Chris Blattman

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled another, potentially more bitter conflict: the long-running war between international relations school of thought. You may have read the Mearshimer interview in the New Yorker that roiled so many, defending his version of realism. Maybe you read Stathis Kalyvas’ defense of constructivism. Or one of a thousand tweets, raging against or loving an IR take. If you’re like most people, however, you’re just confused. If so, forgive yourself. I spent years...

In 2019 the age-adjusted death rate from an opioid overdose was 21.6 per 100,000 people. This compares with 12.9 for kidney disease, 14.2 from suicides, 14.7 for influenza, 21.6 from diabetes, and 161.5 from heart disease (the leading cause of death in the United States). Opioid overdose deaths place in the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States. As can been from Figure 1, prior to 2015 most of these opioid deaths arose from prescription (Rx) overdoses, but after that they came...

Some lessons from the last war seem relevant for the current one. What I’ve been reading: …The Taliban in 2002 were broken. After fleeing Kandahar, Mullah Omar hid out in northern Helmand, Uruzgan, and Zabul. A new direction for the movement had yet to coalesce. Various commanders were preparing to continue the war, a few in al-Qa‘eda and militant camps in Pakistan. Others were resting in Pakistan or attempting to retire to community life inside Afghanistan. A number wanted to cooperate with...

The changing of the guard at the India/Pakistan Wagah/Attari border puts the shame to West Side Story Quote of the week: “My goal is not to disparage the NYT as a church but to note that the relevant market is lifestyle.” From this great thread: Most people think @nytimes is in the journalism business. This morning, when using towels recommended by Wirecutter, it occurred to me that’s wrong (or incomplete). It is in the culture (or lifestyle) business. This has interesting economic and...

Alex Tabarrok had a great interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast. A lot of it is on what we learn from Mancur Olson about the current capture of US politics by interest groups. Whether it’s property developers or wealthy homeowners or poor renters or big oil, or whatever—these are groups that would trade off $100 of societal benefits for $1 to themselves. What struck me is how, afterwards, Tabarrok reflected on the moral economy, not the political economy, of this rent-seeking: I was especially...

Yesterday Russia moved to consolidate its control over eastern separatist regions of Ukraine. People bickered over whether this constituted an invasion, at which point Noah Smith won Twitter for the day: If it’s not from the Invasion region of southern France, then it’s not an invasion, it’s just a sparkling annexation — Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 (@Noahpinion) February 22, 2022 I’m only medium-good at tweets, and I don’t have much experience at all with Russia or Ukraine. But what I can do is parse...

Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” started three weeks ago, with truckers converging on Ottawa to protest a law requiring that they be vaccinated to come back into their own country. Given that well over 80 percent of the truckers are vaccinated, what exactly are they protesting? As one reporter who talked to dozens of demonstrators put it, it’s less about mandates per se and more about “a sense that things will never go back to normal, a sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the...

Over a thousand pieces of equipment and as many operators to plow roads once 2.5 cm of snow has accumulated, and once we get 15 cm Montreal gears up into the DEFCON 1 equivalent of snow response operations. Maximum readiness. Immediate response. The first step is informing citizens when their streets will be cleared. In dense, downtown neighborhoods, most people park on the street and their cars need to move. No parking signs get installed block by block and notifications go out through the...

One day I showed my father a copy of some tattoos from the ‘Crosses’ (solitary confinement cells), where I worked as a supervisor, and he said to me, ‘My son, collect the tattoos, the convicts’ customs, their anti-social drawings, or it will all go to the grave with them.’ He taught me the methodology for documenting prison folklore and how to encode material, which was essential to the dangerous undertaking. For thirty-three years I, a ward of a home for children of ‘enemies of the...

Photo essay of the interior spaces of labor union offices around the world (Pictured above: “Solidarity”; Gdansk, Poland) For those who enjoyed Pranab Bardhan’s memoir posts, here is a recent podcast with the famed development economist How to embed invisible messages in an an email, that ensures it will go straight to the recipient’s spam folder Pasting PDF text to to text! If you spend a lot of time copying text from PDFs into Word like me, I hope this tip might be useful! If the PDF...