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You cannot sink the Titanic

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Saving for future reference, on introducing people from conservative backgrounds to liberal ideas - and also understanding the vehemence against feminism - kind of like with racism, there's generally the presumption that it's a solved problem, so any efforts to keep striving for equity are just making new "reverse racism" problems.

@cwebber described ChatGPT as Mansplaining As A Service, and honestly I can't think of a better description. A service that instantly generates vaguely plausible sounding yet totally fabricated and baseless lectures at an instant with unflagging confidence in its own correctness on any topic, without concern, regard or awareness even of the level of expertise of its audience.

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what do with a skeleton in the McD's....

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Cheap debt has led to a buyout boom, including in an industry where companies aren't in a position to take on significant amounts of debt, and it's simply easier for the private equity guys to shoplift whatever value they can.

Take a gamble that love exists and do a loving act.

Two things I love that I had forgotten about, unearthed in my old blog cleanup:

Turns out the most valuable thing you gain from making something is the experience of making it. You can use that experience to make more, better things

In the beginning was the Plan
And then came the Assumptions
And the Assumptions were without form
And the Plan was completely without substance
And the Darkness was on the faces of the Employees
And they spoke unto their Supervisors saying
"It's a Crock of Shit and it Stinketh!"
And the Supervisors went unto their Department Heads and sayeth
"It's a Pail of Dung, and none may abide the Odor thereof."
And the Department Heads went unto their Managers, and sayeth unto them
"It is a Container of Excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Director and sayeth
"It is a Vessel of Fertilizer, and none may abide its Strength."
And the Director went unto the Vice President and sayeth
"It contains that which aids Plant Growth, and it is very Strong."
And the Vice President went to the Executive Vice President and sayeth
"It promoteth Growth, and it is very Powerful."
And the Executive Vice President went to the President and sayeth
"This Powerful New Plan will actively promote the Growth and Efficiency of the System."
And the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was Good
And the Plan became Policy

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I'm glad we figured out the kitty Dean is so easily enthralled by the "feathers at the end of a fishing-pole"-type teaser... trying to get him to play-hunt with toys that lacked feathers but were otherwise similar was kind of an uphill climb.

I've taken to listening to podcasts while playing hunt with him, which keeps me occupied so that the sessions are a bit longer. Though now I'm wondering about the idea that feather teasers are to Dean what podcasts are to Kirk...

I still wonder about how much cats understand it's a game - they of course live a bit closer to their instincts than folks, but still I don't think they're under too many illusions about the reality of the situation. Also, how tuckered out do cats get from this? Like it doesn't seem like an extended exercise session, but probably cats are built for sprints (after quiet and patient lurking)?

BABAM Takes Music To The Streets from Julia Maruca on Vimeo.

Is it just me or are conservatives a lot more likely to use a term like "wonderful" non-ironically than liberals? And is Trump leading that or just part of a trend or larger reason for that?

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AI AlphaGo Zero started from scratch to become best at Chess, Go and Japanese Chess within hours - This is pretty incredible stuff, and damn near my idea that "I'll be impressed when the same program that wins at Go wins at Chess, and for the same reasons."

I remember hearing about the core idea (setting a game-playing AI against a copy of itself to improve) used in Arthur Samuel's checker playing program back in the late-50s.

All the games AlphaGo Zero plays are "perfect information" games. I wonder how it would do with games of ambiguity and bluff and randomness, like Poker (or Stratego, even.) I suspect when you have a computer play a version of itself, you're vulnerable to the "hill climbing" problem (i.e. if you always head towards the highest ground NEAR you, you might end up stranded on a local high peak, but not the highest in the land) - that you get a certain type of genius at playing another certain type of genius, but vulnerable when playing a more wildcard player, and that vulnerability is increased if you don't know the full state of the game.

Of course, my favorite emergent chess program behavior remains the stories around Atari 2600 Video Chess; the screen would blank as the computer was "thinking", and sometimes when the board returned you'd find some pieces weren't quite where they were before...

UPDATE: better summary The future is here – AlphaZero learns chess

Curious
Extraordinary
Eccentric
Wears a hat of someone else's choosing
Inconsistent
A sunset lover
Smooth elbows
A man with specific mannerisms
Sleeps diagonally
A perplexment
Rides the carousel
An evening botanist
Classically athletic
Fraternally-minded
Wears a light wristwatch
Gives a careful handshake
Gives too much change for a dollar
A fluent swimmer
A keen-eyed birdwatcher
Fond of his mother
Elegant
Built on an uncertain foundation
Fluttersome
A real jackdaw
Avowed bachelor
A gentleman of the piers
Born with the caul
Limber
An aesthete
In the way of uncles
He throws a party with an open guest list
Son of the moon
A boy from Eton
Always rings twice
Has a silk bathrobe
Not quite up-to-code
He hitchhikes instead of taking the bus
Stays ahead of the game
A skillful mountain climber
Salutes another flag
An upside-down chimney-sweep

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advent day 7

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"I feel like one of my life goals should be getting a lifesize cut-out made out of me. Would you want one?"
"You're such an only child."

(it only sort of helped when I explained, no, I meant would she want one of herself.)
advent day 7

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Turns out the most valuable thing you gain from making something is the experience of making it. You can use that experience to make more, better things, and whether you're looking for a creative career or just the emotional fulfillment of making something awesome, you're further down the road now than you were then.

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The other week I was doing bachelor boy shopping at the Porter Square Star Market and they had Progresso Soup that was marked down from $3 to $1 per can, so I stocked up a bit but probably not as much as I shoulda! (And its been a nice switch up from my usual low cal bachelor boy dinner of popcorn, at not too many more calories.) I've been lucky enough in life that I've never had to be much of a coupon clipper (and distracted enough that I didn't want to be) but is there a good system of alerts out there, when certain stuff is cheap at certain places?

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RIP Ralph Baer, father of video games

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http://loveblender.com

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It wasn't a bad month for music, but nothing really jumps out as great.

• The Devastator (Stormy) Funky! Heard it on a Kia / Lebron James car
  
• Hula hoop pjs (Gap Art Films) I ripped the music from this 18 second ad. I wish I knew a longer version!
  
• NDN Kars (Keith Secola) (Not this version, but this live version is cool) I like the meld with Indigenous music.
  
• Cocaine's Gonna Kill Me (Damn Tall Buildings) These fine blue-grassy folks played at a JP Porchfest Fundraiser.
  
• Don't Stop Believing (Josh Knowles and Aaron Fried) Cello and violin cover, from some buskers.
  
• Comet Bumblebee (Koosha + Comet 67P) Koosha noticed the Comet 67P sounds matched well with Flight of the Bumblee...
  
• BO$$ (Fifth Harmony) I guess this is a group from "X Factor", but I love the big percussion and dig the horns in this one.
  
• Left Hand Free (alt-J) Kind of an awesome modern southern sound, though I guess they're from England. Dig the video of rural fun
  
• Shake It Off (Walk Off the Earth) Terrific acoustic cover of this overplayed song.
  
• Take On Me (Sara Bareilles) This is lyrically and sonically an amazing song, and I think this version brings out further beauty in it(some friends of mine preferred this ukulele cover)
  
• Hey Mami (Sylvan Esso) Sweet mellow song
  
• Ugly Boy (Die Antwoord) This is not an easy group to concisely describe. This song is about shmaltzy beauty under the ugly.
  
• Jay's Chant (Clerks) Quote from the movie. Was surprised to find the soundtrack on iTunes; I thought Kevin Smith talked about it going away.
  
• Violent Mood Swings (Thread Mix) (Stabbing Westward) I always liked Jay's Dance in Clerks. (What the video is of, actually)
  
• Chewbacca (Supernova) Also from Clerks.
  
• Lapti Nek (Ladycréme mix) (Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band) This song has been expunged from Return of the Jedi, replaced with a much inferior and corny Jedi Rocks in the special edition. The funny thing is maybe Lucas tried to make it a real world hit.

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We'd like to show you a picture of our office, but we actually are never in it. BECAUSE WE ARE TOO BUSY HUSTLING RIGHT NOW. BRING YOUR RAIN COAT!CAUSE WE ARE TRYNNA MAKE IT RAIN IN Q4!

advent day 7
advent day 7

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Take some time to think about time.

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On my devblog, a pretty nifty double helix animation in processing.js
-via Miller -- I'm not sure if lightsabers add a ton to the classic duel but it did make me look up an explanation of the fencing techniques the combatants talk about...

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UI engineers think they're geniuses for the blatant over application of "Fitts' Law". The whole stopwatch UI metric thing is not fully baked

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07teller.html - Teller reminds me why I don't dig puzzles, even w/ the MIT Mystery Hunt looming.

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http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/07/die-pluto-die.html - Folks resent Pluto's deplanetization because they think science is a collection of facts, not the ongoing process of consensus and self-correction that really makes it the best way of understanding the physical world.

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Two rants, both using the parable of the Good Samaritan: Slacktivist uses it to unask the question "do all paths lead to God",
Fake Steve Jobs uses it to point out how so many Christians are in total denial about how their faith contradicts the actual teachings of Jesus.

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heh, park street red line totally smells like weed, transit cops are walking around.

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Since covered phones can't be admired by anyone but their owners, there must be some unspoken pleasure in the idea that you--and you alone--can lift that burqa of molded silicone.

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While it's not setting the world on fire, it's gratifying to Google on "javadvent" and see where it has gotten. (There were only 2-3 hits for the word prior, mostly with this "jav/Advent.htm" variant.)

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I really, really hate my brain. Luckily, I'm slowly killing it with alcohol, so in the end, I'll win. Eventually. I suppose.

This morning went out to a pick your own Christmas Tree place, Oaknoll Farm. I guess these things aren't generally "cut your own" (liability being what it is, I imagine) but Emil, the proprietor, was good company and very patient with EB and co.'s selection process. I thought of one of those Microsoft-style brain-teasers, meant less to get a single answer as to see how some thinks through a difficult mathematical e

So everyone who is born is born at a certain altitude, and everyone who dies dies at a certain, probably different, altitude. Do you think net altitude over the course of humanity is a net positive or a net negative? Would an astronaut who died in space throw that off?

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Superhero of the Moment

--First of The Superest, a series of superheroes, each one designed to nullify the one that came before. The artists seem to be having a great time, reminds me of a game of Mr. Snowman

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Gameshow of the Moment

On Family Feud:
Richard Dawson: "A number you have to memorize...."
Contestant: "7."

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Nostalgia of the Moment
I was surprised to see the headline story at CNN.com was the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 computer. It was an ok article, but saying that peopel considered its "graphics weak in comparison to the Apple II and Atari 800" was just backwards... they were right that it had the worst BASIC but graphic wise it was pretty clearly the best. (Not to mention the best selection of pirated games...)

Yesterday I had a small situation that had a reasonably happy ending, but reminded me why some of my concerns about "intractable problems at work" exist. It's hard to explain without going into details... basically, I have to ramp on webservices, a lesser-used corner of my company's project that this client is interested in. So I started with some example code we had kicking around, but the code was rough, and took a lot of manhandling just to get it in runnable shape. And all through it, I didn't have 100% faith in the system, but I figured I just need to adjust some things that had been hardcoded in order to fit in with my laptop environment, and get a few files that were left out of the distribution, and then just take a look and figure out what was going on.

So I ran into a problem, fixed my code, ran into another problem, tried a few things, fixed the problem, etc. But I ran into a problem I didn't think I understood at all, but probably was an issue with my code, so I asked my manager about it, and he said the symptom was of a specific breed of bug, but he thought they had cleared those out... and indeed, it turns out I was running the test software against a slightly older version of the product. The bug wasn't in the code I was working on but as a result of using an older version of the product.

So problem solved, right? Well sure, but take my manager out of the equation, and I'm potentially beating my head against this error message for hours. Well, frankly it just couldn't be done, not by me in the time frame I had allotted, and not without working up a damn profound knowledge of some sections of my company's product's infrastructure. And that was after I gave up trying to fix my local code, figuring that the problem was most likely there.

This story has an ok ending, but... I dunno. The concept of not knowing if I should throw up my hands or persevere concerns me very much.

Yeesh. If I had been one of those guys who like, played sports in high school, or just in the neighborhood, is this one of the lessons I would have learned? Learning to deal with other teams that are just better, and playing on through situations that may or may not be utterly hopeless?

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Image of the Moment
--of all these kitties, this one, sans caption was my favorite. Invisible Bike was pretty amazing though.

A lot of the photos are plays on "im in ur base, killing ur d00ds", here's an explanation... but this page has a different theory about the origin, claiming it was a novice player killing his own forces. It's a more satisfying story, but is that likely to happen in Starcraft?

Today at 2:05 in the morning (Eastern), I was one billion seconds old! (Give or take a minute, but still, that's like 5 decimal places of accuracy!)

Funny, I hardly feel a second over 900,000,000.

This and other feats of extreme chronological geekification can be performed on my good old date toy, the same one that told me that August 16th was my 10K Day. (And yes, I had the exact same "funny, I..." joke back then. Same (and forgetful) minds think alike.)

In other news, I start my new job today. At a place called "Refresh". Maybe I should try to work it so the obvious symbolism of that name, plus starting my second billion seconds, has real meaning.

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Aside of the Moment
Pet peeve: I don't know if my phone has a better workaround for this, but I hate when you call someone on cell, their voicemail kicks in, and then you get a message that they're calling you back...as far as I can tell there's no "hangup on this call (voicemail), don't just switch to the incoming call" option on my phone, so you end up leaving a big message of silence on their voicemail. I found a work around, at least for when I'm calling someone's Sprint voicemail: hitting * brings up a menu, and * again cancels the message. So it's good to know how to do that at least.

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Quote of the Moment

The quickest way to a man's heart really is through his stomach, because then you don't have to chop through that pesky rib cage.

Recipe of the Moment

TUNA CASSEROLE
Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish
Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

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Link of the Moment
A long time ago I liked to the site's starship gallery, but the Star Trek site Ex Astris Scientia has lots of other cool (at least, cool as measured on a scale of "1" to "Star Trek") stuff, like the Inconsistencies page...the page on Trek's view of religion is very telling about the culture and creators that spawned the various incarnations of the show. Hope everyone in nor'easter land is muddling through. We've shoveled 3 or 4 times. People just shouldn't be living this far north.

Anyway, in the interest of this blog's secondary function of keeping people informed about The Life of Kirk, I'm gonna mention that it looks like Mo and I are going to break up. I think it's fair to say it's her decision. There's a bundle of reasons, each one has had its turn feeling more or less important; her feeling there's a connection we haven't made all this time, not enough shared activities, that our admitted difference in ambition (she tends to be very driven to pursue various projects, I tend to have a less pro-active, take it as it comes approach) is something she can't deal with in a life-partner, the usual waxing and waning of sex drives, her feeling she's missed out by never having lived alone for any significant time. Over the past month or so we've been talking a lot, a bit of couples therapy, writing e-mail, I've been trying to convince her that our life together is really something good, and can be made better, especially now that she's finally talking about what's bugging her. But I fear she's not so easily persuaded.

I find giving up on a relationship or any commitment to be an incredibly painful thing to do (I really think that tenacity shows in weird places, like the strength of my commitment to music groups I've joined; if I'm not super-delighted about the direction of the group I'll gripe about it, but I'm the one that's always there) though I saw that possibility of giving up for the first a week or so ago, a line in the sand to cross, and yesterday when she said she'd be leaving me, I guess that was that.

It's amicable though, almost weirdly so. It's definately one of those situations where it would have been useful if she had identified some of these issues before the wedding and the purchase of our house, but hey. (Or as Brooke pointed out, it's like Adam Sandler says in The Wedding Singer: "Once again, Things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!") Still, within the context of doing what she thinks she owes it to herself to do, Mo is trying to be as kind and nice as possible, and does seemed pained by the hurt this kind of thing is going to cause me and also our families.

I'm glad to see she's started her own livejournal. You can see some of her thoughts and point of view there, but she wanted me to mention that it isn't the "true, deep representation" of how she feels about all of this.

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Art of the Moment
I was contacted by Marissa Saradpon, because for a Design Layout class she had illustrated my old story Yee and Lan...the resulting work is really terrific, and her timing was great...I made it the feature for this month's Blender of Love (which saved me from writing up some horrendous essay about the breakup of me and Mo.)

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Toy of the Moment
Your chance to rock the world of the holiday snowglobe dwellers. Really amusing. And a pretty good metaphor for how this holiday season is going for me... Funny of the Moment

In the beginning was the Plan
And then came the Assumptions
And the Assumptions were without form
And the Plan was completely without substance
And the Darkness was on the faces of the Employees
And they spoke unto their Supervisors saying
"It's a Crock of Shit and it Stinketh!"
And the Supervisors went unto their Department Heads and sayeth
"It's a Pail of Dung, and none may abide the Odor thereof."
And the Department Heads went unto their Managers, and sayeth unto them
"It is a Container of Excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Director and sayeth
"It is a Vessel of Fertilizer, and none may abide its Strength."
And the Director went unto the Vice President and sayeth
"It contains that which aids Plant Growth, and it is very Strong."
And the Vice President went to the Executive Vice President and sayeth
"It promoteth Growth, and it is very Powerful."
And the Executive Vice President went to the President and sayeth
"This Powerful New Plan will actively promote the Growth and Efficiency of the System."
And the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was Good
And the Plan became Policy

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Product of the Moment
Someone had the same idea I had for using laptops on the desk. Still, I wonder if that's good for the hinge?

I first saw that thing in the latest Wired, which had the cover headline "CHINA:THE NEW CLONING SUPERPOWER". You know, when I think of china, and what it needs as a nation, a way of making more people isn't high on the list. (To be fair I think the article raises the same point.)

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Comic of the Moment
This here is Drinky Crow from the comic Maakies. As Ranjit says, "you weren't already obsessed with Maakies? You should be." A brilliantly bizarre comic, with an interesting archaic style, it's kind of like Little Nemo in Slumberland's alcoholic and suicidal cousin, crossed with Itchy & Scratchy and with a streak of tiny Bazooka Joe cartoons underneath (but more misogynistic). Being the borderline obsessive compulsive that I am I had to read the entire archive. If you're in a hurry, I liked this one on kisses, this one made me laugh, this one had a strange poetic beauty, and this one's undercartoon was a bit like a Jack Handy routine. (I love the whole "DOOK DOOK DOOK" drink sound.) Peterman called me 40 minutes before a talk by Daniel Dennett last night. He's my favorite philosopher, I loved his spirited defense of classical Darwinism and I find his definition and explanation of consciousness to be right on the money. I can't believe I didn't pursue any philosophy when I was at Tufts, where he presides. I'm also wondering if I didn't ask a clunker of a question in the Q+A; I thought it was a fair question given some indefinite areas in his talk, but it may have come across badly. Ah well, I'll take solace in this next quote (from my October 1999 PalmPilot journal) from Richard Feyman...

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Quote of the Moment

I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.

I don't know why, but I find it a very reassuring quote.

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Link of the Moment
So I guess the segway, aka Ginger, aka "IT", has been in the news lately. (Oddly, I've heard more about the coverage than I've seen coverage itself.) It's an electric, two-wheeled self-balancing scooter. Some people praise it as the next wonderful thing, but this Piece in Salon points out that it's not replacing cars, buses or trains; what it's replacing is walking. Dean Kamen, a nation turns its chubby eyes to you.