slawrence
3mo ago
Does anybody here subscribe to Asterisk (the magazine)? Have you gotten issue 5 delivered yet, and if so how long ago?
No question too simple or too silly.
You asked for it!
slawrence
7mo ago
The NYT (and fellow travelers) likely would view the article as bunk, because it's clearly a physics/energy/environment paper written by a CS professor. This is one of the few checks that journalists are able to perform, and from what I've seen they generally do perform that check.
They might also note that it hasn't been peer reviewed, and that it isn't formatted according to the accepted standard for scientific papers. (As QuantumFreakonomics says below, it's more blog than paper.)
Whether they would note what, concretely, is wrong with the paper, I think depends on who else they managed to interview, and how persuasive those would be.
slawrence
8mo ago
As others have pointed out, we might also worry about (say) Fetterman's cognitive capabilities. Or the emotional stability of some of congress's younger members.
I think it's better to look at this as a symptom. It's not like U.S. voters got together and said "okay, we'd like a gerontocracy". Rather, there's some underlying dysfunction preventing these people from being kicked out. This dysfunction ought to be identified and rectified, not just because having senile officeholders is bad, but because there may be still worse consequences.
We observe that politicians remain in office despite obvious incapacity. Outlawing a single obvious incapacity is hardly a solution.
slawrence
9mo ago
Makes sense. I was more concerned about the other influences (I didn't know how involved Kai Bird was for instance), but yeah I've seen Nolan films before and while I've never really liked them, they're at least not political.
Must've blown your mind to watch Schindler's List then :)
slawrence
9mo ago
This is a request for recommendations. I am dimly aware that after (and during) the H-bomb development, there was a bunch of game theory being done (RAND comes up a lot) to understand the U.S.'s strategic situation. What are good things to read about this? I'm interested in all/any of: technical reviews, pop-level history books (in the vein of Rhodes's "Making of the Atomic Bomb"), and any source at all that discusses the Soviet equivalent of these activities.
slawrence
9mo ago
I was not planning on seeing it; this review has mostly changed my mind. Thanks!
I was particularly afraid that the movie would be a hagiography of the poor maligned Oppie, with an overlay of "trust the science" messaging. A fear amplified by reading some op-ed by Kai Bird (who has some second-degree connection to the movie I think?), about Oppenheimer, ending with a comparison to Fauci. (Would Fauci be flattered to know that he's being compared to "the nuke guy"? I wonder...). Gratifying to hear that it's a more normal movie.
On the other hand, I did not like Interstellar...
The U.S. has a (small, I think) naval base in neighboring Djibouti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Lemonnier.
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