Jonnston

As an idea, and an ideal, it's hard to seriously criticize EA. Sone pretty shady people have done really unethical things while claiming it as a rationale, but I don't understand how that's supposed to convince me that "most good for the least cost" should be anything other than a North star for moral action.

Kant in shambles

De La Soul's discography came to streaming this year. Including 3 Feet High and Rising.

I use anki right now. I mean this question in good faith, is there a reason for me to switch? I'm happ with anki, but I'm open to being sold.

Relatedly: Can I pay for this? Anki won't accept money, and it makes me nervous that one day the software is going to change and become unusable. I don't know how ankiweb can afford to host decks at no charge.

There's an excellent fictionalized book about this topic called Red Plenty. I just read it recently and found it thoroughly enjoyable. It's a very humanizing account of a potentially dull and abstract idea.

Will Durant once expressed his conviction that the world only seems to get worse because as we develop morally and intellectually, we're less tolerant of evil but simultaneously more able to perceive it. In empirical terms things have been getting better for a long time, and probably still are.

FFXIV is actually bigger than WoW these days.

I'm not saying that I hold these views myself, I think that these are straightforward generous readings that you can take of common conservative positions.

Killing in war is bad, even evil, but there is no other way. It's a lesser evil than the alternative. Killing Germans in WW2 was bad, but the alternative was worse.

Forcing a woman to carry a child to term is bad, even evil. It produces a great deal of suffering. The alternative is to kill an unborn child, which is worse. Therefore select the lesser of the two evils.

Again, I don't subscribe to these views, but it seems like a pretty coherent position to me.

Yakuza 0. I've been playing it as "virtual tourism", it's a faithful recreation of one small part of 1980s Tokyo. The environment is really lovingly crafted, and the main story is B Movie schlock in the best way.

I think most mathematical facts described as beautiful fall into one of the two categories of “consequences of definitions” and “shocking connections”. The first happens when the structure of your terms is lined up in just the right way as to make a proof feel automatic and clear, every piece follows right from the previous one in a natural way. The second one is rarer imo, and is enjoyable almost in the same way a clever punchline is. A series of facts are setup, and then your viewpoint is suddenly shifted forcing you to recontextualize those facts and see something new. A lot of “elegant” proofs are of this flavor.

This was a really well written essay! Great breakdown of Sweeney’s strategy!

I wonder what amazon’s report is going to look like. Only half an hour until they release