Not a feed. A time capsule of technological acceleration, captured while it was still happening.
AGI, robotics, medicine, China, labor, surveillance, drones, markets, and the odd little jokes people made when they felt the ground move.
“We need data centers and unregulated AI to compete with China, but we don’t need their transportation infrastructure” is an opinion I cannot reconcile.
TRUMP: - THE PEOPLE WHO ARE AGAINST DATACENTERS WANT TO BE POOR - CHINA COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH THIS ANTI DATACENTER MOVEMENT
In a past post, I highlighted that income per capita and fertility rates, once strongly negatively correlated across OECD countries, are now positively correlated: t.co/SYzpacqamo Similar reversals have occurred in many other classic negative relationships between fertility and other variables. Today, I will examine one of the most frequently cited relationships: the link between female labour-force participation and fertility. The exercise is the same as before. I use total fertility rates from the U.N. World Population Prospects 2024 and female employment data from the OECD Annual Labour Force Statistics, specifically female civilian employment as a percentage of the population aged 15 to 64. Then, I compute the rank correlation across the 18 countries with continuous coverage from 1970 (as early as I can go): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. In 1971, the correlation between female labor participation rate and fertility was -0.74. That is, where women worked more in the market, they had fewer children on average. This is the standard story everyone has in mind (and one of the most frequent comments readers make): since market work and child-rearing compete for mothers' time, higher female labor participation leads to lower fertility. The fascinating observation is that the sign of the correlation changed rapidly during the 1980s. The correlation was still -0.47 in 1981, crossed zero in 1985, and reached +0.52 in 1988. This large flip occurred in just a few years, well before the arrival of smartphones or the large immigration flows of the 1990s and 2014-2024. Since 1988, the positive correlation has gradually eroded to about +0.30, but higher female employment still predicts higher fertility, albeit less strongly than it did around 1990. Again, the question for your favorite theory of fertility is: how does your explanation account for this abrupt reversal in the 1980s across 18 rich economies? As with all empirical work, some caveats are important. First, yes, 18 countries constitute a small cross-section. The year-to-year wiggles after 1990 are mostly noise, so take only the broad pattern seriously. But I believe that, by the year 2050 or so, this will be the shape of the relationship between female labor participation and fertility for the whole planet (or most of it). Second, the baseline OECD annual series ends in 2013. To extend the sample to 2023, I switched to a second OECD series, the infra-annual labor statistics, which reports participation rather than employment. Since the two series overlap from 2005 to 2013, I can check that they differ by only 0.07 on average. I plot both rather than splicing them into a single line so you can judge it yourself. Third, Luxembourg is excluded. Many of its workers are cross-border commuters, not residents, which produces figures that don't make sense. Also, Norway is missing 1971 (who knows why?), so I interpolate it. And as always, credit where it is due. Namkee Ahn and Pedro Mira first documented this reversal in "A note on the changing relationship between fertility and female employment rates in developed countries," Journal of Population Economics, 2002. Tomas Kögel, in the same journal in 2004, argued that the cross-country sign flip reflects unobserved country heterogeneity rather than a change in the underlying relationship. I find Ahn and Mira's argument more convincing, but you should read Kögel as well. Comments always welcome!
One of the claims in “Terra Incognita” that readers have found most interesting is that income per capita and fertility are now positively correlated across OECD countries: the richer a country is, the higher its fertility. To document this claim more carefully, I have completed the following exercise. I take total fertility rates from the U.N. World Population Prospects 2024 and real GDP per capita from the new Penn World Table 11.0 (expenditure side, chained PPPs, released in October 2025 and now running to 2023). For each year from 1954 to 2022, I compute the rank correlation across countries between fertility and real GDP per capita and plot the results. I use 30 of the 38 countries that are OECD members today (regardless of when they joined). I drop the other eight because they have data gaps, as former socialist economies did not compute GDP using the standard methodology (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia). In the mid-1950s, the correlation among the 30 countries was about -0.32, and it deepened through the 1960s and most of the 1970s, until a minimum of -0.78 in 1977. This is the world most people have in mind: the opportunity cost of children rises with income and, the richer you are, the fewer children you have. Gary Becker and dozens of economists wrote papers trying to understand this pattern. But then, in 1977, well before anyone had heard about smartphones, social media, or some of the other “usual suspects” behind the recent drop in fertility, something changed: the rank correlation started climbing in a steady way, becoming positive in the second half of the 2010s. Right now, being richer means having higher fertility rates. And, as far as I can tell, there is no indication this trend is slowing down. So, if you have a favorite explanation for the evolution of fertility over the last few decades, ask yourself: how can my explanation account not only for the drop in fertility but also for the rank correlation switching directions in 1977? A couple of warnings. First, I use the rank correlation because it is immune to outliers. Luxembourg and Ireland report GDP per capita figures that nobody should take at face value. Second, I am using the U.N. World Population Prospects 2024, which I have criticized for overestimating the fertility rates of the poorest OECD members (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Türkiye). If you use the fertility rates reported by their own statistical agencies, the rank correlation is even more positive. But I don’t want anyone accusing me of fiddling with the data. Finally, credit where it is due: I first learned about this reversal from Doepke, Hannusch, Kindermann, and Tertilt, “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era,” in Lundberg and Voena (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of the Family, vol. 1, North-Holland, 2023, pp. 151-254. Anyone who wants to go deeper should start there. Comments always welcome!
4%+ of all economic growth this quarter is just tariff refunds lol
Estate agents are doing this ALL THE TIME now in the UK and it has to be made illegal.
AI apocalypse is here the photos for my sublet were ai’d 💀💀
We have designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms under the Digital Services Act. They now have four months to comply with additional DSA obligations. More: link.europa.eu/8bmk3M #DSA
I’m convinced HBO's Silicon Valley was a documentary. Why would anybody do this for no reason??
Sequoia partner Doug Leone reveals he got a root canal with no Novocaine to see if he was really a badass "I had to get a root canal. And I had to go to a meeting right after that. I told the dentist, drill without any Novocaine.” “My whole life, I wanted to see if I was a badass or not. Am I a fake badass that has this envelope nobody could tell, or am I really a badass on the inside?" "He drilled and I jumped. And I told the dentist, I won't move again. And I didn't move again. I used the trick of thinking what it must be like to go to war and lose an arm or two legs. That's pain with consequences. Mine was pain with no consequences." “It’s just nerve endings from there to my brain to my spine, f*ck it I’m not moving.” "I had to go home and change my shirt because I was a puddle of sweat. But I didn't move. And so I love fear. It does wonders for me."
Hey fable build me a music score editor with a physically modeled piano synth. About a day later:
overheard in sf: “we’re waiting to have kids until post-AGI. figure we’ll have more information then.”
we've created a society where being seen to do the thing matters more than actually doing it. the real world is now merely a stage for the digital one. and an entire generation will be left with nothing but a full camera roll and empty memories.
OpenClaw looks quite a bit different than what you might remember from … checks clock … 5 AI years ago. x.com/steipete/statu…
cli is nice, having UI visualizations and your team where you work is nicer.
"Male Gen Zers are dropping out of the US job market in droves," per NYP
We’ve switched all of our inference to Charleston AI. The models are awful and it takes 7.5 minutes to process every request but man, there’s nothing more beautiful than supporting a small American AI business
A major housing headwind is about to hit. And that's the Baby Boomer exodus from the U.S. Housing Market. In the next decade, the share of U.S. population above 75 will skyrocket. Meaning Baby Boomer owners who fueled the housing market over the last 20 years will turn into sellers they age out. And Gen X, the next generation in line to buy up those homes, won't be able to absorb it. As they are 20% smaller in population than the Baby Boomers. The result is that by 2037, there will be more 75+ aged Americans than 55-64 aged Americans. Which will be a first in modern U.S. History. This will lead to lower homebuyer demand, more supply, and lower prices in retirement destinations. Especially across Florida and Arizona. To see how this demographic data for your area, check
if you really believe in AGI why are you still shaving your pubes
Was using GPT 5.6 Luna to process documents, replaced it all with GLM 5.3 flash past two days for zero quality drop and it’s still cheaper than their 80% discount… You can just switch models
Ok this is absolutely crazy. I gave Codex a 20 year old PHP codebase and told it to rebuild it in modern JS and it *almost* one-shotted it. 😭 This is beautiful.
Yeah I see why OpenAI was hyping astra so much. This is actually insane. It’s a huge jump even from fable.
MORE ASTRA one shot examples！ do you think fable 5.1 can outperform astra?
It’s hard to wrap your head around a world where California High-Speed Rail had to conduct environmental impact studies on monarch butterflies along existing tracks in the exact same county where this is allowed to happen.
Trump Administration Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer — NOTUS
One of the big worries about AI is these frontier companies saying no to your business. It seems to have begun
we live in the future
Minimax H3 Max has generates video faster than you can watch it so I hooked it to a twitch livestream! Now you can watch infinite interdimensional cable - link to the stream below
“I don’t like when my boss gives me something in Notion because it’s obviously clanked out” “Clanked out” is going right into the vocal. Banger
This message is brought to you by: Parents who told their kids they're not allowed outside while destroying parks and any other interesting place a kid may want to have fun in.
Kids today will never know how lucky WE were.
Quand j'étais en étude sup, j'avais eu une conf avec un gars qui nous expliquait à quel point la marche bipède c'était compliqué à répliquer parce que soumi a beaucoup de chaos. C'était il y a 14 ans.
We’ve crossed the Kirk Singularity Point to where now actual videos of Charlie Kirk look like AI edits
The other issue with the SAT is that the "reading comprehension" section has been largely replaced by data analysis. Here are two actual questions that appear on the "reading" portion of the SAT. I don't know about you, but I don't remember learning about bar graphs and nucleobase concentrations in my English classes.
It is genuinely insane to think that this is a real SAT exam question:
a girl asking you questions instead of chatgpt in 2026 is a sign of deep respect in their culture
Study Of Us is in beta! Submit your face to get rated by others, rate your own face, get a report on what kind of personalities think you're hottest (bpd? porn watchers?) If you've submitted or rated faces on aella .lol you should be able to sign in with same account.
In the Finnish basic income study, women randomly given extra monthly income were less likely to get pregnant. Women whose husband/spouse was randomly given more income were more likely to get pregnant. At least, that's what they reported, but the p values are kinda shit, so we can't really say. Intriguing pattern lining up with other studies of relative income differences within couples.
