We own a small patch of forest and had to take down a piece of it because of the bark beetle outbreak that has been causing large problems in recent years. So now it is time to make sure that the new generation of trees gets off ot a good start there.
While we're waiting for a delivery of 4000 saplings, I spent the morning to plant the ones that we grew ourselves in the garden last year. They promise rain for tomorrow.
This recent 80,000 hours podcast is a great listen! Fascinating stories on how they secured nuclear material from former Soviet states, and a perspective on weapons of mass destruction that one does not hear very often.
Just a small excerpt:
North Korea has an advanced biological weapons program. What worries me about North Korea is they’re more likely to use biological weapons than nuclear weapons, because if they used a nuclear weapon, it’s over, right? If they used a biological weapon and delivered it covertly through secret operatives, anywhere in the world… In Malaysia, where they used VX against a Kim Jong-un’s brother in a successful assassination attempt. Now that was a chemical weapon, but wherever North Koreans have a diplomatic presence, they could launch biological weapons attacks covertly. And in a way, perhaps that’s a little bit deniable, maybe they would never get caught for doing it. So I think they’re more likely to do that than to use a nuclear weapon, which would have a home address.
I am going back and forth in my thinking on whether cryptocurrencies are a fraud. Of course there are obvious scams in this area that try to directly lure people out of their money; those are not what I wonder about, but the digital currencies themselves.
There have been frequent reports of market manipulations over the years and the whole setup looks like a pyramid scheme where the early "investors" get rich at the expense of the late suckers. Plus, some of the prominent people do, while certainly being brilliant, come across as charlatans. Fun to read and often insightful, sure, but I cannot shake that vague feeling that something is off.
On the other hand, cryptocurrencies have been around for while now and not collapsed yet, in spite of the occasional scandals. And where the line between "pyramid scheme" and "positive-sum game" should be drawn, is not clear to me. The whole economy has made humanity so much better-off since growth convinced people that the cake is getting bigger and that things can get better for everyone, in contrast to a zero-sum situation.
So maybe Bitcoin and the like will stay around, and we have to get used to that. To the moon!
(And as a side note: Whenever someone argues for a blockchain to be used anywhere else than cryptocurrencies, feel free to roll your eyes and laugh them out of the room.)
This blog holds no world-shattering insights. I don't have something interesting to say every day (ever?), but the point is to write it down anyway. Just in case a good thought comes by eventually, then the routines are in place to capture it.
But the blog spammers have rediscovered the comment fields, so there's that.
The question of personal identity is a tricky one and philosophers have argued about it for a long time, considering the Ship of Theseus and other analogies in that context.
One way to frame it is to think about past and future selves. Putting it this way is biased in the sense that it implies that these are not the same as the current self, thereby foregoing the conclusion. But it allows to ask questions like
How strongly do you identify with your past self?
or
How well do you treat your future self?
which can be quite helpful mental tools.
The secion on exactly this subject was what I found most intersting in the chat between Simone Collins and Spencer Greenberg that I listened to the other day. They talk about much more than this and at times it is quite funny (the good kind of funny).
Plus, they mention FutureMe, a site for writing letters to one's future self - what a wonderful idea!
It's been a while but today I brewed a new batch of beer, my 57th. A wheat beer, not quite according to any of the well-known German or Belgian styles, but just the way I like it. I hope, at least, since one never knows exactly how it will turn out until the first tasting, after fermentation and carbonation are done.
If you are into the details, the grist is 56% Pilsner malt, 34% wheat, 10% Munich and a smidge CaraAmber. Hops are Nothern Brewer, East Kent Goldings and a very small late addition of Citra. Yeast is Lallemand's "Munich Classic" which is the same as Wy3068, the most common wheat beer strain, and it well deserves this place. Originally I thought I would add some sugar later on, to bring it in the vicinity of Grosse Bertha, but I think I won't. I prefer weaker easy-to-drink beers, especially since this one is meant for the summer.
Around ten years ago I was hanging out with some long-distance runners from time to time. I never made it much farther than the marathon myself, but some of the guys were doing ultras. I remember well that one time, meeting a group on a Saturday morning at a metro station in a Stockholm suburb, to run together for a few hours at a moderate pace, following the metro line to the city center and out on the other side, so that one could drop out at any time and easily get back home.
The pace allowed for conversations and someone told me that he hadn't eaten for quite a while before the run, in order to "optimize fat burning". This sounded like crazy talk to me at the time, after all it is common wisdom that one of the keys to being a good runner is to precisely manage nutrition intake.
It turns out though, that he kinda had a point. No matter how much you load up with carbs beforehand, the body's glycogen stores will eventually run out. In order to not "hit the wall" at that point, you better have the backup engine oiled and ready to go, that is switching to burning fat instead of sugar.
How quickly the body can convert fat into energy is apparently something that can be trained. If it never has to do this, not a rare situation in our world of abundant food, it gets worse at it over time. Enter fasting, which has been shown in recent years to have significant health benefits. (This more than one can say of most other nutritional science.) As far as I've read, which is not very far, it is unclear what the best fasting regime looks like; is 18h a day better than 24h once a week, or rather several days every quarter?
I found it easiest for myself to simply try out skipping breakfast, which turns the time from dinner until lunch into a ~18h long fasting period. (Black coffe in the morning does not count.) This works quite well for me, without negative consequences except that I frequently feel freezing cold in the hours before lunch, perfectly normal, they say. Already after a short while I did not feel hungly that easily or strongly anymore, which I already consider a benefit that offers extra freedom in meal timing by not being slave to cravings.
To make a long story short, I ran 10km at lunchtime today, in the middle of a spontaneous ~30h fast that I just ended with some great homemade meatballs and a German Weissbier. The run felt good overall, but I did take it a bit slower than usual. It's not like I'm in a hurry to get anywhere.
I work in a large university building that hosts physics, chemistry and some more applied technical research, which means that it is great fun to occasionally go down to the cellar where the trash is being collected. Usually there is not much interesting in the electronics bin, but over the years I have brought home, for example, a fully functional TV (720p) and a few magnetic stir plates that are useful for yeast propagation.
Some while ago I picked up the power supply that is pictured above. It looked useful for some home automation project or whatever, and I hoped it would be low-voltage DC, which is most useful in this context. I could not have been more wrong: It turns out it is AC, adjustable up to 5 kV! While I took enough care to not electrocute myself, the multimeter that I used got fried for good.
A look inside reveals some nice manually assembled circuits and the ID of central unit is searchable, confirming this is a high-voltage AC power supply. I have no idea what to do with it now, but I have not brought it back to the bin either. Ideas welcome!
I am getting impatient. It is difficult to admit to myself, but I am turning into a crank, a real old fart, whenever the topic turns to COVID in conversations with collegues or friends. I find myself pontificating and linking to opinion articles and statistics that show how things could be so much better, if we just got our act together.
Needless to say, I am not proud of this. Maybe the pandemic is finally getting to me, even though my work and life situation are such that the negative impact on me has been minor compared to many people, if not most. For that I am certainly grateful.
Still, I find it difficult to shake off this vague feeling of frustration over the fact that we are doing much worse than we could. Not so much because I think I know better than the experts, but rather because there is a wide range of opinions among people with expertise, and I am convinced more by the ones that want to widen the Overton window to doing things differently than before, because we can and because the dire situation warrants it.
Just to name one example, while the quick vaccine development is a great success, it could have been accelerated by months by allowing the routines for Phase-3-trials and approval to be adapted from the status quo. This is not even hindsight knowledge, but people argued for challenge trials at the time already.
I think a part of "the problem" is the general unwillingness to properly weigh risks againt each other. If some people will get harmed by a decision, like the hypothetical one not to suspend a vaccine due to suspected rare side effects, because it reduces harm for a much larger group, then it is the right thing to do and should trump the concerns. I understand that decision makers get much more easily blamed for action than inaction, but we should correct for this bias, not accept it.
A few related links:
