The Washington Post’s Andrew Van Dam on the average US doctors' salaries:

The average U.S. physician earns $350,000 a year. Top doctors pull in 10 times that.

I will write more about this later but for now I will just note how frustrating it is to read an article that has a premise and conclusion that I completely agree with (America doesn’t have enough doctors so the ones that it does have are compensated way above average) backed up by mishandled and misreported data (first the article doesn’t say whether the “average” is mean or median — it is the median, which is actually good — then doesn’t explicitly mention that the median in question is of the adjusted gross income at the household level, not of individual compensation: the median total individual income is $265,000).

At least the article linked to the NBER paper with all the data, which in turn completely validated my recent quip about economisits. Frustrating throughout, especially if you try reading the comments.

In a scene right out of The Wire, a man was shot while watching a soccer game in Adams Morgan, right next to our kids' old elementary school. In fact, had we not moved a few months ago, it would have been their current ES — this happened not 500 feet from our old back yard, as the crow files.

So anyway, if you cut the police budget, crime goes up. Who knew? (And yes, this continues to annoy.)

This room-temperature superconductor news has potential to be either really big, or just another footnote in the history of physics, but either way the number of hits I got about it from different sources was interesting:

• RSS feeds: 3
• Everything else: 0

RSS wins! Again.

There is predatory, and then there is predatory:

When Björn Johansson received an email in July 2020 inviting him to speak at an online debate on COVID-19 modeling, he didn’t think twice. “I was interested in the topic and I agreed to participate,” says Johansson, a medical doctor and researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “I thought it was going to be an ordinary academic seminar. It was an easy decision for me.”

…

All the scientists interviewed by Science say Ferensby’s initial messages never mentioned conference fees. When one speaker, Francesco Piazza, a physicist now at the University of Florence, directly asked Ferensby whether the organizers would request a fee, Ferensby replied, “No, we are talking about science and COVID-19.”

But after the events, the speakers were approached by a conference secretary, who asked them to sign and return a license agreement that would give Villa Europa—named in the document as the conference organizer—permission to publish the webinar recordings. Most of the contracts Science has seen state that the researcher must pay the company €790 “for webinar debate fees and open access publication required for the debate proceedings” plus €2785 “to cover editorial work.” These fees are mentioned in a long clause in the last page of the contract, and are written out in words rather than numbers, without any highlighting.

What an absolute nightmare. Predatory journals at least have the decency to ask you for them money up front.

And let’s take a moment to contemplate the ridiculousness of the current academic publishing and conference model. Note that there is nothing unusual in academic conferences requiring attendance fees from speakers. If you have an scientific abstract accepted for oral or poster presentation at ASCO, let’s say, you will still have to pony up for the registration fee. And publication fees for a legitimate open access journal can be north of $3,000. So how is a judge to know whether the organizer’s claims are legitimate?

The difference, of course, is that the good ones — both journals and conferences — don’t solicit submissions; you have to beg them to take your money. Which only makes the situation more ridiculous, not less.

Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic:

I first encountered The Making of the Atomic Bomb in March, when I spoke with an AI researcher who said he carts the doorstop-size book around every day. (It’s a reminder that his mandate is to push the bounds of technological progress, he explained—and a motivational tool to work 17-hour days.) Since then, I’ve heard the book mentioned on podcasts and cited in conversations I’ve had with people who fear that artificial intelligence will doom us all.

I can see the appeal, but calling The Making of… “The Doomer Bible” is uncharitable to both books.

Chris Arnade walking across Japan, part 2:

So the technocrat/policy types look at Japan’s last few decades of relative economic stagnation as a failure, while the Japanese just shrug it off and chalk it up to one of the costs of maintaining their cultural identity.

Haven’t thought about it that way before, but isn’t another country set on preserving its identity also in a period of economic stagnation? Craig Mod noted how and why they are not the same, however, and I like Japan’s prospects better.

Christine Emba for the Washington Post:

It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.

Even so, not all of the changes that have led us to this moment are unequivocally positive. And if left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes, in the form of resentment and radicalization.

The headline is so bad I won’t copy it here, but the article is sound and worth sharing. Good illustrations, too.

Writes The Washington Post:

Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) echoed Mendelson’s remarks. Bowser, she suggested, “can ask [D.C. police] why they’re not patrolling equitably across the city, or provide data on what they’re doing, or [ask] why the U.S. attorney is declining two-thirds of the cases. I want to reiterate: This council is united in addressing public safety issues and we’ll continue to do it.”

This is in regards to a new emergency public safety bill passed by the council in response to a spike in violent crimes, and if you took Nadeau’s comments to heart you would think that the problem was restricted to certain neighborhoods — you know which ones they are — and was a direct result of there being less police presence than in some other areas — you know which ones those are as well.

Throwing out words like diversity and equity has become a verbal tick for some, but if council member Nadeau said that the D.C. police were not patrolling equitably with intent, we are deeply in newspeak Ministry-of-truth territory. Because the police are, in fact, patrolling equitably: in the wrong direction. Bad decisions have consequences D.C. council cut the police budget by $15 million in June 2020; by April 2023, police staffing reached a 50-year low which came both from the cuts directly, and indirectly from the burnout of those who remained. and instead of owning up to their mistakes — the equitable policing the Council achieved meant that previously safe parts of town are now also unsafe — they double down on their bad reasoning.

But to justify the title of the post: equitable — unlike, let’s say, gaslighting is a precise word, which in my book makes it a good word. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that achieving equity is always good. “Socialism makes everybody equal: equally poor”, went the old joke, and what goes for equality can also go for equity, as D.C. Council has just shown.

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts:

In the tourist quarter in the shadow of Porto’s fortresslike cathedral, a social worker with a government-funded nonprofit, SAOM, handed out clean syringe packages to people who use heroin. When crack pipes are available, the social workers give them out. There’s no judgment, few questions, and no pressure to embrace change.

Summing up the philosophy, Luísa Neves, SAOM’s president, said: “You have to respect the user. If they want to use, it is their right.”

Absolutely bonkers. Not putting people in jail for drug abuse is one thing, condoning it is madness. Do they also hand out flasks of whiskey to drunks?

🏀 USA Basketball starts fresh with new players and coach for FIBA World Cup:

USA Basketball has won gold at the past four Olympics but is seeking to avenge an embarrassing seventh-place finish at the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China, where an underwhelming roster lost to Serbia and France.

No shame in losing to the homes of Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama, even though the first didn’t play and the second was still in diapers back then.