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Call Center Jobs Are Declining, but 14,000 Calls Show Humans Still Outperform AI
Bold Agent Kit analyzes roughly 14,000 inbound calls and finds human receptionists delivered about four times stronger intake outcomes than AI voice agents on the metrics they tracked, even as call-center employment trends down—arguing deployment quality still matters more than raw automation.
7 min · 1,723 words
America Didn’t Lose Its Rare Earth Industry. It Sold It.
Kirsten Asdal, Tom Koch and Tao Tan argue in Lawfare that the U.S. rare earth chokepoint was created by market logic, since China prices for control rather than profit, and that rebuilding American supply needs asymmetric financing where government absorbs downside risk and shares in the upside.
11 min · 2,592 words
How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet
Amanda Shendruk investigates how Amazon’s marketplace and advertising tools push prices up across the web — not just on Amazon — via seller fees, Buy Box dynamics, and price-matching ripples.
5 min · 1,065 words
Oxide Computer Company announces a $445M Series D, opening with the milestone that ordinary operations made it pay income tax this spring, and explains why a profitable hardware company still raises: to keep accepting new demand, expand manufacturing capacity and build an enduring company.
3 min · 694 words
a16z's Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov and David Borecky argue AI is reshaping the CFO role from accountant to banker to builder: data stops being the bottleneck, finance engineers build their own tools, teams get smaller, planning becomes continuous, controls become product features, and finance's mandate grows.
9 min · 2,003 words
Why Texas Is Making Data Centers Wait
Ryan McEntush of a16z explains why Texas paused new data center interconnections and permits after ERCOT's large-load queue hit 474 GW, much of it speculative, walks through grid interconnection, bring-your-own-power and flexibility as paths to hundreds of gigawatts, and argues for better rules, incentives and community trust instead of a blanket pause.
25 min · 5,707 words
The AI boom is making the world's cheapest smartphones disappear
Rest of World's Kinling Lo reports how AI data centers are soaking up memory chip supply, pushing phone makers to raise prices and drop their most affordable sub-$150 models, and what that means for people in lower-income markets who depend on cheap smartphones to get online.
4 min · 889 words
Alex Tabarrok examines a Harvard Environmental Health paper linking Costco density to cancer rates—and why the correlation likely reflects confounding rather than warehouse clubs causing disease.
1 min · 310 words
So You Think You Could Be An Electrician?
Contractor Jesse Smith pushes back on the viral “trades are an AI-proof six-figure escape hatch” narrative, weighing wages, injury risk, internal blue-collar status hierarchies, and how automation may still reshape construction work.
11 min · 2,474 words
[No] Use for Humans in the Age of AI
Alexander Schepanovski reads Anthropic’s 2030 AI-economy scenarios and asks what “use for humans” remains when knowledge work collapses—arguing power, scarcity, and who owns the robots matter more than productivity slogans.
8 min · 1,898 words
Our World in Data's Hannah Ritchie shows that while global electricity generation per person has grown by more than 50% this century, the UK's peaked in 2003 and has fallen by over a third, explaining the roles of deindustrialization and energy-efficiency gains such as LED lighting and appliance standards.
1 min · 208 words
How Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse
HOA Spy indexes Florida association filings to show how liens, foreclosure suits, and association standing overlap with the housing crisis: higher carrying costs, thinner supply when units sit under association enforcement, and displacement risk for owners who fall behind.
10 min · 2,407 words
How Singapore's government-run dating service works, and why it won't solve the dating crisis
Kai walks through GovTech’s FirstDate pilot—questionnaire, Singpass verification, Gale-Shapley matching cycles—and argues why a government matchmaker is unlikely to fix Singapore’s deeper dating and fertility challenges.
18 min · 4,079 words
On the escalation of war in EthiopiaThe coming proxy wars will be devastating for civilians and do little to improve governance and human welfare in Ethiopia and the wider Horn
Ken Opalo analyses renewed large-scale fighting in northern Ethiopia between the federal government and TPLF and Fano forces, arguing these are wars of choice driven by historical grievance and elite hubris, with outside powers turning them into proxy conflicts.
11 min · 2,440 words
Has AI impacted the labor market yet?
Alex Imas and Jacob Schaal survey the empirical evidence on whether generative AI has already shifted employment, wages, and task composition—separating strong claims from what the data currently support.
23 min · 5,183 words
Software Goldilocks: the market for software is expanding but is the System of Record dead?
Sam Gerstenzang argues AI expands SaaS spend while splitting value into small opinionated point tools and large full-service “does the work” products—squeezing classic mid-market systems of record from both sides.
2 min · 520 words
Bryan Caplan vs Effective Altruism
Walter Veit challenges Bryan Caplan's recent criticism of effective altruism, arguing the debate should turn on arguments, reasons, and evidence rather than dismissive pseudo-philosophy.
6 min · 1,271 words
You Are No Longer Invited to DinnerThe death of the American host
Derek Thompson traces a half-century collapse in Americans hosting friends at home—from 42% monthly in 1975 to 12% in 2026—and weighs harried dual-earner households, screens, and other explanations for the great disinvitation.
10 min · 2,257 words
I Would Like the Value of My Home to Rise, While My Property Taxes Fall
Timothy Taylor's Conversable Economist discusses David Schleicher's paper "The Great American Property Tax Freak Out" on why rising home values have driven US states to cut or abolish property taxes for owner-occupiers, and argues the ironic result is still higher housing prices for future buyers.
3 min · 687 words
Historians often blame drought, famine, and invaders for the Late Bronze Age collapse—but that can’t explain why the empires never came back. Patrick Fitzsimmons argues for a deeper structural story.
14 min · 3,253 words