TIL about ray marching and fractals. Thank you for the pointer, Yannick Nelson!
“1984” (Keeping in Mind That I’ve Never Read It), by Ellis Rosen, The New Yorker, 23 January 2021.
It all started when Orwell was walking down the scary streets of 1984. He was about to open up Twitter and tweet about whatever came into his mind, and also the address, phone number, and Social Security number of a congressman he didn’t like. That’s when he saw them. The Thought Police. Generally speaking, Orwell loved the police and supported law and order. But, in this case, they were bad police, because he was the one who was in trouble.
Oh no, Thought Police, he thought.
“We heard that!” they shouted. “You’re under arrest for doing freedom!”
Brilliant! Spotted via Boing-Boing.
Lego Certified Professional Jumpei Mitsui brought Hokusai's iconic ukiyo-e woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (c. 1829-1833) into the Lego realm. Marvel at this incredible work in Osaka's Hankyu Brick Museum.
Sue Fletcher-Watson describes her plan for A Year of Radical No's and follows up with Nine Months of Saying No – an update. Thanks to Vashti Galpin for the pointer!
So my main fear was that this Strategic Leadership Course would try to feed me time management tips, taking up 6 precious days of my time, when what I need is just LESS WORK. Thank the lord, far from it. ... One session left a particularly strong impression on me. We spent some focused time considering the work-life balance challenges of another person on the course, culminating in offering them some advice. My advice? Say No, for a whole year, to everything new. Conferences, training, collaborations, journal reviews, student supervisions, the whole lot. Their response? Laughter. None of us could imagine doing such a thing.
Zeynip Tufekci, writing in The Atlantic, explains why Trump's ludicrous attempt at a coup cannot be laughed away.
The next attempt to steal an election may involve a closer election and smarter lawsuits. Imagine the same playbook executed with better decorum, a president exerting pressure that is less crass and issuing tweets that are more polite. If most Republican officials are failing to police this ham-handed attempt at a power grab, how many would resist a smoother, less grossly embarrassing effort?
(Image from Tom the Dancing Bug.)
A Tale of Two Pandemics: A graphic summary explaining how and why communities of colour suffer more from Covid. Spotted via BoingBoing.
Stefan Collini writes in the Guardian.
Then there is the rather less obvious contradiction between consumerism and education. Our higher education system is at present structurally consumerist. Even now, it is not widely understood how revolutionary were the changes introduced in 2010-12 by the coalition government in England and Wales (Scotland wisely followed another course). It wasn’t simply a “rise in fees”. It was a redefinition of universities in terms of a market model. The Office for Students is explicitly a “consumer watchdog”. Consumers are defined by their wants; in exchange for payment they are “entitled” to get what they ask for. ...
Universities are, by a long way, the main centres of research and scholarship in our societies; they curate the greater part of our intellectual and cultural inheritance; they provide by far the best source of disinterested expertise; they select and prepare those who will be the scholars and scientists of the future, and so on. Countries all over the world have found that you cannot fulfil these functions by distributing students and academics across all institutions either uniformly or randomly. Some element of selection and concentration is needed, and that brings with it some element of hierarchy, however unofficial. Explicit differentiation of function among higher education institutions might well be preferable to any pretence that they are all doing the same thing and doing it equally well.
