Magpie 50/ 50 is weird
Happy Lunar New Year!
Happy Lunar New Year. I have fond memories of the Lunar New Year chaos in Shanghai but Singapore is one of many countries that don't allow fireworks for personal use. In countries that don't do fireworks, drone show are coming in hot (Vietnam) and Lukewarm (our dear little red dot).
I was in Hanoi for Tet 10 years ago and I recall hearing fireworks during the day. I turned a corner and saw a family lighting ghost money and playing the fireworks noises from a boombox. Traditions adapt.
This is what happens with the Smithsonian has a crack social media team who grew up on Bored Panda listicles.
John Deere and starlink. Could be transformational for farming productivity but what’s the open-source a competitor? Will the inevitable "enshittification" of this platform lead to famine? Via ben evans
Whether it's the reproducibility crisis, or academic fraud, or this recent example of "citation cartels", Academia is under attack on multiple fronts. Freakonomics radio did a 2 episode run that I recommend, covering most of the hot topics.
Speaking of Freakonomics, they're doing a multi-part series on the great American Physicist, Dr Richard Feynman. Feynman has so many potent sayings, I'll bring one forward for this newsletter.
there's a difference between knowing a thing and knowing the name of a thing.
While I'm sure Dr Feynman wouldn't be impressed, this newsletter is all about knowing the names of many things. I've written 50 of these, and here's what I know:
on average 60% of you open the email
on average, 2% of you click on a link
Quite interesting data. This is a link thing so I'll persist. if you want to see something different, let me know.