It turns out the appendix is not useless or vestigial -- it's like a Norwegian seed vault for healthy gut bacteria, your inner biome's cloud backup. www.npr.org/sections/hea...

The stock market is mostly irrelevant to funding business, and VC is coming up short. Yet the costs to start an enterprise have never been lower. What are alternatives to support community wealth building and not just financiers? My latest spicy take: www.imd.org/ibyimd/finan...

Fellow Detroit transit nerds: my birthday present from My son was a Detroit streetcar map from 1950. Great routes.

Now I want to get Nikki Haley's take on the causes of the English Civil War.

GPT understands my metaphors.

I may regret throwing out all my old paper journals when GAI creates entire online knockoffs of ASQ, AJS, ASR -- and SEO hacking sends people to the knockoffs rather than the original articles. www.businessinsider.com/seo-heist-ai...

The National Center for Educational Statistics reports that there are 2267 4-year colleges and universities in the US, which granted 7374 bachelors degrees in "Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies." So the average college has no more than 3.25 gender studies majors. Can we move on?

Loving the DNEP Holiday Fair at Jam Handy. Detroit entrepreneurs are amazing, creative makers!

Cool.

Being deadwood is mostly great. But I miss have accomplishments to announce. So: "I published my job market paper!" (In 1991.)

If you have not done so already, now's a good time to join your AAUP chapter. www.inquirer.com/education/ma...

Final, 53-page report of AAUP's Special Committee on Florida, on which I had the privilege of serving, is now published. Some themes from our dozens of interviews: "[T]he reality in Florida is 'Orwellian,' and Florida is the 'canary in a coal mine.'.... Being a bystander is no longer an option."

If philosophy majors ruled the world, misusing the term "begging the question" would be a capital offense.

Top 5 metaphors: Potemkin Village Hermit crab La Brea tarpits Estuary Winchester Mystery House

The OpenAI saga suggests that employee ownership may not always yield good outcomes for society. "Even recent employees would have seen a 4x cash out at liquidation. If the company drastically slowed commercialization, then no investor would've come in." www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-o...

Happy Canadian Cinco de Mayo!

In business, plagiarism is called "benchmarking."

LA is a lasagne of the magical and the inexplicable. The mass transit is now great! Unless you are headed to LAX, in which case you will wither and die in traffic.

Fellow refuseniks: I found our place.

California is a land of endless culinary invention. Exhibit A: a burrito… For breakfast!

No Starbucks today in LA

That’s me, all week!

JF Sebastian’s place.

Week in review: Zephyr Teachout on algorithmic wage discrimination, Jerry Davis (@vanishingcorp.bsky.social) on the disappearance of public corporations, and Maryam Jamshidi on creeping authoritarianism in Florida. Plus, tons of upcoming virtual events (two today!) and new LPE-relevant pieces.

"Is this the end of corporate capitalism?" Probably not the end--but an opening for alternatives. lpeproject.org/blog/is-this...

Ohio: big ups.

What's a perfect album that came out when you were 16

I feel seen. Spicy and crabby.

Americans eat an average of 10 ounces of meat per day. What the hell is wrong with us?

I have reached some conclusions. 1. The climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity. 2. Decarbonizing the economy--business--is essential to survival. 3. Business schools train those who run business. 4. Business education and research must be thoroughly re-oriented toward decarbonization.

AAUP statement on academic freedom in times of war: www.aaup.org/news/academi...

What species is the intended consumer of this snack?

Detroit is magical for many reasons, including: naming streets for the authors of statistical software.

Never doubt Costco. Last week I thought their display of Christmas decorations was premature. Today it is snowing.

This Friday at 3:00 we host an excellent panel on worker ownership. Join us! Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Biden's labor strategy pays off (with insights from @veenadubal.bsky.social) wapo.st/40vGmA1

Based on that guy's unhinged techno-manifesto, can we conclude that venture capitalists are basically valets to the Übermenschen?

Oh no, who now will save us from ESG and corporate woke-ism? Oh right, we still have Vivek and Ron. (Maybe an MMA cage match to see who's king, sponsored by Marc Andreessen?)

Tressie is absolutely a national treasure. She may single-handedly save the field of sociology by making it the smartest major on campus.

A regular reminder: the college majors that infuriate the right are so tiny as to be almost non-existent.

TFG says Meadows was "hounded like a dog." The prose styling of his witness tampering is...something.

ICYMI yesterday, lack of data on who does what at work and how much they earn has left the Biden administration no choice but to formulate its proposed update to overtime rules using guesses about who was probably covered in 1998. 📉📈 www.briefingbook.info/p/limiting-a...

Whoever took these companies public has some splaining to do. Maybe they could write an insanely long manifesto and blame ESG.

It is possible to believe both that transaction cost economics provides useful tools for thinking about the survivability of different models of organization, and that shareholder capitalism will extinguish our species if left to its own devices.

After reading that guy's techno-optimist manifesto, I want to say that this things still holds up. (AH and Founders Fund believe in no guardrails for founders because founders are makers; we're moochers and takers.) theconversation.com/ayn-rand-ins...

Proud that my piece on respectability is officially out at APSR. It’s open access! The piece matters a lot to me bc it reflects my strong belief that Black people’s political & social lives warrant deep study & deserve their place in our field’s “top” journals. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hey @vanishingcorp.bsky.social this.

The Fed's latest Survey of Consumer Finances reports that a record58% of American families are now invested in the stock market. What could possibly go wrong? I have thoughts. medium.com/imagining-eq...

Lentil soup will make you feel better. Here's the best Instant Pot recipe. Delicious, quick, inexpensive, makes lunch for a week. Believe. ifoodreal.com/instant-pot-...