Written by Econintersect
Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries (and sometimes longer ones) of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.
This feature is published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the late afternoon New York time. Today the ‘What We Read Today’ column missed the cutoff for our FREE daily newsletter, normally the only way it is accessed. So it’s been published in a Special Edition for the convenience of subscribers. As a result, it is today available for all to read.
Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.
For early morning review of headlines see “The Early Bird” published Monday through Friday in the early am at GEI News (membership not required for access to “The Early Bird”).
BECOME A GEI MEMBER – IT’s FREE!
Most of this column (“What We Read Today”) is usually available only to GEI members.
To become a GEI Member simply subscribe to our FREE daily newsletter.
Topics today include 24 articles and 18 graphics:​
- If You’re On the Moon, Does the Earth Appear to Go Through Phases?
- AI Created a 3D Replica of Our Universe. We Have No Idea How It Works.
- Learning to predict the cosmological structure formation
- Most Heavily Shorted S&P 500 Stocks
- Fama vs Shiller: Are markets efficient or driven by emotion?
- ‘England’ 886 AD
- Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum
- Alfred the Great
- Alfred ‘The Great’ (r.871-899)
- Cnut the Great
- The Forces Changing World Population Growth
- ‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed
- ‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica
- DOJ ordered to find ways to include citizenship question on 2020 census, official says
- Report: CBP facilities a “ticking time bomb”
- Trump Says Migrants Living ‘Far Better’ in Detention Than at Home
- China to Britain: Keep your ‘colonial’ hands off Hong Kong
- Trump tells Iran threats ‘can come back to bite you’ in nuclear standoff
- Vladimir Putin: It Is a Big Loss for Our Country and Our Army
- 14 sailors killed in fire aboard Russian navy deep-sea submersible
- Shenzhen: A City Miles Ahead
- A New EV Horizon: Insights From Shenzhen’s Path to Global Leadership in Electric Logistics Vehicles
- Reporter on China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims: “This is absolute Orwellian style surveillance”
- China’s Vanishing Muslims: Undercover In The Most Dystopian Place In The World
- And More
.
Articles about events, conflicts and disease around the world
Global
- The Forces Changing World Population Growth (Our World in Data) The change from 1950 to today and the projections to 2100 show a world population that is becoming healthier. When the top of the pyramid becomes wider and looks less like a pyramid and instead becomes more box-shaped, the population lives through younger ages with very low risk of death and dies at an old age. The demographic structure of a healthy population at the final stage of the demographic transition is the box shape that we see for the entire world for 2100. (See first graphic below.) Population growth patterns are strongly influenced by current wealth and age demographics. (See second and third graphics below.)
- ‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed (The Guardian) The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic. The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline. See also next article.
- ‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica (The Guardian) See also ppreceding article. Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows. The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.
A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world. The current losses are doubling every decade, the scientists said, and sea level rise are now running at the extreme end of projections made just a few years ago.
U.S.
- DOJ ordered to find ways to include citizenship question on 2020 census, official says (The Hill) A lawyer with the Department of Justice said Wednesday that agency officials have been ordered to determine whether there is a way the administration can include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, hours after a tweet from President Trump raised confusion over the status of the question.
Joseph Hunt, an assistant attorney general with DOJ’s civil division, said Wednesday that the department has been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census.”
- Report: CBP facilities a “ticking time bomb” (CBS News) Democrats on Capitol Hill want to hear from top immigration officials about an explosive new report claiming conditions at Border Patrol facilities are so bad, one manager called it a “ticking time bomb.” That follows a recent visit where democrats toured facilities in Texas and claimed to have seen “horrifying” conditions.
.
- Trump Says Migrants Living ‘Far Better’ in Detention Than at Home(Bloomberg) President Donald Trump said that undocumented migrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico border are living in better and safer conditions than in their home countries, after public outcry over the detention of children and adults in unsanitary conditions.
UK
- China to Britain: Keep your ‘colonial’ hands off Hong Kong (Reuters) China told Britain to keep its hands off Hong Kong on Wednesday while London called for Beijing to honor the agreements made when the city was handed over in 1997, escalating a diplomatic spat over the former British colony.
Iran
- Trump tells Iran threats ‘can come back to bite you’ in nuclear standoff (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump warned Iran on Wednesday against making threats that can “come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before,” after Tehran announced it would breach a 2015 nuclear deal.
Russia
- Vladimir Putin: It Is a Big Loss for Our Country and Our Army (Diplomatic Observer) In a written statement from the Ministry of Defense of Russia, it was stated that there was a fire outbreak in the Russian Navy underwater research ship yesterday. It is known that the fire broke out during biometric measurements and that 14 seafarers lost their lives. See also 14 sailors killed in fire aboard Russian navy deep-sea submersible (CBS News).
China
- Shenzhen: A City Miles Ahead (Rocky Mountain Institute) Shenzhen, the tech hub in Southern China, a “pacesetter,” has become the first city in the world to turn nearly all of its buses and taxis electric. But it is not just public and for-hire fleets electrifying in Shenzhen. In the last three years nearly 60,000 electric light trucks and vans have been deployed for urban freight movement, representing approximately 35% of the city’s overall fleet of urban delivery vehicles. For more details see A New EV Horizon: Insights From Shenzhen’s Path to Global Leadership in Electric Logistics Vehicles.
.
- Reporter on China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims: “This is absolute Orwellian style surveillance” (CBS News) According to the United Nations, more than 1 million Chinese Uighur Muslims are being detained in government internment camps. China calls these prison camps in Xinjiang province “re-education” facilities meant to fight extremism and separatism in the region. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China describes it as “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” See China’s Vanishing Muslims: Undercover In The Most Dystopian Place In The World (Vice, YouTube)
.
Other Scientific, Health, Political, Economics, and Business Items of Note – plus Miscellanea
- If You’re On the Moon, Does the Earth Appear to Go Through Phases? (Live Science) The moon is tidally locked with Earth, meaning the moon’s orbital period matches its rotational period. It takes about a month for both the moon to orbit Earth and for the moon to rotate on its axis. Effectively, this means that the same side of the moon always facing our planet. If you were camped out on the far side of the moon, you’d never have a view of Earth. If you were based on the near side, you’d see Earth all the time. And Earth would indeed appear to go through phases over the course of about a month, directly opposite to the lunar phases people on Earth would be witnessing. The Earth would also look much bigger than the moon does to us. (The Earth is about four times larger than the moon, in diameter.) And from the perspective of the moon, Earth would also always appear to be in a fixed location, directly overhead, if you were standing at the point we observe to be the center of the lunar disk.. (Remember, the moon is in tidal lock with the earth.) So, with the picture provided we can tell the astronauts are standing near the edge of the lunar disk because the earth is near the lunar horizon. Another clue? The edge of the moon in darkness is visible this side of the horizon.
.
- AI Created a 3D Replica of Our Universe. We Have No Idea How It Works.(Live Science) Given the enormous age and scale of the universe, understanding its formation is a daunting challenge. One tool in the astrophysicist toolbox is computer modeling. New research has used “neural networks” for modeling. They worked much faster than traditional models and with less than a third of the “error rate”. The neural network was also able to operate with variations of physical parameters such as the amount of dark matter, despite never being trained on how to handle dark matter variations. For the research paper, see Learning to predict the cosmological structure formation (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
Dubbed the Deep Density Displacement Model, or D^3M, this neural network is designed to recognize common features in data and “learn” over time how to manipulate that data. In the case of D^3M, the researchers inputted 8,000 simulations from a high-accuracy traditional computer model of the universe. After D^3M had learned how those simulations worked, the researchers put in a brand-new, never-before-seen simulation of a virtual, cube-shaped universe 600 million light-years across. (The real observable universe is about 93 billion light-years across.)
The neural network was able to run simulations in this new universe just as it had in the 8,000-simulation dataset it had used for training. The simulations focused on the role of gravity in the universe’s formation.
- Most Heavily Shorted S&P 500 Stocks (Bespoke) Below is a list of the 29 stocks in the S&P 500 that have more than 10% of their share float sold short. Luxury retailer Nordstrom (JWN) currently tops the list with 22% of its float sold short. The stock is down 33.86% YTD and 55% from levels seen last November. Tax-prep company H&R Block (HRB) is the second most heavily shorted stock with 20.55% of its float sold short. HRB is followed by sports retailer Under Armour (UAA), Snap-On (SNA), and Kohl’s (KSS). While JWN and KSS are both down big YTD, HRB, UAA, and SNA are all up nicely on the year.
On average, these stocks with 10%+ short interest as a percentage of float are up 8.5% on the year, which is well below the 17% gain that the S&P 500 has seen.
- Fama vs Shiller: Are markets efficient or driven by emotion? (The Big Picture) Economist and author of the smash hit book, “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel” Allison Shrager, sits down with Josh Brown, Barry Ritholtz, and Michael Batnik to discuss the great debate, efficient market hypothesis vs. behavioral finance. They discuss how it is possible for Fama and Shiller to share the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic science despite their widely opposing views on what moves asset prices up and down. Ultimately, they ask the question whether markets are efficient or do human emotions dominate the ups and downs of asset prices.
.
- ‘England’ 886 AD (ipinimg.com) The ‘Treaty of Nottingham’ referred to in the map legend was an agreement reached between Alfred, King of Wessex, and Guthrum, Danish (Viking) warloard, which established in approximately 886 (sometime between 878 and 890) the boundaries shown in the map. See Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum (Wikipedia). A key shire in that agreement was Nottingham, ceded to Danelaw in return for the Danes foresaking any further claim in the kingdom of Mercia. Because of Alfred’s military victories vs. the Vikings (Danes) and the resulting treaties which stabilized the geographic and political structure of what was to become England, with his kingdom of Wessex in the dominate position, he became known as ‘Alfred the Great’, King of the Anglo-Saxons, the only English monarch to ever be given the appelation ‘great’. See Alfred the Great (Wikipedia) and Alfred ‘The Great’ (r.871-899) (Royal Archives). Canute the Great (aka Cnut) was also King of England (1016-1035), as well as King of Denmark and King of Norway, so historians do not consider him to be “English”, but “Danish”. See Cnut the Great (Wikipedia).
Click for larger view of Alfred the Great’s statue at Winchester erected in 1899.
.
