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The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

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Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#21

Post by erk__ »

melling wrote: post #3

Publication founded by mathematician Jim Simons who started a hedge fund that consistently beat the markets and made billions. The entire story: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0... Lots of interesting information on the internet about him too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)

Numberphile have done a pretty good interview with him which is worth a watch. There is both a full length 1 hour interview [0] and a cut down interview running 18 minutes [1].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVDqfUhXOY

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#22

Post by bonoboTP »

I don't like Quanta. They always try to explain some super specific cutting edge new stuff that nobody has any context for and it results in fake understanding. It's an aesthetic of understanding, science porn if you will. There should be way more pop science stuff that would explain old (decades or centuries old) concepts to the lay public instead of the hottest new thing of the day, where the incentives are huge to overhype for career reasons. "News" don't mix well with science.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#23

Post by jcranberry »

guerby wrote: post #6
melling wrote: post #3

Publication founded by mathematician Jim Simons who started a hedge fund that consistently beat the markets and made billions. The entire story: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0... Lots of interesting information on the internet about him too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)

Echoing recent discussions on HN, from wikipedia: "An article published in The New York Times in 2015 said that Simons was involved in one of the biggest tax battles of the year, with Renaissance Technologies being "under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade."[46] In September 2021, it was announced that Simons and his colleagues would pay…

I believe that was because their most successful fund was the retirement fund for employees, or something along those lines. I heard they only lost this case because of a clerical error.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#24

Post by timcavel »

bonoboTP wrote: post #22

I don't like Quanta. They always try to explain some super specific cutting edge new stuff that nobody has any context for and it results in fake understanding. It's an aesthetic of understanding, science porn if you will. There should be way more pop science stuff that would explain old (decades or centuries old) concepts to the lay public instead of the hottest new thing of the day, where the incentives are huge to…

No post body was provided.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#25

Post by jgalt212 »

guerby wrote: post #6
melling wrote: post #3

Publication founded by mathematician Jim Simons who started a hedge fund that consistently beat the markets and made billions. The entire story: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0... Lots of interesting information on the internet about him too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)

Echoing recent discussions on HN, from wikipedia: "An article published in The New York Times in 2015 said that Simons was involved in one of the biggest tax battles of the year, with Renaissance Technologies being "under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade."[46] In September 2021, it was announced that Simons and his colleagues would pay…

Simons may be the biggest tax cheat in US History.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#26

Post by etrain »

melling wrote: post #13
mjreacher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His foundation, the Simons Foundation, funds among a few other things, arXiv. I have wondered why other tech related billionaires do not sponsor more items in the scientific sphere like Simons does, because unlike funding a building at some rich university your money could actually be used for something useful and if something good comes out of it, having your name attached to it could mean a lot more than the name o…

I’ve often wondered why we, the public, don’t fund more items in the scientific sphere. Basic research, for example. At one point, there was a “Kickstarter” for science but I haven’t gotten an email from them for years.

There was a company called Petridish that did exactly this. They pivoted after six months and became Blue Apron: https://vator.tv/news/2017-09-05-when-blue-apron-was-young-t...

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#27

Post by pixelatedindex »

bonoboTP wrote: post #22

I don't like Quanta. They always try to explain some super specific cutting edge new stuff that nobody has any context for and it results in fake understanding. It's an aesthetic of understanding, science porn if you will. There should be way more pop science stuff that would explain old (decades or centuries old) concepts to the lay public instead of the hottest new thing of the day, where the incentives are huge to…

> There should be way more pop science stuff that would explain old (decades or centuries old) concepts to the lay public instead of the hottest new thing of the day

While I agree that there needs to be more easily accessible science articles that are still pertinent today, I didn’t get the impression that that’s what Quanta was going for. Their target audience isn’t necessarily the lay public but instead someone who is comfortable in this space and has more than a passing knowledge.

My point is that there is room for both - something “hard to chew” like Quanta and something more “pop”.

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#28

Post by perihelions »

mjreacher wrote: post #9
melling wrote: post #3

Publication founded by mathematician Jim Simons who started a hedge fund that consistently beat the markets and made billions. The entire story: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0... Lots of interesting information on the internet about him too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons_(mathematician)

His foundation, the Simons Foundation, funds among a few other things, arXiv. I have wondered why other tech related billionaires do not sponsor more items in the scientific sphere like Simons does, because unlike funding a building at some rich university your money could actually be used for something useful and if something good comes out of it, having your name attached to it could mean a lot more than the name o…

He also donated to Brookhaven to extend the operating time of one of the particle accelerators. (His Wikipedia entry doesn't mention this, remarkably).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Heavy_Ion_Collide...

https://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/brookhaven-receives-outside-fun...

- "Brookhaven National Laboratory Director Praveen Chaudhari has announced a $13-million private contribution that will enable the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to operate for 20 full weeks this year. The money was raised by Jim Simons..."

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#29

Post by DantesKite »

Fun fact I love to repeat: Quanta Magazine gets most of their funding from the Simons Foundation which gets some of its proceeds from the Medallion fund, which uses deep, mathematical techniques to perform absurdly successful daytrading, most of which comes from other daytraders losses. So every time someone loses money on Robinhood, they contribute to Quanta Magazine lol.

Source at 17:55: https://youtu.be/Q2u0dKRA1cA

Re: The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting

#30

Post by mjreacher »

Maro wrote: post #15
mjreacher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His foundation, the Simons Foundation, funds among a few other things, arXiv. I have wondered why other tech related billionaires do not sponsor more items in the scientific sphere like Simons does, because unlike funding a building at some rich university your money could actually be used for something useful and if something good comes out of it, having your name attached to it could mean a lot more than the name o…

What's wrong with paying for academic buildings to be built (and having your name on it)? The point is that students can go to the building and receive lectures, or run labs, or read books in the library. Who cares whose name is on the building... These buildings will stand for a long time anyway, soon nobody will know who that person was anyway (other than by the name of the building).

There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just in my view the money could be better spent. If a university needs a new building it will get built regardless. In contrast, I know graduate students living off ramen and suffering because their stipends are so small. Here the work of Simons Foundation on funding grad students is of great help because it means the students don't have to focus on getting money on top of their research but just focus on their research, which should lead to better results.
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