A summer of unprecedented bushfires, a global pandemic and economic
recession. 2020 is certainly not the year anyone predicted, but it is shaping
up to be a year of seismic paradigm shifts. ...
‘The most ignorant and unfit’: What made America’s worst ever leader? (NYRB 3.7.20)
“Being president,” former First Lady Michelle Obama has said, “doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.” In this moment, we may also need to acknowledge that presidents also reveal much about who we are.
IAN FRASER. Banks, master criminals of the Universe (Literary Review February 2020)
Banks, too big to fail and too big to gaol. A review of “Sabotage: The Business of Finance” by Anastasia Nesvetailova & Ronen Palan.
Russian state-sponsored hackers target Covid-19 vaccine researchers
Sarah B. Lawsky (Northwestern), Situating Tax Experimentation: A Response to Michael Abramowicz’s Tax Experimentation, 71 Fla. L. Rev. F. 76 (2020):
In Tax Experimentation, [71 Fla. L. Rev. 65 (2019)], Professor Michael Abramowicz proposes that the government employ “tax experiments.” In these experiments, a subgroup of taxpayers would be treated differently than other taxpayers, for purposes of the tax law, for some period of time. The behavior of the treatment group could give the government information about tax policies. After briefly summarizing the article, this response suggests that Professor Abramowicz’s proposal has the potential for significant impact and that taking into account additional issues raised by existing tax scholarship—about tax morale, revenue estimation, and sunset provisions—will make the proposal even stronger.
Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend
What people in other forums are saying about public policy Continue reading
Cloud swings Chinese database market behind local developers
Oracle rules on-prem, but Alibaba owns the cloud ... and here comes Huawei
IBM job ad calls for 12 years’ experience with Kubernetes – which is six years old
Other job ads make similar mistakes, and candidates do worse
Linus Torvalds banishes masters, slaves and blacklists from the Linux kernel, starting now
As a colossal commit count crashes into Linux 5.8-rc5
Seattle’s Socialists Are Now Enemy Number One for Jeff Bezos and Amazon Jacobin
Different Names, Same Address: How Big Businesses Got Government Loans Meant for Small Businesses ProPublica
White House tells 18 million unemployed workers to ‘Find Something New’ in ad campaign WaPo
Tim Cook Joins White House to Tell Unemployed Americans to Learn to Code Gizmodo
On an Instagram account called Plague History, artist Genevieve Blaishas been modifying the subjects of artworks to give them face masks. You know I couldn’t resist including her rendition of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
See also Iconic Art & Design Reimagined for the Social Distancing Era, Famous Art Recreated at Home During the Pandemic, and Jesus Christ, Just Wear a Face Mask!