Let go your earthly tether

In the episode The Metal Clan, an interesting work within a work appears:

出尘世羁绊,入虚无如风

Let go your earthly tether. Enter the void and become emptiness, like the wind.

Starving artist as an aesthetic and all round excuse for being an asshole

There was a time when artists and writers flocked to inexpensive cities to allow themselves the trials of making art over the trials of making a living. In North America today, the main site of literary activity or literary business – which more and more amount to the same thing – is Brooklyn. Yet it’s probably one of the toughest places for a writer to live cheaply and noodle about, wearing rags. What happens when artists gravitate to places where they can make art only with great financial effort; where writers have to be journalists, adjunct professors, or work in cafés to pay the rent, leaving little time to write their novel, while learning every few months that one of their herd has secured a six-figure advance for their first book? What do their relationships and values look like, and how do their love stories unfold? This is the world of Adelle Waldman’s first book.

 
Starving artist as an aesthetic and all round excuse for being an asshole

Class war

"Thailand’s political crisis is a sorry tale of bad losers... their responsibility, and their disgrace, are very great."

 Thailand’s political crisis

The Legend of Korra Book 3

Excited!

Beauty and the Beast

Red

Flutter

Introductions are MANDATORY

Fear Not This Night (Piano)

Reactionary thought in contemporary China

From China Airborne: The Test of China's Future, by James Fallows (Pantheon, 2012), Kindle Loc. 3326 of 3816

"All reactionary thought in contemporary China is of the same tradition," that philosopher, Ai Siqi, wrote in 1940. "It emphasizes China's 'national characteristics,' harps on China's 'special nature,' and wipes aside the general principles of humanity, arguing that China's social development can only follow China's own path."

 

Fantasy General OST - Track 3

The Wolf Among Us Opening Credit Music

The Forgotten Resources of Space

The Forgotten Resources of Space

There are no unique raw materials waiting for us in space (possible exception of 3He). There are a lot of hydrocarbons on Titan, but because of delta-v costs, it will always be cheaper to derive them from marginal locations on Earth, like oil shales or biofuels. Even if a platinum-rich asteroid were found, platinum would be obtained cheaper by re-opening a depleted low grade mine on Earth.

If extraterrestrial raw imports will never be economical, is there any motivation for going there? Increasingly, it is processes rather than raw materials that are important for industry. Space processes can control the gravity, vacuum, radiation, temperature, and energy density to a degree impossible on Earth. These characteristics, the forgotten resources of space, can produce high-strength membranes using surface tension effects, long whiskers and gigantic laser crystals grown in microgravity, nano-engineering using ultra pure vapor deposition, strong glassy materials produced by exploiting a steep temperature gradient, and alloys mixed by diffusion alone. Relatively small machinofactured and nano-produced objects, including pharmaceuticals and bio-tech, will be the first space imports to Earth.

Phil Eklund, 2009

High Frontiers is an interesting example in the way how high science diffuses through culture and make accessible concepts and ideas that were once the preserve of the specialized few.

The application process

Sometimes I feel that the application process is a bit like FTL. You go into the final stage feeling you have a chance (after all, you've made this far). And then...

Remembering Snowscapes

Something to watch for the weekend

Beats watching.... say, Whitechapel.



the trailer music

A war within the Chinese internet autarky

"Each of the big three is so big, so wired in politically and so vital to the Chinese economy that its survival is assured. An employee at one of the companies likened BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) to Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the superstates of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which are so big as to be undefeatable and permanently at war."

 

Chinese internet: Mobile wars 

Neverwinter Nights main theme

Do not mistake wishes for truth

云宮音

Forest Green

Tales of English justice

"[L]ong before 1825, when they were professionalised by being removed from everything except the administration of justice and put on salaries of £5500 or more a year, the judges had been wealthy men. On George I’s accession the puisne – i.e. ordinary – judges had been put on £1500 a year, with large periodic increases until, by 1800, they were on £3000 a year ‘free and clear from all taxes and deductions whatever’, and by 1810 on £4000. The purpose of the Hanoverian introduction of automatic knighthoods for the judiciary was probably to elevate the status of the honour rather than of the bench, and was reportedly resented by the latter. The further pay rise of 1825 may not therefore have been the massive buying-out it is sometimes said to have been; but it does mark a cleansing of the constitutional stables. In 1832 the basic judicial salary was brought down to £5000 a year, and there it remained until 1954, when it was still a pretty good wage in spite of inflation, but was finally raised by £3000 in one go. By then, as the Lord Advocate had written to the Lord Chancellor, it was ‘most unsuitable for a High Court Judge to travel in a public conveyance’. This is why many of them now cycle to work."

Above it all

Tales of English justice

"Mr Justice Hallett... was sent for and asked to resign for ‘asking too many questions’... I was once told by a very old lady what the source of the problem was. ‘We used to be taken to the Halletts’ when we were children,’ she said. ‘My sisters and I would be put in the nursery to play with Hugh, and he would line us all up at one end of the room and lecture us. I could have told the Lord Chancellor he was making a mistake appointing Hugh Hallett."

Above it all

Tony Blair 1987

Tony wrote once for the LRB. Who knew?

In it he spoke about the North Sea oil driven success of Thatcherism, Tories' rule based on ~41% of the votes and a divided opposition, and a vision for government in which power was not simply devolved to the markets.

Then the prophet turned into a preacher on a tank.

Tony Blair - diary

Dragonfall

"You look at a moth and barely perceive sentience. You glance its way, amused, as it flutters towards a bright light in a vain attempt to... what?

To enter? To draw strength? To burn? It doesn't know. Its epic struggle is barely one-hundredth of your lifespan. The sum total of its existence is nothing against the vast scale of your struggles, your hopes, your dreams - which it could not fathom in a thousand thousand years.

Poor moth."

What not to do as a retail investor

Why would anyone trade forex?

It's even harder than making a return trading bonds.

Crime and punishment

I take one look at that picture of her and think she should be sent to bed without any supper.

US woman arrested over nine-year overdue rental video

Damages

Beautiful montage

Bauklötze (original)

And a better enunciated version:

Morant Bay Uprising, Jamaica - 1865

From Sedley, Stephen. Ashes and Sparks: Essays on Law and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 56-57.  

"[T]he uprising was put down within a week, in the month that passed before the decree expired the military was allowed an orgy of shooting, flogging and more or less arbitrary executions. The Cornhill Magazine put the number of deaths at 439 and floggings at 600.

If this had been all, there would probably have been a transient fuss in England, after which (Governor) Eyre's career would have continued to flourish..."

However,

"The controversy was not about whether there had been a necessity for martial law to be invoked at Morant Bay: there almost certainly had been. It was ostensibly about the unnecessary duration of the decree and the abuse of the powers it created; but neither of these features distinguished it from the measures adopted in response to other such risings. What gave the outrage a focus was that Eyre had personally authorised the arrest in Kingston of a man named George Gordon, and what today would be called his extraordinary rendition to Morant Bay. Arriving there on a Saturday, Gordon was given an instant trial without access to counsel and hanged two days later."

"Gordon was that dangerous thing, a rogue member of the ruling elite: but he was racially and economically compromised, and that made him not only dispensable but serviceable as an example to others. All Eyre needed was an excuse and an opportunity to sweep him into the net of bloody reprisal..."

The Levellers

From Sedley, Stephen. Ashes and Sparks: Essays on Law and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 89-90.  

"[T]he power of the Leveller programme - the first true political programme of a modern kind - lay in its amalgam of principle and realism. That principle rapidly becomes unrealistic and that realism is too often a betrayal of principle was the dilemma of the Levellers as it is of all politics. But their thinking and action show a clear consciousness of the dilemma and a serious endeavour to meet it. In this, and in their combination of a thought-out political programme with grassroots organisation, lies their modernity."

Borgen

Statsminister

Statsminister!

Tales of English justice

"[I]n 1746 the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas gave judgment for £1000 damages in favour of a Lieutenant Frye against the president of a court martial which had wronged him, and then encouraged Frye to sue the other members. When they protested through the Lords of the Admiralty to the King, the Chief Justice had the whole lot of them arrested for contempt and released them, when they apologised, with the warning: ‘Whosoever set themselves up in opposition to the law or think themselves above the law will find themselves mistaken.’"

Above it all

Wir sind die Nacht 我们是夜晚

From a 'language learning' site:




"Wenn du wüsstest , dass

如果你知道

es auf dieser Welt nur einen einzigen Menschen gibt ,

在这个世界上只存在唯一一个

Der dich glücklich macht , 

能让你幸福的人

Der für dich bestimmt ist , 

为你注定的人

Was würdest du opfern , um ihn zu finden? 


为了找到他你会舍弃什么

Wie viele Jahrhunderte würdest du nach ihm suchen?

你是否会用几百年去寻找他

Und wenn du ihn dann gefunden hättest ,

然后当你找到他之后

würdest du ihn je wieder gehen lassen?

你会让他再次离开你吗


Würdest du ihn nicht auch mit


你是不是也会

beiden Armen so fest umklammern , wie du nur kannst , 

紧紧地把他拥在怀里

und ihn nie , nie , nie wieder loslassen? "

绝对绝对绝不会再放手

Dumpfe Träume

Kalte
Kalte
Nächte
Nächte
Lass deine Augen leuchten...
Dumpfe
Dumpfe
Träume
Träume
Und meine Seele fordert...

Kalte
Kalte
Nächte
Nächte
Lass deine Augen leuchten...
Dumpfe
Dumpfe
Träume
Träume
Und meine Seele fordert...

Schneller
Schneller
Atmen
Atmen
Unsere Körper beben...
Leises
Leises
Zittern
Zittern
Und meine Seele lodert...

Süsse Bisse
Kaltes Schaudern...
Und meine Seele lodert...
Kalte
Kalte
Nächte
Nächte
Lass deine Augen leuchten...
Dumpfe
Dumpfe
Träume
Träume
Und meine Seele fordert...

Who judges the judges?

‘His Majesty’s Judges are satisfied with the almost universal admiration in which they are held.’

‘Her Majesty’s judges have a greater understanding of human nature than any other body of men in the world.’ 

Above it all

Configuration of international justice

From Sedley, Stephen. Ashes and Sparks: Essays on Law and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 15-16. 

In speaking of a 'consensus [that] is eroding the old impunities afforded by statehood and state office':

"If this epoch-making jurisdiction is not simply to degenerate into the twenty-first century's version of victor's justice, into a regime in which the war criminals of the lesser nations get their deserts while nationals of the greatest power are shielded from all process except that which their own state elects to deploy against them, the long arm of international law has to be able to reach everyone against whom there is a triable case, and the mailed fist has to be there to punish those who are found guilty by due process. A system which replicates the very insolence of office from which human rights abuses spring cannot properly call itself a system of justice. One law for the powerful and another for the weak is no law at all."

It is unclear...

"whether internationals criminal jurisdiction is instead to slide back into its ambivalent twentieth century role as a secondary and localised manifestation of military and political power."

Some reflections

Perhaps what makes ABCs successful is their ability to focus on an artificial goal that is set in front of them and pursue it with great focus and drive. Even if that goal doesn't turn out to be particularly useful, having some direction is better than flailing around.

Success doesn't bring them any particular joy or happiness. The unlucky ones, After realizing that the goal is not what they want,  take it to mean that it has all been in vain and are set adrift. The lucky ones are able to switch the goal with some other.

Walking on light

Operación Masacre

"The city (like the country) can be loved as long as the light is fading and there aren’t any people in the view..."


- Operation Massacre

Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme)

GRAVITY, Soyuz & Shenzhou

It is interesting if you think about why the Soyuz and the Shenzhou would be similar: consumer electronics differ greatly between manufacturers, and cars and planes do, too. But there's enormous value to actually simplifying and unifying the control schemes for these spaceships. One can interpret the comment that the two are similar as a testament to the impressive engineering that goes into spaceflight. That we have these totally distinct bespoke creations, but that the creators expended enormous effort to unify their control mechanisms as a result of an actual, practical need. And that this practical need is precisely what we see in this movie.

Even if Shenzhou were an exact copy of Soyuz, the control schemes are actually unlikely to be similar without a lot of effort involved. These control schemes were so precisely thought out that a pilot with familiarity with only one of them could pilot both, even when the pilot could not understand either language. This is one area where this movie excelled. It entertained complexity.

Further reading: GE Apollo D-2 vs Soyuz vs Shenzhou
GE Apollo D-2 vs Soyuz vs Shenzhou (cached link)

Rent seeking

"No one believes [The big French, German and British energy companies who sell Britons their gas and electricity] compete with each other: the test of that is that they are unable to demonstrate, in a way anyone can understand, that they do. They are more like farmers who have acquired land on which to grow crops in perpetuity... the land they own is us, their customers, and the crop is our bills."

Energy Tax

Presumed Music

The White Queen

Wars of the Roses 

Richard the Third

Bauklötze

Tiny Times

I'm somewhat removed from Chinese popular culture, and from popular culture in general. But I was intrigued by this movie. Partly because the critics' voices were so boisterous, their farts so loud, that I can't help but feel that I need to find out what the stink is all about. Well, I watched the movie and thought that it was not bad.

From the vantage point of a viewer living in a society of abundance, the movie doesn't seem extraordinary. The shots are glossy, but nobody would mistake the set for the level of luxury that one would find in places without so much fanfare in the U.S.

But there is a very simple premise from the movie: Chinese people want what everybody else want, mainly love and money. Is this too much to ask? Would it be so out of place to suggest that the pursue of wealth and prosperity should be the governing mission of mankind?

I find that this normality, this baseline familiarity, may itself be significant. I once thought to myself that the day when movies coming out of China are no longer considered exotic or 'auteur', only then would China truly have arrived in the international stage in a more significant sense, because it would then have arrived culturally. I think those days may be starting.

This movie is in many ways limited, but I think it would be a mistake to wait for a more grant debut to realize what is happening. Ultimately, to have Chinese culture walk out of the alley of history and speak more about the universal present, to have an entirely different society with the critical mass to ponder the expanding possibilities of reality: that would be exciting. That would be electrifying.


The movie will be remembered as a signifier of the continuing normalization of China. I am happy to see such signs, because what Chinese culture has come to mean to me is the continued improvement and actualization of a people. It has, in some ways, come to meant progress itself.

The Politics of Relationships

V
So I ran across a photo album of a girl I knew at college
She got fat

me
oh?

V
Yeah
Got fat
Well, I think I know why, too
My theory is that... 

me
that she ate too much?


V
Well...

Awkward conversations

FT: The Great Pornwall of Britain


Sit back and take a moment to imagine what the future might sound like.

“Hello, you’re through to BT. This call may be recorded for training purposes. How may I help you, Mr Smith?”

“Uhhh, I, errr… filters… ummm…”

“Would you like to view adult content, Mr Smith?”

“Oh uh, no! I mean, I think it’s blocking some educational material, you see I…”

“Sure, Mr Smith. Do you have the approval of the other account holder, Mrs Smith?”

Click!

Photos of Texas in the 1970s

Texas in the 1970s

The Legend of Korra Book 2

Really excited.

The reason? Because the previous shows were so good: "The show's internal consistency, long story arcs, and inventiveness with its basic premise illustrate a lot of love and care on the part of its creators. They cared enough to pay this kind of attention to detail."

Efficiency at the wrong end

V
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6051041

me
so, what do you make of it?

V
It's great link bait for the HN crowd
It's a tough choice, though
On the one hand, you can be a robot, working 12 and 14 hour days at your iBanking job, slaving away at the system making a 250k$ pittance
Or you can be one of the free thinkers, working your part-time Starbucks job for 10$/hr between house parties, oh, and, by the way, no health insurance

V
The speech is actually quite self-aggrandising
It hints at all these truths we know but won't admit
Like how the slackers who lived a better life probably are mostly losers and only 1% hidden geniuses

me
I think the original intent was to question the industrial process of education

V
But clearly the industrial process reflects an industrial thinking about society
This is the thinking that the people who will love this speech will also espouse
The utilitarian approach

me
it may be questioning the efficacy of this process, after all, there's only one valedictorian
the industrial education process may or may not be dehumanizing, but the larger problem is that it is actually incredibly inefficient

V
How do we improve efficiency?

me
I don't know, but I think that is where a lot of the angst is really coming from

V
But the HN appeal seems to show that the angst is at efficiency at the wrong end
Who cares if the gifted & talented are underserved by the system?
They'll probably succeed anyway
The slightly gifted may be left behind
But they're really not as special as they want us to think
But at the other end, you have direr situation, and there seems to be less focus or interest on what to do about them

The desperate and the dissembling

V
See, this open letter is fantastic:

me
 that seems to be missing the point.
 isn't the point that the capability exists to forego these legal formalities and access confidential data by executive fiat with little or no proper oversight?
the fact that such executive power is declared "legal" by a legislative body like Congress does nothing to dampen its menace and abusive potential
if Google is serious about privacy, then it would take action to strengthen end-to-end protection of data
unless I'm missing something I'm entirely unsure why this piece of spin is fantastic
it seems desperate and dissembling

V
 I think that desperation is good
 In fact, I think it's excellent.

me
 I think the pleading tone belies the fact that it is always groveling to certain powers
 why does't it go ahead and make a grand gesture and pull out of business operations in the U.S. indignantly? Oh wait, because it can't afford to

V
 Well, I think an even better part of it is that it pulled out of overseas operations on proof of malfeasance.
 This is not the same. This is the company suffering for an appearance of overeager complicity with a programme that is, itself, of unclear legality.
 This is better, though. It really doesn't matter if the charges are true or false. It matters that the appearance or implication that the charges are true is enough to make the company squirm. And I think that it is wrong to say that the situations are identical. 
What is an organisation overseas that has equivalent political influence? The same lobbying structures don't really exist, as I understand.
 So they withdraw and take the hit
 Here, the lobbying structures are very advanced
 Twitter apparently refused to participate in this programme. I think it's a positive thing if the organisations who agreed to participate are penalised in the market for the mere implication.
 If this intensifies, which I hope it does, then I think the only way to fight this implication is to prove noncompliance, which means doing what they should have done from the start and allow end-to-end encryption.

me
 I guess the company is now in a position in which it will have to say something, anything, and make some gesture, any gesture - however empty (and hoping that the reader doesn't notice), to get away from the implication

A corridor of power

The US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York

Those who serve power, and those who are served by it.

Children's books. French children's books.

I was going to write about a wedding scene in a movie I liked, but the embed option for the movie clip was disabled, so I guess I'll just have to blog about children's books.

Voilà

Two modern fairy tales

Tale 1
Tale 2

Each left her own world for his.

I'm upset

8:30 PM me: just found out x is getting married 

9:20 PM me: I wonder if she is happy 
but more to the point, I feel quite upset 

11:09 PM V: Why upset?

me: for her getting married, but not to me 

V: Why do you want to marry a girl you don't even know? 

11:34 PM me: Yes, you do have a point 
but I'm still upset

But that's a sadder story

"And the mystery knight should defeat all challengers and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty."  

"She was," said Meera. "But that's a sadder story."

Will we ever get a proper review of ASoIaF?

A promising review turned massive spoiler

Checking in

‘Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse?’

An Entire Order Converted into What It Was Intended to End

The Decline of Italy

"In 1992-94 Italy was widely held to have been reborn. The parties that had long ruled – latterly misruled – the country were all but wiped out, after their corruption had been exposed by a fearless group of magistrates, in an election under a new and, so it was felt, more functional system, even if the government that emerged from the polls was a surprise to many who celebrated the end of the old regime. The country could now make a fresh start, in its way comparable to that of 1945."

Return to Algiers

First there was the Battle of Algiers:



"La France doit-elle rester en Algèrie?"

"Si vous rèpondez encore oui, vous devez en accepter toutes les consèquences nècessaires."


30 years later:

Some translations

A well translated poem looks something like this. I take as an example the foreword to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, as translated from the Chinese by Moss Roberts:

滚滚长江东逝水，浪花淘尽英雄。是非成败转头空。
青山依旧在，几度夕阳红。
白发渔樵江渚上，惯看秋月春风。一壶浊酒喜相逢。
古今多少事，都付笑谈中。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——调寄《临江仙》

On and on the Great River rolls, racing east.
Of proud and gallant heroes its white-tops leave no trace,
As right and wrong, pride and fall turn all at once unreal.
Yet ever the green hills stay
To blaze in the west-waning day.

Fishers and woodsmen comb the river isles.
White-crowned, they've seen enough of spring and autumn tide
To make good company over the wine jar,
Where many a famed event
Provides their merriment.

                                                         - From ershiwu shi tanci

Moss attributes the authorship of the poem to a collection of works "ershiwu shi tanci" (二十五史弹词??)  rather than specifically to 调寄《临江仙》.It is interesting in that this provides a wider context for people unfamiliar the genre (or the language).

A search into "ershiwu shi tanci" reveals that it is "a collection of popular songs on historical themes compiled during the Ming dynasty by Yang Shen (d. 1559)". Personally I had to look up what 调寄 means.

Alas, poor Simone

"Drama of my affections, pathos of life . . . . Indeed, I have a more complicated, more nuanced sensibility than his and a more exhausting power of love. Those problems that he lives in his mind, I live them with my arms and my legs. Has he ever known months when all the days were only tears? I do not want to lose all that . . . . Only I must make myself stronger in order to walk on despite my burden. Two cowardly attitudes: keep the burden and sit down - (this is very cowardly) - throw off the burden and walk on. One good one: keep the burden and walk on. I will walk on." 

Marketizing universities

[Marketising universities] rests on a fundamental misconception of the market and its functions: a misconception that could only be held by people who have not thought seriously about the market or its history. 

The market itself, for example, rarely drives innovation; on the contrary it usually reacts. Entrepreneurs certainly have a sense of what might be profitable, but the market does not tell them what will and what won’t. They rely, largely, on guesswork; they put something on the market and keep their fingers crossed. There is no certainty in the market. Nor does it necessarily signal what needs to be done. The market did not synthesise penicillin or put communications satellites into the heavens or discover how cholera is spread. In many cases the market can resist innovation. Businessmen get set in their ways or simply make the wrong guess. Nor are consumers natural innovators. On the contrary they are often very conservative and have to be induced to change their habits by the enormous engine of advertising.

In Defense of British Universities

Normalization by the virtue of "values"

12:51 AM me: TTV does give an impression of Taiwan as a normalized liberal society in keeping with the spirit of the times 

12:59 AM V: You talk about normalisation so skeptically, but what other perspective would they have?

1:00 AM It's like saying, boy, you can tell those Mainland TV shows are up to trouble by how hard they try to hide how naturally inscrutable and untrustworthy Chinese people are

1:04 AM me: it's like... Zhang Ailing writing about being love stricken in WW2 Japanese occupied Shanghai. One also gets the sense then that Republican China was modern and normalized, when it was actually mired in corruption and faced existential threats from the outside

1:06 AM Think about Shame...Amah! (which was published in 1944, before the war ended)

1:07 AM did you get the sense from the story that China was/or was about to be engaged in a struggle for its national survival?

1:10 AM I think normalization is meant to speak to a universal audience. In any age you would have people talking about love, nostalgia, childhood, innocence, remembrance

1:11 AM intentionally or unintentionally placed, it exists; it's reassuring

1:12 AM me: but it is tempting to think that the people on these TV shows reflect a society that has privileged access to normalization by the virtue of its "values", when another society under very different circumstances and values did experience it, as have others1:13 AM that is the skepticism I am trying to convey

View on Age of Fracture

One of the consequences of the disunity of a dominant idea is counter-revolution.

Corey Robin on Age of Fracture by Daniel Rodgers