The F-47, the new US 6th generation fighter. (8-minute video from Binkov, article at Defense News)
Very interesting essay on British traveller and writer Bruce Chatwin: "My whole life has been a search for the miraculous: yet at the first faint flavor of the uncanny, I tend to turn rational and scientific.”
I wish to endorse this Scott Siskind essay positing psychological explanations for political positions. Conflict over resources is real, but in our world it simply does not explain most of our politics. Conflict over status explains more, but I think Siskind's psychological framing better captures what is actually happening.
Despite everything, there is still a punk scene in China.
23andMe declares bankruptcy. (NY Times, Reuters) These DNA testing companies did well at first, and their stocks soared, but I always thought that once the backlog of interested people had their data their sales would fall off, and so it has happened. Issues with the security of the data they hold haven't helped, but the main thing is that most of the people who want this kind of genetic information already have it.
Remarkable hoard of Iron Age objects found in Yorkshire, including cauldrons.
Richard Hanania: "Before long, I expect Trump administration officials to start reading out the license plate numbers of Teslas that have been damaged the way that liberals used to repeat the names of black people killed in encounters with police."
Essay by Sherman Alexie, "the greatest Kiss lipsync tribute band in Native American history." Partly about the subject indicated in the title and partly about the fallibility of memory.
The science and politics of using mRNA vaccines to fight cancer.
New findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which has surveyed 15 million galaxies and quasars, suggest that the cosmological "constant", aka "dark energy," must have been much stronger in the past, which might mean that the expansion of the universe will eventually stop and reverse. (good article from Berkeley Labs, 7-minute video from Sabine Hossenfelder.)
J. Russell Smith (1874-1966) and the cultivation of trees. He thought vast areas of hills should be converted from plow agriculture to growing trees that had been specially bred to provide food or whatever else humans need. His book Tree Crops (1929) still has a huge following, including among science fiction writers, several of whom have filled the future with forests of food-producing trees.
Ninety-minute interview with Manu Meel, co-founder of BridgeUSA, an organization dedicated to promoting constructive political dialogue on college campuses. Bridge USA web site.
Alex Tabarrok reminds us of America and Canada in better times.
Giving AIs personality traits, and seeing how this impacts their collaboration with humans.
Fascinating NY Times article on the Volksbund, the German organization that recovers German bodies scattered across Europe during the World Wars and gives them decent burial, no matter who they were. A Russian archaeologist I knew in the 90s told me that he had spent much of his career recovering the bodies that regularly turned up during construction in Russia, especially in cities where they were just buried in the rubble and forgotten.
Kerala, an Indian state with 35 million inhabitants, has done well economically in the past 30 years despite uninterrupted rule by socialists, helped by ties to the global economy. Widespread knowledge of English also helps.
Designing better light sails for interstellar travel.
3 comments:
The Siskind essay is interesting, and it's pleasant to see a blow struck against crude materialistic and over-rationalist forms of analysis. But, as with Ezra Klein's anodyne policy-mongering, I can't help but feel that something about it misses the current moment. Siskind's attention seems mired in the sort of bootless arguing-on-the-internet-focused political atmosphere of the first Trump admin. My sense is we've left that phase of bickering and "political hobbyism," and have entered upon war by other means. Of course, at the moment the war is only being waged by the administration, and they're wiping the field, the Signal episode notwithstanding. Real, concerted, aggressive opposition that could actually meet them head-on doesn't exist. One Bernie-AOC tour out West and some weak boycotts aren't going to do it. Merely saying "People want to feel like their preferred lifestyle and policies have no negative implications at all" and so on, no longer covers our reality. For many, and especially for what used to be the institutions of "civil society"--universities, newspapers, law firms, and some culture icons most visibly--the order of the day now seems to be sauve qui peut.
There was a discussion published in the NYT today about the lack of effective resistance to Trump. The talk featured Gessen, Bouie, and Tufecki, all of whom I esteem. The most striking thing for me was the near-unanimous agreement that any would-be opposition will not gain significant support if it campaigns on, you know, the Constitution, due process, human rights, democracy, etc. If that's true, I'm tempted to wonder what is even the point.
The F-47, the new US 6th generation fighter.
What a friend we have in Congress
Who will guard our every shore
Spends three quarters of our taxes
Getting ready for a war
Guns must make our coastline bristle
And we have to fill the sky
Full of bombs and guided missiles
They'll be paid for - by and by
Have you noticed all the progress
In our mighty airborne fleet?
By the time a plane's adopted
It's already obsolete
There's no factory profit, brother
And we have to do or die
One improvement, then another
They'll be paid for - by and by
Modern bombs are sure to carry
Loads of glory, joy, and thrills
What a privilege to bury
All the dead our money kills
Never mind the widows weeping
Disregard the orphan's cry
When God wakes the dead and sleeping
They'll be paid for - by and by
Pete Seeger, What A Friend We Have In Congress, 1960
Kerala, an Indian state with 35 million inhabitants, has done well economically in the past 30 years despite uninterrupted rule by socialists, helped by ties to the global economy. Widespread knowledge of English also helps.
Prioritizing investing in health and education at every turn, despite having extremely limited resources to invest in much of anything?
Pshaw! They CLEARLY should have slashed taxes on the wealthy, gutted business regulations, and created obscene incentives for international billionaires and corporations to move in and exploit the local populace! Then the benefits of Trickle Down Economics would have made Keralans even richer!
/sarcasm
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