- “His social credit score has been lowered, and the South China Morning Post reports that Xu also faces travel restrictions for accusing Chen of being a fake master. As a result, Xu can’t ride in second class or above on planes or sleeper trains, and cannot ride high-speed trains at all (and if he had kids they’d face prohibitions, too).”
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First, the excerpt above is noteworthy because of the real world implications of a reduction in one’s social credit score. Second, read the article to find out why his score has been reduced in the first place. Truly mind boggling.
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.. - “There could be two reasons for this. In rural areas, the downside in incomes appears to have eroded any positive effects of lower inflation. Among urban consumers, the persistent inflation in goods and services other than food may have restricted the real and sentiment impact of lower food inflation. To be sure, it is possible that if inflation is lower but consumption has not gone up meaningfully, then savings have risen. But there is no clear data to prove this yet.”
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Ira Dugal points out the problems of low inflation in India (who’d have thought it, huh?), but also, more broadly, points out how difficult it is to think through macroeconomic issues.
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.. - “The government has no business being in business. There are scores of government owned companies that do exactly the same thing – like BPCL, HPCL and IOC are all refiners and oil marketing companies. There’s OIL and ONGC. And a GAIL, a Petronet, an IGL and so on. That’s just in the Oil and Gas space. There are a gazillion public sector banks. There needs to be a regular practice to get rid of most of the stake in these companies and to corporatize them. What better time than when you have a mandate?”
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Deepak Shenoy walks us through his wish list of what the new government should do, and provides (as always) an easy to understand overview of what the response of the markets has been (thus far) to the election results.
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.. - “The Great Trigonometrical Survey is credited with having measured the heights of 79 Himalayan peaks; they include the Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga. It also measure the baselines of Saint Thomas Mount, Madras, baselines of Calcutta, Coimbatore, Tanjore, Guntur, the measurements of the Cauvery Delta, the measurements of Mysore and the Great Indian Arc – an arc extending from the tip of the Indian subcontinent to the mountains of Himalayas. The measurement of the great Indian arc is a significant milestone for Indian geography because it was the first effort to plot, in mathematical terms, the vastness of the subcontinent from the north to south.”
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The Madras Courier helps us understand the importance of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and gives us a peek into the romance associated with the entire exercise. If you find yourself interested in the entire exercise, there is also an entire book about it.
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.. - “So, here’s a story. On 15 April 2019, when the roofspace over the crossing of Paris Cathedral caught fire, I was in a pub in east London having a burger. My initial reaction was not one of anxiety for the 12th-century Early Gothic church, with its splendid 13th-century Rayonnant superstructure and rose windows with contemporary (if VERY restored) medieval stained glass, but instead a slight feeling of dismay of how long this would mean the building would be closed and how much it would cost to replace the roof. It was also a great shame to lose the crowning achievement of the restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, his magnificent Neo-Gothic crossing flèche, albeit mere days after all the statues had been removed from it for restoration. Anyway, then I went off to watch Kubrick-themed Italian thrash-metal revival band Ultra-Violence open for Wisconsin death metallers Jungle Rot without that much worry.”
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A rather flippant, and therefore enjoyable dissection of the Notre Dame, the damage done to it, and what could be done about it. I do not know enough to comment about whether it makes sense or not, but I learned from reading it – hence the recommendation. Via The Browser.
Tag: MMA
Links for 20th March, 2019
- “In 1950, cement production was equal to that of steel; in the years since, it has increased 25-fold, more than three times as fast as its metallic construction partner.”
A mostly negative view of concrete, and how pervasive it has become over the years and across the world, in the Guardian. I wouldn’t necessarily argue the view that concrete is all bad, but the data is worth thinking about. Also keep an eye out for a mention of Vaclav Smil later on in the article – an author worth reading. - “Achieving victory over another man, defeating them, forcing them to submit—it’s not about saying “I’m better than you.” It’s saying “I’m better than I was yesterday.” It’s why almost every competition ends with a hug and a thank you. Because each gave the other something—the opportunity to learn, to progress and to become better. At “Camp Settle This Like Men,” and at MMA gyms around the world, black belt instructors lend their time and expertise to lead classes on kickboxing, jiu jitsu, boxing and self-defense. When we teach others our skills, we make them better, hone our own knowledge, and create stronger opponents, that we can measure ourselves against.”
An article from the Quillette about “Camp Settle This Like Men”. Interesting on multiple levels – masculine toxicity, respect (the earning and the giving of it), and about the plus side of mixed martial arts. - “You have no idea how hard it is. Yes, there’s a lot of work that goes into getting the teams aligned and getting the right leaders in place who believe in these priorities, and being able to execute on that. And even the process of writing something like this is really helpful, because you can talk about a lot of things in the abstract. But it’s not until you actually put it down on paper and say, “Yeah, here are the trade-offs. We’re going to focus on reducing the permanence of how much data we have around, and that’s going to make these things harder.” Then you get all these teams inside the company that come out of the woodwork with all the issues that that’s going to cause for other things that we really care about.”
Maybe it is because I was teaching industrial organization this semester – but rather than everything else that everybody focused upon, this is the part of the interview that leaped out for me. Organizing a firm is hard. Organizing teams within a firm is harder. There’s a very long reading list that suggests itself about this – it begins from Coase, and ends at Horowitz – for now. - “Today, we’re celebrating the objects and ideas dreamt up and created by inventors, scientists and dreamers. Thanks to over 110 institutions, including National Council of Science Museums and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research from India, as well as dedicated curators and archivists from 23 countries around the world, you can explore a millennia of human progress in Once Upon a Try, now available on Google Arts & Culture. With over 400 interactive collections, it’s the largest online exhibition about inventions, discoveries, and innovations ever created.”
What a time to be alive. I haven’t seen a lot on the site, principally because I would get nothing else done – but this is a truly bookmark-able resource. Again, what a time to be alive. - “In India, in my opinion, we ape the West too much, particularly America too much. I lived in Silicon Valley so I know both the strengths and the weaknesses. The weaknesses, the short-termist thinking. Very few companies stay the long haul and we have taken more inspiration from the Japanese on these than from the Americans, in this particular area.”
Lots and lots of interesting stuff here, and the whole interview is worth listening/reading. But of all of those things, this was the most interesting one to me – the influence of Japanese and American start-up culture on Zoho – a remarkable Indian firm.
EconForEverybody 