Internet Reading Q2 2020

I had thought that this quarter my reading list will be dominated by covid-related writing. Boy was I wrong.

1. Recently I read, rather by accident than design, short lives of several contemporary economists. What struck me was their bareness. I was wondering: how can people who had lived such boring lives, mostly in one or two countries, with the knowledge of at most two languages, having read only the literature in one language, having travelled only from one campus to another, and perhaps from one hiking resort to another, have meaningful things to say about social sciences with all their fights, corruption, struggles, wars, betrayals and cheating? (Non-exemplary lives)

More about economists:

• Mervyn King's new book insists that we shouldn't use numbers when forecasting. Are economists really this stupid?
• The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe
• The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change
• Can the World Get Along Without Natural Resources?
• An Economist’s Guide to Potty Training

2. Short stories: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

More short stories and Tor.com rereads:

• Blood Is Another Word for Hunger
• Between the Dark and the Dark
• Siapa Namamu, Sandra?
• How do we feel about Kaladin’s plan? Kaladin was literally wearing the skin of his enemies into battle. Are we okay with the fact that, if this setting had war crimes, our hero would be a war criminal? Chapter 62-63
• Recap: Dalinar betrayed by Sadeas at the Tower, Kaladin speaking the Second Ideal. Chapter 66-67

3. COVID-19: This changes everything, unless it doesn’t

More on COVID-19:

• What Happens to All the Un-Hugged Hugs?
• Q1: Will breathing in recirculated air on a plane put me at a greater risk of contracting the new coronavirus? A: The risk of contracting the new coronavirus via the air on planes is low if cabin air filters are well-maintained. Q2: Are HEPA filters enough to protect me if someone with the virus near me sneezes or coughs? A: Not entirely.
• COVID-19 Can Last for Several Months
• Coronavirus Blunders in Indonesia Turn Crisis Into Catastrophe
• 'The way we get through this is together': the rise of mutual aid under coronavirus
• How King Arthur Flour found itself in the unlikely crosshairs of a pandemic
• The Deranged Civic Religion of the Lockdown Protesters
• 'COVID-19 is real': Virus ravages family in Indonesia's second-largest city
• It was my job to call people whose Covid-19 tests were positive. That taught me a lot about medicine, the law, and society
• The first modern pandemic
• Like many New Yorkers, I was jaywalking and nearly walked into a Latino deliveryman whizzing by on his bicycle. “Chinese bitch!” he shouted as he rode by. I wasn’t filled with hot rage or a hurt that cut me to the bone. I was just rattled and then sad.
• Indonesia and COVID-19: What the World Is Missing
• My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?
• The dire need for information should not mean rush to produce unreliable information quickly. This is what I am afraid is happening right now with hydroxychloroquine. (Hurry, don’t rush)

4. Racism: The disparity between NKRI Harga Mati and Pro-Kemerdekaan created by the public can be destructive for the Papuan Lives Matter campaign. People should see the movement as a fulfilment of the common or basic needs of humanity first, not in a frame of who is taking benefit from this situation. If both Papuans and Indonesians come together to talk about racism and humanity, that’s how the movement can move forward. But the moral of the story is to stop preaching to Papuans about how to run their own movement.

More reading on racism:

• The Logic of Stupid Poor People
• We need to talk about the [New York Times Bestseller] list.
• A white woman, racism, and a poodle
• “I'm free, white, and 21”
• The day I met James Baldwin at Harvard
• The debate about whether the removal of a statue is a violent act or not is dwarfed by the sheer evil and violence of slavery. The lay out of a slave ship in the pictures below should be a help to those who are struggling to work out how they feel about all that has taken place. As should the picture of a slave, a person, being tossed into the ocean to drown.
• Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop
• Reflections on the Color of My Skin By Neil deGrasse Tyson
• #boscops Boston residents organizing to challenge the power of the police!
• This Is Fascism
• What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?
• Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom
• Essential Workers Are the New “Magical Negro”
• The military presence at D.C. protests was disturbingly familiar. Being in the streets of Washington reminded me of the occupation I endured as a Palestinian.
• Kadir Nelson’s “Say Their Names”
• Yamko Rambe Yamko Bukan Lagu Daerah Papua

5. Climate Change: The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?

More reading on climate change:

• Bedazzled by Energy Efficiency
• Insulation: first the body, then the home
• Lessons in the Impermanence of Permafrost
• Plastics: The New Coal in Appalachia?
• International Trade Policies Subsidize Pollution

6. Capitalism: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

More on capitalism:

• What Is the Stock Market Even for Anymore?
• An Attempt at Explaining, Blaming, and Being Very Slightly Sympathetic Toward Enron
• Zero-Interest-Rate-Policy explains the world
• I may be certain that capitalism will eventually destroy Earth’s biosphere, but I can also recognize the danger of pinning hopes for the preservation of the latter on the end of the former. I am not convinced, however, that those who recognize that capitalism may not end soon must simply accept it.
• How might we get better at imagining new worlds? These are 52 questions to help you think about what alternative worlds might look and feel like.
• Tom McHenry mario
• Capitalist Catastrophism

7. Econometrics: Thanks to multi-collinearity checks that automatically drop predictors in regression models, a two-way fixed effects model can produce sensible-looking results that are not just irrelevant to the question at hand, but practically nonsense. Instead, we would all be better served by using simpler 1-way fixed effects models (intercepts on time points or cases/subjects, but not both). (What Panel Data Is Really All About.)

More econometrics and other sausage-making:

• Difference-in-Differences: What it DiD? by Andrew Baker
• [Pre-analysis plans and Registered Reports: What the new opinion piece does and doesn’t imply(https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/pre-analysis-plans-and-registered-reports-what-new-opinion-piece-does-and-doesnt)
• An overview of multiple hypothesis testing commands in Stata
• Why ex-post power using estimated effect sizes is bad, but an ex-post MDE is not
• The Generalizer can help education researchers: Define an inference population, Select important features of the population, and Develop a recruitment plan for a future experiment.
• We Need More Respectful and Inclusive Experiments in Development Economics: A Proposal
• Migrant Remittances Will Plummet. Here Is What That Means for Global Development
• Stata Coding Guide
• How to put multiple lines in a Markdown table cell (multiline table)

8. Languages and Writing: The undecipherable rongorongo script of Easter Island

More on languages and writing:

• Antara Dubai dan Yogyakarta: Esai Tentang Huruf yang Berkompromi
• Nobita Lari Sampai Surabaya: Menilik Lucunya Terjemahan Doraemon
• Over 80% of published authors quit within 3 books. Only about 10% of published authors make it to six books. And only 5% make it to twelve.
• Federal plain language guidelines

9. Thinking: One of the most fundamental life skills is realizing when you are confused, and school actively destroys this ability. The most dangerous habit of thought taught in schools is that even if you don't really understand something, you should parrot it back anyway.

More on thinking:

• [Three Things to Unlearn from School: Attaching importance to personal opinions, solving given problems, and earning the approval of others.] http://casnocha.com/2007/07/three-things-to.html
• I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (Of course Slate Star Codex is currently taken offline)
• Idea Generation
• I’m not saying that donating 10% of your money to charity makes you a great person who is therefore freed of every other moral obligation. I’m not saying that anyone who chooses not to do it is therefore a bad person. I’m just saying that if you feel a need to discharge some feeling of a moral demand upon you to help others, and you want to do it intelligently, it beats most of the alternatives. (Nobody is perfect, everything is commensurable)

10. Japan: Learning to speak, read, and write Japanese is enormously fun. So is starting a company. I recommend not combining the two.

More from India, China, Japan, Peru, Yemen, Britain, Indonesia, US, and Tonga:

• Not long after Time’s article came out, an Indian news anchor at the leading channel CNN-IBN, hosted a segment on Modi. In her right hand, she held a copy of Caravan’s cover story, and in her left, a copy of Time’s profile, as she asked the cameras: “Which Modi is the real Modi?”
• The Chinese Communist Party leadership believe they are in the midst of an ‘intense, ideological struggle’ for survival and that to win they must defeat the West. China’s Plans to Win Control of the Global Order
• It can be seen that Marie Kondo is no kook, but heir to an ancient tradition that recognises the spirit in the sword, the anima in the inanimate.
• Potato Travelogue: A month-long journey into the flavors and traditions of Peru’s favorite food
• Ise-ji: Walk With Me, notes on the coastal pilgrimage route in Mie Prefecture, Japan
• I often write about odd monetary phenomena on this blog. Here's a new contender, Yemen's dual banknote system.
• Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity
• The Regency And Its Offensive Smells
• Indonesia, 20 Tahun Lalu: Yang Mau Reformasi, Ikut Kami!
• 1998
• How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience
• [The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months] (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months)
• Indonesia’s inconsistent income distribution data
• Malam harinya datanglah kapal patroli TNI-AL dan Polisi Air, mengeret mereka ke luar wilayah Indonesia menuju Malaysia selama satu hari satu malam. Sampai di sana, tambang diputus dan mereka ditinggal. Berbagi Tiga Seri Cerita Nelangsa Pengungsi Rohingya

11. Asexuality and the Baggins Bachelors: Finding My Counterparts in Middle-earth

More on LGBTIAQ+, sexuality, and relationships:

• Sara Hegazy was gay. She was also an atheist. She did not hide the fact that she was either. And she paid for it in every horrible way possible. A few days ago, she committed suicide in Canada.
• Self-Build
• The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies
• I did not call my uncle, even though each Friday I resolved to. Then he passed away.
• Love Will Be the Death of Us
• Philip, the Last Sweet Potato

12. Science: I'm an astrophysicist, but that doesn't mean I have a motivation to debunk those UFO videos

More science writings:

• Why Sleep Deprivation Kills
• How Apples Go Bad
• Australia's first astronomers

13. Build build build: When the America of the 1910s faced a national crisis, America responded by creating and dozens of emergency response committees at the local level. Today's children have learned instead to solve conflicts by appeal to authority.

Andreessen's essay and reactions to it:

• It's time to build by Marc Andreessen
• How Tech Can Build
• Why we can’t build: America’s inability to act is killing people.
• Managerialism and Civil Service

14. Miscellaneous: Lessons Learned the Hard Way in Grad School (so far)

More miscellanea:

• 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
• Against Dog Ownership
• On Smarm
• Triwizard tournament X The Great British Bake Off
• When Tailwinds Vanish: The Internet in the 2020s
• Bye, Amazon
• Why is it that the people freaking out the most about taxes on the rich are the ones who don’t seem to know how the tax code works? Tax Frenzies and How to Hose Them Down