ANATOLY IVANOV / PROSE / CATEGORIES / SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

CAR-CENTRIC CITIES OF AMERICA CREATE NATIONS OF STAY-AT-HOME-GAMERS

EDUCATION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / LINKS / 2022-06-10

Car-centric urban planning in North America creates nations of stay-at-home-gamers “under adequate supervision” that fail to acquire social interaction skills till the age of 16 (when they can get a driver’s license)… So their 20′s and 30′s are spent being a teenager, “discovering the world  + 

“ORDER OF TIME” BY CARLO ROVELLI

PHYSICS / REVIEWS / 2022-06-06

Disappointed by Carlo Rovelli’s “Order of Time”. Reads more like a physicist’s hobby project in creative writing (though quite a poetic one)… rather than a container of eye-opening, bleeding-edge information. Main ideas: time is quantized, entropy increases with time, time is local and relative, we  + 

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE AN APPLE MACOS DEVELOPER?

COMPUTERS / MANAGEMENT / PSYCHOLOGY / ESSAYS / 2022-02-01

I’ve always wondered: how does it feel to be an Apple macOS developer? You can’t isolate yourself from the ‘official’ bug reports, or the ‘unofficial’, but very vocal and public grudges on Twitter, about the character / emojis palette random misbehavior since, when, 2014? Or  + 

DEBRIEFING INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS IN RELATIONSHIPS?

PSYCHOLOGY / TRANSPORTATION / ESSAYS / 2022-01-22

Do you know how the aviation industry improved to become the safest mode of transportation? Debriefings of incidents and accidents. Do we debrief our failed relationships? No. Do we improve? No. We get into the same cockpit of a 1970′s McDonnell Douglas DC-10 saying “oh,  + 

COPY TEXT FROM EBOOKS WITHOUT APPLE’S TRUNCATING “EXCERPT FROM”

COMPUTERS / PRODUCTIVITY / REVIEWS / 2022-01-16

Annoyed by Apple’s Books.app quoting, trimming and appending an “Excerpt From” when copying a small passage from an ePub? Did you know ePubs are a collection of HTML files? 🤓 Open the folder containing the books. If you use iCloud, type open ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents/ in  + 

“THE ART OF IMPOSSIBLE” BY STEVEN KOTLER REVIEW

BIOLOGY / JOURNALISM / LITERATURE / REVIEWS / 2021-06-08

“The Art of Impossible” by Steven Kotler is a perfect example of a book by a journalist who does punchy write-ups of other books written by other punchy journalists who cite popular self-hack writers (like Tim Ferriss, whose advice is retold several times), who talk  + 

VACCINATION IS THE ONLY WAY OUT

BIOLOGY / HEALTH / POLITICS / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2021-03-02

7,8 billion people currently live on our planet. Only 114 million have been confirmed as infected by Covid-19. That’s less than 2%. The virus will keep eating through the remaining 98% for years. As most governments… or, more accurately, we don’t care enough about others  + 

EXPONENTIAL VS LINEAR THINKING IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19

BIOLOGY / MATHEMATICS / PSYCHOLOGY / ESSAYS / 2020-03-09

The people most alarmed about the coronavirus seem to be people accustomed to thinking exponentially — people in tech, finance, and science. People least alarmed are those used to thinking about problems linearly. The problem isn’t the virus itself. It’s the under-provisioned healthcare systems and  + 

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF TILL THE BITTER END OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION

ECONOMICS / ENVIRONMENT / ESSAYS / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2019-12-13

The UK General Election shows us, yet again, and unlike in the EU Referendum, without any remaining doubt, that the populations most at risk vote for their own masochistic downfall. The people who stand to lose the most from the complete dismantlement of government health  + 

APPLE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BUGS… FOR YEARS

COMPUTERS / ESSAYS / 2019-11-18

Apple really, really doesn’t give a shit about its bugs. For years! Appalling. Apple Mac OS Address Book entries with “son” or “daughter” will cancel the entire sync of contacts data to iPhone. (not talking iCloud sync here) Workaround: change all fields “Son” or “Daughter”  + 

TEACH KIDS TO DISASSEMBLE STUFF… IMPROVE RECYCLING AS CONSEQUENCE

EDUCATION / ENVIRONMENT / GADGETS / ESSAYS / 2019-08-22

We could cut recycling costs significantly if we taught and encouraged kids to disassemble stuff. DIY and engineering hands-on education as as bonus. Girls and boys. Requires better collection points, but otherwise, nothing fancy.  + 

PEOPLE LOVE CYCLIC AND REGENERATING STORIES AND UNIVERSES

PHYSICS / PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-07-28

People love cyclic and regenerating universes — reincarnation, royal / superhero families of father to son, extreme quantum fluctuation initiating a new Big Bang, etc. — because they appeal to our sense of narrative. They also appeal to our intuition for causality seen in most phenomena  + 

CHERNOBYL? BECAUSE IT’S CHEAPER.

CINEMA / ECONOMICS / ENVIRONMENT / REVIEWS / 2019-06-11

“The emergency shutdown system at Chernobyl had a fatal flaw. At 01:23:40, Akimov engages AZ-5, or SCRAM. The fully withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron, which reduces reactivity… but not the tips. The tips are made  + 

WE REPAIR THE UNIVERSE THAT CRUMBLES

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN / PHYSICS / ESSAYS / 2019-03-10

Blessed are those whose purpose and enjoyment is to repair and restore, rebuild and recover, for everything in this Universe decays and crumbles.  + 

APPLE’S FORCED UPGRADES

COMPUTERS / GADGETS / REVIEWS / 2019-02-27

Apple: Would you like to install iOS updates automatically? Me: No. Apple: There’s a major 1.0 update of iOS, would you like to install it now? Me: No. Apple: Enter your passcode and we’ll install an update of iOS overnight. Me: Cancel that! I said  + 

MONEY = ENERGY… FOLLOW THE MONEY TO GET TO THE ENERGY

ART THEORY / CINEMA / ECONOMICS / PHYSICS / ESSAYS / 2019-01-29

Energy is what constitutes and organizes matter (and antimatter ? ). Prana is an Earth-local, Vedic special interpretation of it. Money is an Earth-local, economic interpretation of it. Follow the money and you’ll follow the energy that constitutes and organizes matter. If you really want  + 

RED HAT SOLD TO IBM

COMPUTERS / ESSAYS / 2018-10-29

I remember when Red Hat was still a startup… and me installing our own custom Red Hat Linux 7 Servers in… uhmm… 2001. Now it’s a 34 billion USD purchase by IBM.  + 

US DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN BIOLOGICAL TERMS

BIOLOGY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2018-04-10

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.” — the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms  + 

MY BIKE FRIDAY POCKET ROCKET PRO SPECS AND MODS

CYCLING / TRANSPORTATION / TRAVEL / ESSAYS / 2013-02-27 / 18 COMMENTS

My go fast, go far device. Rides as good as a high-end road bike. Folds as small as a standard suitcase. Enjoys long distances and short corridors.  + 

16 INCH SLICK TIRES: SCHWALBE KOJAK REVIEW (STELVIO REPLACEMENT)

CYCLING / TRANSPORTATION / TRAVEL / REVIEWS / 2012-04-11 / 11 COMMENTS

The Schwalbe Stelvio is no more. The super fast slick tire available in the 16 inch / ETRTO 349 size is now replaced by a slightly more docile but grippier Schwalbe Kojak. I’ve been riding the Kojak on my Brompton since November 2008.  + 

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