Predominantly Erroneous (Exohedron nonsense blog)

Today apparently wasn't a good day for driving. I passed two accidents on the way to work less than a mile apart. Fortunately the road was wide enough to switch to other lanes. I think that the accident in front was the first; the accident behind was what one might call a "merge conflict" which I'm guessing was the result of them trying to get around the other accident.

 

Chainsawman is so good.

 

It turns out that the combination of sending in undercover cops who reveal themselves in order to beat up protesters while also claiming that there's a core of violent protesters leads to people claiming that the violent protesters are actually all undercover cops performing false flag operations. Who would have guessed.

 

What's the observational analog of Goodhart's law, where instead of classifying by the property you actually want because it's too hard to measure, you instead measure a proxy, which then becomes the property that you classify things by?

 

One of the issues with purely language-focused attempts at progressiveness: making titles gender-neutral only results in people assuming that the prestigious titles always apply to men and the non-prestigious ones always apply to women [change axes of discrimination as appropriate] so that female doctors are told to their faces that "Doctor [name] is a man and therefore you aren't Doctor [name]".
The Newspeak only papers over the issue of discriminatory stereotyping, which not only doesn't actually fix the problem but makes it harder to fix because it's harder to talk about. Sure, if "doctress" were a word then people would be demeaning doctresses as less worthy than doctors, but at least we'd be able to talk about the issue. Instead we get a "I don't see color" problem, where the interlocutor doesn't have or refuses to have the vocabulary to have a meaningful discussion.
This is not to say that gender-neutral titles are bad, but there are issues with the usage and treatment of them in the current cultural environment. When the language is blind but the users are not, we get problems.

I get the feeling that if I were to ever start a tumblr and get asked about social justice or accused of being problematic or called out or whatever the fuck, I'd probably deal with the issue by dumping a heavily-caveated wall of text that doesn't actually address whatever the complaint was.

 

Suddenly realizing that the two parts of the chorus of "Love is a Battlefield" aren't shaped the same way. The first part has four lines

The first three lines of the second part are shaped the same way as the corresponding lines of the first part

but then we get an extra line

Honestly the first part of the chorus sounds a bit weird to me, because the way that the lines land, there's about a bar's worth of vocal rest after "Love is a battlefield" before "We are strong" hits.

 

Binary Sunset only instead of actually playing the whole tune you just hold the second note for like six minutes.

 

Occasionally I think about rebinding all of the keys on my work computer, but I don't, not only because of the productivity hit I would take from having to get used to the new keybindings, but also from the time I would have to spend rebinding all of the keys.

 

Is it mutualism when I grab the insects that keep slamming themselves into the ceiling lights and throw them out the window?

 

Tempted to cover my front door in math for Halloween.

 

I have so much respect for people who actually compose breakcore note-by-note. I'm trying not to just use layers of copy-pasted loops for once and it's taking so much time.
I should just get around to making that Python program that I've been thinking about.

 

Is being comfortable/happy with the idea that life and existence is inherently meaningless and that each individual is thus capable of determining the meaning and significance of their story a form of privilege that not everyone has?

 

Sort-of following on the last post, I think one of my fascinations with the notion of the flat, empty, infinite gray plane of nihilism is that I like the idea of being a tiny speck surrounded by something so simple that I can describe it fully but so vast that I'm not actually sure if I comprehend it.
Another one is that, given a lack of sensory input, the human brain inevitably starts to hallucinate, to fill the emptiness with something if only because nothingness doesn't fit into its model, and sometimes the things conjured in this fashion are themselves interesting.

If you shut your eyes you see things created from within. What happens when you turn off your sense of purpose?

 

Can't wait for the political conspiracy/shitshow revolving around water that leads to a giant, tribalistic us-vs-them flamewar, and more importantly I can't wait for the question of what to call it.

 

The difference between a representation of a groupoid and a representation of the associated groupoid algebra.

 

It might be only a few notes of overlap, but I kind of feel like someone could make a good mashup of Duel of the Fates and the title song from Phantom of the Opera.

 

Every once in a while I learn that the set of music I think is enjoyable is a lot larger than I think it is, but then I remember that the set of music that I'd actually want to listen to is quite small in comparison to the music that I think is pleasant.

But man, indie pop and those arpeggiated square waves: nice.

 

It's getting to the point where I'll just forgive a lot of lane-changing shenanigans as long as they use their blinkers properly. If you're going to change lanes, you signal which direction you're going to go in before you move, hopefully early enough that the cars around you can get out of the way.

 

I'm learning that I have no idea what human vocal ranges are like. I've got like Johnny Cash on one end and Vitas on the other and I don't actually know how much space is in between.

 

Squiddhārtha