#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/1/25

We're a bit jet lagged, but we were still able to get our apartment mostly set up today. And while shuttling around town I was able to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by David Hunt on using radar for autonomous systems at the Athena AI Institute (funded by NSF for the time being) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W9CBbm2WjU

Next was a great talk by Bhuvana Krishnaswamy on scalability in low-power wide area networks also at the Athena AI Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejUSA-fVDUo

Next was an excellent talk by Song Han on enabling deep learning on edge devices at the Athena AI Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPE55ARub80

Next was an engaging discussion with Damien Geradin on competition in digital markets and thoughts on the DMA at the Digital Markets Research Hub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w_Wj69YsQQ

Last was "A History of Korea" by Kyung Moon Hwang. There's a lot of history to cover here, and Hwang sprints through antiquity before spending more time on eras where we have more historical data. I loved the analysis of the Three Kingdoms period, and the similar patterns one sees in early Japan are unmistakable. There's a lot of time spent on Korea's relationship with its neighbors and later the US, which provides excellent context for the state of the peninsula in the modern era. I do think this book could use a large expansion of the earlier chapters though. Still highly recommend https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/history-of-korea-9781352012583/

Also beehiiv wasn’t working for me yesterday, so here’s that post as well:

I’m finally in Tokyo! I’ll be here for the whole summer to spend more time with the companies and researchers I’m working with, and since my family will be here too we’ll also travel around a bit and just enjoy the city. On the flight over I also read a great book for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

Today I read “A History of the Muslim World” by Michael Cook. This book is an absolute tome, but it’s written extremely well and provides a rigorous, academic, and engrossing dive into Muslim history. Cook goes on a methodical tour of the Muslim world, providing a historical overview of regions before their interaction with Islam, then reviewing and analyzing their history from that point until around 1800. Throughout Cook critical interrogates primary sources, being careful to point out when corroboration is weak. This is a big jump into Muslim history, but if you’re interested in the topic it’s a must read. Highly recommend  https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691236575/a-history-of-the-muslim-world