What We’re Reading

Productivity:

It’s quite difficult to produce what Google calls a moonshot, a 10X effect in the physical world, because increasingly, we’re running up against the limits of physics in terms of how fast a train can travel, how fast a plane can go. All those things, we’re running up against the limit to either of the physics of air resistance, or indeed passenger safety, because it’s worth remembering that if you have a crash on a 500-mile-an-hour train, that’s 250 people dead. So you’re running up against these fundamental limits.

It’s much, much easier I would argue, and indeed, it’s something you should try first, to achieve a 10X in psychology. And I’d argue that Uber, for instance, is an example of a 10X in psychology because it doesn’t reduce the weight by a factor of 10, it reduces the degree of uncertainty by a factor of about 25.

Gaps:

“The recession has essentially ended for high-income individuals,” Chetty told Biden and Harris. Meanwhile, the bottom half of American workers represented almost 80% of the jobs still missing.

Breakthroughs:

What if a single injection could lower blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides — for a lifetime?

In the first gene-editing experiment of its kind, scientists have disabled two genes in monkeys that raise the risk for heart disease. Humans carry the genes as well, and the experiment has raised hopes that a leading killer may one day be tamed.

“This could be the cure for heart disease,” said Dr. Michael Davidson, director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

Travel:

Marriott and other hotel chains seeing much lower spending than at this time last year. At Airbnb, by contrast, spending is hitting new all-time highs.

Airbnb spending is running a whopping 75% higher than this time last year, says the research shop, based on a panel of spending data including more than 65,000 Airbnb transactions.

Two economies:

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Have a good weekend, stay safe.