nikhil.io

My new favorite show. Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are 💯💯💯. The best soundtrack to a TV show I’ve heard in years (Hannibal being my absolute favorite.) Via KC.

Bill Hader is made to faceshift when doing his impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s weird and brilliant and I love it. Here’s another where he does Al Pacino.

TIL about the term “deepfakes”.

Excellent stuff again from Jordan Peele. Thought the first half was about slavery and lost identity. Wisecrack has a great video on the movie’s various interpretations.

Via Deepu.

My anger has never been with the writers for having a character I love to come to a tragic end like that. No matter how gut-wrenching it was, they, or George RR Martin, always laid out a convincing argument for why it happened. And that’s what great writing does, it makes you think of the downfalls as being a result of the characters actions or a clear set of events.

For Ned, he went from Point A - being hand of the king, to point B - getting beheaded and his family being torn apart. No matter how devastating though, it was set up and executed perfectly. From the moment he figured our Cersei’s children were by Jaime and not Bobby B, the things he did, the decisions he made, led to his death. We as viewers know that he made a critical mistake in telling Cersei that he knew. In trusting and underestimating Littlefinger. And lastly with Sansa and himself trusting that Joffrey would keep his word in being merciful if Ned admitted treason. It is why when the end of Episode 9 happened, no one was talking about how bad the writers were. Our frustrations were with Ned, our anger was with Joffrey and Cersei. It is not that he deserved to get killed, it is that we have a full understanding of how he got there. There is no arguing against that progression.

And most importantly this moment hits us with what was the hard truth of the show the characters, no matter how much we love them, will suffer the consequences of their actions.

– TropeAnatomy

And finally, and I’ve watched this a few times with unhealthy glee, Screen Rant on how the HBO Season 8 pitch meeting might have gone (via CM.)

Season 8 was a stark reminder¹ of George RR Martin’s writing prowess².

Every person I’ve sent this to has seen it. Not sure why my own internet excursions didn’t yield this manifestly horrifying video.

The last few seconds reminded me of scenes from Annihilation. Like this one:

Edit: It’s been used in Eastern Medicine for a while. Like the top YouTube comment notes, “Cordyceps is evolving to trick us into believing it is medicine.”

Absolutely amazing stop motion by Daniel Cloud Campos & Co.

Here’s the making of. They did it over 17 days. I wonder when they got any sleep. At one point he says “we got 2 seconds after 4 hours.” ~3 minutes of video = 360 hours, or 15 days 😬

And it reminds me of the Oldboy fight scene!

Via Rotten Tomatoes and with the awesome ChartJS. Dots are episodes, contiguous lines are seasons (static version.)

A search for episode titles on GitHub yielded this indescribably amazing, mostly hand-curated GoT Dataset by Jeffrey Lancaster (who published a Medium article describing his process. Has a Stranger Things dataset as well.)

Update: MFW watching the final episode.

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,

   and you’re hampered by not having any,

the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,

   is simply by spinning a penny.

No—not so that chance shall decide the affair

   while you’re passively standing there moping;

but the moment the penny is up in the air,

   you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

– Persi Diaconis, “The Problem of Thinking Too
Much”

For My Mother by May Sarton

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

💗

via Catherine

Vicki Boykis’ excellent article on every aspect of ‘Data Science’ I can think of: a little history, employment prospects, skills, education, and continuous learning.

It would appear that more than half the job, at least, is wrangling (replicating, cleaning, imputing, transferring, understanding, augmenting) data. It’s boring and super-important so, of course, is the least favorite thing 🙃

Source

Peter Norvig: (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)).

See also: HyLang. Looks super cool and always makes me wonder if anyone’s ever used it in production.

Back in the second century BC, Cato the Elder ended his speeches with the phrase ‘Carthago delenda est,’ which is to say, ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’ It didn’t matter what the ostensible topic of the speech was: above all, Carthage must be destroyed.

My opinion towards JavaScript is much like Cato’s towards Carthage: it must be rooted out, eliminated and destroyed entirely. I don’t know if I’d go quite so far as to say that the fundamental challenge of mass computing is the final destruction of JavaScript — but I want to say it, even though it’s false.

JavaScript is a pox, a disaster, a shame. It is the most embarrassingly bad thing to become popular in computing since Windows 3.1. Its one virtue (that it’s on every client device) is outshone by its plethora of flaws in much the same way that a matchstick is outshone by the sun, the stars and the primordial energy of the Big Bang added together.

JavaScript is the XML, the Yugo, the Therac-25 of programming languages. The sheer amount of human effort which has been expended working around its fundamental flaws instead of advancing the development of mankind is astounding. The fact that people would take this paragon of wasted opportunity and use it on the server side, where there are so many better alternatives (to a first approximation, every other programming language ever used), is utterly appalling.

JavaScript delenda est.

I don’t know what my newfound affection for it says about me. Via HackerNews.

Watched because “Sherlock Holmes.” An awful, unnecessary, ghastly shitshow.

Tyler Vigen maintains around 30,000 examples of “spurious correlations” (also available in book form). For instance:

You can also “discover” your own. Like this one

The first two-thirds are brilliant. As for Olivia Wilde and her riveting performance:

[. . .] it’s still good to see a cunning and capable actress rise above her usual projects, such as stupid fodder like Tron or Cowboys and Aliens, or labels like “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.”

After Enough and five Death Wish movies, the revenge genre is not without its recurring clichés, many of which get defrosted and microwaved again in A Vigilante. The point, if there is one, is that “heinous criminal felonies are acceptable if they are justified by a woman driven beyond the limits of reason.” As one battered wife says, “Every graveyard is full of people who didn’t make it.” The same is true of old movies gathering dust in Hollywood film vaults.

At least in Civilization:

[. . .] Gandhi tends to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and spares no expense on wiping your civilization off the map. You probably always thought you were crazy — how could a series that prides itself on historical accuracy portray Gandhi so wrong? Well, you’ll be happy to know that both your sanity and Civilization’s historical integrity aren’t at fault. Instead, a bug’s to blame.

In the earlier Civs, leaders are given a set of attributes that dictate their behavior. One such attribute is a number scale associated with aggressiveness. Gandhi was given the lowest number possible, a rating of 1. However, when a civilization adopted democracy, it granted a civilization -2 to opponent aggression levels. This sent Gandhi’s rating of 1 into the negative, which swung it back around to 255 — the highest possible rating available, and thus, the infamous warmonger Gandhi was born.

– Geek.com, What caused Gandhi’s insatiable bloodlust in Civilization

And they just left it in there as an homage:

This cyclical aggression scale was fixed in later versions of the game, but Gandhi wasn’t totally cured of his bloodlust. The team fixed Gandhi’s aggression rating, but as an Easter egg paying homage to the earlier aggressive versions of Gandhi, ramped his nuke rating through the roof. So, while it may be difficult to push Gandhi over the edge, he goes from zero to nuclear option once you do.

Via MS.

This video of a ball swinging in front of concave mirror (starts at 2:00, cannot embed for some reason) reminded me of simulations of what it would be like if one fell into a Black Hole.

Here’s a Schwarzschild Black Hole, one “with mass, but with no electric charge, and no spin.” (Source)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and
without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the
speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow
down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and
exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep
isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has
jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less
visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway.
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the
mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.

– Robert M. Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

via BG

Can attest 😆. Via.

Via GLP, a University Title Generator that generates “prestigious” titles and associated salaries. A few random gems

• Associate Coordinator of the Subcommittee for Community Services
• Deputy Vice President of the Office of Alumni Planning
• Provost for the Subcommittee for Investor Diversity
• Vice Chair of the Subcommittee for Donor Technology

It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.

– Conrad, Heart of Darkness (taken completely out of context…)

Amar Bose on education, teaching, purpose, creativity, not whinging, Norbert Weiner (under whom he was a grad student), and working with the right (and ethical) people. Starts around 24:00.

OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I’m not aware of them.

– Dr. Alan Kay on the Meaning of “Object-Oriented Programming”

So… Erlang? (RIP Joe Armstrong 🙏) And that was before this

(I’m not against types, but I don’t know of any type systems that aren’t a complete pain, so I still like dynamic typing.)

Indeed, Dr. Kay.

As the final season of HBO’s blockbuster television series Game of Thrones hits screens around the world today, audiences in China are begging for the explicit scenes of sex and violence not to be censored.
[. . .]
Disgruntled viewers in China have previously compared the significantly edited version to a “medieval castle documentary”.

Which natually leads to (which won’t embed for some reason so here)

Ramin Nazer on some models he entertains of what happens to us after we die. A few of my favorites

Brilliant, beautiful.

Best thing I’ve seen this year. About as spiritual as it gets.

After an unimaginable length of time, even the black holes will have evaporated and the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons, gradually tending towards the same temperature, as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero. Once the very last remnants of the very last stars are finally decayed away to nothing and everything reaches the same temperature, the story of the universe finally comes to an end. For the first time in its life, the Universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy finally stops increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered.

Nothing happens. And it keeps not happening forever.

😢 how beautiful is that? And black holes take a long, long time to evaporate

A black hole with the mass of the sun will last a wizened 10⁶⁷ years. Considering that the current age of our universe is a paltry 13.8 times 10⁹ years, that’s a good amount of time. But if you happened to turn the Eiffel Tower into a black hole, it would evaporate in only about a day.

And that’s after this happens

It will take hundreds of trillions of years for the first stellar remnant to cool completely, fading from a white dwarf through red, infrared and all the way down to a true black dwarf. By that point, the Universe will hardly be forming any new stars at all, and space will be mostly black.

BLN and I spoke about how we simply have no good strategy to attempt a comprehension of “hundreds of trillions” of years.

Captured the city’s many contrasts quite well. Felt like I was watching Mirzapur again. The excellent Pankaj Tripathi plays the same wealthy, powerful, morally bankrupt, declining patriarch as in the show. Pretty much the same deal if they’d cast a mannequin instead of Akshay Oberoi.

Everything I expected from an Anurag Kashyap movie. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal were 💯 The real Raman Raghav story is quite crazy.

Remake of the Telugu Temper. Saviour Porn. Read this article on “procedures established by law” and mind-boggling backlogs in the Indian Legal System.

Not much of a story but loved the cinematography and pre-Independence setting. Easily the best Indian horror movie I’ve seen after Manichithrathazhu.

Found screenshots of a beautiful vintage theme I’d installed on my iPhone 5 via Cydia when I was stupid enough to jailbreak my phone. Wish I could still use it though 😍

via /r/desmoines. Source unknown.

Saw with LD. Long, slow, visceral, beautiful, gory. Kept me guessing. Excellent stuff.

There’s a pervasive hush and sense of stillness that lingers over the region of Gokseong, and scenes of brazen, crazed madness are often preceded by shots of tranquil mountain vistas whose lush, thickly forested landscapes increasingly feel smothering and secretive. This is a film as beautiful as it is gory, as painstakingly scenic as it is committed to stark visual interplays between darkness and light.

All the while, the story of Gokseong unfolds in fits and starts, each puzzle piece more confusing than the last. Are the residents of the town being systematically poisoned with a drug that causes them to become frenzied, savage killers? Are they being cursed? Or is it both, and for what reason? Na’s writing layers tension upon tension, particularly through the escalating paranoia that each of the townspeople comes to feel for any and all outsiders.

However, answers are much harder to find in this film than accusations. Horror fans wanting a plot whose ending dovetails nicely with all the elements that preceded it may wind up feeling frustrated, though many more may be drawn into the heart of its darkness: the conviction that terror has come to this town and there is no escape to be had.

Garrett Whisten made a most amazing CVS receipt generator (cached).

He even wrote a scraper that gets real product names off their website 🙏 🙌

Does The Dog Die? is a publicly curated database of sensitive, “emotional spoilers” for books, movies, TV, and many more categories. Unconsenting Media is a similar database of “sexual violence in broadcasting”.

A delightful, 20-minute video from the Hamilton Watch Company¹

and a tl;dw version of the above

Watched with D and M. Good thriller. Dharmendra was great. Was made aware of Neil Nitin Mukesh jokes.

A few favorites from a selection of Kenny Shopsin’s infinite wisdom. He ran this diner (which doesn’t really sound like one…)

On ambition

It’s just an initiation into the idea until the abilities to appreciate life forthe moments in a row starts to make you a deeper and more fulfilled person, and the energy you put towards pursuing the goals … it starts out obsessive.

The point of goals

My stupid goal: I’ve risen above that and I don’t need a goal, I’m just stupid. I just float free, knowing that after you’ve pursued a stupid goal for a long time, even if you understand it’s not important, you understand it’s a device to help you overcome the absurdity of life.

Social Media (article lists this as “on getting involved”)

[One] modern phenomenon is that people have begun to savor their spectatorship rather than being involved. They don’t want to be a part of it, or if they do, they don’t know how. They construct an artificial wall between reality and themselves — and they don’t cross it.

And on life

The only way to not be crushed by the stupidity of life is to pursue something energetically and gain as much satisfaction as you can before it gets stupid — and just ignore the fact that it’s stupid. The whole thing is shitty. You’re gonna fucking die.

“No really, why do you do this to yourself?” - KS

Features, in my estimation, the greatest solo special ops scene ever committed to film. No expert, but the knee-pillow fire might be related to why Seal Team Six attempted to destroy one of their damaged choppers.

Witch is cmd + tab on steroids.

A pure CSS still life by Ben Evans who appears to be working on an online story with pure CSS illustrations as well. Via Deepu.

All Yesterdays is an exploration of things we know we will never know about “dinosaurs and prehistoric animals” . Jonathan Wojcik at bogleech.com has an excellent review of the book. Of particular interest: We know little-to-nothing about the creatures’ anatomies and morphologies because of missing soft tissue data. Here are paleoartists’ recreations of a cow and a swan:

Looked up a sperm whale’s skeleton and can’t imagine how lacking a recreation would be:

Source

This article discusses the history and current state of paleoart. And this post is the ultimate TL;DR on the subject

As C.M. Kosemen explains throughout All Yesterdays, we really can’t ever know how much fat and other soft tissues contributed to the overall shape of dinosaurs since that’s the first thing to rot and shrivel tight against their bones and like even a sperm whale has a little skinny skeleton.

so like

how would we know?

Makes amazing sculptures. See the ones of Freddie Mercury and Doc Brown posted on social media quite often. Has an active YouTube channel.

Cached a list of CNN-IBN’s list of “the 100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time” for later perusal because the source website is cancer.

Gave Hugo a try and was quite impressed by the ease and speed. The official documentation kinda sucks at introducing key ideas (like taxonomies) in a gradual way that’s helpful to newcomers, but is great for variable and function references. Found these two posts very helpful. Here’s another that explains template variable scope well. And another that goes over theme development step-by-step.

Sticking to Jekyll for now since

• I don’t post that often and can wait a minute for recompilation if/when I have that many posts
• Hugo does not compile SASS like Jekyll; don’t want to make an asset pipeline or turn to readymade solutions like this
• It doesn’t do archives like Jekyll. Approaches like these might be creative but… 🤷‍♂️

Hugo is as insanely fast as advertized. I love the section and taxonomy abstractions, myriad content types, and I18n support. I’d use it to build any static website that’s not a blog. For now, Viva Jekyll.

Brooding and wonderful stuff by the brothers Jacobo and Sergio Abril of Nada Studios (who are architects.)

makes absolutely mesmerizing cyberpunky, vaporwavey 3D art.

The Des Moines Register on how to send them email in (I’m guessing) the late 80s/early 90s.

An article on how Baud Rate isn’t the same as Bit Rate

Baud rate refers to the number of signal or symbol changes that occur per second. A symbol is one of several voltage, frequency, or phase changes. NRZ binary has two symbols, one for each bit 0 or 1, that represent voltage levels. In this case, the baud or symbol rate is the same as the bit rate.

– Lou Frenzel, Electronic Design, “What’s The Difference Between Bit Rate And Baud Rate?”

Via /r/bitcoin

Can’t Unsee is “Spot the difference” for UI nerds. 6530. On the “hard” sections, wondered how much the minutiae matter if a user is unable to discern the difference between two comps after a few seconds.

Via Deepu