Today I Learned

Appointing incompetent loyalists, via Wikimedia Commons I’d really like to describe the Trump administration as an example of Weaponized Incompetence, but I really can’t. Intuitively, the term seems to fit, but it already has a definition in the psychological literature. Setting Trump aside for the moment, the term refers to strategically avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incapable so that someone else helps, takes over, or stops delegating tasks. Over time, the per

“Beware of the Leopard”, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, via Wikimedia Commons In the classic scene from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I refer, of course, to the 1981 TV version), Arthur Dent confronts the person trying to bulldoze his house, who explains that the plans for the demolition had been placed on display. “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.” “That’s the display department.” “With a torch.” “The lights had probably gone.” “So had t

Da Vinci sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510), via Wikimedia.org NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared on The Skeptic (UK). “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill, 11-Nov-1947 The term “neurodiversity” has been used in recent years to describe the natural variations in human neurolo

Bubbles, from Finding Nemo, via YouTube.com Finding Nemo was a great film, filled with endless references, sight-gags, and characters, making it the sort of movie you can watch again and again. Among the wonderful scenes is one with Bubbles (voiced by Stephen Root), who gets a bit... excited when he sees bubbles. As Gill says, “Fish aren’t meant to be in a box, kid. It does things to you.” But why would people be thinking so much about bubbles? It’s not as if we’re in the mid

Bronze coin of Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judaea © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. dixit itaque ei Pilatus ergo rex es tu respondit Iesus tu dicis quia rex sum ego ego in hoc natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum ut testimonium perhibeam veritati omnis qui est ex veritate audit meam vocem dicit ei Pilatus quid est veritas et cum hoc dixisset iterum exivit ad I

til-technology.com When we hear music, there’s usually a go-to association, which can say a lot about the listener. Take, for example, Wagner’s famous Ride of the Valkyries, from Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). While I have heard it many times (in isolation, as I have never actually listened to a Wagner opera in its entirety), the version that my mind always goes to is the one in What’s Opera, Doc?, with the famous lines: “Kill da wabbit! Kill da wabbit! K

Alan Turing, 1951, via Wikipedia.org It’s been over seventy-five years since Alan Turing came up with the Imitation Game in his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and I have previously written written about the Turing Test. After so many years, and so much work on Artificial Intelligence, there is a lot of criticism of the test, and discussion of how to beat it, and systems which can now “beat” it, but not much on what comes next. Does beating the Turing test m

The Quantum Leap, via Wikipedia.org When I write, I often try to come up with two topics that are linked in some interesting way, and find it fun when the link is unexpected or particularly tenuous. The more unexpected the connection, the more fun it can be, particularly when I learn about something new. So, the first time I wrote about quantum computers and encryption, I discovered the band Mammút, through finding their song “Shore” while searching for more information about

PSEUDOSCIENCE: Human and animal physiognomies, via Wikipedia.org NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared on The Skeptic (UK). Computer science is science, right? It’s in the name. This is actually a topic of some debate. Is it a scientific discipline? An engineering discipline? A branch of mathematics? Yes. All of that, and more. Probably best to describe it as a “multi-disciplinary field” and note the intersection points with mathematics, cognitive science, linguist

Blown Away Guy – Maxell ad, via Wikipedia.org “Is it real? Or is it Memorex?” For those under fifty, the answer is probably a blank stare. For the rest, I apologize for misremembering the slogan. Imagine my surprise when I found that it was actually “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” Do others remember it that way? Is this an example of the Mandela effect? Nah – I just remembered it wrong. I need to apologize for the image as well, but this one was deliberate. I only vaguely rem

Phrack, via https://phrack.org/ Language is constantly evolving, not only by time and location, but also because of usage and changing cultural associations. When I think of the word “manifesto”, the example which leaps to mind is the Communist Manifesto, obviously due to the title, but also because it is short and clearly laid out. Manifesto is defined as “a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer”, and such statements are general

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto Experience is learning the hard way that something won’t work, is harder than it looks, or will come back to haunt you. Learning from history is where you find that something didn’t work, was harder than it looked, or came back to haunt someone... and then you go ahead and do it again. The well-known quote that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” is, of course, attributed to Mark Twain. Quotes like this can be very hard to tra

The perfect food , via Wikipedia.org . I believe that AI and Bayesian reasoning might be the chocolate and peanut-butter we’ve been looking for. One of the major challenges we currently face is the Rage Machine , in which we are exposed to a fire-hose of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Trying to understand and navigate this environment was hard enough ten years ago, but has now been turbo-charged by AI systems which are being used to flood the zone in

Minion Sculpture – Brisbane 2024, via Wikimedia Commons Minions have a wonderful combination of traits which make them both dangerous and sweet. They want to help, but usually end up creating more problems than they solve. It seems as if their purpose in life is to be the henchmen of a villain, but they’re comically bad at it – incompetent and easily distracted, though not evil. At times, they seem almost like old stereotypes of interns – eager, but inexperienced and a bit c

Tweety from Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, via Wikipedia Though certainly an iconic figure, I’ve never been a particular fan of Tweety . I find earlier versions of the character cruel and malicious, while later versions (possibly, I’ll admit, because of those earlier versions) seem faux-innocent and cruelly manipulative. Sylvester , on the other hand, is often a more relatable character, especially when he recognizes that cats eat birds and struggles to control his baser i

Cover of The Alan Parsons Project album, Pyramid, via Wikipedia.org The Alan Parsons Project is one of those acts where many people don’t “know the band”, but will recognize several songs, such as Eye in the Sky , or Prime Time . Those familiar with progressive rock from the 1970’s and 1980’s, on the other hand, likely know them well. The only official members were Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson , augmented by a large group of session musicians who worked in various capacit

Boötes Void , aslo known as the “Great Nothing”, via Wikipedia.org “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ch IV, Section 146, Via Project Gutenberg Nietzsche is a very interesting figure, whose work is often admired and/or criticized, but seldom understood. It does not help that he suffered bouts of ill health throughou

Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone, Auguste Rodin, via Cleveland Museum of Art When I first read Stranger in a Strange Land , I was too young to fully understand much of it. Of course I only realized that when I read it again, several years later. Over the years, I have read the book a dozen or so times, and picked up a bit more each time. This is the nature of good books – you can read them again, and pick up something new. Sometimes, you pick up some subtlety in the story o

This is my honest opinion of Donald Trump. It’s been redacted, in order to avoid offending anyone due to language or, um... physical impossibility. I just hope I did better than the US Department of Justice (DOJ), when they released the tiny, first-drip of files related to Jeffrey Epstein . Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on Epstein is pretty concise. “Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier, child sex offender, serial rapist

“Martha Root”, dressed as Pink Ranger, Chaos Computer Club, 2025 I feel conflicted. On the one hand, it was illegal. On the other hand, they were bad people and it was very cool. I once attempted to describe the “ hacker mindset ”, which is less about technology, and more about trying to find innovative ways to do things – for many “old-school” hackers, it was far more about solving puzzles. Over the years, the word “hacker” has become more and more difficult to define. Depen