deathmtn

A colleague passed along this old paper: What Do Prototypes Prototype?

It's from the '90s (I saw the @ix.netcom.com email address and thought that was weird before reading on about the Apple Newton). It's about how prototypes should be specific and limited about what they prototype. In addition to allowing you to learn more from them, they make making them much more possible.

I went through a "we (or I) should always prototype everything first!" phase about a decade or so, but it often didn't help me. Without a narrow focus, making them wasn't that much easier than just building the real thing. So, subconsciously, I drifted back into always "doin' it live" especially for my personal projects.

I think that paper has reinvigorated the spirit of the prototyping '90s in me! Partly because the implementation time of the still not done, Observatory has me demoralized, I'm gonna try earnestly prototyping stuff again!

Risky business: linking Toxoplasma gondii infection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries

Using a saliva-based assay, we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for T. gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in ‘management and entrepreneurship' over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197).

As Smidgeo sez: "Entreprenures with Toxoplasmosis Smidgeovate the MOSTEST"

Via Hot Garbage.

I just want to look at things right now. I don't want to do things.

How to type an emdash (—) in Ubuntu 18. Once you turn on the Compose key setting, it's [whatever key you pick for Compose], then `---`.

This is something I meant to look up for six months!

A really nice sequence of lighthouse photos, culminating in a really satisfying rainbowy sunset photo.

Hisss is good! It's a game that a four-year-old (at least our four-year-old) will find compelling and can pick up easily. I enjoyed looking at the nice gradient snake tiles.

I was hoping to get all of my tweets deleted and have my account closed before the end of the year. I tried again today, and I think tools like cleantweets can only get what the Twitter API gives it access to via the `user` endpoint (I'm guessing). So, it can only delete about a year's worth of tweets. I've experienced the same with the t utility.

So, I could write my own thing that uses the search API to get at those old tweets, but I resent the idea of spending effort on what should be easy.

I can also close the account without deleting the tweets. This is what I did when I stopped Facebook. Even though I know it only marks a field in a row rather than actually deleting, it is possible that GDPR or something prevents them from using those posts. Or, I could imagine an infrastructure in which it's just less convenient to use them, and that might be enough to keep it.

I suppose it doesn't really matter that much; I just have some completionist ideal built up in my head. I guess if I don't find something easy by the end of the year, I'll just delete the account and stop the bots from posting over there.

2-4-6-8-2-4-1. Ran a bit further than I normally do. It was still less than half of what Katt runs.

It did feel good. It would do me a lot of good to run more than half a mile a day, but I can't think of how I would fit that into a normal workday so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"for the love of all that’s Googley"

People who work at Google are both encouraged to inform on their coworkers and to fear being informed on. Carrot and stick! Now that's Google-Spanner-level problem-solving applied to behavioral conditioning!

One effect of rising inequality is that, to protect yourself, you can find yourself softening your morals. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those big company salaries?, it's easy to think. And who could blame you, when you live in a place where you can still struggle with a six figure salary? Some companies are paying half a million dollars a year to the right technical leaders. Some are paying much more than that. Wouldn't that make everything better? To not have to worry about money all the time? To feel successful?
…
It's as if there are invisible billboards yelling at you to be rich.

About ten years ago, when quants came into the spotlight, I thought it curious that so much ability was being wasted. Quants are often people with physics or math PhDs that decide to work for Wall Street to exploit systems in order to make a lot of money for investors. Some examples of their work are automated trading bots and dangerous financial instruments. Why did they use their skills to create things like this instead of solving and discovering problems that would help people? I imagine it is because everyone told them, mostly implicitly, that money is what is important, even if it's divorced from actual value and comes from elaborate gamesmanship.

I have felt that at times, but my personal hatred of boredom has provided a serendipitous shield from that kind of pressure. Since 2016, however, I've felt it again, but for another reason. Rationally, I think that mostly working as normal and waiting out this administration is the best financial strategy. However, I can't help but think that there multiple ways, ranging from the idiotic to the sinister, in which Trump will make life here untenable.

Should that come to pass, wouldn't it then be best to have hoarded cash so that we can optimize our chances of escape? From an expected value lens, it's not a good idea to behave as if the worst will happen. But fear is usually not something that accepts your argument once and agrees to not reprosecute its case.