Notes from all over

Working

I always think a lot about how to be more personally productive.   What processes should I adopt or abandon?   What tools should I use, and which should I retire?  These are some of the things that inspired me this week.

• Bird by Bird is a simply fantastic book; I don’t know how I missed it.   Nominally, it is about how to be an effective writer, told with a lot of snarky humor.  But really, it is about doing any kind of work.  Timeless advice — you just have to plug away daily, keep on creating whether good or bad, and slowly hone your skill.
• Bill Murphy on knowing when to be quiet.  Shutting up and listening is a pretty powerful way to learn.
• Marcello writes about the Amazon writing culture, and I love his core point — writing is a powerful form of critical thinking.  I don’t know what I really think until I try to write it down, and in the process, identify all the absurdities and gaps and inconsistencies.
• Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times — now this is a guy who has demonstrated amazing focus and a willingness to plug away at a problem.   I think most of us would have given up after a single digit number of snakebites.
• Every book review by the PSmith’s is amazing and this one is no exception.  The review demonstrates how to deeply read a book, how to get under the surface words and really weigh the ideas, and put the ideas in their cultural context.  I’ve had Horowitz’s book on my to-read list forever;  his increasingly self-centered behaviour has kept me from reading it, but now I want to pick it up again.

Progress

I continue to believe that encouraging economic growth is the only way out of our national budget problems and national malaise.

• Sam D'Amico on the four things that have driven electrification: magnets, power transistors, batteries, and single-chip controllers.  Underpinning all these are rapid advances in scale and some Moore’s Law effects.   A wise friend recommended that I start paying attention to D’Amico.
• “Almost 80% of job openings in the US economy are in businesses with less than 250 workers, and the share of job openings in small businesses has been growing over the past five years” — the great strength of the US economy.  And this is despite all the hurdles in front of small businesses — capital access, stupid employer-based health insurance, red tape, and predatory corporations.  We need to continue throwing fuel on the small business fire.
• MAGA’s War on Science — this is the most painful part of the Trump administration, to me.  Destroying parts of our science infrastructure will have consequences for decades.  I am not saying that science funding is untouchable — I have read many criticisms of some of our science funding, and we can do it better.   But let’s discuss the problems and devise a renewed plan to invest in science, not shut it down.

Automotive

The automotive industry has been a great driver of the US economy, but it is not in a good place.

• Ford abandons 'fully networked vehicle' project — the legacy automakers are fighting too many wars.  They are trying to solve many problems simultaneously — EV car design, software, batteries and battery supply chains, deglobalization of supply chains, etc.  All while trying to operate and protect their legacy ICE business.  Some of the nameplates will survive but not much else.

USA

• Some relatively sane talk on immigration — and the one idea that is a no-brainer in here: “An idea I keep floating is a small bump in employer-side payroll taxes for foreign-born workers to help keep Social Security solvent.”  
• A Better Way to Defend America Base More U.S. Forces in the Western Hemisphere—and Fewer in Asia and Europe.  A thoughtful take on the military challenges we face and how best to prepare for them.
• Judd Legum on Trump's investments:  “Trump says imposing tariffs on nearly every nation on earth is essential to force companies to make investments in the US instead of abroad.  But since taking office, the Trump Organization has announced new multi-billion $ development deals in the UAE, Qatar, India and Vietnam.  And NONE in the US.”
• Trump threw away our best chance at fairer trade — “Everything Trump says he’s trying to accomplish, in other words, was already on the table. He not only walked away from it, but his insistence on attacking the whole underlying concept of a rule-governed global trading system means we almost certainly can’t get any kind of durable or enforceable deal. The one trade breakthrough of his first term was that he got China to agree to buy more stuff from the United States, and then they just didn’t do it.”