Mitch's Blog

“Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis: We may not know what’s in the box, but we can tell if it’s been damaged in transit.” pluralistic.net/2024/03/2…

The revolving door of senior personnel between regulatory agencies and the companies they’re supposed to regulate means that the agencies don’t do their jobs.

The FAA has been overlooking problems with Boeing planes for years and we’re seeing the damage in headlines now.

Likewise, while vaccines are safe and powerful enablers of public health, Big Pharma lied for decades about the safety and efficacy of opiods, so it’s reasonable for people to disbelieve everything Big Pharma says.

Few of us are qualified to judge the safety of vaccines, medications, buildings and airplanes, but we can look at the regulatory process and see if it’s sound. And that process is broken. Corrupt.

Facebook and TikTok aren’t to blame here, the fault lies in the failure of government.

If the Biden Administration has been tackling this problem, I’m not aware of it. That doesn’t mean I support Biden’s re-election less, because Biden’s done a lot of good and in areas where Biden has failed, Trump would be a thousand times worse.

Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is [99percentinvisible.org] — A podcast tour of Santa Fe. Beautiful city. We visited a few years ago and loved it. Love that New Mexican food.

It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Pandemic. Joe Biden is paying the price for America’s unprocessed COVID grief. [theatlantic.com]

Photos of the original McDonald’s in in Illinois, which opened in 1955, and has been preserved as a museum, showing what it was like to dine there back then. [businessinsider.com]

A third and final “Downton Abbey” movie is in the works. [collider.com]

The “Reitoff principle”: Why you should add “nothing” to your work-life schedule. [bigthink.com] — Taking time to do nothing, and letting your mind wander, is important to productivity and living a good life.

The Reitoff principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.

Kevin Mims makes the case that Shatner is a superb actor, and his much-parodied over-the-top style was due to a couple of factors: TVs at the time had small screens and often lousy picture and audio quality; performances had to be big because the medium was small. Also, Kirk and Spock were a duo; Kirk had to be loud to offset Spock’s stillness.

[quillette.com]:

While a lot of TV actors were trying to mimic the mush-mouthed vocal delivery of big-screen movie stars like Marlon Brando or James Dean, Shatner went in the opposite direction. He enunciated his words carefully and broke his sentences into bite-sized pieces, making each clause a separate unit of delivery. He would speed up his cadence at times, and then bring it to a near halt. Shatner’s unique speaking style has been parodied countless times. Among living actors, probably only Christopher Walken’s line delivery has generated more parodies.

Also:

It isn’t just a coincidence that names like Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, and Rod Serling crop up frequently in discussions of Shatner’s career. Academics frequently celebrate the work of various American literary schools–the American ex-pats of the so-called Lost Generation, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats–but few literary salons have influenced American popular culture as profoundly as the Southern California fantasists who were all brought together by Rod Serling for his Twilight Zone series and later worked on other fantasy and sci-fi shows, including Star Trek.

Noah Smith [noahpinion.blog]:

Vinge was perhaps the most technologically visionary sci-fi writer of the past 50 years — a worthy successor to H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov. And yet in some ways he excelled even those august predecessors. Vinge imbues his characters with an emotional depth that very few sci-fi authors can match, and his plots are consistently complex and engaging. He’s the rare writer who really could do it all.

In the early part of his career, Vinge was a staunch libertarian, but over time he came to see that government is essential to keeping society functioning and preserving freedom.

I used to enjoy doing panels at science fiction conventions. Fear of public speaking is supposedly the most common fear, but not for me. I’m the opposite. I love public speaking, though I rarely get opportunities. So, for a few years, I leveraged my meager cred as a tech reporter to get myself put on panels at science fiction conventions. Those panels often focused on AI, and Vernor Vinge was often a speaker at those, too.

One panel turned out to be just me and him. It was the last panel of the day on the last day of the con, and yet the room was packed. “All these people here to see me, I said. “Poor Vernor. Gosh, I hope he doesn’t feel bad.” jkjkjk They were there to see him. We sensibly turned it into a Q&A with Vernor, with me asking a lot of questions and trying to minimize my contributing my own opinions. Which is hard for me, because I have so many opinions and would feel selfish if I did not share them promiscuously.

I did another panel with about a half-dozen people, including Vernor, David Brin, a renowned physicist who has done groundbreaking research into AI, and me. Again, I realized that the people in the room were not there to see me. How can I contribute? I said to myself. And I answered myself: A panel is a show. Every show needs a villain. So when it was my turn to present, I took my iPhone out of my pocket, held it up for the audience to see, and said, “This is my iPhone. It doesn’t know who I am when my finger is wet. You’re telling me this thing is going to achieve superintelligence in a few years? Pfui. The Singularity is bullshit.”

Vernor, who was sitting next to me, turned to me and his face lit up. He was delighted.

In the 2000s and early 2010s, I attended one or two SF conventions per year and encountered Vernor walking the floors of the dealer room, checking out what was for sale while I did the same. We’d stop and chat for 15-30 minutes. I always enjoyed our conversations, and I think he did, too—it would have been easy enough to escape if he did not. I wish I’d taken the opportunity to get to know him better.

Researchers analyzed digital archives of an obscure document thought to have been written by Shakespeare’s father and learned that it was actually written by the Bard’s sister. [phys.org]

Shakespeare had a sister?

Like a Phish concert but with more grievance. This is what it’s like at a Trump rally. [Danielle Kurtzleben / kpbs.org] “I want to show my support for the best president in the history of this nation.”

Overheard: “As you age, it’s ridiculous how fast bird-watching creeps up on you. You spend your whole life being 100% indifferent to birds, and then one day you’re like “’is that a yellow-rumped warbler’”

20 Years After ‘Fargo,’ Marge Is Still the Best Coen Brothers Character [thrillist.com]

Constant bad news doing your head in? Why not read about the fish doorbell instead [theguardian.com]

Lawmakers are pushing a bill to stop distribution of anti-Semitic flyers in San Diego. They’re calling it “hate littering.” [timesofsandiego.com]

Wind project in San Diego’s backcountry runs into turbulence [sandiegouniontribune.com] — Residents oppose construction of 60 wind turbines that would stand hundreds of feet high.

California regulators want to protect indoor workers from oppressive heat. Politicians are blocking the protections. This is part of a nationwide trend. [kpbs.org]

For seniors, medical care can be a slog, but there are ways to rein it in. [washingtonpost.com] — Scheduling appointments, going to and from and managing treatments takes a lot of time.

Fresno High School in California limits kids to two seven-minute bathroom breaks per day and tracks student bathroom breaks with apps. [govtech.com] — We’ve streamlined the school-to-prison pipeline by turning schools into prisons.