I’m similar to you, except to upgrade my practical math skills at college I did cultivate a “liking” for math comparable to other technical areas I pursue. Namely, I started reading popular math books and articles, watching math youtubers, solving recreational puzzles from math periodicals… It was like, half actual interest and half contrived interest, seeing if I could develop in that direction. One summer when I had a lot of free time, with the help of a mathematician friend, I worked through a few advanced textbooks and video lecture series beyond anything I strictly needed. Progress was real but agonizing, and then I promptly forgot everything. It turns out that just maintaining a mid-to-late-undergraduate-level understanding of applied math is all I can be responsible for. It’s a responsibility I attend to, but my brain is only so mathy. At some point it becomes a question of both motivation and ability.
Authenticity (as Gidon Kremer once said), above all, is what is genuinely felt, and the inner world of a dedicated listener who has built up a relationship with their music over a lifetime is full of genuine feeling. It _is_ participation, not mere consumption. Even if the act of listening is a private one. Art forms need properly attentive audiences.
I say this as a decent pianist who collaborates, performs, teaches, records. And who messes around with AI with great fascination. Music is so broad and diverse in the experiences it can provide and the social functions it stands in relation to. Separate channels and bubbles can be good, the signs of a tree of life diversifying. Your lakeside vignette doesn’t say anything about something wrong in music and culture, it’s just a normal thing that happens whenever people chill out by a lake throughout human history. Off-key singing and dancing to salsa and reggaeton? I wouldn’t be nervous about joining in, I’d be heading to the opposite side of the lake. And that’s good too – how personal music can be, that that’s your thing, not my thing.
To drain pasta or noodles quickly, I put it in a colander, hold it above my kitchen sink, and swirl it around in quick circles. I realized about a month ago my circles are always counterclockwise, and very efficient, but that I can't keep a clockwise spin going for more than a few cycles before messing up. Since then I keep trying to spin my pasta clockwise (such are the small excitements and adventures of my wfh life), starting with very slow movements, but I just can't do it. There's something weird about this motor skill specifically that eludes me. I'm left-handed but my right-handed writing is reasonable and I play piano with matched abilities in both hands. Maybe one day, with enough practice, my pasta will go clockwise.
You're right-handed, right? It is more natural to move your hand in counter-clockwise circles than the opposite. People who have never swirled pasta or anything like that will feel the same if you ask them to make swirling motions with their hands. Inwards is easier - clockwise with your left hand, counterclockwise with your right hand.
A literature search didn't turn much evidence of this at all, let alone conclusive evidence. Any sources?
I swirl right hand clockwise. I also draw circles clockwise. One article said circle drawing direction was likely cultural or linked to handwriting systems, not which was more "natural".
The right hand is associted with clockwise motion. Screws are "righty tighty"; if not they are called to be opposite threaded or left threaded. I suspect most right handed people, if given a string and bobbin, such that they hold the bobbin with their left hand, will use their right hand to wind the string clockwise onto the bobbin.
A four-legged animal's right front paw makes clockwise circular with respect to the sagittal plane of its body, as it walks.
On a recumbent bicycle with hand pedals, the right hand crank goes clockwise. It would be weaker the other way.
For all kinds of motions, it's better when the hand is coming down in the extended-arm position, working with gravity.
Extreme example: if you are hammering something with your right hand, of course, you raise the hammer and extend your arm, let it fall and then retract your arm. That creates a clockwise motion. Counter-clockwise hammering something upward from below is awkward. You also wouldn't want the workpiece close to you so that you are raising the hammer with your extended arm, bringing it it in and dropping it with closed arm. It's bad leverage: raising with the extended arm is harder.
This hammering motion applies when doing something like winding a rope onto a bobbin. You have to raise your right hand and forearm against gravity and that is better when it is closer to your chest. Then drop it down slightly away from your chest. Clockwise winding has compellingly better ergonomics for the right hand.
I hate LinkedIn but need it for a few things, mostly accessing certain clients and projects as a freelancer. Last October my ISP (Vodafone UK) assigned me a datacenter-classified IPv6 address with 80+ abuse reports on reputation databases, for bots, DDoS, crawlers. Before I realized this I started getting locked out, suspended, restricted from just about every web service I use, having to solve captchas for simple Google searches, etc.
I resolved everything except LinkedIn. They required Persona verification to restore access, but I'd already recently verified with Persona, so clicking the re-verification links just returned a Catch-22 "you've already verified with us." LinkedIn support is unreachable unless you're signed into an account. I tried direct emails, webforms, DMs to LinkedIn Help on Twitter, all completely ignored.
Eventually some cooldown timer must have expired, because Persona finally let me re-verify last week. Upon regaining access, I was encouraged me to verify with Persona AGAIN, this time for the verified badge.
I now have a taste of what "digital underclass" means, and look forward to the day when no part of my income depends on horrible platforms that make me desperate for the opportunity to give away my personal data!
I also feel that digital companies get away with “no human representatives”. I should always have access to a human. It should be law. It will screw over a lot of companies and I am all for it since they don’t know what service looks like if it looked them in the eyes.
I heard this being described as an "accountability sink." A system designed in such way that when something bad happens, there is nobody to be held accountable. It feels pervasive in the modern world.
The rule for not replying to GDPR requests (e.g. sent by registered letter) holds within a month: the maximum fine for this is 4% of last years total revenue or 20 mio €, whichever is the larger number.
For US companies use their (typically Dublin) European HQs.
> the maximum fine for this is 4% of last years total revenue or 20 mio €, whichever is the larger number.
The maximum fine wasn't even achieved by Facebook, after years and many blatant GDPR cases. Do you really think someone is getting a fine for not replying to a subject access request in due time? If so I have a very good bridge to sell you, and that bridge has more probability to exist than Amazon getting any kind of GDPR fine for not acknowledging a SAR.
> look forward to the day when no part of my income depends on horrible platforms that make me desperate for the opportunity to give away my personal data
We are moving into the opposite direction. Drink a verification can.
Thanks for mentioning this. I have activated a one-month LinkedIn Premium free trial, hopefully as another layer of protection while I re-establish myself and fortify my profile.
Wolfram came to our evolutionary biology department to preach that book about 20 years ago. We all got our heads into cellular automata for a while, but in the end they just don't have the claimed profound explanatory power in real biological systems.
It depends on the kind of work. If it's routine stuff, past seven hours or so, I can keep going and not feel tired, but I increasingly don't want to, and the feeling that I'd rather be doing something else becomes very distracting. If the work is technical and intellectually rewarding, I might feel inspired to continue, but I start making mistakes and past a certain point, it becomes counterproductive. If the work requires conceptual or creative insights, my brain stops delivering them for free and my backup methods for squeezing them out start failing too. If I'm speaking or writing, I lose the thread and my words lose their punch and personality.
My occasional bouts of insomnia bring a different kind of all-encompassing fatigue. I become overemotional. At my most sleep-deprived, I struggle to operate a kettle. Things were different when I was younger. Writing up my PhD, I essentially slept every other night for months, yet stayed sharp, productive.
I find it impossible to reconcile Monty's character with the fact Richard Griffiths was only forty years old when he played him. Yes, forty. I'm 46 now but however old I get, Uncle Monty will forever remain the archetypal "batty older queen" in my head.
That is wild, yes - he's one of those actors that always seems about that age. He was 57 or so when the first Harry Potter was filmed.
In fact, I would like a Potter/Withnail mashup, with Harry looking confused and distraught while Withnail shouts "Have you been at the controls!!? I demand some booze!" at him.
From what I understand, Moses's major contribution was describing color mixing principles for pigment paints independent of the notion of specially nominated primary colors, showing among other things that a mixture of any two paints is reduced in saturation in proprtion to their separation on the hue circle. I've been exploring classic color theory texts lately and the most illuminating by far as been Michel-Eugène Chevreul's "Principles of Color Harmony and Contrast", which has a wonderful recent translation and commentary by Dan Margulis. The core of the work elucidates what are known today as the optical phenomena of simultaneous contrast, chromatic adaptation, perceptual constancy. There is also a good overview and critique of historical color wheels at https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color14.html
The third video in the "Featured Introductions" section near the top of the page, called "A Swift Introduction to Geometric Algebra", is a very good starting point.
I also have to balance foodie obsessions with being economical and healthy. (Growing up, my extended family had a culture of "living to eat" and they ran several restaurants as a trophy thing, i.e., with negligible profit but acclaimed food.) I'm now an experienced home cook who likes throwing somewhat elaborate dinner parties, but when on my own it still makes sense to just batch cook and freeze. When it comes to that, what I notice is that I'm still making the same dishes I did as a poor student, just augmented. The base dish is quite tasty to start with, but now I can afford to use a few nicer or speciality ingredients that take it up a level. If you're making a cauldron of risotto or tomato sauce or whatever that will yield dozens of servings, it doesn't cost that much more per serving to add the extra thing or perform the extra technique that makes it really delicious or interesting (and compensates for the fact you're freezing it). The same applies to everyday things that I whip up to eat fresh, in terms of keeping a well-stocked pantry of somewhat pricey powders and potions that only get used up slowly.
