The land of the possible has many paths, and we can know only one. Everything's stochastic and impermanent. Our lives are packed with luggage, the vast majority of which would be best left at the side of the road. Utopia is a place with kind and reasonable people using coalition-building, science and determination to solve … Continue reading Apocalypse is the Suburb of Utopia
Category: essays
The Impossibility of Comparative Consequences
A calculus of comparative consequences is impossible. Every effort to develop one is a process of rationalizing bias. Consequentialism assumes, based on experience or thought experiments, that it can assess the consequences of a particular act. This position implies that one act causes consequences. These consequences can be evaluated, reduced to some kind of common … Continue reading The Impossibility of Comparative Consequences
The Rating Rabbit Hole
Note: This was written in August of 2015, before cafebedouin.org existed. I rediscovered it recently and thought the point is still a valid one and worth sharing. tl;dr: Algorithms have a bias toward the status quo and present a threat to our cultural production. (2,600 words) Shortly after the start of the Afghanistan war, Osama … Continue reading The Rating Rabbit Hole
Freedom & Limits: The ASUS C201 with libreboot and Parabola Linux
March 2020 Update: If you wish to use an ASUS C201 as a laptop computer and usability is an important consideration along with freedom, I now recommend PrawnOS. See my March 2021 update for discussion. Unfree BIOS Software Surfing the web one day, I came across a mention of libreboot, a free software replacement for … Continue reading Freedom & Limits: The ASUS C201 with libreboot and Parabola Linux
The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Sciences by Kieran Healy
The Plain Person's Guide to Plain Text Social Science is written for graduate students in the social sciences, but useful for any writer. For people not doing sophisticated data analysis, the key suggestions are to use a text editor like Emacs for writing, Markdown for formatting, git—such as on GitLabs—for version control, and a translator … Continue reading The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Sciences by Kieran Healy
2018 Experiments, 1st Quarter Follow-up
New Year resolutions always seem like an exercise in futility. Everyone does them. But, it is difficult to get the social support to make any kind of New Year resolution work. Failure is expected. Starting out in the aftermath of a holiday like New Year's Eve probably doesn't help much either. New Year's resolutions tend … Continue reading 2018 Experiments, 1st Quarter Follow-up
Swimming Against the Stream of Convenience
A year ago, I deleted my Facebook account. It was a bit of a watershed moment for my digital life because it was the start of a process, where I took a hard look at my use of the "free" services offered by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple and tried to assess whether other … Continue reading Swimming Against the Stream of Convenience
The Fallacy of Calories In / Calories Out as a Mental Model for Weight Control
One of the common comments people make about weight control is: "It's just calories in / calories out." It's true, but it's also wrong in important ways. For example, one of the things that we know happens once people reach their thirties is that they start to lose 3-5% of their muscle mass per decade. … Continue reading The Fallacy of Calories In / Calories Out as a Mental Model for Weight Control
Omelets, Perfection & Life
Several years ago, I stumbled across an article in Gourmet magazine called "Chasing Perfection" by Francis Lam. This is how it starts: "Before Chef Skibitcky got ahold of my brain, I, like every other rational person, thought an omelet was something anyone can make. You throw eggs in a pan, stir them around, fold them in … Continue reading Omelets, Perfection & Life
Revolution For One
"You see the beauty of my proposal is / It needn't wait on general revolution / I bid you to the one-man revolution— / The only revolution that is coming."—Frost, Robert. "Build Soil." Change is a constant. Paradoxically, remaining the same, over time, requires change. Our bodies, like the Ship of Theseus, change and mutate, … Continue reading Revolution For One
Ask Your Doctor: Is Castration Right for You?
I came across a book on Amazon the other day, "Castration: The Advantages and the Disadvantages," by Victor T. Cheney. I have to admit I initially found it hilarious. Between my social conditioning, the slightly humorous reviews, the fact that Amazon makes it very clear that the item is available for gift wrap, it made … Continue reading Ask Your Doctor: Is Castration Right for You?
Be Seeing You, Facebook
tl;dr: I have decided to delete my Facebook account. To use Facebook is to consent to being spied upon and manipulated. To quote from the television show, The Prisoner: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!" Join me, and quit Facebook today. (1175 words) "In … Continue reading Be Seeing You, Facebook
Unwritten Rules
tl;dr: Ponyatiya is a code of conduct of the Russian criminal class. The way it has evolved in Russia suggests that there is a give and take between written and unwritten rules, and the balance between the two points reflects the level of confidence a people have in their civil institutions. If the U.S. has … Continue reading Unwritten Rules
Ergot on Rye
tl;dr: Ergot is a forgotten plague that teaches a lesson about the cost of ignorance, and perhaps, offers another one on the price of sanity and the value of a little madness. (1,620 words) "An old cautionary tale has it that there once was a kingdom in which all the grain crop one exceptional year … Continue reading Ergot on Rye
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