J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 124

Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Eoppa Brings Baptism to the Isle of Wight

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): Eoppa Brings Baptism to the Isle of Wight: "A.D. 658. This year Kenwal fought with the Welsh at Pen, and pursued them to the Parret. This battle was fought after his return from East-Anglia, where he was three years in exile. Penda had driven him thither and deprived him of his kingdom, because he had discarded his sister...

...A.D. 660. This year Bishop Egelbert departed from Kenwal; and Wina held the bishopric three years. And Egbert accepted the bishopric of Paris, in Gaul, by the Seine.

A.D. 661. This year, at Easter, Kenwal fought at Pontesbury; and Wulfere, the son of Penda, pursued him as far as Ashdown. Cuthred, the son of Cwichelm, and King Kenbert, died in one year. Into the Isle of Wight also Wulfere, the son of Penda, penetrated, and transferred the inhabitants to Ethelwald, king of the South-Saxons, because Wulfere adopted him in baptism. And Eoppa, a mass-priest, by command of Wilfrid and King Wulfere, was the first of men who brought baptism to the people of the Isle of Wight...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

Jess Phillips: House of Commons: ""Tonight I will vote ag...

Jess Phillips: House of Commons: ""Tonight I will vote against a general election just like I will vote against pretty much anything the current PM put in front of me.... I have no faith in literally anything the prime minister says. There is no distance that I could trust him.... The PM is playing some bully boy game, of some bully boy public school that I probably won't understand. [Tory MP shouting] Sorry, would the hon gentleman like to make an intervention? Crack on.... Yesterday I watched Conservative colleagues begging him to tell them what he wanted... to give them a deal to vote for. This is some game that three men in No. 10 have come up with to try to game the system so that they win.... Personally I will not vote for any election that falls before October 31st..... "It's just a shame that quite a lot of the people who are sat in front of me who know that what happened over the last two days is wrong are too cowardly to actually say in here, in public, what they're all saying in the tea rooms. "You've all crowed and given sympathy to me about the problems that we have in the Labour Party and you have just sat by silently as your colleagues were marched out.... "We shouldn't go on conference recess. We shouldn't be proroguing parliament. We are currently in a national crisis. This is not a game. This is not some toy we can play with.... I'm meant to believe the PM is really doing this because he has a vision for the people in this country? He has a vision that comes to him every night and it is his own face..."

#noted #orangehairedbaboons

Alexis Lothian: : "In recent days, we���ve seen questions...

Alexis Lothian: : "In recent days, we���ve seen questions raised on social media about whether the name of the Tiptree Award should be reconsidered.... The questions relate to Alice Sheldon���s actions at the end of her life. On May 19, 1987, she shot first her husband, Huntington Sheldon, and then herself.... The Motherboard does not believe that a change to the name of the Tiptree Award is warranted now. But we believe that this is a very important discussion, and we do not think it is over. The community that has grown up around this award since its founding in 1991 deserves to have its voice heard in any conversation as significant as renaming.... Alice Sheldon... the story of how she and her husband, Huntington Sheldon (known as Ting), died. Friends and family���and the science fiction community at the time���viewed this tragedy as resulting from a suicide pact: the desperate and tragic result of a combination of physical and mental illness and the Sheldons��� desire to die on their own terms. He was 84 years old; she was 71. However... the story can also be seen as an act of caregiver murder.... Ting���s friends and family understood his death and Alice���s as the fulfilment of an agreement between the two of them.... Phillips writes: 'Ting didn���t leave a statement, but all Ting���s friends that I talked to plus his son Peter were unanimous that it was a pact, and that Ting���s health was failing'...

#noted #books #sciencefiction

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World: "Outside, in the garden, ...

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World: "Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells overs the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos or threes among the flowering shrubs [���] The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters. The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly rotating disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught. 'Strange', mused the Director, as they turned away, 'strange to think that even in Our Ford���s day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting, imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It���s madness. Nowadays the Controllers won���t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games'...

#noted #books

Doug Jones: language Evolution: "People don���t just comm...

Doug Jones: language Evolution: "People don���t just communicate by encoding and decoding literal meanings, but by inferring one another���s communicative intentions, always thinking 'I wonder what he meant by that'. There���s a whole branch of linguistics, linguistic pragmatics, that studies how this works. And pragmatic inference in language is just one instance of a special, powerful human aptitude for creating shared intentions. This aptitude means that there are always ways to subvert official speech, in any language, even Ascian or Newspeak. Or Korean: the news several years ago was that North Korea had banned sarcasm:��Officials told people that sarcastic expressions such as ���This is all America���s fault��� would constitute unacceptable criticism of the regime��...

#noted

Note to Self: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win t...

Note to Self: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win the Cold War: Hoisted from the Archives](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/...): Harry Dexter White... George Kennan... George Marshall... Arthur Vandenberg... Paul Hoffman... Dean Acheson... Harry S Truman... Dwight D. Eisenhower... Gerald Ford...

#notetoself

In the modern world, it is not tariff reduction but regul...

In the modern world, it is not tariff reduction but regulatory harmonization that is required for grasping increased benefits from the world division of labor. We need to work to level up rather than level down or level stupid, but we need to work to level the regulatory landscape. The Brexit hope is for a free-trade zone with the United States but also with "national sovereignty" over regulatory matters. That is just not how it works:

N. Piers Ludlow: Did We Ever Really Understand How the EU Works?: "Michael Gove... referred... to a free trade zone... from Iceland to Turkey of which Britain would, he was confident, still be part... irrespective of the outcome of the referendum. But this focus on tariffs was quaintly anachronistic, because ever since the 1980s the main target of European liberalisation efforts has... been... non-tariff barriers... regulatory convergence...
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<p>...But���remarkably���hardly anyone took Gove to task for this misleading claim. Instead the vast majority of commentators seem to have regarded his statement as relevant and legitimate.... A second feature of the EU that we ought to have known about but have blithely failed to think through is the importance of timetables. European integration history is studded with the use of timetables and deadlines designed to compel member states to respect their obligations and to bring about simultaneously the administrative, commercial and legal changes that they have agreed to make.... Another avoidable error has been to underestimate the degree to which Brexit���s impact upon Ireland would become a central concern for the whole EU.... The EU is always prone to support an insider in a tussle with an outsider.... Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the British debate about what was likely to prove negotiable has failed repeatedly to take into account the political nature of the entity with which it is dealing, and the fact that it is the UK and not the EU that is asking for change. The first of these realities is best illustrated by the Boris Johnson ���prosecco��� argument���or the idea that the strength of Britain���s bargaining position in the negotiations springs from the commercial interest of many continental exporters in keeping access to the lucrative UK market. This overlooks the extent to which all of the EU27 regard a flourishing EU as even more valuable than the British market, whether economically or politically...</p>
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<pre><code>#noted #globalization #orangehairedbaboons
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Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Egferth and Lothere

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): Egferth and Lothere: "A.D. 670. This year died Oswy, King of Northumberland, on the fifteenth day before the calends of March; and Egferth his son reigned after him...

...Lothere, the nephew of Bishop Egelbert, succeeded to the bishopric over the land of the West-Saxons, and held it seven years. He was consecrated by Archbishop Theodore. Oswy was the son of Ethelfrith, Ethelfrith of Ethelric, Ethelric of Ida, Ida of Eoppa...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Founding of Ely

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): Founding of Ely: "A.D. 672. This year died King Cenwal; and Sexburga his queen held the government one year after him...

...A.D. 673. This year died Egbert, King of Kent; and the same year there was a synod at Hertford; and St. Etheldritha began that monastery at Ely...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

Ian Dunt: "Right well, the most historic day in parliamen...

Ian Dunt: "Right well, the most historic day in parliament since the last one is about to kick off. You can follow along here https://t.co/nMVmrBf2pY...

#noted