Newsletter 26
Hi everyone,
I’m late this week thanks to a not great Sunday of not feeling great. How and ever, here is this week’s edition. Some more videos than usual this week, and a few more podcasts I recommend listening to.
As always you can recommend this newsletter to anyone you think may find it interesting - it’s greatly appreciated:
And if you feel you get value from it every week you can stick some cash in my Guinness fund for when the pubs reopen.
I think we’ve made real progress on a whole series of areas over the past 25 weeks - and to new subscribers I would strongly urge you to go back through editions as some elements are serialised week to week.
Have a great week!
Gavin
Reading list - the best stuff to read
😬 Social platforms - Facebook’s mess
No stranger to this newsletter Karen Hao has an excellent read on how Facebook’s internal politics, flawed incentives and poor leadership are responsible for their cataclysmically bad decisions - leading to societal harm. (7,000 words/26 mins by Karen Hao).
I asked him the question again. His Facebook Portal camera, which uses computer-vision algorithms to track the speaker, began to slowly zoom in on his face as he grew still. “I don’t know that I have an easy answer to that question, Karen,” he said. “It’s an extremely difficult question to ask me.”
Entin, who’d been rapidly pacing with a stoic poker face, grabbed a red stress ball.
Bonus: see this thread from Karen’s editor on how Facebook PR tried to push back against the story.
🇷🇺 🇨🇳 Moon base partnership
China and Russia will work together on a moon base in the early 2030s. Expect to see far more Moon activity in the coming decade. (1,000 words/4mins by Eric Berger)
Under terms of a memorandum of understanding, the two countries will cooperate on creation of an "International Lunar Science Station" and plan to invite other countries to participate. The agreement was signed by Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, and Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia's space corporation, Roscosmos. The agreement was announced by Roscosmos.
🌏 Climate change - planting forests
The Economist has a very good explainer on why forests are not so simple, a subject we’ve covered several times in this newsletter. (10 mins)
🇨🇳 🇺🇸 Losing to China
By way of followup to last week’s deep dive on INF related missiles, two pieces:
“We’re going to lose fast”. In some war games the US loses to China pretty quickly. (2,200 words/8 mins by James Kitfield)
CNN did a long read on China’s navy that I should have included last week. (4,000 words/15 mins by Brad Lendon)
🏛 Society - Saving Democracy
An interesting read on the future of democracy, in an era of polarisation, online platforms and silos. Karl Popper comes up again and towards the end they do a thought exercise on a possible future for the internet. (7,000 words/ 25 mins by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev)
Inspired by the philosopher Karl Popper, the doyen of “open society” and a critic of untransparent social engineering, Matias thinks we have to not just take control of our own data, but also help oversee the design of algorithmic experiments, with “individual participation and consent at all decision levels possible.”
🌍 What is life?
Not as easy an answer as you might think. (3,000 words/11 mins by Carl Zimmer)
The trouble that scientists had with defining life had nothing to do with the particulars of life’s hallmarks such as homeostasis or evolution. It had to do with the nature of definitions themselves — something that scientists rarely stopped to consider. “Definitions,” Cleland wrote, “are not the proper tools for answering the scientific question ‘what is life?’”
🇺🇸 What’s happening with Trump?
Given that he was not too long ago forefront in all of our minds, either on Twitter or via him being US President, it’s a bit shocking to the system how quickly he has faded from public consciousness since being banned from Twitter and losing the presidency. Politico looks at where he is now. (2,000 words/6 mins by Gabby Orr and Meredith McGraw)
🔭 Stealing the new Hubble
We’re getting painfully close to the launch of the JWST into space, where it will be sent to L2. The huge space telescope has been in development my entire adult life and is due - finally - to launch in October. However given that the telescope is now valued at more than $10bn (or about $1.5m per kilo of telescope) - how will it be transported safely to French Guiana for launch? The Atlantic asks: what about pirates? (1,400 words/5 mins by Marina Koren)
But in 2012, a trailer carrying a NASA telescope disappeared on its way from Minnesota to Texas. When NASA officials panicked, an employee from the trucking company set off in search of the missing cargo and found the driver asleep in the truck, with the telescope-toting trailer nowhere in sight. It was eventually discovered abandoned at a car wash in Dallas, and the driver claimed that it had been stolen.
Related: How long more will the Hubble last?
🦠 COVID-19
The pandemic is messing with your brain. A nice personal piece. (2,000 words/7 mins by Ellen Cushing)
Everywhere I turn, the fog of forgetting has crept in. A friend of mine recently confessed that the morning routine he’d comfortably maintained for a decade—wake up before 7, shower, dress, get on the subway—now feels unimaginable on a literal level: He cannot put himself back there. Another has forgotten how to tie a tie.
How does aerosolised coronavirus spread through an apartment block? El Pais has a very good illustration. The aerosolised nature of the virus is the most overlooked element of it, along with overdispersion.
Greek Tragedy Corner (a journey through Greek tragedy every week)
Next in our journey through Euripides is Ion. We’re now more than halfway through the works of Euripides.
Documentary
This week we pick up the last episode of Vienna: Empire, Dynasty And Dream in 1814/15 after the defeat of Napoleon and the start of the Congress of Vienna - and the beginning of the downfall of the Hapsburg Dynasty.
Klemens von Metternich vs Russia’s role with Alexander I (in politics and their lovers - Princess Bagration and Princess Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan)
The start of the Concert of Europe, one of the longest periods of (relative) peace in European history, an early precursor to the League of Nations.
The European revolutions of 1848. The retaking of Vienna from revolutionaries by the Hapsburgs in October.
The Hungarian 1848 revolution. Russia’s assistance to retake Hungary.
The 1853 Crimean War.
Otto von Bismarck and the unification of Germany. The defeat of Austria in the Battle of Konigsgratz in 1866.
The marriage of Emperor Franz Joseph and Sisi in 1854 - and her love of the gym. And she was a champion of the Hungarians - to become equal partners with the Austrians in the empire- bringing about the dual monarchy.
The construction of the ring strasse in Vienna, replacing the city’s walls.
Sisi set her husband up with one of his mistresses.
The life and death of Sisi’s son Rudolph and his mistress Mary in a suicide pact in 1889.
The death of Sisi - murdered in 1898.
The era of Vienna Secession movement. “To every age its art. To art its freedom.” The art of Klimt. The fascinating life of Alma Mahler.
Sigmund Freud moving to Vienna in 1891 and the birth of psychoanalysis.
Mayor of Vienna Karl Leuger and modern anti-semitism. He helped inspire Adolf Hitler, also in Vienna, moving there in 1908 to become an artist.
In 1913 Soso Jughashvili moved to Vienna, where he adopted the name “Stalin”. Both he and Hitler lived in Vienna at the same time.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914. Ultimately leading to the commencement of the Great War.
The role of Kurt Schuschnigg in the fall of Austria to Germany in 1938.
The holocaust. The end of the war. The founding of the Austrian republic in 1955.
Watch it here. (59 mins)
Podcast(s)
A brilliant detailed conversation with Dr. Ashish Jha about the coming optimism for ending this pandemic. Like Jha, I see massive amounts of vaccines becoming available this summer, which will lead to massive changes in the dynamics of the pandemic, globally. (40 mins)
Jha’s book recommendation is Like Wars and the autobiography of Malcolm X.
Donie was on the QAnon Anonymous podcast and it was good craic. (60 mins)
Deep Background has a similar discussion as Ezra last week. The subject was climate change and resilience, with Alice Hill. (43 mins)
Still in my tabs
Quantum Mischief Rewrites the Laws of Cause and Effect
Researchers think a planet lost its original atmosphere, built a new one
After Sunday’s launch, SpaceX is on the cusp of a historic reuse milestone
George Bernard Shaw audio from 1930.
This is cool
And I liked this Police Squad take-off
