The Great Lockdown (IMF, 2020) could either lead to high inflation (eg. Brazil) or deflation (eg. Japan). According to this article, the structural changes that could occur through inflation channels moving forward are:
1) Shift in consumption patterns during the pandemic;
2) Change in competitive dynamics; and
3) Impact from economic scarring and shifts in labour market.
Image credit: Pew Research Center
A perspective on how early career researchers have been impacted by the pandemic in the LSE Impact Blog. (6-minutes read)
Excerpt:
"In a blogpost from this time last year, I introduced Harbingers-2, a longitudinal qualitative research project, which seeks to understand the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the early career researcher (ECR) community. One year on, halfway into the project, it seems appropriate to revisit the oft-heard ‘horror’ scenario: the prediction that ECRs will become a generation of academics lost to research. Basing our appreciation of the situation on data gathered in two repeat rounds of depth interviews with 177 ECRs from eight countries (China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, Russia, UK and US) held about seven months apart in 2021, we can report on how far this scenario has played out. Have ECRs been disproportionately affected by the crisis to the detriment of their research careers?"
Image credit - IU Blogs. Interactive Covid-19 Visualisation.
"Cecilia Tortajada recalls making her way down a long staircase and into of one of Japan’s engineering marvels, an enormous water tank that crowns Tokyo’s defences against flooding. When she finally reached the tank’s ground, she stood among the dozens of 500-tonne pillars supporting the ceiling. In the cavernous, shrine-like cistern, she felt humbled.
“You find yourself being a tiny part of this humongous system,” recalls Tortajada, a water management expert at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Institute of Water Policy, in Singapore. “You realise how well prepared Tokyo is.”
If Japan is a pilgrimage destination for disaster and risk-management experts like her, this is one of its main temples. The floodwater cathedral hidden 22 meters underground is part of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (MAOUDC), a 6.3 km long system of tunnels and towering cylindrical chambers that protect North Tokyo from flooding."
Image credit - BBC
Image credit - groovyjapan.com
What I appreciate the most is the knowledge gained after watching drama series. 'The Silent Sea' is a Netflix South Korea's sci-fi mystery thriller streaming television series. Read further and you will discover how Choi Hang-yong, the writer and the director's of the drama own-up to the eponymous title.
Excerpt:
"Astronomers Francesco Grimaldi and Giovanni Battista Riccioli were the first to use the phrase Mare Tranquillitatis in 1651 in the lunar map they created, called ‘Almagestum novum.’ Another astronomer, Michael van Langren, named the location “Mare Belgicum” in ‘Lumina Austriaca Philippica’ in 1641. Even though Mare Belgicum was coined earlier as a phrase, Mare Tranquillitatis is the one that stuck."
In Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, Nobel-Prize winning economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo provide a grounded approach to tackling today’s most pressing global problems. The focus are on alleviating inequality and poverty. Shruti Patel writes the review of the book.
Image Credit - Shruti Patel, Book Review
Excerpt:
"Back in 2019, Apple announced its intentions to break up with Intel, the company that had been supplying the CPUs for Macs since 2006. Then, at the end of 2020, Cupertino announced the M1. It’s a system-on-a-chip, which means one silicon slab contains the CPU, graphics processor, system memory, machine learning hardware, and just about everything else a computer needs to operate. Because Apple controls the software and hardware surrounding the M1, its systems can eliminate layers of inefficiency. The chip launched with refreshes to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, laptops that obliterated benchmark tests for their classes. Apple also stuck its new silicon into the Mac Mini and the new ultra-slim iMac. They’re equally as impressive. The company has already updated the M1 with the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, which popped in October. Laptops with those guts are already outperforming pricier Mac Pros using the old architecture. It was a big swing for Apple and, at least so far, it has been a massive achievement. "
M1 chip. 16 billion transistors. Image credit - Apple.
I was looking for water filters due to the recent situation. Come across the following Zen Garden Oasis youtube (21 min). It is super helpfu...
