Monday, July 5, 2021

Seriously, do not listen to the Get Smart cover

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This discussion of  a thinly researched New Yorker piece got me thinking about a corrective piece we did a few years on a review the magazi...
1 comment:
Friday, July 2, 2021

The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was closer in time to Kitty Hawk than it is to us

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In a sense, the satire of this classic bit is sharper now than it was when first released. The idea of private sector blue-sky research was ...
Thursday, July 1, 2021

Similar to plans to empower investors include raising credit limits at casinos

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We've talked about the various scams and bubbles that have come to dominate the markets and the role retail investors and their culture ...
Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Eleven years ago at the blog -- the times, they aren't a'changin'

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One of the discouraging things about going through these old posts is how it steals away any sense of progress. The same snake oil (debunked...
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Tuesday, June 29, 2021

“Pastel QAnon.”

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Another long-running thread here at the blog is how the right wing and left wing fringes tend to overlap around areas like conspiracy theori...
Monday, June 28, 2021

Monday tweets

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There should be a Pullitzer for headlines.  pic.twitter.com/tC2RB13r1X — Evan DeSimone (@MediaEvan)  June 22, 2021 We've already discu...
Friday, June 25, 2021

Intellectual diversity

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This is Joseph I was reading this piece in Talking Points Memo . It seems like a very bad idea that would get into serious first amendment i...
Thursday, June 24, 2021

David Graeber on future envy

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Picking up on last week's thread . Perhaps not surprisingly, David Graeber the anthropologist was better with cultural attitudes toward ...
Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Working majorities

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This is Joseph There has been a lot of discussion about the US senate and the filibuster.  For example, Jon Chait has a piece poking holes i...
Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Even in California...

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As mentioned before, because of the varied terrain of the Golden State, you can get an extraordinary range of temperatures, often within a f...
Monday, June 21, 2021

Eleven years ago at the blog

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Also a Monday... This post reminded me of a 1970 review (actually just the first sentence) by Roger Greenspun of a film that popped up a whi...
Friday, June 18, 2021

Flying cars are still out of range

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In the movie Thunderball (FRWL>GF>IHMSS>DN>YOLT>TB, but we'll talk about that later), possibly the most memorable/memorab...
Thursday, June 17, 2021

Aducanumab

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This is Joseph.  Thomas Lumley has a nice piece on the newly approved biologic for treating Alzheimer's Disease : The drug (or, technica...
1 comment:
Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Judges and politics

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This is Joseph. The question of whether Stephen Breyer should retire back in the news because a prominent congresswomen has opined on the is...
1 comment:
Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Some context for the thread

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I just learned that David Graeber passed away last year. Looking back over his Baffler piece, I'm kicking myself for not quoting it more...