The Power of Culture

We Can’t Help Describing Trump as Powerful Because We Describe All Men as Powerful The above is a really well-written piece of cultural criticism (if the title triggers you, try treading the article anyway). What is power? As the article notes, “Now, Trump lacks any of the “masculine virtues” androphilia supposedly values—a warrior physique, military experience, good strategic judgment, vigor, stamina—but that’s the...

Phone Mic Surveillance by Google?

So yesterday my son played me a video of a guy who modded a roomba to play audio files whenever it bumped into things. That was on his phone, on his account. My phone was nearby. Today, my phone shows me roomba ads. I’ve gone through every app on my phone, and only Google has microphone permissions. Nothing I’ve done except watch a video on someone else’s phone would give Google any indication I’m...

Orange Juice Packaging

You know those half gallons of orange juice in the grocery store? 1/2 gallon = 64 ounces. About five years ago they all suddenly became 59 ounces. Well, I just noticed that they have all suddenly become 52 ounces. Of course, the price is the same. So in effect that is an 18.75% price increase over five years ago, and an 11.9% increase over earlier this year. Maybe most people don’t notice, but I certainly do. I’m...

When algorithms fail

Algorithmic fail… So I search for “Sinners Like Me CD” on eBay (Eric Church). Ebay suggests related items: “Just Like Me perfume”, “Dolls Like Me” (apparently a line of multi-ethnic children’s/girls dolls), and “‘Sinner’ T-shirts”. Presumably the algorithm took word pairs out of the original search string and matched them against the most popular...

Thinking about Change

Improving the world: I’ve noticed an interesting challenge. Someone sees an issue… something wrong in the world. Say, rapacious capitalism. They propose a solution, or a framework to a solution. Now it may be well-thought-out. Or it may be foolish. But the response always seems to be, “You proposal seems similar to X, and X didn’t work in the past.” Now if you get that in response to every...

On Techo-Reactionaries

The Dark Side of LED Lighting It seems that no matter what technical progress we make, someone is going to complain that they like the old way better. And they will of course have extensive “scientific” reasons for their preferences, since appearing scientific is how we increase or persuasive effect. Now it may be that there is some small but measurable effect on people (I haven’t noticed it after extensive...

The Spurious Dragons of Environmentalism

According to the voting guide the Focus on the Family (a so-called Christian lobbying group that recently re-incorporated as a church): “Environmentalism, according to the source the manual recommends to church groups, is a “litany of the Green Dragon” and “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.” ” Sorry, that is not Christianity. That is Mammon leading the faithful by the nose. It is beyond...

Why Should Ordinary People Care about the Stock Ma...

Whenever the stock market rises, the press cheers like that is a good thing. But increasingly people are wondering why. Something has changed. Indeed, a lot of the rules around how we are supposed to think about things have changed in the past 20 years. It used to be that when companies made a lot of money they went out and built new factories and hired a lot of new people. And when that was true, it made sense to cheer when...

Facts and Reality

The headline: “Americans increasingly disagree about basic facts”. So basically… for each disputed fact, one side is wrong. Or are we re-defining the word “fact”? And if one side is wrong for each of these facts, shouldn’t the headline read, “Americans increasingly out of touch with reality”?

Wages and Gender

The headline reads: “Why Are Women Still Choosing the Lowest-Paying Jobs?” But that is really just framing the questions wrong. Maybe we should instead be asking how it is that those jobs that women have historically gravitated towards somehow ended up becoming fields that are relatively underpaid. The question of what any given job “should” make is a very interesting one, both on the low end and on...

On the Evolution of Fairy Tales

The headline: In The Original Sleeping Beauty, The King Is A Sexual Harasser Who Forces Himself On The Princess My thoughts: I guess this brings up the question of what constitutes the “original” of a fairy tale. Most people would say the Brothers Grimm versions are the original, but the Grimms were editors (at times quite heavy-handed editors) of stories, some of which had been in circulation hundreds of year...

Intellectually honest headline of the day

Intellectually honest headline of the day: “CERN Scientists Conclude that the Universe Should Not Exist”.