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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
As an example, Campolo and Schwerzmann describe how 23andMe try to use data to “objectively” define ethnicity, an arbitrary sociopolitical concept invented by humans.
> To categorize a consumer's ancestry via DNA from a saliva sample, 23andMe relies on a group of initial testing subjects who are asked to self-identify based on what they know about their ancestors and their geographic origins. 23andMe then draws the lines around what it considers as forming a distinctive population by identifying and labeling genetic patterns discovered in the dataset.
The Blackbird Must Be Flying
Substack
I mentioned the difficulty of extrapolating from a system in which the outputs become the inputs of the production process earlier; this problem more or less describes the futility of modelling with fields that are relativistic, self-acting and self-generating. Everything has to happen instantaneously, which paradoxically means that the model is static, and therefore reversible.
Capitalism and Culture: Bourdieu's Field Theory
Dan O'Hara
Perhaps their method of government was the strangest of all. In this planet, I am told, a Nation consists of a number of Subjects, and one King: but, in the little planet I speak of, it consisted of a number of Kings, and one Subject!”
Delphi Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
LEWIS CARROLL
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