Here’s Cory Doctorow’s review of The People’s Republic of Walmart, which I posted about a few days ago.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/walmart-without-capitalism.html

Modern monetary theory has been coming up a lot here in the early stages of the Democratic primaries. It’s not at all clear to me that it’s a safe or sane approach, but there are certainly economists who believe it is. Here are a few articles on the subject:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a34n54/modern-monetary-theory-explained

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/deficits-and-the-printing-press-somewhat-wonkish/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/modern-monetary-theory-is-an-unconventional-take-on-economic-strategy/2012/02/15/gIQAR8uPMR_story.html

This book hasn’t quite come out yet, but it sounds extremely interesting. You can hear Cory Doctorow give his take on it here (2:45 – 2:48).

Since the demise of the USSR, the mantle of the largest planned economies in the world has been taken up by the likes of Walmart, Amazon and other multinational corporations

For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us?

An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-of-walmart

This leads us to a scenario that leaves little room for resistance, because opting out, even collectively with a group of friends or a small organization, seems pointless. You are missing the network effects and you are losing traction. Every act of resistance seems to be too small because of the sheer scales of these firms. What do we do?

It’s incredibly difficult, and a lot of the resistance options are heavily individualized. We can personally lock down our social media profiles, we can turn toward privacy-saving alternatives, we can deploy algorithms that fool other algorithms, we can fool facial-recognition surveillance with specialized makeup and outfit, and so on. But these all tend to rely on individuals making a choice, rather than any approach to trying to systematically undermine the big platforms. It is incredibly difficult to think about what can be done, in part because the size and scale of these companies is very difficult to challenge from the ground up. There are some attempts though — for example, the platform cooperative idea of “we’ll produce an alternative, and we’ll get users to migrate to a nice, humane version of Uber,” for instance…

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bigger-than-the-ussr-a-conversation-with-nick-srnicek-author-of-platform-capitalism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guianan_cock-of-the-rock

It looks like their “infrared sight” is good enough to make out various shapes, too. In a third experiment, the researchers put them into a Y-shaped maze. The mice were trained to find a hidden platform that was associated with one or two specific patterns. The same patterns were projected onto one end of the maze using infrared light, and the bionic mice were able to find the hidden platform whereas the normal, plain mice could not.

What’s more interesting is that their super infrared vision lasted up to ten weeks with few harmful effects. “Endowing mammals with [near-infrared] vision capacity could also pave the way for critical civilian and military applications,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/01/danger_mouse_infrared/

From Warsaw to Washington, the political divide that matters is less and less between left and right, and more and more between open and closed. Debates between tax-cutting conservatives and free-spending social democrats have not gone away. But issues that cross traditional party lines have grown more potent. Welcome immigrants or keep them out? Open up to foreign trade or protect domestic industries? Embrace cultural change, or resist it?

In 2005 Stephan Shakespeare, the British head of YouGov, a pollster, observed:

We are either “drawbridge up” or “drawbridge down”. Are you someone who feels your life is being encroached upon by criminals, gypsies, spongers, asylum-seekers, Brussels bureaucrats? Do you think the bad things will all go away if we lock the doors? Or do you think it’s a big beautiful world out there, full of good people, if only we could all open our arms and embrace each other?

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/07/30/drawbridges-up

Useful info.

For the most part, cables only really have one job: transfer information or power from one place to another. There are few things an expensive cable does better than a cheaper one. However, there are still a few distinguishing features to watch for when you’re cable shopping, depending on your needs. Here are a few tips:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/smarter-living/the-discount-cable-and-charger-brands-you-can-trust.html

While the Norma Cluster is massive, and local galaxies are moving toward it, it doesn’t explain the full motion of local galaxies. The mass of the Great Attractor isn’t large enough to account for the pull. When we look at an even larger region of galaxies, we find that the local galaxies and the Great Attractor are moving toward something even larger. It’s known as the Shapley Supercluster. It contains more than 8000 galaxies and has a mass of more than ten million billion Suns. The Shapley Supercluster is, in fact, the most massive galaxy cluster within a billion light years, and we and every galaxy in our corner of the Universe are moving toward it.

https://www.universetoday.com/113150/what-is-the-great-attractor/

Wow, I definitely held some of these misconceptions. A few examples:

• While the beta carotene in carrots can help improve night vision in those suffering from a deficiency of vitamin A, it does not enhance it beyond normal levels in those receiving an adequate amount.^[365] The belief that it does originated from World War II British disinformation meant to explain the Royal Air Force‘s improved success in night battles, which was actually due to radar and the use of red lights on instrument panels.^[366]
• Eating less than an hour before swimming does not increase the risk of experiencing muscle cramps or drowning. One study shows a correlation between alcohol consumption and drowning, but there is no evidence cited regarding stomach cramps or the consumption of food.^[316]
• Poinsettias are not highly toxic to humans or cats. While it is true that they are mildly irritating to the skin or stomach,^[277] and may sometimes cause diarrhea and vomiting if eaten,^[278] an American Journal of Emergency Medicine study of 22,793 cases reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers showed no fatalities and few cases requiring medical treatment.^[279] According to the ASPCA, poinsettias may cause light to mid-range gastrointestinal discomfort in felines, with diarrhea and vomiting as the most severe consequences of ingestion.^[280]
• European honey bees are often described as essential to human food production, leading to claims that without their pollination, humanity would starve or die out.^[271][272] The quote “If bees disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live” has been misattributed to Albert Einstein.^[273][274] In fact, many important crops need no insect pollination at all. The ten most important crops,^[275] comprising 60% of all human food energy,^[276] all fall into this category.
• Earthworms do not become two worms when cut in half. Only a limited number of earthworm species^[256] are capable of anterior regeneration. When such earthworms are bisected, only the front half of the worm (where the mouth is located) can feed and survive, while the other half dies.^[257] Some species of planarian flatworms, however, actually do become two new planarians when bisected or split down the middle.^[258]

Source: List of common misconceptions – Wikipedia