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kristjankalm

190 karma · joined February 8, 2015

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kristjankalm··on What made Dostoevsky's work immortal
“Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway.” V. Nabokov, [0]

I really recommend Nabokov's full lecture on Dostoyevsky [1], plus obvs all the of the lectures in the series are brilliant.

[0] https://lithub.com/on-dostoevskys-199th-birthday-heres-nabok...

[1] Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov, https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/lectures-on-rus...

kristjankalm··on Extreme 'rogue wave' in the North Pacific confirmed as most extreme on record
as the article says, it's "most extreme" with respect to its size compared to the surrounding waves: "the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of its peers."
kristjankalm··on Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud
I regularly use parmigiano rind when making vegetable stock. Hopefully the tracker extract will add some nuance.
kristjankalm··on Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
that's excellent -- couldn't find any background info on the project, do you know the context?
kristjankalm··on Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
The author of the book -- Ester Salgarella -- has also put together an online searchable corpus of Linear A:

https://sigla.phis.me

It's very neatly annotated, e.g: https://sigla.phis.me/document/ARKH%201a/

and a good starting point to anyone wishing to try their hand on extracting patterns out of the corpus

kristjankalm··on EU citizens arriving in UK being locked up and expelled
how did joining the EU restrict Commonwealth immigration?
kristjankalm··on EU citizens arriving in UK being locked up and expelled
i find such logic hard to understand: UK was part of the EU, hence the open labour market. That's the whole point of EU. What did they find unfair exactly -- that Nigeria was not part of the EU? Or that countries can agree to have an open labour market?
kristjankalm··on Why I Work on Ads
yes but amplification matters -- there's been at least one study which measured the clickbaity-ness of headliness of paid vs ad-based news sites and the difference was sth like an order of magnitude. i'll see if i can find the link.
kristjankalm··on Why I Work on Ads
advertising is the primary driver for clickbait and emotion-driven content. it enables The Daily Mail, it results in youtube's algorithm hell, it's why facebook exists. 'clicks = money' is bad for mental health. as long as wikipedia et al are free, give me subscription-based web all day.
kristjankalm··on UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
yes, this reasoning does make sense. but given the human cost it should only make sense if there's a significant prior: in most of these cases there was no previous evidence whatsoever, just a new system, and boom, thieves.

I think the core point here is how imbalanced this process was: postal system builds a new accounting program that shows money is missing. these people were convicted solely on the evidence that software said so, there was no burden on them to show that the money was actually missing. I mean, hard for me to grasp how is that possible. anyone can write a program that shows something. how is this sufficient proof to send people to prison? does it not need to touch some objective reality at some point?

kristjankalm··on UK court clears post office staff convicted due to ‘corrupt data’
This is unreal. Shitty software sending people to prison without anyone in the process considering what exactly is the likelihood of hundreds of postmasters simultaneously becoming thieves overnight.
kristjankalm··on Yamaha’s DX7 synthesiser changed modern music
Could I ask the source for these numbers? I've been trying to find some production numbers for popular synths (including submodels, e.g. all Minimoog or Prophet 5 versions combined etc), but haven't really found anything properly sourced/cited.
kristjankalm··on Rebekah Jones' house raided at gunpoint
> American gun culture has little to do with this case. Cops behave like this because behind door number one there could be a guy with an assault rifle ready to take them down

i'm struggling to understand this -- are you saying there is no link between 'American gun culture' and the probability of 'there could be a guy with an assault rifle ready to take them down'? in what other 1st world country would the said probability be even close?

kristjankalm··on DoorDash S-1
cheers, had no idea
kristjankalm··on DoorDash S-1
could you elaborate why? i mainly use deliveroo and tip with the app -- they also seek to minimise contact so usually i just get to pick up the food from my doorstep, cash tipping seems a bit suboptimal
kristjankalm··on Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
low temp storage was also required for the ebola vaccine and yet it was successfully administered to more than quarter of a million people in equatorial Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kivu_Ebola_epidemic#Vaccinatio...

should be quite doable

kristjankalm··on 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)
pretty much any metric you could come up with to "measure" civilisation -- literacy, urbanisation, economic output, monetary economy -- went to historic lows.

slightly orthogonal to this, but the original motivation behind the 'dark ages' label was that for large parts of europe there are very few written records for the 5-7th centuries. e.g., we know practically nothing what happened in 5th century england because the only written source -- gildas -- is mostly concerned with pontificating about sinful behaviour in artful ways. even some actual people he mentions in passing get biblically coded nicknames so we have to make wild guesses who's he referring to. and that's our only source for pretty much a century.

kristjankalm··on Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)
born in the 1980s
kristjankalm··on Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)
First, I am relatively familiar with the admission process at Cambridge and noone gives a crap whether you were on a robotics team at high school + the rest of the extra-curricular jazz. Personal statements mostly just get ignored. Have no idea about the US thouigh, maybe its very different over there.

Second, I know several people from a generation born it the 50s and 60s whose parents either directly forbade them going to the university (rural France, woman's place it at home) or had to put up with conditions unfathomable to most of undergraduates today. The last 2-3 generations are historically unbelievable privileged. But sure, 'It is no party'.

kristjankalm··on Exit unicorns, pursued by bears
also -- this markes the absolute lowpoint in the play and things start slowly but definitely improving from that point on. although Antigonus does end up eaten by the bear.
kristjankalm··on Practice Fusion pushed doctors to prescribe opioids in kickback scheme
> Practice Fusion solicited a nearly $1 million payment from the opioid company, promising that in exchange it would create alerts in its software that would cause physicians to write more prescriptions for extended release opioids than were medically needed.

wondering whether whoever actually coded up the change in software knew what he/she was doing. i truly hope not.

kristjankalm··on An update on YC China
so a specific example then -- in your opinion is putting ca one million Uighurs and Kazakhs into internment camps compatible with the 'Chinese way'?
kristjankalm··on Nautilus to be acquired by an investor group of fans
compared to the best known subscription success stories -- the NYT, WP -- it certainly seems significantly smaller. but i agree, that comparison isn't very valid, it's certainly a heavyweight amongst magazines.
kristjankalm··on Nautilus to be acquired by an investor group of fans
> And we all know that consumers don't fork enough money to support ads-free journalism, which leads to perverse incentives.

yes they do. susbcription-based models are doing quite well. besides the big heavyweights, in UK alone there are several smaller and successful subscription-based magazines: the TLS, the economist, the spectator etc. in us sports there's 'the athletic' and its clones.

kristjankalm··on A deep learning framework for neuroscience
> I'm guessing their focus is on the lowest level activities in simple brains, perhaps afferent/efferent sensory perception, metabolic and physiological regulatory control -- the kind of things instrumented in worms like C. Elegans.

could be but then most of the authors of the paper work in human cognition so I'm slightly skepical that their focus is going to be at the level of cellular biology

kristjankalm··on A deep learning framework for neuroscience
they're arguing that articifial neural nets are useful models of brain function and anatomy. a lot of people in the field of neuroscience strongly disagree, hence their attempt to outline the utility of ANNs.
kristjankalm··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
cheers, that seems properly sourced
kristjankalm··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
from where does this increase in cancer probability statistic come from? anyone have a link to a paper? tried googling but found nothing reliable sadly
kristjankalm··on An addictive “murder map” of medieval London
yeah that map is pretty unusable on mobile -- doesn't matter which frame/page/version
kristjankalm··on An addictive “murder map” of medieval London
the same map with much better ui experience

https://vrcmap.co.uk/

it is the source of the iframe on the uni of cambridge page the article links to

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