Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

1. STAR WARS: Rise of Skywalker Trailer BREAKDOWN!

2. John Preskill: Quantum Computing

3. Matt Strassler: Of Particular Significance

4. Wikipedia: CP violation: "The universe is made chiefly of matter, rather than consisting of equal parts of matter and antimatter as might be expected. It can be demonstrated that, to create an imbalance in matter and antimatter from an initial condition of balance, the Sakharov conditions must be satisfied, one of which is the existence of CP violation during the extreme conditions of the first seconds after the Big Bang...

5. Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen: Quantum Country

6. Mark Betnel: Thinking and Learning: "So Michael Nielsen, again, produces a thing that is amazing, in collaboration with Andy Matuschak. It's an intro to quantum computation, with more topics to follow, with a built in 'mnemonic medium'...

7. Wikipedia: Controlled NOT Gate

8. Wikipedia: Hadamard Transform: "Quantum computing applications...

9. Gotts Roadside: Menu

10. Ernesto Dal Bó

1. Clive Crook pretends not to understand that Britain is a small island off the coast of Europe that will be much poorer without vibrant trade with Europe. Hence Britain is either (a) poor, (b) a member or quasi-member of the EU, or (c) a powerless rule-taker. No amount of national will spurred by Johnson's and Farage's desires to become prime minister can change that. Yet Crook somehow thinks or pretends to think that it can—that hard Brexit does not end in (a) or (c). I wonder why: Clive Crook: Brexit: In the End, the U.K.'s Choice Will Be Stay or Go: "There’s no point in seeking compromise when no good compromise is possible..... what many see as an appealingly soft Brexit: so-called Norway-plus.... [It] would...leave the U.K. as a powerless rule-taker.... Support for Brexit comes chiefly from resentment at Britain’s lack of control over the policies that affect it. Norway-plus would make that problem vastly worse... politics... devoted to butting heads with the EU over successive policy innovations over which it has no say...

2. Gregory Travis: How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer: "Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame.... This propensity to pitch up with power application thereby increased the risk that the airplane could stall when the pilots 'punched it'.... Pitch changes with power changes are common.... Pitch changes with increasing angle of attack, however, are quite another thing. An airplane approaching an aerodynamic stall cannot, under any circumstances, have a tendency to go further into the stall. This is called 'dynamic instability', and the only airplanes that exhibit that characteristic—fighter jets—are also fitted with ejection seats...

3. Mueller has referred questions of conspiracy and obstruction of justice to Congress. The natural response is that Congress now needs to open an inquiry. It might not turn out to be the prudent and savvy thing to do, depending on how things work out. It might turn out to be not just savvy and prudent but essential. We do not know. But we do know that it is what people of rectitude and sincerity would do. It needs to be done: Winston Churchill: Eulogy for Neville Chamberlain: "At the lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values...

4. John Quiggin: Transactional Trumpism: "Why were so few traditional Republicans repelled by Trump... and why does Trump continue to attract such strong Republican support? One answer is... 'transactional Trumpism'... him because of his success in delivering a traditional Republican agenda. The problem I have with this explanation is: what success? The standard items on the list are: Supreme Court appointments, tax cuts and deregulation. But (1) these things are the absolute minimum that would be expected from any Republican president (2) Trump has made a mess of all them...

5. Oddly elusive about the politics. Yes, Congress should begin an investigation that could lead to impeachment. But Democrats in the House will not vote for a trial of Trump without 20 Republicans in the Senate willing to listen to the evidence and convict. And those Republicans do not care whether Trump has committed offenses worthy of impeachment: he has. They care whether voting to convict Trump would boost their chances of winning their next general election—or their next primary: Susan Hennessey and Quinta Jurecic: The Mueller Report Demands an Impeachment Inquiry: "Under the current system, the options for checking a president who abuses his power to the degree that Trump has are functionally impeachment proceedings or nothing. There are many factors here, but the main culprit is the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)’s 2000 memo against the indictment of a sitting president—which itself builds on a 1973 OLC memo.... Republicans don’t want to touch the matter because the president is a member of their party.... Democrats... are worried that initiating impeachment proceedings will offer the president a rallying point for his base, and allow Republicans to paint them as fanatics out to get Trump at all costs. Besides, the thinking goes, Democratic base voters want to discuss policy issues that impact their lives, not perseverate on the many president’s sins. The problem is that impeachment isn’t a purely political matter—though certainly it is political in part. It’s a constitutional expression of the separation of powers, of Congress’s ability to check a chief executive overrunning the bounds of his power. It’s also, under the OLC memo, the only release valve in the constitutional structure for the urgent and mounting pressure of an executive who may have committed serious wrongdoing.... Though hard questions remain about whether President Trump should be impeached and whether the evidence would be sufficient for the Senate to convict him, these are not questions that need to be answered at this stage. Congress’s responsibility at this point is to begin an impeachment inquiry as a means of finding an answer to them...

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