This made me laugh:

If your track coach tells you to run faster, and you answer with something about e=mc^2 and the light speed barrier, you're making a pretty strong claim about your current abilities.

It's from today's ACX piece which argues that we can and should think better, and that "everyone is biased" is a bad argument against trying.

This is close to what I think is the reason I don't like relativism or postmodernism. Pointing out that someone or some argument is not perfectly right is very much not the same as saying it is as bad as something else. There are gradations and they matter.

Another picture of pennywort flowers, I know. But they are very photogenic and make good subjects for macro photography. So let me tell you how this picture was taken.

This is my gear, the same that I had for the last 15 years, from the time when digital photography was all the hype and everyone wanted to be a photographer.

The Nikon D300, 105mm macro lens and the external flash would cost you around 350€ used today (disregard the 18-200m zoom lens). They work great together and can give very sharp and beautiful results.

There are however a few things to do before pressing the shutter release.

• I use the internal flash in master mode to control the external flash. This makes lighting very flexible. I often hand-hold the flash 90-180 degrees from the sun because the goal is making the light less harsh by filling in the shadows.
• The camera is set to shutter mode with the shortest flash-sync time dialed in, 1/250s in this case. This is because the flash needs to compete with the bright sunlight and the short shutter time lets less of that in.
• Exposure compensation at -1/2 stops, flash -1 or -3/2 stops. The violet and highlights easily get saturated at default exposure. And we want the flash to be less bright than the sun, again just evening out the light somewhat but not completely flattening the scene.
• The two previous points have a welcome side-effect: The camera needs to choose the largest aperture it can in the current light condition, thereby rendering the background very much out of focus.
• Then I compose the image and focus, first auto-focus to get close, then I hold focus and put it at the right spot by moving the camera ever so slightly.
• I take several pictures before moving on. Not all will be a success with this quick method, not using a tripod, and I rigorously throw away all but the best one in a series.

This way I usually get the picture that I had in mind with quite little effort.

Wanna watch me chopping wood for ten minutes? Here you go!

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.

Swedish blåsippa, German Leberblümchen, Wikipedia tells us the Common Hepatia is also called kidneywort or liverwort because people used to believe it treats disease in these organs.

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.