Month: January 2024

The cold has broken (leaving behind a still chilly but livable low-30s) and dropped a couple inches of thick, wet flakes on its way out. Above freezing highs the next week or so are hinting at an end to a peaky Winter some time on the horizon. We’re all looking your way now, groundhog.

Inputs

1: An interesting digression on the odd history of serendipitous discovery of sweeteners among chemists at LessWrong. One of the first things one learns in Intro to Chemistry is the rhyme about sulfuric acid¹Johnny was a chemist, Johnny is no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4 and not to ingest things in the lab²I mean, I think they usually mean a sandwich or whatever, but certainly don’t eat the experiments!. How so many professional chemists not only end up with their experiments on their bare skin, but go on to lick it, is beyond me.

2: I’ve always wondered about this happening on a delayed penalty, but it couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Best goal of Malkin’s career.

3: Tonight! Katie Nolan goes for the Celebrity Jeopardy crown, which will air after this posts, but which I will most definitely be watching. 8/7c on ABC³Check your local listings, as they say.

Notes:

• 1
  Johnny was a chemist, Johnny is no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4
• 2
  I mean, I think they usually mean a sandwich or whatever, but certainly don’t eat the experiments!
• 3
  Check your local listings, as they say.

It’s a weird day. I got some good news that I won’t share quite yet, out of an abundance of superstition. It’s also my late father’s birthday, which leads to a weird basket of emotions. On both accounts, I went out and got a beer.¹Thus the relative lateness of today’s post.

Inputs

1: Started in on Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works at the bar. So far, it carries the same authorial voice I’ve known her writing for. Looking forward to getting deeper into the weeds, but I already caught some fun insights about things like cadastral maps.

2: Got back, kicked up my feet, rewatched The Martian, which is such a great book and film adaptation of the same. The logical, scientific approach to problem solving is gratifying to see given wide exposure, both as a general encouragement of such approaches as well as to act as a new introduction to exploration and science for generations that need that kick in the pants.

3: Finally, went and did a little space exploration of my own in Elite: Dangerous. Nothing like flying around the galaxy to take the edge off more planetary concerns.

Notes:

• 1
  Thus the relative lateness of today’s post.

We’re finally at the breaking point of the cold front hovering over my house, and with more reasonable temperatures on the horizon, my mind starts unthawing a bit. People run from this cold, flee to deserts, to beaches, to far-flung locales to not brace themselves amid the bone deep nature of nature. I’ve lived in those places, and missed this. There’s something about a harsh Winter that makes life feel lived, time feel transitory and not a still forever of nothing. time is visible here, countable in the changing of moments into hours, into days, into months. Seasons have width, breadth, breath to them. To freeze is to know there is a thaw coming, a Spring beyond the wall of grey, glowing blue and green just over the horizon.

Inputs

1: When China, in its evolution of itself after Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to alter course, was looking to learn about America, it sent a young student to study the country and report back. Where did they send him to learn about the beating heart of America? Where did they seek the soul, the essence of an entire nation? Iowa City, Iowa.¹I’m already imagining the Shutdown Fullcast bit about China learning everything it knows about America from the 1988 Iowa Hawkeyes

To imagine what could have been if they had picked any number of other places. A China that learned about America from Miami would have been an interesting time to live in.

2: Pablo Torre had Roy Wood Jr on to talk about how the hosting of awards shows works, the issues recent hosts have run into, and the why behind the how. Really interesting inside baseball stuff, down to joke selection and timing and knowing one’s audience.

Also, Roy and I are seemingly incredibly similar thinkers in that, we’re both very deliberate and also ephemeral as hell, with very open hearts to the bountiful variety life holds and the potential of our places within it.

3: Sports Illustrated is essentially dead today. Private equity is the worst thing we allow to happen in America. The argument that they’re clearing out the chaff of unprofitable companies belies an insistence that the only reason for anything to exist is to bring a larger than average profit percentage to a very small percentage of the nation. It’s a belief system that needs more public and fervent shame sloughed on its adherents, but won’t, because people are so easily bought off, on the one axis along which their interests converge: money.

Eat the rich.²I mean, they’re stuffing themselves full of the highest quality feed, it’s like they’re preparing themselves for consumption already.

Projects In Progress

Man, who in the hell knows anymore. This section has been less about progress or reporting of statuses and more about finding a new way to shrug in print each day. Let’s see if it returns next week, or if it’s cleaved for its own good.³I am aware of the ironic rhyming of the previous against #3 above. Different instincts entirely, but I am aware.

Notes:

• 1
  I’m already imagining the Shutdown Fullcast bit about China learning everything it knows about America from the 1988 Iowa Hawkeyes
• 2
  I mean, they’re stuffing themselves full of the highest quality feed, it’s like they’re preparing themselves for consumption already.
• 3
  I am aware of the ironic rhyming of the previous against #3 above. Different instincts entirely, but I am aware.