Author: Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
👓 Stakhanovite movement | Wikipedia
The term Stakhanovite originated in the Soviet Union and referred to workers who modelled themselves after Alexey Stakhanov. These workers took pride in their ability to produce more than was required, by working harder and more efficiently, thus strengthening the Communist state. The Stakhanovite Movement was encouraged due to the idea of socialist emulation. It began in the coal industry but later spread to many other industries in the Soviet Union. The movement eventually encountered resistance as the increased productivity led to increased demands on workers.
👓 Alexey Stakhanov | Wikipedia
Alexsei Grigoryevich Stakhanov (Russian: Алексе́й Григо́рьевич Стаха́нов; 3 January 1906 – 5 November 1977) was a Russian Soviet miner, Hero of Socialist Labor (1970), and a member of the CPSU (1936). He became a celebrity in 1935 as part of what became known as the Stakhanovite movement – a campaign intended to increase worker productivity and to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist economic system.
👓 A Stakhanovite regime: overwork | The Economist
Americans are taking a rare holiday for Thanksgiving today.
👓 Unhappy Would-Be Shopper Goes on Rampage in Local Best Buy | Pasadena Now
Pasadena police officers arrested a 32-year-old Pasadena man who reportedly went on a rampage at a local Best Buy store Tuesday afternoon, yelling and tossing items, after a store employee refused to run his credit for purchase of several smartphones. The incident happened at about 3:44 p.m. in the store located in the 3300 block of East Foothill Blvd., police Lt. Pete Hettema said.
📺 "The West Wing" Take This Sabbath Day | Netflix
Directed by Thomas Schlamme. With Rob Lowe, Moira Kelly, Dulé Hill, Allison Janney. A drug dealer's appeal of the federal death penalty is rejected by the Supreme Court, which upholds the death sentence with execution scheduled for the following Monday. One of the defense lawyers on the case is Sam's old high school bully, and he appeals directly to Sam to involve the president. During a weekend in which he was supposed to be in a yacht race, Sam opts to stay at the W.H. and try...
👓 Beyond fiction | Scott Aaronson
I now know firsthand what it’s like to be arrested by armed police officers, handcuffed, and sharply interrogated, while one’s wife and children look on helplessly. This is not a prank post. It happened in Philadelphia International Airport. As someone who was born in Philadelphia, and who’s since visited ~40 countries on 6 continents and flies every week or two, I’ve long considered PHL possibly the most depressing airport on the planet (and the competition is fierce).
👓 Thank you, world! | Scott Aaronson
1. This post has no technical content. As the tag indicates, it’s entirely “Nerd Self-Help”—thoughts I’ve recently found extremely helpful to me, and that I’m hopeful some others might be able to apply to their own life situations. If that doesn’t interest you, feel free to skip.
2. I’m using the numbered list format simply because I have a large number of interrelated things to say, and getting each one down precisely seems more important than fashioning them into some coherent narrative.
From section 17:
But you, readers, armed with wisdom I lacked, can reach a happy place in your lives a hell of a lot faster than I did.
An important reason for people to blog and share their stories.
👓 Lecture notes! Intro to Quantum Information Science | Scott Aaronson
In Spring 2017, I taught a new undergraduate course at UT Austin, entitled Introduction to Quantum Information Science. There were about 60 students, mostly CS but also with strong representation from physics, math, and electrical engineering. One student, Ewin Tang, made a previous appearance on this blog. But today belongs to another student, Paulo Alves, who took it upon himself to make detailed notes of all of my lectures. Using Paulo’s notes as a starting point, and after a full year of procrastination and delays, I’m now happy to release the full lecture notes for the course. Among other things, I’ll be using these notes when I teach the course a second time, starting … holy smokes … this Wednesday. I don’t pretend that these notes break any new ground. Even if we restrict to undergrad courses only (which rules out, e.g., Preskill’s legendary notes), there are already other great quantum information lecture notes available on the web, such as these from Berkeley (based on a course taught by, among others, my former adviser Umesh Vazirani and committee member Birgitta Whaley), and these from John Watrous in Waterloo. There are also dozens of books—including Mermin’s, which we used in this course. The only difference with these notes is that … well, they cover exactly the topics I’d cover, in exactly the order I’d cover them, and with exactly the stupid jokes and stories I’d tell in a given situation. So if you like my lecturing style, you’ll probably like these, and if not, not (but given that you’re here, there’s hopefully some bias toward the former).
👓 Ten updates | Scott Aaronson
If you like quantum, complexity, etc., then please read to the end! I’ve gotten a bunch of emails lately of the form “why haven’t you ever blogged about such-and-such?,” when it turned out that I damn well did blog about it; it was just somewhere down in a multi-item post.
👓 Getting some traction on micro.blog | Andy Sylvester
I made a post on Sunday, and it triggered a nice stream of comments from people on micro.blog, all of which appeared as comments on my post. Cool! It looks like the webmention support on both ends is working well. As another step in WordPress/micro.blog integration, I am adding my comments RSS feed ...
👓 Gutenberg | Colin Devroe
I’m writing this post using a new post editor that is coming in the next version of WordPress code-named, and likely named for all-time, Gutenberg.
In fact, I’ve written several of my most recent posts, including this photo post of South Iceland, using this new editor.
Gutenberg is an editor that allows a WordPress author to use an interface for writing that is much more akin to using Google Docs or Microsoft Word. You type, drag images, add headlines and quotes, and all other various things using a much more visual way of editing than previous versions of WordPress had with what is now being called the “Classic Editor”.
👓 Indie WYSIWYG: How I Fixed My Instagram Problem | Alex Kearney
I talk about what-you-see-is-what-you-get posting system for my #indieweb site and how it improved my post quality.
📺 Christmas at Graceland | Hallmark Channel
Directed by Eric Close. With Wes Brown, Kellie Pickler, Tamara Austin, Ned Vaughn. A Chicago-based business executive travels to Memphis to secure one of the city's oldest family-owned banks. While in Memphis, Laurel reunites with an old flame Clay, a local music promoter with loftier aspirations.
Yes, Mister Hatcher…
Ugh. This is not how corporate America works. And there’s probably no way she’s working out of a cubicle and about to be promoted to VP of an organization that looks like this.
It’s not frequently that one sees an actress with an accent this deep appearing in television or film.
(0:14) As I watch this I’m wondering when we get a Pickler song, but Elvis Christmas songs seem to be dominating the soundtrack.
(0:39) We had a small singing tease about 20 minutes in, but it’s taken this long to hear an actual song? And dear God! Why did they opt to overproduce the music and have her lip sync? Blech…
(0:42) I’m really very distracted by the excessiveness of Pickler’s surely phony eyelashes.
