TAFC.SPACE has a post which includes a map of the world as seen by a topologist. I.e. it doesn't show sizes or locations of countries, just which countries are next to which other countries. The actual map is near the bottom of the post but it's worth scrolling for.
via Kottke.org
An article in Nature reports on scientists who trained a deep-learning system with a large number of photographs of human retinas. After training, the system was able to identify the sex of the people in the photos with >80% accuracy. This is interesting because there is no known difference between male and female retinas. Naturally the system can't tell us how it tells the difference.
via 52 Things I learned in 2022 via Kotke.org
A tweet from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum has a picture taken from their Lancaster bomber on its first flight over Toronto. The picture was taken on 11 November 1988 and features the still-under-construction Toronto Skydome stadium. The picture also includes the RBC systems building where I had just started work two weeks earlier.
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has a post on why trench warfare in the First World War worked out the way it did and why a stalemate and huge numbers of casualties are inevitable. It doesn't have anything to do with stupid or uncaring generals (though those certainly did exist) but with technology.
The trench stalemate is the result of a fairly complicated interaction of weapons which created a novel tactical problem. The key technologies are machine guns, barbed wire and artillery (though as we’ll see, artillery almost ought to be listed here multiple times: the problems are artillery, machine guns, trenches, artillery, barbed wire, artillery, and artillery), but their interaction is not quite straight-forward.
Ever had an idea for a new iceberg design but wondered how it would float? Well now you can find out here, just draw you iceberg and let it drop.
via Flowing Data
The New York Times has the obituary of James Randi, stage magician and debunker of the paranormal.
According to NEA's website, the lowest temperature recorded in Singapore was 19.4 deg C on two days in 1934. Both days were in the month of January.
What is different about us as individuals compared to previous generations is minor. What is different about the world around us is profound. Salaries have stagnated and entire sectors have cratered. At the same time, the cost of every prerequisite of a secure existence—education, housing and health care—has inflated into the stratosphere. From job security to the social safety net, all the structures that insulate us from ruin are eroding. And the opportunities leading to a middle-class life—the ones that boomers lucked into—are being lifted out of our reach. Add it all up and it’s no surprise that we’re the first generation in modern history to end up poorer than our parents.
Each year, about five thousand people kill someone and don’t get caught, and a percentage of these men and women have undoubtedly killed more than once. Hargrove intends to find them with his code, which he sometimes calls a serial-killer detector.
The Alisons, husband and wife, have done something no scholars of interrogation have been able to do before. Working in close cooperation with the police, who allowed them access to more than 1,000 hours of tapes, they have observed and analysed hundreds of real-world interviews with terrorists suspected of serious crimes. No researcher in the world has ever laid hands on such a haul of data before. Based on this research, they have constructed the world's first empirically grounded and comprehensive model of interrogation tactics.
