2021-12-11
Readings
This is a comedic read on it, but it’s worrying to see how many countries have their own versions of science and history that flatter their nationalism or myths. To American eyes some of these look more right or left wing (nonsense from Maori tends to be supported by the far left, nonsense from Hindutvas and from Russian nationalists get more acceptance by the far right); I worry that non-hardliners are becoming less dominant in American society.
Some history - how brutalist apartment architecture was actually good, for its time, in Russia:
I was recently interested to learn that some former France-dominated countries in Africa still use a variant of the (now-defunct, replaced by the Euro) French Franc as currency, which has a fixed exchange rate to the Euro. Amusing to think that the former French currency still has a kind of shadow existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc
This is a great explanation of why building knowledge involves simplifications, even those that can at times feel dishonest:
Interesting and surprising genetic machinery that allows for larger scale manipulation than CRISPR: https://phys.org/news/2021-12-prime-inserts-entire-genes-human.html
I think the most exciting advances in particle physics would be (of course) things that may be stable for more than a few minutes, but it’s still interesting to see searches for other particles. Recently there have been a number of searches for leptoquarks (interesting that we give names to things that may not exist, but it’s necessary and I suppose there’s enough specificity when the range of characteristics of a particular theoretical type is narrow enough; in the same way that we’ve named theoretical moons of Mercury and a theoretical “anti-Earth” in the distant past; I still am bothered by the phrasing of some discussions-for-the-general-public on these topics - “we’ve found this ancient object and it’s name is Bob” sounds annoyingly like the name is part of the discovery rather than a designation): https://phys.org/news/2021-12-leptoquarks-physics-standard.html
Possible plans for another Venus mission, this one looking for unknown forms of life: https://phys.org/news/2021-12-nimbler-faster-venus-probe-life.html
Given the fate of lab mice, the close-up ethics of gene-editing them to be all-one-gender seems fine, but gene editing seems a perennial touchy topic (doesn’t help that movies keep painting it so). Interesting as well that we have the technology to do this kind of thing now: https://www.science.org/content/article/gene-editing-produces-all-male-or-all-female-litters-mice
Unprompted Thoughts
I often think about the level of mistrust and willingness to grump out at people that comes with living in a city, and how different that is from living in small towns; I’ve seen both over my life, and right now I live in Manhattan, a very high-density urban area where I semi-frequently need to be “less than empathetic” at people to step on boundaries. Everyone does here, and while certain talk show hosts (like John Oliver) keep critiquing these views and practices, it is effectively necessary (and I think benefits society, if practiced enough). This ranges from beggars, aggressive homelsss and the mentally ill, to pickpockets and scammers. They may be a miniscule section of the population, but most people in NYC don’t want to interact with the average other person in NYC so those that do stand out (giving people directions is something we all do, but we make sure we have some physical contact with our wallet and ramp up our area-awareness while doing so). Strange to have this paired with a generally more-social and more-infrastructure-friendly perspective that we naturally get in big cities. This connects to a video I recently saw describing certain scams to be wary of.
I've been thinking about why Edward Hopper’s paintings grab me so much; I think it’s the contrast of urban life, in-focus, as an oasis against emptiness (sometimes urban, sometimes rural). Nighthawks and Gas are this contrast; wandering from that focus takes one into blurry, empty space. Hopper’s are paintings for extroverts, I think; people for whom that boundary between solitude and company is deeply significant and very consciously navigated.
Amused at the idea of augmented reality saving us from advertising, and whether there might be legal challenges if it became widespread enough. It’s unclear what a legal basis might be. Perhaps the idea that showing a modified version of, say, a film with product placement that gets edited out, might constitute copyright infringement. If that were successful, perhaps showing a billboard without its content might be seen as such as well.
I find myself troubled by worker relations and mechanisation of jobs in the pursuit of efficiency. This is largely a value-conflict source of trouble; if at some point we had a relatively low-efficiency high-expertise industry, and it began to be mechanised, individual workers lose a lot of agency and opportunity for expertise (think cobblers), and cease to grow as people. And presumably production goes up. In some fields though, that loss of expertise hits other business goals; a fully mechanised workforce may miss out on opportunities for novel designs as empowerment goes down. Eventually the work goes away entirely as robots replace labour, but that may also miss out on the opportunities for some forms of automation. Navigating these things in the particular becomes complex.
Current Events
A number of newspapers are filing antitrust complaints against Big Tech companies; I don’t fully understand the legal basis for these suits (and it’s strange to see, in this report, that the intellectual framework for the suit has been under development), but I think it’d be healthy if we eventually found pressures from this leading to a better funding model for news orgs. https://www.axios.com/1-local-newspapers-lawsuits-facebook-google-3c3dee3a-cce3-49ef-b0a2-7a98c2e15c91.html
I’m not a fan of faith, but religious leaders at times can help the world. Bergoglio’s ties to liberation theology has made it easier for me to appreciate his influence; recently he has critiqued certain use of inclusive language efforts; I am generally opposed to inclusive language and am happy to see some similar themes, although I suspect a lot of the things he’d find particularly bothersome are areas where I oppose the specifics. Very complex, very nuanced. https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-european-commission-vatican-rome-inclusiveness/
Practices of tech companies on discussing security vulnerabilities are sensitive; one can provide full descriptions of a vuln to the level where exploiting unpatched servers becomes trivial, or one can be cagey until most systems in the wild are patched (or in perpituity). This week a major vuln was publicised about the popular log4j library for Java, leading to a lot of bundles of Java apps do emergency new releases of their software. https://blog.cloudflare.com/inside-the-log4j2-vulnerability-cve-2021-44228/
We’re in the early season of the French Presidential election; right now there are a number of candidates (and it seems likely Macron will keep the role), but it’s uncertain. I’m enjoying reading about the people running.
My first thought when reading this was “who the hell would put a whale in an aquarium?”, but it’s good to see legal changes (in Russia, of all places) to limit whale capture for entertainment: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-russia-capturing-whales-aquariums.html
Reviewlets
“Come from Away” is a musical I saw this week, and it’s the (real-ish) story of some planes diverted to Newfoundland in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. It had loads of characters, with each actor typically playing 2-3 of them, and is primarily about how the events changed their lives. I’m not sure about the format, but it did a good job capturing the feel of that week. The musical quality was uneven, the pacing too fast (perhaps intentionally). I’m still trying to decide if I liked it.
Marquette (video game) had one interesting idea, of a non-euclidean space that one explores from the outside and the inside at the same time, and it poured in some decent music, a “meh” game engine, and hoped for the best. This is probably better seen as a “Let’s Play”; there’s no replay value, it’s easy to get stuck, and the payoff is poor. I’m not sure how to fix it.
Outdoor Research Tungesten Gore-Tex Jacket - I got this to replace my old winter coat, which was very warm but very ugly and bulky. This is a much thinner and lighter jacket, but seems to be of similar warmth; it’s a little uncomfortable (the arms don’t have full range of motion), but overall it’s a better coat for the warmth, weight, and appearance.
Sarah Andersen’s “Oddball” is a comics collection from a webcomic I like (but I don’t regularly read; I don’t regularly read webcomics anymore). The topics are familiar, and things range from friendly to touching. I think people generally will only buy this if they know the comic, but I think it’s great for those who do. It delivered some genuine giggles when I was reading it on the way to/from work.
Amusements
Some weird physics -
Interestingly difficult lock; occasionally I think about other ways to build locks (like pneumatics) that would be difficult to pick. This is more conventional, but not entirely so -
Apparently camel beauty contests were underregulated and botoxed lips were a problem. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59593001
This is a particularly interesting lock that effectively blocks the most common lock-picking techniques:
Recent Music
Boa’s “Duvet” is a song that was the intro to the classic anime miniseries, “Serial Experiments: Lain”. I come back to it every so often; the band is a bit obscure and this song is a bit of an outlier WRT their musical style. A lot of the greatest hits of any band tend to be a bit unusual; I don’t know if musicians decide “it’s time to write a hit” or “it’s time to do an experiment”, or if the writing process for such songs differs from their usual thing. Maybe they bring in outside help, and we know that a lot of bands hire external songwriters for some portion of their songs. Ednaswap’s song “Torn” brought acclaim to a different band.
Tom Lehrer’s “I got it from Agnes” has a cheeky double-meaning and fun execution; while I think it’s possible to create the mind-state for that kind of play in modern times, it takes more effort because it’s not still a common element in the classes of society the songs are for. Lehrer’s songs are great because they’re very singable, have a pretty well-defined sense of humour tied into them, and so they lead to people gathering around pianos to recreate them.
I don’t understand a word of Watcha Clan’s “Osfour”, but they make nice songs out of instruments and musical memes that fell out of style a lifetime ago
Strata’s sound is starting to remind me of Toad the West Sprocket; their song “Stay Young” is in some multiple of 3/4 and plays with the beat; they’ve another strong song on the same album called “The New National Anthem” where I’m wary of the political sentiments expressed (still a good song).