2023-04-15
Readings
Progress towards a strong Alzheimer’s treatment: https://news.mit.edu/2023/new-peptide-may-hold-potential-alzheimers-treatment-0413
In early times of the universe, much stronger gravitational waves may have been able to create light: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-physicists-gravity.html
Computational methods to evaluate large numbers of chemical structures are not new; the application to Metal-Organic Frameworks could have a lot of applications: https://chemistry.mit.edu/chemistry-news/scientists-use-computational-modeling-to-design-ultrastable-materials/
How backroom deals for access to content, between hosting sites and studios, restrict small content producers far more than copyright law requires: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4057573
Bad code, particularly bad code that talks to hardware or networks, is a security flaw; interesting to see that play out with misdesigns in a radio client for Windows PCs: https://hackaday.com/2023/04/07/arbitrary-code-execution-over-radio/
Sufficiently pure water may be sufficient as a fluid component of detectors for neutrinos: https://scitechdaily.com/pure-water-breakthrough-in-neutrino-detection/
There are a few communities that I think are actively worth disrupting over their speech (that met a very high bar to get there; consider pro-anorexia groups or kidnap-bounty setups as the flagbearer); generally we should want communities with varied views and interests to coexist without censors getting in the way. Many platforms have censored far beyond this (most community standards), and communities have in turn found ways to dodge machine enforcement of speech with replacement words. None of this is new; this is just a nice survey (that lacks my opinions): https://phys.org/news/2023-04-algospeak-version-linguistic-subterfuge.html
Using bacteria as part of a cancer therapy: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-skin-colonizing-bacteria-topical-cancer-therapy.html
I learned some Japanese in High School, but I missed learning about the topic of topicality in sentence order (or perhaps I learned it then and have forgotten since):
Thoughts
What are the arguments supporting the “don’t piss off judges in their courtroom because they can screw you up” idea? While I confess to enjoying watching people mouth off at judges and get screwed over, I wonder if I should. It sounds like royalty, and it’s an area where the dignity of one person is protected by the power of the state. The best argument I’ve thought of so far is that giving judges this power enables them to keep order in the courtroom, and to keep the court record free of insults and other nastiness that distract from the legal matters at hand. The culture of compliance and judge-pettiness, ordinarily anathema to our society, actually are needed to make this arena function. Is that enough to justify treating courts like airports, as a zone where many ordinary liberties are curtailed? Maybe. But it gives me unease. Maybe it should even if we decide it’s worth it, to help us remain wary of applying ideas like this in places where they lack such a strong justification.
I’m often irritated that for some people, the First Amendment protection of religious belief extends to religious acts; they see it as a civic good that whenever a faith wants to do something the law should get out of the way. The practice equates to special privileges for religion. The healthy way to approach these issues, I think, is to have the law be indifferent to faith; if there are secular reasons that some of a religious community’s desires are forbidden, and the law doesn’t seem to be written with a particular animus towards the faith, then the law stands. Coverage of the recent amending of noise codes in Minneapolis specifically to make Muslim calls to prayer permitted in some edge cases where they’re at unreasonable hours has been particularly bad on this front.
It’s good to see some pushback against the (IMO stupid) calls for a pause on “AI” development; the pause would either:
A) Be extended indefinitely because people will realise it didn’t do anything yet and people can be cowards
B) Do nothing and end
C) Be used to create crippling restrictions on the technology, which is not something we should want (in fact, we should want this stuff open-sourced and the existing restrictions optional for new deploys)
There’s a particularly interesting “how to think” lesson about 2/3 of the way through this video at a security conference, where the point was made that too many people are distracted by the intended features of a mechanism and they neglect to think about what the mechanism can be made to do; it connects to another idea I’ve advocated that we should, for social movements, not judge them solely on what problems they claim to address but also to weigh harms they cause, potential mismatch between what they do and what they claim to do, and otherwise not fall prey to marketing speak. It’s worth seeking the generality between these ideas.
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with fighting continuing for the former city of Bakhmut; a leak of US intelligence on the war revealed little that was truly new, but exposes worrying weakness of the US Intelligence system; France, likewise, indicated its weakness on foreign policy with a recent summit in China. Finland is building fortifications on its border with Russia, while China’s provision of military gear to Russia has been revealed (and contrasts, perhaps, with its public statement that it is not selling arms to either side)
Sudan may be undergoing the early stages of a civil war, as fighting broke out between its regular military and one of its special forces branches (which has claimed capture of some land)
ESA launched a mission called JUICE to explore the moons of Jupiter
China has conducted further military drills to encircle Taiwan, sanctioned American leaders who have met with Taiwanese politicians, and announced it intends to inspect ships entering Taiwanese waters; I worry that invasion may be immanent
Modi and the BJP have been “cleaning” history textbooks in India to create preferred (and false) narratives friendly to the hindutva movements: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/06/indian-government-accused-of-rewriting-history-after-edits-to-schoolbooks
Another instance of political violence in a country that has rarely seen it: The PM of Japan was attacked with an explosive at a campaign event: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/15/explosive-thrown-at-japans-pm-at-campaign-event-00092204
Polls
Pew on American views of China - I see China as an unfriendly rival with a shitty political system and hope they don’t become an enemy (their likely invasion of Taiwan would make them one and their support of Russia’s invasion as well as North Korea’s regime push them in the wrong direction): https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/04/12/americans-are-critical-of-chinas-global-role-as-well-as-its-relationship-with-russia/
Pew on pay equity in couples: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same/
Reviewlets
Evil West (video game) - The rare game engine that’s middling, combined with some nice worldbuilding, and a lot of style. The game is very linear. The end result is it once would’ve been seen as amazing but now it’s just not particularly memorable. I’d probably read it as a comic book, but there are too many excellent games out there to make this a way to spend my hours. The game’s decision to have what little path branching it has be so close to the main path is just funny.
Blacktail (video game) - Pretty, and I like its willingness to explore dark subject matter, but it’s held back by its game engine (to a more frustrating degree than Evil West). Much easier to step away from this one.
The Chant (video game) - Absolutely full of interesting ideas and visuals, but hampered by a really bad game engine, a slow walking speed, and bad gameplay.
Substack Notes (software service: A Twitter clone) - This is a promising-but-clearly-not-ready Twitter clone, with a very similar interface that’s better in places and way worse in others, a very clumsy follow procedure (tied unfortunately to Substack’s existing newsletter model). With a bit more work (and if they realise the problems), it could be an entirely workable replacement, but will enough users try it to get critical mass?
Phenteramine (Weight loss med) - Note that I think it’d be foolish to let this review have readers have a conversation with their doctor. I started on this this week, having been stuck in the 230-240lbs range for the last several years and being interested in getting closer to a healthy weight of about 180. I am presently unable to combine it with exercise due to an ankle injury. It seems remarkably effective but I’m having issues that are probably side effects from it that may lead me to stop
Kangaroo Notebook - Novel - Feels like a revisit of some of the ideas from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, by a famous Japanese novelist. Very enjoyable; magical realism is a genre I enjoy and this is a good example. Released in Japan a little before I was born.
Amusements
This is an old collection of very early video from NYC in 1911 that waas made into a film, and then recently very mildly colourised and upscaled. Incremental coolness, showing NYC more vividly from that era:
This was written to be serious but it flops heavily enough in the intro that it’s just funny; it claims to introduce a “new physics of life”, offering bad justification as to why we need that
“We can’t really explain what the difference is between a living lump of matter and a dead one” - Um
It describes Newton’s universe with immutable laws and darwin’s with changes in permutations of matter as somehow being in conflict
It sees “time being reinvented many times through the history of physics”, neglecting that time itself isn’t what was reinvented but rather our understanding of it has deepend
There are more bits of nonsense in the paper; extracting more amusement is left as an exercise for the reader: https://singularityhub.com/2023/04/13/modern-physics-cant-explain-life-but-a-new-theory-which-says-time-is-fundamental-might/
An exploration of a past marketing campaign - the Noid from Domino’s Pizza:
How sooted firefighter suits are cleaned:
Recent Music
Oblivion - Annetenna - A depressing and catchy song by a band that (I think?) is a spin-off of Ednaswap (which did the original version of Torn, covered by Imbruglia). Has lived for years in my head.
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash - I don’t think this song will ever be forgotten, nor will a different recording win out; the song also has an interesting history in that it (like many songs) was written by someone other than the person who popularised it (June Carter), but years after she wrote it, they married. Also, unsurprisingly, the song has nothing to do with the geographic superregion associated with volcanoes.
Rock-Paper-Scissors - Katzenjammer - A very pleasant pop-folk song by a Norwegian-but-English-language band with the usual subtle and strange accents that means. Has a music video that reminds me of the Monkees TV show
Doom soundtrack - Mick Gordon - Recently have been doing nostalgia tours for the music for the original Doom game, which was part of my childhood. Has a surprising amount of variety, and benefits from targeting sound hardware past the chiptunes era