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AuthorSpencer Chen

Turkey’s Trust in Government Has Turned to Dust [Ayşegül Sert, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
252 views
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• In 1999, an earthquake struck near Istanbul, killing 17,000 people and leading to the rise of the AKP, or the Justice and Development Party.
• On Monday, two major earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, leaving more than 11,000 people dead, four times that number injured, and many still missing.
• The AKP has spent the past several years on nationalist campaigns, attacking Kurds in Turkey and Syria, and by threatening its neighbor Greece.
• It has focused on ideology—exhorting women to bear “at least three children” and creating a “pious generation” by opening up many religious schools.
• The government has used infrastructure projects to highlight its break with the past, but has failed to prepare for this catastrophe.
• Turkish citizens have called out on social media to wealthy real-estate and construction-company owners to bring their earthmovers and other heavy machinery to the wreckage sites.
• In the affected region, a shopping mall, a historic mosque, and hospitals were destroyed, forcing patients and caregivers out in the cold.
• The government has shut down many independent media outlets and restricted Twitter, preventing emergency help from reaching desperate areas.
• On election day, people should remember the bare hands of rescue workers and residents digging people out from under our cities.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ayşegül Sert’s original post Turkey’s Trust in Government Has Turned to Dust

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Don’t Read His Lips [James Surowiecki, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
266 views
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• Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke last week after the Fed’s monthly meeting, conveying the message that the fight against inflation was not yet won and that the Fed anticipated continuing to raise interest rates over the next few months.
• Investors ignored Powell’s message and leaped to the conclusion that the Fed was no longer as hawkish as it had been, sending stocks soaring.
• When Powell spoke yesterday at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C., he wanted to make sure that no one missed the point and reiterated that the process of getting inflation down would be “bumpy” and was likely to take “quite a bit of time”.
• Until 1994, the Fed didn’t even announce at its monthly meeting whether it had raised or lowered interest rates.
• Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell have all been open about their thinking and have moved steadily toward more transparency and public communication about their policies.
• The job of central bankers has changed and they now have to be good at communicating without any real rule book.
• Powell did a fine job of explaining that the Fed was sticking with its target of 2 percent inflation, and that, as a result, it planned to keep hiking interest rates.
• However, the market rallied strongly, and by day’s end it was up by more than a percentage point.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read James Surowiecki’s original post Don’t Read His Lips

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Why There Was No Racial Reckoning [Wesley Lowery, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
263 views
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• In the wake of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the nation’s leadership class was presented with a crossroads: to radically rethink American policing, or to retreat to the safety of piecemeal reform.
• Tyre Nichols’ death in Memphis, TN in January 2021 is a reminder of the limitations of reform.
• Five officers were fired and charged with second-degree murder after the release of four video clips depicting the officers’ excessive use of violence.
• The race of the officers (all five were Black) sparked debate about the role of race in police violence.
• The timely release of information and forthright steps to hold the officers accountable likely prevented civil unrest.
• The Memphis Police Department had a Black woman police chief, a majority-Black workforce, body cameras, de-escalation training, and a duty-to-intervene policy, yet Tyre Nichols was still killed.
• The city had responded to a record-high 342 murders in 2021 by deploying the SCORPION unit, a task force of 40 officers instructed to “be tough on tough people.”
• Vice President Kamala Harris attended Tyre Nichols’ funeral, where his mother said she believed her son was sent on an assignment from God.
• The article discusses the legacy of James Baldwin and Derrick Bell, two influential Black American writers and activists.
• Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta child murders in 1979, and Bell wrote the foreword to the 1996 paperback edition of Baldwin’s book, Evidence.
• Bell developed a theory called “interest convergence,” which posits that America’s white majority takes strides toward racial equality only when white people see doing so as in their own best interest.
• The article also discusses the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man killed by police in Atlanta in 2021.
• At the funeral, activist Amber Sherman outlined the family’s demands for accountability and reform.
• Sharpton discussed the need for legislation to end qualified immunity and make it a crime for a cop to stand by and watch another officer brutalize a civilian.
• He concluded that movements take time, but that he and other activists will continue to fight for justice.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Wesley Lowery’s original post Why There Was No Racial Reckoning

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A History of Confusing Stuff in the Sky [Garrett M. Graff, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
282 views
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• Balloons have been used for spying and bombing since World War I, and German zeppelins regularly crossed the English Channel to drop hand grenades or small bombs on London.
• During World War II, Japan lofted about 9,000 balloon bombs toward the West Coast in 1944 and 1945, hoping to spread fear, ignite forest fires, and bring the war to America’s homeland.
• At the end of World War II, the arrival of the nuclear bomb meant that an entire city could be vaporized by a lone attacker arriving out of the blue sky.
• In 1947, reports of a mysterious flight of objects over the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest touched off a summer of excited, panicked UFO sightings.
• In 1952, the Air Force’s UFO-investigation program, Project Blue Book, figured out that Captain Thomas F. Mantell had most likely been chasing a Navy weather balloon when he crashed his plane.
• In the postwar era, balloons represented cutting-edge military technology, and the U.S. had multiple secret balloon projects under way.
• On Saturday, the U.S. military deployed an F-22 to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon, and the pilot who flew the plane is known as FRANK01, honoring Frank Luke, the balloon-busting ace of 1918.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Garrett M. Graff’s original post A History of Confusing Stuff in the Sky

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How Seawater Might Soak Up More Carbon [Warren Cornwall, Nautilus]

By Spencer Chen
In [Nautilus]
February 8, 2023
268 views
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• Gaurav Sant is flipping a switch on a machine aboard a barge in Los Angeles that will suck water from the Pacific Ocean and reduce its carbon dioxide levels.
• The machine is part of a larger effort to geoengineer the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide.
• The ocean is already absorbing 90% of excess heat generated by burning fossil fuels and holds an estimated 41,000 gigatons of carbon.
• Strategies to increase ocean alkalinity, such as adding antacids to the ocean, are being explored to increase the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
• Douglas Wallace, a chemical oceanographer at Canada’s Dalhousie University, believes this approach could make a difference without causing massive ecosystem risks.
• However, there are still many unknowns about the effectiveness and economic viability of these strategies, as well as potential ecological effects.
• Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan recently put $21 million into the UCLA Institute for Carbon Management, where Sant’s project began.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Nautilus to read Warren Cornwall’s original post How Seawater Might Soak Up More Carbon

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The Moon Smells Like Gunpowder [Jillian Scudder, Nautilus]

By Spencer Chen
In [Nautilus]
February 8, 2023
175 views
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• Apollo 16 and 17 astronauts noticed a strong smell of gunpowder in the lunar module after returning from moonwalks.
• The lunar dust is sharp and can cling to the space suits, making it difficult to remove.
• Inhaling the dust can cause severe damage to the lungs, similar to silicosis.
• If humans are ever to live on the moon or Mars, they will need to find a way to protect themselves from the dust.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Nautilus to read Jillian Scudder’s original post The Moon Smells Like Gunpowder

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Feisty Joe Biden Is Back [Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
February 8, 2023
262 views
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• President Joe Biden gave a raucous and argumentative State of the Union address, previewing what will likely be key themes of his 2024 reelection campaign.
• Biden leaned into his populist “Scranton Joe” persona, sparring with congressional Republicans and calling for national unity around shared goals, particularly delivering economic benefits to working families.
• Biden’s emphasis on economic concerns reflects his belief that the best way to counter the GOP’s cultural notes is to downplay culture-war fights and define himself primarily around a practical agenda to lift average families.
• Biden’s speech showed a contrast to former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s bellicose GOP response, which summoned “normal” Americans to rise up against a “woke mob” allegedly erasing American values and traditions.
• Polling suggests that Biden has not yet convinced most Americans that his economic agenda will benefit them.
• Biden’s speech continued a recalibration of his promise to unify America and work across party lines, differentiating between “mainstream” Republicans and “extreme MAGA” forces.
• Biden forcefully called on Republicans to pass a “clean” increase in the nation’s debt ceiling, and pledged to veto any effort to undo the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that reduce drug prices, any legislation imposing a national ban on abortion, and any efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ronald Brownstein’s original post Feisty Joe Biden Is Back

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Chartbook #195: How to pay for Putin’s war?Russia’s technocrats torn between defense of the austerity status quo and national mobilization. [Adam Tooze, Chartbook]

By Spencer Chen
In Adam Tooze [Chartbook]
February 8, 2023
244 views
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• The Russian economy emerged from the first shock of the war and sanctions in 2022 far better than many expected, with a fall in GDP of just 2.2%.
• Putin’s reaction was to crow that the experts were wrong, but the underlying issue is economic management.
• The track record of stability clocked up by Putin’s regime comes at a heavy price in terms of macroeconomic imbalance.
• Putin’s regime has increasingly resorted to “War Keynesianism”, with large salary payments to soldiers propping up incomes and building a constituency loyal to the regime.
• Russia must manage the bottlenecks imposed by sanctions and ensure that aggregate demand continues to bubble along.
• The truce between the war economists and the conservative advocates of continuity as personified by Nabiullina has held, but it will be tested in 2023.
• The budget deficit is 1.8 trillion RUB (1.2% of GDP) and liquid assets in the National Welfare Fund amount to 4% of GDP.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Chartbook to read Adam Tooze’s original post Chartbook #195: How to pay for Putin’s war?Russia’s technocrats torn between defense of the austerity status quo and national mobilization.

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Pitchfork and the Death of Things as Themselves [Freddie deBoer, Freddie deBoer’s Substack]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
February 8, 2023
282 views
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• Pitchfork’s review of Måneskin’s album *Rush!* is at risk of busting at the seams due to its internal contradictions.
• The review suggests that people like the band for reasons other than the sonic quality of the music, to serve an unconscious need to appear neither cool nor popular.
• Pitchfork has gone from being a hipster review site to an enforcer of the consensus “poptimist” worldview in music criticism.
• Poptimism has been the utterly dominant ideology in music criticism for years, yet it is still treated as an oppressed discourse.
• Carly Rae Jepsen is a good example of how poptimism distorts how we discuss artists, with a level of critical defensiveness about her career.
• Poptimism is fundamentally about mandating a particular taste, and failure to properly appreciate massic pop culture commodities makes you guilty of having bad taste.
• The author would like to see celebration of more music that sounds truly different, and for people to stop mistaking their devotion to popular music for some sort of statement on social justice.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Freddie deBoer’s Substack to read Freddie deBoer’s original post Pitchfork and the Death of Things as Themselves

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New Bing, and an Interview with Kevin Scott and Sam Altman About the Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
February 8, 2023
271 views
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• Microsoft and OpenAI have been in a partnership for 3.5 years.
• Kevin Scott and Sam Altman have known each other since Sam tried to recruit Kevin to be the Head of Engineering at his startup, Loopt.
• Microsoft and OpenAI have a shared vision of powerful models that can be used as platforms to develop lots of things on top of.
• Microsoft believes OpenAI is the best AI team pound-for-pound on the planet.
• OpenAI can focus on their work while Microsoft helps them commercialize their products.
• OpenAI and Microsoft have a successful partnership that has allowed them to accomplish a lot of amazing things.
• The goals of OpenAI and Microsoft are compatible and not overlapping, allowing them to work together efficiently.
• The partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft is not a simple “throw it over the wall” situation, but rather a close collaboration at each step.
• CoPilot was the first project that required collaboration between three organizations, and it was a learning experience for all involved.
• Sam Altman and Kevin Scott discussed the success of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership and the cost and business models associated with the new Bing product.
• Sam believes that the partnership works best when both parties trust and like each other and work together in good faith.
• Kevin believes that Microsoft has the ability to performance-optimize the product and bring it to market as an ad-supported product.
• Sam believes that the two companies will be able to figure out a way to monetize the product profitably.
• The two discussed the new Bing product and how it may require new interaction models to be successful.
• Sam gave credit to Kevin for his commitment to the partnership and the flexibility of both companies to make it work.

Published February 8, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post New Bing, and an Interview with Kevin Scott and Sam Altman About the Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership

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