Featured Links - May 23, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A spring marsh

• Welcome to Nusantara (no paywall link). "The audacious project to build a green and walkable capital city from the ground up." It's a huge project for Indonesia and fraught with complications. 
• What Could ChatGPT Do to Wall Street? "A look at Wall Street’s past efforts to speed up trading by embracing computers and AI illuminates the implications of using them for decision-making." Having worked at a stock exchange, I can attest to the complexity of financial markets. 
• How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’. "Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’". The scale of these solar and wind projects is remarkable. 
• “Something Is Very Broken”. "Boston Area Gleaners fights hunger from the ground up.: I have friends who pick up and distribute food to shelters and food banks, but on a much smaller scale than this.
• Shrinking the World. Author Charles Stross compares travel in 19th century England to travel today and comes up with some interesting comparisons.
• LA Teen Sues School District Over Non-Dairy Milk. "Students nationwide are fighting the government's mandate to serve cow's milk in public schools."
• Multiple Interstellar Objects Have Entered Our Solar System, Study Finds. "This study takes a closer look at ISO capture and tests the idea that some ISOs could be captured in near-Earth orbits rather than solar orbits. The researchers behind the work say that there could be a steady population of ISOs in near-Earth orbit."
• Groundbreaking proposal sets out to resurrect NASA’s Spitzer Telescope. "The Spitzer Resurrection Mission will send a telerobotic space probe to bring the Spitzer space telescope back to life."