Today I Learned

Hacker Silhouette, via Wikimedia Commons They want to help keep people safe. That’s a motivation I certainly support, but it’s important to be sure that your actions actually support your goal. On the 1-Dec-2025 episode of Cybersecurity Today, host David Shipley (whom I have mentioned before) talked about a new (at that time) website called Stop Hacklore! They describe themselves as “a group of current and former CISOs and security experts” who “want to offer guidance that ma

Reflections (band), Live at the Skyway Theater 2014, via Wikimedia Commons This keeps happening, and I love it! I wanted to talk about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but I like having two topics which tie together in some way. That’s why I sometimes simply search on a word or phrase, then see if there’s anything I find new and interesting. That’s how I learned about the Icelandic band Mammút, for example. In this case, I searched on the word ‘reflections’, and found th

Flag of Russia, via Wikimedia Commons Everyone seems to need a villain. For many, that villain is Russia. I won’t go into the long, complex history, or discuss how our current geopolitical situation evolved, but I do wonder about the degree to which people have an enemy because they want or need one. Several years ago, I posted about Theory X and Theory Y, where X assumes that people are inherently unmotivated and need to be actively ‘managed’, while Y assumes people are gene

Dr Anthony Fauci, beside Trump (the best of us, beside the worst), via Wikimedia Commons Donald Trump’s first presidency was a global embarrassment, starting with the so-called ‘Muslim ban’, and ending with the January 6th insurrection. And then, in 2020, came COVID-19. This was a major global event, and there was no perfect course of action. There were a lot of bad ones, though, and Trump selected many of them. Selecting Alex Azar for Health and Human Services was not necess

Artificial Intelligence Icon, via Wikimedia Commons Everyone is so out-of-touch. Are they? Really? And, if so, why might that be? Many people think it’s an age thing, but I don’t. I remember several variations on the idea that someone who is not a ‘socialist’ (or ‘liberal’, or ‘républicain’) at twenty has no heart, and one who is still such at forty has no brain – I didn’t think much about it when I was young, but now believe that it’s utter bullshit. I have come to realize t

Cyclospora cayetanensis, via Wikimedia Commons I was surprised to learn that Waldo is actually Wally, and that he’s only been around since 1987. I first heard of him as an adult, but always assumed that he had been around for years before that period where he appeared to be everywhere. Just like Robert F Kennedy, about whom I have written several times. Most recently, I described the changes he made to the Food Pyramid, but I have also discussed his anti-vax views and his app

Touched by His Noodly Appendage, parody of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, via Wikipedia.org Reactions to the above image range from religious ecstasy to abject horror. I find it amusing and interesting, so I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was, according to the consensus of scholarly opinion, a satire on creationism, created by Bobby Henderson, a physics graduate at Oregon State University. It was first published as an open letter to the Kans

Artificial Intelligence, via Wikimedia Commons NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared on The Skeptic (UK). We live in a sea of cognitive biases. Everyone is affected. All of us. All the time. Psychologists study them, as do economists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers, but no one is immune to them. Skeptics need to understand them, and I suspect that most are able to rattle off a list as easily as they can a list of logical fallacies. It is essential, however,

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

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

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

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

Charlie Chaplin, in The Great Dictator, 1940, via Wikimedia Commons Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about fascism. While I already had a fair degree of familiarity and understanding of the big picture, I’ve been picking up (and often blogging about) items which are new to me. Predictably, most are disturbing, but I occasionally come across something wonderful. Charlie Chaplin was an immensely influential figure in the history of cinema, and his “Tramp” character has been an

The School of Athens. Print by Giorgio Ghisi, of painting by Raphael, via Wikimedia Commons What most people call “debate” really is not. I found the Wikipedia article quite amusing. My favourite bit was where it says: “...debates emphasize logical consistency, factual accuracy, and emotional appeal to an audience.” I guess one out of three isn’t bad? Even so-called “formal” debate, where there are rules, judges, and guidelines for acceptable conduct, are more about competit

42 and Douglas Adams – Numberphile, via YouTube I suppose it’s not surprising that I’ve mentioned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy...