*Lost Worlds* Investing

*Lost Worlds*

The author is Patrick Wyman, and the subtitle is How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World.  An excellent book, it is a survey of (mostly) pre-Sumerian times, what we know about them, a...

October 13, 2026
“I have no mouth and I must scream” Investing

“I have no mouth and I must scream”

Worth a reread, here is a new report from the front: Our experiments suggest that small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial IoT devices, like smart o...

October 13, 2026
Michael Woodford, Nobel Laureate Banking

Michael Woodford, Nobel Laureate

I think of Michael Woodford as the kind of economist who studies something very specific very intensively and tries to get it just right.  But in his case he is not studying something small and irrele...

October 12, 2026
Robert E. Hall, Nobel Laureate Economy

Robert E. Hall, Nobel Laureate

Alex has already covered this, I will add a few remarks. First, every Bob Hall paper is interesting!  Only a handful of economists can say the same.  Every paper has an idea, and some sort of novel co...

October 12, 2026
Michael Woodford Wins Nobel Banking

Michael Woodford Wins Nobel

No one since Milton Friedman has done more to shape how central bankers think about their jobs than Michael Woodford. Woodford’s Interest and Prices (2003) has been called the central bankers’ bible. ...

October 12, 2026
Okie-dokie, Casey Handmer edition Investing

Okie-dokie, Casey Handmer edition

I’ve been prototyping an automated peer review project. With current models you get human level peer review for about $0.10 of tokens. For $5 you can rederive every result, check every statistical inf...

October 12, 2026
Sky Roomba! Investing

Sky Roomba!

I bought a robot window cleaner. I have some high windows which need a ladder just to get the bottom and with this I can just start the robot at the bottom, it cleans the window and then returns to th...

October 11, 2026
The economics of agents Economy

The economics of agents

From Patrick Collison: Assorted things I’ve been mulling over regarding agents in the economy: • Companies are in some sense the original superintelligence. It’s often the case that they can use their...

October 11, 2026
The origin of risk Economy

The origin of risk

From the QJE, by Alexandr Kopytov, Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel, and Zebang Xu: We propose a tractable model in which risk, at both the micro and macro levels, is endogenous and driven by incentives. ...

October 09, 2026