized by a combination of high academic achievement and poor financial prospects (think post docs, academics, journalists, nonprofit staff).”. Noah Smith opines “This is the Bernie base. They are people who *could* get high paying jobs thanks to their general intelligence and education level, but are downwardly mobile due to some combination of emotional problems, chasing “cool” professions, disdain for the business world, and laziness.”
I note that to the extent these people earn over $150K and lives in dense urban areas, they will be categorized as ‘elites’ according to a categorization used in a widely-circulated Rasmussen survey of political attitudes.
(I never heard the term ‘precariat’ before, but it seems useful)
Bad election narratives, by Musa al-Gharbi, summarized and discussed at the Assistant Village Idiot’s blog.
Glenn Reynolds: Is AI Coming for Your Kids? The example of the kid asking ChatGPT about how cars are made, and then talking with it about counting, is impressive, and there is obviously a lot of value in this kind of thing. But, the possibilities for the ‘nudging’ of political, social, and philosophical attitudes, in the direction desired by the creators of the system, is immense. See my post Stories and Society for some related thoughts.
Canada: the ongoing disaster and the possibilities for change, at Stuart Schneiderman’s blog, along with several other interesting items.
Several discussions going on about the the prospects for manufacturing in America:
Andrew McCalip says “We have an existential manufacturing problem in America.”
Zane Hensperger writes about reindustrialization and especially about machine shops.
Bill Waddell has several essays at LinkedIn, including Manufacturing in the Age of Tariffs, The Ethics of Free Trade, and 12 Million Middle Class Jobs Sacrificed on the Altar of Globalization.
Marc Andreessen says “From near total dominance in manufacturing to near total dominance in technology. What happens if we dominate in both? Let’s find out!”
For contrast, a WSJ article: Factories Aren’t the Future. I do wonder whether, when thinking about factories, the economist who wrote the article visualizes processes like this.
And finally, watch this mountain lion experimenting with a swing.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!