The occasional linklist – July 19, 2020
I have been pondering creating a column on my blog where I share links to articles I read and liked. I perform this function on Twitter at the moment, but the attention some links attract are rubbish, and I reflexively share only relatively bland things there these days as a result. I’m also starting to relish the privilege of not having a shitstorm erupt in my notifications just because I shared something – a link or a viewpoint – that someone disagreed with, and is now giving me headaches because I no longer have the option of ignoring them.
So here goes, the first instalment of articles I recently read and liked. 🙂
- Aren’t we all somewhere on the spectrum of disease? – the deductible
- Four centuries of development surprises on a single stretch of a New York city street – Fermat’s Library
- Authors of study on race and police killings ask for its retraction, citing “continued misuse” in the media – Retraction Watch
- The international student bait-and-switch – Margins by Ranjan Roy and Can Duruk
- When there is despair, there will be hate too. And that’s not a bad thing. – The Wire
- A safe and profitable nuclear plant is closing in France. Why? – Sustainability Times
- The ontology of pop physics – Tablet
An introduction to physics that contains no equations is like an introduction to French that contains no French words, but tries instead to capture the essence of the language by discussing it in English. Of course, popular writers on physics must abide by that constraint because they are writing for mathematical illiterates, like me, who wouldn’t be able to understand the equations. … Such books don’t teach physical truths; what they teach is that physical truth is knowable in principle, because physicists know it. Ironically, this means that a layperson in science is in basically the same position as a layperson in religion.
