jbattle

Crawford's work that I'm most familiar with is a game called Balance of Power -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)

I played it as a cold war kid and was fascinated by it. Mid 80's, post War-Games, this game blew my mind. It simulated the world.

The lesson I remember was that conflict in the Cold War was not zero-sum. One side would win and one side would lose. There were (in this game) no win-win outcomes. But - and this is the key point - the value of each win or loss was unequally felt. For the US to back down in Indonesia was disappointing. To back down in West Germany was fatal.

Oh - and also the notion of graduated escalation & de-escalation. Playing the game well requried using escalation wisely. Sometimes you escalate (a bit) to see how they respond & judge the value of a conflict to your opponent. Sometimes you escalate (a lot) to signal to your opponent that a given conflict is very serious to you.

I don't know if I ever had _fun_ playing the game - but of the hundreds of games I played as a kid this one stuck with me.

All this with something like 64k of memory - brilliant!

Biden's inaugural address was full of this

"To all those who supported our campaign, I'm humbled by the faith you've placed in us. To all of those who did not support us, let me say this. Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still disagree, so be it. That's democracy. That's America. The right to dissent peaceably. Within the guardrails of our republic, it's perhaps this nation's greatest strength. Yet hear me clearly: disagreement must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you, I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did."

I dread the idea. The leaf blowers running nonstop 10 months a year are noisy enough.

Maybe I can convince all my neighbors to fly barrage balloons in all the back yards.

Not being snarky - most social media content is also essentially someone saying “here I am!” (Near a beach, near food). Maybe ravens share some existential angst with humans. Or maybe they are just more physically spread out and need to keep in touch.

I love this question! I got curious about how ancient people interpreted stone tools. When did humanity first realize “cavemen” had come before?

I saw this guy on youtube talking specifically about this topic. Im no historian but i felt like he gave it a serious grounded exploration (no ancient aliens!)

https://youtu.be/4jRbHhOOjw4

Lake Michigan is BIG. The location of this thing isn't public but Chicago is closer to Cleveland than the middle of Grand Traverse Bay. Washington DC and NYC are closer together than Chicago and G.T.B.

I'm no expert in the Great Lakes but I'm surprised they found something that far north that old. From a little reading the glaciers were retreating from that area around the same time frame. I guess +/- 1,000 years is a big deal.

There are a bunch of cool signs of the precursor to Lake Michigan around Chicago from the time when the lake was "capped" in the north and drained to the south. Blue Island and Stony Island were real islands. Ridge road to the north marks where the shore once stood. Pretty cool to imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chicago

I'd argue that a suite of tests that exercise all reasonably likely scenarios is table stakes. And would have caught this particular bug.

I'm not talking about 100% branch coverage, but 100% coverage of all happy paths and all unhappy paths that a user might reasonably bump into.

OK maybe not 100% of the scenarios the entire system expresses, but pretty darn close for the business critical flows (signups, orders, checkouts, whatever).

create a subscription for a test user. delete it. Make sure you can create another subscription for the same user.

create subscriptions with and without overlapping effective windows

Those seem like very basic tests that would have highlighted the underlying issue

There are only 12,000 coal miners in WV. Only 45,000 in the whole US. Obviously there are a large cast of others supporting the miners directly and indirectly (e.g. truck drivers, manufacturers of mining equipment, etc).

There are 341 million other Americans that have an interest in where our energy comes from (and what goes into our atmosphere).

(I'm all for generous support for any American facing major disruption because of macroeconomic changes btw. Getting rural places a fair share of national prosperity is a national problem)

There's an old video game called Seven Cities of Gold wherein you play a european explorer poking about the new world. It has procedurally generated game worlds, and claims to use some plate techtonics. I don't remember if you could actually circumnavigate the world, but it gave a great experience of gradually uncovering an absolutely massive map, packed with things to see. Designed for platforms with SERIOUS technology constraints, the author packed a LOT of game play. Given the historical subject, it also offers up some serious topics for thought / conversation.

As always, the Digital Antiquarian has a great article about this game: https://www.filfre.net/2013/08/seven-cities-of-gold/

I have little fear about AI generating propaganda. It's cheap to write a crappy article and fake a photo or two - or choose a real photo but twist the story around the photo.

What I worry about is "artificial / generated consent". You read some upsetting story, and your skeptical brain holds it at arms length. Then you read commentary in a forum you trust and you see message after message of thoughtfully worded support for some position. I think reading gobs of "informed real people" commentary is far more persuasive - and subtly so - than reading an article from someone you KNOW is pushing a specific perspective.

I like to believe I'm an independent thinker, but a big part of my process is to seek out many different points of view and judging which feel well supported and well reasoned. Consensus DOES play a role in my judgement forming. If consensus is easily faked, yikes.

I'll throw in a couple more good pieces of music by Ethiopians:

This is from an album of older pop music. From the little I've read this is something like live bar music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSUuqP7RFj0 https://open.spotify.com/track/1yInD7kgqru084JKE3Bqyz?si=b31...

A dutch ~punk band called the Ex recorded some music with a famous saxophonist named Getatchew Mekurya. The whole album is great, this is my favorite song:

https://theex.bandcamp.com/track/che-belew-shellela

And this piano piece by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a lady who led a seriously interesting life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKU7iz9RYV0