Nothing to see here today. Please move on.
I am serious, there will not be the slightest morcel of information here today. It is better you stop reading this very moment.
Well go on! Shush! I promise I'll do nothing but ramble on for a bit and you will not miss anything noteworthy.
Or I might not even do that.
Good night.
An updated plot of push-up statistics:
I had some problems with my wrists last week, so I had to take a bit of a break. But this has resolved itself and slow progress is being made again. Doing 25 push-ups in a row is already more than I was ever able to, I think.
The thing with the wrists is kinda funny. Whenever I start a new exercise, something unexpected, other than the training goal itself, becomes the limiting factor for a while. This was very clear when I started running; at some point it was the shins, then the calves, or the knee, once even the bones in the foot's arch. My way of handling it is always the same: take it easy, don't push through it. Try to improve form, that is try to figure out if you're doing it wrong. After a while the body adapts and the next thing becomes the limit. Repeat.
A 2017 picture of two young owls, click to enlarge. Also, make sure to check out r/Superbowl!
I mentioned Scout Mindset, the new book by Julia Galef, just the other day. Now I am two thirds through the audio book, read by herself, and can wholeheartedly recommend it once more. It is quite close to what I expected from it.
One chapter is about calibrating beliefs, that is not only being aware of what you belive to be right, but also how confident you are about that, by assigning a probability to beliefs being correct. Then, in her own words:
Being perfectly calibrated would mean that your “50% sure” claims are in fact correct 50 percent of the time, your “60% sure” claims are correct 60 percent of the time, your “70% sure” claims are correct 70 percent of the time, and so on. Perfect calibration is an abstract ideal, not something that’s possible to achieve in reality. Still, it’s a useful benchmark against which to compare yourself.
She then provides opportunity to practice by answering trivia questions. This was more fun than I expected and you should click there right now and spend a few minutes on this!
I say this not only because it just so happened that I did well this time: My guesses about which I was 55%, 65%, 75%, 85% and 95% certain, turned out to be 50%, 67%, 80%, 100% and 100% correct, respectively. Probably a fluke. Full score sheet.
When I encounter news like this I cannot help but think of Greenwashing. Giant corporations like Unilever and Nestlé committing a billion dollars to protect tropical forests can sound like buying a way out of bad press.
But then I tell myself to be less cynical and appreciate that these organizations have a huge lever to do less of [wrong thing] and more of [right thing] and that we do indeed want them to be incentivized in that direction. Being suspicious enough to dismiss any positive initiatives as marketing ploy, does the opposite. It makes everyone less likely to get out of the bad equilibrium of unsustainable exploitation on the one hand, and righteous environmentalists scolding them on the other.
So, kudos to everyone behind the LEAF coalition! May you have a good plan for achieving the most good with the money.
This post is back-dated a few hours. Yes, I broke the blogging streak, but I have a good excuse: I watched Druk (Another Round) last night, a recent film with Mads Mikkelsen.
The plot is quickly summarized. Four teachers decide to test a psychologist's (apparently real) claim, that humans are born with blood alcohol level 0.5‰ too low and that one would perform better professionally and socially after correcting this deficiency. The experiment predictably goes well, until it doesn't.
Overall predictability is not a negative here though, it builds to a dreadful anticipation. The four protagonists go off the rails in different ways, as they increasingly see the reasons to do the experiment in the first place: a combination of boredom, existential angst and feeling lost in marriage.
The film's performances are great, the characters relatable and the ending is ecstatic and highly ambiguous. Recommended!
Addendum: I only now read that, by sheer coincidence, Druk won the Oscar for best international film the same night that I watched it. Nice.
I don't write the posts for this blog in advance. Sure, there are a few files with an idea or a link that I want to write about eventually. But nothing finished that I can release if I don't feel like blogging today, but don't want to break the streak. So I have to come up with something, right now.
As you might remember from previous posts, I live somewhat isolated in the forest. The town is only 20 minutes away, but still. There are no direct neighbours and in times like now, working from home, and because of the abysmal weather this week with another two days of snow in late April, it just so happened that I did not get out to meet anybody, or see anything new for quite a while. Except through the screen, of course.
This morning I therefore got in the car and drove downtown. Not to go shopping, I can resist that particular urge and like being frugal. But to take a long walk at a decent pace, like a small hike of ~7km, just to see something different. Towns-folk likes to take hikes in the woods, I do the reverse. At least today I did. Maybe that's part of how people get a bit weird after a few years living in the forest.
When I came by the cathedral,I went in. The early Saturday morning meant I was alone inside. It's been years since I've been inside. Gothic cathedrals are always uplifting, if you let them get to you. For me this means ignoring the religious veneer and see the whole as a cultural and aesthetic achievement. Plus, it is historically significant, with Gustav Vasa's pompous grave, among other things.
I hope I won't forget this once everything gets back to normal, the right now very appealing idea to visit all museums in town. I've never even been to the one for natural history during all the years I've been living here.
Last night I finally finished building my Lego Science Tower. The set is not official but originates from a crowd-funding effort by Bricklink. The sealed box had been sitting in my office for two years until I recently brought it home to have some fun with it.
You can see Newton's apple in the tree and Mendel's garden in front of the tower. The telescope on the top rotates and tilts by turning the knobs. Inside there is Pawlov's dog, Schrödinger's cat, a library and a chemistry lab, among other things. Overall a lovely design with ingenious attention to detail!
Time for another look at my recent browser history.
