Month: May 2018

Most of the May/June 2018 issue of Technology Review, the MIT alumni magazine, is devoted to blockchain. Futurists will appreciate “Inside the Jordan refugee camp that runs on blockchain”, about Syrians living in a potential future of retinal authentication for spending crypto currency:

Haddad’s idea for Building Blocks was to start by creating an account on a blockchain for every family of Syrian refugees in a Jordanian camp. Families wouldn’t then have to wait days for local banks to transfer their money, or have to share identifying information with the banks, where some unscrupulous employee might steal or misuse it. Meanwhile, the WFP, instead of forwarding money before it’s spent, could itself tally all refugee purchases and pay participating stores afterward in local currency. That’s a big deal, since upwards of 30 percent of UN assistance is lost to corruption.

It is great to do good for others, but what about folks who want to do good for themselves? There is an interesting article on hackers who have made off with crypto currency, not only the familiar Mt. Gox heist, but a January 2018 raid on Coincheck (the thieves netted about $250 million on $500 million stolen).

[The magazine also devoted space to its multi-year theme of female victimhood as evidenced by the paucity of cisgender female nerds (could also be celebrated as evidence of a society with so much opportunity for women that they can do interesting jobs instead; see “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic), which says “In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.”). In the introduction to an interview with Amber Baldet, a JP Morgan Chase manager, the “cryptocommunity” is described as “an entitled boys’ club”. The magazine shows its commitment to gender bravery by interviewing this executive, not about technology or finance or what she and her team of coders might be accomplishing, but about “the state of diversity in the cryptocurrency world.” There are two full-page images of the subject, in both of which she shows enough skin to reveal multiple tatoos. (The editors chose to feature full-page images of multiple women in the issue, but men are generally shown at 1/4 or 1/16th this size. An alien reader would assume that women are literally bigger than men.) In the MIT-only section, an engineering professor who earned her PhD in 1964 is quoted as saying “If engineering doesn’t make welcome space for women then engineering will become marginalized.” The journalists doesn’t comment on the seeming cisgender-normative prejudice or denial of gender fluidity (how do the professor, journalist, and editors know that humans currently working as engineers will continue to identify as “male”?)]

Readers: Will journalists end up being some of the main beneficiaries of blockchain? (other than the obvious beneficiaries, such as vendors of illegal products and services) Every magazine or newspaper can recycle every old headline and most old stories by adding “with blockchain” for the next few years?

Related:

• “Bitcoin v. Medical School”
• Why doesn’t everyone with unmetered electricity mine Bitcoin?
• Secret bitcoin billionaires will renounce their U.S. citizenship before cashing in?
• Bitcoin as Ponzi scheme

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It is tough to convict people given all of the procedural safeguards that we have in place because we value fairness. In the old days, the remedy for this was to torture people until they confessed. Today we make the punishment after conviction 10X worse than it was previously, but offer the option to confess via a plea bargain and receive instead the former maximum sentence. This theme is explored in the classic University of Chicago Law Review article “Torture and Plea Bargaining” (Langbein).

I’m wondering if the sexual assault courts that the Obama Administration forced universities to create have discovered the same idea. “Lawyer: Yovino will claim at trial she was raped by SHU football players” (CT Post):

State prosecutors Tatiana Messina and Emily Trudeau contend Nikki Yovino, now 20, falsely claimed in 2016 that she was raped after having consensual sex in a bathroom with the two men, because she didn’t want to lose another young man as a prospective boyfriend.

Bridgeport lawyer Frank Riccio II, who represents the two men, said that as a result of Yovino’s rape allegations, his clients were scheduled for a school disciplinary hearing but on the advice of legal council agreed instead to withdraw from the university rather than face being expelled and having that on their records.

If three college kids are in the bathroom with the door closed it will be tough for anyone who wasn’t there to establish exactly what happened (and perhaps all three were drunk so even they don’t remember?). Thus, it makes sense to threaten sufficiently severe punishment that the accused will simply take the desired action in exchange for not suffering the maximum punishment.

Related:

• Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (a.k.a. majoring in partying and football)

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I have a three-year-old PC with a Corsair AX760i 760W power supply. It was a premium model at the time (2015), costing $183.

I left the PC plugged-in, but shut down, for a couple of days. When I returned and powered it up, the machine died after about 10 minutes of use, as suddenly as if there had been a power failure. After that, it wouldn’t start at all, seeming to start up and then shut down repeatedly at 1-2 second intervals. I left it unplugged overnight and the machine booted up and ran just fine all day.

I am thinking that it is time for a new power supply. In theory this thing has a warranty, but how can I live without it for days? Maybe they offer advance replacement? But how do they know it is actually broken and it isn’t something else shutting down the PC?

[Readers: Anyone have an idea for what could be wrong other than the power supply?]

Let’s assume that it is in fact time for a new power supply. The same company, Corsair, makes multiple 750-watt model: Bronze ($80), Gold ($130), and Platinum ($180). What is the conceivable practical difference among these? Will it be fan noise? They all claim to be quiet at idle, which is where my PC lives 99 percent of the time (Adobe Premiere compressing videos is my only heavy load). The high-end ones are slightly more efficient? But who cares if the PC is seldom under high load?

Thanks in advance for brilliant insights!

[Separately, I can’t see anything about today’s PCs that is significantly better than what I purchased three years ago (for a little over $2,000). The consumer (non-Xeon) motherboard in my desktop holds up to 128 GB of RAM (32 GB currently populated). Most of what’s in the market today seems to max out at 32 GB or maybe 64 GB. How is it that so many brilliant engineering minds can’t make something that inspires trade-ins?]

 

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From a Facebook friend:

I get so frustrated with operational problems at [the school where I work] that I sometimes think I’d leave if there was another Hispanic-serving trans-friendly women’s college in [the big metro area where I live] that would grant me tenure. (emphasis added)

If she ever does talk to a headhunter, I would love to listen in!

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“Eric Schneiderman, Accused by 4 Women, Quits as New York Attorney General” (nytimes):

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general who rose to prominence as an antagonist of the Trump administration, abruptly resigned on Monday night hours after The New Yorker reported that four women had accused him of physically assaulting them.

Two of the women who spoke to the magazine, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, said they had been choked and hit repeatedly by Mr. Schneiderman. Both said they had sought medical treatment. Another woman, a lawyer, said she was slapped violently across the face. A fourth woman said she had similar experiences.

Mr. Schneiderman has long been regarded as one of the state’s most progressive politicians, even before his 2013 lawsuit against Trump University and his subsequent suits against the Trump administration made him the darling of the political left.

One of the women, Tanya Selvaratnam, has “served on the board of The Third Wave Foundation, which is dedicated to youth activism and the feminist movement” and produced videos for the Women’s March. It does not seem unreasonable to describe her as a “feminist”. This New York Post article describes her relationship with the “progressive politician”:

Harvard-educated activist writer Tanya Selvaratnam told the New Yorker magazine that her yearlong affair with Schneiderman “was a fairytale that became a nightmare” — and quickly escalated into violence in the bedroom, even as he begged for threesomes.

“Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did,” Selvaratnam said. … Soon, “we could rarely have sex without him beating me.”

I hope that we can all agree that this is a description of a below-average heterosexual relationship. The question then arises as to why an expert on feminism wouldn’t simply walk away from it. Can it be that years of studying feminism, marching, advocating, etc. have no practical value in this realm? If so, in what realm does being a feminist lead to a personal advantage?

[Separately, I know of a well-educated medium-income woman in her 20s. She was sufficiently passionate about feminism to go to the Women’s March in the off-the-charts-expensive city where she lives. She met a man in his mid-50s who owns a modest (i.e., $3+ million) house. She is now protesting the patriarchy by living in this man’s house.]

Related:

• the Rationale chapter of Real World Divorce, which contains an interview with an academic regarding how feminism can be squared with the goals of women in family court
• the Domestic Violence chapter of Real World Divorce, whose applicability isn’t obvious here because the parties were not married and had no children together

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Friends run an annual blind wine tasting with $12(ish) bottles of red and one $40 “ringer” bottle.

In a field of about 15, the top-rated wine was Ava Grace Merlot 2015 from California, closely followed by a Moncaro organic Rosso blend from Italy and the $40 Gary Ferrell 2014 Pinot Noir (equalled by a Robert Mondavi 2016 cabernet; maybe the “private selection” that is about $11?).

People truly hated a popular Rioja and modestly priced Cotes-Du-Rhone and Bordeaux wines.

If you prefer wines crafted in Virginia you’ll be pleased to know that the Trump Winery’s 2014 Sparkling Rose earned 96 points in a competition in California (press release). From a recent Trump Winery email: “At the largest international wine competition in the world, our 2016 Sauvignon Blanc received a Double Gold medal with a 96 point rating. Of the nearly 200 Sauvignon Blancs entered from around the world, only 12 double gold medals were awarded: 10 from New Zealand, 1 from California, and ours!”

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A new and wonderful turn of phrase in “Neighbors say it’s no surprise Lincoln County man crashed helicopter” (Fox 46):

An Iron Station man is lucky to be alive after his helicopter crashed and caught fire right on his front lawn.

Back in October, Timothy Kniess’ wife won the lottery a hundred thousand dollars on a scratch off ticket.

Luck was definitely on their side again today when he was able to escape the crash with just a few scratches.

Neighbors weren’t surprised by the crash. They say they watched Kniess attempt to fly his Mosquito XE helicopter for weeks, just waiting for it all to go wrong.

“Man bought a helicopter, he woke up one day and said ‘today’s the day, I identify as a pilot, bought a helicopter.’ Hell I can’t tell a man what to do in his own property,” [neighbor John Aubery] said.

 

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Friends who are connected to the classical music world kept telling me to watch Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime. So I did…

The show is interesting because the actors are portraying highly technical activities, e.g., conducting a symphony orchestra or playing a violin. They have to do this in time to actual music and the result is remarkably convincing.

The show starts when the president of the “New York Symphony”, played by Bernadette Peters (70!), brings in a young Mexican conductor modeled after Gustavo Dudamel. (We later get the backstory on the character played by Peters: she is a billionaire who made her fortune by marrying and divorcing four different men, not an entirely realistic outcome based on current New York family law, especially given New York’s vague cap on child support profits in the single-digit $millions.)

The highlights of the show include cameo appearances by real-world classical music stars, such as Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax, and Lang Lang. If you’re a fan of Broadway-for-4-year-olds, you’ll also enjoy seeing Melody Yang.

One interesting aspect of the show is that its production straddles the point at which female victimhood began to dominate American public discourse.

• Early seasons: Old man conducts and is replaced by young man. Attractive female cellist has sex with old male conductor. There is no discussion of the gender ID of any composer, but all pieces played are by male composers (including a modern commission).
• Final shows, aired 4.5 months after Hollywood producer shower habits made the New York Times: Young woman conducts. Attractive female cellist has sex with other women. All pieces played are by female composers (and works by male composers are specifically excluded from a new orchestra’s mission). Characters speak statistics to each other regarding the percentage of conductors who are female.

I’m wondering if this could be used as an example of men becoming “woke”. The producers of the show are all described on Wikipedia with male pronouns. They could easily have picked a young female Latin American conductor to start off the show (e.g., modeled after Alondra de la Parra). There was no need for them to portray young female orchestra members as seeking to have sex with old male conductors. The show thus gratuitously reinforced gender stereotypes in classical music. No lesbian relationships were depicted, thus reinforcing heteronormative stereotypes for women.

By the last season, however, they were devoting about 30 percent of the dialog to decrying the lack of social justice for women conductors, women composers, etc. That shows an “unwoke” to “woke” transition?

Readers: If you’ve seen this show, what did you think?

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The standard method for improving the messages inside fortune cookies is to add “in bed”. Examples:

• “A friend asks only for your time not your money in bed.”
• “A dream you have will come true in bed.“

The movie Teenage Cocktail bubbled to the top of the Rotten Tomatoes “what’s streaming now” list with a 100 percent rating (our of only 5 professional reviews so perhaps that makes it easier to hit the top of the chart?).

The plot: two teenage girls want to earn money so they (a) sell their appearance on a webcam to a male audience, and (b) have sex with a man in exchange for cash. Unless we think that this is a new idea, why would critics like the movie so much? One theory: the writers added “and they’re gay”.

Would this work for recycling almost any other standard plot? Simply make the characters gay and the critics will be positive?

Readers: The movie is free on Netflix. If you’ve watched it, what do you think accounts for the 100% rating with critics?

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Here’s one of the delights of Facebook membership:

Happy Cinco de Mayo to all of my readers!

(I refrained from responding “If a very pale-skinned person gets hungry for Taco Bell on May 5, would it be less (micro-)aggressive to put on brown face makeup prior to departing for the drive-through?”)

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