Rad Geek People's Daily

Here’s some more from the ongoing use of hyperspectral imaging and transformer-based machine learning to decipher the Herculaneum scrolls (technological civilization is awesome). Researchers have been working closely on a scroll of Philodemus’s History of the Academy for a couple years now; here’s more on some newly deciphered passages that just dropped, in The Guardian:

Awesome.

• Joseph Schumpeter (1942/1950), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (3rd edition).

• Paul M. Sweezy (1943), Professor Schumpeter’s Theory of Innovation, in The Review of Economics and Statistics 25.1 (February 1943): 93-96.

• Hebert Giersch (1984), The Age of Schumpeter, in The American Economic Review 74.2 (May 1984): 103-109.

• Bret Devereaux (2024), Phalanx’s Twilight, Legion’s Triumph Part Ia at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (2024-01-19). This is the first part of a long multi-part series that’s aimed at — as far as I can tell — a squarely tactical look at possible answers to the classic old question from Polybius;^[1] or, as Devereaux sees it, why was the Roman legion able to decisively defeat the Hellenistic sarisa-phalanx?

1. ^[1]From Plb 1.1: Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years? Or who again can be so completely absorbed in other subjects of contemplation or study, as to think any of them superior in importance to the accurate understanding of an event for which the past affords no precedent….↩

I wanted to just post this story here with a quick comment to the effect of, Well, good. Parking minimums are stupid and they’re especially unneeded around neighborhoods that are growing vigorously precisely because of the huge, pleasant walking trail that they’re growing alongside.

Of course, municipal government being what it is, the Atlanta City Government can’t just let the City of Atlanta alone; yet another foray into urbanism is immediately moving forward with a deep, abiding and utterly ridiculous suspicion that people in a city can’t just work it the fuck out on their own. We’re doing some City-Building and Neighborhood Planning here, and if cars are no longer required to get around, then by god we’ll take steps to forbid them:

New legislation passed by the Atlanta City Council will remove parking minimums in the BeltLine Overlay District, a half-mile zone on either side of the BeltLine trail and light rail system.

According to an article by Josh Green in Urbanize Atlanta, the new rules, introduced by Council Member Jason Dozier, will also ban new gas stations and drive-throughs.

The theory goes^[1] that less space (and less upfront money from builders) devoted to parking will allow more room for less expensive housing, restaurants, shops, offices, and other vibrant uses, while encouraging neighborhood planning focused on pedestrians, not drivers.

— Diana Ionescu, Atlanta Eliminates Parking Mandates Near BeltLine
In Planetizen (2024-02-08).

For God’s sake. If nobody needs gas stations and drive-throughs, they won’t use gas stations and drive-throughs, and you won’t have them to kick around anymore. If gas stations and drive throughs can stay in business within the arbitrary Overlay Zone then city-dwellers must have some use for them after all.

Let it be, let them pass.

1. ^[1][Sic. Of course there is no real theory here, just the arbitrary guesswork of neighborhood planners who figure they know ahead of time how people are going to use the places that they live and go. —R.G.]↩

From Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day podcast (2022-12-25), rather belatedly listened to:

Life Cycle of Common Man

Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits,
This average consumer of the middle class,
Consumed in the course of his average life span
Just under half a million cigarettes,
Four thousand fifths of gin and about
A quarter as much vermouth; he drank
Maybe a hundred thousand cups of coffee,
And counting his parents’ share it cost
Something like half a million dollars
To put him through life. How many beasts
Died to provide him with meat, belt and shoes
Cannot be certainly said.
But anyhow,
It is in this way that a man travels through time,
Leaving behind him a lengthening trail
Of empty bottles and bones, of broken shoes,
Frayed collars and worn out or outgrown
Diapers and dinnerjackets, silk ties and slickers.

Given the energy and security thus achieved,
He did …? What? The usual things, of course,
The eating, dreaming, drinking and begetting,
And he worked for the money which was to pay
For the eating, et cetera, which were necessary
If he were to go on working for the money, et cetera,
But chiefly he talked. As the bottles and bones
Accumulated behind him, the words proceeded
Steadily from the front of his face as he
Advanced into the silence and made it verbal.
Who can tally the tale of his words? A lifetime
Would barely suffice for their repetition;
If you merely printed all his commas the result
Would be a very large volume, and the number of times
He said thank you or very little sugar, please,
Would stagger the imagination. There were also
Witticisms, platitudes, and statements beginning
It seems to me or As I always say.
Consider the courage in all that, and behold the man
Walking into deep silence, with the ectoplastic
Cartoon’s balloon of speech proceeding
Steadily out of the front of his face, the words
Borne along on the breath which is his spirit
Telling the numberless tale of his untold Word
Which makes the world his apple, and forces him to eat.

— Howard Nemerov (1977), Life Cycle of Common Man
From The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov.