Economist on third-wave economics: “When the pandemic started last year bureaucrats began studying dashboards of “high-frequency” data, such as daily airport passengers and hour-by-hour credit-card-spending. In recent weeks they have turned to new high-frequency sources, to get a better sense of where labour shortages are worst or to estimate which commodity price is next in line to soar. Economists have seized on these new data sets, producing a research boom. In the process, they are influencing policy as never before.”
Anticipating the Unintended: “What we have now is a gradual shift to a more dominant single-party system with a greater focus on what can be called the One Nation, One “X” philosophy. This sounds seductive in the aggregate especially if your definition of the imagined construct of the Indian nation aligns with what’s being promoted. Will it make democracy stronger? The odds are stacked against it if history is any guide.”
How David Perell writes an essay: by Dan Shipper. “How do you find something interesting to write about? Or, put another way, how do you make your writing interesting? David Perell knows. It’s an ingredient called surprise. He wraps it into each sentence of his essays. He gathers it by constant searching, and he searches by echolocation. He throws out his candidates in conversations, and on Twitter at a prodigious, unrestrained clip. He’s looking for ideas and ways of expressing them that raise eyebrows, that generate so many reactions they can’t be ignored. To truly find surprise, it turns out, you have to find it in someone else’s eyes.” More from David Perell: “I write first thing in the morning for 90 minutes each day, before I do anything else like opening email or checking social media. I don’t have a word count I’m shooting for. I just focus on filling the time with distraction-free writing. I like the Neil Gaiman line where he says: “I think it’s really just a solid rule for writers. You don’t have to write. You have permission to not write, but you don’t have permission to do anything else.” Once my 90-minute timer goes off, I can stop writing whenever I want.”
