2022-01-08
Readings
I liked this talk by a clothing designer on her experience working as part of a game studio; it’d be easy to assume that they would rarely work with real objects, but the results of doing some of these things physically helps (the artbook is great too). Game studios have a lot of choices in terms of how real their production process is.
Some more perspective on the difficulties of launching the James Webb Telescope:
I like how many mysteries we end up finding with all the telescopes we have pointed outward. This may just be an unusual dust cloud, but if it is its origins can still inspire wonder and teach us something, assuming it’s possible to get the information needed for analysis. https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.01019
I admire Richard Dawkins’ willingness to dive into controversy; I largely agree with his stances against gender theory and related topics here: https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary/
Experiments to understand neutron and proton spin: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-team-aims-pin-neutron.html
Modeling and observation to explain unusual structures in our planet’s mantle suggests they may be tied to the collision in the early solar system that created modern day Terra and Mars: https://www.space.com/ulvz-giant-impact-hypothesis.html
Unprompted Thoughts
If you wanted to bleed a moon dry of matter, it’s relatively simple (if a lot of work). Same with a rocky planet, although the gravity well makes it increasingly expensive. Imagine the effort needed to peel off the atmosphere of a gas giant. Then a star. It’s unclear if there’s a way to do this; the amount of matter that would need to be moved out of an incredibly dense gravity well is ridiculous. Imagine then doing it to a neutron star; what kinds of forces would be necessary? Presumably one would have no hope at all at increasing the natural evaporation rate of a black hole, right?
How malleable is human nature? I think a lot of political philosophies, at least those that address the question (those that don’t at least assess human nature are failing in topical due diligence - a political philosophy that is not concerned with humans is not rooted in its subject matter), are dramatically inconsistent on the topic. Also, in what circumstances and through what means is human nature shiftable? I find social trust - societal buy-in - to be a key concept in these topics ; the invisible-on-the-individual-scale decision to feel vested in society and broadly trust its mechanisms, and the related feeling that following a certain level of ethics won’t lead one to be overly disadvantaged against everyone else because of their levels of ethics. The term “level” merits serious questioning and investigation here, but this emerges naturally in all kinds of societies and is a partial answer to the above question. There are other mechanisms - what parents teach their children, what schools teach, what media suggest.
Humans are, given enough education, potentially amazing problem solvers. We can’t afford to have everyone in problem-solving mode all the time; shared solutions are needed so people are pointed in enough of the same direction that our labour fits together (and we follow laws and so on). Finding ways to build societies and organisations so that when clear lackings or inefficiencies can be met by people going into creative mode, without allowing people to disrupt all of society - it’s a challenge.
One of the things I appreciate about BadLegalTakes, as a twitter account that critiques people with confused takes on law, is that it pushes in the direction what I think is a healthy technocratic maturing of people - the idea that many domains of life are technical-and-only-lightly-steered-by-passions. There’s a natural frustration when people who haven’t yet learned to work with their passions encounter these domains (a younger me dreamed about purging the sciences of people with muddy ideas), but provided we have enough people carefully and consistently espousing these views, a lot of radicalism can be bled out of society, leaving people with both passions and reasonability, capable of handling technical knowledge on areas where they feel things deeply. We want neither automatrons nor barbarians.
I think, given the possibility of having hazards for one’s morality so one can exhibit virtue, versus eliminating such hazards, the first is not preferable. This is because these situations don’t create virtue in itself, they test it. And all other things being equal, often not being tested produces better results for society; seeking that can (in a complex, many-nuances way) be a form of virtue as well. At least in life as I know it, there are usually so many other opportunities to test one’s virtue that elimination of some doesn’t significantly lessen one’s drive to do right if one has it. I recognise that living a life where one’s virtue is never tested may lead one not to develop good habits; there are other ways to satisfy that metric than to set up or persist opposition for oneself.
The decision that a given concept deserves a name and/or a place in one’s understanding of the world recently was raised with something called “fluorina”, referring to being infected with Covid and other flus at the same time. I don’t have strong opinions on that particular topic, but the broader question shows up pretty often in philosophy and public discourse, as well as other topics. We use terms to help us understand topics; they’re roads and signposts, with it being harder to move off of them once we have enough. There are several ideas out there that may define the perspectives of real people (such as being “nonbinary” or “two-spirit”, or terms that distinguish finely between variants of pescetarianism or trinitarianism - yes, my examples are all over the place; this is intentional) that I haven’t made part of my vocabulary or my understanding of the topics because the described views are fringe and considering those terms “a thing” adds nothing to my understanding of things and the longform “people who (paragraph)” is good enough for the rare times I need to dig into the specifics.
Current Events
Kazakhstan has seen civil unrest as fuel price increases added a spark to perennial concerns over authoritarian, Moscow-tied leadership. Its current leadership authorised its police to shoot-to-kill, while inviting Russian troops to prevent the government from falling. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59907235
This week was the anniversary of the insurrection by pro-Trump forces in the US to attempt to reverse his election loss. Some conservatives have maintained a strong condemnation of those efforts, but Trump’s supporters remain strong on the right and many politicians have both offered support to the insurrectionists and have pushed to make efforts to overturn elections easier next time. These are troubling signs for American Democracy, which we can safely say at this point is more fragile than it has been for at least a century.
Efforts to rewrite treaties on outer space to permit commercial activity are seeing difficulties, as the US and China have different ideas of what kind of covenant would be best and as they try to get the specifics aligned to their interests - https://www.politico.eu/article/space-rules-us-france-germany-europe-moon/
Reviewlets
Binding of Isaac (game) - This is a roguelite (I still resent how that name stomped on the term “roguelike”, which I reserve for turn-based grid-based games closer to the Rogue-Moria-Angband lineage) that resembles the original Legend of Zelda, and it’s a game I keep coming back to for occasional plays. It has some annoyances - it’s advantageous to keep restarting the game until the first level happens to be the larger size, but it’s very well done and has excellent replay value. Not great for longer play sessions, but that’s not necessary.
JAGS Wonderland (tabletop RPG) - I haven’t played this, but the worldbuilding in it is interesting enough that I go back to read the source books several times a year. It has a lot of things that appeal to me - well-described parallel worlds that have strange metaphysical relations between them, conspiracy theories, lovecraftian horror. The text itself is badly written (writing is very cliche), but if you can move past it the ideas are worthwhile.
Marc-Uwe Kling’s Qualityland (book) - I just started on this; I like the sense of humour, and it feels reasonably similar to Max Barry’s “Jennifer Government”. The “make a pitch” opening reminded me of the beginning of the film, “Brazil”, another of my favourites. Hoping I continue to enjoy it; it’s not a long read either way (just 340 pages).
Amusements
This summary of a few months of life feels like a lost segment of “Waking Life”.
I occasionally come back to this set of Mitchell and Webb sketches; it’s among their better work.
I’ve been thinking about the ending of “The Believer” (film) for years. I don’t know if this was intended as the meaning for the scene, but I’m coming to think that it may be about insisting on taking a relationship on one’s own terms, not realising that relationships don’t (fully) work that way. (the film is emotionally very heavy and difficult, but interesting)
Turkmenistan is working on putting out an underground fire (see also Centralia, PA, which has had one of these for the last 50 years): https://phys.org/news/2022-01-turkmenistan-gateway-hell.html
Interesting to hear Brahms’ voice, and think of an era where being audio-recorded was a novelty.
Recent Music
The Foremen was a quartet that did satirical music in the 90s; one of them, Roy Zimmerman, went on after the band broke up to produce some other fun songs. “Hell Froze Over Today” is both a nice song and a time capsule of the political concerns that were common in that decade.
Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” is musically weird and interesting; it had an unforgettable (uncanny valley-ish disturbing) music video. I’m not aware of many other songs that capture decadent brokenness so well.
Death Cab for Cutie’s “Your Hurricane” feels like it could’ve fit easily in one of their earlier albums. It’s comfortable, not particularly innovative.
Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” is a jazz standard; it’s an evolution of the latter half of an earlier jazz piece called “Willie the Weeper” (that also sounds a bit like “Some of These Days”), and Cab’s has been endlessly covered (like most other Jazz standards), but his voice is distinct and amazing.