Readings
A reasonable discussion of how consensus works in academia:
Changes to Cas9 to improve targeting accuracy: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-gene-safer-redesigned-cas9-protein.html
Interesting glimpse into how piracy worked during the “golden age of piracy”:
Strange to see optogenetics mixed with MRI in neuroscience; usage of this will be limited in applicability and runs the risk of changing the objects of study, but any new methodology in neuroscience can open a lot of doors. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-mri-probe-reveal-brain.html
Also in neuroscience, apparently in mammals (maybe not limited to them), mitochondria can act as a kind of lens for light on its way to photoreceptors. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn2070
Unprompted Thoughts
Right now it seems we’re exploring the power, and the limits, of soft power to stop an invasion. The answer is that it probably can’t (unless Russia’s domestic politics show more vibrancy than anyone expects), but the costs on Russia are pretty severe. India, unsurprisingly under Modi, seems unwilling to offer more than the most tepid critique of Russia. The rest of the world? We get to nervously watch the events, feeling helpless to do anything
We’re also seeing Covid restrictions generally rolled back across the US, which I think is great. Socially irresponsible people who ignored restrictions are reacting oddly to this, as expected; I’ve seen some people angrily demanding end of policies that ended weeks ago where they are, as well as people pushing for legal changes to make it so we’ll never be able to respond to pandemics again. It may not be charitable, but I think a lot of some people’s thing was a psychological resistance thing that became second nature, rather than a legitimate normal disagreement over facts (admittedly, if I were to imagine a version of me who believed Covid was either a hoax or incredibly overblown, I probably would be fairly unreasoanble (although it’d be limited by my general broad belief that some policies need to be centralised and we often have duties to follow things we don’t agree with)
I’ve been thinking again about how various businesses handle excessive meetings; in one tech job I had, there was an expectation that people should just skip larger meetings if they thought they wouldn’t get anything out of them. That’s fine, but maybe it’s not the only measure that should be there. Perhaps there should be meeting allowances; a kind of budget for individuals and teams that would prohibit scheduling of more than a certain number of meetings in a certain amount of time, putting the onus on the would-be scheduler to deal with it or haggle. The hope with this is to impose a cost to counter the “why don’t I just schedule another meeting and if people don’t show up that’s fine”.
“Speak truth to power” is a terrible focus; it presumes the weak have the truth, when often they do not. It omits that the weak may need and be improved by the truth. It ignores that mistruths in the weak damage them and may damage society if they turn into a misguided political movement. Instead, find those who need truth spoken to them, particularly those who don’t want to hear it, and speak truth. That’s all. Don’t worry about the power part.
Current Events
Belarus adopted a set of authoritarian constitutional reforms, providing a political path for its dictator to semi-retire from politics while acquiring legal immunity for actions in office, as well as legislative powers. The changes also removed its stated opposition to nuclear weapons, and allowed Russian troops to remain permanently on its soil.
The current expansion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, although some European countries have been sending arms, and the politics of others have shifted; some Nordic countries that are not part of NATO are exploring entry. Likewise, we’re seeing a lot of prominent people and groups in the west laying out their stances, which is interesting. DSA, for example, condemned the invasion but also suggested disbanding NATO(!)
It’s worrying to see that the IPCC report on climate change concluded that a lot of climate impacts are now unavoidable. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60525591
A hacker group breached nVidia, threatening to release driver source unless they unlock cryptomining functionality on recent video cards. I’m generally pretty negative on crypto-mining; also not a fan of people taking things hostage, even though I’m not big on intellectual property either. I think I’m more on the company’s side here. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/cybercriminals-who-breached-nvidia-issue-one-of-the-most-unusual-demands-ever/
The ownership of the CRISPR patent seems to be with the Broad Institute (MIT/Harvard), invalidating the licenses that the previous presumed owners had given out. I find the idea of Universities owning IP pretty problematic, particularly when public funds are involved. I recognise that in this case IP is significantly a way to provide a funding source for a useful discovery, but I would rather have academia not operate under the IP model and rely on their investments and publicly provided funds.
Biden announced some shifts on gun policy recently; my opinions on issues related to guns are not very strong, but at least based on reading the detailed briefing, none of the changes seem unreasonable. Before I read that, I was concerned about the brief mention of lifting liability shields on gun manufacturers, but provided I understand the detailed summary correctly, this is about manufacturers who try to skirt the restrictions on selling weapons to people who fail background checks. Nothing looks unreasonable to me on its face, but again, I could be happy living in a society that entirely bans guns, one that has reasonable restrictions on them, or one that treats gun rights as being about as unconditional as free speech. This seems to me to be mostly an elaboration of the middle option. Detailed summary here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/23/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-comprehensive-strategy-to-prevent-and-respond-to-gun-crime-and-ensure-public-safety/
Reviewlets
Here comes Niko (video game) - I shouldn’t like this as much as I do. It has no depth, but it’s very silly, isn’t a big commitment, and it’s the kind of game that someone of just about any age could enjoy.
Elden Ring (video game) - I’m pretty early into this; so far, the game needs a lot of work in optimising its graphics stack, but the gameplay is satisfying (not amazing; Nioh is better), the difficulty nicely high, and it’s reasonably pretty. Most disappointing is the music, which is barely there and dull when audible. The intro is also accidentally hilarious given how serious it sounds with all the fictional words and settings we don’t know. I’m hoping I keep enjoying this as I move forward (although I will likely put it down again while I work through Nioh, which I’m not done with yet)
Shapeways nylon/mineral print material - I recently ordered a third 3d print of a biological organism at work, this time using their “natural nylon 6/mineral” material rather than the high precision plastics I used before; this turned out much better; it’s opaque rather than translucent so it’s more pleasant to look at, and the material seems to be stronger so some of the finer details came out better. It’s still not strong enough that the thin whiskers in our dataset were printable, but that’s expected. At least for work like ours, this is probably the right material for a print.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (movie) - The first quarter of this movie had its bright points and looked promising, but then rapidly turned into a steaming pile of shit. I suspect Nora Lum designed her own character and wrote her own lines, and was along with Ben Kingsley’s character, something that should have been cut. The movie couldn’t decide whether to be a comedy film or serious, and in the end veered way beyond the wuxia compromise (which can work well) into “bad-standup wanders into a decent kung-fu movie” territory. Avoid. The (mostly good) actors involved in this should’ve known better.
Free Guy (film) - It’s not a good film, but it’s a fun film. Although it would probably only take moderately more work to make it into both (greatness is out of reach though). I liked the premise - it’s another exploration of the idea of NPCs gaining sentience and layered reality, like The Thirteenth Floor or Inception, with some corporate drama tossed in and a few cringe ideas about romance and obsession. Pacing is uneven. But all forgivable, and I’m glad I watched it.
Amusements
On the heartwarming side, someone turns a supermarket lobster into a pet (but the aquarium seems a bit small); Lobsters are surprisingly easy to empathise with -
A video on lockpicking that also helps demonstrate how locks work, by showing a side-view of the whole process:
I’ve never gotten into mindfulness; my pursuit of virtues are focused on different ones; still amused to see an article (by a slightly woo author) suggesting that its pursuit can be negative for some people: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220302-how-mindfulness-can-make-you-a-darker-person
Recent Music
Wardruna - Tyr - More nordic music; this takes awhile to start, but I think it’d be great to be singing it with a lot of other people
Iron and Wine - Arms of a Thief - It may be the amusement above, but the beats and instruments here remind me of looking in on a busy aquarium
Lucious Jackson - Water Your Garden - More complex beats, with a bit of a psychadelic feel
Regina Spektor - One More Time with Feeling - I like the sadness underlying a lot of Spektor’s music; even an upbeat song feels like it’s upbeat after looking backwards over the whole of human history, all the things any human has done to any other human