1. Why Dunkin’ Donuts failed in India . 2. Rents in the Middle East, and is the region less dependent on oil than before?   And why is Jordan still relatively stable in economic terms? 3. Kakistocracy, the pending Richard Hanania book . 4. Brad Mehldau defends Billy Joel .  Slowly, but even I am being brought around to this position. 5. Kurtis Hingl on the future of research papers : “But this will evolve to a  demand-side system where “papers” are accompanied by a platform of all the tools used in the process, and the reader will ask their AI their “what if we did X instead of Y, does that change the estimate?” Like if I were reading an experimental chemistry paper, and it came with a pre-set lab with all the ingredients, a lab director and assistants, and I could ask them as I read the paper, “what if we tweaked the proportions by X?” and they did it right there in front of me and together we saw the outcome.” 6. Yes China understands their security risks from ChatGPT and other LLMs . 7.…