Morning Belz, Sept. 24
Fall.
It rained off and on for about a week in north Georgia and then the sun came out Wednesday and we’ve had three days straight of crisp fall. It reminds me a little of spring in Minneapolis — those first warm days when everyone heads to the trails around the lakes and the city comes to life. Except this is in reverse. Summer wasn’t even especially hot here, as I understand it, but the coolness of this week has brought a fresh vitality. A cool breeze at night, fewer bugs in the air, Friday night football, more people outside more often. It’s energizing.
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Birds have flourished during the lockdown — CBC
Starlink, SpaceX satellite Internet, is really happening — Cringely*
A 3,000 word review of the Peter Theil biography — Amazon
Chuck Grassley, 88, is running for reelection — Yahoo
The conspiracy theory that explains bad architecture — Astral Codex
Radon-filled mine in Montana drawing pilgrims — Kaiser
Some nerds used AI to try to evaluate media bias — MIT
*It’s a fascinating article. Raises the possibility of Internet that’s impossible to censor. And by the way, according to Geospatial World, there were 7,389 satellites in space as of April, the vast majority of them orbiting Earth. Well over 2,000 of those were launched in the past 18 months. According to the article linked above, Starlink itself accounts for 1,378 satellites.
Quote
“...serious differences made servitude in Virginia more onerous than servitude in England. The ordinary term of service that a man agreed to work in Virginia was not a year but several years; and the wages to which he was entitled had been paid in advance in the form of transportation across the ocean. Almost all servants were therefore in a condition resembling that of the least privileged type of English servant, the parish apprentice, a child who (to relieve the community of supporting him) was bound to service by court order, until he was twenty-one or twenty-four, with no obligation on his appointed master’s part to teach him a trade or pay him. In Virginia a master had little reason to treat his servant well in order to obtain a renewal of his services at the expiration of his term; and a servant had little reason to work hard in order to assure being rehired, because men would not bind themselves out for a second long term when they could make more by working for themselves. The was accordingly the more reason for a master to assert his authority in order to get what he considered a full quota of work from his servants. Not surprisingly, it was reported in England that Virginians ‘abuse their servants there with intollerable oppression and hard usage.’” — Edmund S. Morgan, on the servitude of English settlers in the early days of the Virginia colony, “American Slavery, American Freedom,” 1975
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Morning Belz comes out most weekdays and is written by Adam Belz, a former newspaper reporter who lives just outside Chattanooga, Tenn. Hope you benefit from it. Please shoot me a note if you have suggestions, ideas or corrections, share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.