Rajesh Jain

Walter Williams (1998): “How about tariffs saving jobs? That’s kind of true, but they’re saved at the expense of other jobs. Steel-tariff restrictions might save jobs for steelworkers, but they destroy other jobs. Steel tariffs raise steel prices. Thus, steel-using companies – like tractor, refrigerator, and car manufacturers – face higher production costs. Higher costs weaken their ability to compete both domestically and internationally. Politicians love this. Steelworker beneficiaries of tariffs will be eternally grateful and know whom to vote for. The invisible victims in steel-using industries won’t know why they are unemployed.” [via CafeHayek]

Jason Lemkin: “So what’s better, inbound or outbound? Outbound lets you pick who to go after.  At the right level in an organization.  Inbound?  You get who you get, at least at first, when they inbound. But one big difference is that an inbound lead is more likely to be “in market” now, or close.  They are likely to be interested in buying now or reasonably soon.  Outbound?  That’s a crap shoot. Because you’re lucky if even 10% of your potential, total customer base is “in market” right now.  It’s often much less, often 5% or less…Marketers know part of their job is to keep a vendor top of mind until they are in market. To keep moving folks down the funnel, even folks who may not buy for 1, 2, even 3+ years.”

Arnold Kling: “Fundamentally, there are too many people on a college campus who don’t belong there…This country is sending way too many young people to college. Instead, they should be going to training programs to become allied health professionals, or electricians, or solar panel installers, or something.”

NYTimes: “Shopping center landlords [in the US] have found themselves in a wholly unfamiliar position: For the first time in 20 years, demand for retail space outstrips supply. That demand has soared recently and, after years of muted construction and a purge of weak-performing properties, met a retail market with less available space. Properties that survived the purge signed up tenants that would draw more shoppers and give them more reason to linger. That meant more restaurants and venues that promote recreational experiences, like ax throwing and, more recently, pickleball. It also meant less space for traditional retailers that weren’t performing as well, like bookstores and apparel brands.”

Andy Kessler: “Why are governments so bad at execution? Accountability and incentives. There are no prices or profits, just elusive cost benefits estimated in simple spreadsheets any first-year investment banker could fudge. But these public-works projects are well intentioned, right? Hardly. Good luck finding all the hidden agendas, political back scratching and paid-off donors. Or, in the case of student loans, bribes to voters. Getting re-elected is how politicians measure the success of government work vs. private-sector profits. Those profits from each private-sector project or product provide capital that pays for the next important project. In perpetuity. Profits also provide guidance to markets that fund great ideas and kill off bad ones. It’s Darwinism vs. kleptocracy. Sadly, politicians and industrial policy will always fund dumb things.”

WSJ: ““The Laws of Connection” features Mr. Robson’s 13 principles for forming robust social ties. They include “praise people generously,” “ask for help when you need it,” and “be civil and curious in disagreements.” While some seem obvious, Mr. Robson, author of “The Intelligence Trap” and “The Expectation Effect,” notes that we frequently neglect them. He writes: “Every time we engage with another person, we make decisions that could either bring greater understanding and affection, or continued distance and isolation. As a result of our brains’ biases, we all too often choose the latter path.” One such bias is known as “the liking gap,” which describes the tendency to leave social interactions assuming that the individuals we met liked us less than we liked them. Mr. Robson wants readers to unlearn this false perception and find the confidence to build on connections, an especially useful strategy in the workplace.”

Arm CEO Rene Haas: “A really simple AI application that I use is to remove people from photographs. I’ll take pictures of my kids, my grandkids, my friends, and someone will photobomb. And you can just clean that stuff up. With [Google Photos] Magic Eraser, you can do that. Crazy simple, but that’s AI. But the areas that I personally find far more interesting are drug research and medical. A very simple example: You’re ill, you go to the pharmacy, they prescribe some medicine to you, and you look at the medicine and the side effects are as generic as it can be. That seems like something that, if the doctor knew my DNA genome sequence and would be able to map out exactly which drugs will give me what kind of reaction, knowing exactly my background and profile, that would be compelling…Another interesting example is drug research. How long does it take to develop a new drug? Ten years. That can be cut in half, it can be cut by two-thirds by using AI. That to me is incredibly exciting.”

FT: “The global population has doubled over the past 50 years to 8bn. Our species now produces over $100 trillion of output per annum in current prices. And this stuff sloshes around with an ease that was unknown in the middle of the last century. Thanks to shipping containers, successive tariff-cutting rounds and the mutation of once-communist countries into prolific exporters, almost anything can get almost anywhere. So, albeit with more friction, can people. Migrants constitute a larger share of the world’s population than in 1960. Given all this, there should be a multitude of what I am going to call “total cities”. A total city is one in which a person can find almost literally anything: any cuisine, at low, middle and extortionate price points; any art form, exhibited or performed to world-class standard; any language spoken, not in scattered households but in communities of appreciable size. If you are dating in a total city, you might go out with someone from each continent in one calendar year without pausing to notice the fact.”

WSJ: “Google…is rapidly expanding a one-year-old product, called Green Light, that will create “green waves”—that is, one green light after another—in 14 cities where the system is already deployed, says Juliet Rothenberg, product lead of Climate AI, part of Google Research. And research from the University of Michigan suggests these kinds of systems could actually save traffic agencies money, making it a no-brainer to adopt them. The secret sauce is that none of these solutions requires new hardware. Instead, they use data gathered directly from new, internet-connected vehicles or from navigation apps on their drivers’ phones to help municipalities adjust the timing of their traffic lights, making them more responsive to real-world traffic patterns. “Instead of installing cameras at an intersection, if we know the trajectory of the vehicle, then the vehicle itself becomes the traffic sensor,” says Henry Liu, who leads the research team at the University of Michigan.”

Nate Boaz on his new book, Running Toward Fire: Following the Warrior Path : “As I experienced challenges and crucible life experiences, I had a central question: Why do some go through those types of experiences and grow from them, while others self-destruct? As a business executive, I now realize we all struggle with it. We are busy—all action and no reflection. Instead, we should allow ourselves time to process and work through challenges and traumas healthily, and I hope the book will show people how to do so…[A] lesson I learned is about the character traits critical for effective leadership. It’s a balance of humility and courage—it’s not enough to have one and not the other. I learned to have the humility to not brag about the past and the courage to not rest on my laurels, remain curious, and recognize that I need other people to achieve amazing things together.”

WSJ: “Spreadsheets remain a go-to application in today’s workplace, but depending on how they’re used, they can hamstring efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence into operations, chief information officers say. “Organizations are awash in spreadsheets,” said Frank Sicilia, CIO at enterprise software company Egnyte. “I don’t care what it is that you do for a particular organization, somebody’s got a spreadsheet somewhere.”…Data, which can include a company’s transaction records, analytics and other types of proprietary information, is considered to be the backbone of any AI model. That’s because that data is used to teach the AI how to spot patterns and make predictions. But lacking a consistent, verified version of data, also known as a “single source of truth,” is a major problem because enterprises then are uncertain about what data they should analyze and feed into their AI models.”

Charles Blow: “As Evelyn Couch said to Ninny Threadgoode in Fannie Flagg’s “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe”: “I’m too young to be old and too old to be young. I just don’t fit anywhere.” I think about this line often, this feeling of being out of place, particularly in a culture that obsessively glorifies youth and teaches us to view aging as an enemy. No one really tells us how we’re supposed to age, how much fighting against it and how much acceptance of it is the right balance. No one tells us how we’re supposed to feel when the body grows softer and the hair grayer, how we’re supposed to consider the craping of the skin or the wrinkles on the face that make our smiles feel unfortunate…Aging, as I see it, is a gift, and I will receive it with gratitude.”

NYTimes: “A story can entertain and inform; it can also deceive and manipulate. Perhaps few stories are as seductive as the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves — those reasonable, principled creatures so many of us presume ourselves to be. As Annalee Newitz writes in “Stories Are Weapons,” propaganda is premised on exploiting the discrepancy between surface beliefs and unconscious motives. A clever propagandist can get any number of people who see themselves as invariably kindhearted to betray their ideals. Newitz gives the example of anti-immigration campaigns: Make humans so fearful that even pious, churchgoing grandmothers will countenance rounding up their fellow humans in detention camps.”

Vasant Dhar: “Stories are incredibly powerful, but creating a good story is an art that is shaped from within, forcing us to connect the dots into a coherent arc.  The creator of TED, Chris Anderson, describes it well in his book on public speaking, but it applies equally to writing. I wrote my TED talk multiple times before testing it on a few audiences, and memorized it because every word was deliberately chosen, although I allowed myself some wiggle room during the talk based on what I was sensing from the audience. One of the hardest tasks for scientists and business people is coming up with the right story. A trading strategy that tells a story is a lot more compelling to an investor than one that just presents the numbers. In investing, a good story not only explains the numbers, but has predictive power – it predicts the future numbers as well. In other words, the story establishes expectations about the future.”

Idris Elba: “If you always tell the truth, you’ll never have to lie again.”

Eric Yuan: “I think an AI avatar is essentially just an AI version of myself, right? Essentially, in order to listen to the call but also to interact with a participant in a meaningful way. Let’s say the team is waiting for the CEO to make a decision or maybe some meaningful conversation, my digital twin really can represent me and also can be part of the decision making process. We’re not there yet, but that’s a reason why there’s limitations in today’s LLMs. Everyone shares the same LLM. It doesn’t make any sense. I should have my own LLM — Eric’s LLM, Nilay’s LLM. All of us, we will have our own LLM. Essentially, that’s the foundation for the digital twin. Then I can count on my digital twin. Sometimes I want to join, so I join. If I do not want to join, I can send a digital twin to join. That’s the future.”

WSJ on Leo Melamed: “Futures markets aren’t the gambling dens of populist caricature. They let farmers and businesses hedge risk. They let small investors protect themselves against market volatility, and multinational companies grow by providing insurance against currency fluctuation. In 1987 Mr. Melamed launched electronic trading with the Globex system. The change directly threatened the open-outcry system that had dominated the exchanges since their inception. Think of the movie “Trading Places.” Many traders were furious, but the change drove financial markets into the future and preserved the Merc’s prominence in global finance. “Competition is the key,” Mr. Melamed says. “It makes growth happen.” Free markets are out of political fashion these days, though they have lifted billions from poverty. Good for the Chicago museum for recognizing a native son’s contribution to American freedom and prosperity.”

Sheldon Richman: “Democracy: the matching up of people who want free stuff with politicians who promise free stuff. Problem: free stuff as they all imagine it does not exist.” [via CafeHayek]

Peter Gray: “Real learning (that is, learning something worth learning) is not passive absorption of information in such a way that all you can do with it is parrot it back. It is always an active process that requires thought and initiative on the part of the learner. Such learning is always a creative act of discovery. Events that the learner experiences—including sometimes words presented by a teacher—are stimuli that can help, as clues to the discovery, but those aren’t what produce the discovery. The learner produces it.” [via Arnold Kling]

Manu Joseph: “Most people are not trained to be alone physically, therefore they are not trained to be alone mentally. I do feel that almost everyone has a conversation with the self, but very few know how to argue with themselves. And the only way to make decisions is to argue with oneself and be acutely aware of all the forces influencing us, especially the shameful and petty ones.”

WSJ: “Productivity guru David Allen established a popular framework for time management in his bestselling 2001 book, “Getting Things Done.” He’s published several follow-ups over the years. “Team,” written with Edward Lamont, recognizes a fundamental shift that has taken place in offices. Knowledge work increasingly demands collaboration: If a team lacks clear purpose, or if its members are overwhelmed, its performance will suffer. That model features five steps for gaining control over your daily schedule: capture, clarify, organize, reflect and engage. The authors guide readers through each one, describing common ways that teams fall short and sensible ways to course-correct. Under “clarify,” they note that responsibilities should be made explicit for team members but that meetings often end without clear mandates. “By asking specifically, ‘What’s the next action on this?’ we’ve watched thousands of teams unblock projects that had become stuck,” they write.”

Benjamin Rogge in 1965: “Whose task is it to create jobs then? No one’s; the jobs to be done are implicit in the wants of the consumers. The only problem is to find the appropriate mechanism for bringing workers and jobs together.” (via CafeHayek)

FT: “Brain-computer interfaces can bypass neural impediments that prevent people who are severely disabled by accident or disease from moving their limbs — and enable those who cannot speak or operate a keyboard to communicate. Within a few years BCIs could develop into a market worth several billion dollars a year treating patients with severe motor impairment through injury or disease, according to Michael Mager, chief executive of Precision Neuroscience, a medical BCI company in the US. The long-term implications are far greater. “We are creating a link between human intelligence and artificial intelligence,” says Mager. “It is possible that the only use for that fundamental connection will be paralysis, but I think it’s very unlikely.””

WSJ: “Mobile e-commerce has for years been hailed as the future of shopping. Online shops as well as airlines and hotels have upgraded and pushed apps or mobile-optimized websites as a way to get our attention—and access to our wallets. By using push notifications, mobile-only deals and other levers, vendors can tempt customers to make quick, unplanned purchases. It’s finally working, as this past holiday season was the first time mobile-revenue share surpassed desktop, reaching 61% on Christmas Day, according to data from Adobe. But that increase masks what shoppers say they want, particularly when it comes to large purchases. They often call these “big-screen purchases”—shopping done on computers. You might not like a retailer’s app or mobile website. You might prefer a web browser with extensions that track coupons or price changes. You might just want a second window open to check a calendar or a map. And the laptop’s extra friction makes shoppers more careful: Many people say they have moved too fast on a phone, accidentally buying the wrong plane tickets.”