Reading

Created
Fri, 29/08/2025 - 03:00

Welcome to this tiny fifth-floor Airbnb, your home for the next four days in a major European city. Can you escape without incurring additional fees for cleaning or damage?

Let the games begin.

First, you must open this rusty lockbox containing the apartment keys. The numbers have worn off the keypad, and the latch sticks, so you may have to lightly smash it with a rock. However, if you damage the lockbox, you will be charged a 300 replacement fee.

Hear that ominous clunk? It means either that you are about to plummet to your death in this coffin-sized elevator or that it’s functioning normally.

In this bedroom are fourteen light switches. Ten of them do nothing. One turns on the television, which will blast Eurovision at top volume. One sounds an alarm in the home of your grouchy next-door neighbor who hates Americans and will let his French bulldog poop on your doorstep. One notifies the trash collectors on the street outside that you would like them to crush glass beneath your window. Only one activates the tiny IKEA lamp at your bedside. Can you choose the right one in time?

Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 22:00

Course Overview

This course is designed to introduce students to classic literary works. Class time will be primarily discussion based. Those discussions should remain focused on literary works. They should never become a platform for students to pitch the professor on a business that, in theory, looks pretty lucrative, but in practice turns out to be a pyramid scheme that leaves the professor with a garage full of expensive, nootropic-colostrum-infused wellness shakes.

Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 19:00

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset: Israel’s annihilation of Gaza is no isolated military assault or act of self-defence. Rather, it is the unquestionable and horrifying culmination of a brutal story of settler colonialism dating from the zenith of the British Empire. An aggressive process of ethnic-cleansing, dispossession, and systemic violence — and […]

Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 18:00
Lewis Holden Over 95% of banks’ emissions are ‘financed emissions’. These are indirect emissions from households and businesses who banks lend to or invest in (banks’ asset exposures). Banks disclose these in line with regulations designed to help markets understand their exposure to climate-related risks and their impact on the climate. But emissions disclosures vary … Continue reading Same firms, different footprints: making sense of financed emissions
Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 11:30
In a world of high policy uncertainty, central banks are relying more on soft information sources to complement traditional economic statistics and model-based forecasts. One valuable source of soft information comes from intelligence gathered through central bank liaison programs – structured programs in which central bank staff regularly talk with firms to gather insights. This paper introduces a new text analytics and retrieval tool that efficiently processes, organises, and analyses liaison intelligence gathered from firms using modern natural language processing techniques. The textual dataset spans around 25 years, integrates new information as soon as it becomes available, and covers a wide range of business sizes and industries.
Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 09:39

“After days of intense backlash, most recently from President Donald Trump, Cracker Barrel is scrapping its new minimalist logo.” — CNN

- - -

I should have known corporate didn’t have my back from the jump—that busy mess of an old logo was stamped with a registered trademark symbol, while I got branded with a bet-hedging regular trademark symbol. That said, I didn’t think they’d cave in less time than it takes an antsy five-year-old to dump an entire carafe of maple syrup into his mother’s purse. Message received, boss.

You jerks sure like your logos hokey and redundant, don’t you? I mean, it says “Cracker Barrel” and there’s a picture right next to it of a cracker and a barrel. Well, I guess it’s your lucky day, because the powers that be have decided if it’s ’70s-era wood-paneled schlock you want, then by golly, it’s ’70s-era wood-paneled schlock you’ll get. God forbid any of you CB loyalists would have to update your tattoos.

Created
Thu, 28/08/2025 - 03:00

I understand I am responsible if my child renders her Chromebook a paper weight by mercilessly and giddily jamming a Bic pen into the power jack, creating a beautiful flash across the screen, and, if the TikToks are accurate, a slight puff of acrid smoke emanating from within.

I will replace my child’s Chromebook screen if she slams it over the corner of her desk or on the back of her chair, as if the future of civilization depends on her, a seven-year-old child, creating a pile of electronic waste out of a learning device that operates as the very thing that stands between her and peace of mind.

If, under any circumstances, my daughter douses her school-issued Chromebook in lighter fluid, setting it ablaze to summon evil spirits during the pledge of allegiance, I will furnish the school with a new device.