Day: June 2, 2021

What I find interesting in general, June, 2021

Often I find links that are interesting but I don’t know what to do with. Here are some for this month.

Art related links: If you draw and are running out of ideas, try this,  Random Art Prompt Generator. I was interested in printmaking lately. Here are some links to various sites on it:

I was using this site make photos into stencils, which I could then use on other art projects…it’s good: Free Picture Stencil Maker. Robert Frank is a great photographer. Here’s a good story on how Robert Frank’s vision influenced and inspired Generations Of Photographers. Back to earth, here is Flashery,  a photo box for people serious about their home photos.

Work, economics and capitalism: I found these interesting:

Working for yourself?  How many fans do you need to be successful. Here are two views on that: The Technium: 1,000 True Fans and 1,000 True Fans? Try 100

Climate Change:  We’ve all been very focused on the pandemic. But climate change has not gone away. Here’s two pieces on it: The business as usual climate scenario may be too pessimistic, researchers warn – The Washington Post and Let’s abandon climate targets, and do something completely different | George Monbiot | The Guardian

Random:  I love motorcycles as an object, and Uncrate has some cool ones, like this Volcon Runt Kid’s Motorcycle. If you are painting your house and can’t pick from thousands of colours, perhaps this list of 50 will help you narrow it down:
50 Most Popular Sherwin-Williams Paint Colors. This was a delightful story on how professors are hanging on to chalk! Where Theory Meets Chalk, Dust Flies

If you are interested in statistical distributions other than the Bell curve/normal distribution, check out 3 interesting Statistic Distribution and
Power Law and Power Law Distribution.

Thank you for reading this far. I don’t know if anyone reads most of my posts, but I keep at it regardless.

(Photo by Courtney Hedger on Unsplash)

 

Categories: food
Tags, general

The best form of government, according to Branko Milanović

This is an interesting view of government, and I recommend you read it:
Branko Milanović – Governments of limited vice | Brave New Europe

When I first read it, I found it fascinating. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that what he is partially arguing for is moderate government. If governments get extreme one way or another, terrible things happen to their citizens.

The other benefit of this approach is that governments can adjust to what is a vice they have to crack down on, because the citizenry’s view of vice changes. Sometimes people stop considering certain acts vices. Or they downplay the harm such vices do. When this happens, governments of limited vice can back off and permit people the freedom to act a certain way.  For much of the 20th century the province of Ontario had a film censor board, and they cut out scenes they thought were offensive.  Now it’s been scraped. Once people were arrested for buying marijuana in Ontario: now the government provides guidance on how to purchase it. Governments of limited vice are moving the boundaries all the times, often due to the effort of the people who do not agree with the boundaries, and think society would be better with different boundaries.

There will always be a form of government. Governments of limited vice may be the best of them all.

(Photo by Rythik on Unsplash )