Venkatesh Rao
Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.
Last synced from Twitter 7m ago
8 million Americans slipped into poverty amid coronavirus pandemic, new study says
Researchers looked at the devastating financial effect the pandemic has had on Americans, with Blacks, Latinos and children faring the worst.
When Not to Translate
We live in a time of retranslation. The logic behind this phenomenon is clear enough. A translation inevitably reflects the language and style of its time. Are new translations always better, or always feasible, even?
1
Venkatesh Rao
So I tried reading the gutemberg project version of the Decameron, found it unreadable, and went looking for a modern, abridged translation. Instead I found this interesting essay on translation by a guy who turned down a modern translation commission
5h
The Right’s Disinformation Machine Is Getting Ready for Trump to Lose
QAnon has become a linchpin of far-right media—and the effort to preemptively delegitimize the election.
English Eccentrics and Eccentricities - Wikipedia
Venkatesh Rao
Damn didn’t realize there was a long history of actual scholarship on English eccentrics. I thought it was mostly just a casual and shallow stereotype.
6h
MJD 59,143
I’ve been thinking about creative pivots. Discontinuous reorientations in your pattern of creative production, possibly accompanied by a change in the audience for your creative work (lose on…
How It Started. How It's Going. | Epsilon Theory
Once Daryl Morey's new idea became the common knowledge of the NBA - once everyone knows that everyone knows that the way to win NBA games is to maximize 3-point shots and lay-ups - then it became a permanent feature of the way professional...
China Thinks America Is Losing
Washington must show Beijing that the United States is not inexorably declining.
Search Twitter - "inner work"
Venkatesh Rao
The search phrase “inner work” brings up an entire genre of hustle porn that’s not about startups/entrepreneurship. 🧐
Mostly spiritual crowd but some woke politics types too.
Wonder if there’s other genres besides these two. Maybe sports, Hollywood?
26h
ShopUp raises $22.5 million to digitize millions of mom-and-pop shops in Bangladesh – TechCrunch
A startup that is aiming to digitize millions of neighborhood stores in Bangladesh just raised the country’s largest Series A financing round. Dhaka-headquartered ShopUp said on Tuesday it has raised $22.5 million in a round co-led by Sequoia...
An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle'
The spectacle can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser.
Huxley vs. Orwell: The Webcomic
Stuart McMillen’s webcomic adapts (and updates) Postman’s famous book-length essay, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argues that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New…
Venkatesh Rao
Huxley vs Orwell comic. Says a lot about which world we’re living in that I’m sharing a comic. Also that I’ve read Orwell (both 1984 and Animal Farm) but not actually read Huxley. Only a synopsis.
37h
President Franklin Roosevelt's First Fireside Chat
During Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, he delivered a number of radio broadcasts which became known as fireside chats to inform and build public support for his administration's efforts during the Great Depression, World War II, and the...
Venkatesh Rao
One version that kinda works is the FDR version: a President or pm directly addressing a nation. It’s trying to present a conversation as spectacle that struggles.
41h
Biggles - Wikipedia
Venkatesh Rao
Hmm randomly trawling for stuff down this bunny trail I remember reading most of the Biggles series as a kid. A fictional fighter pilot turned “air detective” with career spanning WWI to 1950s.
50h
Inside Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
The two-year charade that upended people’s lives
Bacteriophage - Wikipedia
Venkatesh Rao
Lol, we’re just a sideshow in the viruses vs bacteria war for the planet .
“It is estimated there are more than 10^31 bacteriophages on the planet, more than every other organism on Earth, including bacteria, combined.”
3d
CTX - Wikipedia
Venkatesh Rao
After all some viruses, bacteriophages, infect bacteria. Sometimes making them worse. Apparently the CTXφ bacteriophage makes cholera more severe
3d