Dailies - Observations (Page 5)

Dissolving The Fermi Paradox

Paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404]by Anders Sandberg et al., on why the Fermi Paradox is not really a paradox. From the conclusions: > When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding,

Vanishing Asia

I've been sharing a lot of photography in the blog over the last couple of weeks; it's become the primary art form I'm enjoying these days. Here's another wonderful collection: Kevin Kelly's Vanishing Asia

The Problems With Technocracy

Economist Glen Weyl on why he's not a technocrat [https://blog.radicalxchange.org/blog/posts/2019-08-19-bv61r6/].

Wildlife Photographer Of The Year

The Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer Of The Year competition just announced its winners. The winner is a stunning photograph [https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery/2020-the-embrace] of a Siberian tiger hugging a tree. Lots of great pictures among the other

Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

Technology and media critic Neil Postman gave a talk back in 1998 about the problems with technological change. The transcript can be found here [https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf]. This paragraph is a good summary of Postman'

Nikon Small World

Nikon has been running a microphotography competition [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/photomicrography-competition] since 1975 and has made its archives freely available. Here are some of my favourites: * Embryonic development of a clownfish [https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2020-photomicrography-competition/embryonic-development-of-a-clownfish-amphiprion-percula-on-days-1-3-morning-and-evening-5-and-9] * Small white hair spider

How Medievals Built Bridges

What a reminder of how ridiculously hard engineering is: It still baffles me that we somehow figured out how to do such incredibly complex things.

Origins Of The Wheel

How [https://www.idesign.wiki/the-wheel/]the wheel came to be. In a nutshell, someone realized rolling heavy objects on logs made them easier to transport. Incremental improvements from there eventually led to the invention of the wheeled cart.

Relief Maps

Really impressive relief maps that make the Earth's geographical features stand out. Take a look at the Andes running across the length of South America. > Fascinating Relief Maps Show The World's Mountain Ranges [//imgur.com/a/3kDqX]

State Capacity

State capacity is a useful idea I learned about recently. It roughly means the capability of a state to carry out its desires. States may want to do several things, but their capabilities to do so are limited by the political, economic, and social

How Auto Shut-Off In Gas Pumps Works

The Straight Dope [https://www.straightdope.com/21341412/how-does-a-gas-pump-know-to-shut-itself-off] answers this very important question.

A Snowball Fight From 1896

Via Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/j5nw51/snowball_fight_124_years_ago_lyon_france_1896/] , this amazing colorized video of a snowball fight from Lyon, 1896:

The Gartner Hype Cycle

I learnt about a useful way to visualize progress of new technologies: The Gartner Hype Cycle. The key idea is that a technology has five phases in its life cycle: The trigger, the peak of inflated expectations, the trough of disillusionment, the slope of

Insuring The World

Lloyd's of London is a strange institution. It's a 330 year old insurance market founded and headquartered in London. The unusual thing about it is that it will insure pretty much anything. Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd'

Nuclear War Prep

Ben-Landau Taylor on what to do [https://benlandautaylor.com/2018/09/13/what-to-do-if-nuclear-war-seems-imminent/] if a nuclear war seems imminent. In a nutshell: move out of big cities (most likely targets for nuclear attacks) to low density rural areas.

The Economics Of Vending Machines

Zachary Crockett on the vending machine ownership and operation industry. The most interesting bit: > What makes the vending industry truly unique is its stratification: The landscape is composed of thousands of small-time independent operators — and no single entity owns >5% of the

British Accents

If you're new to Britain, the sheer variety in accents spoken across the country can be surprising. Most non-British people have heard two: the stereotypical aristocratic accent (also called Queen's English or Received Pronunciation); and cockney, the working class accent

Civilisation And Capitalism

A thorough (9k words) and interesting book review [https://fantasticanachronism.com/2020/01/31/reading-notes-civilization-capitalism/] of Fernand Braudel's Civilisation And Capitalism. The review is worth reading in and of itself even if you don't plan to read the book. I

Ransomware Negotiations

Journalist Bob Sullivan on negotiating with ransomware gangs [https://redtape.substack.com/p/whats-it-really-like-to-negotiate]. Three interesting bits: There is a reputation system for ransomware gangs: > It can sound strange, but during a recent lecture at Duke University, Ehuan said there were "good&

Bell Labs Records

Sixty years of records (1925 to 1984) from Bell Labs have been digitized and are now free to read [https://worldradiohistory.com/Bell_Laboratories_Record_Issue_Key.htm]. I opened a random issue from 1961 [https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Bell-Laboratories-Record/60s/Bell-Laboratories-Record-1961-10.pdf] and the

Economics Of Airline Loyalty Programs

Here's [https://marker.medium.com/why-the-survival-of-the-airlines-depends-on-frequent-flyer-programs-2509bd3f25d0] Bryan Hobart on the bizarre economics of loyalty programs. Some learnings: Loyalty programs are the most valuable asset many airlines own. Delta would have a negative market value if not for its loyalty program: > The

Life At Low Reynold's Number

On [https://science.curie.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Purcell_life_at_low_reynolds_number_1977.pdf] the tough life of tiny organisms who experience the same difficulty moving through water that a human would swimming though tar. The paper is quite dense, so

A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch

The authors of this paper [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31848342/] managed to extract an incredible amount of information from a 5700 year-old chewed up piece of birch pitch (a kind of tar used for a variety of things by early humans). They

Recent Low Tech Inventions

A list [https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/27/136886/ten-recent-low-tech-inventions-that-have-changed-the-world/] of low tech inventions over the last few decades that have changed the world. I didn't realize oral rehydration salts were a relatively recent invention: > By the early 1990s, diarrheal

On Being The Right Size

A wonderful essay [https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/Haldane.pdf] by biologist J. B. S. Haldane on why organisms are the size they are. It's only four pages long, but it might be the best piece of