timelets

timelets @ 2026-01-31T19:35:00

2026-02-01T03:44:20Z

Moral or, more precisely, immoral issues aside, Epstein ran a successful service business where he provided his customers, aka "friends", with exactly what they wanted when they wanted it. He also assumed legal risks, which the customers appreciated. That aspect of the business ultimately led to his incarceration and death.

Madame Hollywood was convicted in the 1990s, so Epstein learned from her mistakes and located his high-end sex services center on an island, not in a large city like LA where the word would eventually get out.

I wonder who provides the services now and how they deal with risks.

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timelets @ 2024-01-31T18:33:00

2024-02-01T02:44:03Z

В Нижнем Новгороде 24-летнюю девушку отправили под административный арест за ношение сережек в цветах радуги. Об этом сообщает правозащитный проект «Эгида». 29 января к ней подошли двое неизвестных. Записывая происходящее на камеру, они потребовали, чтобы она и ее друг немедленно сняли с себя «экстремистскую символику». Впоследствии видео опубликовали в соцсетях, и героиню ролика вызвали на допрос. Сотрудники центра «Э» составили на нее протокол о демонстрации экстремистской символики. Силовики решили, что радужные серьги связаны с ЛГБТ («Международное общественное движение ЛГБТ» признано экстремистским и запрещено на территории РФ), и задержали девушку. После чего суд отправил ее под арест на пять суток.

https://t.me/rusbrief/196395

Сейчас становится хорошо видно, как тоталитарный режим порождает стимулы для доносительства. Экстремизм относится к тяжелым преступлениям; в той же категории находятся убийства, ограбления и т.д. Раскрываемость по убийствам в России около 30%, а экстремизма - 100%. Чтобы улучшить показатели раскрываемости тяжелых преступлений, полиция будет бороться с экстремистскими радужными сережками, а не с убийствами. С принятием закона о конфискации за "фейки" стимулы к ловле "экстремистов" усилятся.

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timelets @ 2023-06-29T17:55:00

2023-06-30T01:00:12Z

There should be a law against bad examples:

“However, artificial wheels are made separately and then added onto a vehicle, whereas biological wheels would have to grow in situ. How could a freely rotating body part either be linked to the rest of the body through nerves and blood vessels or else function without being so linked?”

Dan Sperber. “The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding.”

The shoulder joint can rotate 360 degrees. Somehow, biological evolution worked out a solution to the linkage problem.

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Putin delenda est

2022-05-29T19:44:48Z

Картинка с выставки китайского делового искусства:

Все российские самолеты Boeing не могут летать в воздушном пространстве Китая до последующего уведомления, говорится в письме для клиентов логистической компании Global Link, которое распространено по российским Telegram-каналам. В нем отмечается, что данное уведомление получено компанией от Администрации гражданской авиации КНР.
...
речь идет о закрытии Китаем неба «для российских эксплуатантов всех самолетов, в том числе Boeing и Airbus, с двойной регистрацией».

https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2022/05/27/924013-kitai-ogranicheniya-rossii

Отличный пример, как Китай делает озабоченное лицо по поводу ужасных западных санкций и отбирает бизнес у российских компаний.

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Putin delenda est

2022-05-27T19:47:04Z

When it was the Nine Hundred and Thirty-first Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that every time the owner of an article came to the dyer he would put him off with any pretext[FN#185] and would swear to him; nor would he cease to promise and swear to him, as often as he came, till the customer lost patience and said, "How often wilt thou say to me, 'To-morrow?' Give me my stuff: I will not have it dyed." Whereupon the dyer would make answer, "By Allah, O my brother, I am abashed at thee; but I must tell the truth and may Allah harm all who harm folk in their goods!"

[FN (footnote) #185] It is interesting to note the superior gusto with which the Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better society than Faust and Margaret.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3443/3443-h/3443-h.htm#chap23

Later in the same tale, they describe how technology transfer worked in the ancient world, which would be a good contrast to the modern concept of permissionless innovation.

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timelets @ 2022-05-11T22:04:00

2022-05-12T05:10:01Z

< a href= https://gutenberg.org/files/3442/3442-h/3442-h.htm#chap07> ALI NUR AL-DIN AND MIRIAM THE GIRDLE-GIRL is one of the best, definitely most poetic, story in the Thousand nights and a nigh.

Read or (listen to) the whole thing.

https://ia600805.us.archive.org/20/items/thousand_nights_and_a_night_volume_8_1708_librivox/thousandnights8_32_anonymous_128kb.mp3

Vol 8. https://librivox.org/the-book-of-the-thousand-nights-and-a-night-volume-8-by-anonymous/

p.s. the story can be used to illustrate the contrast between investment and consumption.

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timelets @ 2022-05-01T12:23:00

2022-05-01T19:25:56Z

We start the video with a joke but later he talks about the difference in modes of explanation and gives a nice illustration how a detailed correct explanation subtracts from understanding, rather than adding to it. Relevance is key.

He also talks about the role of machines (i.e. technology) in philosophy:
https://youtu.be/_HmFPdcg6mo?t=3270

"Forced to think about the difference between functionality and concrete implementation."

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Teaching how to think

2021-11-11T03:25:47Z

1. Stories they need to know;
2. The questions they need to ask about those stories;
3. Mechanisms for analyzing those stories;
4. Ways of putting those stories together;
5. Ways of evaluating how reliable a story is.

( Read more... )

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The Flue is dead

2021-01-21T22:44:29Z

Good news!

Influenza, usually raging throughout the Northern Hemisphere this time of year, has become virtually invisible.

It is a small bright spot amid Covid-19, although the number of people saved from a flu death pales next to the number dying from the new pandemic. It also presents questions that doctors around the globe will likely be wrestling with for years: If flu can be nearly wiped out this season, why not every season? Which steps help the most to stop the flu from spreading?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-has-nearly-wiped-out-the-fluhow-do-we-keep-it-from-coming-back-11611230410

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Искусственный интеллект

2020-11-22T19:19:42Z

Спросил у Алексы, почему нет бумажных полотенец. Она ответила, потому что эпидемия коронавируса (нашла в интернете). Это один из лучших примеров хорошей предсказательной силы без понимания причин, т.е. современная версия Китайской Комнаты профессора Серла.

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timelets @ 2020-11-08T22:31:00

2020-11-09T06:41:40Z

and formal prosecution of Pheidias was made in the assembly. Embezzlement, indeed, was not proven, for the gold of the statue, from the very start, had been so wrought upon and cast about it by Pheidias, at the wise suggestion of Pericles, that it could all be taken off and weighed, and this is what Pericles actually ordered the accusers of Pheidias to do at this time.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

By contrast, mail-in vote counting laws adopted by Pensilvania and Georgia legislatures during this election cycle were prone to generate conspiracy theories in a close contest. Florida took care of the problem after the year 2000 recount controversy.

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timelets @ 2020-09-14T16:38:00

2020-09-14T23:42:41Z

I wonder whether this is the logical structure underneath the magic "three" showing up in many European fairy tales.

Lawvere, Rosenbrugh. Sets for Mathematics, 2003.

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timelets @ 2020-09-07T07:51:00

2020-09-07T14:54:33Z

“...said Nestor. ... So, my plan is that Argus, Tiphys and his men dismantle the Argo into portable sections which we take overland from the eastern shore of the Propontis to the western shore of the Euxine Sea, thus circumventing the Symplegades entirely.

Phineus sprayed fruit and bread everywhere as he snorted with derisive laughter. ‘Circumventing, you say? Oh dear me, that’s a good one. Circumventing. The land between, your ‘circumventing land’ bristles with bandits, some of them only half human. They hide in the bushes, shoot arrows and wait for you to die of your wounds. You’ll never see them. For all your crew of musclebound heroes you’d be better turning for home than trying such a foolish thing. Suppose they only got ten of you – that would be ten pieces of your ship you vitally need. Circumvent that.”

--- Stephen Fry. “Heroes: Volume II of Mythos.”

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Good news

2020-06-06T17:49:36Z

Productivity growth due to the pandemic:

Because pandemic practices created so much more time for shooting, conversion rates are up across nearly all of the Bundesliga’s best teams. Bayern has turned 19.1% of its shots into goals since the Bundesliga resumed on May 11, up from a league-leading 15.6% before the break, according to Opta Sports. Dortmund is up to 26.1% from 19.7%.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-soccers-lockdown-pastime-re-learning-how-to-shoot-11591444801

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timelets @ 2020-06-06T09:07:00

2020-06-06T16:16:00Z

The Japanese can solve the COVID-19 problem

“I often got phone calls from (people) in other countries asking, ‘Do you guys have your own special medicine or something?’” Aso said at an Upper House finance committee meeting on June 4.

“I told these people, ‘Between your country and our country, mindo (the level of people) is different.’ And that made them speechless and quiet. Every time,” Aso boasted.

Mindo is a word often used by politicians and others to invoke Japanese nationalism and ethnic superiority and can refer to things like culture and social manners.
...
“We have kept the fatality rate very low, and it was done just by asking people to (minimize their infection risk). People in other countries can’t do that, even being forced,” he said.

“I guess everybody (in Japan) just took it and sweated it out. There were no fines, no violations,” he said. “I believe the Japanese should be more proud about that.”

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13432875

but they can't solve the fertility problem.

Japan’s fertility rate, or average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to in her lifetime, dropped to 1.36 in 2019, going below the 1.40 mark for the first time in eight years.

It marked the fourth consecutive year of decline, according to data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on June 5.

The fertility rate for 2019 slid by 0.06 point from the figure for 2018, significantly down from the 0.01 point level of the preceding three years.

The fertility rate of 1.36 put Japan far from the target of 2.07, the level needed to maintain the population.

By prefecture, Okinawa had the highest fertility rate at 1.82, while Tokyo reported the lowest at 1.15.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13436216

Why is that?

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timelets @ 2020-04-17T15:12:00

2020-04-17T22:17:29Z

Vietnam is easing lockdown rules: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/cautiously-a-fiscally-constrained-vietnam-eases-two-week-nationwide-lockdown

It should be a good natural experiment in opening up a small economy under conditions of uncertainty.

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timelets @ 2020-04-08T00:12:00

2020-04-08T07:14:50Z

Implicitly, Lawvere & Schanuel make a good case for using Kan extensions in science.

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How the Germans did it

2020-04-05T08:12:16Z

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/a-german-exception-why-the-countrys-coronavirus-death-rate-is-low

For example,

In mid-January, long before most Germans had given the virus much thought, Charité hospital in Berlin had already developed a test and posted the formula online.

By the time Germany recorded its first case of Covid-19 in February, laboratories across the country had built up a stock of test kits.
..
"Testing and tracking is the strategy that was successful in South Korea, and we have tried to learn from that," Prof Streeck said.
...
Dr Merkel has communicated clearly, calmly and regularly throughout the crisis as she imposed ever-stricter social distancing measures on the country. The restrictions, which have been crucial to slowing the spread of the pandemic, met with little political opposition and are broadly followed.

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timelets @ 2020-04-04T00:10:00

2020-04-04T07:16:54Z

A new concept of the body was then emerging in the West to take the place of the humoral system, one based not on the balance of fluids but on cycles of input and output. The analogy was no longer a scale but an engine.

The crux of this shift was the discovery, in part through analysis of steam engines, of energy: the overarching force unifying what had been thought of as discrete phenomena, including motion, heat and light.
...
By 1900, the new science of nutrition had applied thermodynamics to human physiology via the calorie, a unit of measure that expressed the needs and abilities of the body in common terms—inputs and outputs, food and work. On its own, the calorie didn’t resolve questions about coffee, which contains very few calories per cup. But the calorie did provide a stable framework for understanding coffee’s physiological effects since it made work look like the basic function and natural condition of a living body, much like an engine. This ascendant biology of drudgery informed a new consensus on coffee: It was lubricant for the “human machine.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-coffee-became-a-modern-necessity-11585972861

A superficial "scientific" narrative provides a convincing explanation of something that works without revealing the underlying physiology.

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timelets @ 2020-04-01T20:57:00

2020-04-02T03:59:06Z

This is a really neat example of a quotient.

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timelets @ 2020-03-19T14:03:00

2020-03-19T21:03:48Z

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timelets @ 2020-01-15T23:57:00

2020-01-16T08:16:43Z

Based on my personal experience, I used to think that misogynists don't exist in real life. Over the years, I met all kinds of bigots: racists, antisemites, anti-LGBT, nationalists, elitists, religious, anti-religious, etc. But never a misogynist. I thought it was an invention of feminist extremists to portray a man as somebody who despises women.

Well, it turns out there's one right here in Vlad's feed (in Russian): https://minsk007.dreamwidth.org/ - quite an amazing character; I even feel somewhat sorry for him.

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timelets @ 2020-01-11T10:46:00

2020-01-11T21:46:15Z

( Read more... )

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0->1

2019-12-19T20:19:16Z

To me, one meaningful distinction between the left and the right does exist in the world of media: in two newspapers of record — The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — landing web pages publish news reports on the left and opinion on the right. Since news are valuable, while opinions are a dime a dozen, I'm a consistent leftist reader.

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Urban vs Rural - 8

2019-10-02T22:13:10Z

Parts of the country are dying out. Services they receive are the worst of both worlds: expensive and low quality:

In the medical desert that has become rural America, nothing is more basic or more essential than access to doctors, but they are increasingly difficult to find. The federal government now designates nearly 80 percent of rural America as “medically underserved.”
...

What Van Horn offered was a three-year contract with $300,000 guaranteed for the first year, which was about 50 percent more than Cummings could have earned in a big city. He wanted to practice in a small town where he could get to know his patients. His wife liked the nearby mountains. They would be close enough to drive back to Central Texas to visit family. The federal government would forgive much of his student debt as a reward for his working in a medically underserved area. Van Horn had sealed the deal with a $5,000 signing bonus and a $3,000 monthly stipend during the final year of his residency.
...
Even during his residency in tiny Winnemucca, population 7,400, he had worked with a medical team of emergency physicians, hospitalists and general surgeons. Once he started in Van Horn, he would eventually become the only doctor on call.

https://www.news-journal.com/news/in-the-medical-desert-of-rural-america-one-doctor-for/article_cff7ecda-e2f2-11e9-a269-330f202342cd.html

Transportation costs are high, specialization doesn't make business sense, investment into services infrastructure has no chance of paying off. Model-wise, the problem is the same as phone-based customer support.

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