The most important story of January was Omnicron. The Washington Post has a good graphic. Built long before, but you can still see that cases are fading, deaths are not yet declining but they will be, and if you want relative COVID safety you might have a chance in a month. Maybe more. At this point I see no hope that new variants will stop emerging, and have little optimism that the FDA will accept that the latest vaccine, made in less than two weeks, does not require another full round of approvals.
If you’re wondering why it’s the most important story, well, to me it was most important because I got it. Down with a bad cold, and it ended up transitioning into living at home for a few months while I’m between apartments due to lease timing and subletting restrictions. This is to say that this month is a little thin and disorganized: apologies.
Look at Pages 28 and 29 of this report on Culver City, if you’re familiar with LA. Making effective transit is often predicated on local access to jobs, but that is in direct contradiction with the agglomeration economies of cities. Balancing this, of course, is high-quality public transit, but getting everything in the right order is going to be a long hard slog.
The other most important story is Ukraine, and the rising threat of conflict there. Unfortunately, I have no modern recommendation. Instead, I recommend reading Plokhy, or another historian of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or reading up on some of the 90s history of Russia if you’re as young as I am. A little bit of history will do you much more good than constantly checking the news. If the Russians invade you’ll hear about it soon enough, and until they do, read history instead of saber-rattling. What good does it do you?
Is the largest physical and internet retail day in the world Black Friday? Hah. Nope. It’s Single’s Day, celebrated November 11th in Southeast Asia. Starting off as a cynical response to various couple holidays by lonely college men, it was turned into A Big Thing in 2009 by Ali Baba’s CEO via the power of discounts. This year, $139 billion was spent.
So, this is a bit unusual, but here’s something I wrote (a part of). My first public RAND Research Report, it looks at the Quantum Defense Industrial Base, and considers what a research and innovation base looks like.
One of my favorite facts about GAO reports is that they include whether or not, in their view, their recommendations were taken. Here’s a neat and relatively comprehensible example, on costing estimates for the DoD.
I’m going to Vibecamp, largely on the grounds of “it looks interesting”. I like any schedule that can move smoothly from romantic epistemology to fight play: intro to grappling. I’ll be leading a seminar on Cohn’s Sex and Death in Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, one of my current favorite papers. Old-school feminist analysis, very good, and relevant to my life.
I’m impressed by Cato’s integrity in not putting the US first in their freedom index: it’s a nice sign of intellectual seriousness. Speaking of, here’s FIRE’s worst 10 colleges for free speech, which shows an expected mix of “the twitterati were angry” and “the state legislators were angry”, to which colleges seem to respond with roughly equal seriousness. The ability to ignore the scorn of your peers is very powerful, and very dangerous.
I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It is a very tight drama, intense and narrow and psychological, and even a decent adaptation of Le Carre. Recommended however you feel like accessing visual media.
The most important story of January was Omnicron. The Washington Post has a good graphic. Built long before, but you can still see that cases are fading, deaths are not yet declining but they will be, and if you want relative COVID safety you might have a chance in a month. Maybe more. At this point I see no hope that new variants will stop emerging, and have little optimism that the FDA will accept that the latest vaccine, made in less than two weeks, does not require another full round of approvals.
If you’re wondering why it’s the most important story, well, to me it was most important because I got it. Down with a bad cold, and it ended up transitioning into living at home for a few months while I’m between apartments due to lease timing and subletting restrictions. This is to say that this month is a little thin and disorganized: apologies.
Look at Pages 28 and 29 of this report on Culver City, if you’re familiar with LA. Making effective transit is often predicated on local access to jobs, but that is in direct contradiction with the agglomeration economies of cities. Balancing this, of course, is high-quality public transit, but getting everything in the right order is going to be a long hard slog.
The other most important story is Ukraine, and the rising threat of conflict there. Unfortunately, I have no modern recommendation. Instead, I recommend reading Plokhy, or another historian of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or reading up on some of the 90s history of Russia if you’re as young as I am. A little bit of history will do you much more good than constantly checking the news. If the Russians invade you’ll hear about it soon enough, and until they do, read history instead of saber-rattling. What good does it do you?
Is the largest physical and internet retail day in the world Black Friday? Hah. Nope. It’s Single’s Day, celebrated November 11th in Southeast Asia. Starting off as a cynical response to various couple holidays by lonely college men, it was turned into A Big Thing in 2009 by Ali Baba’s CEO via the power of discounts. This year, $139 billion was spent.
So, this is a bit unusual, but here’s something I wrote (a part of). My first public RAND Research Report, it looks at the Quantum Defense Industrial Base, and considers what a research and innovation base looks like.
One of my favorite facts about GAO reports is that they include whether or not, in their view, their recommendations were taken. Here’s a neat and relatively comprehensible example, on costing estimates for the DoD.
I’m going to Vibecamp, largely on the grounds of “it looks interesting”. I like any schedule that can move smoothly from romantic epistemology to fight play: intro to grappling. I’ll be leading a seminar on Cohn’s Sex and Death in Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, one of my current favorite papers. Old-school feminist analysis, very good, and relevant to my life.
I’m impressed by Cato’s integrity in not putting the US first in their freedom index: it’s a nice sign of intellectual seriousness. Speaking of, here’s FIRE’s worst 10 colleges for free speech, which shows an expected mix of “the twitterati were angry” and “the state legislators were angry”, to which colleges seem to respond with roughly equal seriousness. The ability to ignore the scorn of your peers is very powerful, and very dangerous.
I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It is a very tight drama, intense and narrow and psychological, and even a decent adaptation of Le Carre. Recommended however you feel like accessing visual media.