Friday Assorted Links from Marginal Revolution
Key Takeaways
- •Marginal Revolution's September 4, 2026 roundup follows the blog's weekly Friday tradition of assorted links curated by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.
- •Feminist writer and organizer Gloria Steinem, prominent from the 1960s onward, died, as reported by the New York Times.
- •A new book on Chinese cuisine by British writer and cook Fuchsia Dunlop is scheduled for release on October 20.
- •The roundup features the O-Ring production model, originally named after the Challenger shuttle disaster, applied to multi-step AI pipelines, plus a ChinaTalk discussion of AI safety with Joshua Saxe.
- •A New York Times item reports on a working pig kidney transplant, reflecting research into xenotransplantation as a response to organ shortages.
Marginal Revolution, the economics blog co-authored by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, continues its long-running tradition of Friday assorted links roundups, which collect items on economics, culture, science, and food that catch the authors' attention. The roundup for September 4, 2026, includes the following items:
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“After work, we'll have each other.” (Asterisk Mag) — an essay taking up the question of how work and human relationships fit together, a recurring theme in debates about automation and meaning.
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Gloria Steinem, RIP (NYT). Steinem was a leading feminist writer and organizer in the United States from the 1960s onward.
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Henry Oliver on Finding Emily (Common Reader).
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Solve for the Russian family squabble equilibrium (short video) (X post).
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New Fuchsia Dunlop book due out October 20 (Amazon). Dunlop is a British writer and cook known for her books on Chinese cuisine.
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The O-Ring model, restated for AI (X post). The O-Ring production function, named after the Challenger shuttle disaster, models production in which output depends on every step being performed correctly — an framing often applied to multi-step AI pipelines.
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Joshua Saxe on AI safety (ChinaTalk).
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The pig kidney worked (NYT). The item touches on xenotransplantation, the transplantation of animal organs into humans, an area researchers have pursued as a way to address organ shortages.
