Books: Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes | James S. A. Corey, Read by Jefferson Mays | Hachette Audio Sci-Fi & Fantasy

I just finished Leviathan Wakes, co-written by the excellent Daniel Abraham, and thought it was fantastic. It’s the first in a series (“The Expanse”), the ninth and last of which is due out this fall (although this first one functions fine as a standalone, so reading it doesn’t necessarily commit you to reading the rest). More people probably know it as a TV show at this point, but I’d rather read the books first (and probably exclusively, in practice, since TV/movies don’t usually hold my attention).

The world-building reminds me of early-to-mid Larry Niven. It has realistic physics, eg no FTL, and pays decent attention to engineering and orbital mechanics, although none of that is really the focus of the book. The prose reminds me of plenty of classic sci fi authors: excellent but generally not flashy. It particularly reminded me of Iain Banks, although Banks gets more poetic. And the characterization owes a lot, I think, to Joss Whedon’s “Firefly”: the characters are quirky and a bit over-the-top while still being plausible, and they’re very sympathetic and engaging.

I’m very much looking forward to starting the next one 🙂

Dinoflagellate Genome Structure Unlike Any Other Known

An international team of researchers has generated the most robust genome to date of the dinoflagellate Symbiodinium microadriaticum, a species involved in a life-supporting symbiosis with corals. While the updated genome confirms some of what has been suggested by previous work, an unusual relationship between DNA transcription and the shape and organization of their chromosomes reveals that dinoflagellates harbor some of the strangest genomes in the eukaryotic world, according to findings published April 29 in Nature Genetics.

Rather than the flexible, X-shaped chromosomes familiar to humans, dinoflagellates organize their genetic material in orderly blocks along rigid, rod-shaped chromosomes. Genes within blocks are consistently transcribed in one direction and rarely interact with others outside their immediate vicinity. This odd arrangement, the authors found, influences the three-dimensional structure of the entire chromosome.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/dinoflagellate-genome-structure-unlike-any-other-known-68749

Dropping misdemeanor charges means arrestees are much less likely to be arrested for committing more crimes.

Absolutely fascinating. I recommend reading at least the linked summary of the paper from Marginal Revolution, if not the paper itself;

We leverage the as-if random assignment of nonviolent misdemeanor cases to Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) who decide whether a case should move forward with prosecution in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.These ADAs vary in the average leniency of their prosecution decisions. We find that,for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to large reductions in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint over the next two years.These local average treatment effects are largest for first-time defendants, suggesting that averting initial entry into the criminal justice system has the greatest benefits.

… We find that the marginal nonprosecuted misdemeanor defendant is 33 percentage points less likely to be issued a new criminal complaint within two years post-arraignment (58% less than the mean for complier” defendants who are prosecuted; p < 0.01). We find that nonprosecution reduces the likelihood of a new misdemeanor complaint by 24 percentage points (60%; p < 0.01), and reduces the likelihood of a new felony complaint by 8 percentage points (47%; not significant). Nonprosecution reduces the number of subsequent criminal complaints by 2.1 complaints (69%; p < .01); the number of subsequent misdemeanor complaints by 1.2 complaints (67%; p < .01), and the number of subsequent felony complaints by 0.7 complaints (75%; p < .05). We see significant reductions in subsequent criminal complaints for violent, disorderly conduct/theft, and motor vehicle offenses.

Source: Misdemeanor Prosecution – Marginal REVOLUTION

(full paper here)

It’s not NFTs you don’t understand, it’s art. – Something Interesting

I’m entirely agnostic about NFTs at this point, personally, but this is an interesting take on it.

A lot of people’s first response to NFTs is to reject them as a scam or a fad – but that is essentially the same category error skeptics make about crypto itself. The NFT space is indeed full of scams, shills and fools – but the core is something genuinely interesting and powerful.

Many people think they are NFT skeptics when actually what they actually are is skeptical about the art market itself. Rather than thinking of NFTs as a strange new genre of art, I think it is easier to conceptualize NFTs as a tool that helps people achieve all the strange artistic things they already wanted to do.

https://www.somethinginteresting.news/p/its-not-nfts-you-dont-understand

Three Stories About Capitalism

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past couple of years thinking about opposing perspectives on capitalism. In this 25-minute talk from 2014, Jonathan Haidt, whose writing I tend to really appreciate, does a nice job laying out those two perspectives and then trying to synthesize them.

 

Liberals want to blame rightwing ‘misinformation’ for our problems. Get real | Thomas Frank

Also available Matt Taibbi interviews Frank about this article.

What all this censorship talk really is, though, is a declaration of defeat – defeat before the Biden administration has really begun. To give up on free speech is to despair of reason itself. (Misinformation, we read in the New York Times, is impervious to critical thinking.) The people simply cannot be persuaded; something more forceful is in order; they must be guided by we, the enlightened; and the first step in such a program is to shut off America’s many burbling fountains of bad takes.

Let me confess: every time I read one of these stories calling on us to get over free speech or calling on Mark Zuckerberg to press that big red “mute” button on our political opponents, I feel a wave of incredulity sweep over me. Liberals believe in liberty, I tell myself. This can’t really be happening here in the USA.

But, folks, it is happening. And the folly of it all is beyond belief. To say that this will give the right an issue to campaign on is almost too obvious. To point out that it will play straight into the right’s class-based grievance-fantasies requires only a little more sophistication. To say that it is a betrayal of everything we were taught liberalism stood for – a betrayal that we will spend years living down – may be too complex a thought for our punditburo to consider, but it is nevertheless true.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/19/rightwing-misinformation-liberals