2023-08-26
(I will soon be travelling for vacation, and will likely miss the next entry)
Readings
Another mechanism for how cells control gene expression to respond to short-term needs: https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-previously-unknown-cells-proteins.amp
Radiation belts around brown dwarfs may often resemble Jupyter’s radiation belt (arxiv link is to avoid paywall, this is published in Science Magazine): https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06453
Mechanisms for electrical properties of strange metals: https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-mechanism-characteristic-properties-strange.amp
Direct observation of neutrinos from the Large Hadron Collider (opening the door to a lot of interesting further research): https://phys.org/news/2023-08-neutrinos-cern-large-hadron-collider.html
The perfect toilet, possibly reducing the need for water flush: https://techxplore.com/news/2023-08-silicon-infused-3d-toilet-bowl-repels.html
Mechanisms of how immune cells lead to brain inflammation and neuron death in Alzheimer’s: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-human-cell-based-3d-reveals-insights.html
It was interesting to hear about how soil colour is a highly organised and meaningful thing in geology; it makes sense once one hears about it and thinks it through, just novel the first time:
Thoughts
The problems with “nationalising AI” ( https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/20/its-time-to-nationalize-ai-00111862 ), which I consider an unrealistic approach to an unsolvable maybe-a-problem-maybe-not:
Machine Learning is not actually that centralised, with the needed hardware to do something interesting being not that out-of-reach, particularly when crowdsourced, and with finding ways to train models more efficiently being an area of active research. The other side, inference, is relatively cheap, and perhaps things between will come to dominate
Efforts to centralise (regulation, resources, whatever) will likely put the US at an enormous competitive disadvantage, and just cause whatever research would happen not happen here. “AI in America” is mostly meaningless. There’s just AI.
The model he’s using to think about this - nuclear regulation - has no resemblance whatsoever to AI. There are no “critical domestic AI resources”. There’s nothing to seize. And no commission could possibly manage all the uses for these technologies.
OpenToDebate on “Would you erase a bad memory?” - One of the things I find unsettling about the question is that the widespread ability to literally erase rather than just emotionally recontextualise past experiences amounts to rewriting of history; cognitive liberty resonates strongly with me (although the point was well-made that excess self-direction can limit growth), but the loss of historical coherence (to the extent that we even have it given historical insufficiency and memory loss and death) is terrifying. I found grappling with this to be distracting me from the debate:
Pitchforks, Swords, and Quills - how to escape “who has power” and move towards “what should the rules be”. The most important advance in society is the reasonably-justified advance from concerns over who rules to concerns over what the rules are. Reasonably-justified because laws are rarely perfectly administered, but when they’re consistent enough then societal trust advances, and life can be planned and optimised.
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues. The Russian front appears to have partly collapsed in the south of Ukraine, allowing for Ukraine to reestablish presence in much of its land. Alongside other news, Russia conveniently saw an elimination of the head of the Wagner Group, likely an assassination by Russian State operatives.
Guatemala had a surprise election result, with center-left Bernardo Arevalo taking the Presidency.
India’s moon mission continues, with a successful unmanned landing, near Luna’s south pole
Zimbabwe’s election saw its president win a second term with a comfortable lead.
Denmark looks to potentially retreat on free speech, proposing a bill that would ban burning the Quran
Former US President Trump surrendered to police as part of a criminal investigation over his attempt in Georgia to overturn his election loss.
Polls
A Pew poll on best US recent presidents (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/22/republicans-view-reagan-trump-as-best-recent-presidents/ ); I’ll diverge a bit from the wording and head into outlier territory. In my view, while Obama was the best recent Democratic President (and I think my view on this will remain stable after Biden leaves office, despite some notable policy failures under Obama), George HW Bush was in my view the best recent Republican President. I suspect the reason few Republicans agree with this is that right now the Republican Party has shed a lot of its technocrats, embracing loud and dumb ideas, greatly to its detriment. I think of Trump as one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had, and think Reagan was just middling. George W Bush is in my view not as bad as we thought of at the time, but the embrace of torture as an acceptable method of interrogation, combined with explicit seeking of oil deals as part of the Iraq invasion, were foreign policy failures that stained the nation.
Policy Focus
A Delaware Town is looking to allow businesses to vote, as a way to encourage businesses to move into a mostly industrial area; in my view this is really bad policy and will be hard to reverse because corporations would vote against any reversal (at least without higher level government stepping in). It is also likely easily abused, giving businesses incentives to multiply in number without reason (a human cannot split in half, a corporation can with little harm and presumably get extra votes along the way) - it seems bizarre to me to offer voting (for any role) to anyone who is not an adult citizen: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/delaware-towns-push-for-companies-voting-rights-stokes-concern
Interesting to see the ABA considering some (fairly loose) requirements on Law Schools with regards to them not permitting activist students to stifle free speech on campus, in response to many recent events on several campuses; generally I support this, although getting the details right is difficult and actually having this effort not be toothless will be difficult given the variety of schools out there with some religious affiliation: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/accreditation/2023/08/24/law-school-accreditor-weighs-free-speech-requirements
My YT video on RFK Jr vs Google:
Reviewlets
Stray Gods (video game) - Initial annoyance: a land acknowledgement before the game started. I like some of the music, but as a game it’s just not interactive enough (it’s far less interactive than Life is Strange, with every interaction being a menu choice, sometimes timed). Some of the character designs are cool too - it just doesn’t quite come together. Disappointing - I wanted to like this (and crowdfunded it)
Coffee Project New York (NYC coffeeshop) - A decent place to do some work. Excellent avocado toast, mediocre hot chocolate. Environment is cozy, if a little bit sterile. For Manhattan it’s not bad for a “come and do some work for awhile” kind of place.
Immortals of Aveum (video game) - A bit annoyed that they killed the more interesting character option off at the beginning of the game (and the main character is an annoying idiot with the bizarre quirk of mostly only being able to talk to people from behind). It’s also interesting to see a game set in a world where magic isn’t medieval; this is a future-magic-world. It also has a lot of video glitches and other bugs, and some really, really annoying sections later in the game. It starts fun, but it eventually devolves into endless rooms of same-y arena combat.
The English Experience (novel) - Third in the series, this is a great continuation of a comical and probably only a bit exaggerated take on academia through the eyes of a messed-up English Professor, this time on an overseas student experience. I’m surprised that the series isn’t losing anything as it goes on.
Recent Music
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis - Tom Waits - A classic jazz piece, everything about this is comfortable (or perhaps very uncomfortable, if you don’t like his voice)
No Gringo - Vienna Teng - Way more political than I normally go for, and a message I’m pretty neutral on, but it’s a very pretty song so I’m willing to forgive a lot.
Dr Greenthumb - Cypress Hill - I never got into either the drug culture or the anti-police-ness that usually came with it, but sometimes the music that came from those subcultures (which often were not that serious anyhow) was pretty great. Cypress Hill’s stuff was usually silly and great