2023-11-25
Readings
An OpenToDebate debate on DEI mandates in the US; DEI is a set of progressive bad ideas that have been acepted because of management fads with very little debate and it has rarely been safe to express doubt about them within a workplace - good to see public debate on it
Galactic shape distribution - it strikes me as amazing that the timescales involved versus the lifespan of the universe permit the effects described: https://www.universetoday.com/164414/there-arent-many-galaxies-like-the-milky-way-nearby-now-we-know-why/
JWST finds Methane in a warm Jupyter: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-webb-methane-exoplanet-atmosphere.amp
Using ML to hint engineers towards better molecular design for energy storage: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-carbon-material-energy-storage-advance-supercapacitors.amp
Digging into an apparent linguistic effect of singing and accents (probably unrelated but also interesting - stuttering and singing):
Efforts to breed other plants that produce vanilla scents/flavours: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-scientists-ethyl-vanillin-specially-bred-strawberry.amp
Epigenetics in Bacteria: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-bacteria-memories-generations.amp
Despite the overdramatic title, this is a good intro to music notation and its alternative forms:
Thoughts
How does the widespread acceptance of the idea of the Overton Window affect how we think about the slippery slope critique? The idea of logical fallacies as surefire ways to disqualify a move in an argument (or an argument as a whole) is appealing - learn these things (start with Schopenhauer), insist that some moves are bad, and you get better discussions. Sometimes a broader culture grows around some of them - don’t bring up the family of opponents in a debate - that’s cool too. Although in either the formal or broader sense, there’s the possibility that a fallacy is either not as solid as we’d like or the boundaries around it have a lot of nuance. It’s good to test them, question them, and really think them through because false signposts can do a lot of harm.
There recently has been a lot of talk about whether letting concerns of/for marketers (real or imagined) shape content on platform is good, and to me the answer is a strong no. Not because of First Amendment concerns, but because of Free Speech Culture concerns. Unpopular speech of whatever kind should be common in important fora. If a platform permits people to make money on the platform as a share of ads, it should ideally not play favourites based on social stances (fine to focus on a certain topic, less fine to focus on certain stances within the topic). Deciding that advertisers get to care about what content is on the platform near their adverts, and letting that lead to differences in how the content is treated, risks limiting speech to commercially acceptable speech (or depending on how it’s handled, at least damaging not-commercially-acceptable speech). The concern is real, even though unfortunately it’s someone like Musk that’s been loud about it recently. If you rent a billboard, you can’t prevent nasty people from marching near it for fear of people seeing the nasty people and the billboard at the same time.
This article ( https://theconversation.com/the-15-minute-city-is-a-popular-planning-approach-but-relies-on-ableist-assumptions-217155 ) illustrates a problem with progressive discourse - that they neglect that pursuing the good in society comes from thinking primarily about the mainstream, not about the fringes. Often the fringes benefit from this anyhow, sometimes they need a bit of touching up of plans, but at most they should get a bit of accomodation, never a foundational inclusion. This writer’s rules sink efforts.
Current Events
Russia launched a barrage of drone strokes in Kyiv and attacks on civilians in Kherson as part of their invasion of Ukraine, while Ukraine works on eliminating Russia’s air superiority with western help.
The Israeli-Palestine conflict hit a new ceasefire based on a prisoner exchange. Israel and Bibi, to differing degrees, have seen increasing external pressure from the rest of the world
Argentina elected a madman, Javier Milei, to lead it. One might think that it’d be possibly instructive to be led by a madman as people would learn that it produces bad results, but unfortunately,
A) Such people have an irritating tendency to be very good at lying about their performance, sometimes by just stating a lie and sticking with it and mocking fact-checkers
B) Existing under such a leader corrupts the culture of its nation, leading them away from being reasonable judges of performance
C) Such leaders also create endless distractions pulling people away from even thinking of weighing their performance. Drama within their own administration, noise about the need to persecute their opponents or about how even when in power they’re being persecuted, etc. History tends to eventually figure this out, but by then it’s far too late
The Far-Right party PVV, led by Geert Wilders, won more seats in the Nederlands parliament (37 of 150; Nederlands tends towards coalition governments) in recent elections than any other party.
North Korea launched a recon satellite, Telescope-One
After a homeless naturalised foreigner stabbed some children in Ireland, there were anti-immigrant riots across Dublin
Polls
A set of NYC/NYS poll on a variety of NYS issues ( https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/quality-of-life-in-new-york-state/ ) - my thoughts:
I’ve seen more homeless over the last year and that’s worrisome, but my preferred approaches (strong paternalism based) are rarely popular enough to happen (and often face legal challenges). Otherwise I don’t think things are worse in general
I still trust Hochul, and think it’d be hard to get someone better, although there are some decisions I’d be happy to second-guess
I think it’d be better if Santos were to resign from Congress - his deep personal weirdness and possible corruption is too much of a distraction
In general I support Democrats if they don’t step on red lines for me (which in practice rules out many Progressives). I’d be unlikely to vote for a Republican unless they were fairly moderate, technocratic, and never-Trump (or at least carefully quiet on him)
I have little opinion on Schumer
If Adams’ dealings with Turkey are as reported, I find them troubling, although I already know that I find Adams ethically deficient (despite aligning with him politically). I’d like another Liberal-not-Progressive option if possible
I’m surprised that according to Pew ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/ ) , there’s a sizable part of the US that gets news on Tiktok. I’m not on Tiktok so I haven’t seen the options there, but I thought it was mostly short-form video. Not a great way to cover news
Policy Focus
Interesting to see intentions collide relating to a law that would automatically seal criminal records after a certain period of time in NYC; I can see both sides on this one - should the public have a right to know, but does the public actually making holding down a job and having a normal life afterwards impossible? I can see the argument for making it more fine-grained, but there’s still the problem of whether after people who have committed the crimes are released from prison whether they will be able to work or not.
Reviewlets
I’ve been preparing a video series on Haiyan Lee’s “A Certain Justice” and reading it slowly, so I’m not tackling a lot of new books right now
Death Stranding (video game) - Finally getting around to trying this. First impression is that there are a lot of weird UI things before the game even starts, and then the Kojima plot weirdness gets the handoff and takes it up to a sprint. Unfortunately, a central mechanic of the game - managing not falling over - is just not something I want to deal with.
Hunt the Night (video game) - A nice zelda3-like, but vampire themed. I get the feeling it’s a fairly short game given how generous they are with progression items; guessing it’s about 15 hours (I’m about 45m in)
The Fall (video game) - Linear mostly puzzle game with a cool theme but an annoying “guess what nonintuitive pairing of things you need to do next” playstyle. No thanks, although I regret missing out on the charm.
Baldur’s Gate 3 (video game) - They put a lot into it, but I’m reminded how truly weird D&D’s setting is if you don’t have a good DM that trims it down, and then you have all sorts of weird styling and dialogue that feels like it’s a bad fanfic. Unsure if I’ll stick with it. Wishing it had had better writers; I think this could easily have been a better game. Maybe add random encounters too.
Grime (video game) - A forgotten indie that’s vaguely soulslike, with good mechanics and a novel rock-monster-claymation theme. Enjoying it, although it’s really easy to forget some of its weirder mechanics and give up on it if you leave too long a gap between playing
Amusements
Pumpkin Pie has a surprisingly interesting history:
Very funny comparison of why Bethesda’s Starfield missed the mark so much in terms of culture:
Letter to a funeral parlor:
Recent Music
This Road - Anne Danielewski (Poe) - I’ve liked Poe’s music for awhile, but she hasn’t released anything recently; this piece feels like a meditation on disorientation
Mein Name - Nachtmahr - Feels like something I would’ve loved to dance to at Outland, a goth-industrial club in Columbus Ohio that I used to frequent (and, oddly, where I often reflected on the passage of time and how the moments I captured then would be looked back on by my future self - strange to be on the other side of that prediction, as if I’ve grabbed time itself and twisted it - certain songs, unlike this one, led me to think this way more than others)
Welcome to the Internet - Bo Burnham - A bit of musical theatre that I imagine sung by someone in a bowtie