2022-09-03
Readings
It’s hard to celebrate new advances in “data compression” when they look like this; knowing roughly how GANs work makes me worry about data hallucinations, which are interesting but troublesome because they’re so plausible. If we could invent binoculars that occasionally insert plausible fake things into distant views, would that really be a plus? It is nontheless fascinating https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-gan-architecture-heavily-compressed-music.html
Gender-based scent affects lab mouse behaviour, with the mechanisms presumably understood now: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01146-x
All about blueberry agriculture:
Apparently the common idea of different styles of learning was nonsense, probably buoyed by the human tendency to find ways to feel different from each other (same as astrology):
Efforts to make lung donation more efficient: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-treatment-result-donor-lungs.html
A few months old, but efficient hydrogen extraction from water has a lot of interesting potential: https://news.ucsc.edu/2022/02/hydrogen-production.html
Thoughts
While I consider Project Veritas and its founder untrustworthy, I’ve also seen a variety of progressives in industry putting a lot of effort into embedding probably-illegal racial or sexual preferences into their hiring; sometimes explicit special programmes to hire people from certain minorities, sometimes for regular jobs. All it would’ve taken for something like this to happen would be be a tape recorder. I wish some more reputable group had taken this recording, but I think it’s good to raise attention to it. https://www.ncregister.com/news/honestly-i-don-t-want-to-hire-catholics-connecticut-school-administrator-says-in-undercover-video
I’m disturbed to see another apology for something that’s fine, from the current owners of Dungeons and Dragons, over a race in their fantasy series. The content they’re apologising for is fiction, not out of line with a lot of other good fictional settings (e.g. the Vorta from Star Trek). The apology is more progressive cringe; I wish the series were in better hands where they’d publish the content and ignore whatever progressives actually care about this stuff. https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/statement-hadozee
Sometimes big journals screw up. I consider this to be a terrible article that should have been laughed out of peer review; it’s a frontal attack on the use of PCA in the sciences, talking about and overblowing issues that everyone already knows about, evaluating the tool based on standards it makes up on the fly. It’s so bad it’s funny. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14395-4
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with Ukraine having regained a small amount of its territory, Russia trying to maintain the size of its military given losses, and western-sent weapons helping to (slowly) make a dent against the Russian aggressors. I think it’s a moral duty to push Russia out of Ukraine, through direct military engagement ideally. I do not support peace efforts that leave any of Ukraine, including Crimea, under Russian occupation. I am pleased to see Russia cutting off oil to Europe, as this hopefully will dissolve the last reluctance of major European powers to send weapons against Russia.
The US government, after several high-level legislators visited Taiwan over the last few months, has put together a weapons package to sell to the country to aid in deterring an invasion by the PRC. This is in response to increased signs that China wishes to invade sometime in the near future; I approve of the US steps, and would prefer explicit recognition of Taiwan as a nation and a firm commitment to defend it.
Iraqi Shia militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr announced a retirement from politics, leading to widespread uncertainty about his (or his movenent’s) future involvement in forming a government, Iranian influence over Iraq, and whether the violence and disruption his movement created will be followed by the same from other movements.
Pakistan suffered large-scale death and destruction from extreme flooding, leading to widespread (if meager) international aid; this happening during unrest related to protests over the ouster of its previous (unqualified cricketer) President
Chile is prepared to vote on a new Constitution to replace the Pinochet-era current one, although the current proposed Constitution doesn’t have a lot of popular support (over some radical provisions given to special interest groups) and will likely fail
Reviewlets
Agents of Dreamland (book, re-review) - Having finished this up, it feels very disjointed; not sure if this is another Tad Williams type thing where plot elements eventually come together, or it’s just a swarm of somewhat-related short stories through the whole series. Some interesting lovecraft-ish stuff going on, set in the modern era, but I’m still confused by it.
Perdido Street Station (book) - This feels like a proper novel set in some strange D&D world; I’m still very early into it but there are a lot of neat ideas I’ve bumped into so far. This dives more into the interpersonal rather than the world’s specifics, which I see as a strength.
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (game) - This is a remaster of a game written when I was in High School (in 1998); unlike a lot of other Nippon Ichi remasters, they put some reasonable effort into improving this one, and it shows. The graphics look good, the audio is clean. Beyond that, it’s a pretty cute game that reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Downsides are that it’s too easy and all the dungeons feel very same-y. But it’s not that long of a game, so the downsides are all managable. The translation team also snuck some sly humour in that shows up in surprising places.
Constant Rabbit (novel) - I gave up on this one pretty early - I like much of the author’s other works, but I found the tensions the author was setting up to be stressful and unpleasant.
Amusements
I keep finding myself returning to the sister’s recital part of this, and being faintly irritated that in the series they ended with a fairly dull bit. I wonder where the original video for the recital part came from.
Somewhere between a good lesson and a funny quip, a coworker who is raising kids recently posted a link to this and it stuck a bit in my head:
I speak a bit of Japanese, and I’m struggling to manage singing along to this (following the tempo and the compression of words to fit it is quite difficult):
Recent Music
Another World - Beborn Beton - This is one of the bands I lost track of when I moved from one music streaming service to another, and song that was good for dancing at the Goth-Industrial clubs I used to frequent, decades ago.
Am I Awake - They Might Be Giants - One of the odder pieces from near the end of the time of my interest in this band; unusual in that unlike most music I like, I have trouble remembering the structure of the song well enough to play it in my head from memory if I haven’t heard it more than a day ago. It’s a weird song.
Soulshine - Allman Brothers - A fine piece of jazz-rock, and one of the easiest-to-listen-to songs in my regular rotation