2023-01-20
Readings
Efforts to revise food standards to remove presence of microplastics in drinking water: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/getting-forever-chemicals-out-of-drinking-water-is-expensive/
And sensors to detect other kinds of contaminants in drinking water: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-scientists-luminescent-sensor-chemicals.amp
A better understanding of molecular distributions at water-ion surfaces: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-molecule-discovery-contradicts-textbook.amp
Concerns that there are bad players in the field scientific publication offering bribes to editors to get papers into journals: https://www.science.org/content/article/paper-mills-bribing-editors-scholarly-journals-science-investigation-finds
Donor influence on Universities is worrying; particular claims of it are hard to judge from the outside but researchers should be able to know that their institution will not bend to specific demands for influence over research. If that’s uncertain then it’s a problem. https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-01-16/researcher-claims-harvard-bowed-to-meta-i-got-pushed-out-after-a-500-million-donation-from-the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative.html?outputType=amp
Interesting piece on odds, betting, and the difficulty in judging obvious mistakes versus risky bets in business and where responsibilities like: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/01/17/sports-bets-errors-payouts/
Laser pulse communication as a means of communcation and location on Luna: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-laser-instrument-nasa-lro-successfully.html
The reason for intrusive r is to break up sound clusters that don’t work well in the English language:
Thoughts
I’m coming to believe in a specialisation fallacy - that technologies specialised for a purpose are necessarily better than general-purpose tools that can meet that purpose. This might make sense for ideas of fairness for superheroes - should the Flash be faster than Superman? Maybe it’d be good writing if the answer is yes. But would a dedicated car and road for camping trips make more sense than a general purpose vehicle? Would special effort needed for specialised development leave room for optimisations? Does existing software that everyone has an interest in optimising instead get a lot of hard-won quality that new devoted efforts will have a tough time matching? I suspect the last point is true. For databases and everything else. A dedicated designed-from-scratch graph database will often not be better than a really good general database that’s been around for a long time. Just because something is specialised doesn’t mean it’s better. And maybe the Flash isn’t faster than Superman even though being fast is his thing.
I think it’d be a shame if so much were written and easily accessible that people respond to it by not writing - philosophical musings, technical musings, and all other kinds of musings are still a good habit to get into even if they can be indexed and found by other people; the literary life is worth living even if the scale of human civilisation and indexing advancements make the novelty of the effort impossible to believe in. We do it because what it makes us, not always because it might in some way change the world.
Current Events
Ukraine - Ukraine has had some success recently in achieving air control over their territory, striking at planes and ground positions of the Russian invaders. Russia continues to tighten control over critiques of its invasion with threats of property seizure and arrests
Israel continues its invasion of Gaza, while the ruling coalition in Israel shows signs of falling apart over disagreements over handling the war; Bibi’s relatively hardline position no longer has broad support from his cabinet. Western criticism mounts as videos (from CNN and other western media) emerge of the intentional destruction of cemetaries and IDF soldiers misusing captured homes and mocking Palestinians.
India is set to celebrate a far-right power grab with a temple complex built over the ruins of a mosque destroyed by Hindu fanatics decades ago
Guatemala’s president-elect Arevalo was sworn into office after efforts by its legislature to prevent the inauguration and limit presidential powers
Efforts to remove American fascist leader and former president Donald Trump from the ballot in several states over his role in the insurrection that endangered Congress are being tested in US courts, while Trump continues to sell revenge on his enemies as a reason to elect him
Japan landed two rovers and a lander on Luna, although the lander appears to be suffering a malfunction in its power systems
Polls
Some polling over last year’s US Supreme Court ruling limiting affirmative action ( https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/16/supreme-court-affirmative-action-00135787 ) - I find it weird where it came from, maybe jurisprudentially weird, but I support the result of ending affirmative action. Not with any specific timeline in mind, but sometime around now or the near future seems a good time to lift the policy and have legal/policy no longer stack the deck to get us to policy/legal colourblindness is appropriate. Departing from that for a time can be justified in severe circumstances, and slavery and years of legal disadvantaging was a severe circumstance, but that cannot be a reason to counterbalance it indefinitely. Deviance from what’s generally the right thing must have clear and achievable triggers, ideally simply a timer that’s not in the deep future, for its end
A really interesting poll ( https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/01/18/language-and-traditions-are-considered-central-to-national-identity/ ) on how people across the world see national identity; to me, being able to speak the common language is important but it’s not sufficient (otherwise the Anglophone world would all have a common citizenship); more important is alignment with the laws and values of the country and having a commitment to (legally) live there for most of one’s life. I think of nationality like a family, based on these things. Note the distinction between being able to speak the common language, and using it as one’s primary language (which I don’t see as important at all). Given these things, I’m wary of the idea of dual-nationality; I haven’t (yet) taken a firm stance against it but I think of dual citizens as being partly foreign.
Policy Focus
Regarding the continual efforts ( https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/01/19/house-republicans-reintroduce-bill-to-repeal-death-tax.html ) by our right-leaning politicians in the US to repeal estate taxes (meaning taxes on wealth left on death to an inheritor), I think estate taxes are among the more fair forms of taxation and efforts to remove them are unwarranted. This is usually sold to the public as a way to protect farms and other small family land-dependent businesses, but there are clear ways to protect those groups if that’s desirable (unclear if it is) without creating loopholes that are too large - have any leniency cap at a certain amount and be only viable for work-related property (with a gross income minimum) and only if the property has been owned for at least a decade before the transfer and have any subsequent sale of the property within two decades of the death face the tax. I suspect it’s not really about farms and ranches though, it’s about the wealthy wanting to pass wealth to generations that haven’t earned it and not wanting that taxed
DEI is a management fad that I dislike for several reasons; it’s good to see efforts to prevent funds from being spent on it, although it’s unfortunate that it’s people like DeSantis that are spearheading the effort as it risks tainting similar efforts elsewhere as being a far-right thing rather than just a not-progressive thing. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna134398
Reviewlets
Kairo (video game) - An interactive weird dream with no explanation and an ancient-feeling engine, it’s interesting for (just) a little bit
Unmetal (video game) - A fairly stupid and silly Metal Gear parody that’s still enjoyable
Dos Toros (Manhattan restaurant) - addendum to review, this week I learned that while their website allows you to put in an online delivery, not all stores actually deliver and your food will just sit at the restaurant forever unless you call them for a refund. Bad experience.
Amusements
It’s weird to see tools for cheating in videogames to be integrated into monitors, where they’ll be difficult to detect (although games might ask the OS to identify the attached monitor and refuse to run on these models): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/the-5-most-interesting-pc-monitors-from-ces-2024/
A new French law is requiring small towns across the country to name all their streets, to reduce confusion and simplify postal distribution: https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/French-village-plans-to-finally-number-its-houses-and-name-streets
There was a recent outcry over US federal efforts to nudge states to stop using humour and pop culture references in road signs; I haven’t seen these signs in person as I don’t live in that part of the country and rarely drive, but I like the idea of them. Most of them anyhow; I’m not going to understand most of the references. https://ktar.com/story/5558081/no-feds-arent-banning-humorous-messages-on-arizona-freeway-signs/
Turtle stalks cat:
Cool glass igloos in Finland:
The educational rapper that helps Australians learn to spell (seen in the intrusive r video above):
Recent Music
Dangerous - Roxette - A song I grew up with that partly defined what I thought of as attractive for women and men (the other songs on the CD were also quite good)
La Diabla - Xavi - Heard a snippet of this in a video that mentioned it was topping charts, and it’s great to have such an interesting and complex maybe-pop-flamenco piece do so well.
La Aurora - Arcangel - Feels like a meditation on something