Winter Wonderland Edition
The groundhog better be wrong ...
The night of the big storm, it was an oddly cloudless sunset. I went for a jog around a local park, which was deserted and pin-drop quiet, and I stopped for a few seconds to watch the sky light up as the sun dipped below the horizon. Something moved just a few feet away, startling me, which is when I saw this feathered friend. If the sunset hadn’t stopped me in my tracks, I would have run within inches of it! I said hello, and we just looked at each other for a bit. They normally like plenty of distance from humans, and this close encounter gave me a sense of its true size - egrets are big birds! It was an unexpected, peaceful moment.
As I finish up this issue, the president just signed the next big batch of appropriations bills for the current fiscal year. DHS remains in play, with 10 days to pass that final budget bill. No one is predicting it will pass in time, meaning a third shutdown this budget cycle. (Some idiot predicted in the last issue that there would be no more shutdowns this year!) There’s a good chance this next shutdown will be lengthy - neither side seems to have much motivation to compromise.
But the education appropriation passed, which means our center will likely get its second year of funding starting in October! We were optimistic about this, but if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that you have to be ready for the unexpected when it comes to the federal government. So it is a relief to know that all of our plans and activities will continue into at least a second year.
As always, I appreciate you reading the newsletter. Please forward to anyone who may be interested.
Something Short
I’ve referred to my essay on AI, education, and creativity before, but I recently shared it in a packet of resources for a guest lecture at Columbia, and this is the paper everyone wanted to talk about. I hit a nerve! It was a lot of fun talking to the students, and it reinforced for me that everyone is concerned about AI in some way, shape, or form. Also, check out Scott Galloway’s recent conversation with Tristan Harris. Probably the best AI discussion I’ve heard recently, and it gave me (just a little) hope.
My reputation as a Luddite is growing, but that goes a bit too far. As noted in the essay, I’m a technology guy! I love the positive aspects of new tech and have always been, well, not an early adopter, more a “second wave” adopter. For example, this story on advanced tech in China made me excited about the possibilities!
Some Things that Intrigued Me
Bubble? What bubble? I love a thoughtful, historical approach to an interesting topic; that’s the reason many of my courses are organized historically - understanding any complex developments in isolation is almost impossible, you need to know where it came from and where it went. For that reason alone, I thought this figure by Brett Winton was amazing and super cool.
Source: ARK Invest via Brett Winton
Neoliberalism rocks! It’s becoming fashionable in political and intellectual circles to trash neoliberalism as an ineffective approach to policy, but the data just don’t support that negativity. Sure, a belief in free markets has its problems, but gosh, it also produces amazing outcomes. As a recent case in point, social media scolds have been complaining that people eat out or have prepared food delivered far too often. They point to the amount of money many people report spending on DoorDash, restaurants, etc. Someone looked at it more carefully, though, and the amount of $$$ people spend on such things as a percentage of their income has stayed pretty much the same over the past few decades. This is because American workers make so much more money than they used to! Economic growth is a wonderful thing.
The positive effects of free market policies popped into my mind again after reading this NBER paper on U.S. poverty. Much of the data are interesting, but the chart below stopped me in my tracks. This is the authors’ depiction of poverty rates from 1939 to 2023. The green line is all Americans, blue represents African Americans, and red represents non-Black Americans. The graph for people over 65 is not quite as dramatic but is also eye-opening (if you were over 65 in 1939, there was a better than a 50-50 chance you lived in poverty; now the odds are closer to 5%).
Yes, our country big, difficult problems that are so thorny that they may not be solvable. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t accomplished great things. Imagine telling someone in 1939 that in less than a century the country would find a way to drop the Black childhood poverty rate from over 90% to 6%. They would have scoffed, yet it happened. Data such as these are the reason why I take populist economic proposals - on both the left and right - with a grain of salt. Free market capitalism has led to enormous economic growth that allowed us to accomplish some truly extraordinary things over the past 75+ years.
There are lots of good ideas. My comments above about our problems sound pessimistic, but I’m actually getting more hopeful that good things will continue to happen. I’ve seen a lot of features like this one by NOTUS: Name an under-the-radar idea that could pass Congress this year and have a big impact on the country. They’ve done similar pieces on state policy ideas. My point here is that there are lots of people trying to make the world a better place, and we lose sight of that because those folks are often outside of the limelight, shirtsleeves rolled up, pushing hard to create positive change. We can fix all of this (sweeps hand across the horizon)!
Some Things That Interested Me
Ponies. This new Peacock series is a lot of fun! Very bingeable (say, during a winter storm that shuts down your city for over a week), and Haley Lu Richardson is great as one of the spies. It hits the right 70s and spy-thriller notes, all while being pretty funny. A little spicy at times, which I liked but may not be for everyone. Overall, a good series that hopefully gets a second season.
Parasite. This song is a few months old now, but when you’re 10 miles into a half marathon, the opening notes of Parasite give you a power boost that is hard to describe unless you’ve experienced it. Just a great, fun song. It’s now the fourth song in my “this race is starting to hurt” power block: Bad Habits, Watermelon Sugar, Love Me Again, Parasite, Lil Boo Thang.
Jade Plant of the Month
And, of course, how bad can things be if we still have jade plants? This month’s green beauty is a variegated jade that I’ve had for just over a year. I struggle with this variety, so it’s development of bright red edges over the past two weeks has been a nice surprise. The white makes the edges pop even more than usual!
Where to Find Me
email: jplucker@jhu.edu
http://Amazon.com/author/jonathanplucker
Oh, yes. Nice post and photo.
Might that be a Great Blue Heron?
Ahh...10 miles into a halfathon...yes, only a 5K to go, so it's time to push.
I'm glad funding is going to continue for many project, including yours. I hope that the level of funding for educational research and services will increase dramatically in the coming years.