1. The mass market paperback is going away.

2. How many people does the world have?

3. India’s first AI university is opening.

4. Bellman equations on ESPN.

5. Yup (cuss word behind this link).

6. Should women ask men out?

7. On the Claude constitution.  And a Straussian reading?

8. The Chilean cabinet under Kast.

9. Moltbook, the new social network for AIs.  And Astral Codex comments.  And another view.  And some more.  And then some.

10. David Brooks is leaving the NYT (and moving full-time to Atlantic, podcast also, the first link is NYT).

The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Hillary speaks, but she doesn’t listen. She half-absorbs events and the lives of other people, and coughs out a kind of instinctive Reader’s Digest annotated version, but mangles all the details as efficiently as bad AI.

Tweet

… is from page 332 of Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger’s brilliant 2014 book – whose title poses a question to which the book’s lengthy text gives the answer “yes” – Is Administrative Law Unlawful?:

A fundamental advantage of the separation of powers is that it institutionalizes specialized decisionmaking and thereby allows Americans to enjoy all of the advantages of distinct exercises of judgment, will, and force. A breakdown in the distinctions among the three powers was a fundamental part of what traditionally was understood as arbitrary or irrational decisionmaking. From this point of view, specialized decisionmaking is valuable for avoiding a type of arbitrary governance – a type encouraged by the administrative consolidation of powers.

The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.

Tweet

… is from page 260 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:

It used to be said that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Today, taxes are the price we pay so that politicians can buy the votes of those who are feeding at the public trough.

DBx: I’ve one amendment: Despite the frequently encountered claim, taxes were never the price anyone has paid to live in civilized society. Taxes – however necessary you believe them to be – are taken by force in order to fund the use of force. This reality means that taxes are the price we pay for the existing shortfall of our society from being fully civilized. (I believe that I first encountered this refutation of the claim that ‘taxes pay for civilization’ from Ed Crane.)

The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.