Articles d'hiver intéressants

[Rübezahl]

"L’envie était autrefois considérée comme un des sept péchés capitaux avant de devenir une des vertus les plus admirées sous son nouveau nom, "justice sociale". - Thomas Sowell

 

"Much of the history of the Western world over the past decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good" - T Sowell

[Rincevent]

il y a 5 minutes, Mégille a dit :

J'ai retiré "faire" parce que c'est quasiment un mot outil, mais il reste tout de même en dessous de "plaire", avec presque deux fois moins d'entrés.

Ça confirme bien ce que je dis.

[Silence]

Le 11/08/2023 à 16:14, F. mas a dit :

https://compactmag.com/article/against-the-eugenicons

 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/what-was-alt-right

F. mas, ça serait vraiment chouette si tu postais une liste des publications que tu suis.

[Silence]

Compact Mag (au design "maximaliste") n'a pas de flux RSS, en voici un créé avec politepol :

https://politepol.com/fd/8T0IbNyDDBAH

 

Le turbo maximaliste Tablet non plus n'a pas de flux RSS et pour l'instant pas moyen d'en créer un. Tous les outils foirent.

[Silence]

Ya vraiment pas moyen, aucun outil ne fonctionne avec ce design infect.

[Silence]

http://feeds.feedburner.com/tabletmag

edit : ne marche pas. On me suggère http://www.pipes.digital/editor

[Silence]

Ok :

https://rss.app/feeds/Ig8HbCNvvJ1tcjVG.xml

[Cthulhu]

Crichton: Environmentalism is a religion

 

Le même discours pourrait (malheureusement) être donné aujourd'hui 20 ans plus tard.

 

Citation

 

Many years ago I was trekking in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan, when my group came to a river that we had to cross. It was a glacial river, freezing cold, and it was running very fast, but it wasn't deep---maybe three feet at most. My guide set out ropes for people to hold as they crossed the river, and everybody proceeded, one at a time, with extreme care. I asked the guide what was the big deal about crossing a three-foot river. He said, well, supposing you fell and suffered a compound fracture. We were now four days trek from the last big town, where there was a radio. Even if the guide went back double time to get help, it'd still be at least three days before he could return with a helicopter. If a helicopter were available at all. And in three days, I'd probably be dead from my injuries. So that was why everybody was crossing carefully. Because out in nature a little slip could be deadly.

 

[Cthulhu]

The String Theory de David Foster Wallace

 

Ça parlera plus aux amateurs de tennis, mais DFW est vraiment un écrivain de classe mondiale.

 

Citation

 

But it's better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing. Oh, we'll invoke lush clichés about the lonely heroism of Olympic athletes, the pain and analgesia of football, the early rising and hours of practice and restricted diets, the preflight celibacy, et cetera. But the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode. We prefer not to consider closely the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in postcontest interviews or to consider what impoverishments in one's mental life would allow people actually to think the way great athletes seem to think.  Note the way "up close and personal" profiles of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life–outside interests and activities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what's obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It's farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one area of excellence. An ascetic focus [37]. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child's world, is very small.

 

[Hugh]

https://www.ancient-origins.net/weird-facts/roman-toothpaste-0019971

 

sur le dentifrice et l'hygiène buccale de l'ancienne Rome.

[Cthulhu]

Enfin pris le temps de lire The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism. Je ne m'attendais pas à ce que la moitié de l'article soit sur les efforts de l'administration Biden de rapatrier la construction de micro-processeurs aux États-Unis.

 

https://archive.is/dUn9X

 

Le passage très marrant :

 

Citation

Semiconductors are a national security priority. The high cost of building them here has become a national security liability. This reasoning was persuasive enough that the CHIPS Act passed with bipartisan support; 17 Republican senators backed the final bill. And there is a lot to like in the legislation. But it is very hard to read the guidelines the administration just released and see a serious effort to lower costs. The government is adding subsidies with one hand and layering on requirements with the other.

Page 11, for instance, encourages a pre-application that includes an environmental questionnaire “to assess the likely level of review under the National Environmental Policy Act.” Page 20 mandates that applicants prepare “an equity strategy, in concert with their partners, to create equitable work force pathways for economically disadvantaged individuals in their region,” which should include “building new pipelines for workers, including specific efforts to attract economically disadvantaged individuals and promote diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.” Page 21 asks for a plan “to include women and other economically disadvantaged individuals in the construction industry,” “strongly encourages” the use of project labor agreements and sets out requirements for “access to child care for facility and construction workers.”

Pages 23 and 24 ask applicants to detail how they will include minority-, veteran- and female-owned businesses, as well as small businesses, in their supply chain and offer seven bullet points detailing how this might be done, including dividing supply chain requirements “into smaller tasks or quantities to expand access” and “establishing delivery schedules for subcontractors that encourage participation by small, minority-owned, veteran-owned and women-owned businesses.” Then there are requirements for “a climate and environment responsibility plan,” as well as community investments in areas like transit, affordable housing and schools.

 

Pas mal de références à Chip War que j'ai dans ma liste de bouquins à lire.

[Arturus]

Les fourmis, nouvelle piste contre l'antibiorésistance

(notamment le tri des blessés...)

[Adrian]

 

[Adrian]

Le mémo à 6 pages d'Amazon

 

Citation

En contrepied des présentations visuellement plaisantes, Amazon s’est construit sur une culture de l’écrit. Depuis 2004, le processus d’écriture est devenu une doctrine centrale pour guider toute prise de décision. Chaque réunion est obligatoirement basée sur un document écrit.

 

Un des documents clé utilisé par Amazon est le mémo à 6 pages.

 

[Alchimi]

https://troisponts.net/2015/09/29/lusage-de-larticle-devant-les-noms-des-navires/

 

 

[F. mas]

Un article totalement hallucinant sur Macron dans Politico (qui certes n'a jamais été très profrançais, mais là... on en vient à convoquer la psychatrie pour parler de son narcissisme et de l'absence totale de retour sur lui-même. A noter également certains propos de ses conseillers proches sur le fait que les Français n'aiment pas son brillo et son intelligence lol).

 

"He somehow seems a bit less than human, a little too perfect, like a humanoid robot that gets the human part a little bit wrong — a concept known in robotics and computer animation as the “uncanny valley,” for the unease and even revulsion it elicits in a viewer.

Indeed, it can sometimes seem as if he is playing the character of the president of France, complete with cosplay photo shoots — unshaven in a military hoodie in obvious emulation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or taking to a heavy bag in an intense boxing session. 

“Everything is an act,” my psychiatrist friend said recently. “He is always posturing and posing; the psychology of that is fascinating and disturbing.”"

 

"The most jarring character shift came at a formal ceremony with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Macron stepped onto the stage looking very severe, almost scowling.

The Chinese dictator spoke for just eight minutes, reading a perfunctory, prepared speech off a piece of paper. Then it was Macron’s turn; without notes, speaking directly to Xi in a highly performative, almost lecturing, style that was clearly aimed at the cameras and any French people watching.

Xi’s entourage of sycophantic ministers grew increasingly uncomfortable as the lecture continued: 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it just went on. Xi, who is treated in the Chinese system as a modern-day emperor, blinked furiously and looked as if he’d just swallowed a particularly noxious frog. At around the 21-minute mark, he let out a clearly audible sigh — intense impatience emanating from every pore of his body.

Macron seemed blithely unaware. His speech went on three times longer than Xi’s — an unforgivable breach of protocol in the Chinese system, especially since it came from the leader of a former colonial, barbarian country that has now fallen on hard times."

 

"On the China trip, one of the things that most struck me was how Macron appeared to be winging things, with little or no input from the French diplomatic service or anyone with deep knowledge and expertise on Xi Jinping’s China."

 

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/magnificent-mind-emmanuel-macron-france-legislative-election/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2lra2L8x6cVK77-jg2op2ikX7hxrfsNdAV1OHsafiXunETvIcdQSkkNoo_aem_ueRVn5HasrZhmz7Pl86LMg

[Rincevent]

il y a 37 minutes, F. mas a dit :

Xi’s entourage of sycophantic ministers

Il faut aussi parler de Macron's entourage of sycophantic advisors.

[Rincevent]

Je ne sais pas trop où poster ça, mais too much Internet for today.

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41560220

[Extremo]

Sur les raisons de l'absence de révolution industrielle en Rome antique:

 

https://www.maximum-progress.com/p/romae-industriae

[Silence]

Article remarquable dans le dernier Playboy. 

NB : ce Playboy, je l'ai acheté de ma poche, et j'invite tous les amateurs d'érotisme à l'acheter. Je dis ça au cas où ca serait illégal (mais s'il le faut, par sécurité, autant nuker ce post).

 

[Silence]

J'ai bien fait de me l'offrir, ce Playboy. Daniel Darc : entretien de 1994

[Liber Pater]

En fait playboy c'est Vice avec des seins et des rockeurs ?

[Silence]

Le 04/08/2024 à 09:13, Liber Pater a dit :

En fait playboy c'est Vice avec des seins et des rockeurs ?

Ya un peu de ça, oui. Toujours dans ce numéro de Playboy, un autre bon article.

[Soda]

C’est sur la propagande qui pourrait être perçue seulement comme de la bêtise.

 

https://pseudo-ecologie.fr/de-linteret-en-politique/

[Adrian]

Réussite scolaire : que faire face à la loterie génétique ? Par Franck Ramus

[Cthulhu]

Un long article portrait de Luckey Palmer, le fondateur de Oculus et Anduril. Je connaissais les deux boites mais sans avoir fait le lien.

 

Y a énormément de passages intéressants dans l'article, le personnage est plus grand que nature, il a monté 2 boites qui valent des milliards, se fait virer de Facebook pour des raisons plus ou moins politiques.

 

Et d'autres trucs complètement fous comme :

 

Citation

“In terms of the subterranean side,” he told me, “the U.S. and the Soviet Union both used to explicitly recognize that the next warfighting domain is the subterranean domain. Not like the tunnels in Gaza or bunkers, I’m talking about the full crust of the earth as a three-dimensional maneuvering space through which we’re moving people, weapons, effects, signals, and even infrastructure. The U.S. used to have a subterrene program. The Soviets had a subterrene program, they actually built a working prototype. The problem was that at the time nuclear energy was considered to be the only way to build a useful subterrene. Then we decided we were not going to use nuclear for civil applications or new military applications.”

 

“But I figured out how to build a subterrene without nuclear,” he said. “That’s the really interesting innovation I’ve come up with. I can’t tell you about the details, but I can tell you that I strongly still believe that the subterranean domain, it’s going to be a domain just like air, land, sea, or space. Some interesting things happen once you can control the crust of the earth.”

 

“But to be clear,” Luckey’s press handler interjected, “we’re not actively working on that.”

 

“Oh no we are,” Luckey said, smiling. “We are.”

 

She looked at me and shrugged: “There are things I don’t know about sometimes.”

 

https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/american-vulcan-palmer-luckey-anduril

 

C'est là qu'on voit la vraie force de frappe des États-Unis où ce genre de profils peut vraiment exceller alors que ce serait impensable en Europe ou en Asie.

[Adrian]

Citation

Age structure and political violence: a re-assessment of the “youth bulge” hypothesis

A popular hypothesis in international studies states that a “youth bulge”––an age pyramid dominated by large cohorts between 15 and 29 years of age––increases the risk of political violence. However, empirical evidence on this link remains inconclusive to date. In this article, we systematically assess the youth effect using new data from 183 countries between 1996 and 2015. We find that within countries, a decrease in the youth ratio is generally associated with a decrease in the number of violent deaths from terrorism or other internal conflicts, and vice versa. This is also confirmed in out-of-sample predictions. However, the association is not evident in all constellations and sensitive to modeling issues. In particular, large cohorts of young males can become a disruptive power in countries that increase enrollment in post-primary education. Although this is usually followed by fertility decline, youth bulges often remain at record levels for quite some time due to high birth rates in the past. Strong labor markets can in general suppress the detrimental consequences of youth bulges. However, the combination of growing youth cohorts and educational expansion often leads to increased political violence even in the presence of low youth unemployment.

 

[Rincevent]

il y a 4 minutes, Adrian a dit :

However, the combination of growing youth cohorts and educational expansion often leads to increased political violence even in the presence of low youth unemployment.

Ce qui nous ramène à une des antiennes les plus méconnues de tonton Todd (même si je ne sais pas si c'est le premier à avoir remarqué ce fait) : une révolution, ça arrive quand les fils savent lire alors que leur père en est incapable. (Plus sérieusement, ça arrive quand le taux d'illettrisme diminue, quelque part entre un tiers et deux tiers d'une population).

[Cthulhu]

Un long article de Slate sur le flirt entre Ice Cube (et autre artistes de rap) et la droite trumpiste: https://slate.com/culture/2024/08/ice-cube-donald-trump-tucker-carlson-joe-rogan.html

 

Citation

Those of us who grew up with Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur or even a quirky bohemian like Mos Def have watched hip-hop invert through its middle-aged crisis; it’s been frustrating to see our most popular artists become interested more in getting into the White House for a photo op rather than in painting it black.

 

C'est très teinté gauchiste qui découvre que les rappeurs des années 90s sont prêts à vendre leur famille pour un peu de $. Amusant au début, mais répétitif vu la longueur de l'article.

 

Au-delà de ça, on peut lire entre les lignes l'appel du pied de la campagne Trump envers les noirs urbains via une poignée de gros noms du hip-hop. Comme l'article le souligne, ça avait peu marché en 2020 avec 91% de votes pour Biden. A voir ce que ça donne en 2024.

[Adrian]

Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country