37

Why Magical Realism is a Global Phenomenon | It's Lit

Milky Way black hole has 'strong, twisted' magnetic field in mesmerizing new image

 Milky Way black hole has 'strong, twisted' magnetic field in mesmerizing new image

For the first time, we're seeing the Sagittarius A* black hole in polarized light. The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration says the image offers a new look at "the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole" at the center of the Milky Way.

EHT Collaboration

The black hole at the center of our galaxy has been compared to a doughnut — and as it turns out, this doughnut has swirls. Scientists shared a mesmerizing new image on Wednesday, showing Sagittarius A* in unprecedented detail. The polarized light image shows the black hole's magnetic field structure as a striking spiral.

"What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," Sara Issaoun, a project co-leader and NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement about the image.

Todays Thought

Kindness is always fashionable. 

-Amelia Barr, novelist (29 Mar 1831-1919)

Nutritionist Answers Diet Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

Friday Mix

Todays Thought

Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is. 

-Paul Erdos, mathematician (26 Mar 1913-1996)

Todays Thought

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. 

-Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Horse

 Akhal-Teke

The Akhal-Teke (/ˌækəlˈtɛk/ or /ˌækəlˈtɛki/; from Turkmen Ahalteke, [axalˈteke]) is a Turkmen horse breed.^[1] They have a reputation for speed and endurance, intelligence, and a distinctive metallic sheen. The shiny coat of the breed led to their nickname, "Golden Horses".^[2] These horses are adapted to severe climatic conditions and are thought to be one of the oldest existing horse breeds.^[3] There are currently about 6,600 Akhal-Tekes in the world, mostly in Turkmenistan, although they are also found throughout Europe and North America.^[4] Akhal is the name of the line of oases along the north slope of the Kopet Dag mountains in Turkmenistan. It has been inhabited by the Tekke tribe of Turkmens.

Todays Thought

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. 

-Robert Quillen, journalist and cartoonist (25 Mar 1887-1948)

Todays Thought

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement. 

-William Morris, designer, poet, and novelist (24 Mar 1834-1896)

Pronouns: Little Words That Say a Lot | Otherwords

Todays Thought

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. 

-Derek Bok, lawyer and educator (b. 22 Mar 1930)

Wire Cutters [Animated Short] by Jack Anderson

The art of "Gruff," a film that's handmade

Todays Thought

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. 

-Fred Rogers, television host, songwriter, and author (20 Mar 1928-2003) 

A Bowl You Wouldn't Buy

Todays Thought

It's best to give while your hand is still warm. 

-Philip Roth, novelist (19 Mar 1933-2018)

Todays Thought

Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn. 

-John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009)

Thomas Dambo's magical troll art

Todays Thought

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. 

-Penelope Lively, writer (b. 17 Mar 1933)

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

Why The French Love American Fast Food

Putain!!! 

 Ides of March

Ides of March

36 languages

• Article
• Talk

• Read
• Edit
• View history

Tools

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Ides of March (disambiguation).

The Death of Julius Caesar (1806) by Vincenzo Camuccini

The Ides of March (/aɪdz/; Latin: Idus Martiae, Late Latin: Idus Martii)^[1] is the 74th day^{[citation needed]} in the Roman calendar, corresponding to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and was a deadline for settling debts in Rome.^[2] In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar, which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.

Ides[edit]

The Romans did not number each day of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (the 5th or 7th, 8 days before the Ides), the Ides (the 13th for most months, but the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (1st of the following month). Originally the Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. In the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.^[3]

Almanac: Assassination of Julius Caesar

Egyptologist Answers Ancient Egypt Questions From Twitter | Tech Support...

Opinion: What I've learned about living alone after losing my wife of 42 years

 Opinion: What I've learned about living alone after losing my wife of 42 years

“We have a wonderful family and really good friends,” she said. “Depend on them.”

This has been good advice, but family and friends don’t live under the same roof as me. They’re not there when I want to complain about a McMansion going up down the block or when I wake from a bad dream in the middle of the night.

It’s also difficult to live alone in a house suited for four people. It was just right for me, my wife and our two children. Now, it feels vast (even though it’s not), and I wander its empty spaces at night like a character in a Gothic horror novel, startled by every floorboard creak.

It would be easier to live by myself if I were more outgoing. Diane was much more social than I am, and she drew a steady stream of people to our door and engaged in conversations with everyone — not just friends and neighbors but also the mailman and Amazon delivery employees.

Todays Thought

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. 

-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court justice (15 Mar 1933-2020)

Keurig’s New Coffee Pods Are Completely Compostable—but You’ll Need a New Machine to Use Them

 I cant wait!

Keurig’s New Coffee Pods Are Completely Compostable—but You’ll Need a New Machine to Use Them

Todays Thought

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. 

-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (14 Mar 1879-1955)

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No.2, "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860"

Todays Thought

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. 

-Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (13 Mar 1900-1971)

Around The World in 1896 Colorized (4K 60fps) New York, London, Jerusale...

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Crash Course World Mythology #26

Todays Thought

You ever wish that fireworks were incredibly quiet and also didn't disappear so quickly and also you could keep them in your home and also you could hold them in your hands? Because if so, I'd love to introduce you to, flowers. 

-Jonny Sun, author and illustrator (b. 12 Mar 1990)

How Scientists Made the Hottest Thing Ever

P vs. NP: The Biggest Puzzle in Computer Science

NASA’s Design for Message Heading to Jupiter’s Moon Europa

How Ancient Mythologies Defy the Gender Binary | Fate & Fabled

Friday Mix

 

Todays Thought

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. 

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., US Supreme Court Justice (8 Mar 1841-1935)

Todays Thought

Nature's laws affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman. 

-Luther Burbank, horticulturist (7 Mar 1849-1926)

Todays Word

 

middlebrow

PRONUNCIATION:

(MID-uhl-brou) 

MEANING:

adjective:	1. (describing a person) Having tastes and interests that lie somewhere between sophisticated and vulgar.
	2. (describing a work of art) Neither sophisticated nor vulgar.
noun:	A person who has conventional tastes and interests.

ETYMOLOGY:

Formed on the pattern of highbrow and lowbrow. From middle, from Old English middel (middle) + bru (brow). Earliest documented use: 1912.

NOTES:

In the grand, often ridiculous, opera of cultural tastes, highbrow is reserved for the stuff that makes you appear smart at dinner parties -- Shakespeare, who basically invented the plot twist, Mozart, whose music you pretend to understand, and Nabokov, who wrote books that double as vocabulary workouts. On the flip side, lowbrow is the guilty-pleasure aisle -- home to the Kardashians, who’ve made an empire out of... being Kardashians, superhero movies (because who needs subtlety when you have explosions), and kitsch art (the velvet Elvis paintings of the world).

What’s brow doing here? It comes from phrenology, a pseudoscience that claimed to tell about a person’s characteristics from the shape of their skull. Someone with a large forehead (highbrow) was considered intellectual. The origin of this classification should tell us all we need to know about dividing people into highbrow and lowbrow.

Also, consider that brows go up and down with time. Shakespeare is highbrow in modern times, but in his days Shakespeare was popular entertainment. Peasants and royalty, illiterates and intellectuals, they all enjoyed performances of his plays. It just goes to show, today’s pop culture may turn out to be tomorrow’s classic.

USAGE:

“Rebeck’s 100-minute tale of grief and release is the sort of middlebrow crowd-pleaser that used to be common fare.”
David Cote; Danny DeVito Hoards Laughter and Tears in “I Need That”; The New York Observer; Nov 2, 2023.

See more usage examples of middlebrow in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

2016 Oscar-Winning Short: “Stutterer” | The New Yorker Screening Room

Original Article

A look at life in metro Phoenix in the 1980s

A shot of downtown Phoenix on May 4, 1989.

The Republic

Brian Burch, 8, gets a bird's eye view of Mesa and Tempe from the balloon of Marvin Kerby in May 1980.

The Republic

Big Surf water park in Tempe in 1980.

Tempe History Museum

Interstate 10 stack interchange under construction in Phoenix in 1980.

The Republic

Former ASU football head coach Frank Kush riding a bike in the Great Arizona Bicycle Ride in 1980.

The Republic

A Phoenix police Hughes 500 series picks up a Phoenix fire crew on South Mountain in April 1980.

The Republic

John Driggs standing in front of the Rosson House in downtown Phoenix in April 1980.

The Republic

A clean-room technician at the Chandler Intel manufacturing plant that opened in 1980. In the three-plus decades since Intel's arrival, the high-tech industry has become a huge economic driver for Chandler. Intel has expanded many times.

Chandler History Museum

Todays Thought

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all. 

-Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (6 Mar 1475-1564)

David Sedaris on Why His First Children's Book Doesn't Come with a Messa...

Funniest goddamn interview

Change the argument

I was reviewing our video streaming services (Hulu, Netflix, etc) to see if there was an opportunity to trim some monthly fees. A few years back we moved from an expensive satellite service to an only streaming solution to save money. I'm never satisfied so I'm always looking for great deals in addition to keeping track of when promos end and cancelling those services. It's a fun game.

We also have a honest to goodness good old-fashioned antenna up in the attic that gives us about 100 channels. 

Today I had a random thought - what if we just stopped watching so much TV? Then the cost falls to zero. 

Todays Thought

For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we're adjusting. 

-Penn Jillette, magician, actor, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author (b. 5 Mar 1955)

Black box auditing is fine

 Black box auditing is fine

Black box auditing is fine

Last week I read this paper entitled “Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits” with some excitement, since I do black box algorithmic auditing at my company and I was looking forward to knowing what more I could do with even more access. Also, it was written by a bunch of smart people from MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Stanford, and so on.

But I’m not very impressed! Actually I think this paper is a weird result of what happens when academics write about stuff that mostly happens outside of academia. In particular, and I’ll skip a lot of things, I want to focus on their section entitled “Limitations of Black Box Audits,” because of the five bullet points they include, they are all wrong. I’ll just go through them one by one:

1. Black-box methods are not well suited to develop a generalizable understanding.

Their argument here is that you don’t understand weird inputs that could lead to strange behavior. They argue it causes the black box auditor to rely on heuristics. But that’s not at all true! When I audit algorithms, either with private companies who provide the data, or follow my instructions, or with regulators or enforcement agencies that insist on the data from the companies deploying algorithms, we always use all of the historical data that we can get our hands on. In other words, we do not rely on heuristics or synthetic inputs, we instead see how actual people were actually treated by these systems. This is a much more thorough black box audit, and it doesn’t require “understanding,” which I think is a misleading and unattainable goal; even the coders don’t really “understand” algorithms (just ask them).

2. Black-box access prevents system components from being studied separately.

Yes, that’s true! And no, that’s not a flaw! Audits are not supposed to identify where things go wrong, they are supposed to decide whether something is going wrong. From the perspective of an auditor, if certain stakeholder groups (say, black patients in the case of Optum) are being treated badly, then that’s the point of the audit. The question of what exactly went wrong and when is the problem of the folks who set out to fix the problem, but they are not auditors.

3. Black-box evaluations can produce misleading results.

The example they give here is that an algorithm can pass statistical tests of non-discrimination but still have underlying flaws in reasoning. But I’d argue, as an auditor, we don’t actually care what the underlying reasoning looks like as long as it *consistently* passes the discrimination tests! Of course, it’s likely that there should be a battery of tests rather than just one. I’m happy to talk endlessly about how to design such a battery.

4. Black-box explanation methods are often unreliable.

Yes, true, but that’s because explanations of algorithms are almost always nonsense. I’d suggest you stop trying to understand “how an algorithm thinks” and start testing whether an algorithm is causing meaningful harm to stakeholders.

5. Black-box evaluations offer limited insights to help address failures.

True, but again, not a problem! If you want to be an engineer paid to fix problems, don’t call yourself an auditor. Indeed there would be a conflict of interest if that were the same job, because you’d be incentivized to find problems to fix, or to only find fixable problems, etcetera.

If one of the authors of this paper wants to discuss this with me, I’d be more than happy to. We could even have a public conversation, since I live in Cambridge!

Todays Thought

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. 

-Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher (1 Mar 1939-2017)