Articles
Matt Levine’s explanation ot the significance of the west’s exclusion of Russia from the international financial system is really good. This is a major precedent in using the international financial system as a weapon of war and the implications are potentially quite expansive. Here’s one excerpt (which he laudably precedes with caveats arount the rule of law and the neutrality of money):
But what I want to suggest is that this weekend’s actions are evidence that the basic structure is good. What I want to suggest is that society is good, that it is good for people (and countries) to exist in a web of relationships in which their counterparties can judge their actions and punish bad actions. If money is socially constructed and property is contingent then money is a continuing, dynamic, ever-at-risk reward for prosocial behavior.
This fits quite nicely with the idea of the primacy of culture and social relations relative to economics, which I tend to believe.
Bandcamp was bought by Epic Games (makers of Fortnite).
Tweets
- This is a great intro to the history of the Vancouver SkyTrain. You’d think they could have done a bit more in forty years, but still cool to see it’s early imaginings.
Data stuff
- Software-Defined Assets in Dagster. My primary work project at the moment is automating a whole bunch of data processing pipelines. I’m doing this in Airflow, but am keen to learn more about the next generation data orchestration tools like Dagster and Prefect.