2023-01-07
Readings
Organelle growth in Eukaryotic cells: https://phys.org/news/2023-01-physicists-organelles-random.html
Some of the descriptions in the article on this are bad (we don’t and can’t know for sure that any given Alphabet was the first), but this is a nice article on the discovery of a complete sentence inscribed on a comb in the Canaanite language: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-translate-the-oldest-sentence-written-in-the-first-alphabet-180981101/
Efforts in understanding the composition of Roman concrete: https://techxplore.com/news/2023-01-riddle-roman-concrete-durable.html
A decent explainer on Bertrand Russell’s Paradox, which seems to have a similar flavour to Godel’s Incompleteness: https://www.thecollector.com/bertrand-russell-paradox-explained/
An investigation of supertall residential buildings: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/supertall-mega-skyscraper-building-nyc/672228/
How health-watches can “see through” skin:
Thoughts
I’ve been thinking about something a relative said to their child at a recent family gathering in a restaurant, suggesting they stay out of events not related to them; the specifics of this related to an altercation between other guests and are unimportant except that it looks like an injustice may have been occurring. My gut reaction is that one should be reluctant to get involved in high-commitment ways because it’s easy to misjudge things, rather than blanket unwilling to get involved at any level, but I also wonder if the advice he was giving was specific to children, or maybe even because children are present. We depend on public reactions to things for public safety; this is why one is often safer in public areas than in mostly-deserted ones - because if someone were attacked presumably crowds would gather to intervene. Presumably. But this depends on norms.
An intuition: desperation to preserve some notion of what I know as sanity, in societies for a species that has too many off-ramps from sanity (even including lists of fallacies, which create their own, hopefully smaller, set of pitfalls) and perhaps only has a small portion of society fully having this sanity in reasonable times (meaning times with few polarising distractions)
I recently came across an article by a philosopher called Nussbaum, who made the interesting claim that we have an obligation to find alternatives to predation between other animals, based on the idea that that’s another form of suffering and because we manage the world, we can reduce it. Stated as such, it’s an interesting claim; it doesn’t fully get traction for me because it’s trying to address things that are outside the realms I think of as those of moral significance, but this attitude is not a hard line (at least, I haven’t yet committed to it being so); were it within those bounds I’d have to think about the loss of life-meaning implicit in deciding to change predator species into non-predator ones. Would it be better to eliminate large predators entirely if we want to do that? Still, it does what philosophy should do - it raises troubling questions and introduces interesting doubts
Current Events
The Russian invasion/occupation of Ukraine continues, with Russians continuing to shell residential infrastructure during holidays there; delivery of armoured troop carriers from western powers is expected, while tank deliveries are being considered.
Croatia joined the Euro monetary union and the Schengen agreements
China, having given up on hardline zero-Covid policies after strong protests, is now suffering alarming rates of spread of Covid in several areas, causing strong protests
Burma is holding talks with its various armed separatist groups in an attempt to change these from military into political conflicts
Reviewlets
The Stainless Steel Rate Saves the World (novel in series) - It’s easy with the series to forget that it’s set in the far future, until this edition partly sets itself in 1970s Earth due to some time-travel shenanigans. It’s fun and interesting to get a contrast from the “future mostly pacfied galactic civilisation” world seen in the first two books, and the writing still manages to be fresh. I liked it. It even had some mild similarity to the last Jason Pargin novel which I was finally wrapping up this week too.
Consider Phlebas (novel, first in a series) - Although this is first in a series I started out pretty lost; there’s lots of background that the reader needs to figure out for themselves. It’s an interesting world so far, I’m about a third of the way through the book, and it has me wondering if Ian Banks spent a lot of time in submarines.
Vineapple Cafe (Brooklyn Coffeeshop) - I visited Vineapple for the first time since before Covid, nervous to see that they claim to be under new ownership. And it in fact hardly resembled the cozy academic coffeeshop I enjoyed (except for being the same physical space and being a Coffeeshop); it’s now much more restaurant-y and looks to be shedding its “come in, sit for a long time and order things occasionally” earlier norm. A disappointing replacement.
Amusements
This series has been a fun way to find good new (weird) music; the idea of 9/8 time being grouped a few different ways is a fun concept:
Highest points in each US State (partly educational, partly amusement, but leaning towards the latter):
3 Alcoholic beverages from Scifi:
Recent Music
Jambi - Tool - Found this through the youtube series above - it’s closer to metal than I normally listen to, but from the weird time signature to the echo sounds, it’s pretty cool
Setting Sail, Coming Home - Darren Korb - This was used in a videogame called Bastion (which was pretty good), and is a duet where the two voices in the song can be decomposed well into independent songs (also present on the same soundtrack). Fun quirk, good song
Spice - Tokyo Karankoron - This is the closing theme to an Anime series about cooking, and while the voices in parts of it resemble a thick garden, the longer cuts of it have little differences between repeats of the sections that I appreciate