WSJ: “A healthy breakfast is a good idea for most people, and skipping it to shed pounds probably won’t work. As ever, the details matter. What people eat—and how much—has a big impact over time. A regular breakfast of sugary pastries, for example, could nudge the numbers on the scale upward, whereas a serving of Greek yogurt with berries could make them fall. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the studies casting doubt on breakfast’s weight-loss benefits didn’t take details like those into account. Breakfast may also keep you from eating late at night, which research shows raises the risk of obesity.”
India Dispatch: “At just $4.5, a modest sari sold on Meesho reveals how India’s e-commerce startup is systematically undercutting the giants through pennies saved. A sari seller takes home 300 rupees ($3.5) whether they sell on Meesho, Amazon or Flipkart, but the difference is in what they pay: on Meesho, the combined costs for shipping, payment and promotion total only 77 rupees (90 cents) — about half what Amazon charges and one-third of Flipkart’s fees. This brings the merchant’s cost of doing business down to 20.4% of gross merchandise value, compared to 34-43% on other platforms. This thriftiness works because the typical purchase on Meesho is under $3, a price point that appeals to 85% of its 187 million annual shoppers, most of whom live in India’s smaller cities and towns.”
Arnold Kling on his reading of Anthony Downs’ 1967 book, Inside Bureaucracy: “Downs suggests that workers in a bureaucracy differ in how they are motivated. He says that there are two self-interested types: a climber strives for personal power, income, and prestige; a conserver strives for security….I would say that both climbers and conservers are comfortable with the system as it exists in an organization. Both will be proceduralists in my typology. The difference is that climbers are alert for opportunities to advance, while conservers are more alert to threats to stability… Think of an organization growing along an S curve. At the steep part of the curve, it attracts and retains many climber…But as an organization’s growth slows, for a variety of reasons it becomes less climber-oriented and becomes dominated by conservers.”
FT: “For years, dominance in AI was thought to require vertical integration: controlling everything from foundational models to consumer facing platforms. That logic mirrored Musk’s success in electric vehicles, where end-to-end control over design, manufacturing and distribution brought clear advantages. But that dynamic is now rapidly unravelling, led by China’s tech giants. In a fast-commoditising sector like AI, cost efficiency and integration speed are becoming the main drivers of profit margins and competitiveness. Partnerships can deliver as much value as ownership. Companies that continue to invest in scaling vertically integrated AI empires are likely to find their returns increasingly under pressure.”
Economist: “In “Peak Human”, Mr Norberg charts the rise and fall of golden ages around the world over the past three millennia, ranging from Athens to the Anglosphere via the Abbasid caliphate. He finds that the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.”
