BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-04-08 Th
Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember...
Very Briefly Noted:
Technological advance the business of the lowest grade of slaves; desire for technological advance the result of making your body your master rather than your servant; and other topics: Lucius Annaeus Seneca Minor (64): On the Part Played by Philosophy in the Progress of Man<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/lucius-annaeus-seneca-minor-64-moral>
Josiah Ober: Agamemnon’s Cluelessness <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/ober-agamemnon.pdf>
Karl Polanyi: Aristotle Discovers the Economy <https://delong.typepad.com/polanyi-aristotle.pdf>
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, & James A. Robinson: The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation <https://economics.mit.edu/files/4123>
Suresh Naidu: Accounting for Thanksgiving’s Ghosts <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/thanksgiving-native-genocide-united-states-pilgrims/>
Herbert A. Simon: The Architecture of Complexity<https://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2013/cs7601_spring/papers/Simon-Complexity.pdf>
Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of her Time and the Original Influencer <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kqGB6dCRF0>
Dennis C. Mueller: A Review of: “Invention, Growth, & Welfare: A Theoretical Treatment of Technological Change” By William D. Nordhaus, MIT Press, 1969 168 pp. $10.00 <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00137917008902671>
Quinn Slobodian: How Germany Created the Neoliberal Order: ‘We All Live in Germany’s World: How the German government accelerated the 20th century’s economic march toward neoliberalism… <https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/26/germany-neoliberal-order/>
Adam Tooze: Technocracy Is Failing in the United States and Italy. Can Janet Yellen & Mario Draghi Save It?: ‘The U.S. treasury secretary and the Italian prime minister have spent decades shaping this economy. But can they control what comes next?… <https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/01/janet-yellen-mario-draghi-italy-united-states-technocrats-capitalist-democracy/>
Jorge G. Castañeda: The Post-Pandemic Safety Net: ‘The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a rebirth of Keynesianism and the welfare state in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, and parts of Latin America, and changed the terms of US debate in ways that previously seemed almost unthinkable… <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-latin-america-welfare-state-after-covid19-by-jorge-g-castaneda-2021-04>
Wikipedia: The Talented Tenth: ‘This article is about the African-American leadership class and W. E. B. Du Bois essay…. The Talented Tenth is a term that designated a leadership class of African descendant Americans in the early 20th century. The term was created by White Northern philanthropists, then publicized by W. E. B. Du Bois in an influential essay of the same name, which he published in September 1903. It appeared in The Negro Problem, a collection of essays written by leading African Americans… <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talented_Tenth>
Steve M.: I Don’t Think the Motivation for Those Diner Safaris Is Particularly Mysterious: ‘Daniel Drezner considers the media’s lack of interest in the opinions of Biden voters…. The media is still fascinated by white Trump voters, romanticizing them as manly Real Americans. And the media doesn’t seem interested in non-white Biden or Trump voters… for the simple reason that they’re non-white. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that… <https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2021/04/i-dont-think-motivation-for-those-diner.html>
Paragraphs:
Jamison Foser: ’Okay but trying to stop black people from voting is bad: Nate Cohn: “The Georgia election law’s restrictions on voting are unlikely to discernibly affect turnout or the result…” “Structural racism is no big deal because black people can just work harder to overcome it” is not the novel or compelling argument the New York Times seems to think it is. It is racist and tired. <https://t.co/pta4UaD7Ms>
Four Seasons Total Landscaping Mistermix: Not Everything Needs a ‘Well, Actually’: ‘Not Everything Needs a ‘Pardon my commitment to “data” and “science” if I don’t think that two studies of questionable applicability tell me much of anything about the effects of the Georgia law. This is, in general, my gripe about data journalism: there’s just not enough good data to draw evidence-based conclusions, so it devolves into speculative punditry with a patina of scientific respectability…. Second, some things are beyond the need to do a sketchy “well actually” analysis piece, and a fundamental right like voting is a great example of one of those things. “Well, actually, we found two studies of people who had their little toes amputated and they walk just fine” is not a justification for a program of toe amputation. Voting is a right, full stop, and people’s right to do it should not be unreasonably infringed. Six hour lines with no water is an unreasonable infringement. We don’t need to go further than that, and we certainly don’t need a privileged white dude who grew up in a Seattle suburb and moved to DC after private college to push out a “well, actually” piece about a Jim Crow revival…
LINK: <https://www.balloon-juice.com/2021/04/05/not-everything-needs-a-well-actually/>
Adam Engst: Stanford Research Explains & Helps Prevent Zoom Fatigue: ‘Jeremy Bailenson of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab…. 1. Close-up eye contact is intense…. 2. Looking at yourself is stressful…. 3. Sitting still is hard…. 4. Video chats have a high cognitive load. Videoconferencing encourages all sorts of odd behaviors that require some level of active thought… keeping yourself framed… using a thumbs-up to indicate silent approval… trying to interpret everyone else’s reactions…. The solution is to give yourself an audio-only break, both sending and receiving, so you can let your brain rest…
LINK: <https://tidbits.com/2021/04/05/stanford-research-explains-and-helps-prevent-zoom-fatigue/>
Brie Wolfson: ’How to get someone to help you: 1. determine the smallest unit of work required of the other person. 2. determine if there is some work you can do yourself that would make [1] smaller. 3. Do that 4. Make a direct and concise ask…. Formula for 4 is: a. a warm hello. b. brief context on why the thing is important (x told me to do it doesn’t count). c. why you are asking them, and not someone else. d. the specific thing you would like them to contribute. e. when you need that help. Your colleagues want to help you. Show them the easiest path to get there…
LINK: <https://twitter.com/zebriez/status/1369358670228688896>
Judd Legum: A Growth Masterclass: ‘Play to your strengths: When I’ve been able to leverage my skill as a researcher and then turn it around and put it out in the newsletter and help inform people in a deeper way about something they care about… that’s what the audience really responds to. And so…. I try to look at what’s going on the news and see where is there a topic that I can research further and pull out stuff that’s really new…. People pay to feel empowered…. Sell value instead of volume…. “Look, I’m creating the kind of writing that you can’t find anywhere else and I need you to be a part of this and to support this work if you value it…”. If you think of it from a business perspective…. the free content is by far the most important content for your business. Because one, it’s something that anyone can read and it can help grow your free list… [that] gives you an opportunity to convert people. If you don’t self-promote, you won’t get a promotion…. Use Twitter to drive growth… [and] threads are better than single tweets…
LINK: <https://on.substack.com/p/a-growth-masterclass-with-judd-legum>
Anne Laurie: Late Night #PizzaGaetz Open Thread: Alexandra Petri Makes An Excellent Point: ‘Alexandra Petri: “Read the piece that within minutes inspired a man to send me an email calling me “toots”!!!!!!! ”Opinion: This Should Not Happen More than Once: If sharing lewd photos happened twice, even, that is because a first time went better than it should have…. There are several details of the Matt Gaetz story that keep sticking in my head, but the one that sticks in it most is the report that the Florida Republican used to wander around and show his colleagues nude photos of people he had slept with. There’s a kind of grim weirdness to the idea of these interactions (which Gaetz denies)—a very “I Read On eHow.com That Men Bond Over Conquests” bewilderment. The callousness and the violation involved are enough of a sock to the gut. But the fact that this was allegedly known about him is what keeps getting to me. The fact that this, or something in this neighborhood of bad, occasioned senior staff from then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) office to have a talk with Gaetz about professional behavior…. I keep coming back to the fact that it takes two to make a locker room. To me, this is something you do, ideally, zero times. You never experience the impulse to do it, and you lead a pleasant life. You travel. You eat lunchmeat sandwiches. Maybe you do a marathon, or climb something. You lead a blithe existence for many decades, you die in your bed in your mid-nineties surrounded by your cherished relatives, and in all that time, you never walk up to a colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives and out of nowhere present him with a nude photograph of someone you claim to have had sex with. But if you can’t do it zero times, then ideally it happens only once. It happens only once, because the moment you do it, the person you show it to responds the way a person should respond. You produce your photograph to your colleague, and your colleague looks at you and says, “Never show that to anyone, ever again. Go home and rethink your life. I do not feel closer to you. If anything, I want to have you removed forcibly from my presence by strong gentlemen whose biceps are tattooed with ‘MOM.’ The fact that you thought this would make us closer makes me question every decision in my life that has led me to this point. Leave now and never come back”…
Duncan Black: They’re Bad People, Brent: ‘Who is the audience for things like, “Gail Collins and Bret Stephens shoot the s—.” Not even picking on them, specifically, though Bret is a disgusting clown even by the low standards of the conservative movement, but genuinely confused that in the year of our Gritty, 2021, there’s still a market for this genre of things…. I think we’re long past the era when “we” pretended that well-meaning people on Both Sides want basically the same things, they just disagree about how to get there. It isn’t an argument about the glorious impact on the economy of low tax rates, or how Social Security Privatization will be BETTER for your retirement. It’s about stealing all the money from poor people and giving it to rich people, or maybe not doing that. And that’s before we get to the explicit bigotry… LINK: <https://www.eschatonblog.com/2021/04/theyre-bad-people-brent.html>
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