2024-01-27
Readings
A fascinating medical diagnosis story: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/the-puzzling-case-of-a-baby-who-wouldnt-stop-crying-then-began-to-slip-away/
This is a glorified job advert, but it’s for NASA and it’s a surprisingly educational one. Cool to see how NASA uses divers as part of astronaut training (and what zero-buoyancy is, and…):
Towards non-spider-based real silk: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-scientists-naturalistic-silk-artificial-spider.amp
Around 22:20 of what’s mostly summaries of current events in astronomy, Becky covers efforts to understand some discrepancies between models over hubble expansion:
The way various animal wings shape air during flight has never had their varying details entirely plumbed; more digging at that: https://phys.org/news/2024-01-dragonfly-wings-relationship-corrugated-wing.html
Efforts towards counteracting retinal diseases and restoring vision: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-01-fmri-vision-cone-function.html
Thoughts
While I don’t want people drawing the wrong contemporary meaning from this insight, I think there is a continuity (with direction) from eras with little government and people paying protection money to organised crime, to early self-interested government, to the slow defocus on self-interest in government (expectations of low-corruption emerge), and then efforts to remove organised crime. Early real government had a familial resemblance to organised crime (which occasionally provided services) and it’s only now in our era of advanced governance that the lines are reasonably clear and the idea of protection money and taxation are so distant from each other (although some people with unfortunate political philosophies and boundless cynicism manage to blind themselves to the differences)
Current Events
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with the most flashy conflicts happening with drones and missiles; Ukraine has been damaging infrastructure in Russia and attempting to get air superiority in its own territory; European diplomatic efforts to secure solidarity in support of Ukraine are leading to bypassing and possibly sanctioning Hungary over its pro-Russia stance, while supplies continue to be uncertain due to politics in western countries
The increasing unpopularity within Israel for its disproportionate attacks on Gaza are leading to mass protests, while the death and displacement tolls within Gaza mount and its allies sour on its response. The ICJ has taken a middle ground in critiques of the invasion, calling for Israel to protect Palestinians from genocide during its invasion
Sweden is set to join NATO after a long delay caused by Turkey; the US is selling F-16 to NATO member Turkey (possibly in response)
Finland is holding a presidential election tomorrow
Venezuela disqualified Maria Machado from being eligible for public office over her ties to Juan Guaido (who ran against Maduro in 2018 in an election alleged to be fradulent)
Polls
Interesting to see a polling org even trying to navigate the definitional and privacy difficulties in measuring employee engagement ( https://www.gallup.com/workplace/608675/new-workplace-employee-engagement-stagnates.aspx ) - unfortunate that they don’t consider a possible cause of increased social-issue advocacy (DEI and other stuff) in workplaces. For me, this is one of the larger challenges in feeling engaged, with recent employers announcing a focus on culture, or having official proclamations on social issues (even when I agree, as I worry about when I do not); laying new political mines in the minefield of navigating value and work and relations with coworkers is going to reduce trust and comfort for everyone. But that’s just a theory; perhaps few people feel this way. Someone should do a poll.
A two-topic study on the economy and Biden ( https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/01/25/americans-more-upbeat-on-the-economy-bidens-job-rating-remains-very-low/ ) - I remain meh on Biden for the same reasons I was meh on him when I voted for him; his policies are mediocre. It’s still an easy choice to vote for him compared to the nutjobs Republicans run nowadays, and his age doesn’t bother me that much, but he’s not good at policy and annoyingly dove-ish on foreign policy. The withdrawal from Afghenistan never should have happened. We should be far more aggressive with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The debt forgiveness stuff is a dumb policy and never should have been tried. It’d be nice if he were more willing to take harder lines against DEI stuff, and if he used stronger messaging to try to craft a bipartisan bill to tighten the border. As a stopgap against Trump’s insanity and cultural progressive nutjobbery, he’s fine. I’d like better. As for the economy, by the numbers it’s good, although I’m trying to figure out how to weigh tech layoffs there - a lot of them are undoing a hiring spree tech companies did during Covid, and a lot of people will quickly find new jobs and the stirring of the pot is generally a good thing, but I don’t know how the numbers actually balance
Another Pew Poll on “religious nones” (not nuns, haha) ( https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/01/24/religious-nones-in-america-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/ ) - interesting that atheists (which I am) are only 17 percent of what they’re calling the nones. In terms of hostility towards religion, that’s a complex topic for me - I’d prefer religion eventually die out, but I see it as potentially providing some benefits and having some intellectual merit; on their Q8, I’d say that belief in gods doesn’t help with morality - it impairs it because it clouds the origin of morality and prevents reasoning about it
Policy Focus
Recently George Carlin’s Estate (a legal entity) sued producers of a comedy station that used an LLM trained on Carlin’s work to help write a comedy special and used his likeness to promote it. Estates of creatives have stopped a lot of other derivative works before, such as sequels to books. In general I think we got IP policy deeply wrong; here it’s leaving things proprietary that the public should be able to enjoy before it’s forgottten. If we’re even to have estates be able to control this stuff, the time limit should be far shorter - rights of publicity and other rights that allow for control over sequels and derivative works should probably only last about a decade (even if we leave the original works protected for longer, which we probably shouldn’t but that’ll take longer to fix).
It’s good to see a bipartisan effort to prevent misuse of the Insurrection Act (in the United States) that allows in certain underspecified circumstances for the use of the US military to quell dissent in our cities. In the past we’ve been able to rely on good judgement of US Presidents on this and many other topics, but we learned with Trump that that’s not something we can take for granted; in general if populism (left or right) is to become a regular feature of our politics, a lot of the more expansive powers of the executive branch (such as pardons) need some rethinking - limiting or abolishing them makes sense
The Wall of Shame
Ignore the content of this article; the wall of shame is for Robin Wigglesworth for really bad writing ( https://www.ft.com/content/cb7f37ad-a0c0-40de-80f1-3bc426d07e35 ); it’s snark-fueled cliche, and so invested in that style that it takes a lot of work to figure out what the article is about. Professional writing would’ve made this a far better article (whether one agrees with the content is another question)
The SEC removed an account security feature that was being too cumbersome, which likely helped one of their social media accounts being taken over: https://www.engadget.com/the-sec-says-its-x-account-was-taken-over-with-a-sim-swap-attack-004542771.html
Henry Oyem (Minister for Foreign Affairs, Uganda) recently made the news for declaring that the people in Uganda who have died of hunger were idiots for not being able to grow food for themselves ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68090485 )
Reviewlets
Fitbit app (Android) - Good when it works, but sometimes it randomly won’t sync, and resetting the fitbit device or removing and reinstalling the app usually won’t fix it (it will just randomly start working again later). The Android appstore is full of user complains about it sometimes not working; Google needs to work on providing a better user experience. I wonder if the issues are just caused by some auth server being down somewhere
Dishonored 2 (video game, replaying) - It’s from many years back, but it holds up and still provides a good Arkane stealth experience; the art and music make it timeless in a way that many games from that era are not
Amusements
A recent(?) story-humour bit from Dara O’Briain:
Rain chambers!
Interesting to see other deomsticated animals (than cats or dogs) demanding affection:
Recent Music
By Fire - Hiatus Kaiyote - Not sure how to classify this, perhaps experimental R&B? It’s fascinating and novel
Phantom Liberty - Podsiadlo and Abramczyk - Sounds like a lost Radiohead song
In Old Yellowcake - Rasputina - The main voice part feels more like an instrument than a normal leading singing part, despite having words.
Town Meeting Song - Polyphonic Spree - A bizarre and awesome cover of the song from Nightmare Before Christmas