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Some barely-formed ideas
A beneficial form of socioeconomic organization is one founded on the knowledge that most people are just trying to get by, caring for themselves and those closest to them, and through the accumulated efforts of all makes that a wholly achievable standard, such that any who wish to have energy to spare for further efforts.
( This goes on for a bit ) -
Something's up out in the darkness
A bunch of astronomers spotted something odd in the outer solar system. The formal announcement is tomorrow. Someone accidentally leaked the big reveal on Twitter, but deleted it before more than a few people could notice. There are hints that a known object is doing something very unexpected for something of its type and distance from the sun.
I'm ( Read more... ) -
Redistribution by any other name
In capitalist economies, when publicly-accountable social structures are excluded from participation in resource allocation decisions, the result is effectively a transfer of power over wealth distribution to privately-controlled structures. The resulting power structure is no less hierarchical than before, and potentially far less accountable to ( Read more... ) -
Fuzzy matching problems
One of the unfortunate effects of my visual impairment is an inability to perceive people’s physical details in a timely manner. I don’t know how anyone else matches individuals within their visual or auditory fields to memorized patterns, or how quickly the process takes place, so I can only explain how I think I do it and solicit responses from ( Read more... ) -
Melt
Well, this is disquieting.
Bonus oddness: the record-high amount of Antarctic sea ice, even as the surrounding and supporting Southern Ocean warms. Although the published interview on that subject doesn’t really provide a hypothesis for this effect, I’m willing to toss one out: melted continental fresh water is flowing into the ocean, perhaps enough ( Read more... ) -
How things have changed
I decided to spend a couple of hours this morning hacking together a comparison of the changes to the Toronto skyline, from the time I moved to my current home in 2008 to sometime midway through last year. I dug through photos I've taken from the balcony during those two years to find a pair usable for rough comparison purposes.
( Yeah, I'm spoiled ) -
Current and recent input
Reading:- A Death in Wichita, Stephen Singular - a story of the path from Roe v. Wade to Kansas v. Roeder, and the ongoing struggle for women's rights and autonomy.
- The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, Graham Farmelo - I wish I had Dirac's grasp of mathematics and fundamental physics.
- Cold War Plans that Never Happened, ( Read more... )
- A Death in Wichita, Stephen Singular - a story of the path from Roe v. Wade to Kansas v. Roeder, and the ongoing struggle for women's rights and autonomy.
