Favorites January 23rd 2022

Charlie Stross @cstross

It's also kind of amazing to plot travel times and costs as a fraction of monthly wages in 1816 and realize stage coaches cost as much per unit time as intercontinental jet travel, only economy class sat on the roof and distances covered were ~8-10 miles/hour.

The key there is cost per hour of travel time. More details of the calculation.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I try not to be over the top about these things, but leading figures in conservatism do keep saying they want to establish an authoritarian regime. https://t.co/IUDDMcSQCz

Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski

Newt Gingrich said this morning that people serving on the J6 Committee are going to go to jail if Republicans take over Congress after the next election. https://t.co/OFhWdbEPdq

Yea, seems bad, but what do I know? Popehat's response was amusing.

Noah Shachtman @NoahShachtman

EXCLUSIVE: Emails obtained by @RollingStone expose an attempt to retroactively hand Arizona to Donald Trump — and reveal top Trumpworld figures were complicit

rollingstone.comStart the Steal: New MAGA Emails Reveal Plot to Hand Arizona to TrumpExclusive emails obtained by Rolling Stone expose an attempt to recertify the state as a victory for Donald Trump — and reveal top Trumpworld figures were complicit

Speaking of scary stuff...

Hillel @hillelogram

This is seriously messing with my head: the Dunning-Kruger effect might not be real! I read all of the linked papers, and they make a convincing argument that it's more likely to be a statistical artifact than a psychological effect:

mcgill.caThe Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not RealI want the Dunning-Kruger effect to be real. First described in a seminal 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, this effect has been the darling of journalists who want to explain why dumb people don’t know they’re dumb. There’s even video of a fantastic pastiche of Turandot’s famous aria, …

My understanding of what they're saying is that part of the issue is a statistical cutoff effect. Even more detail here. Plus, could be another example of getting biased results because all the test subjects were college students.

Russell Kaplan @russelljkaplan

4/ AlphaFold unlocked a different approach: it found the 3D structure of the existing protein & receptors, which was unknown. With the structure + another ML model, they saw how binding affinities would change with different mutations. This led to an ideal candidate in 8 hours.

Very cool to see real-world uses of alphafold's protein structure prediction.

Kylie Atwood @kylieatwood

Tonight the State Dept has ordered the families of US embassy employees in Kyiv to depart Ukraine and authorized non-emergency personnel to depart as well.

Things in ukraine continue to look worrying. Details on how Russia's attack might work in this thread, which was widely shared. Not sure how accurate it is.

kottke.org @kottke

I love this proposal to make the city center of Berlin car-free. An area larger than Manhattan turned over to cyclists and pedestrians.

kottke.orgBold Proposal to Make Central Berlin a Mostly Car-Free ZoneA group of Berlin residents has put forward a proposal to turn all of central Berlin (an area larger than Manhattan) into a car-

Pedestrian downtowns are good stuff.

September 2021

By the way, this silly ad for Apple TV was talked about a lot. It’s pretty funny.