Robert Bigg

However tempting the two May Ball images are, June should be full of light, so for me the rower and splashes in the light top left

Thanks

The St John’s Choir on the tower for May Day seems a little brighter for May than the Morris dancers with a rather glowering sky, so bottom right please

Although the worry then is the growing reliance on oligopolistic suppliers.

My old office development machine still ran win7 so I can sympathise - like flat screens replaced bulky CRT monitors so storage size has dramatically reduced. When I started work a Winchester Drive had 12” aluminium platters each a few mm thick, now solid state drives are the size of a matchbox.

It’s not like the old monolithic mainframes, think of something like a wider slightly flatter Mac Mini.

Cabling is separate as are backup power supplies, and the environment infrastructure- fire suppression etc. but the servers are effectively small ‘black’ boxes you just swap the whole thing, just as you no longer repair a TV.

Agree, I suspect in many areas no one spends time on making software really efficient. It’s far easier to just buy a faster processor.
If you optimised the logic & code it would be faster on each iteration and scale better too. But the extra time involved delays time to market & new functionality.

Some could last a decade, a 3-5 year refresh cycle is more likely (if affordable) and dependent on function (eg just a file server providing storage vs something doing intensive operations). One problem is that the OS and software expect more capacity over time - how many developers have old tech?

Good point, but generally paid in kind,so 10% of your harvest - probably before you sold the rest of the surplus? Certainly harder to evade and set in more immediate time than an outstanding debt over a period.

Not my area, but I agree technically if there was a court order for payment then the sanction was prison… but in the UK debtors’ prisons were largely used before there was any significant income tax etc. taxes were more excise duties/tariffs evasion of which was more criminal than default?

Torn again between the bottom two, Tulips at Trinity or April shower (not sure where exactly), but we had daffodils for February so the shower with the blue umbrella (bottom right) gets my vote.

Tempted as I am to the daffodils, I think it has to be the skies over Caius tower top left.

River Spirit please, 1st image top left.

And many economists appear to actively ignore past theories - the latest version must surely either incorporate or supersede how the subject was approached before. It seems to lead more to reinvention than reappraisal.

Harald Jähner’s ‘Vertigo’ on Weimar Germany does exactly that to great effect.

The icy bend in the river or senate house passage … but icy bend is more January

Congrats 🥂

PS see more extensive comments on my Substack post :-)

Been reading a book on monetary theory/policy, which also examines how China financed its growth internally, despite the maths seems to say much the same. Incidentally an interesting take on money and credit/debt markets - suggests that wide money + domestic govt debt can be seen as national equity.

Within my own experience I have seen companies adopt “agile” software development processes that gets code written efficiently but then get bogged down in a consultation/debate between stakeholders that never reaches a consensus on the actual implementation!

Nowhere near my area, but perhaps the point is for the centre to enable the local/detailed decision making where the knowledge is, but to keep the system on some guide rails that stop the costs running out of control. Both should be possible but we don’t seem to manage it where others have?

Sidney Alexander and wartime economic intelligence I had been working on a chapter about Sidney Alexander, an economist at MIT-Sloan, perhaps best known for his earlier work on the Balance of Payments. But there was a question about the timeline of hi...

There’s some more on Alexander here: open.substack.com/pub/robertbi...

The Palgrave Companion to MIT Economics This book offers a comprehensive history of economics at MIT, highlighting the key figures from the department.

Very pleased to say that my chapter on Sidney Alexander for the Palgrave volume on MIT Economics is finally out!

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

As noted in another reply…

bsky.app/profile/robe...

UK Balance Sheet, Net Worth via ONS

And what you rarely see is some sort of balance sheet approach, which might be a lot more informative. Alvin Hansen suggested a current and capital account approach to the US budget post the Great Depression, not that it came to anything!

Why did they treat the imputed cost of the index-linking of the bond as annual interest rather than as an increase in the (redemption) value, presumably to restrict the impact on total outstanding debt? At least some have avoided the confusion between the stock of debt and the flow of income (GDP).

Reorienting the Economic Debate Thoughts on ‘Decolonizing Economics’ by Dutt, Alves, Kesar, & Kvangraven. This is a significant book, despite what, for some, might be a forbidding title. It is not always comfortable reading, it can ...

Some thoughts on reading ‘Decolonizing Economics’ by @devikadutt.bsky.social @cacrisalves.bsky.social @surbhikesar.bsky.social @ingridhk.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/robertbi...

From an outside perspective it seems wider than just Trump, maybe a greater polarisation of views that seems similar to what is happening in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. I also hope you are right…

Indeed!