Anthony Obeyesekere

Economist and policy advisor. Trying to be a better effective altruist. Sri Lankan and Australian. Retweets are not endorsements.

[Neal Parikh @npparikh]

Anthony Bourdain wrote about this. This was his pitch for Parts Unknown. Trust me, read the whole thing.

[Google Earth @googleearth]

Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P

We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...

Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!

[shirish @shiri_shh]

bro immigrated from Mexico and took a $28/hr contract welding job in 2015.

didn't even know what SpaceX was.

they gave him $10,000 in stock and let him buy more through payroll deductions.

that stake is now worth $880,000.

and he's one of 4,400 employees who became millionaires on Friday. welders. technicians. cafeteria staff.

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@adaderana Interesting..

[SMB Attorney @SMB_Attorney]

Guys, stay alive and healthy for as long as possible. The advances in medicine right now are crazy and accelerating. Over the next 20 years, they’re going to cure everything.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

1/5
I'm a cardiologist. I have spent twenty years watching cholesterol destroy arteries, trigger heart attacks, and kill people I care about.
Today, Eli Lilly presented data that may begin to end that era.
VERVE-102. A single infusion. One dose. It uses base editing to permanently turn off the PCSK9 gene in your liver.
Presented today at the European Atherosclerosis Society Congress:
88% reduction in PCSK9.
62% reduction in LDL cholesterol.
Sustained up to 18 months.
No treatment-related serious adverse events.
One infusion. Not daily pills you forget to take. Not monthly injections. One dose — and your cholesterol may stay low for the rest of your life.

[Gita Gopinath @GitaGopinath]

A painting of the end of meritocracy: A meeting of the two largest economies and not one woman at the table.

[Geoff Brumfiel @gbrumfiel]

An absolutely astonishing account of Israel's AI-assisted targeting in the @latimes

They called 62-year-old Ahmad Turmus and asked: “Ahmad, you want to die with those around you or alone?” His response, below, is chilling.

Story by @nabihbulos
https://t.co/sBVBNxOMnA

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@bryan_johnson Just trying to understand the ‘what to do’ part. Okay, coffee in the morning ✅ That part is clear.

Decaf in evening. However, less is better. Is that just for the evening/night time? Is the ideal that we have some decaf at end of day, or even better, no coffee at all?

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@yudhanjaya This goddam country man…

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. #ApostolicJourney #Cameroon https://t.co/bKteFZ3iWE

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@YRanaraja Is it at Keels?

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@yudhanjaya @DrBukkabwoi Yes!!

[Malinga Fernando @mafernando]

The cost of Sri-Lanka's bad coal deal:

Coal: ~Rs.20/kWh
Diesel (tonight's dispatch): Rs.70-120/kWh

100MW shortfall × 8 night hours = Rs.50-80M/day extra. This is inline with CEB Chairman comment on "Rs. 50 mil per day".

That's Rs.1.5-2.4B/month — just the fuel cost delta from bad coal.

LAD price up 36% in 3 weeks (Rs.281→382). Every night this continues, the bill gets worse.

Who is accountable? And what is the plan to fix it?

SL CEB is literally burning tax payer money to produce electricity because of their inability to vet a a major once-every-half-decade contract.

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

This is wild. The @WhiteHouse plagiarized its reason for launching a war on Iran from @FDD, a cutout of Israeli intelligence. Side-by-side screenshots in the 🧵

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is probably the most important article of the month: an op-ed by Oman's Foreign Minister, who mediated the talks between the U.S. and Iran, in which he writes that the U.S. "has lost control of its foreign policy" to Israel.

He repeats that a deal was possible as an outcome of the talks (something confirmed by the UK's National Security Advisor, who also attended: https://t.co/XkfSpkMjCf) and that the military strike by the U.S. and Israel was "a shock."

Interestingly, given he is one of Iran's neighbors and given that Oman has been struck multiple times by Iran since the war began (https://t.co/IXNdwD6f3j), he writes that "Iran’s retaliation against what it claims are American targets on the territory of its neighbours was an inevitable result" of the U.S.-Israeli attack. He describes it as "probably the only rational option available to the Iranian leadership."

He says the war "endangers" the region's entire "economic model in which global sport, tourism, aviation and technology were to play an important role." He adds that "if this had not been anticipated by the architects of this war, that was surely a grave miscalculation."

But, he adds, the "greatest miscalculation" of all for the U.S. "was allowing itself to be drawn into this war in the first place."

In his view this was the doing of "Israel’s leadership" who "persuaded America that Iran had been so weakened by sanctions, internal divisions and the American-Israeli bombings of its nuclear sites last June, that an unconditional surrender would swiftly follow the initial assault and the assassination of the supreme leader."

Obviously, this proved completely wrong, and the U.S. is now in a quagmire. He says that, given this, "America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth," which is that "there are two parties to this war who have nothing to gain from it," namely "Iran and America."

He says that all of the U.S. interests in the region (end to nuclear proliferation, secure energy supply chains, investment opportunities) are "best achieved with Iran at peace."

As he writes, "this is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told."

He then proposes a couple of paths to get back to the negotiating table, although he recognizes how difficult it would be for Iran "to return to dialogue with an administration that twice switched abruptly from talks to bombing and assassination."

That's perhaps the most profound damage Trump did during this entire episode: the complete discrediting of diplomacy. If Iran was taught anything, it is: don't negotiate with the U.S., it's a trap that will literally kill you.

The great irony of the man who sold himself as a dealmaker is that he taught the world one thing: don't make deals with my country.

Link to the article: https://t.co/FZxtqV3RC4

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

For the record, the president of the United States is now simultaneously claiming that he has won the war, is currently winning the war, needs help to win the war, and needs no help to win the war. All to destroy the nuclear program he claims to have already destroyed last year.

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@SL_Archives @nimilamalee Great!!

[Anthony Obeyesekere @obscary]

@nimilamalee @RehanJayawick @TimesOnlineLK Thanks for the good reporting