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As astrology was one of the very first scientific disciplines to be adopted by the ‘Abbāsid in their assimilation of Persian cultural it followed automatically that that they also adopted astronomy; you need astronomy in order to do astrology. Also, the practice of Islam itself required both the determination of the times for the five daily prayers as well as the qibla the geographical direction of the Kaaba in the …

So Cosma Shalizi and I have an article (messy pre-print) coming out Real Soon in Communications of the ACM on democracy, polarization and social media. And Nate Matias, who I’m friends with, has forceful objections. I’ve promised him a response – which is below – but am doing it as a blogpost, since I think that the disagreement could be turned into something more broadly useful. Cosma and I wrote …

In December I went to the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano to teach a seminar on Transformative Work as Livelihood for the Eco-Social Design masters students. Over three days, we explored potential pathways available to socially and politically engaged designers, how to balance financial stability with meaningful work, and feminist strategies that ensure that transformative practices remain open to many and viable in the long-term. Rather than focusing on strategies for …

Xenogothic exhumes a panel discussion from 2014 involving Mark Fisher, Lee Gamble, Kode9 aka Steve Goodman, Alex Williams, and Lisa Blanning - and bearing the title The Death of Rave - and does a public service by getting the debate transcribed.Go here for Matt's reasons for digging this up and reflections of how it relates to current glumness, state of clubbing and club music, as well as the transcription itself

🗺️ a continuation of writings on world-building. 🌸 this a new series on growing a vision. all of my visions begin as entries in my journal. I usually write them late at night, or in the early morning darkness, before sunrise, or while seated on a plane, or a boat, or scribbled as four words into a notebook, while on a long, meandering walk. more often than not, they come …

A merino blend, cold weather base layer hoodie with excellent ventilation from Squak Mountain Co. Read More ... Continue reading Gear Review – The Squak Mountain Co Woolie at PMags.com.

I feel like I am both closing in on victory and getting farther away from it, insofar as the last remaining puzzles seem to be stumpers indeed. Not quite succumbing to hints yet but probably next time if I can’t push any farther. From a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest, where Ariel and Prospero discuss Ariel previously being trapped in a pine. First, a fairly straightforward bit of …

Today I’d like to start explaining an approach to stochastic time evolution for ‘state charts’, a common approach to agent based models. This is ultimately supposed to interact well with Kris Brown’s cool ideas on formulating state charts using category theory. But one step at a time! I’ll start with a very simple framework, too simple for what we need. Later I will make it fancier—unless my work today turns …

Eli's thoughts on Beyoncé's country pivot and America's favorite genre. The post Constantly Hating: I still don’t get country appeared first on No Bells.

Her nighttime routine consisted of forty different steps involving fifteen products and five parts of her body. First, she lit a white wax candle. Sweet, pink-petalled freesia swept into the room. Her head swam. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she meditated for ten minutes using a loving kindness app. “I forgive you,” she intoned, under the Benedictine guidance of a honeyed British voice. It was said with a genuine attempt …

I am so sad tonight, thinking about Navalny. If you've seen the recent oscar-winning documentary they made on him, you may remember the scene of him trying to film in Novosibirsk, while a guy was taking a piss in the background. Navalny says "welcome to the Russian ghetto" or something. I was in Russia for 3 months in 1998. Yeltsin time. I was in Chelyabinsk, outside of Yekaterinburg (it's the …

A commission chaired by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve recently published a report on the current state of UK governance, which has identified substantial problems and made recommendations to improve matters. Here, Dominic outlines the report’s key conclusions and recommendations, ahead of an online Constitution Unit event at which he and fellow commissioner Helen MacNamara […]

I’m giving this talk at the category theory seminar at U. C. Riverside, as a kind of followup to one by Peter Samuelson on the same subject. My talk will not be recorded, but here are the slides: Spans and the categorified Heisenberg algebra. Abstract. Heisenberg reinvented matrices while discovering quantum mechanics, and the algebra generated by annihilation and creation operators obeying the canonical commutation relations was named after him. …

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]This is the Union Pacific Railroad’s Austin Subdivision in central Texas. It’s a busy corridor that moves both freight and passengers north and south between Austin and San Antonio… But it’s mostly freight. Trains run twenty-four-seven here, carrying goods like rock from nearby quarries, cement, vehicles, intermodal freight, and more. So, when Crystal Clear Special Utility District was planning …

I feel like I am both closing in on victory and getting farther away from it, insofar as the last remaining puzzles seem to be stumpers indeed. Not quite succumbing to hints yet but probably next time if I can’t push any farther. From a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest, where Ariel and Prospero discuss Ariel previously being trapped in a pine. First, a fairly straightforward bit of …