AND THE LIVIN’ IS EASY:
The non-effect of tariffs on manufacturing employment (Michael R. Strain, AEI)
2025
…AND CHEAPER…:
Your Fridge Is Bigger and Cheaper Today, Thanks to Global Trade and Innovation (Jeremy Horpedahl, 11/26/25, Cato)
In 1984, the average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers (representing about 80 percent of the private workforce) stood at roughly $8.32. Acquiring the Kenmore would thus require approximately 163 hours of labor, equivalent to more than three full workweeks.
By contrast, a comparable 2024 model from a major retailer like Home Depot—matching size and features—retailed for $998 in nominal terms in 2024, when I last checked it, a direct reduction without inflation adjustment. With average hourly earnings in 2024 at about $29.85 for the same worker category, the labor investment drops to around 33 hours. In relative terms, refrigerators have become nearly five times more affordable, reflecting efficiencies from global supply chains, automation, and competition.
Interestingly, that fridge has increased in price sharply since 2024, almost certainly in part because of trade policy, and is currently listed at $1,658—even so, it is still much cheaper when measured in time prices, requiring just 53 hours of labor, compared with 163 hours in 1984 (and you can probably find a Black Friday deal on it too).
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce (MacKenzie Sigalos, 11/26/25, CNBC)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday released a study that found that artificial intelligence can already replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market, or as much as $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, health care and professional services.
DEFLATION WORKS:
How Milei made austerity popular (Julieta Casas, 11/20/25, Englesberg Ideas)
How has Milei managed to maintain popular support? A comparison with the country’s past austerity administrations suggests two possible reasons. First, while the president’s ‘chainsaw’ economic policies have cut into the real incomes of broad segments of the population and led to a stagnation of economic growth, they did so early on in his administration. After a harsh initial shock, the mid-term elections coincided with a rebound of the economy, potentially aiding the president’s electoral support. What’s more, a drastic reduction of inflation has worked to his advantage.
THAT WAS EASY:
3D-printable concrete alternative hardens in three days, not four weeks (Ben Coxworth, November 25, 2025, new Atlas)
Although we’ve heard a lot about how 3D-printing concrete homes speeds up the construction process, you still have to wait up to 28 days for the concrete to sufficiently cure. A new printable substitute, however, is ready to go in just three days.
THERE’LL BE TIME ENOUGH FOR COUNTING:
What’s next for AlphaFold: A conversation with a Google DeepMind Nobel laureate: “I’ll be shocked if we don’t see more and more LLM impact on science,” says John Jumper (Will Douglas Heaven, November 24, 2025, MIT Technology Review)
Proteins are made from strings of amino acids that chemical forces twist up into complex knots. An untwisted string gives few clues about the structure it will form. In theory, most proteins could take on an astronomical number of possible shapes. The task is to predict the correct one.
Jumper and his team built AlphaFold 2 using a type of neural network called a transformer, the same technology that underpins large language models. Transformers are very good at paying attention to specific parts of a larger puzzle.
But Jumper puts a lot of the success down to making a prototype model that they could test quickly. “We got a system that would give wrong answers at incredible speed,” he says. “That made it easy to start becoming very adventurous with the ideas you try.”
They stuffed the neural network with as much information about protein structures as they could, such as how proteins across certain species have evolved similar shapes. And it worked even better than they expected. “We were sure we had made a breakthrough,” says Jumper. “We were sure that this was an incredible advance in ideas.”What he hadn’t foreseen was that researchers would download his software and start using it straight away for so many different things. Normally, it’s the thing a few iterations down the line that has the real impact, once the kinks have been ironed out, he says: “I’ve been shocked at how responsibly scientists have used it, in terms of interpreting it, and using it in practice about as much as it should be trusted in my view, neither too much nor too little.” […]
AlphaFold was designed to be used for a range of purposes. Now multiple startups and university labs are building on its success to develop a new wave of tools more tailored to drug discovery. This year, a collaboration between MIT researchers and the AI drug company Recursion produced a model called Boltz-2, which predicts not only the structure of proteins but also how well potential drug molecules will bind to their target.
Last month, the startup Genesis Molecular AI released another structure prediction model called Pearl, which the firm claims is more accurate than AlphaFold 3 for certain queries that are important for drug development. Pearl is interactive, so that drug developers can feed any additional data they may have to the model to guide its predictions.
AlphaFold was a major leap, but there’s more to do, says Evan Feinberg, Genesis Molecular AI’s CEO: “We’re still fundamentally innovating, just with a better starting point than before.”
ALL IN THE WRISTS:
The Alabama Boy Makes Good: Hank Aaron, Legend of the Negro World ( Gerald Early, October 31, 2025, Common Reader)
I went to Connie Mack Stadium, Shibe Park to the older generation, fairly often as a kid, not to see the Phillies but to see the opposing team, especially the Dodgers (to see Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch), the Pirates (to see outfielder Roberto Clemente), the Giants (to see Willie Mays and the majestic Juan Marichal), and the Braves (to see Aaron but also to see pitcher Warren Spahn and Eddie Matthews). I saw Aaron hit a home run at a game I attended. I will never forget how hard he hit the ball, and how effortless and graceful his swing. Oh, those magical wrists of his! I imitated that swing for a while when I played youth baseball. It made my wrists and forearms ache. That did not dissuade me. I finally stopped when one of the coaches I would hit better if I stopped doing a poor imitation of Aaron. My hands were big, so he would yell at me to just use my hands to hit, not my wrists. “Don’t lead with your wrists,” he would shout, “Just let your wrists follow your hands.” He was right. When I stopped imitating Aaron, I did hit better. I guess Aaron’s way of hitting worked for Aaron and probably nobody else, certainly not for star-struck kids of small talent like me. That is the way it is with great hitters, sui generis.
One probable cause of Aaron’s nearly unique wrist strength must have been the fact that he hit cross-handed (right below left) when he was a young player. (try taking a swing that way and you’ll get the picture)
ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls: A new feature on Elon Musk’s X has given deeper insight into the online “America First” movement. (Jack Revell, Nov. 23 2025, Daily Beast)
Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.
In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe.
The funniest exposure since the Venona files.
MORALITY IS A FUNCTION OF BEING OBSERVED:
Seeing a Superhero on the Subway Makes People More Likely to Surrender Their Seats (Jake Currie November 21, 2025, Nautilus)
The researchers found that 38 percent of passengers were altruistic enough to offer up their seats without Batman watching, but that number jumped to over 67 percent when the Caped Crusader was present.