suppose there were a gene that made the bearer feel entitled to other people's things.
would it spread?
And before pointing fingers, remember...the bearer would not think of them as other people's, or that they were taking anything by their actions.
logic exists (and a given problem is logical) if you can put 100 people in separate rooms with the problem and they converge on the same answer
a logical problem is interesting if they converge over time, but generally do not agree given a very brief time
male: "I'm going to have a million kids or die trying"
female: "how do I make sure all my children survive and also everyone else I'm related to?"
Unfortunately part of the female strategy is to try to get the "successful" male genes into her sons.
the other weird part about this is that the same 99% of the genes can be directed to one or the other strategy depending on if they are cohabiting with a tiny Y chromosome...
When doing a startup, you talk about it everywhere, with everyone. At least I do.
I went hiking today on a familiar trail; but the monsoons had changed things and I found myself going up and down the canyon looking for the turnoff.
A couple sitting on a rock seemed friendly - we started chatting. The man, older, was a theoretical physicist with strong opinions. He seemed sure where the trail should have been, that the monsoons had wiped it out.
He was also sure that I was a socialist, after I explained a bit about my ideas for work weighted shared governance. Then he expounded on why only top down models could possibly work given his experiences in Poland and Germany. I'm not sure what the woman thought as she couldn't seem to get two words in edgewise. He seemed to conflate countries and companies, and to be arguing against many things I did not say.
I cannot prove yet that bottom up accountability can beat a top down authoritarian structure, so I cannot say with certainty that he was wrong in his assertions about corporate models. He definitely was wrong about the hiking trail, though. I found the
so high level patterns are the most durable - look at what percent of code is left from even 20 years ago; words from 500 years ago remain and are widely used
"what a tangled web we weave..."
quotes that use powerful imagery to communicate a complex pattern survive and become encapsulated in speech and writing...it is also chance tho which are focused on. song titles, even meme culture - analyzing the survival of phrases would be really interesting
Sometimes, it's hard for me to switch gears from something I care a lot about - launching this cooperative startup, or lobbying for these guys who are facing down dictators in Myanmar or kidnapped by thugs in Iraq - to writing python tests for a purpose that is, shall we say, less than earth-shaking. And to force my brain to make the switch, sometimes I put on a tv series, that effectively disengages my emotions from the real world and somehow lets me work on things I really don't want to do. But then, I find myself attached to this fictional narrative more than I am to the people really relying on me, and that is disturbing.
So how to make myself interested in my own story, in our shared story of crafting this startup to change corporate behavior, of connecting grassroots activists together into a loose team that support each other around the world. How to shape that into a narrative with enough tension and resolution to make the real world addicting? Sometimes it is; but any time I break the connection, re-forging it can take days. I want to find better ways to hold onto the threads, to
I like biking in the heat. Being in touch with my body, feeling that actual need for shade and water, somehow makes me feel a bit more alive. It would be different of course if I had to do it, or if I had no shelter. But maybe because I am secure, I can enjoy the feeling of being exposed a little bit.
One thing I realized today - I think the reason we sweat in our inner joints, like inside your elbow or behind your knee, is that blood vessels are close to the surface there. Also neck and temple. Pouring cool water at those places is more effective in cooling down than like on the head or back. I wonder if that is part of first aid for heat stroke - I don't remember being taught that. Maybe it should be - hope they don't do a study on some poor creature, but anyway it makes sense to me.
ok, just happy that Melvin Carvalho shared this with the W3C mailing list. Reputation space matters - I'm talking about human rights assertions here about bad things, how to verify and act on them - and I am really glad a few people might see this who can cause it to get implemented.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rww/2021Jun/0002.html
Cause I don't have that leverage, not yet - may try to start something this Summer but my level of overcommitment now is even higher than usual, by several-fold.
So many ideas, if I write one a day I could probably write for three months straight. But I am slow to put them out. Some because I want to really make a difference with them, and write for an audience; but finding the audience, and adding the research and up-to-date lateral context takes more time than I have.
Context too, in the sense of what the reader expects. This site is mine, and I write for myself here; I have no contract with the reader to deliver a certain flavor, or for a consistent theme. Not even to frame and hook. This is my place to put words that have some importance to me, that later I will find a useful way to share.
As an engineer, useful is everything; but truth and ideas are seeds the usefulness of which is not known until they grow. So I am storing my seeds here, wrapped in some words to keep them safe until later, when enough rain appears to make it worth their risk to push out into the world.
So I was riding my bike back from Trader Joe's on my lunch break, and a thought occurred to me (all my best work is on a bike, or in the shower...). If the universe is close to 14 billion years old, and the furthest galaxies we can detect are close to 14 billion light years away, have they been traveling away at the speed of light to get that far? Because I didn't think stars moved that fast.
But yep - its the fabric of space that expands, and even faster at large enough distances. I hadn't thought about that before.
This Is How Distant Galaxies Recede Away From Us At Faster-Than-Light Speeds
Need to write this up as another thought-provoking thing for kids just learning physics. There is so much we could do by letting kids think about the questions for at least a little bit before providing the answers!