2023-03-04
Readings
An interestion bioengineering feat - improving plant disease resistance using animal antibodies - https://phys.org/news/2023-03-animal-antibodies-ward-diseases.html
I’m not as convinced as this article on the utility of the discovery, but the possibility of making better use of the visual areas of the blind could be useful in developing assistance technologies - https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-technology-enables.html
Part of a general trend of worries of plastics in our biosphere, this defines an illness for seabirds based on plastic consumption - https://phys.org/news/2023-03-plasticosis-disease-plastic-affecting-seabirds.html
Sociology is often more interesting than it is scientific; with that understood, this offers a theory for how some companies build fanatic fanbases -
Some fantastic investigative journalism demonstrating greenwashing by US petrochemical company Dow: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-plastic-dow-shoes/
Thoughts
The idea of a final technology for a long-lived scientific civilisation is sketchy, but if we accept that dubious idea, then I suspect it would amusingly be causal logistics (amusing because of how logistics is often seen as a field of study) - the abstract study of how differences in early conditions produce specific outcomes, and how to do engineering around this
Internal achievements and external recognition - I recently was reading the intro to a scifi book (not yet enough into it to do a reviewlet this entry) and it opened with a bit of philosophy of one of the characters, and among the things I thought was interesting was an expression that pushed in the opposite direction of where I’ve been moving over the last two decades - the character expressed the idea that the most meaningful or important intellectual work is necessarily documented, and that it’s a waste of time to spend effort in individual undocumented intellectual pursuits; I share the valuation of intellect, but the external side to it is something I’ve steadily lost interest in (not to zero, just to “meh”). It is a privilege and joy to understand the world and struggle with concepts, but just like with art, the audience is not necessary and the mental journey can be enough.
In my view, this commentary on ST:VOY demonstrates what’s wrong with some approaches to worlds of fiction - the author argues that the character of Kes (whom I admittedly didn’t like that much) was problematic because it touched on sensitivities of our society, while I think it’s actually worth doing the thought experiment of how relationships with sapient species with dramatically different lifespans would work. In reality with humans, we have good answers. That’s no reason to avoid hypotheticals. https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2023/02/27/star-trek-voyagers-kes-was-always-going-to-be-problematic/
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with Ukraine struggling to hold on to the city of Bakhmut. Europe is trying to pressure China not to provide military support to Russia
Roel Degamo, a (now former) governor of a province of the Philippines, was shot dead by a militia who invaded his home (a number of other elected officials have been attacked recently in the country)
The Nigerian election from last week resolved with Bola Tinbu (APC party) having won the Presidency
Reviewlets
Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey - Very weird, more of a novelty drink than a normal bourbon. Mixes well with coffee.
Hogwarts Legacy (computer game) - Just started this, with very little Harry Potter background. It started out with a 2005-era-game font, and has some obnoxious “voice one/voice two” new gender politics nonsense, as well as a preamble of creating/linking accounts for some pre-order stuff (I am apparently now a “Ravenclaw”). The gameplay is decent, the voice acting very british, and the gameplay so far looks to have decent depth.
Clyde May’s Straight Bourbon Whiskey - Sweet and floral, it has a lot going on. Perhaps too much. Not bad, but for a whiskey it has a high headache aftermath likeliness for me.
Amusements
I find the idea of the Great American Songbook ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Songbook ), which I looked into because of an overheard conversation on the subway, to be fascinating because it’s so loose a concept as to barely merit a name. Or at least barely merit a name like the one it has. Because described briefly it’s just “a not-well-defined set of the most significant American music of some genres of a certain era”. It’s not obvious something like that would have a name, or needs one. And I can’t think of too many other names of that sort (e.g. is there one for later decades? For a different collection of genres?). So weird.
There are a few different approaches to this math puzzle - I took a conceptual approach, but this video covers mostly a more decompositional approach. Fun either way -
Yip Yip cosplay -
A collection of the St Olaf stories from Golden Girls -
Recent Music
Awful Fall - Stolen Babies - Sounds a lot like Oingo Boingo. Not quite close enough that I’d think they wrote it, but similar flavour
The Happy Meal-Worm - Circus of Dead Squirrels - Death metal alternating with halloween sounds. Oddly likable, even though I listen to almost nothing that sounds like this regularly
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot - There’s a good chance I heard this while I was still in the womb, as it came out two years before I was born and I think I remember my parents playing it occasionally when I was growing up. It’s comfortable, if simple/repetitive. It’s a strange thing that Lightfoot did with the song, more-or-less reporting on a recent disaster
Little Boxes - Malina Reynolds - Fun (if simple) snarky song poking at how the dreams and potential of suburbanites have been captured by the sterile environments they live in