Monday Round Up
Less than all the things I started reading, or read and thought were interesting
Currently my web browser’s tabs look like 1mm renditions of icons due to how many are open. There’s been a lot of good stuff written the past week or so, and since I apparently couldn’t get it all properly, read, digested and essayed out, I want to put some down here so I can reference them later.
And for your benefit, of course! Heheh… I haven’t filled up my book marks file already with things I haven’t finished yet…. heheh…. that’d be crazy…
*ahem*
DIRT
Following the theme of “really interesting architecture blogs” is “Of All Trades” apparently by a civil engineer who really likes talking about buildings. And dirt. What percent of dirt is made up of ants? He doesn’t specify, but the rest is quite interesting, especially if you have ever considered how hard it would be to reproduce the Mines of Moria as your next home.
RUIN
Chris Bray discusses something I have wondered about for a long time: how is it that cities are so wealthy, but still are such crumbling holes. Chris identifies the same issue Caplan has brought up before: it isn’t a question of government capacity, but government priorities. Worth the read.
DEPRAVITY
I don’t know how legit any of this is, though it doesn’t stray outside the realm of what has generally been noted about H. Biden’s laptop, but it is pretty entertaining to read. I am going to tag along and see where things go for funsies, but I don’t know if it is worth recommending. A review of a laptop as a horror film is… oddly fitting these days.
Sadness and Happiness
Naomi Wolf wouldn’t previously have made a list of top reporters 15 years ago; any emotions attached to her name were slightly negative apathy at best. Reading this, and then immediately some of her other recent work, well, I feel for her. I really do. I imagine this is what every person supporting a glorious revolution for the betterment of everyone feels when the cold, dead eyes of their friends turn to them and say “Your existence is excess to requirements. This way to the gas chambers.”
And I had fed those people. I topped up their drinks with my affordable red wines.
I had welcomed them into my home.
It is all quite gut wrenching, with the silver lining of her rebuilding her life among good people. Of discovering that those who had long been sneered at and demeaned by her cohort are really the good guys, and still welcome her with open arms.
A previous essay on her ‘stack is entitled “I'm not "Brave"; You're Just a P---y.” I find myself liking Dr. Wolf more and more.
Laughs
Just to follow the upswing of pleasant emotions.
Egregors!
I kind of love the fact that “Egregore Absolutism” is even a phrase that anyone uses for anything. I mean, that’s gotta have a pretty flat n-grams graph, right?
There has been a lot of interesting discussion about the idea of egregores, emergent agents, and all that. I am very glad this is happening, because I think we as a species have a bad habit of focusing on individual problems and groups we don’t like, without looking at the systemic features that cause those problems, that define the behaviors of the groups we don’t like. The result of that habit is that we deal with a particular symptomatic behavior we don’t like, then have exactly the same type of behavior crop up under a different name, a different group, and often have the very greatest critics of the first problem the greatest supporters of the second. We complain about Fascists or the Woke, without noting that they are both doing exactly the same things, just with different justifications.
We might need to figure out why that is so popular. I think these discussions are a step in that direction.
Also worth reading (again)
CREEPY
Dead spiders can be roughly controlled via a syringe of saline. Sort of the logical conclusion of knowing that spiders’ bodies are a pressurized hydraulic system that functions via controlling the pressures to each part. Still, kind of cool and creepy to see it in action, especially as “in action” is “a dead spider with a needle jammed into its back and sealed off with super glue.”
ADJECTIVE
NOT REPUGNANT
Important, subtle, and… how hadn’t I seen that before myself?
Related to:
Anyway, that’s all for now. This was not even close to all the good stuff out there this past week, just some of the good stuff I still had open on my browser. Not even all of them… the amount of worth while reading there is to do these days dwarfs grad school.
Have a good one everybody!