| ❝ | The problem with all of us being so much more a hive mind than we realize is that knowledge problems that ripple across our a information ecosystems can become not just threats to individuals with weak character or bad habits, but the equivalent of colony collapse.† |
~Erin Kissane [Landslide: a ghost story](https://www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-ghost-story/)
In the last year or two, listened to A.K. Larkwood’s fantasy trilogy: The Unspoken Name, The Thousand Eyes, and The Serpent Gates. I enjoyed the characters and the world, the soft magic based on old flawed gods, and the complex relationships. Excellent narration. 📚
Finally read (or listened to Andy Serkis read) The Silmarillion[ by J.r.r. Tolkien 📚. I can add little to all that has been written on it, but I recommend:
Early this year, read 2/3 of Seveneves by Neal Stephenson 📚. I found the struggle to secure a future in the face of imminent catastrophe excellent science fiction and human drama. I skipped the speculative evolution, though a friend suggested I revisit it as Stephenson’s take on Dune. Maybe.
Earlier this year, finished reading: The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis C. Rasmussen 📚as an audiobook. Recommended by a fellow History & Philosophy of Science graduate. I had read Hume ages ago but focused on causation and Newton. This was most welcome context. Excellent.
Finished: A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Lucy Bird 📚 A friend recommended this exceptional 19th-Century travelogue of a British lady traveling alone in the Rocky Mountains back in the log-cabin days. A compilation of letters home, Bird is an excellent writer and keen observer.
Finished reading: Entheóphage by Drema Deòraich 📚
I bought it from the local (Virginia) author last year at Convivial. It’s now at 4.8 on Goodreads, with one review saying “Michael Crichton meets ecofiction in this scarily plausible medical thriller.” There is some Andromeda Strain but it didn’t quite land the plausible for me - though I loved the biology details along the way. Also, my thrill was muted by knowing up front the pandemic will spread. The protagonists Drs. Nadine Parker and Isobel Fallon are well-developed, and Kyn’s family is delightful, but their funders and bosses felt flat. The sudden ending artfully suggests how the open plots will resolve long-term, yet leaves the details to your imagination.
We put up with a great deal of environmental damage because it is far away. The book asks how that would change if our children literally felt it. The ending, I think, suggests it would take more.
A good first novel - I would definitely consider one of her later ones.
[edited]
…I was in academia at the time, where guaranteed suffering for uncertain gains is the name of the game. But I think a lot of us have Acceptable Suffering Ratios that are way out of whack. We believe ourselves to be in the myth of Sisyphus,…
Yglesias’ Slow Boring:
What’s gone up is not the cost of living relative to a single earner’s wages, but the opportunity cost of the second adult not working.
Interesting.
A reflection on Chesterton’s fence from Farnam Street.
The fence:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
this comment by Colin Corbett seems a good explanation.
Huh. Didn’t expect that. HTT Ted Sanders.
I’ve been writing Python for 25 years. 🐍
So why do I still forget that .split() follows the string while .join() precedes it?
','.split('8,9') is not what I want.
Note: read this paper: stronger LLMs exhibit more cognitive bias. If robust, that would be a very promising result., as I noted in my comment to Kris Wheaton here.
So much Mountain Laurel!
On Weather Chimney Top, in WV.
A wonderfully hard (for me) and rewarding hike.
Sunset at Cave Mountain Observatory Retreat. First time here this year. 😌
An interesting metaphor for the AI race by HGreer, found via LessWong.
Good grief! They’re still there! Kind-of.
The notebook figures don’t seem to load, nor any details from Gorman’s map. Still, that was more than I expected to find for a web project from 1993, with updates made from grad school into 1995.
This work was from the wonderful undergrad research lab I joined in my junior year. Profs. Bernie Carlson & Mike Gorman were mapping Bell & Edison’s different paths to inventing the telephone.
And wow, some of it’s still there, sporting 1995 “Netscape-specific” web technologies!
Of course a better site now is the Library of Congress
In case I’m ever blessed with teaching again, “The Truth Box” seems a great follow-up to “New Eleusis”, an exercise I inherited from my old undergrad advsior:
They could shake the box, smell the box, remove the sticks, whatever; the only thing they could not do was to open the box or do anything that would cause the box contents to be visually revealed. Their job was to tell me, after eight minutes, what they thought was in the box, and why. I explained that developing good reasoning was very important.
…
The next step was to ask students what would increase their level of certainty about what was in the box. Soon, organically, they were reinventing modern science.
~Alice Dreger, The Truth Box Experiment
I had a few undergrad advisors, but I borrowed “New Eleusis” from Mike Gorman of Simulating Science, and re-inventing the telephone from him and Bernie Carlson. I’ve fond memories of the year or two in their “Repo Lab” at U.Va. helping map Bell & Edison’s notebooks, and making them available on this brand new web thing.
Democrats will do the most good if they can stop sounding like Democrats for the time being, with all the tired rhetoric about the oligarchy and trickle-down economics. They will be at their best if they can defend the accomplishments of the past 250 years of American history — the Constitution, the postwar alliances, Medicare and Medicaid.
~David Brooks, April 24, 2025, my emphasis.
Ugh.
Research-integrity analysts are warning that ‘journal snatchers’ — companies that acquire scholarly journals from reputable publishers — are turning legitimate titles into predatory, low-quality publications with questionable practices.
~Dalmeet Singh Chawla, Invasion of the ‘journal snatchers’, Nature News 17-APR.
| ❝ | There is something unique about the color purple: Our brain makes it up. So you might just call purple a pigment of our imagination. |
Movements are relationships, Jay Ulfelder:
| ❝ | ..protests usually aren’t ... good spaces for listening and synthesizing. ...To do that, you need to meet repeatedly in relatively safe spaces where dialogue can happen and trust can develop |
He thinks this relevant for “folks looking to support a resilient antifascist movement in the U.S. in 2025”.
Bookmarks:
Microsoft paper on effects of LLMs on critical thinking.
The average college student is illiterate
By “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners,…. Reading bores them…. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training.