The great machine of scientific enquiry continues to grind relentlessly along, in spite of the smoking wreckage made, then thrown in its path, by the likes of RFK, Jr. Eventually, I suppose, the republicans will realize that ice-picking the tendons of American Science just means that some other detestable part of the world will “get ahead of us” in their endless imaginary fight for dominance.
I hear that they took him to the Naval Observatory for emergency medical care. Could this be The Day? It would be funny if it coincided with what I posted last night.
There are a few things I find fascinating about the current war. First and foremost, it’s a war of attrition and apparently that never occurred to the pentagon command structure. One of the things that Europe learned pretty thoroughly before the Franco-Prussian War, is that an experienced command structure that knows how to communicate and plan is essential. Or so we would think.
I can’t remember where and when I wrote about it; I think it was here – but since I forget, it does not count. The point, I recall (because I keep discovering a’fresh) is that there is a certain basic recipe for cake and once you understand it, everything is a matter of proportion of flour to milk and how you cook it. For example, a pan cake is a cake cooked in a pan. A waffle is a cake cooked in a waffle iron. A popover is a cake cooked in a cup. Now, we can argue whether lard or tallow or butter makes a popover a Yorkshire pudding, but the basics are: a quantity of flour, a quantity of eggs (for structure) some salt, some melted butter (or lard or tallow or even vegetable oil, and then something to make it foam a bit, maybe. If there is absolutely nothing to make it foam, I think maybe you have shortbread. If there’s baking powder, it’s a pancake or a waffle. If air is lofted into it with a whisk, it’s a popover or Yorkshire pudding. But once you understand how runny it should be, how fatty it should be, and how airy it should be, you can produce a tremendous amount of Europe’s greatest cuisine. Unless you get into millefeuille which is basically butter/bread damascus with no air in it… Anyhow.
Warning: Potentially Embarrassing References To 1980s Music
Of course, the autocrats are assuming that the AIs will be nietzschean ubermenschen, but …
This is a dagger named “Beast Mode.” It’s not quite finished, yet, but it’s close. The handle’s done and that was the hard part.
I sometimes enjoy drinking a few glasses of wine and playing Rimworld. There’s something about a slight buzz that engages my creativity in a kind of sloppy mode.
Right-o, we’re back on the highland dirk.
The Wuhan Lab Leak conspiracy theory has gotten recent boosting thanks to the publication of a sensationalized piece in the New York Times. (Donald Trump and I agree about one thing, which is that the NYT is a failing wreck) [nyt]
I have never seen this, though clearly it is possible.