#AcademicRunPlaylist - 3/28/25

I was able to go on a nice run before a drive up north for the weekend, and along the way I was also able to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an engaging panel on the past, present, and future of funding African women in tech with Temitayo Ishola, Ife Durosinmi-Etti, Damilola Teidi, and Esther Otusanya at TechCabal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkXEoxCoe2o

Next was an amazing talk by Elizabeth Anderson on modern business models and the protestant work ethic at the Cornell University ILR School. Anderson goes deep into Pilgrim and related source texts to refute Max Weber's interpretation and brings it back for modern business ethics implications. Stay for the fascinating Q&A. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5pESWOvuy0

Next was an excellent talk by Mac Schwager on perception-rich robot autonomy and neural environment models at the GRASP Lab. The methods Schwager introduces are impressive, and you get a free explainer on NERFs! Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cs1pOaKDHw

Next was an interesting talk by Nikolay Atanasov on learning environment models for robot autonomy at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKixcYzo4fg

Next was "The Condemnation of Blackness" by Khalil Gibran Muhammad. This book is a compelling/depressing tour through a formative era of US history, focusing on the Black experience in the Reconstruction to WW2 period and how inextricably linked that experience is to the definition and measurement of crime. Muhammad puts together a devastating analysis of both the incredibly unjust narrative and system that developed around Black criminality, but also how that shaped geographies and politics in ways that reinforced and accentuated those false narratives. For me personally the sections on Philadelphia were most meaningful, since my Jewish immigrant ancestors arrived precisely in this timeframe, and the interactions between these communities are examined in detail. I would've liked some more quantitative analysis to go with the excellent historical analysis, but it's a minor gripe. Highly recommend https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674238145

Last was "War" by Margaret MacMillan, who opens with an intriguing premise - that war needs to be understood through the lens of how it has shaped societies, societal change, and culture to appreciate why our world looks like it does today and how to avoid future conflict while achieving some of its goals. However the book itself doesn't attempt to unpack this issue, and is instead mostly a themed review of similarities between aspects of warfare through the centuries. This organization creates a bit of whiplash, mostly because it's not chronologically ordered to analyze how these relationships evolved. Ultimately one comes away with some interesting historical examples of different phenomena but not necessarily a deeper understanding of war's effects https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609692/war-how-conflict-shaped-us-by-margaret-macmillan/