A long time ago, back in November of 2021, people made some interesting tweets about Cold Takes posts that I wanted to respond to, but I don't tweet. So I decided to try this goofy thing where I excerpt the tweets and give my replies on a Cold Takes page. The vibe I’m going for here is kind of like if someone delivered a sick burn in person, then received a FAX 6 years later saying “Fair point - but have you considered that it takes one to know one?” or something. You can check out Ezra Klein's interesting thoughts on my Rowing, Steering, Anchoring, Equity, Mutiny post (and my brief reply), and my reply to criticism from Will Buckner on my Pre-agriculture gender relations seem bad post.

Also, someone with a ~million followers liked my post using a boat as a metaphor for different worldviews because … it made him think of innovations in governance that took place aboard pirate ships? See thread. Not exactly what I was going for, but OK!

Daily Mail: "Married couples who meet online are SIX times more likely to divorce in the first three years than those who meet through family or friends, study finds." Actual "paper": looks like online dating is gaining mostly at the expense of meeting people in bars and other casual situations, and that the 10-year divorce rates are similar, although more of the divorces for online couples are concentrated in the first three years:

I have many questions about the rigor of this research, just based on the format and the source, but this looks more encouraging than discouraging. (See my previous speculations on relationship quality trends)

Very interesting tweet with four charts where official forecasts seem to have repeatedly missed in the same direction. I do wish it were better-sourced. The Federal Reserve one and the IEA one would've about matched what I would've independently guessed so there's that.

WHAT are these basketball passes. They are all from the same game (a real game, a blowout but not officially a stunt show). I was watching and saying "No?!" and "You can't do that" out loud.

"Things I like about jargon." (I don't agree with all of this, but generally think jargon terms with relatively simple, findable definitions seem like more of a good idea than a bad idea.)

Matt Yglesias on AI risk:

Also bleak is the artificial intelligence situation. I don’t write takes about how we should all be more worried about an out-of-control AI situation, but that’s because I know several smart people who do write those takes, and unfortunately they do not have much in the way of smart, tractable policy ideas to actually address it. It’s not like pandemics where we have the smart PDF and need to kick Congress’ ass to get them to actually do it. There is no great PDF here, in part because the international dimensions of the problem are very hard to grapple with.

To me, it seems important to know that Matt Yglesias thinks this is a serious issue, even though (as I do concede) there is no PDF ready to go!

Reader Damian Tatum sent in a nice "no need to click" article (link here) - I just enjoy the rhythm/general sound of this one.

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