Stuff I've found interesting in November

1. Nasubi - a life of prizes. Documents a man who enters a Japanese game show that requires him to live alone for over a year, living only off what he can win from competitions in magazines.

2. A study on what happens when jobs at elite banks and consulting firms disappear - the people who would have gone on to join those banks and firms become entrepreneurs instead, and they’re pretty successful!

3. This great book on CRISPR - Walter Isaacson is a wonderful biographer and this book has a lot of fun stuff in it - moral questions around genetic engineering, a Chinese scientist who genetically engineered kids without asking permission, and a crazy biohacker who tried to edit his own genes.

4. This nice article about the two women who come up with generic drug names.

5. A Marginal Revolution post (mainly with other links) about how concerned we should be about the Omicron variant.

6. A great podcast episode with Tyler Cowen, discussing how he is so productive and original (I’m a sucker for anything that goes into the daily routines and habits of people I find interesting).

7. This article about the future of weight loss.

8. An AstralCodexTen post about the argument that we ought to just take loads of potentially helpful (and almost certainly not harmful) medications on the grounds that the expected value is positive.

9. Not normally a fan of these kinds of cheesy viral videos, but this ‘squid game in real life’ competition by MrBeast was really well done and a great watch for anyone who enjoyed the show.

10. Bruno Maçães on Putin.

11. This great website that lets you see the impacts of certain policies (e.g. how much would poverty fall if I introduced a land value tax and introduced a UBI, very fun to play around with.

12. This paper on nepotistic and editorial bias in academic journals.

13. Some further comments on the Bangladesh mask RCT - makes it appear even less convincing than I thought it was. Serious questions here about how effective masks are.