Cavalcade of Mammals

“But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.— I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids & today I hate them worse than everything so farewell & in a sweet frame of mind, I am | Ever yours” C. Darwin

Talin blog, software engineer / game designer

I’m studying all the utopian novels this year And how modern thinkers are taking utopian ideals into the future. by Elle Griffin

Distribution of 19 Types of Berries Native to North America

“data from women ages 20 to 24 who were first to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine showed a 65% reduction in cervical cancer incidence rates from 2012 through 2019“

A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology

GPT-3 Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used by Dan Shipper

“blogging my way through John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government: Of Civil Government” by Miles Kimball, link.

Fused glass collections
Copper-wheel engraving of glass, Alison Kinnaird

Is Human Intelligence Simple? Part 1: Evolution and Archaeology How did we get so smart? by Sarah Constantin, part2

Men, Machines, and Modern Times, 50th Anniversary Edition by Elting E. Morison
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs Illustrated Edition by Camilla Townsend

David Brin, in a comment on his blog describes Elon Musk as a ‘successful innovator’ rather than an investor or government subsidy truffle pig. Brin seems to be under the impression that Solar City “put up 2 million solar roofs”.

As best I can find, Tesla has only installed a few thousand ‘Solar Roofs’. Electrek reported in 2022 that Tesla was doing 23 installs / week, and was pausing installations. Tesla started mass market deployments of the product in 2020.

Tesla bought SolarCity in 2016. SolarCity does mainly ordinary solar panel installations, and Tesla uses combined figures to make it seem like the ‘Solar Roof’ product is more successful. The Tesla ‘Solar Roof’ costs several times more per watt that ordinary solar panels, and doesn’t make economic sense.

profiles status -type enrollment

The Last Real American Dictionary: Scrabble’s new edition is full of delightful new words. But are there enough of them? by Stefan Fatsis

Living Astronomers Who Write Science Fiction

Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2021

Can Aging Be Reversed? Scientists Are On The Verge Of Turning It Into A Reality by Urja Kalyan

The Kids Are Not OK: A Reading List on Clean Air: For parents, teachers, principals, and politicians. by Jessica Wildfire

A Tale of Two Telescopes: WFIRST and Hubble

How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially? by Max Roser
“Adjusted for the purchasing power in each country, 85% of the world population live on less than $30 per day.

Why Does It Take So Long to Count Mail Ballots in Key States? Blame Legislatures: The slow count of mail ballots has been used to cast doubt on election results, but these delays are a deliberate choice by lawmakers in battleground states.

‘You Can’t Sail Around the World By Yourself’: Susie Goodall wanted to circumnavigate the globe in her sailboat without stopping. She didn’t bargain for what everyone else wanted.

China overtakes the US in scientific research output: Between 2018 and 2020 China published 23.4% of the world’s scientific papers, eclipsing the US.
“The Japanese NISTP report also found that Chinese research comprised 27.2% of the world’s top 1% most frequently cited papers.”

U.S. aims to hobble China’s chip industry with sweeping new export rules.

A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism by Suisheng Zhao

Memo to Democrats: Inflation Only Beats You If You Don’t Talk About It by Mike Lux

Ukraine war expert links:
Kamil Galeev
2022 Ukraine Crisis: Reporters, diplomats, heads of state and analysts tweeting on the Ukraine crisis

Texas Woman Nearly Loses Her Life After Doctors Can’t Legally Perform an Abortion: ‘Their Hands Were Tied’

Running doesn’t wreck your knees. It strengthens them. Contrary to popular opinion, distance running rarely causes knee problems in runners, and often leaves joints sturdier and less damaged, link, link2

OneZoom tree of life explorer

Why I’m Not Writing About This Year’s Nobel by Chad Orzel
“the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced as going to John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger, “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.””

Pluralistic: 20 Oct 2022 It was all downhill after the Cuecat by Cory Doctorow

The Highest-Rated Beer in Every State (2022)
Too many high ABV stouts!

How a Strange Grid Reveals Hidden Connections Between Simple Numbers. Erdős–Szemerédi theorem in arithmetic combinatorics

Ancient genomes and West Eurasian history. Storytelling with ancient DNA reveals challenges and potential for writing new histories. by Benjamin S. Arbuckle and Zoe Schwandt

The Periodic Table of Endangered Elements by David Cole-Hamilton

Explanation of cracking a Master combo lock in 8 attempts or less!

Plastic-Eating Enzymes Chomp into the Future. An innovative alternative to a non-degradable plastic.

Stanhopes, novelties with a tiny hidden image.

Twitter texts reveal rich have no ideas

Modeling COVID-19 Mortality Across 44 Countries: Face Covering May Reduce Deaths

What qualities will make an AI a person?
-General intelligence, not just a special ability to solve a particular class of problems.
-General ability to learn from interacting with the environment.
-Can communicate with people.
-The AI needs a sense of self, needs to see itself as a person.
-General ability to reason abstractly, reason about problems in general.

The various types of machine learning that exist today can and likely will be a part of a human-level AI, but as a module or subcomponent that gets applied to learning tasks. Another level of AI will need to exist on top of that, applying general knowledge storage, modeling / conceptualizing problems, dealing with overarching direction and goals.

How far a train will take you in 5 hrs in Europe
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. Documentary

Impact of Lifting School Masking Requirements on Incidence of COVID-19 among Staff and Students in Greater-Boston Area School Districts: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis. “We estimate that lifting of school masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 (95% CI: 32.6, 57.1) COVID-19 cases per 1,000 students and staff over the 15 weeks since the lifting of the statewide school masking requirement, representing nearly 30% of all cases observed in schools during that time. “

You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack, cartoons by Tom Gauld

Kiln camera
Endless rake
Kiln design
EDM controller test
Piezo motor design / tests
Spot welder controller
Kiln ESP32 v2 (current sensing, direct ramp control, 2nd temp probe, bug fix)
ESP32 security camera, wall powered
CNC glass cutting w/ heat gun