Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Nerdiness: Haunted Underground

 

“I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm, as it was bright . . .”



“As life runs on, the road grows strange 

With faces new, and near the end

The milestones into headstones change,

’Neath every one a friend.”


“I value myself upon this, that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation. I am now sixty-eight, and I have no more of it than at twenty-eight.”



A lust for rust: going back in time and exploring a museum without gravity


Artists Auction Future Royalties For Cash Today

While Royalty Exchange might sound like a dating service for those in the peerage, it’s actually a company geared to assisting artists looking to auction off some of their most valuable assets: their royalties and residual rights. Royalties and residuals are contract-guaranteed percentages doled out to creators and performers based on the use or performance of works they were involved in. And participation in a hit song, movie or TV show can mean they rack up pretty fast. – Los Angeles Times


New book traces why India-China ties have been ‘confrontational’ since 15th century The Print


Where We Went Wrong With The Meritocracy

Despite all efforts to try to talk them out of the notion, working-class parents were adamant that an academic education was the best kind of education and that it should be made available to all. – Los Angeles Review of Books


Universities must act to eradicate discrimination against working-class students, including the mockery of regional accents, equality campaigners have said.

A Guardian investigation has found widespread evidence of students at some of the country’s leading universities being ridiculed over their accents and backgrounds, in some cases prompting them to leave education….

The Social Mobility Commission (SMC), which monitors progress in improving social mobility in the UK, described the situation as unacceptable and said accents had become a “tangible barrier” for some students.

This week the Guardian reported complaints of a “toxic attitude” towards some northern students at Durham University. Last month the university launched an inquiry after wealthy prospective freshers reportedly planned a competition to have sex with the poorest student they could find.

Here is the full story



The author is Virginia Postrel, and yes studying the history of textiles is one of the very best ways to better understand markets.  This book does that.

You can pre-order *The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.  Here is Virginia’s adapted WSJ essay.


 Mathematician Gary Cornell argues that current testing procedures won’t tell us much about vaccine efficacy for the elderly


 Nanobodies against Covid?


Markets in everything


Indian labor regulations are really bad.


 Strikingly good piece on Palantir (NYT), with cameos from Hegel, Talcott Parsons, Thiel, and Tolkien.  And Palantir.


Thwarted Santa vaccine markets in everything


The true dangers of AI are closer than we think MIT Technology Review


After the Digital Tornado Cambridge University


Study Shows We Might Be Thinking About Joint Injuries in The Wrong Way Science Alert


The Science of Nerdiness Scientific American