Stupidity is not a social construct
Blogger Kate organizes a poll each year, and here is the poll for 2021. I think Carr's Till Death Do Us Part is the worthy and certain winner. I also voted for Sleep With Slander, which I read this summer.
PS, an older post of some reprinted heist and noir-boiled books https://kenblogic.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-few-heist-novels.html
The WSWS has been very good on this. A defender of the 1619 project abandons his central claim. Here.
A 15 minute video comparing a Bösendorfer, a Steinway, and a Yamaha. Here.
I have always preferred the Bösendorfer, especially for contrapuntal music, as it is clearer to my ear.
My aunt (and her husband) adopted a young boy when he was orphaned. A few years later she adopted seven more children from one family when they were orphaned.
She was their mother.
How innovative designs for crossing streams of traffic can improve the flow. Different patterns for different volumes. 6 minutes. Fascinating.
We saw the marine railway in Ontario, which looks a bit like the Russian lift in this thread.
Must stop those Asian students from excelling! Here.
Invisible hand: things that are done for private benefit but turn out to be for the public good. Invisible foot: things that are done for the public good but turn out to be for private benefit.
There are problems with American cops killing people, but they are not essentially racial. Here.
You need to click on the photo to see what CBS cropped out. There is no innocent explanation for this, CBS is ginning up riots.
I use DDG — which is really an anonymizer wrapped around Bing — as my default. I find it works better than Google most of the time. Really obscure stuff is better with Google.
There are better browsers than Chrome too. On iOS I like Perfect and Brave.
Not all lies are the same. What we used to call bearing false witness is worse than lying about how many watched your inauguration. Biden doubles down.
A brilliant video discussing how to use graphics to illustrate General Relativity.
An old post I occasionally update, reviews of mysteries by Patrick Quentin aka Q. Patrick aka Jonathan Stagge. Updated today.
I learned a good neologism, disinterpretation, deliberate and hostile misinterpretation to score points. Here is a nice disassembly of a disinterpretation.
I can believe in fire without believing in phlogiston.
A key idea in differential geometry and topology is the exterior derivative d. Most presentations of d do a poor job motivating the definition. This video does an excellent job, in a discussion restricted to R^3.
I am trying to avoid Biden, because we need some time to see what he actually does, and he deserves a breaking in period. But this is pretty bad. I think I take this differently than most. I think the ‘cultural norm’ bit is referring to *Biden*. Here is my interpretation: “I explained to Xi that I would have to criticize some things he does but that’s just because it’s expected of an American president. It’s not something for him to take seriously. He gets that.”
I see this a lot, mostly from psychologists actually “ Darwin is the greatest scientist to have ever lived.”
That’s insularity. Darwin might be the most relevant in their discipline, but not only is Darwin not the greatest scientist, he is rather obviously not even the greatest British scientist, or in fact even the greatest British scientist of the 19th century, since both Faraday and Maxwell fall in that category.
This is a stupid Tweet
An excellent article in Quillette. I argue with this type, invariably Trumpkins, a lot on another blog.
Why did the Robinhood shitshow happen now? Because GameStop is important to people. That’s part of why this is an import shift in American politics.
Trust Europeans to make everything worse. — Bruno Maçães.
He was discussing vaccine, but some things generalize!
In 1971 RCA, to cut costs, introduced the thinner Dynaflex LP.
It's easy to miss the important stories, but I think this is one of them. Self watering soil
Kahawa is an adventure-cum-heist novel set in Idi Amin's Uganda. A crew of thieves steal a train loaded with coffee (not rob, steal).
I read this in the 80s and liked it, but remembered almost nothing about it. How does it hold up? Reasonably well. It’s grimmer and more serious than Westlake usually is, but the story has many good things. The real problem is it’s too long, almost 500 pages. There are also some irritating short snatches of crude pornography. The main character isn’t nearly as interesting as the many secondary ones. Overall, B.
I have posted this before, but it’s time for a reprise. Graeme Koehne The Persistence of Memory 9 minutes.
A long but good piece by Jonathan Chait. The answer to his closing question is, they don’t.
A deeply enjoyable essay on “cis-gender.” Once you realize ‘cis’ is code for ‘lumpen’ it becomes much clearer.
