My mind has many nooks and crannies ... like an english muffin
Talking Past Each Other We Are
· ☕ 1608  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I was reading a discussion on social media about a request for a book recommendation and, after awhile, thought maybe I should be diagramming arguments. The request was for science fiction book recommendations from a conservative, non-libertarian view. The person submitting the request specifically asked for books where “the central tenets of conservatism - tradition, hierarchy and authority - are working for humanity; where tradition is used to help, guide and comfort people rather than cynically used as a tool to keep people down.
Senator Tillis, I Don't Understand
· ☕ 310  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Senator Thom Tillis is angry that Twitter is not sending a witness to an Anti-Piracy hearing he is holding in December. Setting aside the question of why the Senator is actually holding a hearing in December, I’m puzzled why the Senator thinks Twitter is a giant avenue of piracy. Lies and deceit, yes, but piracy? The Senator’s letter to Twitter claims that “[Twitter] continues to host and permit rampant infringement of music files on its platform” and that it hasn’t taken any “meaningful steps to address the scale of the problem.
Microsoft Patents Recording and Scoring Meetings on Body Language
· ☕ 294  words work  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Ok, the title is just slightly over the top because Microsoft filed for the patents back in July but the filings just became public; it doesn’t have them yet. BBC News So apparently there would be sensors which “could” record, which invitees actually attend a meeting attendees body language and facial expressions amount of time each participant spent contributing to the meeting speech patterns “consistent with boredom and fatigue” This information would be combined with other factors such as how efficient the meeting was, emotional sentiment expressed by participants and how comfortable the environment was into an overall quality score.
Update on Kentucky Police Training - Warrior or Guardian
· ☕ 162  words politics life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
An update on an earlier post about a training deck used by the Kentucky State Police urging cadets to be ruthless killers and quoting Hitler advocating violence. At the time that story broke on Oct 30, the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet claimed the material had been removed in 2013. Since that date, state police have not replied to subsequent records requests. Maybe that particular slide deck was removed in 2013, but the Lexington Herald Leader reported today, confirmed by the Governor and the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet that another training video had been approved for training use in September of this year that featured Nazi symbols.
Suggestions? I don't want to watch assholes be assholes
· ☕ 74  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I don’t want to watch assholes be assholes. This seems to eliminate all news, any social media where echo chambers interact, all sitcoms (really, is there any sitcom which doesn’t consist of making fun of people?), most dramas, most movies and most social media or forum where people are anonymous. Any suggestions would be appreciated. As usual, feel free to disagree using this contact link. My world view is a hypothesis, not a belief.
Brussels Sprouts
· ☕ 562  words food  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Many of us grew up with a dislike for Brussels sprouts. One reason we knew - our parents, as taught by their parents, as taught by their parents …. back to some English ancestors boiled everything to death. Maybe it was for sanitary reasons, but as an old Asterix and Obelix cartoon claimed, the British boil everything so that it has that lovely “same” flavour. (Some people claim that Britain became a global empire just looking for good food.
Thank You Aaron Van Langevelde
· ☕ 166  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Thank you Aaron Van Langevelde, the Republican member of the Michigan board of state canvassers who said “We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have. As John Adams once said, ‘We are a government of laws, not men.’ This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.
We need a new enemy
· ☕ 632  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Given the degree of polarization in the US, I don’t see both sides making nice. The obvious answer is to stop trying to shove the two magnets together and get them both focused on a new common enemy. I’d prefer the common enemy to be COVID or climate change, but such a large percentage of the US is anti-science that those would just feed the current polarization. The only thought I’ve been able to come up with so far is anti-corruption, and it needs to be targeted at both in business and government.
Sound Familiar? Extracts from Guards, Guards
· ☕ 508  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
These are extracts from Guards, Guards, a fantasy novel written by the late Terry Pratchett in 1989. Sound familiar to any current events? Historical events? The Supreme Grand Master “What a shower, he told himself. A bunch of incompetents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Sceptre of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake. But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident.
I've put myself in your shoes. You're still wrong
· ☕ 457  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
A lot of times I find myself telling people that I don’t disagree with them BUT… Everyone’s ears and brain immediately shut down at the word “But”. I know it, and still can’t help myself. The word “AND"works much better. The point that I am often trying to make is asking the person whether they are actually trying to accomplish something or just rant. To change a situation, you either need enough force to override the other side or you need to change minds on the other side.
Dreams and Overfitting - Broken Conversations
· ☕ 883  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
We don’t know a lot about dreams. A recent paper by Erik Hoel The Overfitted Brain: Dreams evolved ot assist generalization at Tufts Universtity suggests that one possible reason for weird dreams is your brain is trying to avoid “overfitting”. If you don’t want to read the paper itself (long but easy read), you can read an article about it at Discover Magazine. The concept of overfitting is borrowed from deep neural networks where the network is trying to “learn” from a dataset, but focuses so tightly on that dataset that it can’t generalize to similar but not identical datasets.
Where is Peru's President?
· ☕ 238  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
As a distraction from US politics, where is Peru’s president? Let’s set the scene. More than half of the members of Congress are currently under investigation for corruption. Congress removed the popular former President Martín Vizcarra on Nov 9 claiming he had mismanaged the COVID situation and claiming he had taken bribes while as a regional governor years ago. The head of Congress, Manuel Merino, took over as President and faced immediate huge protests, leading to police killing two protestors and injuring dozens of others on Saturday.
Queen of Method Singing?
· ☕ 529  words music  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
There is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle difference between singing for an audience, to an audience, with an audience and at an audience. And there can be good reasons for choosing any of those approaches. I think of the Dixie Chicks doing Not Ready to Make Nice as a song that they could sing at an audience although that particular performance had a sympathetic crowd. I can get irritated watching a singer be overly dramatic because it distracts me from the song itself.