Month: June 2021

“The shape of you”

Putting together a smash hit song involves a lot of pieces. Ed Sheeran didn’t even write this one for himself. You probably remember these lyrics:

Girl you know I want your love
Your love was handmade for somebody like me
Come on now follow my lead
I may be crazy don’t mind me
Say boy let’s not talk too much
Grab on my waist and put that body on me
Come on now follow my lead
Come come on now follow my lead

Remember to watch the video in the article, 8 min 44 sec.

Good news on child mortality

Some things are getting better:

Two decades ago, nearly 10 million children did not live to see a 5th birthday.

By 2017, that number — about 1 in every 16 children — was nearly cut in half, even as the world’s population increased by more than a billion people.

…

The overwhelming majority of child deaths are preventable. Adequate nutrition, water, sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics can save many lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/17/upshot/child-mortality.html

Non-paywalled: https://archive.is/PWY6R

The next decade could be even worse

Normally I lean towards optimistic visions of the future, but this is thought-provoking:

In 2010, Peter Turchin predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.

The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions.

This article (approx 5,100 words) also includes a philosophical discussion of why historians tend to refuse a trend-based approach to history, and some ideas for preventing disasters, and many other interesting ideas…

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/