Deena Mousa
@deenamousa.com
đ€ 1275
đ„ 299
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Global health & development at Open Philanthropy
https://newsletter.deenamousa.com/
College students would need to be paid $59 (on average) to deactivate TikTok for a month, but would *pay* $28 for it to be deactivated for them and their social circles for the same amount of time.
about 9 hours ago
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AI is often framed as Africaâs next leapfrog. In Ep2 of our
@voxdev.bsky.social
series, Rose Mutiso argues this is the wrong frame: AI isnât end-user tech like mobile phones, but an upstream, infrastructure-heavy system that concentrates value where power, compute, and data already exist.
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AI in Africa: Barriers, opportunities and policy
Can AI take off in Africa? Rose Mutiso joins us to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent, and how to make it happen.
https://voxdev.org/topic/technology-innovation/ai-africa-barriers-opportunities-and-policy
1 day ago
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People invoke the Industrial Revolution as reassurance about AI. But living through it meant decades of wage stagnation, job loss & unrest. Ep1 of a new
@voxdev.bsky.social
series, we talk to economic historian Bruno Caprettini about what that analogy gets right/wrong
t.co/AyuTVMKcEY
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AI and the industrial revolution: Similarities, differences and lessons
How did society change during the industrial revolution? Are there lessons we can learn for the AI revolution?
https://voxdev.org/topic/technology-innovation/ai-and-industrial-revolution-similarities-differences-and-lessons
5 days ago
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The âAI bubbleâ may be less catastrophic than it sounds. Even if it pops, itâs leaving behind real infrastructure, much like past bubbles did. My take for
@TheMorningNews.org
2025 year-in-review post:
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Tim Hirschel-Burns
about 1 month ago
And I thought this was pretty interesting from
@deenamousa.com
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New post: ML trained on phone usage data can help identify households in need during crises. Not yet finalized your end of year giving? I've teamed up with GiveDirectly along with a few other Substackers, and Iâll be matching the first $500 in donations through the link in post.
about 2 months ago
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Just out in
@technologyreview.com
: I look at the companies using AI to measure how much pain patients are in based on everything from involuntary facial movements, to heart rate, to peripheral temperature changes. Will this oust the classic self-reported 1-10 scale?
4 months ago
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A new paper in the Lancet finds that doctors got *worse* at finding precancerous growths during colonoscopies on their own if they had just spent three months using an AI assistive tool Worrisome sign that deskilling may happen a lot faster than we'd expect.
4 months ago
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We also don't fully understand why many people experience phantom limb pain, and many others don't
x.com/deenamousa/...
4 months ago
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New post: When can more automation mean more human workers? One argument I made in my recent
@worksinprogress.bsky.social
piece is that if automation made reading scans quicker and cheaper, this might result in *more* jobs for radiologists, rather than fewer. How does this apply to other jobs? đ§”
4 months ago
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In 2016 Geoffrey Hinton said âwe should stop training radiologists now" since AI would soon be better at their jobs. He was right: models have outperformed radiologists on benchmarks for ~a decade. Yet radiology jobs are at record highs, with an average salary of $520k. Why?
5 months ago
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I really enjoy Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History â I expect I'll like following some of the winners of his blog competition just as much! A few of my favorites in thread:
5 months ago
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My contribution to the AI job destruction discourse: Why are radiologists still around?
5 months ago
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I was recently surprised to learn how little we know about pain. For example, Americans have been experiencing more chronic pain over time, and we're not entirely sure why 1/
5 months ago
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I heard we're talking about air conditioning again... my thoughts on the subject one year ago in
@worksinprogress.bsky.social
www.worksinprogress.news/p/heat-waves
7 months ago
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AI art residencies are popping up. In
@theverge.com
, I write about these programs and the artists in them. And, in my newsletter, I write about how interacting with tech in culture can shape perspectives before laws are written. đ§”
bsky.app/profile/the...
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The Verge (@theverge.com)
AI residencies are trying to change the conversation around artificial art https://buff.ly/tx7V4fs
https://bsky.app/profile/theverge.com/post/3lrxmhocso52s
8 months ago
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We treat QALYs as a uniform unit of measure, but every QALY may not be the same. We may care more about QALYs when we're sickest. This makes sense, given how we think about income increases, but isn't how we evaluate health. I write about why in a new post, linked below.
9 months ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Saloni
9 months ago
Great post by
@deenamousa.com
on the tricky concept of putting a price on life. How much do people say they'd value an extra year in perfect health or without disease? And why does this vary between people, or different framings of the question?
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How much do you value a year of life?
Part 1: What people say
https://newsletter.deenamousa.com/p/how-much-do-you-value-a-year-of-life
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How much is a year of your life worth? In Denmark, the average answer is $24,000. In Japan, itâs about $67,000. New post up on what we say when asked to put a price on life. đ§”
9 months ago
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Could we catch the next outbreak before anyone gets sick? I wrote for
@asimovpress.bsky.social
about airborne biosensors that can detect viruses in real time and why, despite their promise, weâre not using them yet.
9 months ago
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As a resident of NYC, I am no stranger to noise. Often, we try to let traffic or construction fade into the background and consider it a nuisance. But could it be driving serious health issues?
9 months ago
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Snakebite kills tens of thousands of people a year and disables hundreds of thousands more. Anti-venom research has barely progressed in decades. This study, using antibodies from a man who deliberately let snakes bite him 200 times, suggests a path to a universal anti-venom. đ§”
9 months ago
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New post about a few "big if true" health interventions that might be much more important than we think. Theyâre strange, theyâre striking - and they need more research.
10 months ago
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New post! Ghibli filters, dopamine apps, frictionless AI â weâre getting better at giving ourselves exactly what we want. What does progress look like when reality itself can be remade to match our desires? đ§”
11 months ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Archie Hall
11 months ago
đ New Substack post đ How do the politics and economics of 'Abundance' work in Britain, compared to America?
notes.archie-hall.com/p/can-the-br...
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Can the Brits have Abundance too?
đŹđ§ Transposing the the Abundance agenda to Britain đŹđ§
https://notes.archie-hall.com/p/can-the-brits-have-abundance-too
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Knowable Magazine
11 months ago
đ The case for strange & seemingly impractical research đŹ âGovernment-funded scientific research may appear strange or impractical, but it has repeatedly yielded scientific breakthroughs â & continues to pay for itself many times over.â âïž
@deenamousa.com
&
@lgilbert.co
@asteriskmag.bsky.social
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A Defense of Weird ResearchâAsterisk
Government-funded scientific research may appear strange or impractical, but it has repeatedly yielded scientific breakthroughs â and continues to pay for itself many times over.
https://knowmag.org/3DTzAgm
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Great to be at the Abundance book launch with
@ezrakleinbot.bsky.social
&
@dkthomp.bsky.social
in NYC last night. A core, striking idea from the book: The U.S. isnât failing to solve housing, healthcare, and energy shortages because it canât. Itâs failing because it wonât. đ§”
11 months ago
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Working paper out this week looks at the effect of congestion pricing on travel using Google Maps data and finds a 15% speed increase within the central business district
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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Excited that Open Philanthropy is expanding our work on economic growth and scientific progress. The case for the Abundance & Growth Fund is simple: Economic growth isnât just about GDPâitâs one of the most powerful forces for improving human lives. đ§”
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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Every year, we waste enough food to feed the worldâs hungryâseveral times over. Globally, 30-40% of food producedâ1.3 billion tonsâis never eaten. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions still starve. How did we end up here? đ§”
11 months ago
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New York City just launched the first congestion pricing program in the U.S. Drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street now pay up to $15 per trip. Itâs controversial, but cities that have tried it have seen less traffic, better air quality, and more funding for transit. đ§”
11 months ago
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Deeply important research: The two-stair rule for mid-sized apartments once made sense, but today it blocks housing with no clear benefit. đ§”
x.com/Sustainable...
12 months ago
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One of the dangers of rising polarization and mistrust is that people start rejecting even the most well-documented factsâlike that smoking is catastrophically bad for you. There's no hidden agenda here; and the government has plenty of self-serving reasons to care too đ§”
x.com/sarahcstock...
12 months ago
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New post! We celebrate breakthroughsâthe internet, life-saving drugs, major peace treatiesâbut behind them are decades of overlooked investments. Now, those investments are on the chopping block. đ§”
12 months ago
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Climate change gets $1.3 trillion in annual funding. But only 7% of thatâ$63Bâgoes to helping people adapt to rising temperatures, floods, and extreme weather. Why does adaptation funding lag so far behind mitigation? đ§”
12 months ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Lauren Gilbert
12 months ago
also
@deenamousa.com
and I made the front page of hacker news defending studying frog skin, the sex lives of flies and other "weird" research
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Interesting new NBER working paper: Most people worry about outdoor air pollution, but, in many homes, indoor air is worse. A field experiment in London tested whether showing people their indoor pollution levels in real time might change behavior and finds a 17% reduction. đ§”
12 months ago
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I spent a few weeks in Hong Kong this winter and noticed color and visual design everywhere in the architecture. I learned these design choices werenât just aesthetic: they were built to accommodate historically high rates of illiteracy. đ§”
12 months ago
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Skepticism of government-funded scientific research is making the rounds again. In
@asteriskmag.bsky.social
,
@lgilbert.co
⏠and I write about why âweirdâ research pays off, and how the government is particularly well-positionedâ better than the private sectorâto fund it. đ§”
x.com/deenamousa/...
12 months ago
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New Substack post is out! I've been thinking about how much systems shape whatâs possibleâwhether in nature or policy. From rove beetles mimicking ants to the chaos of foreign aid stop-orders, hereâs what I learned this month đ§”
about 1 year ago
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In some more lighthearted work, I wrote this piece ("Captive Audience") for the
@nytimes.com
Metropolitan Diary section. I hope it captures some of the chaos and joy of NYC đœđïž
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âEvery Few Pages Reflected Each Personâs Take on Their Experience â
What âLaw & Orderâ background actors think, a special summer and more reader tales of New York City in this weekâs Metropolitan Diary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/24/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Lauren Gilbert
about 1 year ago
My first piece for The Economist is out, on the economics of the Eras tour:
www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
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Taylor Swift, imperfect capitalist?
The pop star could have made even more money from her $2bn tour
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/12/06/taylor-swift-imperfect-capitalist
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Just found out about Bored Cow - which makes a product similar to cow's milk, but without the cows. They use microflora to produce the whey protein instead. Extremely similar process to how we make medical insulin today!
tryboredcow.com
about 1 year ago
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Collected my merch & formal certificate of membership in NYC's Rat Pack â part of the DoH's recent focus on sanitation interventions and reducing the rat population in the city. Link below if you're interested in the program!
about 1 year ago
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Itâs giving season! đ„ł This post full of recommendations for individual donors from
@openphil.bsky.social
staff is now out. Sharing a thread of a few of my favorite orgs on this list đ§”
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Suggestions for Individual Donors from Open Philanthropy Staff â 2024 | Open Philanthropy
As we enter the holiday giving season, weâre continuing our tradition of sharing a list of giving opportunities suggested by Open Philanthropy program staff. Notes on these suggestions: They fall with...
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/suggestions-for-individual-donors-from-open-philanthropy-staff-2024/#id-1-global-health-and-development
about 1 year ago
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I went on
@economist.com
's podcast, The Intelligence, to talk about the quiet re-emergence of iodine deficiency. Luckily, we know how to solve it! A few highlights: đ§”
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Legally bombed: Trump cases dropped | The Intelligence from The Economist
https://shows.acast.com/theintelligencepodcast/episodes/legally-bombed-trump-cases-dropped?seek=482
about 1 year ago
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Trust in science is declining. Preventable diseases are re-emerging. Even iodine deficiencyâa problem we solved a century agoâis back. How did we get here? I reflect this month in a new post in Under Development.
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Deena Mousa
Lauren Gilbert
about 1 year ago
The first post in my living literature review on migration is now up, on the Mariel Boatlift:
laurenpolicy.substack.com/p/the-mariel...
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The Mariel Boatlift
In the course of a few months in 1980, about 125,000 Cubans left Cuba for Miami. What happens to a city when it gains 125,000 immigrants seemingly overnight?
https://laurenpolicy.substack.com/p/the-mariel-boatlift
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Turns out ~30% of pipes in NYC may contain lead - NY's
@lcv.org
made an interactive map so you can see where they are, using using Department of Environmental Protection data
about 1 year ago
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