tmy.sehttps://www.tmy.se/2022-10-07T16:20:00+02:00Bestbo Gård2022-10-07T16:20:00+02:002022-10-07T16:20:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2022-10-07:/bestbo-gard<p>Oh my! This site has been somewhat neglected, hasn't it? More than a year
since the <a href="https://www.tmy.se/woodshed">last post</a>.
The house and woodshed in that picture not even ours any more!
We bought a farm outside of Östhammar this spring, and spent an
awful lot of time moving and getting settled.</p>
<p>Taking over such a large place is no easy task, but I now get to do fun things
like driving my tractor into my forest to get timber and firewood.
<a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/bestbo-gard.jpg"><img alt="bestbo-gard" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/bestbo-garda.jpg" title="bestbo-gard"></a></p>
<p>The farm has its website at <a href="https://www.bestbo.se">https://www.bestbo.se</a> and
there you find the social media links, and some occasional updates.</p>Woodshed2021-07-20T06:19:00+02:002021-07-20T06:19:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-07-20:/woodshed<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/woodshed.jpg"><img alt="woodshed" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/woodsheda.jpg" title="woodshed"></a></p>
<p>The aforementioned freshly-built woodshed. Apart from the three old pallets that serve as floor, this
is made completely from lumber that I made myself, from trees that needed to be taken down
because of bark bettles.</p>
<p>Not sure yet, if it will get plainted in the same Falu red as the house, or allowed
to grey on its own.</p>Back2021-07-19T16:17:00+02:002021-07-19T16:17:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-07-19:/back<p>You probably have not noticed, but this site was offline for twelve days. And so was I.</p>
<p>This is because the glass fiber link that leads to our home in the forest was broken in connection
with some work further down the road. Then the usual fuckups of privatized and distributed responsibilities
ensued. Meaning that I had to lean hard on our network <em>provider</em> (ISP) to finally refer the issue to
the network <em>operator</em> after 5 days. And then another week to get the technician to diagnose, and talk to
the other company that caused the fault.</p>
<p>This is the kind of thing that would have easily annoyed the hell out of younger me - things not working
as they should! The world is mean to me!!</p>
<p>This time, though, I was quite fine with it. I am on holidays anyway and can in fact build a new
shed for firewood without internet access (pics will follow!). The notifications for emails had been turned off anyway
and for urgent stuff we still had the 4G of our phones - so there really only remained the inconvenience that
we imagined ourselves.</p>
<p>Still, it's good to be back online.</p>Lighter Reading2021-06-29T16:28:00+02:002021-06-29T16:28:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-29:/lighter-reading<p>A few weeks ago, I bought and started reading <em>The World of the Crusades</em> by Christopher Tyerman.
I don't even remember where I saw the book recommended or what made it sound like a good idea, but I admit
that the crusades have always been a bit of a gap in my overall layman's picture of history. What were they,
actually, how important, and most of all <em>why</em>‽</p>
<p>This book is a bit dense though. While well made, written and illustrated, I rarely make it more than ten pages
per night, before I fall asleep. The author has a tendency toward unnecessarily high-brow language
but I think it is more the choice of which details to highlight, and the lack of connection between them,
that makes it feel tedious to me.</p>
<p>Thus, I will put it aside for a while and dive into some lighter summer reading: The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series">Culture series</a>
by Iain M. Banks, which I have heard many good things about over the years but never read.</p>Food For Click V2021-06-28T18:25:00+02:002021-06-28T18:25:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-28:/food-for-click-v<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeVaQeU9yjc">US nuclar missiles secrets leak via soldiers using memorizing apps.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcsJ1rXjt1Y">A two-hour conversation about Malthus</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/tylercowen/">@tylercowen</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7InE1zXAY4">Classic card magic with Ricky Jay</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUv9Zda_48">Spherical gears!</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.bprout.com/207869/8648424-mike-dash-on-batavia-s-graveyard">Batavia's graveyard</a>, the
crazy story of the shipwrecked flagship of the Dutch East India Company.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRzpDqqB2fk">Inside a Ghost Gown of Abandoned Disney Castles</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://alltrades.substack.com/p/mushrooms-global-warming-and-the">Fungi and how they set our body temperature</a>.</p>
<p>If you love the absurd:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHzF5KnoN20">LOTR but every time Sam takes a step towards Mordor he says it'll be the farthest he's ever been</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8kMQcpTr9U">Steve Ramsey MicroJig compilation</a></li>
</ul>Felled2021-06-27T14:45:00+02:002021-06-27T14:45:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-27:/felled<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/felled.jpg"><img alt="felled" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/felleda.jpg" title="felled"></a></p>
<p>I spent the morning felling another four trees that were taken over by <a href="https://www.tmy.se/barkborre">bark beetles</a>.
In order to prevent the larvae from developping into bugs and then spreading to neighbouring trees, one has to
remove all the bark from the tree.
This quite tedious but it helps to have a <a href="https://www.gransforsbruk.com/produkt/gransfors-bandkniv/">really sharp knife</a>
that is designed for that purpose.</p>Midsommar2021-06-25T07:10:00+02:002021-06-25T07:10:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-25:/midsommar1<p>Happy Midsummer, y'all!</p>Barkborre2021-06-24T09:54:00+02:002021-06-24T09:54:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-24:/barkborre<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/barkborre.jpg"><img alt="barkborre" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/barkborrea.jpg" title="barkborre"></a></p>
<p>The inside of a piece of bark with bark beetle larvae from a tree that I had just felled because of them. You
can see the channel at the top where the parent bugs laid the eggs, from which the larvae then gnaw their channels perpendicularly, getting
larger along the way.</p>Our World In 80,000 Hours2021-06-23T08:15:00+02:002021-06-23T08:15:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-23:/our-world-in-80000-hours<p>I usually don't consider myself a "fan" of anything, but when it comes to the
work of <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser">@MaxCRoser</a> at <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/">Our World in Data</a>, and
<a href="https://twitter.com/robertwiblin">@robertwiblin</a> as an interviewer, the term applies quite well.</p>
<p>So imagine what a treat for my ears <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/max-roser-our-world-in-data/">the podcast with them both</a>
has been! Lots of background on one of the best sites on the interwebs. If you know it only for its statistics
about the CoVid19-pandemic, make sure to check out their other topics as well!</p>
<p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/"><img alt="topics" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/our-world-in-80000-hoursa.jpg" title="topics"></a></p>Disk Magic2021-06-22T08:36:00+02:002021-06-22T08:36:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-22:/disk-magic<p>A while back, my installation of <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/">HomeAssistant</a>
broke down and that caused some minor inconveniences,
like lamp switches no longer working.
Nevertheless, I only this week looked into
what happened and whether I could recover the setup. The pairing of the lamps
and switches is not something that one wants to repeat unnecessarily.</p>
<p>The most likely cause turned out to be it: The microSD-card in
the RaspberryPi4 broke. They are known to do that, unfortunately. So I bought a new
one, pulled an image from the old card and after a bit of fiddling, I was able
to restore a snapshot that I had taken not long ago. All good.</p>
<p>I bought an additional microSD out of concern for the same thing happening
to the other RasPi, the one that runs this very website.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>ssh berr <span class="s2">"dd if=/dev/mmcblk0"</span> > berry.img
losetup --find --show -P berry.img
</code></pre></div>
<p>I had not known about the option -P before and it is exactly what
I needed in this case: additional device files for the partitions
within the disk image, not just a loop device for the iamge itself.
So I could go on and check the filesystems' integrity:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>fsck.vfat /dev/loop25p1
e2fsck -f /dev/loop25p2
</code></pre></div>
<p>Not surprisingly, there were several errors to be fixed in the
main partition. After all, I was pulling the image from
a running system that was continuously writing logs and
stuff to the disk.</p>
<p>Then I tried to write the image to the new microSD-card.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>dd <span class="k">if</span><span class="o">=</span>berry.img <span class="nv">of</span><span class="o">=</span>/dev/mmcblk0 <span class="nv">bs</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="m">2048</span>
</code></pre></div>
<p>But this did not work because the new card was slightly smaller
than the old one. Apparently 32GB are not what they used to be.
Annoying!</p>
<p>So I had to figure out the number of sectors that
remained on the new card for the Ext4-filesystem.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>cfdisk /dev/loop25
cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0 <span class="c1"># compare numbers in cfdisk</span>
resize2fs /dev/loop25p2 61083647s
losetup --detach /dev/loop25
dd <span class="k">if</span><span class="o">=</span>berry.img <span class="nv">of</span><span class="o">=</span>/dev/mmcblk0 <span class="nv">bs</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="m">2048</span>
</code></pre></div>
<p>Take out the card and re-insert.</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code>fsck.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2 <span class="c1"># passes the test now!</span>
cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0 <span class="c1"># mark first partition as bootable</span>
</code></pre></div>
<p>And that's it. I did not test whether the card actually boots up because
it would cause unnecessary downtime. I am reasonably confident
it will work, should the need arise.</p>
<p>I quite enjoyed this whole small exercise. It had been a while and
one always learns something new in the process.</p>What's Good For You2021-06-21T06:17:00+02:002021-06-21T06:17:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-21:/whats-good-for-you<p>Song lyrics rarely stick with me, but this
sentence from
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF295qTZRgw">Ane Brun's <em>Do you remember</em></a>
always has:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you remember when we forgot<br>
How to smile at each other<br>
To believe that the other<br>
Wants only what's good for you</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Genuine goodwill is probably an
essential ingredient for lasting friendships
and relationships. And it is not even that hard
to muster once one is aware of it and decides
that this is the right attitude to take.</p>Alias Nano=Vim2021-06-20T16:02:00+02:002021-06-20T16:02:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-20:/alias-nanovim<p>Some long time ago, probably around 2005, I got convinced that I
should use <em>vi</em> for quick edits in the terminal, instead of <em>nano</em>
which I had been using for this purpose, for historical reasons.</p>
<p>So I added this simple line to my <code>.bash_aliases</code>:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code><span class="nb">alias</span> <span class="nv">nano</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'vim'</span>
</code></pre></div>
<p>And to this day I type <em>nano</em> when I just quickly want to edit a
file, just out of muscle memory, and I would be very surprised if
I would end up in actual <em>nano</em>, not <em>vim</em>.</p>Home Sweet2021-06-19T14:57:00+02:002021-06-19T14:57:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-19:/home-sweet1<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/home-sweet.jpg"><img alt="home-sweet" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/home-sweeta.jpg" title="home-sweet"></a></p>
<p>A fresh drone picture of our little oasis in the forest.</p>Burj2021-06-18T06:25:00+02:002021-06-18T06:25:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-18:/burj<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFCbJmgeHmA">latest video by Kurzgesagt</a> is
about the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, and is brilliant as usual.
This frame made me pause and ponder on a side-track:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/burj.png"><img alt="burj" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/burja.jpg" title="burj"></a></p>
<p>Doesn't the Burj Khalifa tower look surprisingly large compared to
mount everest? It isn't even a fair picture, because the mountain
does not rise 8.8km out of the ocean, but "only" about 3.5km above the
surrounding valleys.</p>
<p>Thus, climbing Burj Khalifa (which is a thing people <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa#Climbing">do</a>)
just five times is the same height as climbing Everest from base camp. Disregarding the lack of oxygen at high altitudes
and that the tower is much steeper.</p>
<p>Human-made structures start to approach the size of mountains, pointing up,
not only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_Canyon_Mine">down</a>.</p>Who Gets To Decide?2021-06-17T19:40:00+02:002021-06-17T19:40:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-17:/who-gets-to-decide<p>Once more concerning the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of COVID19, I thought aloud the other day:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/who-gets-to-decide.png"><img alt="who-gets-to-decide" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/who-gets-to-decidea.jpg" title="who-gets-to-decide"></a></p>
<p>In a similar vein, but more pithy, I saw a tweet that I cannot seem to find any more, but was close to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Letting scientists that work on gain-of-function research decide whether or not it is worth the risk
is like letting the oil industry decide over climate change policy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While I would not put it as strongly myself, I think the point is valid. The stakes are too
high and eventualities too hard to judge for individual research groups or even funding agencies.</p>
<p>Which is why I am happy to note that this kind of discussion is being had within the field, an example being
<a href="https://anchor.fm/lea-degen/episodes/6---Securing-Good-Futures-for-Biotech-with-Tessa-Alexanian-e12r0d3">this conversation</a>.</p>Wat‽2021-06-16T08:50:00+02:002021-06-16T08:50:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-16:/wat<p>Another quote from <a href="https://www.tmy.se/old-ideas">yesterday's</a>
<a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-moynihan-prior-generations/#communicating-progress-031507">podcast</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do often get the sense that there is a wide sense of malaise about future
human potential, whether humanity itself is even a good thing, within wider
culture. And again, this is purely anecdotal. It’s not based on any kind of
data, but responses to articles that I write online where there’s a comment
section, it’s often people saying, “Oh, extinction would be good.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have encountered this too, and it drives me nuts! The naturalistic fallacy
in action.
Maybe there is something to this analogy, as an explanation for this attitude:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Humanity is kind of in this almost adolescent phase, where it has for the
first time realized that it can wreak consequences on the world. And by
necessity, therefore wreak good as well as bad. And I think you can analogize
it to this juvenile state of mind I’m sure everyone’s gone through, when you
first become aware of the responsibility of your own actions and you do
something really awful. And then maybe you feel really dejected and really
awful about yourself and you feel that maybe it would be better off if you
weren’t around.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Let's all grow up together, shan't we? And become <a href="https://www.tmy.se/geoengineering">responsible stewards</a>
of our planet, and beyond.</p>Old Ideas2021-06-15T10:52:00+02:002021-06-15T10:52:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-15:/old-ideas<p><a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-moynihan-prior-generations/">This interview</a>
is extremely fun to listen to. They discuss historic views of how people thought the
world worked, and how that got changed over the centures. Lots of fun and wacky
ideas, like fossils being rock that tries to become animal!</p>
<p>And the meta-question:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you’re studying the way that people very far in the past conceived of
the world, what they thought about the natural sciences, you just constantly
encounter ideas that seem very misguided, kind of batty from our modern point
of view. And I think people go in different directions in their aesthetic
about how to react to this. Like one strain of thought is that this just
shows how hard it is for humans to reason at all. It shows the fallibility of
our ability to make sense of the world. And so it should make us extremely
humble, and we shouldn’t dismiss the way that they thought about things
because we will probably be just as mistaken as they were by the lights of
people in the future.</p>
<p>I think another take you might have — which is, I think, less fashionable,
but it’s my instinct perhaps because of my personality — is to say, wow, they
just thought really stupid stuff. I can’t believe how misguided they were.
And I understand how they got there. And if you send me back in time, I would
be just as misguided. Absolutely. But nonetheless, this just shows how much
progress we’ve made, and how much better we are at figuring things out today.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am with Rob here, in that we should not have false humility and assume that
we are as wrong as our ancestors. We clearly have made progress and can
explain the world better than ever before today.</p>Before & After2021-06-14T19:57:00+02:002021-06-14T19:57:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-14:/before-after<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/before-after.jpg"><img alt="before-after" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/before-aftera.jpg" title="before-after"></a></p>
<p>Putting the axe into the right spot and then hitting it with a sledgehammer turns
out to work nicely for splitting larger logs. Small ones are easier to <a href="https://www.tmy.se/firewood">just chop</a>.</p>Plastic Bags2021-06-13T12:19:00+02:002021-06-13T12:19:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-13:/plastic-bags<p>Since I <a href="https://www.tmy.se/thankyounorthface">just</a> claimed that plastic bags are
good, in spite of their bad reputation, here is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0">a video that goes through
some numbers</a>.</p>
<p>The only thing I can add is that the pollution aspect very much depends on
where you are in the world. If that place has a working system of garbage
collection and management, then it is very unlikely that a plastic
bag ends up in the oceans. So maybe we should spend the money that
plastic bans cost on helping poorer places improving their
waste management to pollute less.</p>
<p>In any case, I'll happily continue to buy plastic bags, reuse
them a few times before they become garbage bags. And pay the
counterproductive tax that would rather have me buy something
worse.</p>Nothing2021-06-11T20:56:00+02:002021-06-11T20:56:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-11:/nothing<p>I got nuthin for ya today! Sleep tight!</p>Origin Context2021-06-10T14:34:00+02:002021-06-10T14:34:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-10:/origin-context<p>I still listen to the excellent <a href="https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/Coronavirus-Update-Der-Podcast-mit-Christian-Drosten-Sandra-Ciesek,podcastcoronavirus100.html">podcast with German virologist Christian Drosten</a>
and in the latest episode
<a href="https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript302.pdf">(transcript)</a>,
he puts the recent media attention for the <a href="https://www.tmy.se/lab-origin-of-sars2-still-possible">lab leak hypothesis</a>
into context.</p>
<p>Lots of intersting bits of information there!
I tried to run some paragraphs through automatic translations, but the result did not do it justice. So
brush up your German, if you know some, and do listen or read!</p>Mist Magic2021-06-09T14:44:00+02:002021-06-09T14:44:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-09:/mist-magic<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/mist-magic.jpg"><img alt="mist-magic" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/mist-magica.jpg" title="mist-magic"></a></p>
<p>The photo does not do it justice, the magical fog early this morning, when the sun
was just about to break through it.</p>Hops2021-06-08T12:58:00+02:002021-06-08T12:58:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-08:/hops<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/hops.jpg"><img alt="hops" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/hopsa.jpg" title="hops"></a></p>
<p>Our two new hop plants,
the old Swedish varieties Grimsarbo and Olarsbo,
seem to be growing nicely. For the first year,
I dont't expect them
to make it all the way up their respective 6m high
poles, or produce any amount of cones that will be worth
harvesting.</p>#ThankYouNorthFace2021-06-07T07:55:00+02:002021-06-07T07:55:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-07:/thankyounorthface<p>North Face, the outdoor clothing brand, apparently refused to
sell to an oil company jackets with their logo on it. Which
prompted <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewHClark/status/1400613801272152064">this quite funny response</a>,
which shows that 90% of North Face's product line is made out of
petroleum products.</p>
<p>I think it is fair to point out such hypocrisy, assuming that the
story is indeed as told.
Coming from the oil industry, the video of course makes it sound
like a good thing to produce
clothes out of oil based raw materials, thus #ThankYouNorthFace.</p>
<p>This could easily be spun into a campaign of shaming the
company for that very fact. But that would be an example
of well-meaning environmentalism gone bad, because
contrary to energy production it is often much less
resource intensive, and therefore environmentally friendly,
to make things from plastic, compared to "organic" materials.</p>
<p>The prime example of this are plastic shopping bags that have been
banned or taxed in many places after an outrage some year ago. Never mind that
the paper bag that replaced it takes ten times more resources to
produce and cannot have a second use as waste bag.</p>Green Fundamentalism2021-06-06T16:16:00+02:002021-06-06T16:16:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-06:/green-fundamentalism<p>From <a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying">this book review</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Three hundred years ago, we burned wood for energy. Then there was coal and
the steam engine, which gave us the Industrial Revolution. Then there was oil
and gas, giving us cars and airplanes. Then there should have been nuclear
fission and nanotech, letting you fit a lifetime's worth of energy in your
pocket. Instead, we still drive much the same cars and airplanes, and climate
change threatens to boil the Earth.<br>
[...]</p>
<p>"Where is my Flying Car?", by J.
Storrs Hall, is an attempt to answer that question. His answer is: the Great
Stagnation was caused by energy usage flatlining, which was caused by our
failure to switch to nuclear energy, which was caused by excessive
regulation, which was caused by "green fundamentalism".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Counterfactuals are fun! I think I dismissed them too quickly as unknowable for a long
time, but as with mot things, there can be better and worse arguments for how things could
have turned out differently.</p>
<p>The environemntal movement is an interesting case, because what is considered good or bad
in that context depends very much more on culture than on a problem solving strategy.
The underlying conviction that human activity is inherently destructive leads to
moralizing calls to give up things, that are not very effective.
Whereas the obvious alternative is to improve technology
to do more with less environmental impact. But that does not fit the narrative;
to berate people and make them feel quilty lets one feel more morally
superior and pure.</p>
<p>Would climate change never have become a problem, if the environmental movement
would have empraced nuclear power instead of crippling it? No one knows for sure, but
it certainly is interesting to think about.</p>Grill2021-06-04T11:22:00+02:002021-06-04T11:22:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-04:/grill<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/grill.jpg"><img alt="grill" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/grilla.jpg" title="grill"></a></p>
<p>Barbecue season started last week-end.</p>Origin Matters2021-06-03T09:21:00+02:002021-06-03T09:21:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-03:/origin-matters<p>Since I <a href="https://www.tmy.se/lab-origin-of-sars2-still-possible">mentioned it</a> three weeks ago,
the discussion about the possible lab origin of SARS-COV2 has taken off and the subject has
moved from "purportedly racist conspiracy theory" into the middle of the Overton window,
no the least via <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1">this Letter in Science</a>.</p>
<p>First off, I never understood how the lab leak was supposed to be more racist than a wet market origin.
The latter can easily be understood as calling Chinese "filthy bat eaters", no?
In any case, this is a fine example of how well-intentioned policing of opinions
can get in the way of finding the truth.</p>
<p>And the truth is hugely important in this case!
Because even though the origin might not be the most important factor for the response to the
pandemic once it started, it matters a great deal about how we go about preventing the next one.</p>
<p>A disinterested investigation is <a href="https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1400237538627833856">what we should want</a>
but there is so much prestige at stake, <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/05/why-the-lab-leak-theory-matters.html">for the CCP</a> as well as the scientists and funding agencies involved, that it is difficult to
go beyond preformed opinions.</p>
<p>Lab leak turning out to be true <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china">could shake things up</a>, not in a good way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Should it turn out that scientists and experts and NGOs, etc. are villains
rather than heroes of this story, we may very well see the expert-worshiping
values of modern liberalism go up in a fireball of public anger.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hopefully though, we would instead get our act together and <a href="https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/special-episode-engineering-apocalypse/">figure out how to properly handle bio-risk</a>.</p>Pushes2021-06-02T13:11:00+02:002021-06-02T13:11:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-02:/pushes<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/pushes.png"><img alt="pushes" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/pushesa.jpg" title="pushes"></a></p>
<p>It's not been going well with <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/exercise">project push-up</a>.
The big gap in May is when I planted <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/forest">forest</a> instead,
which was tiring quite enough for arms and shoulders. And since
then, well, no real excuse but more than three sets a day just don't seem
to happen.</p>Food For Click IV2021-06-01T09:03:00+02:002021-06-01T09:03:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-06-01:/food-for-click-iv<ul>
<li><a href="https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-it-take-so-long">Why did it take so long to invent this?</a></li>
<li>A mash-up that never fails to crack me up: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBiuvWdmAA0">DJ Schmolli - In The Mood For Some Killing</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/that-time-hitlers-girlfriend-visited-iceland-and-the-british-invaded/">That Time Hitler’s Girlfriend Visited Iceland and the British Invaded</a></li>
<li><a href="https://unherd.com/2021/05/youre-more-biased-than-you-think/">Stuart Ritchie reviews Daniel Kahneman's new book</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iron.html">Myths and tips about cast iron skillets</a></li>
<li><a href="https://palladiummag.com/2021/05/17/why-civilization-is-older-than-we-thought/">Why Civilization is older than we thought</a>.
Early human evolution and history is fascinating and Göbekli Tepe would be high on my list, if I ever started travelling
again.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/nm2qjj/oc_animated_demographic_pyramid_of_sweden_18602020/">Animated population pyramid of Sweden</a></li>
</ul>Highland Trooper2021-05-31T07:24:00+02:002021-05-31T07:24:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-31:/highland-trooper<p>Holy shit! I just realized that the Kurgan in <em>Highlander</em> is played by the same actor
as the asshole sergeant in <em>Starship Troopers</em>! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clancy_Brown">Clancy Brown</a>.</p>
<p><em>The Critical Drinker</em> does a good job in his videos of explaining why the latter film is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8nM5N4ptkw">great satire</a>
and why <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsDofmtMQzI">Highlander does not need a remake</a>.</p>Bärfis2021-05-30T15:34:00+02:002021-05-30T15:34:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-30:/barfis<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/barfis.jpg"><img alt="barfis" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/barfisa.jpg" title="barfis"></a></p>
<p>The eggs that the stink bug (Swedish <em>bärfis</em>, which translates to "berry fart")
laid under our new parasol literally* five minutes after I put it up.</p>
<p>* and I mean <em>literally</em>, not <em>figuratively</em>, as has become the more common meaning
of the word.
Is there a new word for literally literally?</p>Veggies2021-05-29T18:52:00+02:002021-05-29T18:52:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-29:/veggies<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/veggies.jpg"><img alt="veggies" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/veggiesa.jpg" title="veggies"></a></p>
<p>This year's veggie garden is taking shape. Note the pole for birds of prey to sit on, which we raised in the
hope for them to eat the voles that invaded last year.</p>Meat2021-05-28T08:20:00+02:002021-05-28T08:20:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-28:/meat<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/meat.png"><img alt="meat" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/meata.jpg" title="meat"></a>
<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-type?country=CHN~USA~IND~ARG~PRT~ETH~JPN~GBR~BRA~SWE~DEU~FRA">Source</a></p>
<p>Interesting that, when it comes to
meat eating habits, Swedes are more similar to the French than Germans or Brits.
And that China has already "caught up".</p>Wolfram Physics2021-05-27T11:38:00+02:002021-05-27T11:38:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-27:/wolfram-physics<p>I have recently encountered the <a href="https://www.wolframphysics.org/">Wolfram Physics Project</a>
a few times, for example <a href="https://lexfridman.com/stephen-wolfram-2/">this</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t1_ffaFXao">podcast</a>.</p>
<p>The basic idea, if I dare re-state it without any deep understanding, is that the universe
is computation at the fundamental level and the laws of nature that we have figured out
are emergent pockets of computational reducibility.
In general though, the underlying rules are being executed a very
large number of times in a computationallly irreducible way, without any shortcuts.
Particles and such are patterns in the "grid", analogous to a glider in
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Plq-D1gEk">Conway's Game of Life</a>.</p>
<p>I find this surprisingly non-crazy, especially if, as Wolfram and collaborators claim,
much of physics naturally arises in that framework.
But what do I know‽ Theoretical/fundamental physics
is not exactly my strong suit, and as always it needs to be judged on whether or not
it provides better explanations and predictions than competing theories.</p>
<p>If you enjoy getting your mind tickled by
abstract questions like
<a href="https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/05/how-inevitable-is-the-concept-of-numbers/"><em>How fundamental are numbers?</em></a>,
there are worse places to go than the world of Stephen Wolfram.</p>Persnickety2021-05-26T11:15:00+02:002021-05-26T11:15:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-26:/persnickety<p>I try to take note when I encounter fun new words. Today: <em>persnickety</em>, which means fussy, overly obsessed about details, snobbish.</p>
<p>Not so long ago: <em>recalcitrant</em>, meaning subbornly defiant of authority.</p>Food For Click Iii2021-05-25T08:15:00+02:002021-05-25T08:15:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-25:/food-for-click-iii<ul>
<li>Can you <a href="https://www.stefanzukin.com/enigma/">distinguish real paper titles and abstracts from computer-generated ones</a>?</li>
<li>Watch someone open and taste a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7tr6D6d7VM">40-year-old Berliner Weisse</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.tobyord.com/earth">Remastered pictures of Earth</a> from the Apollo missions.</li>
<li>How tech companies devolve into zombies, <a href="https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/">text</a>
or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQccNdwm8Tw">video</a>. Similarities to organizations like universities are obvious.</li>
<li>Hilarious <a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-arabian-nights">review of Arabian Nights</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wfF6JpIg9c">Bluetit live nest cam</a>.</li>
</ul>What Bird Or Plant Is That?2021-05-23T18:08:00+02:002021-05-23T18:08:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-23:/what-bird-or-plant-is-that<p>Have you heard of <a href="https://identify.plantnet.org/">PlantNet</a>
and <a href="https://birdnet.cornell.edu/">BirdNET</a>?
Their phone apps allow you to take a picture of a flow or plant, or record bird song, and
instantly get an answer on what species it is. </p>
<p>They are not perfectly
accurate and often give several probable choices, but very impressive and
fun nonetheless. I especially like the visualization of the spectrum of bird songs,
because I remember more easily how they look than from sound alone.</p>Stilleben2021-05-22T17:55:00+02:002021-05-22T17:55:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-22:/stilleben<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/stilleben.jpg"><img alt="stilleben" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/stillebena.jpg" title="stilleben"></a></p>Water Wheel2021-05-21T15:03:00+02:002021-05-21T15:03:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-21:/water-wheel<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/water-wheel.jpg"><img alt="water-wheel" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/water-wheela.jpg" title="water-wheel"></a></p>
<p>One of the two water wheels in <a href="https://www.tmy.se/the-mill">the nearby mill</a>. I spend all day there
yesterday to free it from the bushes that were in the process of overgrowing it.</p>Physical Work2021-05-19T19:01:00+02:002021-05-19T19:01:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-19:/physical-work<p>Sometimes I wonder whether I made the wrong choice to get into academia.
Now that I have been spending a few days <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/forest">planting trees</a> instead,
I get reminded once more that there is a sense of
satisfaction after a long day of physical work that has no real equivalent
in a desk job. The getting into a rhythm of repetition, the
sense of visible progress, and the feeling of relaxed exhaustion in the
evening. Something to be appreciated, for sure!</p>
<p>Then again, it might well be the case that the positive valence comes
purely from the contrast to everyday life. Probably I would
quickly get fed up, if I had to do boring physical work day in and
day out.</p>More Activism2021-05-18T16:11:00+02:002021-05-18T16:11:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-18:/more-activism<p>I was again <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/forest">planting forest</a> today and I listen to podcasts while doing that.
As a nice follow-up to <a href="https://www.tmy.se/ecomodernism">yesterday</a>, I very much enjoyed
<a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/leah-garces-chicken-industry/">this one about ending factory farming for chickens</a>.</p>
<p>Many insights into when it makes sense to antagonize and campaign against the people doing the things
you consider bad, versus working <em>with</em> them to improve the situation. In this example, chicken farmers
in the US are often stuck in a bad system that they do not approve of themselves, which opens the door
for win-win situations.</p>
<p>Overall another great interview by <a href="https://twitter.com/robertwiblin">@robertwiblin</a>!</p>Progress2021-05-18T16:09:00+02:002021-05-18T16:09:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-18:/progress<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/progress.jpg"><img alt="progress" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/progressa.jpg" title="progress"></a></p>
<p>About two thirds done with planting 4000 saplings on 2.5ha of forest area.
The colored lines are GPS-tracks of how I walked (a bit incomplete), which is
mostly determined by terrain.</p>Ecomodernism2021-05-17T09:57:00+02:002021-05-17T09:57:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-17:/ecomodernism<blockquote>
<p>Imagine what would happen if we had a magic wand that could solve climate change. Should we wave it?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apparently, most people answer no.
<a href="https://www.persuasion.community/p/-would-you-wave-the-magic-wand">Mark Lynas and Yascha Mounk discuss why</a>.
Recommended 45 minutes to listen! Transcript available.</p>
<p>I agree with most of what they say, and like the idea of the new movement of <em>ecomodernism</em>.
Finding pragmatic solutions to environmental problems and
working on a positive vision of the future
make so much more sense than trying to get people
to reject the benefits of technological development.</p>
<p>Lynas' story about how he helped banning GMO in Europe and how he now thinks this was a mistake is a
harrowing example of doing great harm with good intentions. I get chills when I imagine having to
live with that. Luckily, I have never been sure enough about anything to become an activist.</p>T22021-05-16T17:55:00+02:002021-05-16T17:55:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-16:/t2<p>I recently watched <em>Terminator 2</em> from 1991. Twice. Don't ask.
I had almost forgotten how good this one is; one of the rare exceptions
of 80-90s action films that hold up really really well. If you haven't seen it in a while,
I highly recommend you do.</p>
<p>Just a few of the reasons why it is great:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sarah Connor is a total bad-ass. Modern films sometimes pretend female action heroes are a new
thing. Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley are prime counter-examples.<ul>
<li>She is not getting rescued from the mental asylum, she's on the way out by herself when
the heroes meet up with her.</li>
<li>She is prepared, methodical, needs no extra time to react to crazy situations - a real pro!</li>
<li>At the same time she gets to show how broken she is, without weakening her.</li>
<li>She's less sentimental than even robot-Arnie in the final scene.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Her son John is a rare example of a character that is introduced as a spoiled brat but gets to
redeem himself. The things one gets to know about his upbringing totally explain him being messed-up.
And the late-eighties slang he teaches Arnie is soo quaint!</li>
<li>Arnie got to to do the same role as in T1, but with a sense of humour and irony this time, which makes it
endlessly entertaining - that smile when he finds the mini-gun! Both the interactions
with John and the exposition dialogues are written and executed well; there are very few moments
to roll your eyes at.</li>
<li>Robert Patrick as the liquid-metal villain is also fantastic, mastering the cold stare of
a machine.</li>
<li>The action scenes themselves still look great today and they are plenty, but with enough of down-time
in between to make them feel intense. The pacing of the film is very good and the story relentlessly presses
on.</li>
</ul>
<p>I am repeating myself, but go watch T2! The first part is worthwhile too, if you feel like it,
but I don't like it as much myself. The sequels T3 - ∞ are not worth anyone's time, unfortunately.</p>Go Watch2021-05-15T18:05:00+02:002021-05-15T18:05:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-15:/go-watch<p>I spent most of the day planting trees in the <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/forest">forest</a>
and I'll do the same tomorrow. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BvyvCLHzak">This video</a>
(in Swedish) shows how it's done.</p>
<p>Three more YouTube-videos I enjoyed recently:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O2CBgWshiM">xkcd's "Map Projections", animated</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdoMOXvqjbY">Duct tape space suit</a></li>
<li>Robin Hanson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24dJ9JlqL2A">discusses his model of grabby aliens</a> with folks from FHI, including Nick Bostrom.</li>
</ul>And So It Begins2021-05-14T19:29:00+02:002021-05-14T19:29:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-14:/and-so-it-begins<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/and-so-it-begins.jpg"><img alt="and-so-it-begins" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/and-so-it-beginsa.jpg" title="and-so-it-begins"></a></p>
<p>The planting of the <a href="https://www.tmy.se/tag/forest">forest</a> has begun. 200 down, 3800 to go. </p>Saplings2021-05-13T10:52:00+02:002021-05-13T10:52:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-13:/saplings<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/saplings.jpg"><img alt="saplings" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/saplingsa.jpg" title="saplings"></a></p>
<p>So this is what 4000 saplings look like; I was quite unsure how many boxes this would
turn out to be. They were delivered yesterday, in frozen state, and now they
have to thaw in the shadow for a few days before
the boxes get opened and the seedlings <a href="https://www.tmy.se/planting-trees">planted</a> as quickly as possible. It looks like
there is a rainy week coming up, which should be perfect.</p>Lab Origin Of Sars2 Still Possible2021-05-12T08:12:00+02:002021-05-12T08:12:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-12:/lab-origin-of-sars2-still-possible<p>I am as quick in dismissing anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory
as anyone. But I also recognize that the perceived consensus is oftentimes
just that, perceived.</p>
<p>This is also true for science. While we often claim that everybody tries
to disprove everyone else to gain recognition, the reverse is more often
true. Going againt the mainstream opinion is costly, it damages reputations
and funding; after all it is others in the same field who get to decide what
is good science, and what is bad.</p>
<p>Which brings me to <a href="https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038">this article, which argues that a lab origin of the COVID virus
it is not as unlikely as generally believed</a>.
The author shows that the pieces that very much shaped the consensus are not
very convincing, that virologists know this but have no strong incentives
to make this opinion heard. That the lab-origin claim is
associated with Trump does not help.</p>
<p>As a layman I have no strong opinion on this, of course. But dismissing any
possible origin of the Coronavirus out of hand does not sound right to me.
Needs more research!</p>Competition2021-05-11T09:03:00+02:002021-05-11T09:03:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-11:/competition<p><em>Is the level of competition among researchers in astronomy dialled in to the right amount?</em>
This is a question that came up among collegues yesterday. It was formulated less
general, more like "Is there too much competition?"</p>
<p>I think I am not alone in having the gut reaction of answering "of course, it is too much!".
I generally avoid competition and don't think I am good at it. In addition though, it is
bad taste to admit being competitive and we sure want to appear pleasant to our peers, so
how much can we trust the answers to such a question? I don't even have intentional
deception in mind here, but the disconnect between the truly-believed positive self-image
and actual behaviour.</p>
<p>In any case, there was a little ad-hoc questionnaire sent around and I might as well
put my answers here as well, in bold and as comments below.</p>
<p><strong>A small questionnaire on Competition in Science</strong></p>
<p>There is a considerable, and probably strengthened, competition in science
today as regards getting jobs, as well as in financing and getting other
resources for research projects. Among scientists there are different opinions
on the effects of this [... and] I would need some guidance from you as regards this,
and therefore I ask you to fill in this questionnaire.</p>
<p><em>Jobs</em>. The competition in the career for jobs is</p>
<ul>
<li>much too tough</li>
<li><strong>tough</strong></li>
<li><strong>adequate</strong></li>
<li>too mild</li>
<li>COMMENT: This is not a monotonous scale; the two I marked are both true at the same time.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Resources</em> (financing etc). The competition for resources is </p>
<ul>
<li>much too tough</li>
<li><strong>tough</strong></li>
<li><strong>adequate</strong></li>
<li>too mild</li>
<li>COMMENT: Same as before. For both jobs & resources the equilibrium depends not on absolute funding, but on how many are made to share the pie. Less competition means somehow allowing fewer to succeed so that the ones who do have more of the pie left. So our willingness to work in poor conditions and salaries (because of intrinsic motivation/interest) means the opposite, more share the pie and compete for limited resources.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Effects of competition</em>. The present competition </p>
<ul>
<li>guarantees that the quality of science is high, smaller competition would lower it</li>
<li>lowers the quality of science, smaller competition would increase it</li>
<li>generates considerable cheating, forgery of data, plagiarism, etc.</li>
<li>no effect on quality if competition changes</li>
<li>COMMENT: Cannot answer. Strongly depends on how “smaller competition” would look like. Also the third option is less a function of “amount” of competition than of its “kind” (e.g. if you only count H-factor, then ppl will optimize it by salami-tactics).</li>
</ul>
<p>The competition</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>affects the wellbeing of most scientists negatively</strong></li>
<li>affects the wellbeing of most scientists positively</li>
<li>COMMENT: It might still be worth it though.</li>
</ul>
<p>The competition </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>attracts good young scientists</strong></li>
<li><strong>scares good young scientists away from science</strong></li>
<li>does not affect the recruitment positively or negatively</li>
<li>COMMENT: The two first are true at the same time again. Different people get selected, both “kinds” can be good.</li>
</ul>
<p>OTHER COMMENTS?</p>
<p>The sociology of scientists is not well understood by ourselves. We are as
unwilling to admit to being motivated by “wanting to look good” in the eyes of
peers as anybody else, but everything is shrouded in the code of pretending
that scientific results are the only thing that matters.</p>
<p>Chesterton’s fence comes to mind also. One should only be allowed to change
something if one first understands why it is the way is right now. I think most
of us have a too simplistic and personally-coloured picture on this topic to
pass that criterion.</p>Preoccupied2021-05-10T16:49:00+02:002021-05-10T16:49:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-10:/preoccupied<p>Today is one of those days that make it hard to write even a single line. I had several attempts
during the morning but found my mind to be too preoccupied with other things, from work
to all kinds of nonsense, to even think of something I could attempt.</p>
<p>This is however exactly why I try to <a href="https://www.tmy.se/consistency">keep the habit</a>, no matter what.
Getting over the threshold and putting out these few words will lower the hurdle in the long
run. At least that is the hope and I have to remind myself because today it does not feel like
it works. Oh well.</p>
<p>Apropos preoccupations, observing how little control one generally has over
what the own mind occupies itself with, is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the
one hand, noticing and admitting this fact must certainly be the first step towards changing
something, or even decide if change is desirable.
On the other hand, even after a small amount of practice in meta-awareness, it
is laughable how easy it is for certain thoughts to take over awareness and jerk it around.
I blame the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network">default mode network</a>.</p>Nixon In China2021-05-09T14:58:00+02:002021-05-09T14:58:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-09:/nixon-in-china<p>Do you know the saying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_goes_to_China"><em>Only Nixon could go to China</em></a>?
I didn't 'til just <a href="http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9e682bf2">now</a>. It refers to the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon%27s_1972_visit_to_China">1972 visit</a> and as a metaphor
means that somebody (or an organization) that
has a reputation to strongly lean one way, has much more leeway to act in the opposite direction than
someone else.</p>
<p>A few examples that come to mind immediately:</p>
<ul>
<li>If a (European) Green Party were to turn pro-nuclear for climate-change reasons, after decades of
opposition, they would immediately have more
credibility than the parties that always have been for nuclear power. </li>
<li>It took the social-democrats to dismantle the western European welfare states. Similar attempts from
the right would have been fodder for the next election.</li>
<li>Super-rich people that want higher taxes.</li>
<li>Were the Swedish Moderates, who opened up schools to the private market in the 90s, to admit that
this was a bad idea, the perpetual stories about horrendous consequences might actually have something
done about them.</li>
</ul>
<p>Interestingly, politicians usually don't want to be "caught" changing their mind on some issue, which
might not be the optimal strategy in light of the above.</p>
<p>And it should be very effective for someone
with an agenda to try joining the other side and change their stance from within; the low chances of
success might be outweighed by the larger impact in that case.
The episode of The West Wing about a gay Republican (in the early 2000s) fits that idea.</p>
<p>I think <em>Nixon in China</em> is one of those mental models that is worth keeping in the back of one's mind for a while
and see how many more examples show up.</p>Impending Doom2021-05-08T19:06:00+02:002021-05-08T19:06:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-08:/impending-doom<p>Two of the podcasts I listen to just covered a similar topic: How societies handle
disaster, why we usually are unprepared, and how we could do better. Both are
above the usual crop and thus highly recommended!</p>
<p><a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/05/03/145-niall-ferguson-on-histories-networks-and-catastrophes/">Sean Carroll talks to Niall Ferguson</a>
about a large variety of things. Too many bits of wisdom to even
try picking a quote from the transcript.</p>
<p><a href="https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/special-episode-engineering-apocalypse/">Sam Harris brings on Rob Reid</a>
who delivers a riveting monologue, broken up by discussion, that vividly outlines why synthetic biology
can pose a real threat, and what can be done to put countermeasures into place early enough. Four hours
well spent!</p>Oasis2021-05-07T11:00:00+02:002021-05-07T11:00:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-07:/oasis<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/oasis.jpg"><img alt="oasis" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/oasisa.jpg" title="oasis"></a></p>
<p>A patch of fertile land in the vast surrounding forest.</p>How To Write Effectively2021-05-06T08:07:00+02:002021-05-06T08:07:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-06:/how-to-write-effectively<p>A colleague recommended <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM">this video</a>
the other day, and it is indeed very worthwhile 80 minutes of your time, if you do any
kind of scholarly writing, or are at least somewhat interested in writing at all.</p>
<p>Just a few take-aways:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nobody cares about the inside of your head. Unless they are paid to do so.</p>
<p>Don't explain to show you've understood something.</p>
<p>Oftentimes we write because it helps us think. This is fine
but orthogonal to how it gets read, thus rewrite for
specific target reader. </p>
<p>Writing success is to make it valuable to the reader.</p>
<p>What you write is not for eternity, it is to bring the conversation forward.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The performance of the speaker felt over the top at times, I was reminded of how faith healers talk:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Forget everything you think
you knew! Even the things that I tell you
you thought, even though you did not think you did.
Because here comes the revelation!!1!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it became clear that he is much self-aware of this and manages to keep
an undertone of irony and self-deprecation
throughout. At the end he apologizes for being theatrical.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM">Here's the link once more</a>.</p>
<p>One thing I very much like about my current role at work, is that I do
not have to write grant proposals and journal articles any more. I was never
comfortable with that and therefore not good at it either.
Would this video have helped, had I seen it during my time as a student?
Maybe. But is quite possible that past me would not have understood it.</p>Feminist Eugenics2021-05-05T10:44:00+02:002021-05-05T10:44:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-05:/feminist-eugenics<p>Eugenics is apparently making a comeback, for example with some
<a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007117/the-curious-case-of-chinas-feminist-eugenicists#">Chinese Feminists</a>
(<a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/05/tuesday-assorted-links-312.html">via</a>).
Maybe surprisingly, this is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger#Eugenics">nothing new</a>.</p>
<p>This is of course a very thorny issue. On the one hand it is an uncomfortable
and seldom spoken about thruth, that women partially choose their parters for
the expected quality of their offspring, that is for their genes. Quality can
mean different things in different contexts and I see nothing morally wrong
with this being a factor for someone, consciously or not. Who would want to
deny the freedom of mate choice?</p>
<p>On the other hand, eugenics has a bad reputation, and righfully so with regard
to forced sterilizations and the Nazi killings. If however, and that is a
strong if, the benefits from selection could be achieved without actually
harming anybody in the process, then the matter becomes quite different, I
think. Embryos are already selected to some extent in IVF. And the potential
upside is huge, especially with <a href="https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection">multiple iterations of
selection</a>. Once it becomes possible
and cheaper, there will be strong incentives for parents to get smarter kids.
And societies will probably benefit from it, if the ethical concerns can be
solved.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, this is also a topic in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39074555-blueprint"><em>Blueprint</em> by Robert
Plomin</a>, a book that I
enjoyed last year and apprently forgot to write about.</p>Rational2021-05-04T05:36:00+02:002021-05-04T05:36:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-04:/rational<p>This made me laugh:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If your track coach tells you to run faster, and you answer with something
about e=mc^2 and the light speed barrier, you're making a pretty strong claim
about your current abilities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It's from <a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/if-you-can-be-bad-you-can-also-be">today's ACX piece</a>
which argues that we can and should think better, and that "everyone is biased" is a bad argument
against trying.</p>
<p>This is close to what I think is the reason I don't like relativism or postmodernism. Pointing
out that someone or some argument is not perfectly right is very much <em>not</em> the same as
saying it is as bad as something else. There are gradations and they matter.</p>Macro2021-05-03T07:40:00+02:002021-05-03T07:40:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-03:/macro<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/macro.jpg"><img alt="macro" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/macroa.jpg" title="macro"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pennywort">Another</a> picture of pennywort flowers, I know. But they are
very photogenic and make good subjects for macro photography. So let me tell you
how this picture was taken.</p>
<p>This is my gear, the same that I had for the last 15 years, from the time
when digital photography was all the hype and everyone wanted to be a
photographer.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/camerad300.jpg"><img alt="camerad300" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/camerad300a.jpg" title="CamseraD300"></a></p>
<p>The Nikon D300, 105mm macro lens and the external flash would cost you around
350€ used today (disregard the 18-200m zoom lens). They work great together
and can give very sharp and beautiful results. </p>
<p>There are however a few things to do before pressing the shutter release.</p>
<ul>
<li>I use the internal flash in master mode to control the external flash. This makes
lighting very flexible. I often hand-hold the flash 90-180 degrees from the sun because
the goal is making the light less harsh by filling in the shadows.</li>
<li>The camera is set to shutter mode with the shortest flash-sync time dialed in, 1/250s in this case.
This is because the flash needs to compete with the bright sunlight and the short shutter time lets
less of that in.</li>
<li>Exposure compensation at -1/2 stops, flash -1 or -3/2 stops. The violet and highlights easily get
saturated at default exposure. And we want the flash to be less bright than the sun, again just evening out the light
somewhat but not completely flattening the scene.</li>
<li>The two previous points have a welcome side-effect: The camera needs to choose the largest aperture
it can in the current light condition, thereby rendering the background very much out of focus.</li>
<li>Then I compose the image and focus, first auto-focus to get close, then I hold focus and put
it at the right spot by moving the camera ever so slightly.</li>
<li>I take several pictures before moving on. Not all will be a success with this quick method, not using a tripod,
and I rigorously throw away all but the best one in a series.</li>
</ul>
<p>This way I usually get the picture that I had in mind with quite little effort.</p>Firewood2021-05-02T15:00:00+02:002021-05-02T15:00:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-02:/firewood<p>Wanna watch me chopping wood for ten minutes? <a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/huggaved.webm">Here you go!</a> </p>No2021-05-01T21:17:00+02:002021-05-01T21:17:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-05-01:/no<p>Nothing to see here today. Please move on.</p>
<p>I am serious, there will not be the slightest morcel of
information here today. It is better you stop reading
this very moment.</p>
<p>Well go on! Shush! I promise I'll do nothing but
ramble on for a bit and you will not miss anything
noteworthy.</p>
<p>Or I might not even do that.</p>
<p>Good night.</p>More Push-Ups2021-04-30T09:16:00+02:002021-04-30T09:16:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-30:/more-push-ups<p>An updated plot of push-up statistics:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/more-push-ups.jpg"><img alt="more-push-ups" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/more-push-upsa.jpg" title="more-push-ups"></a></p>
<p>I had some problems with my wrists last week, so I had to take a bit of a break. But this
has resolved itself and slow progress is being made again. Doing 25 push-ups in a row
is already more than I was ever able to, I think.</p>
<p>The thing with the wrists is kinda funny. Whenever I start a new exercise, something
unexpected, other than the training goal itself, becomes the limiting factor for a while.
This was very clear when I started running; at some point it was the shins, then the
calves, or the knee, once even the bones in the foot's arch. My way of handling it
is always the same: take it easy, don't push through it. Try to improve form, that is
try to figure out if you're doing it wrong. After a while the body adapts and the next
thing becomes the limit. Repeat.</p>Pygmy Owlets2021-04-29T13:00:00+02:002021-04-29T13:00:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-29:/pygmy-owlets<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/pygmy-owlets.jpg"><img alt="pygmy-owlets" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/pygmy-owletsa.jpg" title="pygmy-owlets"></a></p>
<p>A 2017 picture of two young owls, click to enlarge. Also, make sure to check out <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Superbowl/">r/Superbowl</a>!</p>Calibrating Beliefs2021-04-28T11:15:00+02:002021-04-28T11:15:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-28:/calibrating-beliefs<p>I <a href="https://www.tmy.se/scout-julia">mentioned <em>Scout Mindset</em></a>, the new book by Julia Galef, just the other day. Now I am two
thirds through the audio book, read by herself, and can wholeheartedly recommend it once more. It is quite close to
what I expected from it.</p>
<p>One chapter is about <em>calibrating beliefs</em>, that is not only being aware of <em>what</em> you belive to be right, but also
<em>how confident</em> you are about that, by assigning a probability to beliefs being correct. Then, in her own words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Being perfectly calibrated would mean that your “50% sure” claims are in fact
correct 50 percent of the time, your “60% sure” claims are correct 60 percent
of the time, your “70% sure” claims are correct 70 percent of the time, and
so on. Perfect calibration is an abstract ideal, not something that’s
possible to achieve in reality. Still, it’s a useful benchmark against which
to compare yourself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She then provides <a href="https://juliagalef.com/calibration/">opportunity to practice</a> by
answering trivia questions. This was more fun than I expected and you should click
there right now and spend a few minutes on this!</p>
<p>I say this not only because it just so happened that I did well this time: My
guesses about which I was 55%, 65%, 75%, 85% and 95% certain, turned out to
be 50%, 67%, 80%, 100% and 100% correct, respectively. Probably a fluke.
<a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/calib_scout.jpg">Full score sheet</a>.</p>Greenwashing?2021-04-27T08:04:00+02:002021-04-27T08:04:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-27:/greenwashing<p>When I encounter <a href="https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/leaf-coalition-introduction/">news like this</a>
I cannot help but think of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing">Greenwashing</a>.
Giant corporations like Unilever and
Nestlé committing a billion dollars to protect tropical forests can sound like buying a way out
of bad press.</p>
<p>But then I tell myself to be less cynical and appreciate that these organizations have a huge lever
to do less of [<em>wrong thing</em>] and more of [<em>right thing</em>] and that we do indeed want them to be incentivized
in that direction. Being suspicious enough to dismiss any positive initiatives as marketing ploy, does the
opposite. It makes everyone less likely to get out of the bad equilibrium of unsustainable exploitation on the one hand,
and righteous environmentalists scolding them on the other.</p>
<p>So, kudos to everyone behind the
<a href="https://www.edf.org/media/1b-leaf-coalition-game-changer-fight-save-tropical-forests-support-indigenous-communities-and">LEAF coalition</a>!
May you have a good plan for achieving the most good with the money.</p>Pennywort2021-04-26T07:07:00+02:002021-04-26T07:07:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-26:/pennywort<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/pennywort.jpg"><img alt="pennywort" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/pennyworta.jpg" title="pennywort"></a></p>
<p>Swedish <em>blåsippa</em>, German <em>Leberblümchen</em>, Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemone_hepatica">tells us</a> the
<em>Common Hepatia</em> is also called <em>kidneywort</em> or <em>liverwort</em> because people used to believe it treats disease in these
organs.</p>Druk2021-04-25T23:40:00+02:002021-04-25T23:40:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-25:/druk<p>This post is back-dated a few hours. Yes, I broke the blogging streak, but I have a good excuse: I watched
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Round_(film)"><em>Druk</em> (Another Round)</a> last night, a recent film
with Mads Mikkelsen.</p>
<p>The plot is quickly summarized. Four teachers decide to test a psychologist's
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finn_Sk%C3%A5rderud">apparently real</a>)
claim, that humans are born with blood alcohol level 0.5‰ too low and that one would perform better
professionally and socially after correcting this deficiency. The experiment predictably goes well, until it doesn't.</p>
<p>Overall predictability is not a negative here though, it builds to a dreadful anticipation. The four protagonists
go off the rails in different ways, as they increasingly see the reasons to do the experiment in the first place: a
combination of boredom, existential angst and feeling lost in marriage.</p>
<p>The film's performances are great, the characters relatable and the ending is ecstatic and highly ambiguous. Recommended!</p>
<p><em>Addendum:</em> I only now read that, by sheer coincidence, <em>Druk</em> won the Oscar for best international film the same night
that I watched it. Nice.</p>A Saturday2021-04-24T17:39:00+02:002021-04-24T17:39:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-24:/a-saturday<p>I don't write the posts for this blog in advance. Sure, there are a few files with an idea or a link that I want to write about eventually.
But nothing finished
that I can release if I don't feel like blogging today, but don't want to break the streak. So I have to come up with something, right now.</p>
<p>As you might remember from previous posts, I live somewhat isolated in the forest. The town is only 20 minutes away, but still. There are no
direct neighbours and in times like now, working from home, and because of the abysmal weather this week with another two days of snow in late
April, it just so happened that I did not get out to meet anybody, or see anything new for quite a while. Except through the screen, of course.</p>
<p>This morning I therefore got in the car and drove downtown. Not to go shopping, I can resist that particular urge and like being
<a href="https://www.tmy.se/broken">frugal</a>. But to take a long walk at a decent pace, like a small hike of ~7km, just to see something different.
Towns-folk likes to take hikes in the woods, I do the reverse. At least today I did. Maybe that's part of how people get
a bit weird after a few years living in the forest.</p>
<p>When I came by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Cathedral">the cathedral</a>,I went in. The early Saturday morning meant I was alone inside.
It's been years since I've been inside. Gothic cathedrals are always uplifting, if you let them get to you. For me this means ignoring the
religious veneer and see the whole as a cultural and aesthetic achievement. Plus, it is historically significant, with
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_I_of_Sweden">Gustav Vasa's</a> pompous grave, among other things.</p>
<p>I hope I won't forget this once everything gets back to normal, the right now
very appealing idea to visit all museums in town. I've never even been to the
one for <a href="http://www.evolutionsmuseet.uu.se/indexeng.html">natural history</a> during
all the years I've been living here.</p>Lego Science Tower2021-04-23T08:11:00+02:002021-04-23T08:11:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-23:/lego-science-tower<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/lego-science-tower.jpg"><img alt="lego-science-tower" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/lego-science-towera.jpg" title="lego-science-tower"></a></p>
<p>Last night I finally finished building my Lego Science Tower. The set is not official but originates from
a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJBhOAIyWZU">crowd-funding</a> effort by Bricklink.
The sealed box had been sitting in my office for
two years until I recently brought it home to have some fun with it.</p>
<p>You can see Newton's apple in the tree and Mendel's garden in front of the tower. The telescope on the
top rotates and tilts by turning the knobs. <a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/scitow-inside.jpg">Inside</a> there is Pawlov's
dog, Schrödinger's cat, a library and a chemistry lab, among other things. Overall a lovely design
with ingenious attention to detail!</p>Food For Click II2021-04-22T11:30:00+02:002021-04-22T11:30:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-22:/food-for-click-ii<p>Time for another look at my recent browser history.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://qntm.org/mmacevedo">MMAcevedo</a>, a short story dystopia about mind uploading.</li>
<li><a href="https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/03/23/two-paths-to-the-future/">Two Paths to the future</a> with respect to artificial intelligence and
human enhancement. This links to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180222152845/http://www.xenosystems.net/iq-shredders/">IQ shredders</a>,
a quite unpleasant concept.</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/Truthcoin/status/1378670969229824002">UV light for HVAC systems</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.theinsight.org/p/against-nostalgia">Against Nostalgia (Zeynep Tufekci)</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.tmy.se/food-for-click">Last time</a> I linked to <em>Monkey Mind Pong</em>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzNOuJIzk2E">Here</a> is an explainer video by
a professor in the field.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html">Languishing</a>, the middle-child of mental helath.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/14/the-real-reason-they-hate-nuclear-is-because-it-means-we-dont-need-renewables/">Nuclear energy vs Renewables</a>. It's probably true that there is some <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy">naturalistic fallcy</a> going on, but
as they say in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAemz1v7dQ">latest video by Kurzgesagt</a>: Why not both‽</li>
</ul>Exceptions Prove What?2021-04-21T15:02:00+02:002021-04-21T15:02:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-21:/exceptions-prove-what<p>You know the saying <em>"the exception that proves the rule"</em>. If you are a
non-British European like myself, chances are that that this expression exists
in your native language as well. To name just the tree that come to mind
immediately:</p>
<ul>
<li>German: <em>Die Ausnahme bestätigt die Regel</em></li>
<li>Swedish: <em>Undantaget som bekräftar regeln</em></li>
<li>French: <em>L'exception qui confirme la règle</em></li>
</ul>
<p>The problem is that these treat the word <em>prove</em> as meaning <em>to give proof for</em>
or <em>confirm</em>. It can mean that, for sure, but it can also mean <em>to put to the
test</em>! Swedish even has the word <em>pröva</em>, with presumably the same origin as
<em>prove</em>, which means exactly that.</p>
<p>Is it presumptuous to think that this would have been a better translation?
After all, it does not really make any sense that an exception should count
as evidence <em>for</em> a rule. It should diminish our credence in it, a good
counter-example can completely disprove a rule. It makes however perfect
sense to think that an exception <em>tests</em> a rule. In fact I was happy when
I realized this misunderstanding some while ago because I never liked the
expression before.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I wonder if there is some language-thing going on here that I am
missing. Can it be a simple mistranslation (which inverts the meaning of the
saying!) that made its way into the other languages? If so, why did the
expression stick anyway? Does it appeal to some paradoxical mindset or
Straussian subtext?</p>
<p><strong>Interlude</strong>: Five minutes pass, with me being annoyed that what I just wrote
does not feel right. Until I finally <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exception_that_proves_the_rule">look it up</a>.</p>
<p>Here is the actual meaning: By pointing to an exception that is
explicitly part of the rule, the rest of the rule can be implied. Like a sign
that says "no parking from 9-5" would tell you that it is allowed the rest of
the time. Or the sign outside work saying "smoking allowed", thereby passive-aggressively
telling smokers to not do so anywhere else.</p>
<p>This make some sense. But as far as I remember, this is <em>not</em> how the expression is commonly used.
The paradoxical meaning is dominant, in the context of real counter-examples. But
maybe I am wrong about that, too.</p>Ambition2021-04-20T08:55:00+02:002021-04-20T08:55:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-20:/ambition<p>"You lack ambition!" is an insult in some circles. I don't think
it has ever been hurled at me directly, but it would be quite true,
from some perspective.
Meeting ambitious people who seem to know exactly what they want
to achieve often alientates me. How can they be so certain?
Havn't they just gotten an idea stuck in their head that
consumes them?</p>
<p>There is mental freedom in not being as ambitious as others, at
least if one manages to let go of feelings like envy, when the
inevitable happens that someone "outcompetes" you.</p>
<p>Then again, "being ambitious" (or not) is just another one of the stories we
tell ourselves. One of those stories that altogether make up our identity.
While it is not fully arbitrary, genes and experiences play an important role,
the story <em>can</em> be changed. The internal monologue and the picture of oneself
that it upholds is malleable. What would happen, if I just picked an
ambition and ran with it for a while, without questioning?</p>
<p>⥋</p>
<p>Poetry is generally not for me but I can get behind good prose that almost feels
like poetry, for example <em>Ambition</em>
by David Whyte which begins like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ambition is a word that lacks any real ambition. Ambition is frozen desire,
the current of a vocational life immobilized and over-concretized to set,
unforgiving goals. Ambition abstracts us from the underlying elemental nature
of the creative conversation while providing us the cover of a target that
has become false through over description, overfamiliarity or too much
understanding. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The full piece is best listened to in <a href="https://dynamic.wakingup.com/course/CDC89F">the author's own fantastic voice</a> (9min).
Text version <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ambition-essay-david-whyte-chelsea-coston">here</a>.</p>Hearts Crossed2021-04-19T09:26:00+02:002021-04-19T09:26:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-19:/hearts-crossed<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/hearts-crossed.jpg"><img alt="hearts-crossed" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/hearts-crosseda.jpg" title="hearts-crossed"></a></p>
<p>A ceiling detail in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C3%A4ngn%C3%A4s_Cathedral">Strängnäs cathedral</a>.</p>Engrams2021-04-18T18:56:00+02:002021-04-18T18:56:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-18:/engrams<p>How does it work that we remember things? If I tell you to remember the number
6, and you do, how exactly does your brain achieve that?</p>
<p>The standard answer is that the physical representation of memory, the
<em>engram</em>, is encoded in the synapses <em>between</em> neurons, while each neuron
behaves mechanically, aggregating the inputs into firing an output once an
activation threshold is reached. In this model each neuron does <em>not</em> store
information.</p>
<p>It turns out though that there is experimental evidence that individual neuron can
indeed do just that, remember things, for example a certain time-span. I just read
<a href="https://join.substack.com/p/is-this-the-most-interesting-idea">this interview</a>
which talks about <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/41/14930">this paper</a>. See
also <a href="https://twitter.com/s_r_constantin/status/1383094664518045697">this Twitter
thread</a>.</p>
<p>The provocative thesis is that there is some, very much not understood yet,
molecular mechanism inside neurons that encodes information directly within
a single cell. Somewhat
analogous to how DNA encodes information, but with different purpose and
coding between molecules and information. Our current situation may be
similar to how inheritance was mysterious a hundred years ago, until
the structure of DNA was discovered and understood.</p>
<p>As usual, when a small group goes against the scientific mainstream, it is quite
impossible to have a well-founded opinion as a layman. But even if the
experiment that shows memory in a single neuron eventually gets debunked, we
have learned something. If however it turns out to be right, that the whole
idea to look for the engram between cells instead of within them is a mistake,
then this will quite likely be one of the most exciting scientific revolutions
in modern times!</p>
<p>Do you remember the number I asked you to above? No matter if you do or not,
you have no direct knowledge why that is the case.
Introspection does not help. Finding out through
experiment is our only hope.</p>
<p>I almost forgot: The paper linked above is by scientists from Lund, Sweden!
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a "local" Nobel prize in the future.</p>
<p>Added 2021-05-05: <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/features/can-single-cells-learn-68694">Another article about it</a>.</p>Scout Julia2021-04-17T07:46:00+02:002021-04-17T07:46:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-17:/scout-julia<p>I had seen <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_galef_why_you_think_you_re_right_even_if_you_re_wrong">her TED talk</a>
before and had noticed her name pop up in my timeline on Twitter from time to time. But I admit I did not
really have <strong>Julia Galef</strong>'s work on my radar until recently, when I added <a href="http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/">her podcast</a>
to my rotation. So far it has been very good and I intend to check-out the large backlog eventually.</p>
<p>But first, I'll dive into the book that she just released:
<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555240/the-scout-mindset-by-julia-galef/">The Scout Mindset</a>.
See <a href="https://twitter.com/juliagalef">her Twitter</a> for teasers, or listen to her being interviewed
about it <a href="https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/?ep=036">here</a>.</p>
<p>I did not mention it in my <a href="https://www.tmy.se/star-trek-the-movies">Star Trek rewatch</a>, but Julia is certainly right that
<a href="https://www.wired.com/2021/04/geeks-guide-spock-logic/">Spock is not very logical</a>, and quite annoying.</p>
<p><em>P.S.</em>: See her explain Scout Mindset through activist examples in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzkWqpsPqho">this video</a>.</p>Hugga Ved2021-04-16T09:03:00+02:002021-04-16T09:03:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-16:/hugga-ved<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/hugga-ved.jpg"><img alt="hugga-ved" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/hugga-veda.jpg" title="hugga-ved"></a></p>
<p>Winter is not completely over yet – we had 5cm of snow just the other day and it took two days to melt – but the
preparations for the next one have already started.</p>Push-Ups2021-04-15T16:45:00+02:002021-04-15T16:45:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-15:/push-ups<p>I have never been good at doing push-ups. Upper body strength in general
has never been my thing and I have always preferred low- to medium-intensity
exercise, endurance like running.</p>
<p>However, I recently had the idea to change that and I remembered that logging progress
helped me more than ten years ago to get into running. Even though I no longer do that
(I wear my old GPS clock as a watch, but never turn it on when I go running),
keeping tabs might just work as a motivation-hack once more. For added effect, I hereby make this
commitment public, which is something that I hear people claim also keeps you from
abandoning the routine.</p>
<p>Thus, here is the plot of max and median set sizes, and total number of push-ups every
day, for the last ten days:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/push-ups.jpg"><img alt="push-ups" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/push-upsa.jpg" title="push-ups"></a></p>
<p>I will occasionally post a plot like this with updated numbers.
The script that makes the plot is <a href="https://www.tmy.se/puplot.py.txt">here</a>.</p>Sympathetic Reading2021-04-14T09:40:00+02:002021-04-14T09:40:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-14:/sympathetic-reading<p>Whenever we encounter some statement or proposition, we cannot help but react to it. This
is often automatic, sometimes even subconscious. The kind of reaction we get depends to some
extent on what is being said, certainly, but not only. To a larger extent our own mental
state is more crucial.</p>
<p>How well does the statement fit into our current world model? How unexpected is it?
How flattering or insulting is it? What is the intention of the speaker?</p>
<p>There is considerable freedom in interpretation, but it is a kind of mental
freedom that is easy to overlook. The difference between adopting a
positive reading or a negative one of someone's argument is huge. It is the difference
between strawmanning and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Steelmanning">steelmanning</a>,
and the difference between getting offended and curious.</p>
<p>I find that, with a little practice, it becomes possible to take almost nothing
personally and to notice my own reactions a bit more clearly, which lets me choose the
direction, to some extent. The most sympathetic reading of what is being said
is a good default to strive for, I believe. Not because I want to appear "nice",
although that might be a welcome side-effect, but because it actually is less mental effort
and frees me from being caught up in ruminations about some possible negative subtext
that my brain manages to notice, or invent.</p>The Mill2021-04-13T06:32:00+02:002021-04-13T06:32:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-13:/the-mill<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/the-mill.jpg"><img alt="the-mill" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/the-milla.jpg" title="the-mill"></a></p>
<p>The mill in which <a href="https://www.tmy.se/the-desk">the desk</a>.</p>Star Trek, The Movies2021-04-12T15:48:00+02:002021-04-12T15:48:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-12:/star-trek-the-movies<p><strong>Star Trek</strong>. Hearing that name makes people's eyes either sparkle, or roll. Unlike
<em>Star Wars</em> it never became fully mainstream and Trekkies are still considered to
be quite dorky. I was born too late to have a sentimental relation to the original series, but <em>Next
Generation</em> with Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard had 11-year-old me glued
to the TV every afternoon. I loved it!</p>
<p>Ten years or so later, I re-watched it in English, instead of the German dubbing.
This made it much better with respect to the voices, of course, but the magic that I remembered
was gone. Some of the episodes were quite bad and it hurt a bit to realize that.
Yes, I also watched DS9 and Voyager, but only
half-heartedly, and never became a fan.</p>
<p>Another doubling of lifetime later (🙄) I recently found myself, for unclear reasons,
intrigued by the idea to watch the Star Trek <em>films</em> once more. I think I had seen
them all at least once, but never together and I barely remembered most of them. So
I did, and regret nothing!</p>
<p><em>I: The Motion Picture</em>. This is a very slow film and I almost pressed the button to speed it up.
But I was surprised by how
good the special effects still look today. I had this mental image of the old Enterprise being
just crappy and ugly - not any more. 4/5</p>
<p><em>II: The Wrath of Khan</em>. This one has its moments, but I didn't like it as much as some do. In fact,
I have already forgotten most of it again. Still, 3/5.</p>
<p><em>III: The Search for Spock</em>. This was fun, mostly because of Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon. The
solemn parts on Vulcan and Kirk having a son had me looking at my watch, however. 3/5</p>
<p><em>IV: The Voyage Home</em>. Even more fun than the last! Yes, time-travel is a cheap trick and can go
horribly wrong story-wise, but it did not bother me here. Scotty putting complex formulae
onto an 80s computer screen by pressing three buttons made me laugh out loud.
4/5</p>
<p><em>V: The Final Frontier</em>. Yeah, this is everything as bad as its reputation. All the films are much
more enjoyable, if you manage to have as much fun <em>at</em> the film as <em>with</em> it. This is especially
true for this one. 1/5</p>
<p><em>VI: The Undiscovered Country</em>.
More serious in tone and with lots of pink CGI-blood.
The ending is a bit of a mess, but overall very watchable. Interesting to see the
Klingons change, here they are much closer to TNG than to TOS. 3/5</p>
<p><em>VII: Generations</em>. Wow. I had vague good memories from this one, but it is as bad as the popular verdict suggests.
It just doesn't make any sense! I noticed several occasions when CGI-shots were re-used in the earlier films and
here we are shown the exact same explosion of the Klingon ship as in the last film.
2/5</p>
<p><em>VIII: First Contact</em>. The borg are a favourite story-line from TNG and they make good enemies here, too.
We get to see them take over a brand-new ship, the Enterprise-E.
Getting rid of the large neck and making it smaller than the previous one
are good choices - she looks good! The scenes on time-travel Earth are very light-hearted and if you accept the quirky humour,
they work nicely to contrast the dire situation on the ship. Overall my favourite of the bunch, 5/5. In case
it is not clear yet, ratings are relative within this list, I am not saying that First Contact is among
the best films I have ever seen.</p>
<p><em>IX: Insurrection</em>. This one I vaguely remembered as quite boring, but I did not dislike it this time around.
The intrigue is fine, the villains are cliché baddies that look the part. Even the romance, often
the worst part of any Star Trek, did not bother me. Don't get me wrong, a masterpiece it is not.
3/5</p>
<p><em>X: Nemesis</em>. Well, I cannot quite put my finger on why, but this was not very good. The central
question of identity and personality, and how much of it is "nature versus nurture" is a
long-standing and important one, but how it was handled here felt shallow and stale. The final battle
was not too bad, but Data's death was rushed. An unworthy finale, 2/5.</p>
<p>But maybe it is wrong to call it that. After all, they made <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Picard"><em>Picard</em></a>
last year, the series that brought "the band" back together.
I have seen it, but it did not leave a lasting impression.
They say there will be a second season which I do not anticipate much, I just learned about it from the Wikipedia article
myself. I will probably watch it anyway, in another vain attempt to get the nostalgia flowing.</p>Food For Click2021-04-11T16:36:00+02:002021-04-11T16:36:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-11:/food-for-click<p>A few links from my recent browser history that I found worthwhile.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://bx1.be/categories/news/auderghem-un-mur-descalade-pour-des-cours-sous-le-viaduc-herrmann-debroux/">The climbing gym in Brussels that we used to visit expands outside, under a motorway bridge, because of COVID restrictions</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/zeynep/">@zeynep</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/quasimondo">@quasimondo</a></li>
<li><a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-on-the-natural-faculties">The intellectual hit-job on Galen of Pergamon</a></li>
<li>Videos: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ">Monkey MindPong</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goePYJ74Ydg">Green Beard Altruism</a></li>
<li><a href="https://grabbyaliens.com/">Grabby Aliens</a></li>
</ul>The Desk2021-04-10T21:33:00+02:002021-04-10T21:33:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-10:/the-desk<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/the-desk.jpg"><img alt="the-desk" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/the-deska.jpg" title="the-desk"></a></p>
<p>Seen in an old mill nearby.</p>Seeing Faces2021-04-09T08:33:00+02:002021-04-09T08:33:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-09:/seeing-faces<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/seeing-faces.jpg"><img alt="seeing-faces" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/seeing-facesa.jpg" title="seeing-faces"></a></p>
<p>I was recently reminded of <a href="https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/">thispersondoesnotexist.com</a>
which is a site that displays a new computer-generated face every time you reload it.
There are still some artefacts that give away the artificial origin (I chose two examples
with few glitches for the picture above) but I think it is
fair to say that these faces look convincingly real.</p>
<p>This means that they trigger the same reactions in our minds that pictures of real people do.
I found myself reloading the page for at least ten minutes, becoming more and more mesmerized,
reacting to facial expressions, sometimes falsely recognizing someone I know, and generally
unable to convince the automatic parts of the brain that these are not people.</p>
<p>Do I have a point? Should we become even more sceptical of media than we already are? I don't
know. But being a somewhat aware of the way we cannot help but react to faces, real or not,
cannot be such a bad thing, a kind of meta awareness that hopefully contributes to resilience against
manipulation.</p>Fibysjön2021-04-08T14:50:00+02:002021-04-08T14:50:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-08:/fibysjon<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/fibysjon.jpg"><img alt="fibysjon" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/fibysjona.jpg" title="fibysjon"></a></p>
<p>I took the drone our for a spin this chilly early spring morning. The picture shows
the nearby lake, <em>Fibysjön</em>, just a few hundred meters through the forest from our
place.</p>
<p>Around it you can see some areas where the trees have recently been taken down. In fact,
I see several huge trucks passing by every day, loaded to the brim with logs.
The <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=skog+sk%C3%B6rdare&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images">harvesters</a>
that do the logging are impressive machines and so efficient that they can process
up to a hundred trees per hour.</p>
<p>There is an ongoing debate, heated at times, between the environmental movement,
forest owners and industry, about how to strike the balance between logging
and preservation. The more I read about it, the less of a strong opinion
I find myself to maintain in that regard. I intend to write up the arguments
soon, but as a teaser, if you can read Swedish,
<a href="https://twitter.com/pholmgren/status/1376928732947087369">here is a twitter thread with some
basic stats about forests and forestry</a>.</p>The Call of the Worlds2021-04-07T07:51:00+02:002021-04-07T07:51:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-07:/the-call-of-the-worlds<p>I finally read <em>The Call of Cthulhu</em> the other week. Considering it's
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu#Legacy">impact on culture</a>, this was
certainly overdue. I had read a collection of Lovecraft's short stories some year ago, but
this one was not among them for some reason. Needless to say it was a fun read and the
quickly building atmosphere still works today.</p>
<p>And while at the topic of century-old monster stories, I also read H. G. Wells' <em>The War of the Worlds</em>
not long ago, with mixed feelings. It certainly has its moments and is propbably rightfully regarded as
one of the most important works in science-fiction. But I found it tedious at times and too long
for its own good, which is mostly due to its age, I guess.</p>
<p>Oh, one more monster: <em>The Thing</em>, the 1982 movie by John Carpenter, was quite entertaining! The
gory practical effects hold up well enough and the atmosphere is intense. I think I never had
seen this to the end before; if I don't misremember I started watching it in my late teens, but
when it got to the scene in the dog cage I said "Nope! Not for me!" and turned it off
before the monster reveal.</p>Tallskog2021-04-06T08:39:00+02:002021-04-06T08:39:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-06:/tallskog<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/tallskog.jpg"><img alt="tallskog" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/tallskoga.jpg" title="tallskog"></a></p>Virtue Signalling2021-04-05T16:51:00+02:002021-04-05T16:51:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-05:/virtue-signalling<p>See <a href="https://www.tmy.se/broken">what I just did there</a>? I was telling you (and myself) what a good boy I am to
not participate in consumerism! In other words, I was "signalling my virtue".</p>
<p>This is one of those concepts that, once you learn about it, it pops up everywhere. It is deeply intertwined with
prestige and how much we care about what others think of us. And with mating behaviour, for example when males
(of any species, including us)
try to convince females that they would make a good mate, by whatever criterion that is relevant in the situation.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/geoffrey-miller-virtue-signaling-essays-on-darwinian-politics-free-speech/">This podcast with Geoffrey
Miller</a>,
who literally wrote the book called <em>Virtue Signalling</em>, is quite good as an overview, if I remember correctly - it has been
a while since I listened to it. One of the points he stresses is that virtue signalling is generally a good thing! It is a way to build trust and
allow for cooperation.</p>
<p>Recently however, the term has mostly been used in a derogatory sense, like accusing accusing someone to be "just virtue signalling"
instead of being sincere in their proclamation. For example, a male calling himself "feminist" can be suspect to
ulteriour motives, that is saying anything that "gets the girl"; he might even be a
<a href="https://dragonflyissuesinevolution13.wikia.org/wiki/Sneaky_F*uckers">sneaky fucker</a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, social justice activists' opinions, while certainly being convinced of their own noble motives, can easily appear repulsive
to outsiders when attitudes get <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization">polarized within the group</a> from everyone's trying to gain prestige
by having the "purest" opinions on the subject matter at hand.</p>
<p>All this, just to say: I bought a new coffe machine after all, thereby negating the virtue I was signalling before.
<a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/virtue-signalling.jpg"><img alt="virtue-signalling" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/virtue-signallinga.jpg" title="virtue-signalling"></a></p>
<p>It works well, makes good coffee and I hope it lasts for as may years as the old one.</p>You Are Dreaming2021-04-04T17:22:00+02:002021-04-04T17:22:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-04:/you-are-dreaming<p>While chopping wood earlier today, I listened to <a href="https://futureoflife.org/2021/03/31/joscha-bach-and-anthony-aguirre-on-digital-physics-and-moving-towards-beneficial-futures/">this FLI podcast with Joscha
Bach</a>
in which he says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We obviously live in a dream universe. And the dream is dreamed by a mind on
a higher plane of existence and that is implemented in the skull of a
primate. In the brain of some primate that is walking around in a physical
universe. This is our best hypothesis that we have. And so we can explain all
the magic that you’re experiencing by the fact that indeed we live in a dream
generated in that skull.</p>
<p>And now the question is, how does consciousness come about? How is it
possible that the physical system can be experiencing things? And the answer
is no, it can’t. A physical system cannot experience anything. Experience is
only possible in a dream. It’s a virtual property. Our existence as
experiencing beings is entirely virtual, it’s not physical. Which means we
are only experiencing things inside of the model. It’s part of the model that
we experience something.</p>
<p>For the neurons, it doesn’t feel like anything to do this. For the brain, it
doesn’t feel like anything. But it would be very useful for the brain [to know], what
it would be like to be a person. So it generates a story about that person.
About the feelings of that person, the relationship that this person has with
the environment, and it acts on that model. And the model gets updated, as
part of that behavior.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is quite dense and almost incomprehensible without a lot of prior knowledge
that is not yet obvious to "normies" like myself. I had to turn down the listening
speed to 1x, which I rarely need to, but I think I got the gist of it.</p>
<p>It reminds me of <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality">Anil Seth's TED talk</a>
where he argues that coscious awareness is a hallucination contrained by reality, whereas a dream has no such contraints.</p>
<p>Mind-blowing stuff to think about, maybe literally so.</p>Crocus2021-04-03T09:09:00+02:002021-04-03T09:09:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-03:/crocus<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/crocus.jpg"><img alt="crocus" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/crocusa.jpg" title="crocus"></a></p>
<p>Spring is late at 60°N, compared to central Europe where I grew up.
March and April feel like a waiting period every year and can be
quite grey and ugly. While lush greens are still some weeks away,
the first dots of colour have now appeared in our garden.</p>Geoengineering2021-04-02T07:15:00+02:002021-04-02T07:15:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-02:/geoengineering<p>I listened to <a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kelly-wanser-climate-interventions/">this podcast</a> the other day
and want to highly recommend it! There is a transcript at that same link, if you prefer text over audio.
It has lots of information that was new to me, and a nuanced discussion on a topic that
triggers a negative gut reaction from most people: <em>intervening in the climate</em>, for example by
increasing cloud cover over the oceans, or by putting reflective particles high into the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The argument is of course not that we should stop other efforts to decrease and mitigate climate change,
even though it looks like this is what everbody reacts to. Instead the point is to at least do the
research needed to know what does or does not work, before an intervention gets done in the future
<em>without</em> such knowledge, in a state of emergency. Nevertheless, as soon as it became public that
some US researchers wanted to do this kind of research in northern Sweden, there was an outcry
and it <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-geoengineering-sweden-idUSKBN2BN35X">just got cancelled</a>.
Sad.</p>
<p>In the podcast
I especially enjoyed their discussion of moral hazards. Like with COVID, there are often strong warnings
that the public will receive certain information in a way that makes things worse,
while the opposite reaction is just as plausible.</p>
<p>I find geoengineering to be quite enticing and if I ever were to switch careers, this would be on my list of
things to check out. It is not discussed much in the interview but
that humanity in the long run takes charge of the climate makes perfect sense to me,
it is probably inevitable. For example, we do not want to be subject to the mercy of nature, like
a supervolcano erupting, or to the whims of rogue states that do a climate intervention that only suits
local needs. Solving the problem of world-wide agreement on what the <em>right</em> temperature is,
will certainly be difficult, but might well become a catalyst for stronger global institutions, which we
need for other problems as well.</p>Wiki Loves Monuments2021-04-01T06:09:00+02:002021-04-01T06:09:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-04-01:/wiki-loves-monuments<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/wiki-loves-monuments.jpg"><img alt="wiki-loves-monuments" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/wiki-loves-monumentsa.jpg" title="wiki-loves-monuments"></a>
(<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holy_SURP_Hovhannes_Church.jpg">Photo by Farzin Izaddoust Dar</a>,
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>)</p>
<p>This is the winner of this year's photo contest <a href="https://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/travel-the-world-through-the-lenses-of-wiki-loves-monuments-2020-winners/">Wiki Loves
Monuments</a>
, and deservedly so! A great picture well worth clicking to enlarge. The other
contestants are worth checking out, too, but the official link above shows them
only in small format. <a href="https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/travel-the-world-through-the-lenses-of-this-years-wiki-loves-monuments-winners-80550a5e020e">This one is
better</a>.</p>Broken2021-03-31T12:00:00+02:002021-03-31T12:00:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-31:/broken<p>I like to fix things when they break, and also to use them until they really no longer work.
Replacing something that does its job well enough, just because there exists a "nicer" version of it
out in the world, is an itch that I am able to resist scratching most of the time. The
aesthetics of objects has value, sure, but I generally rank it lower than the enviromental
impact of consumerism and the sheer hassle of buying things. Deciding what to get and then doing so
is effort that has to be priced in.</p>
<p>All that is to say that I broke our coffee pot when I took it out of the dishwasher yesterday.
A large corner is missing and while it still works for now, I am quite sure the rest of the
glass will disintegrate very soon.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/broken.jpg"><img alt="broken" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/brokena.jpg" title="broken"></a></p>
<p>That machine came with the house when we bought it more than six years ago and who knows how old it was
by then already. Not a chance that I find a replacement pot! I fixed/modified the electrical part
twice already and the
plastic is starting to disintegrate, so I admit it is time to give it up.</p>
<p>We have a Moccamaster at work and I like its no-nonsense approach and that it brews very quickly. That
they are so popular should help with future repairs and replacement parts, so I am leaning in that direction
for now.</p>Return To Normal2021-03-30T07:32:00+02:002021-03-30T07:32:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-30:/return-to-normal<p>My <a href="https://www.tmy.se/pandemic-thoughts">pandemic impatience</a> is not as bad anymore as it was a few
weeks ago. I am hearing of more and more people I know getting vaccinated and I am happy for them.
They should <a href="https://www.econlib.org/fear-me-not-i-got-my-covid-vaccine/">restart their lives</a>
and not listen too much to those who revel in admonishing people to keep up with the precautions
as if the risk had not been drastically reduced.</p>
<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/2425/">XKCD's comic on how the nRNA vaccine works</a> is fantastic, by the way.
He has a whole series on the pandemic, all quite witty:
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2398/">1</a>
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2400/">2</a>
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2402/">3</a>
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2406/">4</a>
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2422/">5</a>
<a href="https://xkcd.com/2443/">6</a></p>Almost2021-03-29T20:37:00+02:002021-03-29T20:37:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-29:/almost<p>I almost just went to bed for some reading* when I caught it just in time that I had not blogged yet today.
A catastrophe it would certainly not have been, but I like to keep the streak alive for now, however trivial
the post turns out to be.</p>
<p>It is funny to observe the own mind in caring about such trivial things like streaks, points or badges, in
whatever gamified context they appear. Will it rebel eventually, when one part of the brain gets tricked
by another part, in this case me trying to consciously exploit some built-in mechanism for motivational
gains? Probably not, the automatic "primitive" bits are not aware of context.</p>
<p>Viewing one's own mind not as a single unified entity, but a mess of different motivations, feelings and
thoughts, often conflicting ones, can be helpful and generally rings true to me. You can make up a theory of
<a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/towards-a-bayesian-theory-of-willpower">willpower</a> this way, or
call out the "internal press sectretary" that tries to weave a flattering story out of the underlying mess,
as Simler & Hanson describe in <em>The Elephant in the Brain</em>.</p>
<p>Not very pretty to look at up close, what these brains of ours are up to.</p>
<p>(* still the LessWrong books and a new one on the Viking age, called <em>River Kings</em>.)</p>Homebrewer's Delight2021-03-28T17:49:00+02:002021-03-28T17:49:00+02:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-28:/homebrewers-delight<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/homebrewers-delight.jpg"><img alt="homebrewers-delight" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/homebrewers-delighta.jpg" title="homebrewers-delight"></a></p>
<p>No better way to spend a rainy Sunday than to make full use of the kitchen. Bottling the last batch of beer and brewing a
new (split) batch takes the better part of the day, but everything went smooth today and I was done by 4pm, including
the cleaning of all equipent and the kitchen itself.</p>
<p>I was reusing the yeast from <a href="https://www.tmy.se/wheat-beer">last week</a>, this time for a Pale Ale with lots of
fruity hops: Simcoe, Mosaic, Citra, you name it. And part of the batch became a single-hop with HBC 692 which I
had not used before.</p>Planting Trees2021-03-27T16:43:00+01:002021-03-27T16:43:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-27:/planting-trees<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/planting-trees.jpg"><img alt="planting-trees" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/planting-treesa.jpg" title="planting-trees"></a></p>
<p>We own a small patch of forest and had to take down a piece of it because of the bark beetle outbreak that has been
causing large problems in recent years. So now it is time to make sure that the new generation of trees
gets off ot a good start there.</p>
<p>While we're waiting for a delivery of 4000 saplings, I spent the morning to plant the ones that we grew
ourselves in the garden last year. They promise rain for tomorrow.</p>Nuclear And Bioweapons2021-03-26T16:10:00+01:002021-03-26T16:10:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-26:/nuclear-and-bioweapons<p><a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andy-weber-rendering-bioweapons-obsolete/">This recent <em>80,000 hours</em> podcast</a>
is a great listen! Fascinating stories on how they secured nuclear material from former Soviet states, and a
perspective on weapons of mass destruction that one does not hear very often.</p>
<p>Just a small excerpt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>North Korea has an advanced biological weapons program. What worries me about North Korea is they’re more likely to use biological weapons than nuclear weapons, because if they used a nuclear weapon, it’s over, right? If they used a biological weapon and delivered it covertly through secret operatives, anywhere in the world… In Malaysia, where they used VX against a Kim Jong-un’s brother in a successful assassination attempt. Now that was a chemical weapon, but wherever North Koreans have a diplomatic presence, they could launch biological weapons attacks covertly. And in a way, perhaps that’s a little bit deniable, maybe they would never get caught for doing it. So I think they’re more likely to do that than to use a nuclear weapon, which would have a home address.</p>
</blockquote>Trail2021-03-25T12:33:00+01:002021-03-25T12:33:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-25:/trail<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/trail.jpg"><img alt="trail" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/traila.jpg" title="trail"></a></p>
<p>Just a snapshot from my lunch break yesterday.</p>Charlatans and Positive-Sum Games2021-03-24T06:50:00+01:002021-03-24T06:50:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-24:/charlatans-and-positive-sum-games<p>I am going back and forth in my thinking on whether cryptocurrencies are a fraud.
Of course there are obvious scams in this area that try to directly lure people out of their money; those
are not what I wonder about, but the digital currencies themselves.</p>
<p>There have been frequent reports of market manipulations over the years and the whole setup
looks like a pyramid scheme where the early "investors" get rich at the expense of the late suckers.
Plus, some of the prominent people do, while certainly being brilliant, come across
<a href="https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9eb272d4">as charlatans</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin">Fun to read</a>
and often insightful, sure, but I cannot shake that vague feeling that something is off.</p>
<p>On the other hand, cryptocurrencies have been around for while now and not collapsed yet, in spite of the
occasional scandals. And where the line between "pyramid scheme" and "positive-sum game" should be drawn,
is not clear to me. The whole economy has made humanity so much better-off since growth convinced people
that the cake is getting bigger and that things can get better for everyone, in contrast to a zero-sum
situation.</p>
<p>So maybe Bitcoin and the like will stay around, and we have to get used
to that. <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/doge-moon-mark-cuban-says-053210032.html">To the moon!</a></p>
<p>(And as a side note: Whenever someone argues for a <em>blockchain</em> to be used anywhere else than cryptocurrencies,
feel free to roll your eyes and laugh them out of the room.)</p>Why?2021-03-23T07:34:00+01:002021-03-23T07:34:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-23:/why<p>This blog holds no world-shattering insights. I don't
have something interesting to say every day (ever?), but the point is
to write it down anyway. Just in case a good thought
comes by eventually, then the routines are in place to capture it.</p>
<p>But the blog spammers have rediscovered the comment fields, so there's that.</p>Past and Future Self2021-03-22T12:17:00+01:002021-03-22T12:17:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-22:/past-and-future-self<p>The question of personal identity is a tricky one and philosophers have argued about it
for a long time, considering the Ship of Theseus and other analogies in that context.</p>
<p>One way to frame it is to think about past and future selves. Putting it this way is biased in the
sense that it implies that these are not the same as the current self, thereby foregoing the conclusion.
But it allows to ask questions like </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How strongly do you identify with your past self?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>or</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How well do you treat your future self?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which can be quite helpful mental tools.</p>
<p>The secion on exactly this subject was what I found most intersting in the <a href="https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/?ep=026">chat between Simone Collins
and Spencer Greenberg</a> that I listened to the other day.
They talk about much more than this and at times it is quite funny (the good kind of funny).</p>
<p>Plus, they mention <a href="https://www.futureme.org/">FutureMe</a>,
a site for writing letters to one's future self - what a wonderful idea!</p>Wheat Beer2021-03-21T17:56:00+01:002021-03-21T17:56:00+01:00Thomas Marquarttag:www.tmy.se,2021-03-21:/wheat-beer<p><a href="https://www.tmy.se/pic/wheat-beer.jpg"><img alt="wheat-beer" src="https://www.tmy.se/photos/wheat-beera.jpg" title="wheat-beer"></a></p>
<p>It's been a while but today I brewed a new batch of beer, my 57th. A wheat beer, not quite according
to any of the well-known German or Belgian styles, but just the way I like it. I hope, at least,
since one never knows exactly how it will turn out until the first tasting, after
fermentation and carbonation are done.</p>
<p>If you are into the details, the grist is 56% Pilsner malt, 34% wheat, 10% Munich and a smidge CaraAmber. Hops are Nothern Brewer,
East Kent Goldings and a very small late addition of Citra. Yeast is Lallemand's "Munich Classic" which is the same as Wy3068,
the most common wheat beer strain, and it well deserves this place. Originally I thought I would add some sugar later on, to bring it
in the vicinity of <a href="https://www.beerproject.be/en/beer/grosse-bertha/">Grosse Bertha</a>, but I think I won't. I prefer
weaker easy-to-drink beers, especially since this one is meant for the summer.</p>