Readings
Interesting to see mathematicians working through particular sequences; this “trapped knight” sequence would be fairly hard to guess just from the numbers, with some variants of this perhaps having utility somewhere. I’m tempted to extend it; if the knight is trapped, it teleports to the lowest unclaimed number and proceeds. That makes it infinite again, and the patterns in when (and how often) it must use that kind of teleport could also be pretty interesting.
It’s interesting to see more long-reaching epigenetic effects like this - presumably smoking at a certain age has some effects two generations along. Although without understanding the mechanism, some other effects may be plausible (such as mate selection, or even a selection effect that boils down to class differences that touched on who smoked back then). Finding a mechanism is very important to make it solid. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-04504-0
The trucking industry is seeing automation that may lead to the human side of the job going away. Like with all automation, this is exciting for the tech and the cost reduction, but unless the industry draws down slowly it will put a lot of people out of work who may be hard to place into other jobs. https://techxplore.com/news/2022-01-texas-driverless-trucks-roads.html
Elephant trunks are one of the more remarkable appendages in nature; understanding the neuroscience tied to them is worthwhile. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nerve-bundle-elephant-trunk-largest.html
It’s not a smoking gun, but chemical signatures on Mars that could plausibly have been organic are exciting. When thinking about these things, I recall how much is lost of any structure or organism over a few decades; except in exceptional circumstances time wipes out all trace of structure (including living things) surprisingly quickly. If all humanity were to suddenly die right now I wonder what would be left in a million years, or 20 million. https://www.science.org/content/article/mars-rover-detects-carbon-signature-hints-past-life-source
Possibly welcome regulation on app stores run by platform vendors; the details will matter a lot and those will likely be shaped by industry pressure. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/antitrust-bill-that-bars-big-tech-self-preferencing-advances-in-senate/
Unprompted Thoughts
In NYC I walk around large buildings all the time. They’re part of the local manmade geography. What would it take to build one of these in the middle of nowhere? On a prairie, perhaps? (some strange wordplay popped into my head - Little Skyscraper on the Prairie). First, we’d need to decide if we just wanted the physical structure, or if the building would need to be functional; large buildings usually require a lot of plumbing and electrics; facilities that are not available in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes other things (network feeds, natural gas, sewage). Beyond that, there’s a lot of infrastructure (professionals and equipment) that big cities have on hand for construction that are more scarce in the middle of nowhere. I suspect doing all this for a lone building would be considerably more expensive than it is in a city, despite cities having a lot of other costs (significantly opportunity costs as a given set of space and equipment is usually also usable for other purposes, while empty prairieland lacks those costs). Fun analysis to touch on.
The idea of “Not Zero Sum” often leads to people not reaching the right conclusions, ranging from “essentially infinite sum” to “barely more than zero sum”. The latter can often be treated as essentially being zero sum. I wouldn’t avoid the phrase entirely, but to think carefully about it when it’s seen. An example to illustrate would be a small company operating alone in a market, debating whether to hire someone new. A zero-sum analysis would assume profits won’t change so the only way to do it would be to reduce salary of everyone else. A nearly-zero-sum analysis would be that the person could increase profits, but not enough to make up for their salary. One could have a break-even analysis where they do but just barely, or a more-than-break-even to varying degrees. I don’t want people to hear “not zero sum” and always think “it’s time to get generous”.
There’s recently been interesting debate on who will be the next James Bond; just like with a lot of other long-running works of fiction, I wonder if it would be better to retire the character instead; I find it jarring to see characters depicted by new actors, and more jarring when new writers discard enough elements of the character that they become unrecognisable. Supporters of this seem, in my critical view, to want characters to be reused milk cartons into which anything can be poured; I see little purpose in this and ask that new names be used. I think it’s better to try for consistency and fidelity to established facts and lore (and I write off excessive shifts as noncanonical even if the legal author does it). There’s no harm and there are many benefits in making new characters, worlds, and the like when people want to write new things.
The preservation of meaning and practices over generations and even centuries, without becoming so brittle that people and society suffer overmuch, is I think one of the more interesting questions at the intersection of culture and jurisprudence. The shape of that tension is understudied; we have a few large data points, but we would be better off with far more.
Current Events
Biden’s 1-year marker as POTUS passed; some thoughts. On foreign policy, he’s a mess. I expected this of him, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan demonstrated it; it never should have happened, and it makes me worry that he’ll take a similarly isolationist approach to Russia’s threats to invade more of Ukraine. Domestically, we’ve seen a slow return to somewhat normal order, although Republicans in Congress haven’t pulled back from the brink and show signs they’re still committed to extremism that could unwind pluralism when they get another chance. Biden’s messaging has been mediocre; some missteps, some good moves. I don’t worry that Biden will damage the country like Trump did, but he’s not winning the center, and it doesn’t help that his party is stuck in an identity crisis between Liberals and Progressives, the latter of which are an endless source of bad ideas and damaging distractions.
On that topic, the recent discussions over ending the filibuster seem to have failed, which has sunk bills that would override some steps Republican-governed states have taken to make the methods used by Trump’s insurrection attempt easier next time. Along with some other things that got stuffed into the bills that should have been left out. On the former, while filibuster reform (not elimination) in my view makes sense in the abstract, it is extremely unwise and dangerous to mess with it now, particularly on the eve of Republicans taking control of one or both houses of congress. The indicated willingness to scrap it won’t leave them a leg to stand on if Republicans decide to scrap it when they next have power. On the bills, it would’ve been better to have been more restrained and found ways to get some bipartisian support, even at the cost of scrapping some ideas that would’ve been nice to include. Excessive ambition naturally breeds opposition.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine now looks almost inevitable, with Russia-sympathetic memes (like the idea that Russia is justified at invasion because of a onetime suggestion that NATO wouldn’t expand is somehow more important than a treaty Russia signed to respect the borders of its neighbour) making waves. European countries seem divided about what to do about it, while the US is still talking about sanctions. This is disappointing.
Google recently announced that it’s ending the free edition of G-Suite, which was an early trial form that allowed for domain-tied gmail/apps/etc services. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a big deal, except it means that unless people using it join a monthly plan, their Google Identity (including their email address and anything digital they’ve bought on Google’s various markets) will go away, without an easy way to either forward their mail or move their purchases to a regular gmail account. It’s a reminder of how vulnerable we are to a few big tech companies that, with a simple policy change, can eliminate the ways people know how to contact us, wipe out our purchases, and make a lot of hardware we’ve bought stop working. I would welcome legislation to limit these effects.
Reviewlets
Nobody Saves the World (computer game) - I’ve been enjoying this a lot; it’s similar to early Zelda games, but has transforms like Shantae mixed in, and with heavy RPG elements. It sometimes feels easy, but the hard parts are really hard. The music is good but not memorable.
Kult (tabletop RPG)- I mostly bought this for the worldbuilding, and it has a lot of interesting small ideas in it, but I was disappointed that the bigger ideas are not that solid. The system reminds me of the more recent Dishonored RPG, where rather than the mechanics being the focus, players tug on the story; it’s probably more empowering for the players, but probably much more challenging for the DM (whose, in this system, actions are limited). I don’t know what it would be like to play this, but I at least got a few interesting ideas out of reading it.
Casper foam pillow (firm, King) - This is a low-end fancy pillow, and hits a good spot in terms of offering support while yielding a bit. The price isn’t that bad - more than a normal pillow, but not excessively so. Overall, a good buy.
Amusements
This is a really cool problem - making modern streets look like they’re in a certain era for film:
What were WW2-wartime versions of board games like?
Interesting to see the director of the (very creepy but good) film Return to Oz reflect on what makes it so much weirder than Wizard of Oz.
One of the Latin (language) bloggers I follow, Luke Ranieri, did this video to teach geographical terms, and I’m surprised how doable it is to pick up grammar and some limited vocab from just watching; there are a number of things that help, including using cognates as a seed for learning more, but I think the degree of repetition and obviousness of sentences, looping back many times to ensure the listener’s guesses are verified or discarded, that makes it work. That and the video to give it more grounding. Good to learn Latin from, better yet to puzzle over teaching methods.
Similarly on learning, there is a very clever conceit in this guide to get people reading about wildflowers: https://theprairieecologist.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/a-field-guide-to-roadside-wildflowers-at-full-speed_january2020-1.pdf
Recent Music
John Linnell - Roman Songs (album) - This is an album written in Latin by John Linnell of TMBG. I haven’t kept up with TMBG in recent decades; I don’t know if it’s their music changed or my music sense did, but I think it’s more likely a strange third alternative - that I had my fill of their style of music, with enough of it in my head that I feel I know it too well. I get some of that here too, even though I don’t understand Latin well enough to understand more than a bit. It’s still an interesting experiment.
Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, “Slipping” - There are interesting irregularities in the song that I like, from the part progression to the strongly-sung to weakly-sung to nearly-spoken. I had forgotten about the “miniseries” for a few years.
Emiliana Torrini’s “To Be Free”
MC Frontalot’s “I Can See” is an interesting weaving of an old folktale with the persona of a nerdcore rapper; finding compatible material between the two that can be nudged into a synthesis probably takes some work, but it also probably makes such possibilities leap out; sometimes constraints help with creativity by providing a spark.
I don’t want people to hear “not zero sum” and always think “it’s time to get generous”.
why not?