Effective Altruism Long-term monthly payments and lump sum cash transfers are both effective ways of helping people, but short-term monthly payments are less effective. Long-term monthly payments increase saving and investment, while lump sums cause people to create new businesses with the sudden infusion of capital. Cash transfers don’t reduce work hours (suggesting that they don’t make people lazy or dependent).
I love the piece on the Times. I'd seen a lot of very shallow, hyper-partisan anger on both sides about the whole Tom Cotton controversy, but this is the most thoughtful and compelling argument for "the NYT has become overly infused by politics" that I've seen. Thanks for sharing!
Great line: "Our role, we knew, was to help readers understand such threats, and this required empathetic – not sympathetic – reporting. This is not an easy distinction but good reporters make it: they learn to understand and communicate the sources and nature of a toxic ideology without justifying it, much less advocating it."
I really tried to read the James Bennet piece, but I just could not get through it. The problem is not even that he's right or wrong about the decisions he made when at the Times, or the Times' direction more broadly, but that he seems to greatly overestimate his own importance and that of the Times more broadly.
My general impression of the NYT is that it occasionally publishes some really good investigative journalism, but mostly their national politics coverage is noticeably inferior to WaPo's. And James Bennet wasn't even a news editor! He was just in charge of the opinion page! He was just never as important as he seems to think he is.
It reminds me of my conviction that the very term "cancel culture" is proof that the whole "cancel culture" discussion is overly dominated by elite media figures for whom "you land a cushy TV gig but then your show gets cancelled because you made a joke that didn't land" is the worst thing they can imagine ever happening to a person.
> The 2023 Hugo Award nominating data was recently released. Two works (the Sandman TV show and R. F. Kuang’s Babel) and two authors (Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer) were inexplicably declared ineligible even though they weren’t. It’s believed this is in retaliation for the authors’ criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. The statistics themselves are very fishy.
I love the piece on the Times. I'd seen a lot of very shallow, hyper-partisan anger on both sides about the whole Tom Cotton controversy, but this is the most thoughtful and compelling argument for "the NYT has become overly infused by politics" that I've seen. Thanks for sharing!
Great line: "Our role, we knew, was to help readers understand such threats, and this required empathetic – not sympathetic – reporting. This is not an easy distinction but good reporters make it: they learn to understand and communicate the sources and nature of a toxic ideology without justifying it, much less advocating it."
Wait, the CCP hated Babel too? I never thought I'd agree with them on anything!
Typo: "should to have" should be "should have"
I think you'll love this story
https://mirrorsea.xyz/
I really tried to read the James Bennet piece, but I just could not get through it. The problem is not even that he's right or wrong about the decisions he made when at the Times, or the Times' direction more broadly, but that he seems to greatly overestimate his own importance and that of the Times more broadly.
My general impression of the NYT is that it occasionally publishes some really good investigative journalism, but mostly their national politics coverage is noticeably inferior to WaPo's. And James Bennet wasn't even a news editor! He was just in charge of the opinion page! He was just never as important as he seems to think he is.
It reminds me of my conviction that the very term "cancel culture" is proof that the whole "cancel culture" discussion is overly dominated by elite media figures for whom "you land a cushy TV gig but then your show gets cancelled because you made a joke that didn't land" is the worst thing they can imagine ever happening to a person.
> The 2023 Hugo Award nominating data was recently released. Two works (the Sandman TV show and R. F. Kuang’s Babel) and two authors (Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer) were inexplicably declared ineligible even though they weren’t. It’s believed this is in retaliation for the authors’ criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. The statistics themselves are very fishy.
Update. Leaked emails show they were indeed excluded due to criticisms of the CCP and because of pro-LGBTQ stances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7JaBg1pX_I
I enjoyed the link about meditation, very relatable