Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- UFC champ Jorge Masvidal tells it like it is on Cuba.

- FBI agent in Governor Whitmer case arrested following domestic incident. The whole FBI kidnapping case here is smelling fishy. 

- We are all investors now. People are living much longer than in the past and at a certain age most people learn to spend less that they make. 

- How China's hacking entered a reckless new phase. Don't trust China - China is asshole!

- Noah Smith expands on Haiti vs Dominican Republic and why the divergence.

Haiti

I've long been fascinated by the differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

One of the most remarkable economic divergences in the world.

In 1950, Haiti was as rich as the Dominican Republic.

In 2018, Haiti was POORER than it was in 1950, while the D.R.'s GDP had increased by a factor of TEN.

These countries are two halves of the SAME ISLAND. - Noah Smith

Geography-wise Haiti and the D.R. are the combined size of Vermont and New Hampshire. Imagine if they spoke French and were so much poorer in Vermont while in New Hampshire they spoke Spanish and were doing much better financially than their neighbor to the west. That's Haiti and the D.R. in a nutshell.

Perhaps the fundamental cause for the differing financial fortunes is the fact that they play baseball in the D.R. and in Haiti they play soccer. One is a sport of individual achievement (just look at the stars like David Ortiz or Pedro Martinez) while the other is a sport of faking injury whenever anyone so much as touches you. 

Perhaps all this woke crap and cancel culture in the US is due to the fact that we've started having our children play soccer. We should fundamentally return to baseball and tackle football for the good of the nation before it's too late. Just saying.  

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Interesting - CERN turns to open access software in response to Microsoft raising its fees

- 5 recommended science summer reading books from Jim Al-Khalili. I'm adding two of them to my Wish List

- Sometimes you do think too much

- Some details are emerging from the shooting of David Ortiz. Life seems to be very cheap in the Dominican Republic. I fully expect the suspects to die in prison before they have a chance to testify against whoever hired them.

- Well worth your time lecture by Russ Roberts on the Hidden Harmony of Everyday Life

- Jordan Peterson announces free speech social media platform Thinkspot. This will be interesting to monitor. You have to pay to be on it but it seems the revenue is shared with content creators.

- Heh Heh

Netherlands Stuns Dominican Republic

The Dutch beat the mighty Dominicans in the WBC. People have been harping on the significance of this upset all morning. In the US, however, this is not the equivalent of Buster Douglas or the 1980 Olympic hockey team. In my opinion this is more akin to Boston College beating the Red Sox in a spring training exhibition game.

Sure the victory meant a lot to the Dutch players but don't you think Boston College players would be similarly pumped if they beat the Red Sox in an exhibition? If you don't think this was an exhibition then explain to me why the Dominican Republic did not have Vlad Guerrero, Francisco Liriano, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano not to mention Alex Rodriguez on the roster. Sure A-Rod started off on the roster but took himself off to have surgery on his hip. If this was truly the championship of the world and not a glorified exhibition - don't you think A-Rod could have put surgery off for a week or two?

The two real lessons to take away from the Dutch victory is confirmation of the cliche that there is no such thing as a sure thing and secondly - never, ever bet on exhibition baseball no matter how much it gussies itself up as legitimate competition.