Good morning friends. Your daily digest for this Thursday is ready. Let’s get to it.
Here’s your news briefing:
•Ukrainian President Zelensky addressed the US Congress via Zoom. This is the video he showed them:
The video that President Volodymyr Zelensky demonstrated during his virtual address to the U.S. Congress earlier on March 16. Video: Zelenskiy/Official/Telegram•Biden called Putin ‘a war criminal’. The Russians said it was "unforgiveable rhetoric". "We believe such rhetoric to be unacceptable and unforgivable on the part of the head of a state, whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world." spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Here’s the actual footage in typical Biden style:
•In the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, 13 people waiting in a queue for bread were reportedly killed by Russian shelling.
•Yesterday Putin held a televised meeting with his government. Check out this clip where he vows he would cleanse Russia of the “scum and traitors” he accuses of working covertly for the U.S. and its allies:
•In other news, the Federal Reserve approved the first interest rate hike in more than three years, and sees six more hikes ahead this year. After keeping its benchmark interest rate anchored near zero since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee said it will raise rates by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. The rate rise was approved with only one dissent. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard wanted a 50 basis point increase. More on this here.
•A Walmart distribution center caught fire yesterday. Look at this crazy footage:
•A Russian-owned superyacht can't leave a dock in Norway — not because of sanctions, but because no one in the port will sell it fuel. The Ragnar is owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former KGB agent who has long been linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin. More on this here.
•In the news Simpsons episode, Homer gets canceled and meets Joe Rogan. More on this here.
If you look at the chart below you would think that Covid deaths in Denmark are exploding, but are they really? Let’s take a deeper look.
Let’s first look at excess mortality below. The spike in 2018 was due to a bad flu, then you can see the Delta wave until it was overtaken by Omicron and boosters.
The question is, why does the first chart look so terrible when the excess mortality chart appears more benign? The short answer is that many deaths counted in the OWID chart are not Covid-related. The definition of a Covid-related death reported in OWID is that the person tested positive within 30 days of dying. 59% of all Danes have had Covid since November, so even if Covid was completely benign, many would die while being Covid positive. Danish authorities estimate that 40% of deaths are “with” not “because of” Covid. This distinction was much less an issue earlier in the pandemic, but a huge issue now, as shown below:
Credit to: Michael Bang Petersen
Let’s talk a bit about Daryl Davis. He is a black musician, a pianist to be exact. He has jammed with the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King and even Bill Clinton.
Many years ago as his music career was flourishing, Davis also became enmeshed in quite arguably the world’s strangest side hustle – meeting with Ku Klux Klan members of various ranks and attending so-called cross lighting rallies. Some of these Klansmen became close friends of Davis’s.
While some say Davis converted these men, he prefers to say that they converted themselves, and that he merely provided the impetus for them to do so. Over the past 30 years, Davis has become well-versed in the organization’s ethos and hierarchy which led to him to becoming the first black man to write a book about the KKK entitled Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan, which was published in 1998.
Daryl Davis has been two times on the Joe Rogan podcast. You can check these episodes here and here. Below is a short clip where he explains his approach and why it is successful in changing someone’s mind. Very interesting.
When people talk about income inequality they tend to ignore or miss a crucial factor that has become increasingly relevant according to data. Assortative mating, which is when people of the same or similar education status and income level marry each other. Almost everyone at the top schools comes from more or less equally affluent families, and almost everyone adopts more or less the same values and tastes. And such mutually indistinguishable people marry each other.
If educated, highly skilled, and affluent people tend to marry each other, that by itself tends to increase inequality. About one-third of the inequality increase in the United States between 1967 and 2007 can be explained by assortative mating.
The returns to children’s early education and learning are sharply rising, and if these early advantages can be provided only by very educated parents, who, as the data show, spend much more time with their children than less educated parents, then the road to a strong intergenerational transmission of advantages and inequality is wide open. This is true even if—and it is important to underline this—there is high taxation of inheritance, because inheritance of financial resources is merely one of the advantages that the children of educated and rich parents enjoy. And in many cases, it may not even be the most important part. (Credit to: Branko Milanovic)
And lastly, the usual pics, vids and memes from around the web:
This is how mushrooms are farmed, apparently.
Saharan sand on the Swiss Alps two days ago.
Clouds over Texas. These are actually called mammatus clouds. A very interesting weather phenomenon.
Gas joke.
Took me a second.
Still though, corporate love is real.
Sometimes people forget how ethnically diverse Russia is. Take a look at this.
Me irl.
That was it for today folks. Have a great day ahead. See you tomorrow.