Ep. 74 - Gerrymander USA, The End of Civilization, and Monkey Business

The US Supreme Court says that it can’t weigh in on Gerrymandered districts. We look at the idea of Gerrymandering in the United States, armed with the new social choice tools that we picked up in previous episodes.A Cloudflare outage temporarily takes down a portion of the internet. This may be evidence of a central point of failure, but could that central point be shrinking?Finally we talk about a Bayesian argument in the Wall Street Journal and recently released book that claims to predict the end of the world. We break down what it’s claiming, how the tools of Bayes and Lindy fit in, and how much weight to put on the prognosis. How can we avoid our Turkey Consumption Holiday of Choice?Then - we go completely off script, covering the possibility of continuing civilization on Mars and on pockets in Earth after a Nuclear disaster, the asteroid made of gold, and some monkeys finally reaching the stone age.You have reached another Local Maximum indeed! Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe