Yearly review: 2016 in Nintil.com

So here we are, one year later after my last yearly review. How has the blog fared since then? Recall, this was the number of visits once year ago Now this chart looks like this So once again, the number of visits in 2016 has surpassed the number of visits in all of the previous years combined, just like in 2015. This is Trump voice Amazing, I love all of you /Trump voice In 2014 I published 38 posts, 61 posts in 2015. This year I managed to publish 58 posts. That amounts to about one post per week more o…

On the living standards of animals in the United Kingdom

You'd think you know about it, but you don't, and I didn't either until recently, so here's yet another Nintil post that will enlighten you. This post might be controversial. Comments are welcome in the comments section. If you think there is evidence that I have not considered, or evidence that I haven't properly weighted, please let me know. We begin with a pair of quotes: Industrial farming is abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine out of ten of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates.” These pens a…

In defense of Brennanian epistocracy

I write this article in response to this piece written by Claire Lehmann at Quillette magazine. The article itself is aimed mostly at Jason Brennan's recent work Against Democracy (PUP, 2016), but to some extent it could be read as a critique of similar works like Bryan Caplan's classic The Myth of the Rational Voter (PUP, 2008) , or Ilya Somin's Democracy and Political Ignorance (SUP, 2013). Lehmann first retells the many criticisms that 'low information voters' have been getting lately, during this highly…

The surprising Human Development Index of Cuba

[Post adapted and translated from Spanish] Cuba has an HDI of 0.815, the second highest in all Latin America, just behind Chile. Actually, 0.759, the ninth highest in Latin America. We could wonder why this is possible, given the island's sociopolitical regime. Does castrism work? First, the reason there is a correction in the first paragraph is that the often quoted HDI of 0.815 takes into account a GDP figure that is wrong. So there's one reason why the HDI is lower than it seems, to begin with. You can a…

The paradox of Cuban GDP

[Translated from Spanish] The calculation of Cuban GDP is, surprisingly, a contentious issue. There are those who say that Cuba is one of the richest countries of Latin America, and there are those who say that the Cuban economy is mediocre. Who is right, and what causes this divergence? Let's look at Cuban GDP per capita according to the World Bank. According to this measure, Cuba would have a GDP per capita in 2000 constant dollars of about 5400$. This places Cuba into the 'middle class' of Southamerica: …

Suicide, fast and slow / Book Review: Every Cradle is a Grave (Sarah Perry)

Sarah Perry, contributing editor of Ribbonfarm, and killer risotto maker (no joke, check the book), wrote a book about suicide and antinatalism some years ago. It hasn't got much attention, which makes it an excellent choice for one of my blogposts, following my policy of not writing about what others are writing about. The book I'm about to review deals with suicide and antinatalism, the philosophical view that bringing more people to the world is immoral. In my review I will only cover the first part. Alt…