July 13, 2021
Haystack skillz
“I Wear No Mask” and Other Horrors
It’s Summer 2021, and here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! There is some good stuff coming out of Toronto these days, notably Hi Nay and Parkdale Haunt. They may help you spend time while isolating, doing chores, or waiting for some quarantine or other to lift. As usual, this will focus on paranormal ongoing stories as opposed to Science Fiction or Fantasy dramas or anthologies of short stories, with or without framing elements, for the most part. Feel free to disagree with the decisions. [more inside]
Choice Blindness
In a 2005 experiment, psychologist Petter Johansson and his colleagues presented each subject with two photographs of women’s faces and asked which they found more attractive. In each case the experimenter then presented the “chosen” photograph and asked the subject to explain their choice. But in fact, using sleight of hand, the experimenter had exchanged the photos and was presenting the one that the subject hadn’t picked. from Futility Closet
"What is the experience giving you?"
Let's assume you'd like to get better at a skill. What role does learning tacit knowledge play in growing your expertise? "Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone’. A series of blog posts by Cedric Chin summarizes education research and "explores how expertise is tacit, why the research around extracting tacit knowledge is more important than the literature on deliberate practice, and how to go about acquiring tacit knowledge in the pursuit of skill acquisition" - including a summary of an approach for eliciting tacit knowledge from experts. Some really interesting anecdotes here about Toyota, judo, bike-riding, recognizing tennis serves, and more.
Tuesday cheer: reducing mass incarceration
Why would declining to prosecute people for low-level crimes also reduce other types of crimes? The study, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that the key is keeping folks out of the criminal justice system. Doing so reduced the odds by 58 percent that these folks would engage with that system in the future. ... I decided to call up the three authors of this study to see what they felt were the implications of their research on this policy. It turns out they were as pleasantly surprised by the results as I was. David Byrne writes about US counties and cities that have stopped automatically prosecuting minor nonviolent crimes and seen overall crime go down.
Flipping people: upgrading and dating
What happens when people constantly upgrade love? NY Times author Kelly Sundberg is tired of "flipping men": bonding with men who then immediately dump her and commit to others. This seems especially cruel for those who have been with someone during a sickness, unemployment, or during a rough time.
The shopping/upgrading mentality might have some roots in capitalism: everything is a market, why not love? Modern dating and relationship games seem to beat the hope out of decent people.
English football’s day of embarrassment
You may already have seen reports about ticketless fans breaking into Wembley Stadium for the Euro 2020 final last Sunday – what was initially claimed to be "a small number of people" later turned out to be a "large number" causing "absolute bedlam" – but you will find a lot more disturbing details in this in-depth report by Sports publication The Athletic (non-paywalled version at archive.is). [more inside]
We need to talk about Chonky
Listen. Matthew Inman has something to say about wombats and their weaponized hamslammers. (SL The Oatmeal) [more inside]
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