2022-01-15
Readings
Interesting analysis of “soft” 1A concerns in the US; I recognise the problems in having government officials pressuring private actors to censor. Depending on how we interpret 1A, this might or might be outside constitutional protections: https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and-problem-jawboning
It’s interesting to see improvements in transplant technologies; this genetically modified pig heart transplant is interesting in a few ways (if this in particular becomes widespread, it’d be interesting to hear what religious communities that don’t like pigs think about it):
Evidence is mounting that there may be low-frequency gravitational events from events in the early universe: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-international-collaboration-evidence-gravitational-background.html
Metals with interesting electrical properties are hard to detect with current modeling; hopefully study of these things will help improve our theories. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-newly-strange-metal-deep-insights.html
I often worry about defects in human reason, particularly when many humans get together and these weaknesses combine. In everyday politics we see a lot of this (particularly recently, when better paths are increasingly clear on certain issues); in times of crisis it becomes more clear when people with forceful personalities often get more allegiance than people with expertise. The idea is not that knowledge alone solves all issues - values need to fit in there too, but if one can’t admit facts when presenting a values-based argument, one is in my view clearly in the wrong; one must be able to look the factual implications of the apparent values-choices squarely in the face (and sometimes we should make tough choices) in our decisions. Interesting to see this come up in a film review by an astronomer (see particularly around the 18 minute mark):
Great talk on subtitles in gaming:
Interesting how mathemeticians can invent puzzles for each other, and how it’s sometimes accidentally useful elsewhere. Like philosophy in some ways.
Unprompted Thoughts
I’ve been wondering to what extent, in large-scale media, language gets pushed towards cognates and “likely will figure it out” for the benefit of those who don’t speak a language as their first.
The sanity of a lot of western political discourse on rights and bigotry and various groups crossed the Rubicon, I think, when various groups decided that they get to rewrite the definitions of what bigotry against them looks like, rather than there being unified, standard definitions for these things. As that transition happened, a lot of righteous anger at historical mistreatment of certain groups was neatly detached and turned into a blade for whatever groups decided to pick it up. “Systemic racism” was dropped next to real racism. Anti-Zionism was smeared as anti-semitism. Wariness of China became anti-Chinese racism. And opposition to various religious creeds was conflated with bigotry against the people of those faiths (and often their race). Repairing our dialogue will take undoing a lot of that conceptual engineering.
If you could get one scientific question answered, in 3 paragraphs, by an expert in the field 300 years from now, what would it be? I suspect this is the kind of question that someone could spend at least a month deciding upon, and that apart from a scientist in the field now, very few people would be able to choose a genuinely good question. There are a few “list of open questions in the sciences” websites out there that might get one to a good question though (and they tend to be really good reading). The constraint of only getting a certain length of response is pretty limiting though.
Current Events
NY’s local politics sometimes surprise me; this year there have been legal changes to allow noncitizens (including some illegal aliens) to vote; to me this is a red line, and I won’t vote for anyone again who supported it: https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-new-york-new-york-city-voting-united-states-64edb2ed4de261156f5e717b61101247
The Taliban is attempting to exert more control over the use of foreign aid; I believe we should not offer any foreign aid to Afghanistan under the Taliban, regardless of who controls it. If the Taliban wants aid for Afghanistan, they should leave power; we may want to help the people but not at the risk of filling coffers of warlords: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/13/taliban-joint-body-un-afghanistan-foreign-aid
Biden gave a talk in Atlanta that received a lot of critical reviews; I saw some clips that seemed problematic. Having watched through it, I think it was proper to directly confront Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election and the insurrection, and to critique efforts by Republican legislatures to allow them to override votes, but it’s dangerous to too tightly tie those events to the current federal effort to deal with those issues, and dangerous to paint all Republicans with the same brush (as he did several times in the speech). A speech on a charged set of issues like this needs to be drafted more carefully than this, and no single bill should be equated with the antithesis of the problems it is trying to solve; it represents one approach. All that said, I have a very high bar for speeches, and it was not far out of line for how a POTUS speaks when he wants something.
Reviewlets
Little Mint (Thai Restaurant in Manhattan) - They slightly messed up my order, but their rice curries (this is the Thai “souplike” style) are quite good, if a little thin for my tastes. One of the rice curries had a particular curry flavour in it that I’ve been missing for awhile; wishing it were easier to identify flavours like this. I’ll probably order from them every so often in the future.
God of War PC (game) - This is a recent release, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I have no history with the franchise, but it’s nicely difficult (at the setting I’ve chosen), and the combat and the story are both pretty enjoyable
(update) Qualityland (book) - I’m working my way through this, but it touches on themes of infidelity and that’s a difficult topic for me. Still enjoying it despite that, but I don’t do the long-consistent reading that I give most books.
Star Trek: Picard - Watched my first episode of this recently. My history with Star Trek pretty much ended at the end of Voyager (I haven’t thought of anything after that as being canon, and Discovery looks to be an utter mess). Picard seems to be a pretty different series from TNG, maybe more akin to DS9’s later series if we’re lucky - it has a long-term plot rather than being “Twilight Zone in space”. It also wrestles with some big issues and truths about human nature.
Amusements
Very pretty drone footage over a volcano. I wonder how often they lose drones.
Very nicely done mashup of Mr Bean and Cyberpunk 2077:
This reminds me of the introduction of turbo controllers for videogame systems, when I was young, and maybe how a few game developers back then were offended by the idea and wrote code to attempt to detect excessive regularity in the inputs to punish the player (and the mini arms race that inspired) -
How two former police officers goofed off on the job and tried to get away with it -
Recent Music
Dar Williams - Iowa (acoustic version) - I go back and forth on whether this or the studio version of the song is better. I’ve enjoyed seeing it live when at Dar Williams concerts. It’s one of my favourite songs. It’s hard to avoid singing along when I hear it and there’s nobody around; the chorus has a perfect “missing part” that’s easy to sing.
Firewater - Whistling in the Dark. This is another of my favourites; I think I’m going for a lot of comfort music while the weather is like this. This song is more of a cynical take on human nature, rather than the weathered-but-hopeful that is a lot of Dar’s music.
Frank Zappa - St Etienne
Christina Vee - Dance through the Danger. This was the opening song to one of the Shantae videogames, sung by the actual seiyuu for the main character. It’s a fun, fast-paced song