I'm leaving for a week in Masachusetts and Maine tomorrow, so any posting will likely be imited to scenery. See you when I get back!
Using AI to find deposits of valuable metal ores. (NY Times, CNBC, company web site) Computer programs that model subsurface features and try to locate valuable stuff (especially oil) are ancient, going back to the 1960s, but the claim is that these new AI systems are a major improvement.
Amazingly detailed drawings of buildings and cities by Benjamin Sack.
"The Nuclear Company, a new startup, has ambitious aims of spurring the construction of fleets of new nuclear power plants in the U.S."The rattlesnake livestream, a camera pointed at a rock outcrop in Colorado where dozens of rattlesnakes have been hanging out. In the interest of science, of course.
Kevin Drum confirms that color is indeed disappearing from the world of automobiles; gray, black, and white are the top choices. And I hate it. If my next car has to be gray I'm going to have it repainted orange.
"Inside your skull, your brain hums along with its own unique pattern of activity, a neural fingerprint that’s yours and yours alone. A heavy dose of psilocybin temporarily wipes the prints clean."
If you want an introduction to Foucault's thought, I recommend this 46-minute lecture from Michael Sugrue. Concludes by asking if Foucault's radical skepticism undermined his own ideas as much as it undermined everything else, says that Foucault's followers "delegitmize the discourses of others without inquiring in a satisfactory way into the foundations, or lack of foundations, of their own discourse."
In New York, a move is under way to make air conditioning a right of all tenants, just like heat. (NY Times) Tell me again about how we were richer in the 1960s.
Another array of prize-winning buildings that swamp me with indifference.
Do "museums of other people" have a future?
And from the same article: Did you know that the return of Benin bronzes from the US to Africa has been opposed by the descendants of slaves, who claim that it was the sale of their ancestors that provided the wealth displayed in the bronzes and therefore they should belong to African Americans, not Nigerians?
China's "Psychoboom".
Interesting: "Constellation Energy is in talks with the Pennsylvania governor's office and state lawmakers to help fund a possible restart of part of its Three Mile Island power facility."
Thefts of valuable metals, especially copper, are becoming a major problem in America. (NY Times, FBI, LA Times)
An economist reviews Emile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise, a novel about a department store that I mentioned before.
The Stegosaurus skeleton known as Apex sold at auction for $44.6 million, a new record for a fossil.
Quick post about a Chinese historical drama that seems to focus on the budgetary problems of the Ming Empire.
The problem with running the national park at Pompeii is that you can't dig even a little hole for an air shaft without hitting something like the tomb of a military official under Augustus.
How well immigrants do in the US depends a lot on how they got here: willing migrants who pay their own way do great, but refugees have traditionally lagged, especially when they came from war-torn countries. But now even Cambodian and Hmong migrants who came to the US after the disaster of the Vietnam war earn more than native whites. Just because refugees have a tough time for the first few decades doesn't mean they won't be a benefit in the long run.
Restoring the marble floor of a Roman villa, under water.
Scott Siskind, who lives in the Bay Area, put up a mildly interesting post about homelessness last week. He argued that it is useless to say “we should do something about mentally ill homeless people” without specifying what it is you want to do, "something most of these people never get to." This inspired an explosion in his comment section from people who, it seems, want to send the Cossacks to saber the homeless into the ocean. Lots of people in SF are mad as hell about the homeless; I have an old acquaintance who lives out there and when I talked to him a few years ago I came away thinking that he would vote for Lenin if the Bolsheviks promised to clear the homeless out of his neighborhood. And now Siskind has responded, arguing that "I WOULD BE REALLY TOUGH!!!" is still not an actionable policy, just a way of saying "do something" with all caps.
This week's music is the St. Markus Passion by Nikolaus Matthes, often hailed as the greatest Baroque work of the 21st century. Hard to believe it is only five years old.
Royal United Services Institute report on tactical lessons from the Israeli offensive in Gaza, full of fascinating observations like this one: "The evidence from Gaza suggests that high-rise buildings are of limited military value. . . . Above a certain height, the streets become dead ground." Summary on Twitter/X.
And another RUSI report, this one on Ukraine's failed offensive in 2023. Short summary on Twitter/X. And here is an excerpt on the defense of Bakhmut.
3 comments:
In New York, a move is under way to make air conditioning a right of all tenants, just like heat. (NY Times) Tell me again about how we were richer in the 1960s.
To be fair, in the 1960s, the global average temperature was a full degree centigrade lower - which is a huge difference. Summertime temperatures in New York City in 2020 were about 5 degree fahrenheit hotter than those of the summer of 1960.
Thefts of valuable metals, especially copper, are becoming a major problem in America.
Tell me again, John, how great the economy is doing.
Which it is! In aggregate. But our nation's staggering income inequality means that 'on average', the economy can be doing great, but because all the money is going to the top, the people at the bottom grow more and more desperate, and problems like illegal copper stripping balloon in size.
This inspired an explosion in his comment section from people who, it seems, want to send the Cossacks to saber the homeless into the ocean.
I feel like this cruelly vilifies the Cossacks, who famously openly accepted fleeing serfs and other refugees with no homes and no wealth into their numbers.
That said, I feel like it perfectly captures the mentality of many Americans, who demonize the homeless in a truly psychotic manner.
This twisted mindset is at the heart of a lot of Americans claims that "crime" is on the rise. Most of the time, when people talk about perceptions of crime increasing, the statistics show that crime is not meaningfully going up - and is usually trending down overall. But it turns out those claims of "increased crime" do largely correlate with increases in homelessness.
In short, most Americans think that being homeless makes you a criminal and a villain. Hence the perverse fantasies about sabering them into the seas.
I imagine it has something to do with the classic American malady of the poor refusing to acknowledge that they are poor, and instead seeing themselves as Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". We have long had a Classist society where the poor look down on their fellow poor, thinking themselves somehow magically separate and superior to them, destined to one day take their rightful place among the rich and elite.
Within such a monstrous mentality, nothing is more detestable than the utter deprivation of homelessness. The average American worships at the feet of cruel and immoral billionaires, but wouldn't hesitate for a second to spit in the face of the most saintly and kind beggar.
What a hideous people we are.
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