Anton Howes: “If an invention appears to be from out of the blue, chances are that you just haven’t seen the full story. Progress does not come in leaps. It is the product of dozens or even hundreds of accumulated, marginal steps.” He describes in detail the invention of the steam engine.
Peggy Noonan: “The biggest political group in America isn’t Democrats or Republicans; it is the unaffiliated. Gallup, which does a monthly poll on political affiliation, reports a record number of Americans say they are politically independent. In March Gallup put the share of independents at 49%—pretty much the same as the two parties put together. A Gallup analyst told Axios that while it’s not unusual for the young to declare themselves independent more than the old, it is unusual that as Gen X and Millenials get older they seem to be staying independent and not joining a party, possibly out of aversion to a perceived stigma of partisanship. An NBC poll in April reported 70% of voters don’t want Mr. Biden to run for re-election, and 60% don’t want Mr. Trump to run again. It said about half of Democrats don’t want Mr. Biden. An AP-NORC poll found 44% of Republicans don’t want Mr. Trump as their nominee. These are huge numbers, and if you believe them—they roughly comport with my observations, so I do—then the predicates for a successful third party are there.”
James Pethokoukis: “While AI and computers can certainly process information and make decisions more quickly than humans, they lack the ability to discover and process knowledge in the same way that markets do. Econ 101: Markets are decentralized systems in which prices act as signals to coordinate the actions of millions of buyers and sellers. Prices reflect the subjective valuations of consumers and producers. Importantly, they allow for the discovery of new information about what goods and services are in demand and how to produce them efficiently. AI and computers cannot discover new information or adapt to changing circumstances in the same way that markets can…AI doesn’t have the same incentives as entrepreneurs. It doesn’t have to worry about making a profit or losing money. As a result, AI isn’t as likely to make the same efficient decisions as entrepreneurs. When an entrepreneur makes a mistake, they lose money. This loss provides them with critical feedback that helps them to make better decisions in the future.”
Telegraph: “India has a much bigger burden of diabetes than hitherto assumed, researchers said in a study released on Thursday that has found that nearly a quarter of the people it sampled in Bengal had prediabetes, and were thus at the risk of developing diabetes. The study, the first to specifically generate a metabolic health report card for India’s population, estimates that India has 101 million people with diabetes — about 44 per cent higher than the figure of 70 million indicated by earlier studies. An additional 136 million people nationwide have prediabetes, a health condition marked by elevated blood sugar levels, among whom a large fraction is expected to advance to diabetes. “Not everyone with prediabetes gets diabetes, but the conversion rate from prediabetes to diabetes among Indians and South Asians is among the fastest in the world,” said Viswanathan Mohan, chief of diabetes research at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF), Chennai, and a principal investigator of the study.”
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks: “As they are becoming adults, a lot of people become more intense in their loyalties toward brands nurtured when they were kids. Forty percent of our annual revenue comes from people aged 18 and older. I could easily see it being 50% five years from now. The heart and soul of our adult fan business is delivering to 30, 40, 50-plusers the toys of their dreams from when they were kids. With Dungeons & Dragons, most people start playing at the age of 11 or 12 and never stop playing even when they are a 49-year-old CEO of a company like me. I still play about once a month…Digital and physical toys and game products will live together. A toy helps you develop, explore your imagination and play with others. I don’t see a world where moms and dads don’t want to get toys for their kids. Certainly not in my lifetime.”
