Last week I posted a new paper with Patrick Norrick: “Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World.” We chose the title deliberately. No society in history has experienced the fertility levels now seen in South Korea, China, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, and many other countries. Our knowledge of the causes (and of the economic consequences) remains far more limited than most public discussion acknowledges. Much of what we write is, at best, educated conjecture. The paper also struggles against a space limit. We wrote 20,000 words, far from the 250,000 or so we would need to address some issues in more detail (if I had the time and resources to hide away for a year, I could do that, but not now). That means some ideas are only sketched. Nonetheless, we emphasize several important points. First, fertility has fallen very fast everywhere: rich and poor countries, east and west, north and south, conservative and liberal societies, religious and non-religious societies (with the exception of the Jewish population of Israel; fertility has also collapsed among the Muslim population within the pre-1967 borders), you name it. Even in sub-Saharan Africa we see fast and unprecedented drops in fertility (alas, from a high initial level). Second, and this is really interesting, the fertility collapse has been concentrated in poor and lower-middle-income countries much more than in rich countries. By now, income per capita and fertility are positively correlated within OECD countries. We conjecture this will hold globally in a few decades. Third, and related to the second point, the fertility collapse has been concentrated among poor and lower-middle-income women within countries. In countries such as the U.S., the rich and highly educated now have more children than the poor and less educated. Fourth, we document why we do not understand the data from the U.N. World Population Prospects. See, for example, Tables A.1 and A.2. Fifth, we explain why some proposed mechanisms struggle when confronted with the data. A more subtle point is at work here. Many commentators do not seem to understand the difference between proximate causes and ultimate causes. Yes, births might have gone down because fewer women are in long-run relationships. That is the proximate cause. But you need to explain why fewer women are in long-run relationships (the ultimate cause), and saying that they spend more years in school, to take one example, does not get us very far. Why do they spend more years in school? Once you start down the whole chain of reasoning, things become much harder than they seem. The paper can be found here: sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Demog… Comments always welcome!

Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted of murder, therefore he should be freed. The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer. That is the truth.

My Grok Bot just paid its own salary. Which is completely insane. I gave it one job... Win back churned customers. It: → Found everyone who left in the last 6 months → Emailed them → Won several back → Collected their feedback Then overnight... → Analysed why they left → Built a 5-step plan to improve the community It has already covered its cost. This is getting ridiculous.

WE ARE NOT THE SAME! SAVAGE BASTARDS 🤬

grok bot is literally the closest to a real life Jarvis it can literally start a business, ship software and make you go viral all at once here's how you do it (in 4 mins) 1. install grok bot and make your chief of staff (tony soprano) 2.give it the 'Digital Chief of Staff Prompt' prompt 3.give it access to X, Stripe and Github 4. you are done just paste the article and give it to your chief of staff no matter what it will be the most productive thing you do this week

Elon is correct. Also, NPCs will loose their mind over Elon's post because they were told what to believe and did NOT look into the facts of the case and prefer to be guided by emotions, not truth & reason. I posted about this on Patreon at the start of 2025. Here's a clip:

OpenClaw vs. Hermes vs. Grok @bot, clearly explained: All three let you set up an agent with a specific job, and it keeps its files and logins between sessions instead of starting fresh. OpenClaw and Hermes are self-hosted, so the machine can be a laptop, a VPS, or a container that someone already pays for and can log into. Grok Bot runs on a machine SpaceXAI provisions and operates. It gives one computer per account rather than one per agent. Every Bot on that account reads the same files and carries the same browser logins, so handing work between two Bots does not require a re-login or file transfer. Hermes and OpenClaw isolate agents instead, and their memory sits in plain files anyone can open and edit. Hermes goes furthest since the agent writes its own skills and a background curator deletes the ones nobody uses. Grok Bot has the lowest-friction path to a new skill in my opinion. You can record up to ten minutes of one pass through a workflow, and it can then turn that into a reusable set of instructions and store it as a skill. Moving on, OpenClaw and Hermes run on any model provider. Grok Bot runs on Grok. I prepared the graphic below that has the full breakdown, from hosting and memory through to what each of them costs to run. And if you want to dive deeper, I covered Grok Bot in full in a masterclass, including the shared computer, memory, skills, routines, and the macOS setup. Read it below.

Elon Musk is the single most important driver of the vibe shift across the West. He allowed people to speak. He reversed the mind virus. X provided the antibodies for the mind virus. They are working. It was an extraordinary achievement, one on par with his other work.

This is why @Grok Build is a game changer. I had never used Blender in my life, yet on Day 1, with zero experience, I created this iPhone render from scratch with the help of Grok Build.

This is actually insane. The website has HUNDREDS of FREE Grok Bots available for download. I went through the entire site and dug out the top 10 BEST Grok Bots you need to install now. 🧵: 10 Insanely powerful Grok Bots (install prompts included).👇

Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted of murder, therefore he should be freed. The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer. That is the truth.

$2.7 TRILLION in improper payments has been reported by executive agencies since 2003 — per GAO, payments made in error, in the wrong amount, or without proper documentation. If 'improper payments' were a country, it would be the 8th largest economy in the world — larger than the 2024 GDP of Italy, Canada, or Russia (IMF). And that's just what gets reported. GAO estimates the government loses between $233 and $521 BILLION every year to fraud alone — a figure Treasury Secretary Bessent has cited as up to 10% of the entire federal budget. Congress has passed five separate laws targeting the problem since 2002 — and improper payments still went from $35 billion to $236 billion a year. The fix: track every dollar in public, fund outcomes, and judge auditors on money recovered — not reports filed. ciceroinstitute.org/blog/gov…

Another sad factor in the whole episode was Chauvin immediately called in for an ambulance when Floyd started complaining. The ambulance was about three minutes away but when they drove by they worried for their safety because of the crowd, so they went and parked somewhere for 17 minutes. Floyd was on the ground for 9 minutes. If not for the crowd freaking out over a lawful arrest Floyd would have OD'd in the back of the ambulance and Derek Chauvin would still be eating donuts instead of prison hoodslop today.