Linklist: July 19, 2020
This is why this newsletter exists. TL;DR: I have been pondering creating a column on my blog where I share links to articles I read and liked. I perform this function on Twitter at the moment, but the attention some links attract are rubbish, and I reflexively share only relatively bland things there these days as a result. I'm also starting to relish the privilege of not having a shitstorm erupt in my notifications just because I shared something – a link or a viewpoint – that someone disagreed with, and is now giving me headaches because I no longer have the option of ignoring them.
So here goes, the first instalment of articles I recently read and liked.
Aren't we all somewhere on the spectrum of disease? – “Take diabetes – this country and Canada have slightly different cutoffs for what a normal blood sugar is. Or blood pressure – every few years the experts pick a different number for what’s good enough and what’s ideal. I believe most things we call diseases are points at the extremes of a spectrum that we all fall somewhere on.”
Four centuries of development surprises on a single stretch of a New York city street – “This paper does a development case study at an extreme micro level (one city block in New York City), but over a long period of time (four centuries). We find that (i) development involves many changes in production as comparative advantage evolves and (ii) most of these changes were unexpected (“surprises”).”
Authors of study on race and police killings ask for its retraction, citing “continued misuse” in the media – “We were careless when describing the inferences that could be made from our data. This led to the misuse of our article to support the position that the probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans (MacDonald, 2019). To be clear, our work does not speak to this issue and should not be used to support such statements. We accordingly issued a correction to rectify this statement (Johnson & Cesario, 2020).”
The international student bait-and-switch – “It’s an open secret that for many colleges in the US, the international students are where colleges get a big chunk of their revenues. People rightfully make fun of colleges that have 4-year sticker prices in the low half-millions that now will be offering courses on Zoom, but the reality is more complicated. Most American students never, ever pay the full price.”
When there is despair, there will be hate too. And that's not a bad thing. – “But what historical precedent would a dissenting German have looked for during the monstrous growth of the Third Reich? I had never thought of it, until I came across a dissenting German making the attempt. Friedrich Reck (sometimes Reck-Malleczewen) kept a secret diary from mid-1936 until almost the end of the second world war, “an illegal watcher among the barbarians” he calls himself, observing with increasing horror and disgust the German people’s capitulation – no, devotion – to their mad Führer.”
A safe and profitable nuclear plant is closing in France. Why? – “The answer to why Fessenheim is closing is sadly one of politics. It goes back to 2012 when then President of France, Francois Hollande, made a deal to guarantee the support of the Greens (les Verts). Hollande promised France would reduce its reliance on nuclear to 50% instead of 75% of all electricity.”
The ontology of pop physics – “An introduction to physics that contains no equations is like an introduction to French that contains no French words, but tries instead to capture the essence of the language by discussing it in English. Of course, popular writers on physics must abide by that constraint because they are writing for mathematical illiterates, like me, who wouldn’t be able to understand the equations. … Such books don’t teach physical truths; what they teach is that physical truth is knowable in principle, because physicists know it. Ironically, this means that a layperson in science is in basically the same position as a layperson in religion.”