2021-10-09
Readings
We continue to learn about the ancient lakes that once existed on Mars, as rovers we have there increase in sophistication.
More simulations suggest specifics for a possible 9th planet in the outer reaches of our solar system. Hopefully this is precise enough that we can prove or disprove it with some good telescopy soon.
Interesting materials science advance suggests that a variant on concrete may reduce carbon emissions. One of the key relations between life and climate regulation is carbon sequestration - how much carbon is captured from the atmosphere and embodied into what is usually plant life. Releasing a lot of carbon, as industry tends to do, leads to climate change. Finding ways to limit this without ending activities needed to make civilization work is a major challenge.
A paper on murky issues on a topic near sovereign immunity
Models on how human crowds move in reaction to feature changes in an environment are a little self-alienating to read, but the process of walking around and reacting to people and environmental cues is similarly weird if one tries to really notice what one’s thinking while doing it.
The history of paper is long and fascinating.
Current events
Progressive activists, unhappy at Arizona Senator Sinema’s voting intent, chased her into a bathroom and confronted her there. This caused some controversy, as it should. A lot of Progressives defended this based on the effects of her votes; Liberals, Centrists, and some Conservatives criticised it. Biden rebuked the progressives (and noted this is sadly common). Sanders offered a less impressive response when he was asked to sign on to a joint letter rebuking the activists, insisting that it criticise Sinema first. I condemn the activists.
The risk of Government Shutdown is pushed back a few months. It’s unfortunate that we have a system that doesn’t continue the old budget if new agreement isn’t made, and more unfortunate that our political system no longer has the level of cooperation needed between the parties for things to work properly.
I am unhappy with any efforts to weaken Planetary Protection rules for space missions; I think the scientific questions we can answer now on Mars, before we have substantial industry there, are worth delaying whatever economic or other activities we’d like to do for at least several decades. I think we should also enforce these rules - being willing to shoot down craft of any company (most notably Elon Musk’s companies - his ethics are poor here as in his personal life) that would ignore these restrictions.
Andrew Yang, having failed at his recent attempts to get elected into various roles he wasn’t qualified for, recently decided to start his own political party. I understand the frustration some people always have at any third-party attempts; they worry about splitting the votes of one of the major parties, leading it to lose. I think it’s more important to stress that people should have the right to do this, and that it is healthy to exercise that right even if it can be counterproductive for one’s side. Still, Yang is not a good person to lead a movement of any kind.
Facebook recently had a BGP issue that knocked it off the internet, and it also had some network devices that ideally would’ve been recoverable remotely if this happened that turned out to not have a backup entry for resetting. Fun times. This happened not long after a whistleblower made the (mundane) point that Facebook prioritises profits over other concerns. I am not much bothered by the latter; I don’t think particular social media outlets should have a particular responsibility to curate healthy conversations (I’m more of a free-speech-everywhere person), although finding ways to agree on and manage the few exceptions to free speech is important to think about. I don’t have strong feelings about Facebook or other social media (although I haven’t been on Facebook for years - the Farmville stuff many years back annoyed me enough to have me leave and I haven’t felt I’m missing anything important).
I’m disapppointed in efforts, across the country, to dismantle standardised testing and gifted programs. The programs are not perfect, but having specialised instruction to help brighter kids do more, separated from other kids, is something that serves society well. The concerns leading to their disbanding are things I largely don’t care about, but even if I did I don’t think dismantling could be justified.
I’m happy to see that at least right now the James Webb telescope won’t be renamed; I find the urge to rename things unhealthy. Names and symbols, in the end, don’t hurt anybody. They can be a bit embarrassing if you think about them - I felt that Andrew Carnegie was a terrible person but I worked for Carnegie Mellon for about a decade, but his name didn’t injure me there. We should not be a people keen for iconoclasm.
Unprompted Thoughts
How important is it that a societal concern be rigorously definable, for good jurisprudence? What if something cannot easily be so defined, but one can constrain use of a concern, say good taste, to bounds that a majority of the population agrees with? This is tied to how culturally neutral a government should try to be - earlier in my life I would’ve said “very”. I no longer believe that, both because I don’t think law is culturally neutral, and because I think this limits government from what I see as its legitimate broad purpose - to be society’s tool for self-betterment. Terms that are more definable are easier to make part of policy, but there are degrees of definability, and a vague term (like aesthetics in architecture) can still be worth pursuing; I don’t think anyone would be pleased with purely functional buildings, and deciding the private sector can engage with these concerns but the public must not? That feels like a strange distinction.
Tiredness and creativity - When very tired, I find my thoughts tend to “go sideways”, making a lot of associations that I think I normally filter out (example: “Saint NIC is well-named because he transports packets all over the world”). This can be great for creativity, but when very well-slept I feel sharper, with my habits of thought more functional and a more through access to memories that may be pertinent. Both of them can help with certain aspects of creativity. There have also been times when I’ve been trying not to fall asleep and I find my mind sliding into chaos - tasting those messy thoughts often pulls me back, if briefly, from nodding off entirely in a meeting.
Fertility and population growth/shrinkage - Recently there’s been hand-wringing about possible population decline; I’m all for it. This is largely for environmental reasons; I think a global population decline of humans, so long as it is reasonably slow and stops at a reasonable point (800 million?) will lead us to more managable pollution, resource consumption, reduce fragility, and generally improve quality of life and sustainability in nature.
Prediction: In the future there will be a job of media annotator, moving through “old” films to annotate things about them for future viewing platforms - identifying characters and their actors in every scene, locations, things like that. This will be a kind of information-librarianship that will form the basis for more crowdsourced commentary.
Reviewlets
Far Cry 6 came out this week and I’ve been enjoying it. Likable characters, but I expect as the game goes on, the plot will derail because that’s what the series always does, usually in the form of your side turning out to be pretty awful too. The series as a whole has this general message, which I appreciate; idealism in action eventually usually comes to exhibit the flaws that the idealism struggled with initially
Finished Greg Egan’s book “Permutation City”. It touches on a few interesting, tricky ideas, from simulation of the human mind to the necessity of embodiment for state machines to what happens when smart people have logic that departs from empiricism. I’m impressed that he can do big-idea sci-fi and it’s still very readable and interesting. That’s not easy.
Minecraft Betas look like they’re moving Bedrock and Java editions together in generation, which is pretty cool. There are still some big features that are promised for 1.18 (holiday season this year) that haven’t hit a beta yet. Unclear if they’ll get there in time or not, but it’s neat watching their efforts in the generally-weekly betas (whether one plays or just reads the changelogs). There’s a story behind every software development effort.
Trader Joe’s Indian TV Dinners: Everything I’ve tried so far has been pretty good, at a nice price point. I’m impressed. Strange that the term “TV Dinner” has faded so much without a ready replacement.
Amusements
YT video on pretty mathematical origami shapes. I’ve been thinking of livening up my apartment, and this may do the job.
I’ve recently been intrigued with the Goldmember song from one of the Austin Powers movies. It’s also interesting to think that the character of Goldmember was probably a lot happier with his club in the past, rather than as an unwilling groupie of Dr Evil in the film.
Two shelter foxes screaming at each other. Foxes seem to have more complex relationships than dogs. I wonder if wolves do this kind of thing (they’re supposed to generally be more intelligent than dogs) or if it’s just a fox thing.
Recent Music
Calexico - Splitter. This song has long been one of my favourites
David Bowie - I’m Afraid of Americans. Also has a cool music video.
Bach - BWV 1052, which I first heard when I was very young, in a very truncated and simplified form, as part of the Treasure Mountain game. The nature of some of the transformations of classical pieces for use in the game is interesting - in some cases they added voices to complex pieces of music, presumably to make it easier for young minds to parse the music. One might think that more voices always make music more complex, but I think of it as being like training wheels.