hb – Page 7 – H.B. FLYTE

The future is urban, apparently

One of my areas of interest is how science fiction movies do exposition. So I took a screenshot from Elysium just to save, though I’m only watching this for fun (it’s not on my exam list). I’ve seen it before.

I’m sure this isn’t new to anyone who hasn’t been paying attnetion, but so many dystopian visions of the future are just slight exaggerations of contemporary fear mongering about city livin’.

EVERYONE WILL LIVE IN A CITY, WILL YOU SURVIVE??!?!?!?! Weird.

The real trouble is rural, since I just heard a loud boom coming from the “new” neighbors. They like to make noise. Lots of ratatatatat or bang bang bang.

Five, Seven, Five

The winning haiku at the top of the article is a cold, hard comment on our current American political environment, yet Sanki’s poems, written on one year after the bombing in Hiroshima, produce a different, deeper chill.

Sanki was imprisoned by Japan’s Special Higher Police for writing haiku like the first one. The second was published in a magazine but was omitted from Sanki’s second collection for fear that the book would be censored by American Occupation officials, who suppressed information about the atomic bomb.
By Clark Strand, “Poems of Protest and Political Conscience”

How am I supposed to perform academia if I don’t have time to Tweet?!?

One of the problems with committing to a new public-facing medium is that you get busy and overwhelmed and it suddenly feels abandoned. Two days since I posted here and my instinct is to just quit. The endless scroll is the problem. It’s always hungry and it’s never sated. As meager contributor, even I’m susceptible. When the dust settles and the archaeologists of the future dig through the radioactive waste, our archive will be nothing but “sorry I haven’t posted” posts and Tumblr.

If we’re talking about extensions…

Perhaps instead of extending your deadline, you should offer a hybrid option for people with limited means, not ready to get on a plane, or unwilling to spend a lot of money in the state in which your conference is held.

Oliver Willis: “The New York Times Is The Problem”

Why we should stop wringing our hands about The New York Times and instead, learn to love pointing out its many, many flaws.

https://oliverwillis.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-is-the-problem

Don’t put me in a situation…

This is my illustration of the rhetorical situation, sort of. Think of it as a biblically accurate angel with less surety. All the stick figures are the same person, just at different moments. That’s the cardboard tube of genre in the middle. It has form but easily bendable. Yes. Ok.

This was also posted on Facebook.

I was just talking about Chekhov’s gun the other day…

Interior Decorating comic form XKCD — …looks like I gotta use it now. Welp.

Scientific American: One of the Biggest Problems in Biology Has Finally Been Solved

Really interesting read on the connection between game theory and AI-assisted biology.

“Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explains how its AlphaFold AI program predicted the 3-D structure of every known protein”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/one-of-the-biggest-problems-in-biology-has-finally-been-solved/

In case of a “weird pipe mishap”…

My latest work order: “The pipes in Office 003 are making the strangest noise. It’s not consistent, but if I can capture it on my phone, I will. Normally there’s a gurgle here and a hiss there, but this sounds like something out of this world. I would like to not be the victim of some weird pipe mishap. Granted, as I’m writing this, the sound seems to have stopped. Suspicious.”