Printers have always been terrible. I got away without buying a new printer since 2008 or 2010… until today. I bought an HP printer, because I’ve used HP printers for a long time, and mainly because of the existence of hplip. My goal, after all, is to have no nonsense […]
Blaise Alleyne
313 posts
The real epidemic is epistemic. We’re living through an information schism. I have a lot more to say on this based on my winter reading, but in the meantime I’d like to call a few shots for the next six months. One way to verify whether something is true or […]
Understanding exponential growth is a prerequisite to understanding the pandemic. I’ve had many conversations about the public health response to COVID-19 over the past year. Setting aside more extreme conspiracy thinking, I’m increasingly convinced that most of the non-conspiracy skepticism of public health measures comes down to misunderstanding exponentials. People […]
Last week, while watching WandaVision (no spoilers here), there was a scene in which one of the characters was describing another in a very reductionist way. I paused the show, and asked my kids abruptly, “What would JPII say?” My seven-year-old daughter responded, “That this is bad” (and the look […]
In Part 1 in this series, I explained why there are no easy answers to social media censorship. The problem is not a “Big Tech” conspiracy to silence particular voices. The problem is that too much of our public discourse is mediated by private platforms — centralized, proprietary, walled gardens. […]
This San Holo song entered my bloodstream during long and lonely stretches of the second wave lockdown. It’s forever linked in my mind with the joy of seeing the face of a friend, reminding me that I am not alone, producing antibodies to fend off questioning. This is a celebration […]
There are no easy answers to speech, censorship and internet freedoms given the current state of the internet. Some solutions are better than others, but there’s no perfect answer. If someone suggests there’s a simple answer, they’re probably wrong. As Harvard internet law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in June: The […]
Refuting conspiracy theory arguments is exhausting. It’s like battling an army of orcs or white walkers. It’s not very hard to take down any given individual, but they just keep coming. It’s a pattern of overwhelming, and these arguments are almost always smokescreens for the true beliefs — and the […]
One of the personal silver linings of 2020 is that I’m making music again. In a way, I had never really stopped. But in a way, I had never really started. Origins: Subcreation from the Beginning My parents had started me in violin at age 4, but it wasn’t until […]