Category: Blarghing

My general rants and speeches

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When We Cease to Understand the World by Labatut

This book is definitely unique.

It starts off much like nonfiction, drawing the reader in by painting a dark line from the Zyklon B gas used in concentration camps to a pigment celebrated for its vibrancy. All that Labatut says in this chapter is true, and reads much like something by Bill Bryson: an easy read interspersed with facts and connections that grips the reader.

While it might seem like this writing style would eventually transition to discussing how scientists discovered quantum mechanics, and maybe some deep connection with a wildly different field, it slowly transitions to examine the minds responsible.

While no one can truly understand the excitement and fear of genius at work (unless you are one), it’s interesting that Labatut provides a meta-commentary regarding the thought process. The bulk of the book eventually lands on just two characters Schrödinger and Heisenberg, and using real events in their lives, paint their discoveries in a sometimes lurid but often transcendental  light.

I never thought I would say this about a book ultimately about these physicists, but there were aspects when I thought it was Lolita-esque and I was uncomfortable. But I do recommend the reader to do a little research afterwards.

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Freedom by Franzen

Continuing my trek through the NYTimes Best Books of the 21st Century list, I intended to buy a second-hand copy of The Corrections by Franzen but ended up with Freedom instead. From what I gathered, it seems the two are quite similar, with The Corrections being more “satirical” while Freedom seems more like a soap opera.

It’s funny, the book was simultaneously relatable and alienating at the same time. So much of the novel revolved around midlife crises, sexual frustrations, and societal angst that had no hold on me. Yet, at other times, it would discuss family dynamics and political frustrations which resonated quite deeply.

The book centered around a single family, Patty and Walter, who both grew up as the odd ones out in broken (in their own ways) families. They eventually meet in college, and through this relationship, Franzen brings in many supporting characters: their son (and daughter), whom Patty dotes on too much, which drove him away; Walter’s best friend, who complicates things with Patty; and a young, attractive woman whom Walter works with later in life when his marriage with Patty is on the rocks.

By switching the point of view four or so times in the novel, we get an interesting take on the events. For large parts, the novel was supposedly “Patty’s Journal,” where she detailed her, frankly confusing, motivations. When it was appropriate, we switched to Walt (and sometimes their son).

The story is expansive, yet also has a slightly meaningless ending.

But isn’t the journey the point?

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The Bob’s Burgers addiction on Garmin

Bob’s Burgers has been the ambient track to my life for awhile now. It provides a comforting background noise from which I can choose to tune in to or out of at ease due to the irrelevant (but good humored) nature. Day to day, I would pull up Hulu, and just resume… however, this is not ideal. I only have the ad supported version of Hulu meaning no offline or minimized playing, and it has ads.

“But Marshall, Bob’s Burgers is only available on Hulu. Where else are you watching it?”

Good question. For awhile now, there have been people uploading virtually full episodes onto YouTube. As this is against copyright, these videos all have various ways to skirt around the initial screening: cropped videos, truncated episodes, slightly distorted sounds. They still get taken down relatively quickly. For an explanation of why this is happening, see posts like this. But I would also use these videos, as they generally don’t have shuffled episodes too, meaning I can be surprised by what comes up next. I can also play this very much like a podcast due to having Premium.

Recently, I got a Garmin smartwatch with the capabilities to play stored music. Looking to curb my phone dependence, I thought about putting Bob’s Burgers on the watch in an audio format. However, I wanted a few constraints:

  1. Since I listen to this sometimes to zone out/nap, as much as I like the introductory jingle, it needs to go.
  2. The audio should also generally be faded out before the credits, as it’s usually a long jingle which is too distracting.
  3. Audio cannot be too “jumpy.”

This turned out to be very easy due to the structured nature of the episodes. Suppose one has the files of the episodes in “.mkv” files in a legal manner, then the following lines

for file in *.mkv; do
echo "Processing $file..."
filename="${file
ffmpeg -i "$file" -map 0:a:0 \
-ss 00:00:20 -to 00:20:20 \
-filter:a "afade=t=in:st=20:d=5,afade=t=out:st=1215:d=5" \
-metadata title="$file" -metadata artist="The Bobs" \
-id3v2_version 3 "${filename}.mp3"
done

creates mp3 files of the audio which simply fades in/out the credits and out song. The last point about normalizing the audio turned out to not be important, but using the following line into the for loop might help

  ffmpeg-normalize --progress -c:a libmp3lame "${filename}.mp3" -o normalized/${filename}.mp3

By moving this onto Garmin, I know can shuffle through various episodes!

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Pied-à-terre

small living unit, e.g., apartment or condominium, often located in a large city and not used as an individual’s primary residence

Of course there’s a French word for this.

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Grasshopper

The grasshopper laid on the small open air passageway between the stairs and the front door of my apartment. A streak of ardent green juxtaposed against the gray, brutalist pockmarks of the concrete walkway. And yet, I almost stepped on it. Not, on purpose mind you, but because of the very subtle pull from peripheral vision; a beckoning of sorts when one’s mind is on autopilot.

It looked like it was dead. A grasshopper is not considered an elegant insect, with its many sharp angles and rectilinear tagma. Nothing like the gentle curves of a butterfly. But with this, comes a natural orientation that I could clearly see even while erect. It was lying on its side, throwing off the alignment to the ground attained by millions of years of evolution.

But occasional twitches showed specks of life remained. Unfortunately, my hands were full carrying trash to the bin, and saving this tiny green mote involved several steps. I would had to lean my trash bag against the wall, find and gently use a piece of card stock or paper to scoop the little fellow. Finally, take this little specimen down the flights of stairs and deposit it among the shrubs.

Maybe “several steps” is overselling it, but I ultimately did nothing and continued with my chores after returning from the bins. Was it really that hard to do something for a helpless creature stuck in a foreign land? The activation energy required so large that I chose inactivity? (To be fair, it was three flights of stairs…)

Or was my laissez faire attitude the correct choice for it was too weak to survive anyways? The wind was strong that day, and I suspected that it was blown from the nearby tree onto the balcony. Perhaps the traveler was just catching its breath and would straighten up by itself after several minutes

Twenty minutes later, when I was throwing away the recycling, it was gone.

 

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Tapping Out

I’m a fan of well-designed objects. One where its clear that an engineer spent some late nights thinking about the utility. They consciously insert themselves into the consumer who just want an intuitive experience paired alongside the promised functionality.

Things like the OXO measuring jug, where the lines are placed so that the baker doesn’t have to bend over. Or maybe just a door whose design clearly proclaims whether it should be pulled or pushed. A paperclip even passes this criteria.

The inverse is also true. Sometimes the pursuit for trends or profits causes a product to be utterly disgusting to use, causing pain (well, more so emotional damage). Even worse is when these products are procured by other businesses or the government, and just squirts soap or blows hot air when you want water….

In other words, I hate those stupid new faucets with soap dispenser/dryer that look alike. Shitty things like

or this…

or this…

especially this…

like who thought this was good… a three in one?

KISS.

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A Terrible Philosophy

You are standing next to a lever that controls a runaway trolley. The trolley is headed straight for five people who are tied to the track. You can pull the lever to divert the trolley onto a different track, but there is one person tied to that track. Do you pull the lever?

You decide to pull the lever. Unfortunately, due to lack of infrastructure upkeep, the lever malfunctions and snaps off and you witness the brutal massacre of five innocent workers. It’s a good thing they were unionized and their widows are now receiving proper indemnity benefits.

A runaway trolley is headed towards five people who are tied to the track. There is no lever that you can pull to divert the trolley, but there is a large person standing next to you. The only way to stop the trolley and save the five people is to push the large person off the bridge and onto the track.

You try to push the person off the track. But you, a scrawny philosophy student who subsists on a diet of ramen and Cheetos, lack the power to push the large person off. As retaliation, the large person shoves you instead, and your last thought before you are crushed is about Camus.

You are a surgeon performing an operation on a patient. Suddenly, five other patients rush into the operating room. They have all been involved in a car accident and are in critical condition. You can only operate on one patient, and you know that the other five patients will die if you don’t operate on them.

After asking the RN to find insurance cards in their wallets and realizing that the five new patients are most likely on high deductible plans, you decide to simply operate on the original patient. After all, he has that new BCBS plan that will finally help you make a dent in that ridiculous $100,000 student loan. So much for the Hippocratic oath.

You are a self-driving car engineer. You are working on a new algorithm that will prevent self-driving cars from hitting people. However, you know that the algorithm is not perfect, and there is a small chance that it will cause the car to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill the people in the car. Do you release the algorithm?

Your boss is Elon Musk. Of course you do/did and was/will be the cause of a major pile up on I-75 one of these days.