The first ten on today’s playlist:
Day: December 6, 2020, 11:46 PM
Off, Away
Something that confounds people is that our archaic systems employ high-technology. The modern stock market, with its high-frequency trading, looks ‘high-tech’. But really it’s implementing something ancient (property, contract, monetary exchange), like a motorized prayer wheel.
— scientism (@mr_scientism) December 5, 2020
These ideas have been occupying most of my thoughts most of the time. Not this tweet — I mean the sub rosa intellectual upheavals behind it that have not names nor form just yet. We are now on the verge of an inevitable apocalypse — though not as most mean it, but in the original Greek sense which was that which uncovers, a revelation of some deeper truth.
We’ve automated old methods while proposing nothing new. We’ve brought the past into the future and declared it all that can be. And in fact, it is all that most can imagine. But the problem space is very large and so is the solution space. We’ve not explored even a millionth of that, and we have more capabilities now than we’ve ever had before.
The next few decades are where we test our quality, and if we find it lacking extinction is likely. But apocalypse (in that original Greek sense) brings the possibility of achieving more, of being more than we have been. What are the chances of that? Small, I think. But then again they’ve always been small. From the first rudiment of life sprung from some warm pool in the unfathomably distant past to the human being born as I type this, it was always a one in a trillion trillion chance.
And yet here we are.
No Dough
There is literally no amount of money you could pay me to live in NYC.
$10 trillion? Still no.
Freeform Freedumb
My therapist: "People aren't bad or dangerous, that's just your trauma"
People: Refuse to wear a tiny piece of cloth on their face to avoid killing others pic.twitter.com/kT12UtqjJm
— Kika Lexová (@yumkrill) December 4, 2020
FREEDOM! I can kill whoever I want, despite this being extremely easy to prevent. It’s the American way.
DSP
33 million Californians face COVID-19 stay-at-home order that will restrict movements and business.
As I’ve observed before, we are a deeply stupid people.
Pod Of Another Type
we used to have cheap headphones lying around everywhere. but @apple eliminated headphone ports and added more capable speakers, and bluetooth things are expensive or flaky or maybe not charged. so everyone ends up walking around with a speaker on it's annoying as fuck.
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) December 4, 2020
I’ve noticed this, too. I ended up with a set of Airpods and they really do not work for me at all. I gave them a fair shot but their worst quality is that they fall out every two feet. If I stay perfectly still without moving my head even a little, they can stay in a while — maybe 10 minutes. But the moment I move at all they fall right out, no matter what position they are in or how hard I stuff them in my ears.
Who designed this product? I am glad I didn’t pay for these damn things. It seems like they are just designed to get lost.
Risk Tol
I’m so confused by the fear women report of strangers (don’t walk at night alone, have pepper spray, etc.) but how statistically they’re in less danger from strangers than men are. What is going on? How did statistics get so divorced from perceived risk?
— Aella (@Aella_Girl) December 5, 2020
Those statistics aren’t very revealing, though, due to rational risk assessment and compensatory measures to minimize chances of attack undertaken by women.
Men take more risks than women, though, for various reasons. If you feel physically vulnerable as women often do (for good reason — they tend to be smaller and weaker than their attackers) you won’t walk down the dark alleyway or through the bad neighborhood. I will and have, including a neighborhood in Cairo where I wasn’t really sure I was going to walk out of it.
Also, women pay far less penalty for saying, “I’m scared” or demonstrating fear or timidity than men. Sometimes, they are even rewarded for it. Men never, never are — we pay high penalties for showing fear almost always.
Men are also more accustomed to violence, and are far less likely to be sexually assaulted or raped in a stranger encounter outside of prison. These both matter a lot too.
Net Angle
The Net Is Somehow Both Outdated and Prescient.
I liked that movie quite a lot. At the time, it proposed more than a few things that the average schmoe hadn’t even begun to consider. Now much of it, in a slightly-mutated and less dramatic form, is just everyday life.
Capitalism FTL
“The vaccine has been developed too quickly and is unsafe” Here are some things you should know about why the #COVID19 #vaccine has got here so fast and where huge amounts of time have been saved… (clue – it’s not in the testing). Thread…
— Kat Arney (@Kat_Arney) December 3, 2020
Yep. Testing time was about normal. Vaccines aren’t (generally) profitable so the funding and development time is extremely long if it happens at all.
There was profit to be had here, so a vaccine was developed quickly.
I’ve often wondered if there has been no AIDS vaccine not because developing it is impossible but because it’s far more profitable for Big Pharma for there not to be one. I suspect that is probably true.