February 11, 2020
I would not have expected that I would have to remind the gentlemen..
Today, February 12th, the US Mint releases the 2020 Native American $1 coin, the latest in a series of dollar coins with Shoshone guide Sacagawea on the obverse (heads side) and a reverse (tails side) design that changes by year. The 2020 design, the first to feature an Alaska Native, honors civil rights pioneer Elizabeth Peratrovich who is relatively little-known outside the state of Alaska. [more inside]
Why a rotary cellphone?
"Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile,while also giving me an excuse for not texting. "
Justine Haupt has developed a truly wonderful homebrew rotary cell phone. Many other fascinating projects are on her portfolio page. [more inside]
You are in a maze of twisty little AirBnB rentals, all alike
That night I knock on the doors of the other apartments in the building... standing at an open door, I notice something: the artwork on the walls is the same as in my apartment, so are the sofas, table and chairs. I return to my apartment, open my laptop and click on my host’s Airbnb profile. I count seven listings for the building I’m staying in, all with identical furniture, all with the same bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
The Birds
But every few minutes the game reminds me of its worldview and politics.
Games That You Can't Let Yourself Think About [Vice Gaming] “So The Division has become another one of those games where I compartmentalize the experience. Most of the time I am playing a gorgeous open-world shooter with a wintry look that I love year-round. [...] But every few minutes the game reminds me of its worldview and politics (made more pitiful by the ways it assiduously tries to be apolitical). Whenever The Division tries to portray its characters as heroic, their work and mission somehow noble, it’s a tone-deaf travesty. [...] Mind you, there is a lot of media that requires a healthy dose of doublethink or skepticism. But it’s rare that I find something that is such a bifurcated experience, where my feelings only switch between appreciation and outright loathing. This isn’t a game with “problematic” elements. It’s more like a video game Dorian Gray: something beautiful and captivating that, if you glimpse its true nature, is also utterly appalling.” [more inside]
"Capital and Ideology"
I found a PDF of a presentation made by Thomas Piketty about his new book. Its coming out in English next month.
Previously from September 2019 when the French original version was released.
"Toddlers Are Delighted With Themselves"
“A posed picture of your child perfectly dressed and coiffed, that’s not reality,” McLean told me. Photos that kids take of themselves, however, with their baby teeth on display and their tongue hanging out, “are precious mementos,” she said. “Toddlers think that they are amazing. This is a time when children are so unselfconscious, so accepting of how they look and who they are.” (Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic)
Nothing at Stake
Kogonada's video essay on Cuarón's Roma: In this new video essay, Columbus director Kogonada explores how the in-between moments of the protagonist’s daily existence serve as the heart of Cuarón’s vision—and connect it to the themes of life, death, and rebirth in a few very different works in his filmography, including the dystopian thriller Children of Men and the space odyssey Gravity.
Any Lock Can Be Beat If You Own The Keys
The Washington Post reports in a longform feature about Crypto AG - a Swiss firm providing encryption technology to countries around the world world since WWII - all while being owned secretly in a joint venture between the CIA and West German intelligence, allowing them to introduce back doors so that they could easily decode the 'secure' communications of Crypto's customers. (SLWaPo)
Science Writing - Behind the Scene
A New York Times science writer gives insight to the writing process by annotating his T.Rex article. For budding science writers, a glimpse behind the art of clear explanation. And in particular the issues that apply specifically to science writing: "Science takes time. Often a lot of time. It can be brutal, tedious work. I try my best not to romanticize it, but rather to describe it as a process that often involves a lot of people working together. And oftentimes their jobs may not be the most exciting. In this case, Aaron Giterman wasn’t a scientist mentioned on the paper. Dr. Zanno had mentioned to me that they worked with a technician who pieced the leg back together, and I thought it would be important to the story to highlight his work alongside that of the paper’s authors." [more inside]
the bezzle
With few exceptions, the only rich people America prosecutes anymore are those who victimize their fellow elites. Pharma frat boy Martin Shkreli, to pick just one example, wasn’t prosecuted for hiking the price of a drug used to treat HIV from $13.50 to $750 per pill. He went to prison for scamming investors in a hedge fund scheme years before. Meanwhile, in 2016, the CEO [Don Blankenship] whose company [Massey Energy] experienced the deadliest mining disaster since 1970 served less than one year in prison and paid a fine of 1.4 percent of his salary and stock bonuses the previous year. Why? Because overseeing a company that ignores warnings and causes the deaths of workers, even 29 of them, is a misdemeanor.The Golden Age Of White Collar Crime [more inside]
If you wanted to confuse Instagram, here's how.
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company
“You don’t think of the Sistine Chapel as a work of papal art, it’s by Michelangelo and Raphael [among others], but somehow because the artists are Indian and their names have never been known, the work has been pigeonholed as ‘Company School’ art. The key thing has been to remove the Company from the centre of the story and foreground the genius of the Indian artists, it’s a tragedy that Ghulam Ali Khan, Shaikh Zain ud-Din and Yellapah of Vellore are names people simply don’t know,” he continues. (from the BBC article) [more inside]
Real alchemy: The exciting world of condensed-matter physics!
The new era of polariton condensates (pdf) - "Imagine, if you will, a collection of many photons. Now imagine that they have mass, repulsive interactions, and number conservation. The photons will act like a gas of interacting bosonic atoms, and if cooled below a critical temperature, they will undergo a well-known phase transition: Bose-Einstein condensation. You will have a 'superfluid of light.'" (via) [more inside]
Self-balancing uni-cycle
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