NYT on the metaverse: “Crypto people say they’re building it. Gamers might already be living in it. The art world is cashing in on it. Web veterans are trying to save it…As a buzzword, the metaverse refers to a variety of virtual experiences, environments and assets that gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic. Together, these new technologies hint at what the internet will become next.”
Donald Boudreaux: “Here’s a basic rule of this society: It owes you nothing, for it is nothing more – or less! – than an astonishingly complicated web of ongoing interactions among billions of individuals. And only an individual can owe anything to anyone. Unless you identify a flesh-and-blood person who received something from you in return for that person’s as-yet-unfulfilled promise to give you something in exchange, no one owes you anything.”
Shankar Acharya on the greatest general of the 20th century: “His name doesn’t crop up in readily available rankings, but his under-resourced and underfed army prevailed over the world’s mightiest super power… I refer, of course, to Vo Nguyen Giap of Vietnam…[He] ended a century of French colonial rule at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and then went on to prevail over the world’s mightiest super power in 1975 to unite independent Vietnam.”