tingilinde

money and youth sports

Yet another piece on the rising costs and lowered value (for most) in youth sports these days.   Near the bottom of the page it links to an old NY Times piece on youth sports in Norway - a country that gets it right.  I'm told Finland has a similar model.

 

thumbs up

 

xkcd brillance

a big hit on us gdp

The cost of gun violence.

a tip of the hat to Greg

 

comments on moving asteroid experiments

Some interesting comments by Phil Metzger.

 

 

intercepted phone calls of russian soldiers in ukraine

A rather frightening sample in The New York Times.

 

the galaxy song in 2014

not the president of a democracy

The GOP is pushing for the Christian Nationalist Battle Commander with the US falling into Christofascism in 2024.  On what makes Christian nationalism.

a tip of the hat to Jim

republican military thinking

The hyper-masculine Putinesque thinking of many on the right.

snip

...

The persistence of the Putin-Cruz-Carlson vision of war is surprising, because we have decades, even centuries, of evidence to the contrary. Since the Industrial Revolution, and in many ways before, the ability to run a complex system has been the cornerstone of strategic success. Though much military popular literature likes to stress the human drama of combat—the bravery and sacrifice, the cowardice and atrocity—it is not nearly as important in victory or defeat as many people assume. In state-to-state wars—a category that includes the current Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as broader conflicts such as the two world wars—the side that can most efficiently deploy more effective equipment operated by better-trained personnel has typically emerged victorious.

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infinity

One of the things I like about Quanta Magazine is their treatment of math - a mixture of very readable pieces on work at the frontier as well as well-written pieces that explain some of the basics. Here's a nicely done piece on how big is infinity...

snip

...

You might know that some sets of numbers are infinitely large, but did you know that some infinities are bigger than others? And that we’re not sure if there are other infinities sandwiched between the two we know best? Mathematicians have been pondering this second question for at least a century, and some recent work has changed the way people think about the issue.

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what a mess

Much is being written on the incompetence of Britain's government. Here's John Cassidy's take.

snip

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This statement didn’t impress the global market, which has been dumping British assets since Friday, when the new Conservative government of Liz Truss unveiled a sweeping set of tax cuts to be funded by additional borrowing. This costly stimulus package came on top of a previously announced energy-price bailout of households and businesses, which itself came on top of the necessary but costly efforts that the previous government, under Boris Johnson, took to shield the British economy from covid. It also came at a time when the U.K.’s inflation rate is running at close to ten per cent, and the Bank of England is struggling to bring it down.

The enormous tax cuts are heavily slanted toward the rich and will amount to close to two per cent of Britain’s G.D.P. Kwasi Kwarteng, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented them as part of a broader effort to boost the underlying growth rate of the U.K. economy. Many independent commentators condemned them as crackpot economics. It’s “the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up,” Paul Johnson, the director of the nonpartisan, London-based Institute for Fiscal Studies, said. The most biting verdict came from Larry Summers, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary. “It makes me very sorry to say, but I think the U.K. is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market,” Summers told Bloomberg. If the Truss government sticks to its new policy, the value of the pound could drop to less than a dollar, he added.

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visual story telling

An upcoming Pixar workshop.  This could be fun if you have any interest -- it could be terrific for a teen!

 

old infections that shaped evolution

And protect your brain.

snip

...

These results provide the first example of viral-derived genes that have been re-purposed to protect mammalian brains against infection. The idea that viruses have had such a positive impact on our lives may be surprising, but examples like Rtl5 and Rtl6 demonstrate that viral invaders can, in the long run, benefit their host. According to Dr Ishino, “virus-acquired genes are essential parts of our genome, playing various – but essential – roles in mammalian and human development. We think it is possible to extend this idea to primate- and human-specific acquired genes from retroviruses to help us understand human evolution”.

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notes on spanish mary

Sukie found this piece on how Bob Dylan's lyrics made their way to a song with music by Rhiannon Giddens.

 

the time has come

Artificially lush greenery in a desert doesn't make sense. That seems to be a cultural problem for some..

 

impact!

From the Atlas asteroid tracking project.

Apparently many held that the impact wouldn't be visible from Earth-based telescopes.