LinkFest 2016-03-26
Holy Saturday Edition
Gabriel Rossman makes a persuasive case that social construction is real, but the concept is mostly used by people who don't understand it, and have no sense of proportion.
How Does America "Reshore" Skills that have Disappeared?
The first couple of paragraphs of this article accurately describe what it is like to deal with offshore manufacturing in China, in my experience. The article is mostly about training workers to fill new "reshored" jobs, but the beginning of the article is my favorite.
The Author of the Martian Wrote Ready Player One Fan-Fiction, and now it's Canon
Yeah, this happened.
In 2010 I linked to an op-ed by Andy Grove on American manufacturing. I still think it is relevant. Requiescat in pace Andy.
Book Review: The Art of the Deal
Scott Alexander at SlateStarCodex offers up an absolutely brilliant analysis of Donald Trump's book. Go read it, right now. As something of an odd duck, Alexander sees a certain similarity in Trump also being something an odd duck.
Ross Douthat sees dark years ahead for the Republican party after Trump. I'm still curious to see what happens when Bernie loses the nomination to Hillary Clinton. Some Bernie supporters seem to hate HRC only a little less than Trump. In October, I pondered whether Trump and Bernie would both end up doing third-party runs, which would put us in the same kind of four-way race that elected Woodrow Wilson. Now that I think about it, that could actually be the worst possible outcome.
I want to see both Trump and Sanders run third party campaigns, and make the current parties implode. http://t.co/C4SnvdiSpvOctober 16, 2015
Easter, Early Christians and Cliodynamics
Peter Turchin points to data for the Christianization of the Roman world that fits a logistic model.
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