Some of the Weird Mystical Stuff
Hey, hey, hey!
I might take this down at some point, but I wrote a Q&A to summarize what I've learned from reading research about homework.
"Here's an unsettling story (the most unsettling story, perhaps, to have emerged from any of the physical sciences since the seventeenth century) about something that can happen to electrons. The story is true. The experiments I will describe have all actually been performed." A remarkably clear and truly accessible explanation of superposition in David Albert's "Quantum Mechanics and Experience." (The link is to an illicit PDF, shhhhh, be cool.)
"Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different" by Philip Ball was not an easy read for me, but I became of quantum decoherence which is a whole side of this science that I wasn't aware of. It removes some of the weird mystical stuff about observation impacting the world. Here's a PBS video explainer on decoherence. I understand about 20% of this, but I'm on the way.
Anne Cutler recently passed away, leaving behind "The perception of rhythm in language", an article so good you'll (spoilers!) want to read it twice.
Stevie Van Zandt shared this on twitter, it's Liberace covering Simon & Garfunkel and aaaaaaaaaaaaaah it really must be seen.
I started listening to "In Our Time" during lonely grocery trips at the start of the pandemic, and I fell in love with it. God bless the BBC. Someone on Twitter collected all the math/science episodes, but I recommend 1816, The Year Without a Summer.
Listening to J Dilla's Donuts, an album composed entirely from his hospital bed in LA. I learned from Stephanie Burt's list that there's a 33 1/3 book on the album, I'm pumped to check that out.
I'm a sucker for big, ambitious, melodramatic rock and roll, so I was destined to fall for Gang of Youths' "In the wake of your leave," a song about grief with guitars. It's from their latest album, the first half of which I can't stop listening to.
"Ignoring is the opposite of paying attention. It is taking away your attention on purpose. Use ignoring along with praising and paying attention to shape or change your child’s behavior." This is planned ignoring, a strategy from the research-backed program Triple-P for helping parents with behavior management. Quite similar to what this classroom management guy is calling tactical ignoring.
Nathan Rabin's "The Joy of Trash" is full of bonkers pop culture moments, including when the drummer of KISS confronted a homeless alcoholic who was impersonating him in the tabloids on the talk show Donahue. I mean it's wild. Here's Rabin on this, if you find yourself curious here's the episode on youtube.
OK, OK, I'm done.