Links are late this month, due to my Christmas-induced slowdown in media consumption.

What I’ve been reading

Zvi Mowshowitz’s current model of omicron. It’s hard to believe this came out only a week ago.

Why does yoga feel good? Some hypotheses.

Cheating as a last resort. And more from the same blog: experiments in choosing a partner via filling out an online form. I recommend Aella’s Twitter!

On how the term ‘no evidence’ has been so thoroughly abused during the pandemic.

Every once in a while, you should investigate something as though you had no trust whatsoever in any of your sources of information.   

Hayao Miyazaki is like the superhero trope: coming out of retirement for one last job.

52 Things Tom Whitwell learned in 2021.

Trying to solve the mystery of why some diseases are seasonal. Answer: it’s not the cold. 

What I’ve been listening to

The Conversations with Tyler 2021 retrospective.

Elon Musk on the Lex Fridman podcast.

Tyler Cowen on the Clearer Thinking podcast. Tyler’s point about getting on tracks of compounding returns early is maybe the most important piece of advice I’ve ever heard. And Spencer Greenberg is always worth listening to.

We Like it Here by Snarky Puppy.

What I’ve been watching

In defence of the imperial measurement system. It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as you probably think.

In search of the war donkeys of Cyprus. And other travel videos: to Afghanistan and Iraq.

A short film about a Chinese guy who teaches himself Irish, thinking it’s the language spoken in Ireland: Yu Ming is Ainm Dom.

The adorable chemistry professor from Brady Haran’s videos gets a tram named after him.

The French flag was changed in secret two months ago and nobody noticed!  

The Iron Lady I am unclear what exactly this film is trying to tell me about Margaret Thatcher. The message I’m getting is something like “stubbornness is sometimes good by accident; net effect unclear”. Nothing in here about actual pro-market principles. Where is my Oscar-winning film whose message is that neoliberalism is great and it wrenched Britain out of the economic dark ages?

The Father Fantastic, and stylistically similar to The Irony Lady. Truly remarkable for a directorial debut from a playwright.

12 Years a Slave Probably one of the only times I’ve had to pause a film out of sheer discomfort. I was surprised to learn that this and Django are the only non-documentary films about slavery that I’ve seen. These two facts are no doubt related.