Summer Solstice 2023 links

• 2020’s biggest breakthroughs in Math and Computer Science, Physics, and Biology
• Taylor Swift: folklore, evermore and Songwriting
• Who goes Nazi? by Dorothy Thompson (1941, Harpers)
• Dan Carlin on the Lex Fridman podcast.
• Essay: How do you describe TikTok?, “The best bodily position in which to watch TikTok is supine, muscles slack, phone above your face like it’s an endless tunnel into the air.”
• Trench verses by Belash Yuri Semyonovich
• The Insect Brain
• A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart
• Against Dog Ownership
• Documentary on Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri
• The Offensive Lineman - with John Urschel on the Numberphile podcast.
• A survey of some famous problems in Mathematics over the years, compiled by Alvaro Rozano-Robledo.
• A perfect Suzuka qualifying lap by Sebastian Vettel in the AMR22.
• some cool problems to think about… in matrix completion from LessWrong
• Gilbert Strang’s Final Lecture, streamed live by MITOCW. Brilliant as usual.
• Harvard Careerism from The Crimson. “Students that don’t come from familial wealth may be “disinclined to smell the flowers along the way and to take some chances,” and “The clearest example of Harvard’s careerist turn is its extracurriculars… student organizations… increasingly function as pre-professional outlets.”
• From Chris Dalla Riva on Tedium. Apparently, there are lesser key changes in the billboard top 100 nowadays due to 1) the rise of hiphop (which doesn’t really care about keys as much as it cares about rhythm and lyrics) and 2) digital recording (which doesn’t constrain artists to use instruments like guitar and keyboard only). One exception is Sicko Mode by Travis Scott and Drake. Also discussed was Michael Jackson’s Man in The Mirror and the key change near the start of the second chorus.

update a few days later: and as a special mention

John B. Goodenough

John Goodenough, whose work on Lithium ion batteries and computer random-access-memory will remain immortal.

a product that today touches nearly everyone’s life