#AcademicRunPlaylist - 2/28/25

It was a bit warmer today, so it was nice to get out for a quick run and listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an informative talk by Margo Bagley on the WIPO 2024 IP treaties around genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge and the Riyadh design law treaty at the Cambridge Faculty of Law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPuKUqlc0w0

Next was an engaging panel on the state of tech in Africa at TechCabal with Matthew Davis and Rosemond Phil-Othihiwa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGEIfPomwHA

Next was a great talk by Bruno Olshausen on building biologically inspired invariant and equivariant vision perception algorithms at the GRASP Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDsqELT2uXE

Next was an interesting talk by Małgorzata Mazurek on the Polish origins of global economic development concepts at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWMTrSIDorc

Next was an intriguing talk by Xiaolong Wang on modeling humans for humanoid robots at UW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrzXOmssGyA

Next was an important talk by Smitha Radhakrishnan on indebtedness, caste, and breadwinning in urban Uttarakhand at the Watson Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t7GpYO9D7w

Last was "Fearing the Black Body" by Sabrina Strings. This book traces the long development of ideals of female beauty in the western world and the extremely recent invention of the thin ideal. The inextricable link with racism is present throughout, with the meaning of who counted as "ugly" and non-white evolving along with body type norms. The shocking role of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harper's Bazaar, and the insurance industry in promulgating the fat phobia wave is instructive, but also indicates how we could shift these norms again in the future. Highly recommend https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/