2023-06-10
Readings
When this develops further into being a standard that devices rely on, it will have made it, but it’s impressive to see the effort towards energy capture from human motion moving towards something that could power devices: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-wearable-textile-captures-energy-body.html
A lot of the time I’m wary of countries where archaeology/history is being done controlling output of such research; this is one of the rare times when they’re right and pushing back against cultural-political nuttiness of the researchers - it’s unfortunate that we’ve reached a point when corrupting political trends have made this possible, but good that Egypt is doing a pushback here: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-bans-archaeology-team-mime-scli-intl/index.html
The use of ultrasound to put ever-more-complex creatures into hibernation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ultrasound-puts-animals-into-a-curious-hibernationlike-state/
Efforts to control how cells create tissues: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-scientists-3d-bio-printing-organoids-hydrogels.html
Copyright and law often are at ends in terms of public interest - cases of building regulations being under copyright (so not available for inspection) are notorious. It’s good to see such concerns moved aside in investigation of police training materials: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/victory-california-police-instructors-cant-claim-copyright-protections-block
Thoughts
Why I see wokeism as populist, while some conservatives see it as elitist - In seeking the good, we can follow numerous tacks; they’re not exclusive, but spending our time and messaginjg governs the practical, while our messaging generally makes choices on what has the effects we want. Let us identify three foci (there may be other ways to cut this pie): great leaders, changes in broad social norms, and changes in laws/policy. Technocrats like me believe the public good primarily comes from good policy - we think great leaders are passing and rarely all that great, and social change is rarely unambiguously good and pursued too rigorously destroys vesting. Note as well that change, contrary to simple perspectives, is rarely single-directional or even easy to analyse in terms of its impacts - the labels of progress and regress (as much as the left and the right are well-differentiated by idolising the future or the past, respectively), are oversimplistic and offer no concrete guidance for what changes we should seek. Wokeism being more about social norms than either leaders or policies, it doesn’t fit into the relatively nondisputed grounds of technocrats-liking-policy or populists-liking-charismatic-leaders. I mistrust social change unless it is fairly slow-paced and noninjurious to established and good value-commitments (wokeism fails both of these criteria), and I see it as being more populist than technocratic because, like with the populist leader, it is a matter of “the feels”, lodging in the heart of people, being hard to iterate on, and hard to evaluate. I partly agree with the critique from conservatives that it has a partial origin in academia, but only partly because it both stands in opposition to academic norms of free inquiry and because it comes from a narrow part of academia that was always suspect (sociology and related disciplines) because of its generally open embrace of social-political advocacy rather than empiricism and scholasticism.
I liked the essay here about the morality of creation, in a hypothetical where someone had the power to shape reality into narratives and used it to achieve their ends - it’s a fun hypothetical. But there’s an angle to it that I think leads me away from the conclusion that responsibility is assignable (at least towards uncertainty) - that narratives are an unavoidable part of thought and that restrictions on one’s crafting of them (assuming it’s the narrative and not the typewriter that leads Alan Wake’s ideas to become real) are impossible to expect of people. Right now we have the luxury of not living in a universe where our thoughts generally have large effects, and where our actions and our thoughts in the vast majority of cases are quite distinct (human arousal being a rare counterexample, another being that it is possible through thought to work oneself into a state of elevated heartrate and perspiration). If our thoughts directly and broadly impacted the outer world, maybe we couldn’t/shouldn’t be responsible for such impacts because discipline over one’s thoughts may be impossible for most.
Do difficulties (health issues, financial issues, etc) make us kinder or the opposite? This kind of question fits into a broad category of questions where I think it's possible to make a solid argument either way. We could start with the idea that kindness and empathy are enhanced by knowing what people are going through, or the idea that frustration leads us away from care of others towards a focus on ourselves. This reinforces the importance of exposing what seems like good arguments to a variety of competing perspectives, so we don’t reach inappropriate certainty on what looks like good reasoning but is untested.
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with a likely-Russian-conducted set of attacks on dams (most famously but not only Kherson) in occupied parts of Ukraine leading to flooding. Meanwhile, Ukraine is apparently beginning its counteroffensive, hopefully beginning to retake occupied land.
The conflict between parts of the military occupying Sudan has paused in the capital, allowing aid to reach civilians in the area
Canadian wildfires over the last month, due to an unusually dry season (and possibly inadequate foresting practices) have resulted in destruction of homes across Canada as well as smoke plumes blanketing cities in the eastern US.
Reviewlets
Long Mars (novel in scifi series) - Recently started on this one, enjoying how it keeps building on scifi ideas while exploring well their societal impact and likely emergent politics; I like works that mix a focus on ideas and characters while touching on big themes, and this does a good job at it.
The Culture (scifi series as a whole) - I hopped on this based on a mention by Ken MacLeod, a sci-fi author I already admire; this series is more tech-optimistic without being tech-utopian than MacLeod’s works, and has a single idea that I find really compelling - that of the Mind - superadvanced AIs that mostly live on huge spaceships and orbitals that are kinda-sorta the real intellectual force behind their civilisation, without completely overshadowing biologicals. It’s also impressive that the series can work over vast stretches of time and space without needing common characters to tie it together. I’m sad to see the end of it (the author died in 2013); thinking of it now being a disconnected canon produces a real pang of angst.
Chesterton’s Gateway - A collection of Ian Chesterton’s essays, edited by Ethan Nicolle - Chesterton means a lot more to Nicolle than he does to me, but the essays (with Nicolle’s commentary) helps paint a picture of his intellectual world, and I can appreciate that. I’m not sure how interesting this would be to most people, but I liked it.
Amusements
A strange and funny story of a lawyer who used ChatGPT as a substitute for doing real legal research, and how the results may see him face serious sanctions:
Old (and disturbing, but funny) Onion story imagining Lars on Trier having made Danish tourism videos. Also amusingly, in Dansk.
Fascinating read on “The Devil Wears Prada”, and in particular how the messages between the film and the book differ:
Recent Music
April - Deep Purple - Like a western rock ballad, with a little riff that reminds me of one of the early Zelda games. Also amusing to see, in this discussion here, someine disagreeing with their past self of 8 years prior on the Zelda influence: https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/1orn83/til_the_zelda_theme_was_inspired_by_a_deep_purple/
Cucho - Mario Bauza - I’ve been getting into Afro-Cuban jazz; the variety of rhythms and transitions between them are interesting in ways most music is at least a little bit dull
Days Go By - Dirty Vegas - An unforgettable music video, and an atmospheric piece that I like having on in the background. I’ve liked this piece since I first heard it, ages ago.