❮❮prevnext❯❯

What I really appreciate about The Talos Principle 2 is that big chunks of its writing genuinely read like they were written by someone who's personally had to justify the discipline of philosophy to a STEM major. "There exists an implicit moral algorithm in the structure of the cosmos, but actually solving that algorithm to determine the correct course of action in any given circumstance a priori would require more computational power than exists in the universe. Thus, as we must when faced with any computationally intractable problem, we fall back on heuristic approaches; these heuristics are called 'ethics'." is a fascinating way of framing it, but then I ask why would you explain it like that, and every possible answer is hilarious.

I like the framing but I think that the moral algorithm is an emergent property, and so any course of action is not so much "correct" as "best". Kind of a bit of ought vs is.

---

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.

---

I suspect one of the telltales that Arlington is a bit too white is that they only have 16 oz jars of Salsa. Why are the gallon jugs so hard to find? Today I visited the Cambridge lab of Bob Doyle... Bob is a Harvard Astronomer / Inventor / Entrepreneur / Philosopher. (If you remember the old toy "Merlin", that was him, which is why he's standing here next to a giant functional model of one. Along with the game "Stop Thief", synchronized sound for Super 8 recording, MacPublish (the first Desktop publishing program for Mac), was part of making the first podcast ever happen, etc etc. You can read more about him on the about page of his "information philosopher" site about page. I just finished his book on "Free Will", a large tome charting the history of that philosophical challenge along with an emphasis on the thinkers he thinks had the best idea for it, refined into a 2-stage-model he calls Cogito.

He agreed to lecture on Free Will at the March 23rd zoom meeting of the Science and Spirituality group I run, so if you'd like to sit in on that - like if you're interested in how we are able to make decisions and choices even though it seems like we're stuck in a Universe where every effect has a chain of causes, ping me and I will add you to the list.

---

The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led the field for many years in both chess and ax murders.

---

---

---

---

In total, over 40% of the South Bronx was burned or abandoned between 1970 and 1980, with 44 census tracts losing more than 50% and seven more than 97% of their buildings to arson, abandonment, or both.

yikes. I think before this when I heard “NYC in the 70s was rough” I was hearing about Manhattan being seedy and rough, I had no idea about the Bronx being absolutely devastated

---

Far-right news sources on Facebook more engaging, Unlike other news across the political spectrum, no "misinformation penalty" for far-right pages

This is why a lot of "both sides do it!!!" talk is off. There's propaganda on both sides, but an important asymmetry in the relationship to preferring actually true things. I just finished David Whyte's "The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship". The book had many graceful moments and the underlying idea of those three critical connections that need to be nurtured and then have a conversation with each other is great, but the work felt like a haul after a while - but when I copied over all the quotes here I realized there was like 3 days worth (so I guess the ratio of good stuff to pages was still pretty decent...).
(My second most surprisingly effectual recently-added daily todo-ish rule, behind only "no popsicle 'til you've cleared out your personal email", is "read a little something every day" - the chapters of this book were about the right scale for that.)

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

I looked down at the blue hands of my wristwatch: five minutes to eight. The interesting thing about wristwatches as objects of desire is that when advertised for sale, they are always worn in situations of extreme timelessness--climbing a rock face, flying a plane, sitting with your son--as if by their purchase we will be absolved of time and no longer besieged by its swift, uncaring passage.

To children, the union of their parents, good or bad, in a still photograph or in a moving memory, is the mythic meeting of the two gods who brought them into life and who provided, by their presence or by their disturbing absence, the surrounding universe of their growing.

Work is a constant conversation. It is the back-and-forth between what I think is me and what I think is not me; it is the edge between what the world needs of me and what I need of the world. Like the person to whom I am committed in a relationship, it is constantly changing and surprising me by its demands and needs but also by where it leads me, how much it teaches me, and especially, by how much tact, patience and maturity it demands of me.

You are neither here nor there
A hurry through which strange and known things pass.

I wish I knew the beauty
Of leaves falling
To whom are we beautiful
As we go?

---

Back-of-the-Envelope thread on COVID-19. Health resources are going to be mightily strained. There's an exponential curve - so one of the things we in the "don't touch your face" population - as goofy and hopeless as some stuff seems when there aren't active cases near... that we know of.... are doing is seeing if we can't slow things down and buy us more time.

---

From the London Review of Books The Word from Wuhan - Dated Feb 21. Interesting.

---

Illustrated National Parks In America Based On Their Worst Review. It's funny because some ("No cell service & terrible wifi", "Nothing specific to do") would really be good selling points for some!

via Bill the Splut

If I learned one less from my time with the CIA, it is this:

Everybody believes they're the good guy.

I was an officer with the CIA Clandestine Service and worked undercover on counterterrorism and intelligence all around the world for almost 10 years. The conversation that's going on in the United States right now about ISIS and about the United States overseas is more oversimplified than ever. Ask most Americans whether ISIS poses an existential threat to this country and they'll say yes. That's where the conversation stops. If you're walking down the street in Iraq or Syria and asked anybody why America dropped bombs, you get: "They were waging war on Islam." And you walk in America and you ask why were we attacked on 9/11, and you get: "They hate us because we're free." Those are stories, manufactured by a really small number of people on both sides who amass a great deal of power and wealth by convincing the rest of us to keep killing each other. I think the question we need to be asking, as Americans examining our foreign policy, is whether or not we're pouring kerosene on a candle. The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them. If you hear them out, if you're brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not, you might have made some of the same choices, if you'd lived their life instead of yours.

An Al Qaeda fighter made a point once during a debriefing. He said all these movies that America makes, like Independence Day and Hunger Games and Star Wars, they're all about a small, scrappy band of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources available to them to expel an outside, technologically advanced invader. And what you don't realize, he said, is that to us, to the rest of the world, you are the empire, and we are Luke and Han. You are the aliens and we are Will Smith.

But the truth is when you talk to the people who are really fighting on the ground, on both sides, and ask them why they're there, they answer with hopes for their children, specific policies that they think are cruel or unfair. And while it may be easier to dismiss your enemy as evil, hearing them out on policy concerns is actually an amazing thing. Because as long as your enemy is a subhuman psychopath that's going to attack you no matter what you do, this never ends. But if your enemy is a policy, however complicated, that we can work with.

---

Boy if there's one thing I learned from this morning's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" it is that I know far more things about Garfield than I probably should.

---

Why I Hope to Die at 75. Thought provoking piece to say the least! The author lays out a very solid argument for his personal choice of a kind of gentle euthanasia - or rather, the softest form of non-interventionist "DNR" order - once he has reached a specific age.

---

Is there anything you are goofily vain about? For me one thing (among many I'm sure) is my 617-area-code cell number. Old-school Boston Strong baby! I feel like only 212 could possibly have more cachet, and I know with which city my allegiance rests...

---

You know, sometimes life isn't fair [...] and that's frustrating.

I think things are more interesting like that, with the blue shells of life.

Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Nobody better trespass against me. I’ll tell you that.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the merciful. You mean we can’t use torture?

Blessed are the peacemakers. Jane Fonda?

Love your enemies – Arabs?

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can’t! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in s**t.

---

The humble PDF as the worlds most important file format

---

What's Happening Mr. Silver? was a psychadelic TV show on WGBH by a Tufts instructor The thing about getting people to set up 2 TVs to 2 different channels and then playing with that is kinda mindblowing. Funny how much lore you mighta missed if you went to Tufts in the early 90s...

---

I Felt Despair About Climate Change--Until a Brush With Death Changed My Mind

Here's a story of how illness - and the more imminent than usual threat of death - can reshape our views on more global matters.

It can feel like a bummer when a kind of existential equanimity is our consoling philosophy; when we change our focus from our own mortal plight to humanity's fate, we kind of hope that the boundless futurist optimists are right, and that collectively, at least, the universe may be our oyster. But there are no guarantees. And even if civilization or even our species as we know it fails, we will have been here, and that matters as much as anything can matter.

---

Being able to spontaneously pick and start watching nearly any movie for a reasonable fee from one of a couple streaming services is an under-heralded wonder of the past decade...

Many of us mourn the passing of the local video store - especially the independent and funky ones, but still, this is a pretty sweet deal.

Funny thinking about some of the milestones to get here - Netflix DVDs in the mail or calling your cable company and having them descramble a channel with a fixed movie starting at a fixed time.

Of course Netflix streaming changed from "gee nearly as good as the DVD selection" to the Showtime / HBO model of "a few big films, some decent original content, and tons of filler"...

---

"Lady Bird" was the movie in question. It was pleasantly nostalgic, but... I dunno, I could see why it didn't get much Oscar love. A Day in the Life of a PalmPilot circa 2000... was looking for a shot of a game I dug, a version of Milles Bourne called Rally 1000
I may have doomed us all here in New England my bringing in my long ice scraper / brush from the car (the short one with built-in glove and the one inscribed with "F*** THIS" (uncensored) stay, though.)

---

Nice model of the Solar System.

In some ways, the earth/sun relation seems... I dunno, almost too small. Everything feels too finite.
Yeesh. Miami is only 6 feet above sea level and gonna be swamped, and under climate skeptic Rick Scott, even writing "climate change" was discouraged or even forbidden.

I believe the Republicans will do the most to make this country what it once was: an arctic wilderness. Songs I added last month. In reverse chronological order, which is actually how I listen to 'em.

• Fix You (Jake Coco & Savannah Outen) The sweetest version of this Coldplay song I could find.
• Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens) A enigmatic (but pro-apocalyptic, I think) brief song. Used for the credits of Ricky Gervais' show "Extras".
• Achy Breaky Pt 2 (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) (Buck 22) What is Larry King doing here? Insanely catchy hook and a good little bit of hiphop. Also, I've never seen dancers so undressed without actually being naked.
• Boobs a Lot (The Fugs) Read the disappointing comic novel about "The Beats", and this group had a connection to the movement. Crazily sexist song, but catchy.
• Hard Work (The U.S. Army Airborne) Finally found the song used in the Eastern Bank commercial (the trick was they're saying "Hard Work Work" not "Aww Work Work". I think if I ever get back into running I might try to use one of those CDs of military cadences.
• Little Sadie (Crooked Still) Cool little bluegrass-y number.
• Coffee and Wine (Chadwick Stokes) Also kind of southern feeling (I'm so crap at identifying genres) -- hook-y chorus
• Everything Is AWESOME!!! (Tegan and Sara & The Lonely Island) The Lego Movie was pretty great.
• I'm Awesome (Spose) It's really funny how this track comes up after the Lego Movie one. A weird exercise in self-deprecating rap. "Lyrically, I'm not the best / Physically, the opposite of Randy Moss, and yet..."
• Friendship (Remastered) (Kay Kyser and His Kollege of Musical Knowledge) Man, this song is great. I love the variations on a rhyming theme. Also the understatment of "and If they ever put a bullet through your brain -- I'll complain."
• Forest Whitaker (Brother Ali) More self-deprecating hiphop, a little more polished.
• Wut (5kinAndBone5) (Le1f) Some say Macklemore ripped off the riff, but I think just the sax sound? Still, great gay hiphop, not just that ally stuff Macklemore makes.
• Bitter Rivals (Sleigh Bells) Shouty Girls. Man, these gals record LOUD.
• Don't Wait (Mapei) Hard to pin this one down, but it has a nice sound.

---

Even my bedside clock (that also projects the time onto the ceiling... highly recommended) self-adjusts for Daylight Savings Time. I was psyched thinking I had caught up on some sleep before I realized that my clock, phone, and laptop all had automagically switched without mentioning it to me.

---

you are a fabulous arrangement
of whatever it is we
are made of

---

New Blender of Love

---

Found Auto-complete poetry...

---

The human voice hydrates even the driest of texts.

---

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2013/02/08/the-artistry-of-george-w-bush/ --sympathetic view of GWB's painting (you can see the semi-stolen shots at Boingboing http://boingboing.net/2013/03/09/george-w-bush-painter-of-pup.html )

---

Sometimes the haystack is all needles.

---

Neil Gaiman on How to Seduce a Writer.

proof that an elephant and a flea have the same weight:

Let:

e = weight of elephant
f = weight of flea
d = difference between e and f

Therefore:
e = f + d Then we multiply both sides by (e-f):
e (e - f) = (f + d) (e - f) Combine the left, multiply the right: ee - ef = ef - ff + de - df Subtract de from both sides: ee - ef - de = ef - ff - df Factor out the e from the right and the f on the left: e (e - f - d) = f (e - f - d) And we can then cancel (e - f - d) from both sides:
e = f
The weight of an elephant equals the weight of a flea, QED!

---

Math is the gateway drug to success.

---

The immortal SpindleyQ said this link was probably right up my alley http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter -- he's right! Very similar to game buttons (though not restricted to one button) and the use of a+O=@ was clever!

---

Apple walk-in repair is generally amazing, but apparently they have some issues if they have to ship it out for a part -- I handed them my Macbook last Wednesday, and just today it got to the repair center, despite the "Estimated Turn-Around Time: 5-7 days". Mysteries hold up wrt "Depot" whatever the hell that is. Grrr. Five years and one day ago I posted my "big project" Todo list. A year and a half ago I went back to that page, crossed out the stuff I had gotten done, italicized the stuff that didn't matter to me any more.

Time to remake that list! Now organized by site/field of interest.

kisrael.com

• ambed an online doodle/sketch and start adding more doodles to my "of the Moment" section
• harvest quotes for the quote-o-matic viewer
• make a "tags"/tagcloud system and replace the "best of" (which really was just a tag-like organization to find stuff I've done)
• clean out comments spam
• redesign front page, more focus on projects etc, less on random historical stuff

random projects

• elecronic music - I said a project for my 30s is to get all these beats and basslines from way back transcribed and in like mp3 form - halfway done with my 30s, not much to show here
• whenworks4u.com
• get a timeline of my life: where I've lived, where I've worked, whom I've loved, major events
• Make and publicize a version of good old pixeltime.
• remake insideu.com (long term project with some former coworkers)
• record Ophelia

games

• start using my PC USB control pads with Glorious Trainwrecks style games - especially multiplayer stuff with Amber etc
• idea: get a Klik N Play multiplayer Mario Party like joint production going
• reinvigorate my regular video game get-togethers. Tougher and tougher to do, as friends move and/or have kids!
• chart River Raid's "River of No Return"...

loveblender.com improvements

• "favorites"
• duplicate comments about poem on poem itself
• avatars/bio pages
• decide if i want to grow traffic back to former levels, or am ok with smaller, cozier feel

---

ATT slogans for Bos/Camb: "might as well get the iPod touch" "5 bars, no service", "works in more places like ScrewYouiPhoneExclusiveIstan" (Actually, it's weird: popular sites seem to load OK on 3G, obscure ones time-out. Wonder if AT+T just has retarded server problems.)

---

ATT slogan: "Cannot Open Page Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding."

---

"RE @ATTNews #ATT recently released a new study into causes and solutions for the dropout crisis: http://go-att.us/e556 -oh SCHOOL not calls-"

---

Man- earbuds are a bit gross, even for the reasonably well Q-tipped. On the other hand, dunno if I wanna be "that guy" w/ the DJ headphones.

---

Just finished "Look Me in the Eye", an Aspergers memoir. Two thoughts: A. These folks are "logical" but miss enough details that they're not always 'rational' B. I think I would be good at explaining things to people with Aspergers.

---

daphaknee: WOAH YOU'RE OLD
OLD PANTS
OLD MC OLDERSON
kirk: yes when i got into retro gaming IT WSAN'T FUCKING RETRO IT WAS THE FUTURE
[...]
god damn it google stop switcihing to "moderat safe surf"
if i accidentally see a boobie when looking for something, that's a GOOD thing

She brings out the bad typist and cussing and trying to be funny in me... I miss having funny IMs.

---

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2272?=rssfeed - Russian anti-Coca-Cola calendar.

---

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101619832 - amusing anti-twitter rant, but, who really twits "What are you doing"? Random, if gross thought: so one of the less attractive habits of some of my cousins was to spit up in the air and catch it. This is, of course, disgusting, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly why. The material starts in the mouth and ends up in the mouth, and you wouldn't think that the time in the open air would be all that corrupting. It's like it involves a process similar to transubstantiation, where the material epistemologically changes from mere saliva into spit, and we reject the attempt to reverse that transmogrification.

---

Game of the Moment

--from an old post at cellar.org's Image of the Day. (I feel like I haven't been finding as much cool stuff to share with you all lately. But, I do like frogs.)

You know, I have to admit I'm kind of sick of companies talking about their "work hard, play hard" ideals. I mean, what if I don't want play that hard, do I get to work less hard too? I understand the urge for wanting workers to focus and bring enthusiasm and dedication and all that, but putting it in terms of that kind of bipolar-ness is just perverse, like obviously I'd be the world's best programmer if I went snowboarding out of helicopters every weekend.

---

Video of the Moment


-- an astounding run of the online toy linerider (I thought I kisrael'd that before, maybe not.) It's an amazing toy where you draw ramps and jumps for this little guy on a sled... you can replay the scene over and over to get the jumps just right and prevent the little guy from crashing, which happens a LOT.

Youtube has a lot of these videos but I'd urge you to play with the toy yourself (even though it takes a lot of dedication and trial and error to get results anywhere near these.)

S'funny, w/ I was listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack at FoSO and FoSOSO's just the other day...

---

Quote of the Moment

The Universe is conspiring to kill you. But you shouldn't let that worry you too much. Seek reassurance in the fact that there is nothing personal about this. It's not a vendetta and it's not just you that the it is working to extinguish. No, its much worse than that. The Universe is ranging its awesome might against all the living organisms on our cosy, blue planet. Every louse, lover, and leopard is going the same way.

I think alliteration is a fine trait in academic-ish writing. Link of the Moment
Dada! Go get you some culture.

---

Typo of the Moment
Link harvester sites are getting both a bit weird and also more professinal looking. I was thinking about seeing if I should grab the logical typo for kisrael.com, namely kisreal.com, but I see it's been grabbed. "For resources and information on Jewish and Radio Station". I think I first read that as Jewish Radio Stations, but the like of grammar only makes it a touch more weird.

I dunno, does "kisreal" sound like call letters? I know stations start with W here in the east, and K out in the west, but I'm not sure about the Middle East.

---

Product of the Moment
Very oddly romantic... Hi-Tech Long Distance Wine Glasses, that use glowing lights to indicate when the other one is held and lifted up for a drink, so people can kind of stay in touch and have a sense of togetherness as they drink wine. Or something.

That's a little bit Dada-esque actually. But only just a bit. Maybe more surreal.

Quote of the Moment

On the Web everyone will be famous to 15 people.

I read it and it seemed like the truest and funniest idea about second- and third-tier blogs like mine since that Onion piece Mom Finds Out About Blog

---

Cartoon of the Moment

--from the New Yorker August 31 1992 edition...I think seeing this cartoon led me to make a lot of "J'accuse!" jokes and references during college that no one got and weren't very funny anyway.

Study of the Moment
Slashdot linked to a study The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface? pointing out that, counter-intuitively, it might be easy for novice users to get a mental model of a computer and generally feel less distracted by using the "evil command line". Heh, maybe the crapness of old-school DOS spoiled it for a generation or more...I mean wasn't that the first "...for Dummies" book?

Quote of the Moment

"Do you think all any of us really want, deep down, is to be loved?"
"No, we want to be rich, to be admired, to eat like a horse and be skinny as a snake. To have small children ask for our autographs, to be on terrific medications that make us calm and witty and sexy. To sing Irving Berlin and Gershwin and Porter at the Oak Room and be described in the Times as 'luminous.' But in the absence of all that, it's enough to be loved."

---

Product of the Moment
Special translucent clingy shirts that look as if you're wearing a full body tattoo. I know Mo's thinking her new life is best adorned by getting up the gumption to get a real tattoo, albeit a small one, but maybe she chould practice with one of these.

Pop Culture Obscurity of the Moment
Man, years ago on daytime TV I saw this really random parody group, "Old Guys With New Socks", a parody of the hyperpopular "New Kids". Google only came up with two references, here's the best one (do a Ctrl-F find for "Old Guys", about half way down.) The passage had one sentence that says everything that is wrong with white man rap: "Careful study of MTV has taught them the proper poses for a rapper to cop; one photo features each with their arms crossed like Run-DMC".

---

Dialog of the Moment

"This is a lovely golf course, I'm tempted to join the club."
"I'm afraid you can't."
"You mean they discriminate against Scots?"
"No, they just don't want assholes in the clubhouse."

The Feebles are kind of like the muppets gone very, very bad. Pretty much any conceivable puppet bodily fluid is represented there. It's by Peter Jackson who is now best known for doing the Lord of the Rings movies.

News of the Moment

"The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender."

If only the whole thing was going to be this easy.
My previous entry was incorrect, the universe, taken as a whole, is beige, not the minty green that was reported earlier. (The new color is #FEF9E5 for web developers...) The scientist who came up with the original finding as a sidenote to their paper made a mistake in translating their data into a single color. The new color is more intuitively obvious than the previous one. The article had a great quote from the astronomer Glazebrook:
"It is embarrassing. But this is science. We're not like politicians. If we make mistakes, we admit them. That's how science works."
And that's one of the main things I like about science.

---

Story of the Moment

Going to bed the other night, I noticed people in my shed stealing things.

I phoned the police but was told no one was in the area to help. They said they would send someone over as soon as possible.

I hung up. A minute later I rang again. 'Hello,' I said, 'I called you a minute ago because there were people in my shed. You don't have to hurry now, because I've shot them.'

Within minutes there were half a dozen police cars in the area, plus helicopters and an armed response unit. They caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the officers said: 'I thought you said you'd shot them.'

To which I replied: 'I thought you said there was no one available.'

Rant of the Moment
Mo's waiting to hear about a new job. For a while she was so fed up that she was considering quitting even she didn't have her next gig lines up, just to get out of there. Talking with some cow-orkers who had been laid-off convinced her otherwise, that just like the classic "the bank will lend money to people who have money," it's much easier to land a new job when you have one already. What's up with that? Shouldn't the business world try to move beyond the politics of high school dating? "Well, we're looking for employees who will be really loyal, who will really give their all for the company. Tell me, are you willing to sneak off from work and interview with us on Tuesday?"

---

Story of the Moment

And so [Abraham] took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham's hand and said "How could thou doest such a thing?"

And Abraham said, "But Thou said--"

"Never mind what I said," the Lord spake, "Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?" And Abraham grew ashamed. "Err--not really, no."

"I jokingly suggest thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it."

And Abraham fell to his knees, "See, I never know when You're kidding."

And the Lord thundered, "No sense of humor. I can't believe it."

"But doth this not prove I love Three, that I was willing to donate my only son on Thy whim?"

And the Lord said, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."

And with that, the Lord bid Abraham to get some rest and check with Him tomorrow.