alexandra's pile of notes

The real question, then, is not whether there are other timelines; there certainly are. Rather it is why we see only one. Perhaps life or intelligence would not be possible if the branching were too evident to us. Physics is replete with such preconditions for our existence. For instance, if temporal flow did not have a directionality—an arrow of time—there could be no lasting change, no memories, no intelligence, no agency. Keeping other timelines hidden might be of similar importance. Quantum superposition may serve some specialized functions in our bodies, but otherwise it—along with any traces of alternate timelines—is dissipated in biology’s vigorous exchange of material and energy with the environment. The very nature of intelligence is to be selective; we would be paralyzed if we had to assay boundless infinitudes. Rather than holding open all possibilities, a mind must settle—at least tentatively—on one. The effort required to make that choice—and, from there, to act upon it—may be key to giving us at least the subjective feeling of free will.

stop letting billionaires own newspapers.

Attempts to quantify the scope of the problem are heartbreaking. Half of links in US Supreme Court decisions no longer lead to the information being cited. A report in 2021 found that a full quarter of the more than 2.2 million hyperlinks on The New York Times website were broken. Even worse, the Pew Research Center estimates that a quarter of everything put on the web from 2013 to 2023 is inaccessible — meaning almost 40% of the web as it existed in 2013 is simply not there today, a decade later.

The degradation of those links wouldn't panic me so much if they hadn't replaced what came before them — if museum storerooms and dusty library stacks still served as the warehouses of our collective memory.

In recent years, there’s a tendency towards specialism and specialists, from the job market to identities to relationships to education and more. Conversations around university education, for example, tend to be focused on high-earning job prospects, rather than on developing multidisciplinary ways of thinking. The job market tends to favor people who have had a clear, laddered path to success. The prevalence of TikTok trends, which disappear as quickly as they appear, have viewers categorizing themselves within a range of attributes, classifications that are used as bywords for a personality: “clean girl”, “softboi”, “thought daughter”, “thot daughter”, “de-influencers”, and more. Curiosity for curiosity’s sake is not discouraged, per se, but it’s not clearly monetizable either, and therefore can be deprioritized.

As a result, people are quick to try to categorize themselves based on interest or skill, as a way of telling the world who they are quickly, before an audience’s attention runs out, which can lead to tunnel vision, bias, and a sense of social entrapment. Generalists have an important place within society, working from a broad range of knowledge that brings context into the complex and nuanced circumstances humanity finds themselves in today. For example, doctors looking to improve their practices could find helpful lessons from history and philosophy—the history of humankind is also the history of generations of patients, after all. However, generalists have long faced the danger of being overlooked as the “jack of all trades, master of none”.

i don't agree with this, but i like to check in with my opinions every once in a while and take in opposition to challenge my own beliefs. this is about machiavelli, probably one of the philosophers on the opposite end of the spectrum from where i sit.

The internet's new definitive directory of solo and duet tabletop roleplaying games, their supplements, and the external tools made for them. Index entries are submitted by the passionate community that makes these games so special.

As a young naturalist growing up in the Deep South, I feared kudzu. I’d walk an extra mile to avoid patches of it and the writhing knots of snakes that everyone said were breeding within. Though fascinated by the grape-scented flowers and the purple honey produced by visiting bees, I trembled at the monstrous green forms climbing telephone poles and trees on the edges of our roads and towns.

My real world identity is not explicitly tied to my online persona, and if all goes right, hopefully it will stay that way. The real me is not whatever arbitrary designation I was bequeathed by my English speaking parents, it's not even the physical characteristics I present to the world based primarily on the genetic lottery.

The real me is how I express myself. At present, the internet provides the most direct way of accomplishing this task. If I make you feel something, make you remember the words I say, that could be enough to help you understand the real me. In this way, I could live on forever.

In this blog post, I will attempt to describe the system within which I exist as a moderately successful computer scientist and woman. I will highlight the fallacies that lead to women (1) leaving tech, (2) generally being anxious in our society, and (3) experiencing horrific harassment and misogyny.

In a significant step forward for digital preservation, Google Search is now making it easier than ever to access the past. Starting today, users everywhere can view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, with a simple link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

This is a living list (updated sporadically) based off of my experiences speaking and attending, as well as recommendations from some friendly folks on Mastodon.

divergentrays recently shared this on her weekly wrap-up, and i absolutely love it. might share some i make later.

In a fragmented media environment with seemingly endless sources of information to choose from, Americans’ news habits have changed dramatically in the 21st century. Today, an overwhelming majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices. This fact sheet looks at the platforms Americans turn to for news, including patterns and trends.

Unlike other recipe apps, SuperCook only shows you recipes that require the ingredients you already have.