#history

Centrally planned vacations in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, even vacation was regulated by the Party.

· Link post  #communism #history
All models are wrong

Important quote from George Box. I came across it in the context of AI, but it applies to all science. We’re just building models for understanding nature, which is probably too complex to truly understand, but some of our models are useful nonetheless.

· Link post  #history #ai
Miles Davis' opus

Today is the fifty-third anniversary of the most thrilling jazz album I’ve ever heard. Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.

· Link post  #history #music
Black Girl from Pyongyang

Monica Macias was just seven when her African despot father left her under the guardianship of Kim Il-sung. A fascinating story about growing up in North Korea.

· Link post  #communism #history
Mark Twain was an investor

Not your average wordcel, it sounds like Twain was somewhat of a techno-optimist, friend of Tesla, and even tech investor.

· Link post  #history
The Age of Average

Alex Murrell laments and explains how all types of design have regressed to the mean.

· Link post  #history
The Time-Travelling Economist by Charlie Robertson

This book seeks to answer one question: what makes nations rich? The answers are almost entire consistent with status quo economics from the 1950s:

· Book  #history
People had to be convinced of the usefulness of electricity

When predicting the impact of AI on society, we too often reach for very recent technological shifts. I think moments like the Industrial Revolution and the invention of electricity are more relevant. When electricity came around, it wasn’t immediately seen as a necessity. Of course nobody wants to live in a world without electricity today.

· Link post  #energy #history
The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant

Most non-fiction books focus on a very specific topic, and when you read them, a small corner of the patchwork than makes up your worldview evolves. It is probably a good thing that most books are specific in topic because most people are unqualified to make broad, sweeping, opinionated, and strongly held assertions about the world.

· Book  #history
The US government made $15B from the 2008 bailouts

Not a lot of money, but it’s important to understand when considering future banking crises. Keeping the system together is always going to be worth it, but it’s especially encouraging to note that the taxpayer was made whole.

· Link post  #history
Treating housing as an investment was a colossal mistake

This is increasingly the issue of my generation in many countries and yet we don’t seem to be solving the supply/demand imbalance in housing almost anywhere.

· Link post  #history
Anglish

As a lover of alternate history fiction, this is a fun project. What would English be like if it hadn’t borrowed so much from other languages?

· Link post  #history
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

The premise of this book is that every information technology (e.g., Oral language, hand-writing, books, newspapers, smoke signals, radio, TV, blogs, Twitter, Instagram) creates a medium (e.g., television, literature, social media) and every medium is biased towards different types of content. Therefore, the proliferation of a technology and it’s medium(s) inevitably leads to the proliferation of the type of content that this technology favours. So, as television sets became more popular, television (the medium) proliferated, and so did the kind of content that television is biased towards.

· Book  #history
The factory of the future...

A great quote I found in some old notes.

· Link post  #history
You're probably wrong about how things have changed

An interesting series of studies that show that people don’t know how public opinion has shifted over time.

· Link post  #history
Roman vs modern concrete

Interesting commentary on the recent paper exploring “self-healing” Roman concrete.

· Link post  #history
Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java

In the 90s, Bill Gates predicted that the web would disrupt Windows. He imagined it would be through Java, which was incorrect, but the overall trend that Java was a part of was absolutely the downfall of the Windows cash cow.

· Link post  #history
The story of cardboard modernism

This article descends into dense negativity, but contains the most compelling explanation for why buildings are so ugly these days.

· Link post  #history
How Aristotle created the computer

Essential reading on how philosophical studies lept into the realworld to facilitate the invention of computing.

· Link post  #history
I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large

Great letter from Elvis, to Nixon, offering his aid (ratting on hippies) as Federal Agent at Large.

· Link post  #history
How the record industry ruthlessly punished Milli Vanilli for anticipating the future of music

Lipsyncing is a common practice now, but it caused Milli Vanilli to have their Grammy revoked not too long ago.

· Link post  #history #music
How the New York City steam system works

Steamy streets are a New York stereotype. I never contemplated why these things existed until I visited New York. Turns out steam is a public utility in New York.

· Link post  #history
How big is the US cheese stockpile?

The US has 1.5 billion pounds of cheese in cold storage across the country—around $3.4 billion worth of cheese.

· Link post  #history
In 1951, 87% of Yale seniors thought WWIII would break out within five years

Very few could’ve predicted some of the major geopolitical events of the past ten years. Similarly, we’ve historically predicted a lot of things would happen, that did not. Seems the only certainty is that the future will surprise us.

· Link post  #history
The culture of peer review developed relatively recently

This essay traces the history of refereeing at specialist scientific journals and at funding bodies and shows that it was only in the late twentieth century that peer review came to be seen as a process central to scientific practice.

· Link post  #history