Sisyphus

Jacob — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 14:06:03 +0000

Get your notebooks ready, because this one’s educational….mostly. Don’t miss out on this show!

TOPICS

How a Litre is Measured: See, the metric system is kinda genius when you think about it. It’s just a measure of the volume of a decimeter squared. That’s a fancy way of saying a little cube that about 4 inches high.[1] The clumsy “Gallon”, on the other hand, was based on the volume of the weight of 8.34 pounds of water (at least in the US). Different countries have different gallons.[2] How scientific!

Science Papers are not Well Peer Reviewed: Ok, I’m not sure if my “incentivising” idea will work, but something has to be done about the fact that we are not peer reviewing enough papers![3]

The Appeals of Authoritarianism: Even before the 2016 elections were over, I already knew the outcome (as well as anyone could, since it was still so close). But it had put me in a dark mood for months as I saw the reality of what was about to happen.

The “So Called Curse” of Sisyphus: Even the Greeks understood the endless toils and pointless struggle of it all. They just hid it in a story not to totally depress their population.[4] You can also just embrace the madness and go for broke. [5]

Will A.I. be Programmed to be Racist? What a disaster that was, but a sign of just how messed up the internet is. It was supposed to be a friendly twitter girl. Instead, she turned Nazi real fast. Do people remember that Tay loved Trump?[6]

The Harassment Story: I tried to locate this story, but since recording thise, there are so many articles about it that’s it drowned it out. This was when we weren’t taking good notes, so this story will have to be unverified.

How to Really Listen: You know, you’re probably too focused on paying attention to what someone is saying to actually have any time to think about what they are revealing about themselves. That’s what I’m considered bad at listening. Always busy thinking about why they are talking about these issues to know any of the actual details!

Killer Mom: When it first came out, Serial Mom didn’t do too well. Ebert wasn’t a fan, though he did say that parts of the film did work. Is it time for a remake, maybe? [7]

Making up Your Mind: See, people don’t really find it easy making up their minds. It turns out this actually gets harder as you get older. So it sounds to me like my whole “Decision Bot” idea would be a smash hit with that demographic! [8]

Who Will Defend the No-Name Brand: A short story I’ve been developing for a while. If I ever finish it, I’ll publish it in the yearly magazine. Of course, people don’t read, so it might be a waste of my time.

Logic is not Involved: You might think that all your decisions are rational, but that’s just your brain tricking you into being bullied by the limbic system. This part of your brain is only a few hundreds of millions of years old, so what can you do? Also, apparently I inversed the Modes of thinking. [9]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon#The_Imperial_gallon
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw
[4] http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/sisyphus.html
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc9XOxUcvLY
[6] http://gizmodo.com/here-are-the-microsoft-twitter-bot-s-craziest-racist-ra-1766820160
[7] http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/serial-mom-1994
[8] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2440240/Older-people-difficult-make-choices-risks.html
[9] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when-making/

science

Sisyphus