Sunday, January 24, 2021

January Diversions

Rabbit holes that I went down in January, largely thanks to Pocket:
The thing that stood out to me in the teaser pics for this article about the "new" oval office was the gorgeous blue carpet, but it turns out that what is shown in this office changes with every administration in order to make specific statements, and the change had to be done in 5 hours for Biden! https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/20/biden-oval-office/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
This article breaks "fortune favors the ready" into an actually pretty good detailed plan, and there is also a funny ancedote about a test that was done on two people on a british TV show: https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-open-up-to-serendipity-and-create-your-own-luck?utm_source=pocket-newtab
This article was supposed to be about new surveilance database mining techniques, but all of that seemed obscured by the missed elphant-in-the-room of how military intervention in civilian populations wholly fails: https://www.wired.com/story/palantirs-gods-eye-view-of-afghanistan/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
A fascinating article about how Josh Hawley's mentors and acquaintances mourned somebody who they had previously recognized as gifted.https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/19/josh-hawley-senator-stanford-history-capitol-insurrection-ambition-460481?utm_source=pocket-newtab
It turns out that the difference in the look of the eyelids for asian faces has a name I had never heard of, "monolid", the insultingness of which this author does a great job of writing about. The fact that some people come up with ways to create eyelid "creases" artificially seems incredible and something I've never thought about. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/on-monolids-and-the-language-of-beauty?utm_source=pocket-newtab
This was just a fun attempt to analyze something that can be verified instantly to be true. Interestingly it doesn't dive any into how this analysis could help improve work environments, although I guess that people are experimenting with ideas related to this these days. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210114-why-youre-more-creative-in-coffee-shops
I was unaware that stromatolites were still present on Earth, but this article also does a great job of investigating other evolutionary curiosities that can also be seen: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20210117-stromatolites-the-earths-oldest-living-lifeforms?utm_source=pocket-newtab&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fgetpocket.com%2Frecommendations
I guess the mystery of the end of the Mayan empire has been solved. This drought must have been incredible. It was essentially a Mad Max story that actually happend! https://getpocket.com/explore/item/ancient-mud-reveals-an-explanation-for-sudden-collapse-of-the-mayan-empire
A google news search for the "mystery FM signal" from Ganemede, one of Jupiter's moons. The results are nearly all sensationalized reporting by Fox News stations. Mixed in are other legitimate articles about the Juno mission: https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqOQgKIjNDQklTSURvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoTUtFUWkwdTliVGtZQU1FYkVCMVZkMUtCY1JLQUFQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
One of the articles with a fair amount of good detail: https://www.wpri.com/dont-miss/space-discovery-fm-radio-signal-found-coming-from-jupiter-moon/
The Space Race Chess Set!
The twitter post about it: https://twitter.com/timmermansr/status/1340318570471972864
The makerbot page with the source files: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2078833

Friday, January 1, 2021

December diversions

Misc links from rabbit holes run down in December 2020:
In the list of things everybody seemed to know about something I liked except me, George Harrison's (long running) affair with Ringo Starr's wife. Of course the full story once learned just seems sad, people lost in a maelstrom out of their control:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/when-george-harrison-had-an-affair-with-ringos-wife-maureen.html/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Starkey_Tigrett
https://startsat60.com/media/lifestyle/entertainment/pattie-boyd-george-harrison-affair-ringo-starrs-wife-maureen
"Curves not Combat Boots" an interestingly different approach to women's workout fashion: https://curvesncombatboots.com/products/
Info about some of the Myazaki movies that Nina was bingeing on once we got HBOMax:
The Secret World of Arrietty, which is based on The Borrowers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrietty
Arrietty's IMDB page. Supposedly the english language version had stuff added to mask over the typically sad Japanese ending. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568921/
Electron first stage recovery was a really interesting thing that happened in November.
The usual fact-laden article from NSF. The tininess of the payload and rocket diameter can be seen in the integration photo: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/11/rocket-lab-attempt-first-stage-recovery/
Also Launcher One finally made orbit too:
https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1350818131787309056