BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-11-11 Th
Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember:
First:
Manu Saadia: Gaullism at a Crossroads: ‘Troisième Voie was no mere idealistic reverie… [but] a practical, technocratic plan for France’s post-war reconstruction. It infused with its idealism the sweeping program of the Conseil National de la Résistance… borrow[ing] equally from the Christian humanism of philosopher Emmanuel Mounier and from economist William Beveridge’s extremely influential report on social insurance…. The experience of the Résistance precipitated a radical aggiornamento of the French Right. Fighting Nazis and French traitors, and dying side by side with Communist militants will completely alter your world-view. The War thus enabled the French Right to cede to the pressure of the working class, chiefly represented by the Communists at the time. It made it amenable to negotiate the reconstruction of France as a welfare State. The reforms of 1945 and 1946, which enshrined into laws the program of the Conseil National de la Résistance, were indeed a social revolution…. Much of what you know and appreciate about today’s France came out of that revolutionary moment: women’s right to vote, nationalization of electrical production, public retirement system, public crèches, public healthcare, public transportation, the TGV, etc…. That is the proud heritage of Gaullism, shared in common with the other components of the Résistance. It’s not so much De Gaulle that invented the Troisième Voie but rather the Troisième Voie that made Gaullism viable as a political force. It created the ideological framework for the French Right to accept liberal democracy…
LINK:
Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie: The Internet Needs Better Rules, Not Stricter Referees: ‘People are taking the wrong lessons from the Facebook Papers…. The key to a healthier platform is to flip the power dynamic: give the people themselves the power to choose what they pay attention to. Let the will of the people control their feeds, not the other way around. Instead of removing people’s agency by manipulating their attention in favor of the most profitable and provocative content, let them seek out what they really value. Other than in extreme cases involving violence or illicit activity, people should be allowed to decide for themselves who’s worth listening to, what’s trustworthy, and which direction is punching “down.” Beyond being undesirable, relying only on top-down moderation is ineffective: tech companies didn’t invent teen insecurity or tribal resentments, and they won’t fix those problems through censorship whack-a-mole. There is no world in which all vexing views can be banished. And if there were, none of us should want to live in it. There will be no perfect internet, but there can be a better one. A healthier internet requires overhauling incentives by putting people back in charge…
LINK:
One Video:
Mireille Mathieu: La Marseillaise <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7va62mL_LYU>:
Very Briefly Noted:
Gail Carriger: 10 Bookish Hills Upon Which I am Prepared to Die <https://gailcarriger.com/2021/09/20/bookish-hills/>
Jay Bennett: How Many Particles Are in the Observable Universe?: ‘Numberphile is on the case… <https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a27259/how-many-particles-are-in-the-entire-universe/>
Sylvan Lane: Senate Confirms Jerome Powell as Fed Chairman: ‘The final count stood at 84–13… <https://thehill.com/policy/finance/370329-senate-confirms-jerome-powell-as-fed-chairman?rl=1>
Rose Wilder Lane: The Making of Herbert Hoover <https://archive.org/details/makingofherberth02lane/page/248/mode/2up?q=Chang>
Sam Goldheart: 2021 MacBook Pro Teardown: A Glimpse at a Better Timeline: ‘We’re excited to tuck into these fruits from a branching 2016 timeline—the MacBooks that could have been… <https://www.ifixit.com/News/54122/macbook-pro-2021-teardown>
R. H. Coase (1960): The Problem of Social Cost <https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/tsc220/hallam/Coase.pdf>
Forrest C. Pogue: George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945–1959<https://archive.org/details/georgecmarshalls00pogu/page/236/mode/2up?q=%22election+year%22>
Noble E. Cunningham (2000): Jefferson vs. Hamilton: Confrontations That Shaped a Nation<https://archive.org/details/thomasjeffersonv00nobl/page/78/mode/2up?q=monarchy>
Thomas P. Hughes (1989): American Genesis: A Century of Invention & Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970<https://archive.org/details/americangenesisc00hugh/page/102/mode/2up>
Wikipedia: 4th Armored Division (France, 1940)<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Armored_Division_(France,_1940)#Formation>
Adam Posen: ’All experience since 2000 in the adv economies I contend disproves that asymmetry. Inflation expectations are at least as sticky to the downside as they are to the upside. That’s why a 3% IT is not only good versus the ELB but as a correction to one-sided too low risk.I could of course be wrong, but 20 yrs of data sez go for it…
@jasonfurman @erikbryn @nominalthoughts @Zach28150464 But all experience since 2000 in the adv economies I contend disproves that asymmetry. Inflation expectations are at least as sticky to the downside as they are to the upside. That's why a 3% IT is not only good versus the ELB but as a correction to one-sided too low risk 3/4Baratunde Thurston: Season 3 of How To Citizen Is Here!: ‘Also, Metatunde?…
Steven Johnson: How Do You Capture Your Hunches?
Paragraphs:
Gail Carriger: I Blame Jane Austen for 6 Popular Tropes in the Romance Genre: ‘A while ago, I was thinking about Jane Austen under the context of romance tropes and identified what I have called, ever since… The 6 Austens: [1] Emma ~ Friends to Lovers (or Consanguinity): close friendship blossoms into romance (this one is also May/December). [2] Mansfield Park ~ Unrequited Love: X has loved Y forever, they finally get together. [3] Pride & Prejudice ~ Enemies to Lovers: X and Y dislike each other, sparks ensue. [4] Sense & Sensibility ~ Sweet Torture (AKA On the Rocks): X and Y are perfect for one another, circumstances tear them apart. [5] Northanger Abby ~ Mistaken identity: X willfully misunderstands Y and Y’s intentions. [6] Persuasion ~ Redemption (or Reunion): X and Y have a past, mistakes were made that must be rectified…. I realized, as I was mucking about with this post that these are also some of the tropes in romance that I most gravitate towards as a reader. I suspect I should blame too much Austen in my formative years…
Wayne Ma: Apple’s Road Map for Mac Chips Shows Likely Advantage Over Intel: ‘Apple’s third generation of Mac processors… Ibiza, Lobos and Palma… look to be an especially big step up from the processors Intel is expected to begin shipping around that time…. All of the A- and M-processors are manufactured for Apple by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which has arguably become Apple’s most important technology partner…. Apple plans to take a much bigger leap with its third-generation processors, some of which will have four dies made using a 3-nanometer process, that person said…. “With the increased core count and frequency upgrades, Apple has a good chance to overtake Intel in the PC space,” said Jani…. While it’s unclear when Apple products containing the company’s third-generation processors will be released, analysts and people familiar with TSMC’s plans expect the company to be able to reliably manufacture 3-nanometer chips by 2023…. Meanwhile, the next Mac Pro, which targets professional users, will include a processor with at least two dies based on the M1 Max, as part of a family of first-generation processors code-named Jade. The next MacBook Air and a future iPad will likely contain Apple’s less powerful version of the company’s second-generation processor—code-named Staten…. And upcoming MacBook Pros and desktop computers will likely use more powerful versions of Apple’s second-generation chips, which are part of a family of processors code-named Rhodes…. In April, the Rhodes chips hit a milestone when Apple finished their physical design and handed them off to TSMC for trial production…
Jamelle Bouie: What ‘Structural Racism’ Really Means: ‘The 1948 book “Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics,” an influential (if now somewhat obscure) work of sociological analysis by the Trinidadian scholar Oliver Cromwell Cox. If there is a reason to revisit this specific book at this particular moment, it is to remind oneself that the challenge of racism is primarily structural and material, not cultural and linguistic, and that a disproportionate focus on the latter can too often obscure the former…
LINK: <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/structural-racism.html>
John Naughton & Robert W. Taylor: Zen and the Art of Research Management: (With apologies to Sun Tzu). 1. Hire only the very best people, even if they are cussed. Perhaps especially if they are cussed. Your guiding principle should be to employ people who are smarter than you. One superb researcher is worth dozens of merely good ones. 2. Once you’ve got them, trust them. Do not attempt to micro-manage talented people. (Remember rule #1.) Set broad goals and leave them to it. Concentrate your own efforts on strategy and nurturing the environment…
LINK: <https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/zen-lab.txt>
Ben Bajarin: The Silicon Big Fiv: ‘Forget FAANG. The most important technology platforms for the future are semiconductor platforms. Five companies…. AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Apple…. It might seem odd to have Apple included in a list of pure semiconductor companies when the silicon they design is not strictly a product in the same sense it is for the rest of the big five. Yet the unique and proprietary IP Apple brings to a central part of their products computing DNA coupled with its significant scale on its devices and platform earns them the right to be included. The other four companies are obvious inclusions into any semiconductor industry discussion…. Intel: Still the market share leader in data center/server and desktop/notebook…. Qualcomm: The undisputed leader in wireless…. Nvidia: Nvidia… is responsible for the industry trend of using GPUs for general-purpose computing…. AMD: is… in the unique position of challenging Nvidia and Intel from the bottom up with a fully mature CPU and GPU architecture…. These companies do not just design physical semiconductors. All of these companies are actually software companies that create computing platforms. Silicon is just part of their platform story. This is one of the reasons it is so important to recognize the future shaping role these companies play…
LINK: <https://creativestrategies.com/the-silicon-big-five/>
Ryan Avent: Inflation: ‘The carping about inflation really irks me, because I’m not so certain that there is. As noted before, consumer prices are up 6.2% over the past 12 months. It is also the case that real GDP (adjusted for inflation) is up 5% over the past 12 months, and employment is up by about 5.8m jobs. The American economy, notably, has surpassed its pre-pandemic level of economic output while other rich economies, like the euro area, have not. Even so, consumer prices in the euro area have risen by more than 4% over the past year, which is a lot, especially if you’re a German. Had there been less American stimulus, there would have been less inflation, but there would also have been less growth in output and employment. It is possible that less stimulus might have meant a lot less inflation and only a little less of the other stuff. But on the other hand, unemployment is much costlier than inflation, so you really would need quite a lot less inflation for not much less employment growth to break even, so to speak, relative to the reality in which we find ourselves…
LINK: