I’m still slowly getting myself back to full health, but at least these guys keep me company as I rest up and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an informative breakdown of the latest US employment numbers by Gregory Brown at the Kenan Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U38QLczTd1o

Next was a fantastic talk by Yury Polyanskiy on improving quantization methods for LLMs and matrix multiplication more broadly at IAIFI. This is elegant work, and extremely important in advancing more computationally efficient methods for training large models. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCsbXV2uOGI

Next was “Empire's Labor” by Adam Moore. This is an eye-opening dive into the massive labor force that underlies America's global military machine, with a particular focus on the organizations and workers who support US overseas operations. Moore combines deep sociological analysis, complete with instructive interviews, with macro perspective on the scale of this sector and the complex entanglements with geopolitics. Throughout you see the extremely precarious position of the workers, where pretty much every other stakeholder in this system essentially ignoring their circumstances when crafting policies or making operational decisions. The relatively high pay checks these workers earn to expose themselves to harsh, dangerous conditions, importantly still much lower than Americans doing the same work, underscores how important global labor standards are for achieving truly equitable work environments. Highly recommend  https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501742170/empires-labor/

Last was “Speculation Nation” by Michael A. Blaakman. This is an interesting look at land policy and the speculation that accompanied it in the first few decades of its history. Given the importance of land in US history, and specifically dispossessing indigenous people and giving it to white people for rock bottom prices, this book fills a glaring hole in the literature by focusing solely on the legal and economic developments in the early republic that provided a framework for future colonization. It's a bit scattered, though, lacking the consistent application of an analytical frame, which makes it a bit hard to combine into a coherent narrative. Overall, this book provides great background on the forces that shaped the US's expansion, its roots in speculation, colonialism, graft, and historical revisionism. Highly recommend https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824483/speculation-nation/