I think I'd like to try doing hand written morning blog posts. I'm experimenting and looking for thr right app for my Duo 2. I tried it this morning in OneNote and apparently what I wrote (which wasn't very long) was too long to export as a PDF.
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"Poverty is not being poor; poverty is wanting more." - Seneca
To be clear, this is not meant to say "why are poor people unhappy"? Especially in the capitalist society of today. But it is a point in regards to the ability for someone who is objectively poor, but still able to be happy. If you have what you need and want, while it may be less than what others have, it's perfectly reasonable for you to be happy and content.
Historican Heather Cox Richardson's notes from August 11th
I quite enjoy her write ups as sort of a review and wrap up on the day's news with primarily a focus on the US government and Trump. Here is an excerpt from the linked post:
This afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief press conference in which he announced that the unjustified attacks on the Department of Justice (DOJ) have led it to file a motion to unseal the search warrant the FBI used and a redacted version of the receipt for the things removed from the premises. He also confirmed that copies of the warrant and the property receipt were left with Trump, as regulations require. Had Trump wanted to release them, he could have…and he still can, at any time.
Contrary to right-wing reports, Trump’s lawyer was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, which a federal court authorized after finding probable cause. Garland said that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and he also pointed out that the Department of Justice did not publicize the search; the former president did. Because of the public interest in the matter—and to clear up confusion over it—the department is asking a judge to unseal the documents.
A Biochemist’s View of Life’s Origin Reframes Cancer and Aging
I've added his book to my always-growing list of books to read. Boling below is Quanta's question which he answers:
Your book argues that the flow of energy and matter structures the evolution of life and is how metabolism “conjures genes into existence.” What’s the most compelling reason to think metabolism, not genetic information, evolved first?
The purist view of “information first” is the RNA world, where some process in the environment makes nucleotides, and the nucleotides go through a process that makes them link up into polymer chains. Then we have a population of RNAs, and they invent everything, because they’re capable of both catalyzing reactions and copying themselves. But then how did the RNAs invent all of metabolism, cells, spatial structure and so on? Genes don’t actually do that even today. Cells come from cells, and genes go along for the ride. So why would genes do it at the very beginning?
And how would they do it? Let’s say there are 10 steps in a biochemical pathway, and any one step by itself is not of much use. Every product in a pathway would have to be useful for it to evolve, which is not the case. It just looks so difficult to evolve even a single pathway.
Yitang Zhang didn't get to go to middle or high school but he is a mathematician today
As a boy in Shanghai, China, Yitang Zhang believed he would someday solve a great problem in mathematics. In 1964, at around the age of nine, he found a proof of the Pythagorean theorem, which describes the relationship between the lengths of the sides of any right triangle. He was 10 when he first learned about two famous number theory problems, Fermat’s last theorem and the Goldbach conjecture. While he was not yet aware of the centuries-old twin primes conjecture, he was already taken with prime numbers, often described as indivisible “atoms” that make up all other natural numbers.
The thing I am seeing over and over in society is a growing belief in "I'm doing it, so it must be okay." Whether we're talking about a former US President, a Russian dictator, or an ex-Navy veteran. There feels to be a growing sense that personal morals supercede common societal law.
This is hardly a unique thought, but I think it bears commenting that - I firmly believe people cannot strictly derive their morals from governmental law, but that there must be an underlying willingness to participate in the larger society as a balance against it.
"Russia's Brutal Honesty Has Destroyed the West's Appeasers"
It bears reminding that there is a war in Ukraine. The larger press coverage has moved on to some extent, but Russia continues to invade and deny the sanctity of Ukraine's borders. The excerpt below refers to a video a survivor of Mariupol provided them, the video is not in the article but speaks to the blantant acts of Russia during this assault.
I'm forced to wonder, at what point are other countries responsible for allowing this to continue while acts like this take place, ignoring the global laws regarding conflicts? Yes, the threat of nukes is real, but it is something which is solvable.
What makes the video so chilling wasn’t just the fact that targeting civilians is a war crime. It’s that the clip bears the unmistakable logo of RT, the Russian channel that started off in 2005 as a mostly benign attempt to improve Russia’s international image and ended up as a domestic disinformation bullhorn. The video’s unequivocal message: This is what we’re doing in Ukraine, and we’re not even going to pretend anything else.
"FBI search warrant shows Trump under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, Espionage Act violations"
I seriously can't believe this dipshit had four years in the whitehouse.
That's a lie. I can believe it. I'm sad and wish I couldn't believe it.
John Fetterman has an event in Erie Pennsylvania, his first since his stroke
I could be wrong, but I feel like no other new-Democratic senator run has gotten as much press as Fetterman since Obama or AOC. He seems like a very down to earth and good dude. We will see how his election goes. Fingers crossed.
Nepal's Kusunda has one speaker left, linguists are fighting to change that
Kusunda is an interesting language. It has no known ancestor language and one of its unique features is it appears to lack the words for 'yes' and 'no.'
Hima is one of the last remaining Kusunda, a tiny indigenous group now scattered across central western Nepal. Their language, also called Kusunda, is unique: it is believed by linguists to be unrelated to any other language in the world. Scholars still aren't sure how it originated. And it has a variety of unusual elements, including lacking any standard way of negating a sentence, words for "yes" or "no", or any words for direction.
According to the latest Nepali census data from 2011, there are 273 Kusunda remaining. But only one woman, 48-year-old Kamala Khatri, is known to be fluent.
[...]
Madhav Pokharel, emeritus professor of linguistics at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, has been overseeing the documentation of the Kusunda language over the last 15 years. He explains that several studies have attempted to link it with other language isolates, such as Burushaski from north Pakistan and Nihali from India. But all have failed to find any robust conclusions.Madhav Pokharel, emeritus professor of linguistics at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, has been overseeing the documentation of the Kusunda language over the last 15 years. He explains that several studies have attempted to link it with other language isolates, such as Burushaski from north Pakistan and Nihali from India. But all have failed to find any robust conclusions.
[...]
Alongside its mysterious beginnings, linguists have noted Kusunda's many rare elements. Bhojraj Gautam, a linguist with in-depth knowledge of Kusunda, describes one of the most peculiar: there is no standard way of negating a sentence. Indeed, the language has few words implying anything negative. Instead, context is used to convey the exact meaning. If you want to say "I don't want tea", for example, you might use the verb to drink, but in an adjusted form which indicates a very low probability – synonymous with the speaker's desire – of the drinking of tea.
Aug. 12, 2022 - Handwritten Note
Transcript:
Friday, Aug. 12
I have this idea to do occasionally handwritten but still digital blog entries. I don't have a compelling reason other than that I think it might be interesting to do for small mundane sort(s) of posts.
So far, figuring out the app to do it is my first big hurdle. This one is being done in Sketchbook which is close to doing what I want, but I am going to keep looking.
We will see where this idea goes.
Trick