January 26, 2022
"Surgery in the UK remains a hugely male-dominated area of medicine"
In a study reminiscent of last year's finding that Black babies are more likely to survive if they have Black doctors (study), a new study has found that women are 32% more likely to die after operation by male surgeon (study). [more inside]
Stephen Breyer retiring
Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from US Supreme Court. Justice Breyer’s retirement, at 83, will give President Biden the opportunity to name a new justice.
It kinda feels like doing drugs
Alex Falcone has nothing to hide [SLTikTok]
They’ve Left Cooperstown Barren, Uninteresting and Illegitimate
This is a museum of baseball history. What purpose does that museum serve when it purges entire pieces of history from its walls? You’ve ripped the guts out of the thing and left it as not only a dry branding exercise, but a culturally irrelevant one. Only the weirdos who file FCC complaints about vulgarities during the Super Bowl halftime show would ever want to visit it. from By Leaving Out SF Giants Legend Barry Bonds, the Baseball Hall of Fame Finally Signs its Own Death Certificate by Drew Magary [more inside]
An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled.
The description of the property in the listing (“Sharswood”, Circa 1820. On ten acres in Virginia. $220,000) 2 years ago (“There is an old farm office on the property. Would make a cute guest house!”) reads different now: “An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled.” (Washington Post, similar text at Tell Us USA.)
Tales of Whales: Animal Minds Visited, Revisited & Beyond
Next thing I know I have this 50 ton whale coming right at me, and I'm thinking "Oh my God. Stop, I just saved you." Yeah, she's rising up towards me. And I'm just thinking this is going to hurt, and, uh, when she was only inches away from my chest... She stopped. And pushed me on the chest backwards, and then released me, and then kind of pushed again, and then release, and pushed again, and again. And then she swam up right next to me, puts her head up above the water so that her eye was above the water, and then came up and looked directly at me... for what felt like 30 seconds, she just stared...
James Moskito's account [more inside]
James Moskito's account [more inside]
Promises
Promises is a 2021 studio album by British electronic musician Sam Shepard, aka Floating Points, and American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. [more inside]
A little blob of Infinity
The Biography of the Pixel - The Elementary Particle of Pictures "I have billions of pixels in my cellphone, and you probably do too. But what is a pixel? Why do so many people think that pixels are little abutting squares? Now that we’re aswim in an ocean of zettapixels (21 zeros), it’s time to understand what they are. The underlying idea – a repackaging of infinity – is subtle and beautiful. Far from being squares or dots that ‘sort of’ approximate a smooth visual scene, pixels are the profound and exact concept at the heart of all the images that surround us – the elementary particles of modern pictures." An essay by Alvy Ray Smith, one of the early founders of Pixar. [more inside]
“Where’s my donut-shaped space station? Where’s my ticket to Mars?”
Is there an aesthetic dominating today's English-language written SF/F?
Elizabeth Sandifer suggests that we are now experiencing a "clear aesthetic shift in how sci-fi works" in observations that started as this Twitter thread. She notes "Diversity as an underlying assumption....A massive dollop of fanfic and romance influence....It’s stylistically a big tent" and suggests the prospective name "Tor Wave." (Followup comments from Sandifer.) A related conversation about the label "squeecore" started with an episode of the Rite Gud podcast (transcript) and has drawn responses from Doris V. Sutherland - "'Squeecore' and the Cartoon Mode in SF/F", Camestros Felapton - "Is there a dominant mode of current science fiction?", Cora Buhlert - "Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed" & "More on the Squeecore Debate", and Simon McNeil - "Notes on Squeecore". [more inside]
How It Feels to Be an Asian Student in an Elite Public School
"The dwindling number of Black and Latino students at these high schools is a great concern and a mystery. Bill de Blasio, when he was mayor of New York, suggested the heart of the problem." "That does not reckon with history. Decades ago, when crime and socioeconomic conditions were far graver than they are today, Black and Latino teenagers passed the examination in great numbers. In 1981, nearly two-thirds of Brooklyn Tech’s students were Black and Latino, and that percentage hovered at 50 percent for another decade." [NYT link]
You know, as a scientist, you want to figure something out.
The Snowflake Mystery - "I've done a lot of my career in astronomy and astrophysics. Nobody ever asks you what it's good for, I mean, never. Not even once did anyone say, 'What are those black holes gonna be used for?' No, 'Saturn's rings, why do you care about Saturn's rings? What's the motivation for studying Saturn?' nobody asks that. Every time I give a talk, people are like, 'What are you doing? What on earth is this for?' I'll tell you the real reason, the real reason that I got into this. You look at a snowflake and you kind of go, 'Um, actually, (laughs) we don't have any idea how that works.' Well, that doesn't work. We have to know how that works, dammit!" [more inside]
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