August 19, 2023
I _kinda_ get p-adic numbers a little more after watching this?
Veritasium on the p-adics - "There's a strange number system, featured in the work of a dozen Fields Medalists, that helps solve problems that are intractable with real numbers." (p-adics previously)
Streaming Doesn't Pay
The Real Cost of Good Movies lays out the issues in the media strikes - streaming (non)-royalties, digital likenesses, and LLM's - while sketching the reductions in quality and choice for media consumers. Concludes with a suggestion to burn it all down and replace it with BandCamp for video.
One of the First Parts I Remember Noticing was the Section on Mermaids
Printed books from this period cover a huge range of topics and dozens of languages, but for me at least, they have one thing in common: I almost always find them far more interesting — more beautifully designed, more strange, more intriguing — than modern books. The rest of this post is a few thoughts on why. from Why Early Modern Books Are So Beautiful by Benjamin Breen [more inside]
Baby BeeGees. You'll see.
TNT Boys as BeeGees Too Much Heaven on a show called, "Your Face Sounds Familar". From 5 years ago. (YouTube) [more inside]
OK Xer
'My Generation' Anthem for a Forgotten Cohort
I was looking for a new direction in life.
She hired him as a caregiver for her family. They fell in love. Sanhai’s husband had died a few years earlier of a heart attack, leaving her to raise her two sons as a single mother. Not long after they relocated, the family faced another crisis in 2014: Sanhai’s father had a stroke, sending her on a desperate search for a caregiver. Her job as a scientist was demanding, and Sanhai needed someone to tend to her father — who moved in with her family after the stroke — as well as help out with her two sons, then 16 and 10. [more inside]
“They had no unique economic function: They were Europeans.”
The rumour about the Jews is an essay by Prof. Francesca Trivellato about how Jews expelled from France in 1394 were falsely credited with inventing the bill of exchange. She was interviewed at length on this subject by Nachi Weinstein for the Seforim Chatter podcast. The historiography of Jews and finance was the subject of Prof. Julie Mell’s The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, which she summarizes in a brief radio interview with the Carolina Journal. For a more in-depth interview, you can listen to Scott Ferguson interview her for the Money on the Left podcast (incl. transcript) or read the three critiques in a forum on the book hosted by the Marginalia Review, and Prof. Mell’s response.
I Was on an Early '00s Reality Show So I Could Be the Hero of My Story
A kitchen table discussion led to a $5 million solar farm
How a kitchen table discussion led to a $5 million solar farm funded by residents to provide local power. Three-hundred residents in the New South Wales city of Goulburn band together to build their own solar energy project on the edge of town.
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