Fractal voting, academia's tipping point

Jonathan Rodden finds a "a fascinating fractal-like relationship between population density and Democratic voting. As one zooms in to lower and lower levels of geographic aggregation, the relationship only reappears in finer detail." The "understanding of the Democrats as the party of metropolitan America and the Republicans as the party of smaller post-industrial cities and towns is ... completely wrong."

At Orgtheory, Katherine Chen quotes two engineers: "Over the last 50 years, we argue that incentives for academic scientists have become increasingly perverse in terms of competition for research funding, development of quantitative metrics to measure performance, and a changing business model for higher education itself. ... If a critical mass of scientists become untrustworthy, a tipping point is possible in which the scientific enterprise itself becomes inherently corrupt and public trust is lost, risking a new dark age with devastating consequences to humanity. Academia and federal agencies should better support science as a public good, and incentivize altruistic and ethical outcomes, while de-emphasizing output."