Researchers claim to have achieved perfect randomness. (Hopefully nothing like True Level). But I kind of liked the Lava Lamps.

I did not know that (some of) Europe mandates family dynasties by forcing a minimum percentage of an estate be passed down to the children. Wild.

Anton Petrov answers the questions we’ve all asked — We finally know why T-Rex had those tiny arms (and more new T-Rex facts) (Video)

My wife might have nightmares if she found out — Bees can use tools to solve problems.

If you’ve read too much Watchmen, then you are probably willing to read the argument that Doctor Manhattan did not in fact kill Rorschach (and what he did do, instead).

Skeptic Magazine (of all places) has an article called “Was Lamarck Right About Evolution?” The answer is a complicated “No, but…” Lamarck was a more subtle thinker and on an important track and the entire “cutting off mice’s tails” was a bizarre reductio ad absurdum he wouldn’t have endorsed. (I might read the book the article is reviewing).

Running the Voyinch manuscript through some tests — Does the Voyinch Manuscript obey Zipf’s Law?

(Also April, which didn’t have many because …. I was busy).

Arnold Kling discusses the Moral Dyad.

Bryan Caplan wrote an RPG one-shot called “Badger and Skinny Pete,” based on the characters from Breaking Bad?! (Discovered in a profile of Dwarkesh Patel)

A thorough comment explaining why price transparency in health care is nigh impossible.

The Illuminati game in real life might be stranger than the game. Sure, the CIA controls the Orbital Mind Control Lasers, but you’ll be surprised who runs the Weather Satellites! Do Fungi control the weather?¹

Every Frame a Painting (with TCM) — Ozu in Color. EFAP (With Criterion) — The Visual Comedy of Isle Of Dogs.

I played HF4A solitaire and wrote a summary on BGG. (Part 1, Part 2)

I had noticed a bunch of AI videos on Youtube (I no longer trust new channels) but it’s even hit Sumo. Spiffy calls them out. But if people think there is money to be made creating slop in such a niche product, I assume that’s another marker as to how cheap video creation (etc) has become. Incidentally, I remember that Neal Stephenson predicted that the internet would be overrun with slop in Anathem, and Fall, or Dodge in Hell².

Corporate Sanity? Part 1 — Is Agile finally being sent to a farm upstate? (One can hope). Some signs in the Fidelity re-org.

Part 2 — Bolt CEO fires entire HR team for “creating problems that didn’t exist.” (There was one company I worked for that I considered quitting on day one, the HR dept was so messed up …. I was still considering it when the founders fired the head of HR and read the rest of them the riot act³).

A Spa …. for stuffed animals. (Stuffed animal cleaning and repair).

A Peter Watts talk from 8 years ago …. the part from 15:00ish to 24:00 ish where he talks about writing Blindsight were of particular interest if you’ve read the book (but all of it was of interest to me).

Anton Petrov covers the recent advances in Project Ceti (decoding whale language) …. including when unrelated Sperm whales were captured (video and audio) coordinating helping midwife a birth.

Philosophical ideas that were behind their time (in that, you are surprised how late it was proposed).

Japan runs out of Robot Wolves in Fight Against Bears. I await the Guillermo del Toro movie. (A decade ago, I would be awaiting eagerly, but now … eh).

I’ve never heard of Jon Peterson, but he’s an expert on the history of wargames and RPGs? An interview with him — What Playing Games can teach us about simulating the future.

In many languages, the word for “night” is the letter “N” plus the word for “Eight” (give or take).

The Modern Passport System has eliminated Fraud, Forgery …. and heroes who bend the rules to save lives.

RIP Christian Freeling (abstract game designer).

1. Obligatory link to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines ︎
2. In Anathem, the IT specialists assign all data a reliability/reputation score because 99% is slop; in the latter one character builds a slop auto-generator for slander and unleashes it, specifically to force people to stop trusting anything they read. ︎
3. I still quit soon after that, but that probably delayed it by at least … a week. The entire engineering department was cheered up by the news. ︎