2022-02-05
Readings
We know that rogue planets are a thing; I think it’s been suspected that black holes, being unusual evolutions of stars, would wander free in space rather than just hang out in the centres of galaxies; it’s good to observe them. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-free-floating-black-hole-roaming-interstellar.html
Building better artificial teeth that last as long as natural ones is one of those small transhumanist advances that will make life better for people. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj3343
More work into advanced fabrics that wick sweat more efficiently: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26384-8
Life on early Mars continues to look likely; here’s the story of an interesting meteorite found that probably travelled here from here: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-zircon-one-off-gift-mars.html
I’m puzzled at how an intended Facebook feature of notifying people when people screenshot their disappearing messages, unless it’s a mobile app only feature. And it seems undesirable even there for the operating system to permit apps to do this.
Unprompted Thoughts
I’ve been thinking about the use of cultural norms as part of a system of governance, to give a country and nation protection against demogogueic experiments; one idea being that regardless of legal changes, if a high political leader tries to stay in power by legalising additional terms (or by somehow appointing children to the role), everyone in society understands, as an enduring norm, that they should be assassinated. Perhaps with no legal protection for doing so - this is not something people should be eager to do so some sacrifice is expected, but if it is a widespread norm, acknowledged many places and affirmed over generations, then that would give some protection against autocratic takeovers
How efficient could markov chains (or similar) be, constrained by systems with perfect understanding of grammar and some gravity from document templates, to limit rapid entry of text down to some rapid multiple-choice options that someone could use rather than a keyboard to write long-form messages in their personal style without a keyboard?
In big tech, a useful process wrapped on the outer edges of outages is a SEV - an event is classified by its impact, logs are made in a certain format, and the afterwards people meet to discuss why it happened, how the response went, how it might be prevented or made less damaging in the future, how to improve the response, etc. I’ve been considering a variation on that practice where deciding how to respond to it is taken back to the teams maintaining the services to weigh implementation costs of the options, offer a tentative decision, and to report that back to the reliability review committee. The downside is perhaps adaptations happen a lot less, but the upside is that very rare events that one can accept don’t get unjustified levels of response
I think this take on work-life balance (by Arianna Huffington) is incredibly misguided; we already are seeing difficulty with people bringing their whole self, including their politics, to work. The article suggests that work-life don’t need to be balanced because they’re “on the same side”. If people are burning out, perhaps reducing hours people work is viable; some companies are experimenting with 4-day work-weeks. There may be other options too. Not this idea though. https://fortune.com/2022/01/24/great-resignation-life-work-integration-thrive-global/
Current Events
Omar’s bill on combating Islamophobia - I think it’s fine to worry about Islamophobia, but only as part of a general worry about religious bigotry. If we’re to do this for one faith, we should do it for all. Good policy is not piecemail, so I’d vote no (for the same reason I avoid and dislike the “BLM” slogan) - broad principles and broad expressions have fewer risks than narrow ones. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5665/text
The US announced that al-Qurashi, the current top ISIS leader (and parts of his family) was recently killed in an operation. I’m not much bothered by the former, and am willing to forgive the latter provided that it was at no stage intentional, although I wonder what the concrete effects of this are; how much does ISIS depend on its leaders?
Recently Whoopi Goldberg made the news by commenting on race and WW2. Her statements were logical extensions of a common definition of racism from cultural progressives - that systemic racism is all about white power over blacks, vacuuming in anything attributable to it historically. To exaggerate slightly, it is everything that is large-scale different about society had the founders never permitted slavery here versus the one we live in where they did. This is not a definition I subscribe to ; I hold the more Liberal-and-mainstream view that racism is when people bring racist intent to many domains of life, based on ideas of broad racial superiority. The more-commonly-progressive idea has been trumpeted loud in society though, and her views are not unusual there. Circling back to Whoopi, I am glad there was strong pushback, but I don’t really care about apologies of the sort she gave (if someone didn’t injure me personally, I don’t generally care for apologies from them) and I condemn even the temporary cancellation she got. We should not push back on progressivism by condemning people expressing it, but rather by arguing against it and defanging their efforts. We’ll never know whether public confessions are honest anyhow. (the anti-defamation league also stepped in a similar mess this week and was widely condemned by Jewish groups)
In the US we’ve seen a few right-to-repair bills go through congress, for agriculture, for consumer devices, etc. I think the current lock-in is not good for consumers and I can approve of the intent at least. I haven’t read the bills.
The 2022 Olympics are underway as of yesterday, getting an unsurprising amount of political tension because it’s held in China, a country with a shit political system and which has expressed an intent to invade another country, Taiwan, soon.
Reviewlets
Nioh (video game) - This isn’t the kind of game I play very often; it’s more combat-centric and fast-twitched than like, but it does an exceptional job at providing a good combat feel and I’m enjoying it so far. Enough so that while I got it for free I think (Epic Games store giveaways), I bought the sequel and will give that a try after I get through this (my gaming PC is a bit ill though, which is slowing me down). There are some small bits of humour buried in the game, most notably a dramatic warrior hiding a cat inside his suit. Overall, the style is more that of a good, old-fashioned comic
Quantum of Nightmares (book) - This is part of the longrunning Laundry Files series by Charles Stross; I’m not fond of starts to fictional books that hop between perspectives every chapter, even if they eventually meet. They can be ways to tell bigger stories, but being harder to follow and having weaker characters is not always worth it. I’m about 2/3 of the way through this book and it’s mostly just okay so far. Some good ideas executed with mediocrity and little bits of annoying empathy for one annoying character.
Harney and Sons (tea vendor) - Before I moved to NYC, I ordered tea from them fairly frequently, slowly climbing up the tea quality ladder (Twinings was just below this). Nowadays I usually visit them in person, ordering tea by the pound from their menu and watching them retrieve and measure my order from their big wall of tea with a bookkeeper’s ladder-on-wheels. Great looseleaf tea, fun experience to visit, and when I feel like it, their scones are pretty good from their cafe.
Amusements
Interesting exhibit on deepfakes: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/exhibit-how-scary-are-deepfakes
Amusing that Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety” was almost a collaboration with Hitchcock to parody his own films. Even though I thought the film was mediocre. Great proposed gag as well. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/mel-brooks-alfred-hitchcock-review-of-high-anxiety/
I would love to see these locks/keys in Italy. Interesting discussion in the comments too.
Disposal of untrustworthy beakers, and why:
Recent Music
Man Man’s “Cloud Nein” is a strange mashup of what sounds like the Beatles, Scissor Sisters, and Queen.
Juke Baritone’s “Hey God” is a strange kind of jazz-cabaret made of recycled jazz standards, and it works.
Red Elvises’ “Venice, USA”
Diego’s Umbrella - Viva la Juerga