#AcademicRunPlaylist - 6/20/25

It was a busy end to the week, but while shuttling the kids around I still listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a star-studded panel on the geopolitics of critical minerals and the AI supply chain with Alondra Nelson, Kate Crawford, Howard French, Thea Riofrancos, and Tamara Kneese at the Institute for Advanced Study. Despite my extremely high expectations for this panel, it somehow surpassed them. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxVM3cAxHfg

Next was an informative panel on the last year of global antitrust agency adoption of computational tools at Stanford CodeX with friends of the playlist Thibault Schrepel and Teodora Groza, as well as Susana Campuzano Fernández, Lukas Cavada, Despina Pachnou, and Antonio Capobianco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79iQBVJYOv4

Next was an intriguing talk by Richard Markovits on modeling the impact of mergers on near term R&D at the Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj3fkmXFSRo

Next was "The Seven Measures of the World" by Piero Martin. This book sets out to answer a deceptively simple question: how can people measure fundamental physical properties in a way that relies only on immutable properties of the universe? Martin takes us through a physics-infused journey to reveal the extremely recent derivation of unchangeable, objective units for the meter, second, kilo, kelvin, amp, mole, and candela. My only complaint is I wish this book were longer - there's a bit of history about how people used to measure different physical quantities but it's too short for my liking. Highly recommend https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300280111/the-seven-measures-of-the-world/

Last was "The Silver Women" by Joan-Flores-Villalobos. Flores-Villalobos turns Panama Canal history on its head, focusing not on the design or construction of the canal itself but rather the massive workforce that supported the whole enterprise - namely Black West Indian women. This is an impressive piece of scholarship, combining a wide variety of sources to provide a personal view of the essential work of these women, the draconian conditions that the US and more powerful Canal Zone residents imposed on them, and how they exercised agency throughout the construction period. I would have liked a bit more context on the canal work that was taking place at the time of some of the events covered in the book though. Highly recommend https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823639/the-silver-women/