Domain specific language

What if consciousness is an emergent property whose domain specific language we have yet to uncover/develop?

The two things that almost killed Big Bird

First, Big Bird avoided the Challenger disaster. Next, it survived Mitt Romney.

Experience: I am Big Bird

Consensus

"I suspect capital will do well in any variant of the current political order, it'd be nice if money-transfer was easier, cheaper and better automatable, and I'm not expecting banks to vanish anytime soon..."

"Bitcoin throws a whole pile of obnoxious goldbug monetary theory and ponzi scheme incentives into the mix ..."

"...in order to resist sybil attacks... [it] burned a small country worth of oil, and produced a "transaction processing" network with extremely confusing and non-obvious failure modes that can sustain about the same rate of account-updates as, say, a team of human slide-rule operators."

Stellar Consensus Protocol

Out There

An authoritative review of Mad Men

Mad Men’s second overt challenge to its own glamour relies on the audience’s self-flattering sense of historical irony, on our consciousness of our social enlightenment relative to the 1960s. ‘How wonderful they look,’ we’re invited to think, ‘but how racist they are, how sexist, how homophobic, how reckless in their diet; what snobs!’


What if, with or against our will, we aren’t shocked by the darkness beneath the surface, but childishly delighted by the prettiness of the surface shimmering over the darkness? What if the vintage fashion-shoot perfection of the Christmas scene leaves a more powerful impression on us than our awareness of the suffering...

... over a whole series, these temporal markers of the American 1960s crowd the portrayal of chauvinism to create an effect where, rather than being a cause of shame, past racism and homophobia come to seem an organic and inherently temporary aspect of nostalgia, like puberty – as if civil rights for all races and sexual orientations have been won (to the limited extent they have been) not through protest, obstinacy and sacrifice, in the face of vicious opposition and popular derision, but because they were inevitable. It is as if the worst chauvinisms of straight white 1960s America were childish bad behaviour that the adult straight white America of the new millennium would probably rather not repeat, but permits itself to shake its head over with bemused affection for its impetuous younger self...

The shock of the pretty

Thinking out loud on FOSS

Free and Open-source Software has yet to revolutionize ERP systems. It is one of those areas where the value lies mostly in implementation due to the highly customized and proprietary nature of individual businesses.

The bigger problem, I think, is the two track nature of technological progress and organizational competence. There is nowhere to hide if the ERP is not working.

Sunless Sea

“I have also seen his eyes rest fondly upon the faces in the room, upon the pictures on the wall, upon all the familiar objects of that home, whose abiding and clear image must have flashed often on his memory in times of stress and anxiety at sea. Was he looking out for a strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings for his last Departure?”

- Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

Entrepreneurship

Y Combinator Startup Class - lectures given by the best startup accelerator

Zero to One - surprising and insightful book: surprising, because it doesn't confuse “what I did” with “how to do it”. Insightful, because it challenges some long held beliefs and suggests an alternatives.

Apportez l'epee

"Those who have been made, can be unmade."

I shall profit from this lesson

G. Boleyn : "I trust a lesson has been learned. You are not a gentleman born. You should not meddle in the affairs of those set above you..."

Cromwell: "I shall profit from this lesson... I assure you, Sir."

FT - Productivity growth in the rich world started slowing down around the same time that the financial sector’s share of economic activity started rising rapidly

In other words, it means nothing

"We inform you about government access to data... unless this disclosure is prohibited by law"

Uh, hello National Security Letter?

MS adopts first international cloud privacy standard

Security through obsolescence... Ho!

The primary aim of my blogging platform choice has always been archival. Hosting my own blog and having to update certain aspect (i.e. security) to simply keep it running are not-inconsiderable distractions.

There are other things, such as storage, that merits trying out the bleeding edge (ZFSonLinux). But when portability is possible for a range of commodity services (blogging platforms), I chose one that is (presumably) Too Big to Fail. Though Blogger may yet one day meet the same fate as Reader.

Lack of CSPRNG Threatens WordPress Sites

and in it, we'll be the fools and oppressors

Cromwell: "... and do you know what I hate most? He's writing an account of today for all of Europe to read and in it, we'll be the fools and oppressors, and he'll be the poor victim with the better turn of phrase. He wrote this play years ago, and he sniggers every time I trip over my lines."

Consider, for a minute, that you were brought up with a not-insufficient awareness for a certain philosopher, statesman and humanist, and perhaps this awareness even extends to acknowledgement and admiration. What would it take for such an idol to be brought low? For this, a devastating scene of Thomas More's trial in Wolf Hall:

More: "Ask yourselves, gentlemen, why would I open my mind to a man like Richard Rich? Why, when the learned and the pious have implored me, when the King himself with weighty reasons has sought to persuade me."

Rich: "Because you think I don't matter."

We try to write laws sparingly

Most of the issues, however, are eternal

'When due to deliver her daughter, 26 years ago, she wrote six weeks’ columns in advance to cover her maternity leave. The morning she was due to have her baby, her editor called her to ask for an extra piece. “I said, ‘I’m just about to go and have a caes­arean’.” To which he replied, “It’s just routine surgery.” She wrote it.'

  The joys of being a newspaper agony aunt

'Most of the issues, however, are eternal: loneliness, difficulty in forming and sustaining relationships. '

'This isn't France and I'm not a fool.'

Cromwell's Theme from Wolf Hall

Entropy

The problems have to be solved over and over again are entirely the results of an inability of the mix-skilled to plan and organize,  to go about solving problems with rigor and making sure that the methods are repeatable,  the results are sustainable and the decision making process is  accountable. Solutions would often end up compromised due to the same disparity in skill and mindset. And that by solving the many variations of these problems, where does it lead one to?

Sarah and Duck

January 13, 2015

Can't recall exactly the last time that I was so sick that I couldn't get out of bed. It must have been back in China when I was a kid. I got so ill in the middle of the night that my grand parents had to carry me to the hospital. I woke up the next day with an IV drip. Few days later my teacher and the whole class visited. Memories, miss them. Sickness, not so much. Unfortunately getting sick as a kid is how I often found myself.

After coming to the U.S., I hardly get sick at all. I still remember the shock the first time I got a mild cold in the U.S. It was a few years after I settled in. I thought to myself at the time that with the built up immune system from my childhood, minor sickness should be impossible in this cleaner environment. Still, the count slowly went up over the years. I manage to keep track with my hands of all those times that I got sick since I came here, but I may soon have to start using my toes.

Techno-feudalism

Some overdue posts.

Techno-feudalism

"Technology itself does not dictate the outcomes. Economic and political institutions do."

The rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

"The major part of [the] book... was devoted to descriptions of the economic and social institutions that enable some countries to operate near the technological frontier. The failure to establish such institutions, or to operate them effectively, condemns most of the world to levels of productivity and living standards far below what is possible with existing knowledge and techniques."

Those formidable bank robbers

"The Calabrian family gangs (again the meaningless journalistic term ’Ndrangheta blurs their diversity) who delivered the cocaine northwards were and are incapable of coping with the reverse flow of used euros, zlotys and rubles. Their first need was to pay the Colombian suppliers, who refused to accept cash because it was no good for investing in Miami real estate or local hotels and restaurants. The Calabrians needed real money: not bundles of paper but deposits in bank accounts that could be wired to the Colombians. Their second need was to have their own laundered money, to invest in property: Umbria became a particular favourite, as did the high streets of major cities. Ignorant of foreign languages, unfamiliar with international banking practices, the semi-literate Calabrians could supply cocaine to distributors but turned to the Sicilians to launder their profits. With a century of experience in the export trade and the fluent English of educated men, the Sicilians organised the system – still operating today – that sends banknotes from Calabria to Beirut, Dubai, Kaliningrad and other places where money-changers will accept vast sums in many currencies, paying for them with personal cheques that can be deposited in local banks. Funds can then be wired to commercial accounts in Western Europe, perhaps by way of an additional passage (Cyprus was a favoured way until the Sicilians were scared away by those formidable bank robbers the European Commission and the ECB)."

The Honoured Society

Dog Eat Dog

Just got my copy of this delightful game:

"Dog Eat Dog is a game of colonialism and its consequences. As a group, you work together to describe one of the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, defining the customs of the natives and the mores of the outsiders arriving to claim it. One player then assumes the role of the Occupation force, playing their capable military, their quisling government, and whatever jaded tourists and shrewd businessmen are interested in a not quite pacified territory. All the others play individual Natives, each trying in their own ways to come to terms with the new regime. The game begins when the war ends. Through a series of scenes, you play out the inevitably conflicted relationship between the two parties, deciding what the colonizers do to maintain control, which natives assimilate and which run amok, and who ends up owning the island in the end."

A Game of Imperialism and Assimilation in the Pacific Islands

Those who cannot afford justice must do without it

"Maybe we are an overly litigious culture, too quick to insist on our rights and unwilling to compromise in the face of reasonable disagreement. Maybe many disputes are made worse by the legal framework within which they operate. Maybe. But Clarke and Grayling didn’t plan to kill all the lawyers. Instead, the plan has been to place law out of the reach of the poor."

Necessity or Ideology

Interstellar - Main Theme

Parts of the piano/organ reminded me of Philip Glass's "Koyaanisqatsi".

Tinkerbell

"Fact is, when I see the eagerness of Western supporters to celebrate the Hong Kong democracy movement, I reminded I’m still waiting for the Asian Edward Said to write about the West’s need to frame, appropriate, and validate its 21^st-century concept of the “Orient”—and self-validate its own values, attitudes, and increasingly embattled sense of superiority—by defining, parsing, and condemning the mainland Chinese Other it chooses to observe across the Pacific."

Clap Harder or the Hong Kong Tinkerbell Gets It!

The singular accomplishment that is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

When I think of the watersheds of thought, SMAC stands out as something that enabled intense engagements with ideas.

Its value as a cultural artifact should be judged by its ability to successfully go beyond entertainment and wish fulfillment. And in so succeeding, SMAC changed the outlooks and expectations of a whole generation.

To defend inequality, and make acceptable the status quo

"... this is an establishment that has had experience of not being the establishment, although it has always drawn most (though, crucially, not all) of its membership from the ruling class. It ‘is made up – as it has always been – of powerful groups that need to protect their position in a democracy in which almost the entire adult population has the right to vote’. These groups are ‘amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.’"

"Most startling to our descendants will be that ‘this was passed off as normal, as entirely rational and defensible,’ and that ‘institutions run by the elite’ had ‘considerable success’ in redirecting ‘people’s anger to those at the very bottom of society’."

Who will stop them?

Longevity

"... when pundits discuss the future, the excitement around driverless cars and nanotechnology gives way to long faces when the topic moves to human longevity. It may be nice to live longer, but what about the effect on the economy? The question is absurd. Economic growth is about giving people more choices, and no choice is more earnestly sought than the chance of a longer life"

Live longer — and thank economics 

Cultural Identity

"... does not think that cultural identity is therefore intrinsically valuable. On the contrary, he regards it as potentially harmful. In ‘A Dissent on Cultural Identity’, he sets out his position with brutal candour: ‘That cultural identity is “a permanent feature of human life” is trivially true. We all come from somewhere … But why must each of us be more than matter-of-fact in committing our lives to our history, our culture, our identity? They – culture, history, identity – have done many things for us and many things to us. What makes us affect gratitude instead of anger in return?’"

The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke from the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence; Moral Imagination: Essays

The politics of resentment and complaint

A strong central government is needed for politics to function and for the state to survive the empowerment of the people.

The curse of all stable societies is capture by elites.


Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Political Order and Political Decay’

Drive by decision making

People often want to know enough to make decisions, but not enough to make good ones.

Our Dark Ages

How people lived, who they really are, and how they change over time are rarely entirely known. We encounter their artifacts from time to time and look upon them in mystification: their thoughts in writing, their visage and symbols, their memories through the mediation of how others remembered them. We glimpse at the occasional laughter, sorrows, and fears in lives that are shrouded in mystery.

Remix

Björk - All Is Full Of Love (Chris SU Remix)

Confession

Det Sjunde Inseglet

Sounds like a butcher's shop

silence, before the chop, panic, before the lack of mercy, powerless

'Content'

Some time ago, one of my co-workers told me, as if he is doing me a big favor, that "you need to have your own opinions." Yeah, ok. I suppose he gets to judge whether an opinion is my 'own'?

This reminds me of a particular self-aggrandizing strand of make-believe: everything that is not one's own is bad.

That is to say, people conflate ownership and actual value, and give free pass to aggressively ignorant attitudes: "So long as the opinions are my own, who cares about the truth?"

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."