Archive of 2024 | alexandra's pile of notes

December 2024

Permanent link to “Google’s Quantum Error Correction Has Some Competition”
Permanent link to “Welcome to the world of oligarchy.”
Permanent link to “Fine, I'll Talk About the Drones”
Permanent link to “Luigi Mangione Prosecutors Have a Jury Problem: 'So Much Sympathy'”
Google’s Quantum…

According to Google, Willow solved a computational problem in under five minutes — a task that would have taken the world’s fastest supercomputers approximately 10 septillion years. This staggering feat, announced in a blog post and accompanied by a study in the journal Nature, demonstrates the extraordinary potential of quantum computing to tackle problems once thought unsolvable within a human timeframe.

Permanent link to “Google’s Quantum Chip Sparks Debate on Multiverse Theory”
Does Space Need…

“Everywhere that humans go, they cause ecological problems. The environmental history is clear about this,” Daniel Capper, an adjunct professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, who is a vocal proponent of such a movement, recently told me. Capper, who has a Walt Whitman beard and speaks with a genial kind of urgency, argues that commonly-held beliefs about the value of land and wilderness on Earth should hold just as much sway in space.

Permanent link to “Does Space Need Environmentalists?”
Permanent link to “The Tragic Optimist's Guide to Surviving Capitalistic Nihilism”

November 2024

Alternate Timelines…

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…

Permanent link to “Alternate Timelines Can’t Help You, Quantum Physicists Say”

October 2024

Permanent link to “Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports”
Digital dark ages:…

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.

Permanent link to “Digital dark ages: Internet history, old websites are disappearing”
A Syllabus for…

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…

Permanent link to “A Syllabus for Generalists”
Permanent link to “Dangerously Honest Advice from History’s Most Controversial Philosopher”
Permanent link to “Why It's So Hard To Imagine Life After Capitalism”
Permanent link to “The Tiny Table Index”
The True Story of…

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.

Permanent link to “The True Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Never Truly Ate the South”
I'm Afraid to Die,…

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.

Permanent link to “I'm Afraid to Die, so I Made a Website”
Permanent link to “The Race to Harness Quantum Computing's Mind-Bending Power | The Future With Hannah Fry”

September 2024

Permanent link to “Seattle's Map, Explained”
Permanent link to “felt this while looking for something to watch”
Permanent link to “The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman”
Permanent link to “skincare routine”
Permanent link to “New Feature Alert: Access Archived Webpages Directly Through Google Search”
Permanent link to “You should go to conferences”
Permanent link to “Hellmouth's Manuscript Maker”
Permanent link to “Pew Research Center: News Platform Fact Sheet 2024”
Permanent link to “SuperCook, a zero-waste recipe generator”
Permanent link to “Your Rights to ADHD Accommodations at Work”
Trump’s…

“Here’s my challenge to journalists over the next two months: quote Trump in full,” Max Kennerly, a lawyer and legal commentator, wrote on X on Thursday, alongside a video posted by the Harris campaign of Trump’s comments. “Don’t clean him up, don’t reinterpret what he says in a more sensible way, don’t secretly editorialize. Just quote him. Let the voters see how this man’s mind doesn’t work.”

Permanent link to “Trump’s incomprehensible child care comments appear to have broken a dam”
Permanent link to “just an-otter marketing ploy”
Permanent link to “Little Known Galaxy Guide on Google Sheets”
Permanent link to “We're losing our digital history. Can the Internet Archive save it?”
Permanent link to “The First Horse Domestication Was Later Than We Thought”
Oracle, it’s time…

You have long ago abandoned the JavaScript trademark, and it is causing widespread, unwarranted confusion and disruption. JavaScript is the world’s most popular programming language, powering websites everywhere. Yet, few of the millions who program in it realize that JavaScript is a trademark you, Oracle, control. The disconnect is glaring: JavaScript has become a general-purpose term used by countless individuals and companies, independent of any Oracle product.

Permanent link to “Oracle, it’s time to free JavaScript.”
Permanent link to “How to Plant and Cultivate a Japanese Maple Tree”
Permanent link to “Senate Hearing on Steward Health Care Bankruptcy”
Permanent link to “Live tracker of humans in space right now”
Permanent link to “Cities: Skylines II Found a Solution for High Rents: Get Rid of Landlords”
Big publishers…

I’ve seen quips to the effect of “if public libraries were invented today, they’d be outlawed.” The joke is increasingly becoming reality, most recently thanks to a decision in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Particularly in a country where we’re seeing rapidly intensifying campaigns against books, libraries, and librarians, I am extremely concerned by an outcome that not only imposes further limits on how libraries can provide books to the people who need them, but seems to view libraries as detrimental to society. We must fight to protect our rights to read freely, and fight back against the censorship, surveillance, and rent-seeking that publishers and book distribution platforms have been working to not only normalize, but protect by law.

Permanent link to “Big publishers think libraries are the enemy”
How Do I Prepare My…

Before going to a protest, demonstrators or observers should note that their cellphones may subject them to surveillance tactics by law enforcement. If your cellphone is on and unsecured, your location can be tracked and your unencrypted communications, such as SMS, may be intercepted. Additionally, police may retrieve your messages and the content of your phone if they take custody of your phone, or later by warrant or subpoena.

Permanent link to “How Do I Prepare My Phone for a Protest?”
Permanent link to “The Responsible Tech Guide”
How U.S. Public…

When The Pew Charitable Trusts created Pew Research Center in 2004, we were surveying Americans using the established industry method at the time: calling people on their landline phones and hoping they’d answer. As the Center marks its 20th anniversary this year, survey methods have become more diverse, and we now conduct most of our interviews online. Public opinion itself has also changed in major ways over the last 20 years, just as the country and world have. In this data essay, we’ll take a closer look at how Americans’ views and experiences have evolved on topics ranging from technology and politics to religion and social issues.

Permanent link to “How U.S. Public Opinion Has Changed in 20 Years of Our Surveys”
Permanent link to “Small Seasons: A guide to understanding”
Permanent link to “Pinball Map”
Permanent link to “‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine”
What the Color…

But while the color blue dominates Lowcountry skies and waters, for centuries it was nearly impossible for human hands to reproduce. Only indigo—a leggy green plant that emerges from the soil in bushy, tangled clumps—can generate the elusive jewel tones. In Beaufort County and elsewhere in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, blue had the power to protect enslaved Africans and their descendants, known as the Gullah Geechee, from evil spirits. But the color was also the source of incomparable suffering. Indigo helped spur the 18th-century transatlantic trade, resulting in the enslavement of thousands.

Permanent link to “What the Color ‘Haint Blue’ Means to the Descendants of Enslaved Africans”
Permanent link to “The Global Nonviolent Action Database”
Permanent link to “Karl Pilkington has got a head like a fucking orange.”
Permanent link to “Can a WebPage be alive?”
welcome to the pile

i've been looking for a microblog platform i could host for a while now, and after much deliberating and testing different platforms, i've settled on chyrp lite. the recommendation came from leilukin, who's also using it for their tumbleblog. thank you, leilukin! this note pile will feature articles i'd like to read, blog entries i have read, links i want to share, and thoughts that i've stopped writing down thanks to the enshittification of twitter and other social media platforms. this will be a space for me to just dump certain things in my brain, and they very well might span a wide variety of topics. thanks for being here! :)

Permanent link to “welcome to the pile”