Some of you might be familiar with Cory Doctorow from his book "Enshittification", where he talks about the gig economy and how platforms manipulate workers.
I sent him an email about Cambly. He wrote back, saying he hadn't heard of it before, but now he has. Hopefully having a journalist know about Cambly will help shed some light on it...
This is a simple algorithm I thought of. It is in Base-10, so somewhat arbitrary.
It works like this: take any integer greater than 1, and find out its prime factors. Concatenate the number of prime factors to the end of the number. Then find out the number of prime factors of that number and repeat. Continue going until you hit a prime number.
For example, starting with 75, we have:
75 -> 753 -> 7532 -> 75324 -> 7532443
And 7532443 is prime, bringing this to an end.
(As the example shows, we count all the prime factors, including repeats, so 75 has 3 factors, not 2)
Will this algorithm always end in a prime number? It would probably be very hard to find an answer.
Another volume in this iteration of The Transformers comic books.
As I said before, the conflict here is between keeping some of the nostalgic and simple feeling of the franchise, while making a story that is a bit more complex. They mostly accomplished this. I would probably pick up more of these if the library has more, but also wasn't quite involved enough to go out of my way to find more.
I've read several poetry collections this year, and the thing is, I don't really know how to read poetry. What information am I supposed to retain? What am I supposed to imagine? How do I know if I am "getting it"?
Well, I don't know what I am doing, but sometimes when I read poetry, I do get into an imaginative state with it. And I certainly did with this.
Sometimes after reading serious philosophy and the like, I like to unwind with things like manga based on video games. Another library booksale find that cost me a quarter!
There are many Platonic dialogues, over the years, I've read many of them. They are also easy to access, since they tend to crowd the shelves of bookstores and library booksales, so if you ever want to review the great ideas of Western Thought, you can get them for 50 cents. And the ideas are usually presented in a straightforward enough manner, with less technical terms than modern, academic philosophy. I can't claim that I reached enlightenment from reading this, but it did get me thinking, and helped me brush up on some ancient history.
This is a military history of the Battle of Arnhem, the bloodest part of one of World War II's biggest airborne battles. The larger battle was the subject of the famous book "A Bridge Too Far" by Cornelius Ryan, who has a similar first name to the author of this book. This book is a military history that goes into some detail about specific troop movements and the like, but sometimes skips the larger context, probably because it assumes the reader already knows those things. I liked reading it, but it might not be the best place to start for understanding the war in Western Europe.
Every Goosebumps book I've read is good because it quickly presents a central fantasy concept (cursed clock makes time go backwards) a central character concept (bullied kid in a dysfunctional family) and then gives the reader a plot that makes sense and has a lot of action, with a few twists.
How many times has "Transformers" been rebooted, by different comics companies? I like what they did here, making it a bit less cartoonish while not making it too grim and gritty. They also managed to keep the iconic art but make it more interesting.
Kurt Busiek can do no wrong, as far as I am concerned, and each one of these collections I read makes me want to know more about AstroCity. He manages to expand the mythology and present his own ideas, all while keeping the retro and nostalgia vibe of the superhero comics we grew up with.
Continuing the Young Avengers, this was a solid entrance in the "Snappy Dialog" era of comics, and had some interesting plots and characterization.
This is the other side of the last Ace Double I read, and it was a standard, but well-written story. I call this type of science-fiction "Blue Collar Sci-Fi", about working people on dusty, rocky planets or moons, or space freighters. In this one a space navy officer gets caught up in intrigue that is acknowledged, in the story, to be a type of space noir. A good read. Not a lost classic or something, but a good read.
This is another question that seems minor but got me thinking:
Were there doctors or medical practitioners in the Shire? We know there was something similar in Gondor, and both Elrond and Aragorn had skill at healing, but do we ever hear mention of anything like a doctor in the Shire?
Hobbits had seemingly good constitutions so didn't get too sick (but Bilbo had a cold, and the plague did hit the Shire), and they aren't prone to violence, or machines. But I imagine they still had some illness, and were liable to accidents and injuries. It seems that occasionally they would get in farm accidents and need bones set!
Hobbits are also often parallel to Victorians, with a complex bourgeois society (and they seemed to have lawyers), so it seems that there would be something akin to doctors in the Shire, but I don't know if it was ever mentioned.
A lot of people mention that travel maps are hard to judge because we don't always know each other's ages.
So I decided to make two travel maps.
By the age of 18, I had lived in Oregon and Washington all my life, and had traveled to California, to the Rocky Mountains for a three day trip, and for the East Coast for a historical study tour with my school. The East Coast study tour saw the basics... Washington, DC, Philadelphia, NYC and Boston, with a few other stops along the way. (I can't actually remember if our train passed through Rhode Island on that trip).
Airport stops in Dallas and Ohio.
A few years before that, I had lived my entire life in the Pacific NW, and the furthest I had been was a car trip to Yreka, California, and other than that, my entire life was on the I-5 Corridor, with a few trips to the beach or east of the mountains.
Today, my travel map is 44 states and six countries.
I am really just a hobbyist, but starting in 2020, I would take my camera with me wherever I go, and make 10-20 minute long videos about different cities and towns. I've actually been travelling around for decades before that, but having a channel gave me focus! My videos cover Oregon, Washington, Northern California and Montana (and a year in Costa Rica). Some of them focus on the cities, and some of them are in small towns. I have videos of downtown San Francisco and of the top of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. Some of my videos are about natural areas, some are about shopping malls, and some are about trains, buses and boats. Some of them are in the middle of diverse, liberal areas, and one of them is in a fundamentalist Mormon community in Montana.
The one takeaway I have is that all of these places are multidimensional. The bad and good stereotypes usually aren't true, or at least aren't glaringly frightening. Most of the big cities aren't shit-splattered junkie warzones, and most of the small towns aren't scary exclusionary places. (Not saying that cities or towns don't have their problems, but its not something that is super obvious at first). Most of my videos, whether it is a residential area in Portland, or a small town in Montana, end up making things look pretty boring---which doesn't sell on YouTube, but gives a good view of what they are actually like.
I am not saying that I am the absolute expert, but I've actually seen so many of these places inside and out, and my own impressions are quite different than the people who are just going off of stereotypes, or who are pursuing an obvious agenda.
How familiar was Tolkien with Plato (and other Classical Greek philosophers in general?)
I am assuming that as a philologist who studied classics, he had to have been at least partially familiar with Plato, and also given his theological interests, he would have studied Plato, and philosophers/theologians who were influenced by him.
But does anyone know if he ever studied Plato intensely? Would he have had more than a general knowledge of Greek philosophy?
Since 1989, when the NBA draft went to two rounds, 264 NBA players have been drafted without ever playing a minute in an NBA game. (From the wikipedia article I took this data from, it was unclear whether these were players who never signed to a team or players who were on the team but never played).
Almost all (257) of these were second round picks, but there were 7 first round picks that never played as well. This number was fairly consistent, around 8-12 players per draft class (with a few dips) between 1989 to 2015. In 2015, it peaked at 16 picks who never played. After that year, which was the year two way contracts were introduced, the number has gone down, to 2-6 picks per year who didn't play.
Some of these are probably players whose skills didn't fit into the rotation. Some of them were probably injuries, and some were players in foreign leagues who didn't choose to relocate.
(There are also plenty of undrafted players who did play in the NBA)
The biggest takeaway for me is just how competitive the NBA is. Out of all the prospects, only 60 get drafted per year, but the real story is even more strict than that, because typically around 8-10 of those wouldn't even qualify to ever play a single minute of garbage time in the NBA.
While looking at previous draft classes on wikipedia, I noticed that some years had many players who never played in the NBA. I was curious, so I went through and counted them. Since 1989, when the two round draft was introduced, 264 people were picked by NBA teams, and then never played. As can be believed, the overwhelming majority of these (257) were second route picks, but there have been 7 first round picks that never played at all, as well. (Although one of these is a recent player who had an injury and might still play).
The way Wikipedia lists them, I don't know which were never signed, and which might have been on a roster but never appeared on the court.
The number of picks who didn't play was pretty consistent from the early 1990s to 2017, with about 8-12 of each class not playing. In 2017, it peaked with 16 of the draft class, more than 25%, not playing, and then it has gone down to 2-6 per year not playing.
I also didn't go into the biographical details, so I don't know which picks didn't play due to "skill issues", and who might have been injured, or a foreign player who chose not to relocate.
The main thing I take away from this is just how incredibly competitive the NBA is. There are only 60 openings into the NBA a year, and effectively less than that, since usually 10 of those players didn't even qualify to play a minute of garbage time. (*although just as there are drafted players who didn't play, there are many undrafted players who did play).
In 1982, with the 221st pick in the 10th round, the Phoenix Suns selected Dale Wilkinson, a Senior from Idaho State, as there draft pick. As such, he is the last picked NBA player to have actually played in an NBA game.
In his NBA career, he played for the Detroit Pistons and the LA Clippers, where he played a total of 45 minutes across 12 games, scoring 14 points, and getting 3 rebounds and 3 assists. (These aren't averages, these are career totals).
He also played in the CBA and in Japan.
While this might seem like a slight NBA career, it is actually good for a 10th round player. Considering that in our modern two-round era with only 60 players, there are usually 5-10 players per draft class that never play a single NBA game, coming in as a 10th round pick and playing in the NBA is still a good accomplishment. If you scale expectations against pick number, maybe he actually did better than LeBron?
Also...is being picked 221st a very low selection, or a very high selection?
Every time I see California described as a "Never", it is usually someone who doesn't want to live in Los Angeles. Or who thinks that San Francisco is "far north" California.
California is a big state, and California looks like this too.