Mitch's Blog

Writing in 2017 about the perils of self-optimization:

The past 14 years have regularly featured junctures where I had to get rid of something I liked doing so I could do something I liked doing more. Some of that was low-hanging fruit (I haven’t watched TV regularly in more than a decade), but after getting rid of the empty calories in my activity diet, I had to start making hard choices.

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Some of these choices were tough. I have all but given up on re-reading books, despite the undeniable pleasure and value to understanding the authors' craft, which is easier to unpick on subsequent readings. But I have more than 20 linear feet of books I’ve promised to read for blurbs and reviews, and reading those books _also _teaches me something about the craft, _also _brings me pleasure, _also _makes me a better reviewer, and also makes me a better citizen of science fiction, who contributes to the success of worthy new books.

I am rediscovering the pleasures of re-reading books.

Some social media tools – like Facebook – make for fun (if problematic) socializing, and all social media pays some dividend to authors who are hoping to sell books and activists who are hoping to win support, but Twitter also teaches me to be a better writer by making me think about brevity and sentence structure in very rigorous ways (and from an activist perspective, Twitter is a better choice because it, unlike Facebook, doesn’t want the web to die and be replaced by its walled garden) – so Twitter is in, and Facebook is out.

This essay has got me thinking about opportunity costs, particularly regarding social media.

London Gatwick introduces robotic parking service. Autonomous robots park your car while you head to the terminal with your keys.

“The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean,” writes Timothy Pratt at The Guardian.

GrapheneOS uses a feature called a “duress password.” If police demand the password to your phone, you give them the duress password instead and it wipes the phone clean.

When Tunick arrived in Atlanta, agents questioned him about child sexual abuse images. “Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was rebuffed each time, according to courtroom testimony. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights.”

“I Don’t Know How You Can Look at Minneapolis and Say They Are Better for Choosing Reform Over Revolution”. Hamilton Nolan interviews journalist Justin Ellis, author of the book “The Cruelty of Nice Folks,” about Minneapolis, the failures of white liberalism, and defunding the police.

Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed. As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Website operators are crying foul.

Why Do We Expect Ancient Romans to Have British Accents in Movies?

Penn professor Emily Wilson thought she’d sell 1,000 copies of her ‘Odyssey’ translation. She sold more than a million this year alone, thanks to Christopher Nolan.

The Last Days of the Southern Drawl. “Young people are losing their southern accents. By the end of my life, there may be no one left who speaks like my father outside the hollers and the one-horse towns.” By Annie Joy Williams at The Atlantic.

Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Stupid-Americans Reject Vaccines. Via John Gruber on Daring Fireball, who quotes Isaac Asimov: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

ME (leaving offsite meeting): “Where can I wait for an Uber?”
HER: “Where did you park?”
ME: “What?”
HER: “What?”
Then we talked about insomnia. I knew I’d found another member of the tribe.