Here and There #32
Big tech is watching; a great gift to a medical school; epigenetic editing; more about long Covid; and civic action vs. Christian nationalism; and Radley Balko's last installment on George Floyd
This group of readings starts with a bit of disturbing information: big brothers (yes, plural) are watching. If you have a cell phone, the data of your life is commercially available—to private companies, to our government, to other governments. And how it’s being used. Scary; but real. (Link courtesy Allan Graves; link is to a PDF since text may be paywalled.)
Remember the congressional “hearings” (in quotation marks, because such events are actually mostly political posturing) on freedom of speech/censorship/anti-Semitism at major Ivy League universities, about 3 months ago? The best analysis on what happened and what should have happened is, I think, in this article at The Dispatch. (Again, a PDF in case you get paywalled out.)
I continue to be stimulated by Noah Smith’s thoughts/research/writing. Well, his research is basically reading stuff I don’t have the time or expertise for. In his most recent “5 things” piece, he covers some very interesting ground: how AI might help some people; on how we measure U.S. spending on food; on the cost of doing science and whether discovery of new things is slowing down; and more.
You’ve probably heard about the woman who has given a $1 billion endowment to a medical school in the Bronx, NY. This brief report at Axios news explains pretty clearly what the effects of the gift are—and how it works (to avoid taxes, for instance).
We all want to forget covid. But for a significant percentage of the population, who have long Covid, that’s not possible. In case you didn’t read it earlier, here’s Zeynep Tufekci’s article on long Covid and Congress, and whether you’ve read that or not, a couple of letters from readers to the NY Times on her article.
And more from the world of medicine. There’s been a lot of work on how DNA editing can help to deal with at least some diseases. But epigenetics, a related field, is seeing a great deal of exploration. One study now seems to show that cholesterol can be “tamed” by epigenetic editing—working on the enzymes that affect DNA rather than the DNA itself.
What is Christian nationalism? Is it growing or not? There have been a number of helpful, explanatory essays recently: John Hawthorne points back to a book that distinguishes types of CN approval (or not) and its implications for understanding the present discourse; and Daniel K. Williams makes a helpful distinction between civil religion and Christian nationalism. You’d do well to understand this potentially complex subject.
Finally, Radley Balko has just released part 3 of his in-depth, exhaustive study of the death of George Floyd and the attempted rehabilitation of Derek Chauvin. Along the way, he covers a great deal of what happens in corrupt police departments, such as that in Minneapolis. This is a terribly important piece to read (give yourself some time; it’s long). If you haven’t read parts 1, 2, and 2a, you should do so, too (and you can easily find them on Balko’s substack site).