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Monday Links from the Fens vol. CCCLI

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    Monday Links from the Fens vol. CCCLI

    ClientCo's Windows box told me I had to change my password again today. IIRC it's every two months it does that, meaning the next time it tries I won't be here, having returned to the comfort of the bench whence I can post nonsense like the following
    • Art at the Edge of Tomorrow - A visit to artist Lillian Schwartz, whose innovative use of technology earned her a place at Bell Labs in the 1960s and who at 87 is still producing new work. ”The story starts with a piece of Lillian’s called Proxima Centauri, a kinetic sculpture involving a glass globe, a ripple tank, and a slide projector. Later in the 1968 it would appear on Star Trek (as a prison for Spock’s brain) but that spring it was a part of a show called The Machine at the Beginning of the Mechanical Age, at the Museum of Modern Art. At the opening, Lillian met computer graphics pioneer Leon Harmon, who extended a pivotal invitation: “And then he said to me: Would you like to come to Bell Labs?””

    • An OS 9 odyssey: Why these Mac users won’t abandon 16-year-old software - The strange case of people who still use the pre-OS X Mac operating system: ”OS 9 diehards may hold on due to one important task they just can't replicate on a newer computer, or perhaps they simply prefer it as a daily driver… Certain that they can't all be maniacs, I went searching for these people. I trawled forums and asked around, and I even spent more time with my own classic Macs. And to my surprise, I found that most of the people who cling staunchly to Mac OS 9 (or earlier) as a key component of their daily—or at least regular—workflow actually have good reason for doing so.”

    • Eichmann in Jerusalem i - Part one of Hannah Ahrendt’s classic account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann has been moved outside the New Yorker’s paywall: ”Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann, the man in the glass booth built for his protection: medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench (not once does he turn to face the audience), and who desperately tries to maintain his self-control—and mostly succeeds, despite a nervous tic, to which his mouth must have become subject long before this trial started. On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.”

    • Why bad ideas refuse to die - "They may have been disproved by science or dismissed as ridiculous, but some foolish beliefs endure. In theory they should wither away – but it’s not that simple.” Steven Poole looks at why ideas from the flat earth to the flavour map of the tongue remain with us long after they’re proved false.

    • An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar - Vijith Assar illustrates how rephrasing can make meaning go away: ”As a thought experiment, let’s examine in extremely close detail a set of iterative changes that can be made to a single simple grammatical structure, turning it from a statement taken at face value into one loaded with unrealized implication.”

    • How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math - Barbara Oakley on the importance of memorisation and repetition in learning new ways of thinking: ”As studies of chess masters, emergency room physicians, and fighter pilots have shown, in times of critical stress, conscious analysis of a situation is replaced by quick, subconscious processing as these experts rapidly draw on their deeply ingrained repertoire of neural subroutines—chunks. At some point, self-consciously “understanding” why you do what you do just slows you down and interrupts flow, resulting in worse decisions. When I felt intuitively that there might be a connection between learning a new language and learning mathematics, I was right.”

    • After The Big One - "This week's Terraform is something special: It's a hybrid format, what we've taken to calling "reported science fiction"—a deeply researched, exhaustively detailed story about what will happen when the so-called "Really Big One" (a 9.0 magnitude earthquake) hits Portland, as scientists expect it will in coming decades… Trust me, this one, an epic, 5-part feat of speculation—and the most immersive fact-based fiction you'll probably ever read—is worth diving in deep."

    • A Trip to the Tippy Top of the Transamerica - "I went to The Page Bar the other night to have a beer and write a little in my notebook, but before the fluffy head of my Guinness could settle under the tap, I’d struck up a neighborly conversation with the group of strangers next to me. One of these strangers (and big fan of The Bold Italic), Brett Wise, had me seriously riveted with the story of his trip to the top of the Transamerica Pyramid. Not the top floor, no, the top-top." Jessica Saia meets Brett Wise, who took some excellent photos from the top of San Francisco’s tallest building.

    • How Elizabeth Holmes’s House of Cards Came Tumbling Down - "In a searing investigation into the once lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Nick Bilton discovers that its precocious founder defied medical experts—even her own chief scientist—about the veracity of its now discredited blood-testing technology. She built a corporation based on secrecy in the hope that she could still pull it off. Then, it all fell apart." Hubris, meet Nemesis.

    • Tokyo Escalator - As the name implies, this site has photos of the escalators of Tokyo:



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Ohhh goodie!! More links...

    Vijith Assar illustrates how rephrasing can make meaning go away: ”As a thought experiment, let’s examine in extremely close detail a set of iterative changes that can be made to a single simple grammatical structure, turning it from a statement taken at face value into one loaded with unrealized implication.”
    Not being able to understand the intro isn't a good start to a link though. I'll just look at pictures of an escalator instead I think
    'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

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      #3
      Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
      [*]A Trip to the Tippy Top of the Transamerica - [I]"I went to The Page Bar the other night to have a beer and write a little in my notebook, but before the fluffy head of my Guinness could settle under the tap, I’d struck up a neighborly conversation with the group of strangers next to me. ...
      Oh, I was rather expecting that one to be about an encounter with a group of OTT flamboyant trannies or TSs
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        #4
        Loving the captions on the Escalator pics.

        It has chic elegance.
        I'm so exciting in narrow space.
        It's so cool like my ideal boss.
        "Being nice costs nothing and sometimes gets you extra bacon" - Pondlife.

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