2022-12-10
Readings
Another mechanism of aging possibly understood: https://phys.org/news/2022-12-aging-driven-unbalanced-genes-ai.html
Hinting at gene therapy for people with certain heart conditions, a gene that controls scarring in heart events has been identified: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-scientists-gene-scarring-hearts.html
Progress towards understanding one of the mechanisms by which neurons involved in initial pain perception get signal: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-hints-potentially-crucial-role-stress.html
A talk on Perlin Noise and world generation:
On the ongoing hunt to pin down the properties and find dark matter: https://phys.org/news/2022-12-explore-ways-dark.html
Developments in far-right American legal theory (raising the issue of how essential a belief in rules and norms to coexistence, and how recent developments on the right and the left threaten this): https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/09/revolutionary-conservative-legal-philosophy-courts-00069201
Thoughts
Part of the environment in which jurisprudence operates is the realisation that laws (broadly understood) can’t cover all human interaction; they either are too simple to work, too narrow to cover everything, or too expansive to be remembered. A functional society depends on laws, but also on cultivating certain virtue and behaviour of citizens, from which intuitions generally compatible with laws come about, covering most potential conflict before it gets to the courts. This understood, the lack of centrality in the informal side of things mean that these derived rules can differ between individuals (most often ideally just between a majority that’s operating through logic about what produces good results, and a minority that’s using motivated reasoning in pursuit of self-interest). Recently I saw some sidewalk chalking offering a service called Linedudes, offering a paid service for people to wait in line for oneself, and thought about such a conflict - a lot of people, myself included, would refuse to let a linedude swap with their paying customer in lines. Lines are generally not covered by laws, and it’s hard to know the result of such a conflict; my hope is that rejection of the premise of that business would be universal enough as to make it fall apart as people pay but fail to get what they want. Or get yelled at enough.
Indigenous Knowledge: Bad for NZ, bad for US: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/12/02/what-is-indigenous-knowledge-and-why-does-it-matter-integrating-ancestral-wisdom-and-approaches-into-federal-decision-making/
Over the last week we’ve had some releases by Elon Musk claiming to be a bombshell on how Twitter used to work to benefit the Democratic Party, possibly showing a misuse of government power along the way; Musk did his release alongside a paid stooge, Matthew Taibbi; as someone hostile to Musk but generally also not friendly to the way Twitter was, I read through the initial release and it appears to be a big nothing, because it covers times when the Dems were not in power, shows no evidence of elected officials doing what Musk claimed, and also openly showed it as a mechanism by which both political parties (again, not elected officials) aimed to correct certain kinds of dangerous misinformation and blatant lies during elections. There’s been a stampede of people eager to believe it showed far more than it did and asking why mainstream media didn’t cover it, which largely indicates the noncareful.
I was recently amused to see a takedown of the business model of EstablishedTitles, which was doing a scam by which they pretended to sell property in Scotland to people so they could pretend to be legally Lords and Ladies by Scottish customary law, marketing the hell out of the idea on Youtube with paid in-video adverts (done through creators, in a weird but now widespread end-run around Youtube’s ad model) - I’d like to see creators do “anti-adverts”, sticking blurbs in their videos demonstrating that most VPN services, stuff like this, and most other things advertised that way provide very little value to most people:
Current Events
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, with the aftermath of a Ukraine strike on military facilities in Russia echoing through international forums, Russia’s destruction of civilian infrastructure leaving large cities in the dark, and Belarus trying to figure out how tightly to align with Russia; meanwhile the US made an extremely foolish prisoner exchange of an arms dealer for a foolish basketball player who brought drugs into Russia.
The Iran protests continue, with former PM Khatami weighing in with sympathy towards the protests - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63871863
Indonesia implemented a number of changes to its legal system to bring it more in line with Sharia, likely with long-term damage to tourism and immigration
Peru had a conflict between a President who claimed to dismiss the country’s congress, and congress impeaching that President. The nation’s congress proved more able to get its way, with him landing in jail after having attempted flight to Mexico
Reviewlets
Deathworld (sci-fi novel) - Interesting ideas and worldbuilding, combined with hamfisted dialogue and a heavy moral message. Overall it’s worth it, but toning things down a bit would make it a more enjoyable read. It apparently has a sequel, not sure if I’ll dig into that (the story concluded nicely; no sequel really feels necessary)
Kogane Ramen (Manhattan restaurant) - Not easy to spot, but roomy, stylish, and has a good variety of Ramen and sake. Good food, served in very large bowls
Amusements
If Scooby-Doo was Latino:
Musical analysis of the Mr Rogers Neighbourhood theme:
Explaining technical/scientific topics sometimes gets like this:
Recent Music
Retrospect - Pride and Fall - Late darkwave
BWV1041 (allegro moderato) - Bach - I’ve never, over the decades I’ve known this song, decided whether the octave shifts are cheesy or not; maybe it started out cheesy and doing descent at the same time as ascent was a way to “solve” that?
Eternity - Do as Infinity - Sentimental
La Serenissima - Loreena Mckennitt - Sounds almost medieval in its sound structures; a meditation more than a song