Month: June 2022

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The Commentary Magazine Podcast - We Can’t Stop Talking About How Weird Biden Is

Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon joins the podcast today to talk about Joe Biden’s walk-back of his firm statement—on Monday!—that the U.S. wouldn’t supply Ukraine with certain weapons. Why does he keep doing this? What on earth is going on? Plus, what happened with the John Durham investigation? Give a listen. Source

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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know - The Corpsewood Manor Murders

When Dr. Charles Scudder and Joey Odom moved to a remote location in rural Georgia, they sought to create their own, personal paradise — complete with drugs, sex and occult symbolism. Locals agreed the men were eccentric, but, by all accounts, friendly and non-threatening. They seemed set to continue living out their strange social experiment in peace — until one violent day changed everything.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Stack Overflow Podcast - Talking blockchain, functional programming, and the future with Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman

While blockchains are huge right now, finding one to build on that doesn’t use a ton of energy, has good privacy protections, and operates efficiently is harder than it looks. The original breakout blockchain, Bitcoin, was slow to adopt any innovations coming out of research. Other blockchains use the electricity of a small country to play elaborate gambling games. For someone looking to build the future of Web3, what are your options?

On this sponsored episode of the podcast, we talk to Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman. After finding out that the Bitcoin blockchain wouldn’t incorporate all the good ideas generated around it—proof of stake, privacy improvements, and smart contracts to name a few—he decided to build his own. 

Arthur has a background in machine learning and statistics but spent his early 20s teaching self-driving cars how to turn left and working in quantitative finance for high-frequency trading. High-frequency trading was data-driven, but there was so much noise that machine learning didn’t do very well. Self-driving cars, meanwhile, presented a more structured problem, so neural networks could yield good results. 

Around that time, Arthur got bit by the crypto bug. It lived at the intersection of a lot of his interests: Cryptography touched on computer science and math, but his time in finance got him wondering about banks and money work. The idea of individual sovereignty scratched a personal philosophical itch. 

Naturally, Arthur decided to try some mining software. It took all of his computer’s resources, so he uninstalled it. But after seeing the price of Bitcoin break a dollar and other news items about it, he looked closer. He started to think about what a company could do if it didn’t have to maintain banking relationships. He thought about possible applications, like decentralized poker. 

When Bitcoin refused to adopt the improvements developed by competing alt coins, Arthur started thinking about a new blockchain that would respond to new developments and focus on efficient processing, security, and a good smart contract system. Forking the code wasn’t enough; he needed a new ledger. 

That’s when Tezos was born. It was initially built by a small team of OCaml programmers using that language’s functional subset. Arthur was inspired by the example of WhatsApp, which was built by a small team of senior Erlang engineers. While OCaml would limit the talent he could hire, it would be a very efficient way to build an error-free transaction system. He could have built the whole thing in Java, sure, but Arthur estimates that it would have cost a whole lot more. 

If you’re interested in learning more about what an engineer’s blockchain ecosystem looks like, check out the Tezos home page. Discover building on Tezos: https://tezos.com/build/

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Hayek Program Podcast - Liberalism for All — The War on Drugs

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, we begin a special summer series of the podcast on Liberalism for All, hosted by Jayme Lemke as she explores the underpinnings and outworkings of a free and open society. Driving the discussion is a set of core questions, including:

  • What does it mean to be liberal in the 21st century?
  • What is the relationship between liberalism and equality?
  • Is the pursuit of equality a threat or opportunity for the liberal project?

Joining Lemke for this episode is Audrey Redford, assistant professor of economics at Western Carolina University and an alum of the Adam Smith Fellowship. Redford shares her journey in becoming a political economist before explaining her concept of 'malnovation' in illicit drug markets and how it shapes the efforts of individuals to acquire illicit drugs. They also discuss what low-hanging fruit exists for drug policy reform, and what a more liberal approach to public drug policy would look like. As they close their conversation, Lemke and Redford share broadly what political economy can contribute to shaping free and open institutions.

If you like the show, be sure to leave a 5-star review for us on Apple Podcasts and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Learn more about Redford's work.

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CC Music: Twisterium

Dirt Rhodes by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3650-dirt-rhodes

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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Headlines From The Times - California’s historic water restrictions

Unprecedented water restrictions in Los Angeles County are going to ensure the slow demise of lawns. And now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ready to deal green lawns a final blow. Today, how Southern Californians will have to get used to browner lawns — and why even that might not make a dent in a historic drought.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: L.A. Times water reporter Ian James

More reading:

Newsom urges aggressive water conservation and warns of statewide restrictions

California just adopted new, tougher water restrictions: What you need to know

California bans watering ‘nonfunctional’ grass in some areas, strengthening drought rules