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  1. Last 7 days
  2. Mar 2024
    1. LOL. stupid shit. only the multiplication of scalar values is always defined.<br /> multiplying two nonscalar values is defined only in some cases, and certailnly not for money.<br /> multiplying two lengths (1 meter x 1 meter) only works, if the two lenghts are orthogonal... idiots

    1. yeah. but the actual problem is pacifism and overpopulation.<br /> all other problems, including world wars, are only symptoms of pacifism and overpopulation.<br /> this is just another intelligence test, and again, most people fail, most people are idiots

    1. Theindexer will want a feel, before they begin, for the concepts that willneed to be flagged, or taxonomized with subheadings. They mightskim the book – reading it in full but at a canter – before tackling itproperly with the software open. Or they may spend a while, as apreliminary, with the book’s introduction, paying attention to itschapter outline – if it has one – to gain a sense of what to look outfor. Often, having reached the end of the book, the indexer will returnto the first few chapters, going over them again now that they havegained a conceptual mapping of the work as a whole.

      It's no wonder that Mortimer J. Adler was able to write such a deep analysis of reading in How to Read a Book after having spent so much time indexing the ideas behind The Great Books of the Western World.

      Indexing requires a solid inspectional read at minimum, but will often go deeper into contexts which require at least some analytical reading. To produce the Syntopicon, one must go even further into analytical reading to provide the proper indexing of ideas so that they may be sub-categorized and used for deeper analysis for things such as comparison and contrast of those ideas.

  3. Feb 2024
    1. Thus, in light of the unique property of narratives to overcome resistance, facilitate information processing, and address emotional topic (Kim et al. 2012), understanding the conditions under which different forms of narratives (e.g., news stories, testimonials, fiction) are and are not effective may be critical in eliminating health disparities.
    2. “limitations of health communication may be especially relevant for at-risk populations experiencing health disparities”
    3. In order to reduce current inequities in the prevalence of and mortality from disease, we need more culturally sensitive health information presented in a more accessible and appealing format.

      Real world significance

    1. Die Selbstverpflichtungen der Regierungen zur Dekarbonisierung reichen bei weitem nicht aus. Ein Bericht, der von den Vereinten Nationen als Grundlage für die kommende COP28 publiziert wurde, ergibt, dass 2030 etwa 20 bis 23 Gigatonnen mehr CO<sub>2</sub> emittiert werden sollen, als mit dem 1,5 °-Ziel verträglich wäre. Zum ersten Mal wird in einem offiziellen UN-Dokument das Ende der Nutzung fossiler Brennstoffe gefordert. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/un-report-calls-for-phasing-out-of-fossil-fuels-as-paris-climate-goals-being-missed

      Bericht: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/EMBARGOED_DRAFT_Sythesis-report-of-the-technical-dialogue-of-the-first-global-stocktake.pdf

      Bericht: https://unfccc.int/documents/631600

    1. To what extent in this process is the client reconfiguring and refocusing on their relationship with those around them? Does the past have absolute process (in the Zulu incarnation)? It obviously may not in the Western practice, but perhaps the client may more easily come to terms with those around them as a result, and this is more beneficial than a "truer" outcome?

  4. Jan 2024
    1. yeah. printing books is my "prepping" for the post-apocalypse world: no electricity, no computers, no internet, no DVD players, ...

      on the other side, their aggressive push for digitalization of everything is their way of prepping for "the great memory hole". because the blackout is just a matter of time, and then "oops!" all data is gone, the collective memory is reset to zero, no proof of anything, no traces, no history ...

    1. for - Rainbow body - Deep Humanity - superorganism - multi-level communication - adjacency between - contemplative practice - direct experience of body's cellular activity

      summary - Father Tiso and his catholic lineage combined with scholarship in Tibetan studies places him in a unique position for interfaith dialogue - His research interest in investigating the extraordinary and unexplained Tibetan meditation phenomena of Rainbow Body manifested by the greatest practitioners at the time of death (including contemporary ones) sheds light on the Rainbow Body phenomena in many spiritual traditions and challenges the scientific community to come up with an explanation for it. - If scientifically proven true, it offers an extraordinary possibility of human potential - Contemplation could be the practice technique that could directly bridge normal human consciousness with the microscopic world around us, which to date, is only accessible through scientific instrumentation.

      question - Does deep contemplative practice offers a direct access to the microscopic reality? - If so, how does it accomplish this direct communication with human cells, and indeed, even the universe itself? - Father Tiso shares centuries old recorded visual drawings of experiences reported by Rainbow Body practitioners and speculates whether these drawings represent direct experience of the cellular scale of our human form - Indeed, could it even be at the quantum level of experience, since rainbows are an optical phenomenal?

    1. Die Preise für erneuerbare Energien liegen inzwischen weltweit nahezu überall deutlich unter denenbfür fossile Energie. Allerdings sind die Profite bei fossilen Energien wesentlich höher. David Wallace-Wells analysiert diese Situation ausgehend von Brett Christophers' im Februar erscheinenden neuen Buch und von aktuellen Zahlen über die Profite der Öl- und Gasfirmen und die fossilen Subventionen.Nötig sind staatliche Interventionen und vor allem der Verzicht auf fossile Subventionen. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/opinion/profits-green-energy.html

    1. Die taz beschäftigt sich mit den Vorschlägen Emmanuel Macrons zur Klimafinanzierung für den globalen Süden. Dabei geht es u.a. um neue Regeln für Weltbank und IWF, um eine Beteiligung vor allem Chinas an der Finanzierung ärmerer Länder und um Kreditvergaben zu deutlich niedrigeren als den jetzigen Zinsen. Für den Erfolg dieser Pläne wird entscheidend sein, ob beim G20-Gipfel im November 24 und bei der COP30 entsprechende Beschlüsse gefasst werden.https://taz.de/Geld-fuer-den-Klimaschutz/!5984779/

  5. Dec 2023
    1. Wells attempts in this essay to help mankind "pull it's mind together" for the betterment of people and the planet. How is this supposed to happen in a modern media environment which is designed to pull our minds apart as rapidly as possible?

      How might the strength of capitalism be leveraged to push people back toward a common middle rather than split them apart?

    2. Adler & Hutchinson's Great Books of the Western World was an encyclopedia-based attempt to focus society on a shared history as their common ground. H. G. Wells in his World Encyclopedia thesis attempts to forge a new "moving" common ground based on newly evolving knowledge based on distilling truth out of science. Shared history is obviously much easier to dispense and spread about compared to constantly keeping a growing population up to date with the forefront of science.

      How could one carefully compose and juxtapose the two to have a stronger combined effect?

      How could one distribute the effects evenly?

      What does the statistical mechanics for knowledge management look like at the level of societies and nations?

      link to https://hypothes.is/a/abTT1KPDEe6nqxPx4fXggw

    3. Wells, H. G. “The Idea of a World Encyclopedia.” Harper’s Magazine, April 1937. https://harpers.org/archive/1937/04/the-idea-of-a-world-encyclopedia/.

    4. This Wo;Id Encyclopedia would bethe mental background of every intelli-gent man in the world.

      Who, here, defines intelligence?

      How would comparative anthropology between societies view such an effort? Would all societies support such an endeavor?

    5. very carefully assem-bled with the approval of outstandingauthorities in each subject, carefully col-lated and edited, and critically presented.It would be not a miscellany but a con-centration, a clarification and a synthesis.

      Compare this with Hutchins and Adler's solution undertaken just a few years following this beginning in the early 1940s and finally published in 1952: The Great Books of the Western World.

      These books speak toward the idea of living well and understanding mankind, but don't have the same deeply edited and critical synthesis viewpoint.

    1. In his ideas for a "mental clearing house" Wells was probably influenced by "Die Brucke" and its Goals for a World Information Clearing House.
    2. Wells believed that technological advances such as microfilm could be utilized towards this end so that "any student, in any part of the world, would be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica" (p. 54).

      This sounds a lot like Vannevar Bush's Memex, n'cest pas?

    1. i have absolutely no doubt about that if we go even to three degrees warming and we're about 1.2 right at the moment above pre-industrial temperatures but if we go to even three degrees warming there isn't an ecosystem on the planet 00:35:24 that will not be shredded by that and there's no prospect for anything resembling liberal democracy to serve to survive in a world that's three degrees warmer than it was pre-industrial times
      • for: 3 Deg C world - catastrophic
    1. Will artificial intelligence create useless class of people? - Yuval Noah Harari

      1:00 "bring the latest findings of science of the public", otherwise the public space "gets filled with conspiracy theories and fake news and whatever".<br /> he fails to mention that ALL his beautiful "scientists" are financially dependent on corporations, who dictate the expected results, and who sabotage "unwanted research".<br /> for example, the pharma industry will NEVER pay money for research of natural cancer cures, or "alternative" covid cures like ivermectin / zinc / vitamin C, because these cures have no patent, so there is no profit motive, and also because the "militant pacifists" want to fix overpopulation this way.<br /> a "scientist" should be someone, who has all freedom to propose hypotheses, which then are tested in experiments (peer review), and compared to real placebo control groups. because that is science, or "the scientific method". everything else is lobbying for "shekel shekel".

    1. naturalism, paradise on earth, relations... i heard some fuzzy attempts to approach these topics.<br /> in my work, i propose a mathematcally-exact system, to describe and predict human relations,<br /> in a culture, that also works in a post-collapse world, in small groups of 150 people. book:<br /> pallas. who are my friends. group composition by personality type.<br /> github .com /milahu /alchi

  6. Nov 2023
    1. If all national energy and climate goals are reached, this value is lower by 25%, and by 60% if the world gets on track to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.
      • for: stats - fossil fuel industry - valuation in a 1.5 Deg C world

      • stats: fossil fuel industry - valuation in a 1.5 Deg C world

        • current 2023 valuation: 6 trillion USD
        • current NDCs met (short of a 1.5 Deg C world): 4.5 trillion USD
        • 1.5 Deg C world: 2.4 trillion USD
    1. what worries me is again the the long-term future of the economy in a carbon constrained world 00:27:32 and as a futurist uh what what is your perspective on on the the role of oil going into 2050
      • for: carbon budget - Alberta, carbon-constrained world - Alberta's future
    1. Auf den Öl- und Gasfeldern der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate, darunter vielen, die der staatlichen Gesellschaft Adnoc gehören, wurde in den vergangenen 20 Jahren in großem Umfang routinemäßig Gas abgefackelt, was zu hohen Methanemissionen führt. Die Emirate hatten sich verpflichtet, das Abfackeln schnell zu reduzieren. Die dieser Selbstverpflichtung krass widersprechende Praxis gilt bei NGO als weiterer Beleg dafür, dass Selbstverpflichtungen der Fossilindustrie nicht getraut werden kann. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/17/cop28-host-uae-breaking-its-own-ban-on-routine-gas-flaring-data-showsactor

    1. After I had been searching for ways to flesh out this parallel between contemplative and scientific research, through the common element of a lab method, I finally stumbled upon the Husserlian epoche as a stepping stone or connection piece between the two
      • for: bridge between - scientific and contemplative world

      • comment

        • this describes my current strong interest in the epoche as a potentially b transformative Deep Humanity BEing journey tool
    2. Ask a scientist what the world is made out of, and he or she may talk about atoms or molecules, or quantum mechanical wave functions, or possibly strings or vacuum fluctuations, depending on the level on which one want to focus. Diverse as those answers may be, they all have in common that they borrow elements from descriptions of building blocks of nature, as used already within contemporary physics. Now propose to a scientist that everything could be seen as `made out of experience', or at least, for starters, as `given in experience.'
      • for: what is the world made of, paradigm shift - scientific ontology

      • question

        • what off the world made of?
      • answer ( Phenomenological)
        • experience!
    1. Maybe this will help: [Great Books of the Western World SYNTOPICON changes in 1986 (more info in comments) : ClassicalEducation](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/hlvnkv/great_books_of_the_western_world_syntopicon/)

      reply to u/Paddy48ob at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17jscyk/comment/k80z1nn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Thanks for this pointer. As a note, when I compare my 1954 version against the photo of the 1990 edition (which has fewer pages), it's obvious that the "1. The ends of education" section in the 1954 edition is significantly more thorough with more references (and supplementary data) which don't exist in the 1990 edition. The 1990 edition presumably removes the references for the books which they may have removed from that edition (though it may have actually been even more--I didn't check this carefully).

      Just comparing the two pages that I can see, I don't see any references to the added texts of the 1990 edition appearing in that version of the Syntopicon at all.

      I took a quick look at the Syntopicon V1 (1990) via the Internet Archive and of the added texts that year I sampled searches for Voltaire, Erasmus, and John Calvin and the only appearances of them to be found are in the Addition Bibliography sections which is also where they appeared in the 1952 editions. My small sampling/search found no added references of any of these three to the primary portions of the main References sections, so they obviously didn't do the additional editorial work to find and insert those.

      As a result, it appears that the 1952 (and reprint editions following it) have a measurably better and more valuable version of the Syntopicon. The 1990 (2nd Edition) is a watered down and less useful version of the original. It is definitely not the dramatically improved version one might have hoped for given the intervening 38 years.

    1. Comparisons of the Date of First Contact, Date of Earliest Sustained Interaction, and Date of Earliest Record ofDepopulation from Disease for 11 Populations Used in this Stu

      .

    2. s could have resulted from smallpox movingfaster across space compared to other diseases

      .

    3. able 1 . List of the Earliest Accounts of Disease-Related Depopulation among a Native American Population Used in thisStudy. Those with Reliable Information on the Type of Disease Are Listed

      .

    1. Ausstieg Deutschlands aus dem UN-Migrationspakt

      besser: ausstieg aus der UN

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7D_SnySls0<br /> Coin Bureau – Who Controls The World?

      7:02 die UN wird kontrolliert von den veto-mächten (frankreich, russland, china, USA, england)<br /> also deutschland ist nur eine kolonie der USA<br /> (dabei sollte deutschland eine kolonie von russland sein, weil russland ist viel näher…)

      23:31 countries that have imposed sanctions on russia: USA, canada, germany, UK, australia, japan, …

  7. Oct 2023
    1. Alter’s commentary benefits from his allusions to, among others, Freud, Gilgamesh, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, Josephus, Joyce, Kafka, Melville, Milton, Molière, Nabokov, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Sophocles. But technical words and phrases often appear without explanation: aleatory device, autochthonous, collocation, deictic, diachronic collage, dittography, durance vile, emphatic anaphora, gnomic, haplography, metonymy, and threnody. (To my knowledge, there is no readily available glossary containing all these words—so you will just have to google one word at a time, dear reader.) Even when Alter offers a definition as an aside, I wonder how many people will benefit from his explanations., e.g., “This pairing is virtually a zeugma, the syntactic yoking together of disparate items” (Isaiah 44:15).

      Is it really incumbent on the author to translate every word he's using with respect to the language in which he's writing. He's already doing us a service by translating the Hebrew. Are modern readers somehow with out a dictionary? I might believe they've not been classically educated to capture all the allusions, but the dictionary portion is a simple fix that is difficult to call him out on from a critical perspective, especially in a publication like "Law & Liberty" whose audience is specifically the liberally educated!?!

    1. Let’s look at some of the attributes of the memex. Your machine is a library not a publication device. You have copies of documents is there that you control directly, that you can annotate, change, add links to, summarize, and this is because the memex is a tool to think with, not a tool to publish with.

      Alan Jacobs argues that the Memex is not a tool to publish with and is thus fundamentally different from the World Wide Web.

      Did Vannevar Bush suggest the Memex for writing or potentially publishing? [Open question to check] Would it have been presumed to have been for publishing if he suggests that it was for annotating, changing, linking and summarizing? Aren't these actions tantamount to publishing, even if they're just for oneself?

      Wouldn't academics have built the one functionality in as a precursor to the other?

    2. “A tool to think with, not a tool to publish with” — this seems to me essential. I feel that I spend a lot of time trying to think with tools meant for publishing.
    1. as the ecosystem around it swirled, the web platform itself remained remarkably stable
    2. There’s a cost to using dependencies. New versions are released, APIs change, and it takes time and effort to make sure your own code remains compatible with them. And the cost accumulates over time. It would be one thing if I planned to continually work on this code; it’s usually simple enough to migrate from one version of a depenency to the next. But I’m not planning to ever really touch this code again unless I absolutely need to. And if I do ever need to touch this code, I really don’t want to go through multiple years’ worth of updates all at once.

      The corollary: you can do that (make it once and never touch it again) if you are using the "native substrate" of the WHATWG/W3C Web platform. Breaking changes in "JavaScript" or "browsers" are rarely actually that. They're project/organizational failures one layer up—someone (who doesn't control users' Web browsers and how they work) decided to stop maintaining something or published a new revision but didn't commit to doing it in a backwards compatible way (and someone decided to build upon that, anyway).

    1. Die Internationale Energieagentur IEA hält eine Begrenzung der globalen Erhitzung aufgrund des schnellen Wachstums bei den erneuerbaren Energien für sehr schwierig, aber noch möglich. In ihrem Jahresbericht kommt sie zu dem Ergebnis, dass der Höhepunkt der Nachfrage nach Kohle, Gas und Öl bis 2030 erreicht werden wird. Die Energiepolitik der wichtigen Staaten ist aber bei der Umstellung auf Erneuerbare bei weitem nicht so ehrgeizig, als es nötig ist. https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/grace-aux-energies-bas-carbone-limiter-le-rechauffement-climatique-reste-possible-affirme-lagence-internationale-de-lenergie-20231024_YF7ZJA7WBFACRFIVCBRONJPKAA/

      World Energy Outlook 2023: https://origin.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023

      Mehr zum World Energy Outlook 2023: https://hypothes.is/search?q=tag%3A%22report%3A%20World%20Energy%20Outlook%202023%22

    1. for me nation is the largest amount of population you can address right now if you want to bring well-being you cannot address the 00:13:15 globe hello you cannot address the whole globe just like that it is not within your means to address the globe
      • comment
        • Sadhguru is making the point that there is so many competing perspectives, many highly polarized that you cannot achieve harmony between all of them
        • Ironically, this is even true at the national level
        • One can, however, appeal to a global subset of people who believe in the same thing
    1. Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Translated by Susan Massotty. 1947. Reprint, New York: Bantam, 1997.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.

      A stark statement that lays bare the original sin of Western thought.

    1. If it requires too many words, you have not seen theunity but a multiplicity.

      How are they defining "multiplicity" here? There seems to be a tacit definition with respect to being in opposition to "unity" (of a work), but not an explicit one. It also seems to be a shaded meaning with respect to the more common one.

      unity: essence, core, coherence, oneness

      They use the word "multiplicity" in the usual sense of large number or multitude on p55: "The multiplicity of the rules indicates the complexity of the one habit to be formed, not a plurality of distinct habits."

      They also revisit it in the upcoming section: "Mastering the Multiplicity: The Art of Outlining a Book" on p88

      Perhaps its just me but there's a linguistic "softness" of the uses of unity and multiplicity here with respect to 2023. Though these two opposites fit the dictionary definitions of their words, is it possible that this softness is the result of a sort of historical linguistic shift I'm feeling in these words? I can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps it's the relationship of unity to religion? Neither seem to be frequently used these days.

      The Ngram Viewer shows peaks for the use of unity in 1660 and 1960 of almost 75% higher usage compared to a broader historical average. It is generally waning since. Multiplicity has about 1/4 the use of unity and has remained flat over time. What caused the peaks in the use of "unity" during these periods? This 1972 use was on the downslope of the 1960s peak. Was it used in the 1940 version?

      The 20th century increase in the use of unity begins around 1914 and may have been related to political shades of meaning going into WWI with another marked rise in the lead up to WW2.

  8. Sep 2023
    1. 1: Why Do We Need Something Different? Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0004 Open the PDF Link PDF for 1: Why Do We Need Something Different? in another window 2: Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0005 Open the PDF Link PDF for 2: Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering in another window 3: Systems Theory and Its Relationship to Safety Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0006 Open the PDF Link PDF for 3: Systems Theory and Its Relationship to Safety in another window II: STAMP: An Accident Model Based On Systems Theory [ Opening ] Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0029 Open the PDF Link PDF for [ Opening ] in another window 4: A Systems-Theoretic View of Causality Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0008 Open the PDF Link PDF for 4: A Systems-Theoretic View of Causality in another window 5: A Friendly Fire Accident Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0009 Open the PDF Link PDF for 5: A Friendly Fire Accident in another window III: Using STAMP [ Opening ] Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0030 Open the PDF Link PDF for [ Opening ] in another window 6: Engineering and Operating Safer Systems Using STAMP Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0011 Open the PDF Link PDF for 6: Engineering and Operating Safer Systems Using STAMP in another window 7: Fundamentals Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0012 Open the PDF Link PDF for 7: Fundamentals in another window 8: STPA: A New Hazard Analysis Technique Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0013 Open the PDF Link PDF for 8: STPA: A New Hazard Analysis Technique in another window 9: Safety-Guided Design Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0014 Open the PDF Link PDF for 9: Safety-Guided Design in another window 10: Integrating Safety into System Engineering Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0015 Open the PDF Link PDF for 10: Integrating Safety into System Engineering in another window 11: Analyzing Accidents and Incidents (CAST) Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0016 Open the PDF Link PDF for 11: Analyzing Accidents and Incidents (CAST) in another window 12: Controlling Safety during Operations Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0017 Open the PDF Link PDF for 12: Controlling Safety during Operations in another window 13: Managing Safety and the Safety Culture Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0018 Open the PDF Link PDF for 13: Managing Safety and the Safety Culture in another window 14: SUBSAFE: An Example of a Successful Safety Program Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0019 Open the PDF Link PDF for 14: SUBSAFE: An Example of a Successful Safety Program in another window Epilogue Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0020 Open the PDF Link PDF for Epilogue in another window Appendixes A: Definitions Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0022 Open the PDF Link PDF for A: Definitions in another window B: The Loss of a Satellite Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0023 Open the PDF Link PDF for B: The Loss of a Satellite in another window C: A Bacterial Contamination of a Public Water Supply Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0024 Open the PDF Link PDF for C: A Bacterial Contamination of a Public Water Supply in another window D: A Brief Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0025 Open the PDF Link PDF for D: A Brief Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling in another window References Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0026 Open the PDF Link PDF for References in another window Index Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8179.003.0027 Open the PDF Link PDF

      Great resources here

    1. I think there are real-world use cases! Would you consider converting a history of transactions into a history of account balances a valid use-case? That can be done easily with a scan. For example, if you have transactions = [100, -200, 200] then you can find the history of account balances with transactions.scan_left(0, &:+) # => [0, 100, -100, 100].
    1. The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. 27th Printing. Vol. 1. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. 1952. Reprint, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1984.

      I read the first edition.

      Hutchins, Robert M. The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. Edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. 1st ed. Vol. 1. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

      urn:x-pdf:0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac<br /> Annotation search: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac

    1. Wills, Garry. “After 54 Great Books, 102 Great Ideas, Now—Count Them !—Three Revolutions.” The New York Times, June 13, 1971, sec. BR. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/13/archives/the-common-sense-of-politics-by-mortimer-j-adler-265-pp-new-york.html

      It's not super obvious from the digitized context (text), but this review is in relation to The Common Sense of Politics (1971) by Mortimer J. Adler.

      Wills criticizes Adler and his take in the book as well as the general enterprise of the Great Books of the Western World.

      There seem to be interesting sparks here in the turn of the Republican party in the early 70s moving into the coming Reagan era.

      • for: doppleganger, conflict resolution, deep humanity, common denominators, CHD, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Into the Mirror World, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories, conspiracy culture, nonduality, self-other, human interbeing, polycrisis, othering, storytelling, myth-making, social media amplifier -summary
        • This conversation was insightful on so many dimensions salient to the polycrisis humanity is moving through.
        • It makes me think of the old cliches:
          • "The more things change, the more they remain the same"
          • "What's old is new" ' "History repeats"
        • the conversation explores Naomi's latest book (as of this podcast), Into the Mirror World, in which Naomi adopts a different style of writing to explicate, articulate and give voice to
          • implicit and tacit discomforting ideas and feelings she experienced during covid and earlier, and
          • became a focal point through a personal comparative analysis with another female author and thought leader, Naomi Wolf,
            • a feminist writer who ended up being rejected by mainstream media and turned to right wing media.
        • The conversation explores the process of:
          • othering,
          • coopting and
          • abandoning
        • of ideas important for personal and social wellbeing.
        • and speaks to the need to identify what is going on and to reclaim those ideas for the sake of humanity
        • In this context, the doppleganger is the people who are mirror-like imiages of ourselves, but on the other side of polarized issues.
        • Charismatic leaders who are bad actors often are good at identifying the suffering of the masses, and coopt the ideas of good actors to serve their own ends of self-enrichment.
        • There are real world conspiracies that have caused significant societal harm, and still do,
        • however, when there ithere are phenomena which we have no direct sense experience of, the mixture of
          • a sense of helplessness,
          • anger emerging from injustice
        • a charismatic leader proposing a concrete, possible but explanatory theory
        • is a powerful story whose mythology can be reified by many people believing it
        • Another cliche springs to mind
          • A lie told a hundred times becomes a truth
          • hence the amplifying role of social media
        • When we think about where this phenomena manifests, we find it everywhere:
    1. RECOMMENDED READING LIST

      Compare this list to what ultimately became the Great Books of the Western World in 1952. Lots more 20th century writing on it to begin...

    2. Although not all of the books listed are "great" in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them.

      This book was published originally in 1940 and apparently the Great Books of the Western World was hatched in 1943, so this book isn't necessarily a stepping stone to pitching/selling those, though obviously it informs the ideas which led up to its creation.

      Note that it is roughly contemporaneous to his article a year later:

      Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941.<br /> https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf

  9. Aug 2023
    1. This is why I build my personal projects in PHP even though I'm not really a fan. I use PHP and JQuery. It'll work basically forever and I can come back to it in 15 years and it'll still work.

      When people mistakenly raise concerns about the Web platform being fragile, point to this common meme.

    1. In general the professors of the humanities and the socialsciences and history, fascinated by the marvels of experi-mental natural science, were overpowered by the idea thatsimilar marvels could be produced in their own fields by theuse of the same methods. They also seemed convinced thatany results obtained in these fields by any other methods werenot worth achieving. This automatically ruled out writerspreviously thought great who had had the misfortune to livebefore the method of empirical natural science had reachedits present predominance and who had never thought ofapplying it to problems and subject matters outside the rangeof empirical natural science.

      Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

      One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

    2. We and the Japanesethought, in the i86o's, how wonderful it would be if thisresult could be achieved. We and they fixed our minds on theeconomic development of Japan and modified the educationalsystem of that country on "American lines" to promote thiseconomic development. So the rich got richer, the poor gotpoorer, the powerful got more bellicose; and Japan becamea menace to the world and to itself.

      Writing in 1951, Hutchins is writing too close to the time period of post World War II to have a better view of this topic. He's fashioned far too simple a story as a result.

      There was a lack of critical thinking and over-reliance on top down approval which was harmful in the Japanese story of this time period though.

    3. This set of books is offered not merely as an object uponwhich leisure may be expended, but also as a means to thehumanization of work through understanding.16

      Purpose of the Great Books of the Western World

    1. We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now. It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives. We will see significant changes in areas like privacy, data protection, algorithm and architecture design guidelines, and platform accountability, etc. which should reduce the pervasiveness of misinformation, hate and visceral content over the internet.
      • for: quote, quote - Prateek Raj, quote - internet regulation, quote - reducing misinformation, fake news, indyweb - support
      • quote
        • We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now.
        • It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives.
        • We will see significant changes in areas like
          • privacy,
          • data protection,
          • algorithm and
          • architecture design guidelines, and
          • platform accountability, etc.
        • which should reduce the pervasiveness of
          • misinformation,
          • hate and visceral content
        • over the internet.
        • These steps will also reduce the power wielded by digital giants.
        • Beyond these immediate effects, it is difficult to say if these social innovations will create a more participative and healthy society.
        • These broader effects are driven by deeper underlying factors, like
          • history,
          • diversity,
          • cohesiveness and
          • social capital, and also
          • political climate and
          • institutions.
        • In other words,
          • just as digital world is shaping the physical world,
          • physical world shapes our digital world as well.
      • author: Prateek Raj
        • assistant professor in strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
    1. Der Nähe Osten - der frühere "fruchtbare Halbmond" - ist eines der von der globalen Erhitzung am stärksten betroffenen Gebiete. Ausführliche multimediale Reportage über die Wasserkrise im Irak, die einige früher fruchtbare Gebiete bereits unbewohnbar gemacht hat und den IS-Terrorismus erleichtert. Sie wird verschärft durch Staudämme in der Türkei und im Iran, Raubbau und veraltete Bewässerungstechniken, Regierungsversagen und Bevölkerungswachstum. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/world/middleeast/iraq-water-crisis-desertification.html

    1. Barzun, Jacques. “The Great Books.” The Atlantic, December 1952. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1952/12/the-great-books/642341/.

      Barzun heaps praise on Great Books of the Western World with some criticism of what it is also missing. He finds more than a few superlative words for the majesty of the Syntopicon.

    2. I he fact is that there arc some three thousand subheadings. So persons who feel that an official ceiling of 102 ideas would cramp their style can breathe freely.

      According to Jacques Barzun (and possibly written in the volumes itself), while the Syntopicon has 102 ideas, there are "some three thousand subheadings."

    3. It is not quite a five-foot shelf: 1 make it four feet eight-and-a-half — standard railroad gauge.

      the five-foot shelf reference is to the Harvard Classics competitor

    1. I like their simplicity and cloth texture, but family members seem to think that my 1952 set of The Great Books of the Western World are a bit on the "dreary looking side" compared with the more colorful books in our home library. (It says something that the 12 year old thinks my yellow Springer graduate math texts are more inviting...) Has anyone else had this problem and solved it with custom printed dust jackets?

      • Has anyone seen them for sale?
      • Made their own?
      • Interested in commissioning some as a bigger group?
      • Used a third-party company to design and print something?

      In doing something like this for fun, I might hope that the younger kids in the house might show more interest in some more lively/colorful custom covers.

      I'm partially tempted to use a classical painting as a display across the spines (a la Juniper Books collections) perhaps using:

      Other thoughts? suggestions?

      Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/15gv2cz/custom_dust_jackets_for_the_great_books_of_the/

      • for: extreme weather, realtime extreme weather analysis, World weather attribution
      • description
        • the World Weather Attribution organization is a group of research institutes that provides robust scientific answers to the question:
          • is climate change to blame?
        • when an extreme weather event has occurred
        • This is usually available days to weeks after the event and informs discussions about climate change while the impacts of the events are still fresh in the minds of the public and policymakers.
  10. Jul 2023
    1. Erneruerbare Energien wachsen weltweit deutlich schneller als von vielen erwartet. Ein neuer Bericht der Internatiionale Energiebehörde IEA stellt fest, dass die Erzeugungskapazität inzwischen bei 340 Gigawatt liegt. 2022 wurden 1.600Millionen Dollar in Erneuerbare investiert. Der Marktanteil von Elektroautos stieg auf 15%. berichte von anderen Institutionen bestätigen diese Trends. https://taz.de/Klimaneutralitaet-2050-technisch-moeglich/!5948817/

      IEA-Bericht: https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-clean-energy-progress-2023

      Bericht des Rocky Montains Institute zur Energiewende: https://rmi.org/insight/x-change-electricity/

      Studie des World Resources Institute zu den 8 Ländern mit dem schnellsten Wachstum von Erneuerbaren: https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-scaling-renewable-energy-fastest

    1. Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies
      • Title
        • Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies
      • Author
        • World Bank
    2. Hiding in plain sight: The missing trillions for climate change
      • Title
        • Hiding in plain sight: The missing trillions for climate change
      • Author Axel Van Trotsenburg
      • Date
        • June 15, 2023
      • Publisher
        • World Bank
    1. The Editors wish especially to mention their debt to thelate John Erskine, who over thirty years ago began the move-ment to reintroduce the study of great books into Americaneducation, and who labored long and arduously on thepreparation of this set.
    2. We attach importance to making whole works, as distin-guished from excerpts, available; and in all but three cases,Aquinas, Kepler, and Fourier, the 443 works of the 74 auth-ors in this set are printed complete.

      There are 443 works by 74 authors in the Great Books of the Western World. All of them are printed in their entirety except for Aquinas, Kepler and Fourier.

    3. The final decision on the list wasmade by me.

      Robert Hutchins takes sole responsibility for the final decision on the selection for the books which appear in The Great Books of the Western World series.

      One wonders what sort of advice he may have sought out or received with respect to a much broader diversity of topics and writers with respect to his own time. I reminded a bit of the article The 102 Great Ideas (Life, 1948) which highlights a more progressive stance with respect to women and feminism in the examples used.

      See: LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. Https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

    4. They now have the chance to understandthemselves through understanding their tradition.

      It feels odd that people wouldn't understand their own traditions, but it obviously happens. Information overload can obviously heavily afflict societies toward forgetting their traditions and the formation of new traditions, particularly in non-oral traditions which focus more on written texts which can more easily be ignored (not read) and then later replaced with seemingly newer traditions.

      Take for example the resurgence of note taking ideas circa 2014-2020 which completely disregarded the prior histories, particularly in lieu of new technologies for doing them.

      As a means of focusing on Western Culture, the editors here have highlighted some of the most important thoughts for encapsulating and influencing their current and future cultures.

      How do oral traditions embrace the idea of the "Great Conversation"?

    5. democracyrequires liberal education for all.

      Two of the driving reasons behind the Great Books project were improvement of both education and democracy.

      The democracy portion was likely prompted by the second Red Scare from ~1947-1957 which had profound effects on America. Published in 1952, this series would have considered it closely and it's interesting they included Marx in the thinkers at the end of the series.

    6. We may havemade errors of selection.

      A great admission to make upfront in such a massive endeavor which one hopes to shape the future.

      What does this mean for ars excerpendi writ large? Particularly when it may apply to hundreds of thousands?

  11. Jun 2023
    1. One) Successful men realize that the most important decision in their life is the woman they choose, because outside of work, this is what they'll be spending most time on. The woman must understand the man's grand ambition, and support them with it. (Cf. Flow & The Intellectual Life as well). Women should be chosen on personality, not looks. Looks fade (attraction as well), personality "stays".

      Two) Everyone deserves an opinion but not everyone deserves a say. Charlie Munger sums this up right: "I don't ever allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do." Or Marcus Aurelius, who says: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject." In short: Only state your opinion when you can back it up!; knowledge and experience. The same goes for judging opinion (and advice) from others.

      Three) Successful people buy assets when the money is enough. Assets > Luxury. (See also: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki). Only buy glamor and other "interests" once your assets are there to secure your financial success.

      Four) Be pragmatic. Do what's practical, not what is "sexy". Notice inefficiencies and solve them. The entrepreneurial mindset.

      Five) The morning sets the tone for the rest of the days. Time is subjective, waking up early doesn't matter as much as waking up later. It depends on the person. Someone who wakes up at 10am can be as successful as someone who wakes up at 6am. Instead, what defines success, is a highly effective morning routine.

      Six) The less you talk, the more you listen. Talking less means less mistakes. In addition, the less you talk, the more people will listen when you do speak. It puts extra weight on your message. Listening means analysis and learning.

      Seven) Pick the right opportunity at the right time. Pick the right vehicle. Do the right things in the right order! The advice "don't do what someone says, do what they do" is bullshit, as you can't do what someone is able to do after ten years of experience.

      Eight) Discipline > Motivation. Motivation, like Dr. Sung says, fluctuates and is multifactorial dependent... When you are lead by motivation you will not be as productive. Don't rely on chance. Rely on what is stable.

      Nine) Once a good career has been made, buy A1 assets and hold on to them to secure a financially successful future.

      Ten) Just because you won, you are not a winner. Being a winner is a continuous process, it means always learning and reflecting as well as introspecting. Don't overvalue individual wins but do celebrate them when appropriate.

      Eleven) Build good relationships with the banks early on. At times you need loans to fund certain ventures, when having a good relation with them, this will be significantly easier. Understand finance as early as possible. Read finance books.

      Twelve) Keep the circle small. Acquintances can be many, but real close relationships should be kept small. Choose your friends wisely. "You become the average of the five people you spend most time with." Privacy is important. Only tell the most deep secrets to the Inner Circle, to avoid overcomplication.

      Thirteen) Assume that everything is your fault. Responsibility. It leads to learning. It requires reflection and introspection. It leads to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's statement: "Nothing happens to you, everything happens for you."

      Fourteen) Work like new money, but act like your old money. Combine the hunger of the new with the wisdom of the old.

      Fifteen) Assume that you can't change the world, but slightly influence it. It prevents disappointments and gives a right mindset. Do everything (that has your ambition) with an insane drive. Aim to hit the stars. To become the best of the best.

      Sixteen) Private victories lead to public victories. The solid maxim is the following: "The bigger the public victory, the more private victories went into it." Work in private. Social media doesn't need to known the struggle. Let your results talk for you. This is also why you should never compare yourself to others, but rather to your own past self.

      Seventeen) After extreme experience, the most complicated task will look elegant and effortless. Unconscious competence.

    1. it still strikes me as something people believe in the abstract, rather than know from hard experience. I've always found that if you look behind/under widely held beliefs, you can find useful gems.
    1. The men who crafted Great Books programs, most prominently John Erskine, Mortimer Adler, and Scott Buchanan, promoted the idea that the reading of classics was a task meant for all students, at all levels, even if the works were translated from their original language. At several colleges, the curricula of undergraduate programs came to be based upon the reading of these Great Books.
    1. We live in a society that emphasizes glamour and sex appeal. That is why most of us strive to achieve external beauty, but oftentimes we lose our uniqueness in the process.

      so this passage explicitly mentions "external beauty", BUT if we're to consider beauty in its truest essence, then i wonder if this statement is a bad thing. after all, beauty is essentially harmony and balance (which explains why individuals with symmetrical features are considered attractive). all of us strive for beauty, but in doing so, we may lose what makes us unique because beauty favors uniformity.

      this is fascinating to me because uniformity adheres to a standard, which is important for regulating randomness (opposite of this is pattern and we LOVE patterns because it is discernible which means it is safer), and fostering a shared understanding of the world. and this shared understanding of our world is really important to us as humanity. this is how we evolve together. this collective perception only happens through that concept of beauty (or form and structure, harmony and balance).

      nowadays, we shifted and value individualism more. this excessive individualism has promoted different perspectives on the world which contributes to conflicts. ultimately, extremes on both ends of the spectrum (uniformity or individualism) are detrimental, so striking this balance between them is crucial for progress and unity among people.

  12. May 2023
  13. Apr 2023
    1. Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume II, Man to World. 1st ed. Vol. 3. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

    1. Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume I, Angel to Love. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

    1. If Parvana lost track of hermother, she was afraid she'd never find her again

      This is sad, a child has a fear to lose her mother because all women on the street are wearing the same cloth

  14. books.google.com books.google.com
    1. Two page spread of Life Magazine article with the title "The 102 Great Ideas" featuring a photo of 26 people behind 102 card indexes with categorized topical labels from Angel to Will.

    2. LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

      Provides an small example of "the great conversation" on the equality of men and women.

    3. Amidst a number of very gendered advertisements in issue 4 of volume 24 of LIFE magazine from 1948 is a short piece on the pending release of The Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World.

      The piece starts out talking about the 432 classical works written by 71 men and highlights the fact that "Woman, not a main idea, is included [with] in [the topical category] Family Man and Love." The piece goes on by way of example of the work to excerpt portions on Idea number 51: "Man". To show the flexibility of the included Syntopicon categorization they elaborate with 15 excerpted passages from authors from Plato to Freud on Idea 51, subdivision 6b: "Men and Women: their equality or inequality".

      It provides a fantastic mini-study on the emerging conversation on gender studies as seen in a mainstream magazine in 1948.


      Were there any follow up letters to the editor on this topic in subsequent issues? How was this broader piece received with respect to the idea of gender at the time?

    4. A staff of at least 26 created the underlying index that would lay at the heart of the Great Books of the Western World which was prepared in a rented old fraternity house on the University of Chicago campus. (p. 93)

    1. Oakeshott saw educationas part of the ‘conversation of mankind’, wherein teachers induct their studentsinto that conversation by teaching them how to participate in the dialogue—howto hear the ‘voices’ of previous generations while cultivating their own uniquevoices.

      How did Michael Oakeshott's philosophy overlap with the idea of the 'Great Conversation' or 20th century movement of Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

      How does it influence the idea of "having conversations with the text" in the annotation space?

    1. The issue at play in the AI question, or the question of tempering our growth in general, isn’t just that our technology is built without higher values that can mitigate its excesses. It’s that culturally we lack a story as to why values even matter to begin with. It’s futile to appeal to ethics in this context, because the ethics aren’t embedded at a deep enough level to counter powerful incentive structures. They aren’t worth dying for, because the system doesn’t value them, it only values quantity.

      Key observation - Quantity is all modernity values - Quality is thrown out the window - Later, the author connects - quantity to the Cartesian world view, - that seeks to measure everything - and quality to the Idealist worldview - that elevates consciousness over physicalism and materialism - (Destructive) growth - is an outcome of the cartesian worldview

    1. Mental Health State of the World report published by Sapien Labs’ Mental Health Million Project suggests that over recent years we appear to be crossing a global tipping point.

      Annotate this report

  15. Mar 2023
    1. In 1886, during a lecture on the "pleasure of reading," the British scientist, politician, and man of letters John Lubbock spoke of his wish for "a list of a hundred good books"; in the absence of such, he offered his own selection.
    1. In a postwar world in which educational self-improvement seemed within everyone’s reach, the Great Books could be presented as an item of intellectual furniture, rather like their prototype, the Encyclopedia Britannica (which also backed the project).

      the phrase "intellectual furniture" is sort of painful here...

    1. This is the Deluxe edition of the Great Books of the Western World. There are three versions of the set. the least expensive was cloth-bound. That was the original version published in 1952. In the 1970's a tan edition was issued that was more expensive. The problem is that the binding tends to chip and crack unless it was kept in a dark, refrigerated closet. This set, which is half bound in black Fabricoid (imitation Morocco leather) and half in cloth was the most expensive of the three, costing upwards of $1800 in the mid-Eighties, and the most durable with gilt tops.

      1952, 1970s, 1980s editions and their differences.

  16. Feb 2023
    1. what it means to be human and in our own humanness explore how do we fit into an every changing, evolving environment in a transforming world and universe. What does it mean to be human.  It appears to be forgotten in this world we live in. A quote from a recent article which I wrote "Recreating a  world of wonder" "But, somehow, we have lost our sense of wonder, buried our curiosity, and gravitated into a quagmire of deception, misbelief, and angry fear, fed to us by those who wish to control everything, as if that were even possible."

      Recreating a world of wonder - What does it mean to be human?

  17. Jan 2023
    1. you've got a climate denier in charge of 00:42:13 the World Bank so why are you surprised that the World Bank is completely failing to do its job

      !- world bank : leader is a climate denier

    1. I'm still against frozen-string-literal by default. It is arguable if the string creation limits performance so much in real-world programs. We need to first measure how much Ruby can be faster by frozen-string-literal. If it is not significant, Ruby should prefer dynamics and flexibility.
    1. https://press.princeton.edu/series/ancient-wisdom-for-modern-readers

      This appears like Princeton University Press is publishing sections of someone's commonplace books as stand alone issues per heading where each chapter has a one or more selections (in the original language with new translations).

      This almost feels like a version of The Great Books of the Western World watered down for a modern audience?

    1. There’s a caveat that we’re aware of—while Hydrogen and App developers only require one runtime (Node), Theme developers need two now: Ruby and Node.

      Well, you could write standards-compliant JS... Then people could run it on the runtime everyone already has installed, instead of needing to download Node.

    1. By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college. But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera. Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.
  18. Dec 2022
    1. Eno’s strategies don’t always appeal to the musicians he works with. In Geeta Dayal’s book about the album, also titled “Another Green World,” the bassist Percy Jones recalls, “There was this one time when he gave everybody a piece of paper, and he said write down 1 to 100 or something like that, and then he gave us notes to play against specific numbers.” Phil Collins, who played drums on the album, reacted to these instructions by throwing beer cans across the room. “I think we got up to about 24 and then we gave up and did something else,” Jones said.

      Example of Brian Eno using combinatorial creativity using cards to generate music.

      This sounds similar to a process used by Austin Kleon which I've noted before.

  19. Nov 2022
  20. view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org
    1. Most of the tourist and sporting infrastructure had to be built at enormous expense — estimates range anywhere from$200 billion to $300 billion. Yet the return on investment for huge events like this is rarely positive. The Olympics are infamously pricey  to put on, and the economic benefits for residents of the host city are questionable.  So, with the big price tag and not much to show in return, why do countries like Qatar, Russia and Brazil offer up billions of dollars to host global sporting events? According to Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross and a former Major League Soccer referee, they may be seeking to burnish their reputations through international media coverage.   “If you’re putting any sort of significant money into infrastructure like Qatar obviously is doing, there’s just no way you can make that back on ticket sales, on media rights, [or] on the amount of money you make from tourists coming to visit your country,” Matheson said in an interview with Marketplace’s David Brancaccio. “So obviously, you’re hoping for some sort of long-run benefits, some sort of legacy, and often that is an improvement in your reputation, either as a tourist destination or as a world player in some ways.” 

      Alternate thesis for why countries and cities vie to host money-losing events like the World Cup and the Olympics: grift.

      With the necessary need for building infrastructure, there's easy and ample opportunity for cooking the books and pushing cash flow into the pockets of contractors and political figures as well as into the pockets of the governing bodies and their officials.

      Cross reference FIFA bribery

      Some of the money may go into the local economy and workers which is good, but who's really benefitting here? Where is the money going? Who is footing the loss? It can't all be written off to goodwill.

    1. Empiricism was thenew intellectual trend. Before this, just about any difficult question on anysubject at all could find a perfectly acceptable answer in authority of one kind oranother—in ‘It is God’s will’, rather than ‘Let’s find out’.

    Tags

    Annotators

  21. Oct 2022
    1. http://www.greyroom.org/issues/60/20/the-dialectic-of-the-university-his-masters-voice/

      “The Indexers pose with the file of Great Ideas. At sides stand editors [Mortimer] Adler (left) and [William] Gorman (right). Each file drawer contains index references to a Great Idea. In center are the works of the 71 authors which constitute the Great Books.” From “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog,” Life 24, no. 4 (26 January 1948). Photo: George Skadding.

  22. Sep 2022
    1. The difficulties of producing an OAS 3.0 spec without it helped validate that the keyword was needed, and not (as some claimed) a solution looking for a problem. The best feedback is always real-world usage.
    1. here's an old model from the 19th century of memory which actually in the 21st century has come 00:13:03 back as a pretty good one as a metaphor anyway so the idea is that rain comes down on the ground and there's a little regularities randomly there and at some point those regularities will be a 00:13:17 little more responsive to the rain and a little channel will form the channel acts as an amplifier and so wherever that channel got started it starts funneling lots more water through it other water is draining into 00:13:31 it and all of a sudden it starts cutting deeper and you get these gullies and you get down into these gullies you have to remember to look up because everything 00:13:44 down there in this gully is kind of pink you can think that the world is pink and in fact if you get into a real gully one of my favorites is Grand Canyon by the 00:13:57 way that's only a hundred million years of erosion to get the Grand Canyon it's relatively recent get into one of these things and the enormity of what you see 00:14:08 outwards Dwarfs what you can see if you look up if you've ever been on one of these things you're just in a different world it's a pink world you don't think 00:14:23 about climbing out of it you think about moving along in it

      !- In other words : stuck in a groove - stuck in a conceptual groove -

  23. Aug 2022
    1. https://occidental.substack.com/p/the-adlernet-guide-part-ii?sd=pf

      Description of a note taking method for reading the Great Books: part commonplace, part zettelkasten.

      I'm curious where she's ultimately placing the cards to know if the color coding means anything in the end other than simply differentiating the card "types" up front? (i.e. does it help to distinguish cards once potentially mixed up?)

    2. But the real goal of a Great Books reading program is to experience the minds of these authors (something the Schoolmen called connatural knowledge) and imprint whatever value we find there on our souls (i.e. will and intellect). This can only be done through a process of intentional re-reading.
    1. I think we can define an "archival virtual machine" specification that is efficient enough to be usable but simple enough that it never needs to be updated and is easy to implement on any platform; then we can compile our explorable explanations into binaries for that machine. Thenceforth we only need to write new implementations of the archival virtual machine platform as new platforms come along

      We have that. It's the Web platform. The hard part is getting people to admit this, and then getting them to actually stop acting counter to these interests. Sometimes that involves getting them to admit that their preferred software stack (and their devotion to it) is the problem, and it's not going to just fix itself.

      See also: Lorie and the UVC

    1. lack of a common powerful hi-level language available on every computer remains. You still cannot write a script file and send it to everyone and expect them to be able to run it without installing something first. The closest we probably have is HTML with JS embedded, since everyone has an HTML browser installed
    1. Louis Menand had an interesting article on great books courses recently: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-montas-rescuing-socrates.

      If you look closely at those photos of Adler, you'll notice that one is in context and the other is the same image of him cut and pasted onto a set of books.

      Those who are into this broader topic may also appreciate Alex Beam's book "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books". A while back I remember going though Lawrence Principe's Great Courses lecture series on the History of Science to 1700 which I suspect might help contextualize a tour through the great courses.

      I'm curious if you're adding any other books that Adler et al left off their list?

    1. https://github.com/sajjad2881/NewSyntopicon

      Someone's creating a new digitally linked version of the Syntopicon as text files for Obsidian (and potentially other platforms). Looks like it's partial at best and will need a lot of editing work to become whole.

      found by way of

      Has anyone made a hypermedia rendition of the Syntopicon, i.e. with transcluded windows or "parallel pages" into the indexed texts?<br><br>Many of Adler's Great Books are public domain, so it wouldn't require *so* titanic a copyright issue… pic.twitter.com/UmWiyn5aBC

      — Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak) August 17, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. no matter how ill-adapted it is to our needs

      I dunno. I think the common argument that the Web was not intended to be an application delivery platform is both (a) ignorant of basic facts in subtle ways that are materially relevant to the particular use case described here and (b) poorly applied to this use case, given those particulars.

      I don't like most traditional Web apps or what passes for best practices in the contemporary culture. I don't write them, and I'm not defending them.

      But we're talking about scientific literature here. I'll dispute the general argument as it applies to the specific use case under discussion by pointing out that a document-centric platform is in fact exactly the correct tool for the job in this case. The only thing that could be better is if you were able to write your paper more or less as you ordinarily do for journal publication and then feed the journal article into a machine able to comprehend the methods at a deep level and then simulate what it describes. We don't have that, though. But we can to author documents that are a little more explicit instead. This is not a terrible consolation prize. So we really should start seizing the benefits of the current circumstances, lest the Web platform actually turn into something unsuited for this. (Which, perversely, is most likely to happen as a result of pursuing the vision of making it more suited for traditional software development.)

      Again—by all means, don't compile to asm.js (or WASM, or from TypeScript, etc.). Put it to use on its strengths and in the spirit of its original vision.

    2. Note however that it’s not “any of today’s virtual machine managers”

      I agree. And this very reason (along with the complexity, mentioned in the following paragraph) is what should disqualify VirtualBox.

      The virtual machine manager you should use is the one you assumed would be available when you published this post (and that you were correct about, and that I am using right now to read it): the Web browser.

    3. For the 2013 Web platform, you may hope that its sheer popularity will motivate someone to keep it alive, but I wouldn’t bet on it either. The Web platform is too complex and too ill-defined to be kept alive reliably when no one uses it in daily life any more.

      There's some sleight of hand here, which treats "when no one uses it in daily life anymore" as a given. That (folks continuing to use it) is the stability of the Web platform.

      Besides, even if we suppose that people have stopped using it (dubious), the entirety of what constitutes "the 2013 Web platform" is not necessary—only the parts that are actually used for computation and I/O. That's much smaller.

    1. David Cournape made the interesting observation that no technology less than 20 years old is better than Python in terms of stability.

      Not true. The standardized Web platform is not just more stable than Python, it's probably one of the most stable platforms in existence. It just moves (read: improves) slowly.*

      Most people don't recognize this, because they pack the stable, standardized parts all in the same mental bag as the shiny, non-standardized parts (like Flash, for an example of decades past, or experimental vendor-specific stuff for a more evergreen problem), then end up getting bit in a similar way and blaming the environment rather than communal tendencies towards recklessness.

      It also turns out that the Web's original academic underpinnings are deeply aligned with the goals of researchers looking for a way to work together—even if the final puzzle piece (ECMA-262) didn't come into existence until later in the decade when the Web first appeared. It's still old enough that it passes the litmus test proposed here.

      * for good reason; after all, look at the evidence

    1. Correspondingly, there was a striking decline in studies oflinguistic method in the early 1950s as the most active theoretical minds turnedto the problem of how an essentially closed body of technique could be appliedto some new domain – say, to analysis of connected discourse, or to other cul-tural phenomena beyond language. I arrived at Harvard as a graduate studentshortly after B. F. Skinner had delivered his William James Lectures, later to bepublished in his book Verbal Behavior. Among those active in research in thephilosophy or psychology of language, there was then little doubt that althoughdetails were missing, and although matters could not really be quite that sim-ple, nevertheless a behavioristic framework of the sort Skinner had outlinedwould prove quite adequate to accommodate the full range of language use.

      Are these the groans of a movement from a clockwork world perspective to a complexity based one?

    1. I basically think of it as an "executable README". A README or blog post often contains shell commands. So I just copy those into a script.

      Suppose that instead of shell commands, the snippets were JS, and the README, rather than being named README.markdown or README.txt, were actually named e.g. README.txt.htm. it wouldn't be basically like an executable README—it would actually be executable. You could double click it to open, and then read through it and use it to actually do the stuff that the README is documenting (like build the project in question).

  24. Jul 2022
    1. Hayek worried they would never let go

      Once the government has control of the economy, will they ever let go?

    1. Let us briefly discuss three specific examples of concepts that seem particularly promising for theprospect of ‘good enough world’ and could become synergistically interrelated: (a) the social policy ofunconditional basic income, (b) the development of blockchains and (c) the idea of the offer networks

      !- claim : examples of a good enough world * Universal Basic Income (UBI) * Blockchain * Offer network

    2. A Good Enough World

      !- question : good enough world * This term seems a bit counter-intuitive as a "good enough world" is actually advocated as one of the better solutions for the future of our civilization.