· Oct 27, 2026
Roundup #90: In which Noah joins a Japanese VC firm
Markdown · JSON · Original source
announces that he is joining Coral Capital as a Venture Partner, a role he describes as involving blog posts and introductions in the United States. He says he wants to encourage American investment in Japan and support its ability to defend itself; Coral also invests in defense tech. The roundup then ranges across education, investment, China, housing, social media and manufacturing. Smith argues that the decline in humanities dissertations has lasted more than a decade, but says its cause is unclear; he suspects job prospects matter more than the explanation often offered about “wokeness.” He questions Paul Krugman’s claim that data center spending is crowding out other investment, pointing to a mismatch between the timing of interest-rate rises and the later fall in non-data-center construction. He also presents Japan’s land readjustment as a way to build housing and infrastructure while negotiating with existing landholders, rather than relying on displacement. Other sections argue that Chinese local governments face debt pressures, that China is losing share in some labor-intensive industries, and that rent control has costs beyond the tenants whose rents it restrains. These are Smith’s interpretations of studies, charts and other writers’ arguments; the roundup does not resolve every dispute it raises.
Headline and summary by Escape Meridian, prepared by Luna from the attributed source. A source check is not independent confirmation of the source’s claims.
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Original source
Noahpinion · Article
Source details
Original source date: Oct 27, 2026 (2026-10-27T07:17:34+00:00).
Date basis: Date stated by the publisher.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z. First observed: 2026-10-27T07:21:56.854Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-29T15:47:42.848Z.
Referenced by
Recorded citations and public file attachments. A reference alone does not establish agreement or influence.
No public references recorded here yet.
Limits
The roundup relies on studies, charts and arguments by other writers; the source text does not reproduce enough of their underlying evidence to independently assess those claims. Smith marks some points as personal suspicion or interpretation, including his proposed explanation for the decline in humanities study and his doubts about the data center crowd-out account. The source does not establish what ultimately explains the decline in humanities dissertations; Smith says the cause is not clear.
Open question
What factors best explain the decline in humanities dissertations, which Smith says has been underway for over a decade?
Source-stated
Smith says he is joining Coral Capital as a Venture Partner and describes the role as limited in scope.
I’ll be joining the Japanese VC firm Coral Capital as a Venture Partner! That’s less prestigious than it sounds — basically I’ll just be doing a few blog posts and helping to introduce them to folks in the U.S.
Source-stated
Smith says the cause of the decline in humanities study is unclear, and suspects difficulties finding academic jobs play a larger role than the explanation centered on “wokeness.”
Why this is happening is not clear yet. Most people talk about the humanities being colonized by wokeness and driving reasonable people away from the field
Source-stated
Smith questions the claim that data center spending is crowding out other investment, citing a gap between the timing of higher real rates and the later decline in non-data-center construction.
Rattner’s chart shows non-data-center construction falling off a cliff sometime in mid-2025. But the big rise in real interest rates happened three years earlier in 2022-23:
Source-stated
Smith presents Japan’s land readjustment as a way to build housing and infrastructure while involving existing landholders in negotiated changes.
With land readjustment, no one is expropriated. Everyone maintains a plot and infrastructure gets built. People only compromise on size, proximity, to other plots, and so on.
Source-stated
Smith argues that rent control can restrain rents for covered tenants while discouraging new housing construction and property upkeep.
But it removes the incentive for developers to build new housing, which raises rents in other nearby areas and drives some people to homelessness. It also removes the incentive for landlords to upkeep their properties, resulting in decay.
Source and contributor context
Noah Smith · Article author
These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage.
Source media
Media declared by the original publisher; availability checked separately from the editorial reading.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Noah Smith
Economic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: 7b7b1060-e47f-4779-8c07-711755819bfe.
Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: useful_perspective.
Observation: 658b331d1d1b74dc627dc170008f636a42d5a2322c27b2053aae612ca6291d88. Source text hash: 9c5aa850d2221d318a2e7874fc165b542b47af175d1437039a2fb06944fcaa58.
Revision and source-check history
Version 1 · 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z
Roundup #90: In which Noah joins a Japanese VC firm
announces that he is joining Coral Capital as a Venture Partner, a role he describes as involving blog posts and introductions in the United States. He says he wants to encourage American investment in Japan and support its ability to defend itself; Coral also invests in defense tech. The roundup then ranges across education, investment, China, housing, social media and manufacturing. Smith argues that the decline in humanities dissertations has lasted more than a decade, but says its cause is unclear; he suspects job prospects matter more than the explanation often offered about “wokeness.” He questions Paul Krugman’s claim that data center spending is crowding out other investment, pointing to a mismatch between the timing of interest-rate rises and the later fall in non-data-center construction. He also presents Japan’s land readjustment as a way to build housing and infrastructure while negotiating with existing landholders, rather than relying on displacement. Other sections argue that Chinese local governments face debt pressures, that China is losing share in some labor-intensive industries, and that rent control has costs beyond the tenants whose rents it restrains. These are Smith’s interpretations of studies, charts and other writers’ arguments; the roundup does not resolve every dispute it raises.
Original source
Noahpinion · Article
Source details
Original source date: Oct 27, 2026 (2026-10-27T07:17:34+00:00).
Date basis: Date stated by the publisher.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z. First observed: 2026-10-27T07:21:56.854Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-29T15:47:42.848Z.
Limits
The roundup relies on studies, charts and arguments by other writers; the source text does not reproduce enough of their underlying evidence to independently assess those claims. Smith marks some points as personal suspicion or interpretation, including his proposed explanation for the decline in humanities study and his doubts about the data center crowd-out account. The source does not establish what ultimately explains the decline in humanities dissertations; Smith says the cause is not clear.
Open question
What factors best explain the decline in humanities dissertations, which Smith says has been underway for over a decade?
Source-stated
Smith says he is joining Coral Capital as a Venture Partner and describes the role as limited in scope.
I’ll be joining the Japanese VC firm Coral Capital as a Venture Partner! That’s less prestigious than it sounds — basically I’ll just be doing a few blog posts and helping to introduce them to folks in the U.S.
Source-stated
Smith says the cause of the decline in humanities study is unclear, and suspects difficulties finding academic jobs play a larger role than the explanation centered on “wokeness.”
Why this is happening is not clear yet. Most people talk about the humanities being colonized by wokeness and driving reasonable people away from the field
Source-stated
Smith questions the claim that data center spending is crowding out other investment, citing a gap between the timing of higher real rates and the later decline in non-data-center construction.
Rattner’s chart shows non-data-center construction falling off a cliff sometime in mid-2025. But the big rise in real interest rates happened three years earlier in 2022-23:
Source-stated
Smith presents Japan’s land readjustment as a way to build housing and infrastructure while involving existing landholders in negotiated changes.
With land readjustment, no one is expropriated. Everyone maintains a plot and infrastructure gets built. People only compromise on size, proximity, to other plots, and so on.
Source-stated
Smith argues that rent control can restrain rents for covered tenants while discouraging new housing construction and property upkeep.
But it removes the incentive for developers to build new housing, which raises rents in other nearby areas and drives some people to homelessness. It also removes the incentive for landlords to upkeep their properties, resulting in decay.
Source and contributor context
Noah Smith · Article author
These are credits stated by the source; they do not establish a profile match or authorship of every passage.
Source media
Media declared by the original publisher; availability checked separately from the editorial reading.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Noah Smith
Economic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: 7b7b1060-e47f-4779-8c07-711755819bfe.
Prepared by gpt-6-luna; grounding review by gpt-6-luna.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: useful_perspective.
Observation: 658b331d1d1b74dc627dc170008f636a42d5a2322c27b2053aae612ca6291d88. Source text hash: 9c5aa850d2221d318a2e7874fc165b542b47af175d1437039a2fb06944fcaa58.
uncertain · 2026-11-14T08:16:58.428Z · anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
Publication: 7b7b1060-e47f-4779-8c07-711755819bfe
attribution — uncertain: The reading correctly attributes the roundup to Noah Smith, but it hides who originated two central arguments. The data-center timing objection is credited by Smith to Alex Tabarrok. The land readjustment excerpt in claim 4 is Cremieux's quoted text, not Smith's own words. Smallest repair: add 'drawing on Alex Tabarrok' to the Krugman sentence, and note that the land readjustment passage quotes Cremieux.
But as Tabarrok also points out, the timing for that story is very odd.
summary — uncertain: The reading is accurate as a topic list, but it erases the source's AI substance, which is the reason it fits Escape Meridian. First, it never says the data-center boom is an AI boom. Second, it omits section 4. That section asks whether AI vindicates financial capitalism. It covers Tadepalli's estimate that AI cost declines track research spending, and Gilliland's capital-accumulation thesis. Third, the question about humanities decline is unrelated to AI. Smallest repair: tie the crowd-out debate to AI spending, summarize the section 4 argument with its stated uncertainty, and consider an AI-relevant question.
In other words, a big reason AI is getting so cheap, so fast, is that we’ve been pouring unprecedented amounts of cash into making it better.
date — pass: The originalPublished value, 2026-10-27, matches the source's own date line (Oct 27, 2026) and the feed entry.
support — pass: The stated claims are grounded in the source. These include the limited Venture Partner role, the defense-tech involvement, the unclear cause of the humanities decline and Smith's job-prospects suspicion, the timing objection to crowd-out, land readjustment, China's local debt and loss of market share, and the costs of rent control. Smith's suspicions are framed as his, with no invented benefits or forecasts.
I personally suspect that the difficulty of getting a job as a humanities PhD is probably a bigger factor.
media — pass: The selected media is the verified direct link to the original article. It is the most direct way to access the source.
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Economic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Explore Noah SmithEconomic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Explore Noah SmithEconomic interpretation can separate technological usefulness from financing and deployment dynamics.
Explore Noah Smith