Blurt! — Commonplace Book https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/ Recent content on Blurt! — Commonplace Book Hugo — gohugo.io en-us © 2019–2026 S. Ben Melhuish Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/westward-continental-drift/ Wed, 28 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/westward-continental-drift/ “We have a variety of reference frames tied to the deeper hot spots. These exclude the presumed shallow spots which come from the upper mantle. We can also create a reference frame from those shallow spots. … Now all plates are moving west! Even Europe, which other frames bring to a halt, is now taking part.”

(Albert Zijlstra, Westward drift, Volcano Café, September 25, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ankylosaur-clubs/ Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:37:15 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ankylosaur-clubs/ “Zuul’s back and flanks are covered in various spikes and bony structures called osteoderms. Just as [Dr. Victoria] Arbour predicted, there is evidence of broken and injured osteoderms on both sides of the flanks, some of which appear to have healed.”

(Jeanne Timmons, New find suggests ankylosaurs' tail clubs were for bashing each other, Ars Technica, December 6, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/uzhe/ Mon, 26 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/uzhe/ “Respondents explained that they found spellings with u to be less confusing because that spelling kept the initial letter in common with usual — as long as a silent e was there at the end to cue the pronunciation of the u away from the sound in untie. I find this resolution elegant in its clunkiness: Solving the problem of two unwritten sounds by writing a further, unpronounced letter is a truly Englishy solution.”

(Gretchen McCulloch, Only English Would Try to Shorten a Word This Way, The Atlantic, December 7, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-vaccination-effects/ Sat, 24 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-vaccination-effects/ “[T]he modeling estimated that COVID-19 vaccination [in the United States] prevented 3.25 million deaths…. Averted hospitalizations were estimated at 18.6 million…. For infections, the model estimated a dodge of 119.85 million.”

(Beth Mole, US COVID death toll would be 4× higher without vaccines, modeling study finds, Ars Technica, December 13, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/urban-birds/ Fri, 23 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/urban-birds/ “No longer needing to sing at high frequencies that could be heard over the highway’s rumble, the sparrows’ songs became more expansive, occupying more of the soundscape’s ‘acoustic bandwidth.’ Even those with quiet voices became audible; in those first months, ‘you could hear four times as many birds as you could before,’ says [Professor Elizabeth] Derryberry.”

(Shoshi Parks, Why Birds Changed Their Tune During the Pandemic, Atlas Obscura, September 2, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/laser-fusion/ Thu, 22 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/laser-fusion/ “[T]here’s the uncomfortable fact that producing the 2 megajoules of laser power that started the fusion reaction took about 300 megajoules of grid power, so the overall process is nowhere near the break-even point. … [W]e’re still left with major questions about whether laser-driven fusion can be optimized enough to be useful.”

(John Timmer, What enabled the big boost in fusion energy announced this week?, Ars Technica, December 13, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/next-explorations/ Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/next-explorations/ “I am 100% convinced there are inter­esting new ‘ways of relating’ waiting on these overlay networks, these pocket internets. They might require config­u­ra­tions beyond what’s currently supported, but these compa­nies are suffi­ciently young and flex­ible that, presented with a compelling idea, I get the sense they’d just … implement it! Maybe you should set up a ZeroTier or Tailscale network with a few friends or collab­o­ra­tors and … see what happens?”

(Robin Sloan, A year of new avenues, December 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/water-world/ Tue, 20 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/water-world/ “Matching the density of the two planets produces a model that has a bit over 10 percent of the planet’s mass composed of water. This, however, means that about half the planet’s volume is water. … Due to the planet’s mass, the pressure of the atmosphere would be immense and could create a layer of supercritical water between the atmosphere and the ocean.”

(John Timmer, Scientists may have found the first water worlds, Ars Technica, December 15, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/parentified-children/ Mon, 19 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/parentified-children/ “As a consequence of always tending to others, very little space is left for the child to know or express her own needs. The only legitimate needs seem to be those of others. Expressing her own needs is met with frustration, anger or other parental emotions that link her needs with fear and shame.”

(Nivida Chandra, The parentified child, Aeon, March 4, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/liberica-coffee/ Sun, 18 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/liberica-coffee/ “[T]he coffee it makes is good. … That grown in South Sudan had ‘notes of raspberry coulis, figs, plums, and milk chocolate.’ It has comparable caffeine levels to Arabica, so can be an appropriate substitute as growing conditions for Arabica continue to decline.”

(Diana Gitig, Your next pour-over may be Liberica or excelsa, Ars Technica, December 15, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/work-spyware/ Sat, 17 Dec 2022 15:19:03 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/work-spyware/ “Ironically, the Times reports that Crossover’s own employees so resented the company’s intrusive monitoring of them (as they created and sold intrusive monitoring tools) that Crossover hemorrhaged employees and struggled to hire replacements. Eventually, Crossover had to turn off its most intrusive features so that it could keep the employees needed to make and sell its bossware product.”

(Cory Doctorow, The Shitty Technology Adoption Curve Reaches Apogee, August 21, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/twitter-failure/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 20:28:28 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/twitter-failure/ “They didn’t give a shit about journalism; they just wanted prime real estate that they could develop. And news organizations had it in the form of buildings in the middle of town. So financiers squeezed the news orgs until there was no money to be squeezed and then they hung them out to dry.”

(danah boyd, What if failure is the plan?, December 5, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/wolf-parasites/ Mon, 05 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/wolf-parasites/ “Wolves with antibodies against [Toxoplasma gondii] were significantly more likely to disperse (leave their packs and set out on their own) and to become pack leaders. Pursuing both of these courses of action constitutes aggressive and risky wolf behavior.”

(Diana Gitig, Behavior-changing parasite moves wolves to the head of the pack, Ars Technica, November 29, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/gas-leak-dark-ships/ Sun, 04 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/gas-leak-dark-ships/ “SpaceKnow detected 25 ships passing through the region…. In total, 23 of these vessels had their automatic identification system (AIS) transponders turned on. Two did not have AIS data turned on, and these ships passed the area during the days immediately ahead of the leaks being detected.”

(Matt Burgess, “Dark Ships” Emerge From the Shadows of the Nord Stream Mystery, Wired, November 11, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ai-diplomacy/ Sat, 03 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ai-diplomacy/ “Over time, it became a master at [Diplomacy], reportedly achieving ‘more than double the average score’ of human players and ranking in the top 10 percent of people who played more than one game.”

(Andy Baio adds “building extremely persuasive AIs that are more effective negotiators than humans, what could go wrong”.)

(Benj Edwards, Meta researchers create AI that masters Diplomacy, tricking human players, Ars Technica, November 22, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/japanese-web-design/ Fri, 02 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/japanese-web-design/ “[W]hile the rest of the world’s smart phone adoption began with the iPhone, Japan was years ahead — but alone. The result was that Japan’s smart phone culture evolved separately from the rest of the world. There was less emphasis on large pictures and text was more acceptable since it had been the norm since the early days.”

(Sabrina Cruz, The peculiar case of Japanese web design, November 26, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/weak-coffee/ Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/weak-coffee/ “In the Hopi language surukaphe means ‘tail coffee’, or coffee watered down to make it go further. In Brazilian Portuguese slang, chafé means ‘bad coffee’, a blend of the words for ‘tea’ and ‘coffee’. Then there’s cholo in Louisiana French, from chaud-l’eau, or ‘hot water’.”

(I Dub Thee “Weak Coffee”, A Way with Words, November 14, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/police-surveillance/ Wed, 30 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/police-surveillance/ “Police can use Fog Reveal to geofence entire buildings or street blocks—like the area surrounding an abortion clinic—and get information on devices used within and surrounding those buildings to identify suspects. … [A]bortion data surveillance via Fog Reveal could seemingly be conducted without warrants and without any legal oversight.”

(Ashley Belanger, Sneaky ways cops could access data to widely prosecute abortions in the US, Ars Technica, November 23, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dhs-sucks/ Tue, 29 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dhs-sucks/ “George W. Bush didn’t originally want to create the Department of Homeland Security; he was persuaded into doing so by Democrats, who were themselves mostly grasping for an opportunity to score political points. Almost no one pushed for a new department because they thought it was a good idea.”

(Amanda Chicago Lewis, The 20-Year Boondoggle, The Verge, November 16, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/black-hole-dynamical-capture/ Mon, 28 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/black-hole-dynamical-capture/ “[A] team of European researchers decided to model an event that should be relatively uncommon: the two black holes didn’t start out in a mutual orbit but happened to pass close enough to gravitationally latch onto each other. … The models that produced a chirp that best matched the GW190521 signal saw a single pass that drew the black holes closer, followed by a single rapid curve into the collision.”

(John Timmer, Strange black hole merger may have been a rare random encounter, Ars Technica, November 17, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/spider-memory/ Sun, 27 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/spider-memory/ “The spiders searched the part of the web where the cricket had been—the sheet or the lines—which indicated a memory of prey location. And when Sergi stole prey from the gumfooted lines, the spiders made more searches for prey that was especially large relative to themselves.”

(Max G. Levy, Sorry, Prey. Black Widows Have Surprisingly Good Memory, Wired, October 31, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/throwing-octopuses/ Sat, 26 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/throwing-octopuses/ “[O]ctopuses can alter the coloration of their skin, with darker colors typically being indicative of aggression. The authors found that octopuses with dark coloration threw debris more forcefully and were more likely to hit another octopus.”

(Jennifer Ouellette, Take that! Octopuses caught on camera vigorously throwing debris at each other, Ars Technica, November 10, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/noisy-bird-environments/ Fri, 25 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/noisy-bird-environments/ “They also found that, in general, the size of the birds’ repertoire decreased as anthropogenic noise increased, especially when the birds were exposed to levels of anthropogenic noise that were above the usual noise to which they were accustomed.”

(Alejandro Portilla Navarro, City birds are changing their tune, Knowable Magazine, November 14, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/lensed-supernova/ Thu, 24 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/lensed-supernova/ “[T]he earliest image indicates that it was roughly 100,000 Kelvin, which suggests we were looking at it just six hours after it exploded. The latest lensed image shows that the debris had already cooled to 10,000 K over the eight days between the two different images.”

(John Timmer, Single Hubble image captured supernova at three different times, Ars Technica, November 10, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/comb-writing/ Wed, 23 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/comb-writing/ “Translated, the inscription reads, ‘May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.’ … This purpose was confirmed when the authors searched for evidence of head lice on the comb under a microscope and found some remains on the second tooth, still in the nymph stage of development.”

(See also the discussion at Language Hat.)

(Jennifer Ouellette, Ancient wisdom: Oldest full sentence in first alphabet is about head lice, Ars Technica, November 9, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/otzi-thawed/ Tue, 22 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/otzi-thawed/ “Over the next 1,500 years, during especially hot summers, the remains and artifacts were partially exposed, which explains the deterioration of the most exposed parts of the body and additional damage to the artifacts. Eventually, around 3,800 years ago, snow and ice finally sealed off the gully until the discovery of the mummified remains in 1991.”

(Ötzi was a recurring interest of my old @sben_links account on Twitter, the predecessor to this microblog. If I had completed my long walk in 2017, I would have passed through the next valley east from where he was found, and would have certainly stopped by his museum when the trail passed through Bolzano.)

(Jennifer Ouellette, Study: Ötzi the Iceman probably thawed and refroze several times, Ars Technica, November 15, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/clueless-rich/ Mon, 21 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/clueless-rich/ “For all the grandiose talk about The Light Of Consciousness and The Future Of Humanity that has come out of Silicon Valley during its ascent, what it has delivered has mostly been spectacularly useless, lifeless, and anti-human. In this sense, it reflects its owners perfectly.”

(David Roth, Everything Is Silicon Valley Now, Defector, November 14, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/educable/ Sun, 20 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/educable/ “Today’s America has seen decades of the intentional conservative-led starving and squeezing of public education … and also the devastation of newspapers, journalism, and a vast misinformation campaign. All this adds up to preventing many who are educable from becoming educated. Thomas Paine, and those I’m using him to represent, would recognize this as a sabotage of their system.”

(Ada Palmer, All People Are Created Educable, a Vital Oft-Forgotten Tenet of Modern Democracy, November 14, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/corpus-ethics/ Sat, 19 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/corpus-ethics/ “Ogbogu wasn’t familiar with Hollie Mengert’s work at all. He was helping another Stable Diffusion user on Reddit who was struggling to fine-tune a model on Hollie’s work and getting lackluster results. He refined the image training set, got to work, and published the results the following day. He told me the training process took about 2.5 hours on a GPU at Vast.ai, and cost less than $2.”

(Andy Baio, Invasive Diffusion: How one unwilling illustrator found herself turned into an AI model, November 1, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/reionization/ Fri, 18 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/reionization/ “Bubbles of hydrogen-ripping galaxy light began to grow, carving holes in the cold, quiet bulk of the intergalactic gas. Over a billion years, the bubbles filled the cosmos and nearly every hydrogen atom was torn in two, leaving protons and electrons to wander the Universe separately again.”

(Katie Mack, How the first stars split the Universe apart, BBC Science Focus, October 10, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/rare-earth-extraction/ Thu, 17 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/rare-earth-extraction/ “Here, rare earth extraction cleared 90 percent efficiency, taking 67 hours to get there. By contrast, leaching didn’t max out until 130 hours after extraction started, and its maximum efficiency was only 60 percent. Again, the extraction that used electricity had fewer contaminating metals.”

(John Timmer, Toxic cleanup technique can get more rare earth metals out of ores, Ars Technica, November 3, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/twitter-to-mastodon/ Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/twitter-to-mastodon/ “Twitter encourages a very extractive attitude from everyone it touches. The people re-publishing my Mastodon posts on Twitter didn’t think to ask whether I was ok with them doing that. The librarians wondering loudly about how this ‘new’ social media environment could be systematically archived didn’t ask anyone whether they want their fediverse posts to be captured and stored by government institutions.”

(Hugh Rundle, Home invasion, November 8, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-holidays/ Tue, 15 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-holidays/ “[M]y professional bias influences my priorities: Ensure the vulnerable around us (like grandparents) do not end up in the hospital with COVID-19 (or flu or RSV). This means we are going to do everything in our power to break transmission chains before gathering for the holidays.”

(Katelyn Jetelina, Thinking through the holidays this year, Your Local Epidemiologist, November 3, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/embassy-air-monitors/ Sun, 13 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/embassy-air-monitors/ “The cities that had a US embassy that set up one of these monitors and tweeted out air-quality data saw a decrease of PM2.5 particulates to the tune of 2 to 4 micrograms per cubic meter—compared to their air quality before getting the monitor and to other similar cities that do not have a monitor.”

(Doug Johnson, US embassies may have accidentally improved air quality, Ars Technica, October 28, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/mars-impacts/ Sat, 12 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/mars-impacts/ “Knowing that these two impacts generated events allowed for a direct comparison between the estimates and the impact location. And it turns out the estimates are quite good. One event was estimated at 3,530 ± 360 km away, and it turned out to be 3,460 km from the lander, a difference of just 70 km.”

(John Timmer, Big impacts picked up by seismograph on Mars, Ars Technica, October 27, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/proxies/ Fri, 11 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/proxies/ “Kodak slowly began to fix this bias in its film, but not out of any sense of racial injustice: it was a response to complaints from furniture makers and chocolate sellers that Kodak cameras couldn’t properly capture their products’ hues.”

(James Vincent, Keep It Clean, London Review of Books, October 20, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/apple-ads/ Wed, 09 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/apple-ads/ “It feels like a bait and switch: my loyalty in buying products that are better for me as a user is being tested because shareholders need to see more services revenue. … [I]t will feel a little bit scummier every time I go to download an app or get directions.”

(Nick Heer, The Ad Store, Pixel Envy, October 26, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/sorting-legos/ Tue, 08 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/sorting-legos/ “As you become familiar with common LEGO parts, you should try sorting them into categories based on their type. A good place to start would be to separate ‘Bricks’, ‘Plates’, and ‘Other’ LEGO parts into three different containers.”

(Tom Alphin, The LEGO Storage Guide, Brick Architect, September 3, 2020) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/hong-kong/ Mon, 07 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/hong-kong/ “Some outspoken teachers have lost their licenses. Many others have received warnings after being anonymously accused of saying the wrong thing. Their so-called crimes are often vague, which encourages those who want to avoid their fate to attend to every possible aspect of their lives that might bring disapproval.”

(An Anatomy of Erasure, The Economist, July 1, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/rent-algorithms/ Sun, 06 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0800 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/rent-algorithms/ “[Leasing] agents sometimes hesitated to push rents higher. Roper said they were often peers of the people they were renting to. ‘We said there’s way too much empathy going on here,’ he said. ‘This is one of the reasons we wanted to get pricing off-site.'”

(Heather Vogell, Haru Coryne, and Ryan Little, Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why., ProPublica, October 15, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-vs-worrying/ Sat, 05 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/covid-vs-worrying/ “Whenever COVID-19 cases doubled, climate-related tweets dropped by about 5 percent. The doubling of COVID-19 deaths saw climate tweeting decline by over 7 percent. … [A] big boost in case counts could easily offset the arrival of a major hurricane.”

(John Timmer, Another casualty of the pandemic: Our ability to worry about anything else, Ars Technica, October 18, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ai-language-learning/ Fri, 04 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ai-language-learning/ “For years, many linguists have believed that learning language is impossible without a built-in grammar template. The new AI models … demonstrate that the ability to produce grammatical language can be learned from linguistic experience alone.”

(Morten H. Christiansen and Pablo Contreras Kallens, AI is changing scientists’ understanding of language learning — and raising questions about an innate grammar, The Conversation, October 19, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/plague-vs-autoimmunity/ Thu, 03 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/plague-vs-autoimmunity/ “[P]eople who were homozygous (had two copies) of this protective gene variant involved in antigen presentation were 40 percent more likely to survive the plague than those with two copies of a deleterious variant, which encodes a broken protein.”

(Beth Mole, Black Death etched a mark on our genetics, warping immune responses, study finds, Ars Technica, October 19, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/semafor/ Wed, 02 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/semafor/ “Semafor’s dinky plan to publish duller, subhead-laden versions of whatever you can read in the Times or Politico is the sort of unserious half-measure that would only sound good to the class of people who write checks for this kind of thing.”

(Laura Wagner, Semafor is the Problem, Defector, October 20, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/arming-ukraine/ Tue, 01 Nov 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/arming-ukraine/ “American and British military officials [helped] to hone the Ukrainians’ strategy. ‘We have algorithms and methodologies that are more sophisticated when it comes to things like mapping out logistics and calculating munitions rates,’ a senior official at the Defense Department said. ‘The idea was not to tell them what to do but, rather, to give them different runs to test their plans.'”

(Joshua Yaffa, Inside the U.S. Effort to Arm Ukraine, The New Yorker, October 17, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ordering-hacks/ Mon, 31 Oct 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/ordering-hacks/ “[T]hese hacks ultimately become a labor issue. It would not be so taxing to make a TikTok drink … if stores were well-staffed, if workers were paid a living wage, if corporations weren’t intent on busting unions, and if customers were patient and understanding when their desires just aren’t possible.”

(Jaya Saxena, Hacked to Bits, Eater, October 12, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dwarf-fortress-tutorial/ Sun, 30 Oct 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dwarf-fortress-tutorial/ “[T]he developers are testing it on Annie, Zach Adams' wife. After a failed attempt with an earlier version, the latest tutorial took Annie far enough to where she could ‘tunnel under a bog and drown her fortress.’ Presumably, that is good.”

(Kevin Purdy, Dwarf Fortress, the most inscrutable game of two decades, is getting a tutorial, Ars Technica, October 14, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/well-modeled-rings/ Sat, 29 Oct 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/well-modeled-rings/ “If we assume there’s a ring produced every orbit, the 17 present rings indicate about 130 years of ring production. Since they now extend out about a light-year, we can infer that they’re moving away from the binary stars at about 2,600 kilometers every second.”

(John Timmer, Webb captures truly strange set of rings built by massive stars, Ars Technica, October 12, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dart-asteroid-diversion/ Fri, 28 Oct 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/dart-asteroid-diversion/ “Before DART, Dimorphos’ orbit took 11 hours and 55 minutes; post-impact, it’s down to 11 hours and 23 minutes. … NASA estimates that the orbit is now ‘tens of meters’ closer to Didymos.”

(John Timmer, DART mission successfully shifted its target’s orbit, Ars Technica, October 11, 2022) ∞]]> https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/wired-design/ Thu, 27 Oct 2022 20:00:00 -0700 https://blurt.pile.org/commonplace/article/wired-design/ “In this case, the outcome of the Wired.com redesign

  1. reduced the front-end markup size by over half (from 48KB down to 23KB)
  2. dropped from 24 nested tables that controlled layout down to only 1 table that appropriately rendered financial market data
  3. dramatically improved accessibility of the site for users of assistive technology.”
(Douglas Bowman, Wired.com: 20 years later, October 11, 2022) ∞]]>