As I’ve blogged about before, proof is a social construct: it does not constitute a proof if I’ve convinced only myself that something is true. It only constitutes a proof if I can read…
Category: Read
👓 The ABC conjecture has (still) not been proved | Persiflage
Five years ago, Cathy O’Neil laid out a perfectly cogent case for why the (at that point recent) claims by Shinichi Mochizuki should not (yet) …
👓 Investing in Skills | Collin Donnell
I’m pretty comfortable on the command line. I can move about, issue commands, edit my profile, pipe things around, all that. However — and I’m probably supposed to admit this with a little shame — I’ve never really learned how to write shell scripts. Usually I’d write a Python script, a small command line app, or hack something together with Automator. It did the same job, but not being able to write a bash script from scratch felt like kind of a blind spot.
👓 A Critical Analysis of Bob Dylan's 2017 Xmas Lights | Vice
For almost a decade, I have had an unhealthy obsession with the Christmas lights on Bob Dylan's Malibu home. Here's what I learned from this year's display.
👓 Spooled Twitter Thread: OK Third-Party WordPress, We Need To Have A Come-to-Jesus Meeting About Your Accessibility Flare | Amanda Rush
This post originally started as a Twitter thread. Since those can be difficult to read in some circumstances, and since this content is I think valuable for more than just WordPress Twitter, I’m spooling it up and re-sharing as a complete post. I’ve also added a link and a video to this. OK thir...
👓 Excluded from Confoo Speaker Dinner – What Happened and How It Made Me Feel | Part of a Whole
I was an invited speaker at the Confoo YVR conference in December 2017. I gave two talks, both on accessibility. I was the only speaker presenting accessibility-related topics. There was a dinner organized for all the speakers. I was precluded from attending that dinner because the organizers selected a venue on the second floor, with no elevators. There was no way for a wheelchair user to access the venue. I felt embarrassed, and angry.
Wow this was pretty shitty…
👓 Paranoia grips Capitol Hill as harassment scandal spreads | Politico
Lawmakers and aides are consumed by one question: Who's next?
👓 The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning | Long View on Education
“Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who ...
👓 The Beauty of the Block | Audrey Watters
“Block with abandon.” That’s Andy Baio’s New Year’s Resolution. “I spent far too many emotional cycles last year on people arguing with me in bad faith, diving i...
👓 Sci-Hub Loses Domain Names, But Remains Resilient | TorrentFreak
Sci-Hub, often referred to as the "Pirate Bay of Science," lost three of its domain names this week. The suspensions are likely the result of the lost court case against the American Chemical Society. Despite the setback, Sci-Hub remains resilient, pointing out that there are other ways to access the site including its own custom DNS servers.
👓 Storify Bites the Dust. If You Have WordPress, You Don’t Need Another Third Party Clown Service | CogDogBlog
How many more times do people have to get stiffed by a free web service that just bites the dust and leaves you bubkas? What follows is a monster post. You will find me ranting ar companies like St…
📖 Read pages 19-52 of The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane
📖 Read Chapter 1: What is Life? pages 19-52 in The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by (W.W. Norton,
, ISBN: 978-0393088816)
, ISBN: 978-0393088816)
Lane lays out a “brief” history of the 4 billion years of life on Earth. Discusses isotopic fractionation and other evidence that essentially shows a bottleneck between bacteria and archaea (procaryotes) on the one hand and eucaryotes on the other, the latter of which all must have had a single common ancestor based on the genetic profiles we currently see. He suggest that while we should see even more diversity of complex life, we do not, and he hints at the end of the chapter that the reason is energy.
In general, it’s much easier to follow than I anticipated it might be. His writing style is lucid and fluid and he has some lovely prose not often seen in books of this sort. It’s quite a pleasure to read. Additionally he’s doing a very solid job of building an argument in small steps.
I’m watching closely how he’s repeatedly using the word information in his descriptions, and it seems to be a much more universal and colloquial version than the more technical version, but something interesting may come out of it from my philosophical leanings. I can’t wait to get further into the book to see how things develop.
👓 A Clarification | Sam Altman
I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it. I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic jerks in the lab so...
👓 E Pur Si Muove | Sam Altman
Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel...
👓 The 'Star Wars' Refresher You Are Looking for Before 'The Last Jedi' | Hollywood Reporter
In case you need a reminder of where all the main players were the last time we saw them...