August 20, 2018
Spaghetti Solutions: the science of breaking spaghetti in 3 and 2 pieces
Danny Hillis recalled spending hours breaking spaghetti with Richard Feynman to figure out why dry spaghetti, when bent, usually broke into three pieces (see a high-speed recording; related r/Physics thread). Feynman and Hillis were stumped, and the phenomenon was finally explained in 2005. Recently, MIT scientists crack the case of breaking spaghetti in two: Controlling fracture cascades through twisting and quenching (PNAS; public abstract only).
Let 2018 be the year that the stars came closer for all of us.
Last night, N.K. Jemisin made history by becoming the first author ever to win three consecutive Hugo awards for best novel for the final installment of her Broken Earth trilogy. Her acceptance speech [transcript here] is a "shining, rocket-shaped middle finger" at all the naysayers who claim her success is unearned because of political correctness or identity politics.
Medicare for All (for Less!)
Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care—In 12 Charts - "Prices are hidden behind insurance deals, hospital consolidation pushes up costs and the health sector is a growing power in the economy." [more inside]
Smoke Season
The Pacific Northwest is blanketed in smoke. Again. Topping even 2017's historically bad fire season, the past week has seen air quality at the worst levels ever recorded in the Puget Sound region. Conditions are currently unhealthy to very unhealthy in much of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, and will likely remain poor at least until Wednesday. [more inside]
It's on! I mean, it was on. It was on, but now it's off.
After days of speculation, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a leadership spill today, offering the governing Liberal Party the opportunity to elect a new leader (and therefore, a new Prime Minister). It was all over in a matter of minutes, but Turnbull fended off a leadership challenge from Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton, winning the party room poll 48 to 35. Dutton has now resigned from Cabinet. He may not even be eligible to sit in Parliament.
"Truth Isn't Truth"
The New York Times breaks new details of how White House Counsel, Don McGahn, has cooperated extensively in Mueller inquiry and follows up on Trump lawyers’ sudden realization that they don’t know what he told Mueller’s team (@realDonaldTrump strenuously denied their implication his "Councel" was "a John Dean type ‘RAT’"). Writing for the Lawfare blog, Obama's White House Counsel Bob Bauer points out the issues how McGahn is handling his duties. And national security blogger Marcy Wheeler tears into his possible motives for leaking to the NYT. Meanwhile, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani may have coined the definitive meme for his defense on Sunday's Meet the Press: "Truth Isn't Truth" (NBC follows up, Team Trump still isn't telling the truth about that 2016 Trump Tower meeting.) [more inside]
void void let there be void void
deadmau5 dared me to circuit bend a bible The wonder wonder bible. Nothing against the bible here. I showed it to a couple of christian friends before and they seemed to like it. for what thats worth! Im Just #circuitbending a cold blooded machine, for the more avantgarde inclined [more inside]
Luftbildarchäologie
During this year’s long heatwave in Britain and Ireland, many people’s imaginations have been captured by the images of archaeological sites revealed in parchmarks (previously in Wales and also in Ireland).
As the summer draws to an end, archaeologists are beginning to take stock of dozens of new sites that have been uncovered. You may think that archaeologists mainly dig, but getting up in the air is one of the most important methods for identifying archaeological sites. [more inside]
Fascination With the Void
Write something…
Neuropolitics
The “neuropolitics” consultants who hack voters’ brains: These experts say they can divine political preferences you can’t express from signals you don’t know you’re producing (Elizabeth Svoboda, MIT Technology Review).
Now and Then
Imagine two girls who grew up as friends on the same street, in the same rural town, where they attended the same church and schools, and generally shared the same cultural experiences through high school. Eventually, these two girls become adults and end up living in different places, perhaps hundreds of miles apart. Now imagine two other adult women who live in the same place but who were raised in different places. What type of life experiences will these women have in terms of the work they do and the wages they earn? Will they get
married and, if so, how young? If they have children, when will they start to raise a family? How many children will they have? According to the authors of the new BFI working paper, “The Effects of Sexism on American Women: The Role of Norms vs. Discrimination,” the answers to those questions depend crucially on where women are born and where they choose to live their adult lives. [more inside]
bluebook-182
In December, footage of UFOs taken from US military planes, officially declassified and approved for release by the US government, was published online by an organisation called To The Stars Academy. [...] The release of the footage may be strange, but the mechanism of its release is stranger still. To The Stars was founded by Tom DeLonge, who used to be the singer in the pop-punk band Blink-182. [more inside]
Gave peace a chance
Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s most prominent journalists and a seminal peace activist who was among the first Israelis to advocate for a sovereign Palestinian state, died in Tel Aviv on Monday morning. He was 94 years old.
Once and future cats
Sabercats were magnificent, powerful predators – what does their extinction tell us about the future of life on Earth? [more inside]
Pump it up
The trouble with solar power generator is that it's hard to store electricity. Batteries are expensive. Flywheels are cool but expensive and have undesirable failure modes. Near San Diego, water authority officials want to create a pumped hydro storage facility that could store up to 500 MW. But what if you don't already have a huge reservoir? A Swiss startup wants to use a crane to lift concrete blocks as a storage mechanism.
Beyond Two Solitudes
Unsurprisingly, it's MySpace's fault
Eurotrip barely made a dent in theaters in 2004, but the song that initiated the titular trip somehow made it onto the Billboard charts two years later, and remains a cult favorite more than a decade later. "Scotty Doesn't Know", a pop-punk anthem to cheating, remains Matt Damon's most enduring cultural legacy.
In the room the men come and go talking of prostitutes and saunas?
"Remember the trees… Remember all who tried to save them."
“...it attempts to simulate the complexities of prison life.”
Prison Architect: once you're in, you can't get out [The Guardian] “Prison Architect is a simulation in which players take on the design and running of a major US correctional facility. On first loading the game you’re tasked with taking over an existing prison. The current CEO wants you to build an execution facility for a double murderer, known simply as Edward. It is through this rather macabre tutorial that you’re shown the basics of prison architecture, creating foundations, building walls and adding power and water utilities. You’re also shown how to escort the non-playable characters around the prison. It’s an introduction that makes two things clear: that the prison system is effectively a business, and that it’s a business that involves death.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
Get some Hammond in your soul
For your listening pleasure: The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio live. Why yes old timer, it does remind one of the wonderful Jimmy Smith, doesn't it? Happy Monday, y'all.
Eighty men tried, and eighty men died
Nevertheless, it seems that up until 1960 or so, it was quite rare to call Richthofen the Red Baron. Conversely, from 1970 or so, it was almost impossible not to: I don't think I've found a single book about him from the last half-century which does not also have 'Red Baron' somewhere in the title.Brett Holman asks the question: when was the Red Baron?
This was too good of a hack, it opened it twice
The James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Literary prizes have been in the news, with the Nobel taking (at least) a year off, and with a graphic novel having been longlisted for the upcoming Man Booker prize (previously). Meanwhile, the UK's longest-established literary prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prize, has, with relatively little fanfare, announced the winners of its 99th annual awards, with Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams taking the fiction prize, and Craig Brown's Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret winning the prize for the best biography. Peruse a list of past winners at Wikipedia. [more inside]
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