Origami: Mucube

Mucube 1

Mucube, designed by me, made out of modified Sonobe units

Someone asked me if this model was based on the Ukrainian flag.  Point in fact, I made this model last year, so it wasn’t.  But let’s say it is now.

This design was inspired by Jan Misali’s video about the 48 regular polyhedra.  The mucube is a series of connected squares that infinitely tile R3. Whether this really counts as a regular polyhedron is dubious… but obviously a great target for an origami design.  I liked it so much that I made two of them.  The other is below the fold.

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Why the algorithm is so often wrong

As a data scientist, the number one question I hear from friends is “How did the algorithm get that so wrong?” People don’t know it, but that’s a data science question.

For example, Facebook apparently thinks I’m trans, so they keep on advertising HRT to me. How did they get that one wrong? Surely Facebook knows I haven’t changed pronouns in my entire time on the platform.

I really don’t know why the algorithm got it wrong in any particular case, but it’s really not remotely surprising. For my job, I build algorithms like that (not for social media specifically, but it’s the general idea), and as part of the process I directly measure how often the algorithm is wrong. Some of the algorithms I have created are wrong 99.8% of the time, and I sure put a lot of work into making that number a tiny bit lower. It’s a fantastically rare case where we can build an algorithm that’s just right all the time.

If you think about it from Facebook’s perspective, their goal probably isn’t to show ads that understand you on some personal level, but to show ads that you’ll actually click on. How many ads does the typical person see, vs the number they click on? Suppose I never click on any ads. Then the HRT ads might be a miss, but then so is every other ad that Facebook shows me, so the algorithm hasn’t actually lost much by giving it a shot.

So data science algorithms are quite frequently wrong simply as a matter of course. But why? Why can’t the algorithm see something that would be so obvious to any human reviewer?

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Link Roundup: March 2022

CGP Grey was WRONG | CGP Grey (video, 18 min) – An old video, but I really liked this discussion of errors made in the context of content creation.  It can be a lot of work to get things right, but then as soon as you hit publish some expert immediately appears to point out the glaring problem. But this dynamic scales weirdly with popularity.  When you’re obscure, it hardly matters what you say, and there aren’t always experts around to correct you; but when you’re popular you have to spend a lot of time getting it right the first time.

The Worst Double Standard in Gaming | Graythorn (video, 21 min) – This video points out that MMORPGs and life simulation games are quite similar, but the former tend to have more gamer cred.  Graythorn then analyzes the differences in the genres to infer what game elements are associated with greater “legitimacy”.

The Bisexual Gimmick | A Deep Dive into Bisexual Reality Television | verilybitchie (video, 1:30 hours) – Verity Ritchie goes through a list of reality television shows that have used bisexuality as a gimmick, from the conscientious to the sensational.  Guess which shows were most popular.  A fascinating study of the many issues in bisexual media representation.  I particularly liked the discussion of monogamy as it’s understood in reality television.  Like, they’re clearly not monogamous, but they have this fiction that it’s all monogamous because monogamy is the end goal.

Origami: Rhombus Weave

Rhombus Weave

Rhombus Weave, designed by Eric Gjerde

At this point in time, I have almost 10 years of origami photos to choose from, and though the pace of my artwork has slowed during the pandemic, I still have a large number of photos in my backlog.  (You can, of course, find them all if you find the link on my sidebar.)  This one comes from an earlier era when I didn’t care what was in the background, because the photos were only for myself, and the backgrounds added flavor.  A few of these are embarrassing, but I actually like this one because it’s the balcony view from my old apartment.

This origami tessellation comes from Eric Gjerde’s classic book, Origami Tessellations, definitely recommended if you ever want an introduction.  The pattern on the paper has horizontal lines, but the rhombuses are twisted so that the lines undulate up and down.

Not for Broadcast’s bizarre politics

Not for Broadcast is a comedy FMV game about managing a television broadcast. This essay is emphatically not a review, meaning that I have no intention of recommending one way or another whether you ought to play it. Rather, I’m interested in discussing its story about liberal fascists. I will also get into spoilers—warnings when I get there.

What is Not for Broadcast?

Not for Broadcast is at its core a multi-tasking game. You must divide your attention between cutting between multiple cameras, bleeping out swear words on a two second delay, adjusting for interference, and don’t forget to actually pay attention to the show that you’re editing, so you can follow the story.

There’s no mechanical benefit to following the story, so in my experience, it got lowest priority. The game delivers a unique experience where the narrative is delivered through a fog of distraction. This aligns with the narrative of the game, which is about a government that distracts from the real issues by filling broadcast news with fluff. Of course, to actually appreciate what the game was doing, I watched the archived footage afterwards. Paying attention would often cast segments in a whole new light.

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Re-reading Sword & Citadel

Remember back when I blogged about rereading Shadow and Claw, the first half of The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe? Of course you don’t, that was in 2019.  Well, I finally finished the second half, Sword and Citadel.  See, I used to read books on my commute and now I work remotely.

This post will contain spoilers for The Book of the New Sun, although for what it is worth, I don’t think this is the kind of book that you need to avoid spoilers for. It’s not that the book doesn’t have secrets. Rather, the secrets are so dense and obscure that it is not possible to spoil all of them, not even by literally reading the book.  I think knowing a few of the book’s secrets can teach you how to find even more for yourself. Also, some of the spoilers you’ll find out there are wrong, so you’ll still have the pleasure of trying to differentiate legend from canon.  Personally, I freely read spoilers.

Like the previous post from 2019, this post will take the form of a series of observations, mostly focusing on thematic analysis.

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Equality vs equity: An overanalysis

It’s time for a critical analysis of the “equality vs equity” meme, a widely duplicated and mutated image of three people standing on crates to watch a baseball game.

equality and equity

I shrink images to fit this blog’s margins. For bigger versions, see my sources. Source

The linguistic island

Of all my complaints about this meme, my most significant is about its choice of words. On the surface level, the meme is educating us about the distinction between “equality” and “equity”. However, outside of the meme, that is not how the words are used. The equality/equity distinction, mostly just comes from the meme. The meme is not educating us about the meaning of these two words, it is establishing new meanings.

It is not illegitimate to create new meanings for words, of course. But the problem is that the meme masquerades as educational, and everyone takes that for granted. As a result, every discussion of “equity” eventually comes back to the meme.  The meme is a linguistic island, and there is nowhere else for the discussion to go.

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