Microposts

Added this to my “brains are fascinating” note: How memories persist where bodies, and even brains, do not

It seems that a 44-year-old French man had gone to hospital complaining of a mild weakness in his left leg. Doctors learned that the patient ‘had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus – water on the brain – as an infant. The shunt was removed when he was 14.’ When they scanned his brain, they found a huge fluid-filled chamber occupying most of the space in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue. The patient, a married father of two children, worked as a civil servant apparently leading a normal life, despite having a cranium filled with spinal fluid and very little brain tissue.

Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs is about so much more than whales. Beautifully written, Giggs uses whales to talk through society, culture, environmentalism, evolution, and history, along with lots of good natural history on whales📚

I really enjoyed the Foundation books as a kid and thought it might be fun to read them along with the new Apple TV show. I know they’ll diverge and look forward to seeing how they approach the original content

Federal Election Day here in Canada 🗳 🇨🇦. As a public servant, I have no public opinion about the parties. I do think, though, that we have a civic obligation to vote and, so, encourage any Canadians out there to make an informed choice and cast your ballot.

We celebrated 21 wonderful years of marriage with an extended weekend at the Sir Sam’s Inn near Haliburton.

We had gorgeous weather and lots of relaxation.

To burn off some of the delicious food, we hiked up to the top of the ski hill through a twisted, 5K path to get a great view over the lake.

Along with some canoeing on a quiet Eagle Lake.

More importantly, we had a chance to reconnect, celebrate our adventures together, and plan for what’s next.

Surprising no one here, I’ve realized that I spend far more time thinking about systems for my notes than in actually taking notes.

To add some public accountability, I’m declaring that for the next 3 months I’m only using Apple Notes. This will help me develop a good note taking habit, while also identifying my use cases for later optimization.

Although I’ve been thinking about this for a while, the recent Tools for Thought interview with @AndySylvester and @Chrisaldrich really crystalized the idea.

I really enjoyed Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton (book 1 of the Salvation Sequence trilogy). A fun blend of sci-fi, detective novel, and alien invasion with a cliffhanger ending📚

A new game on the iPad: try to guess what term Photos is searching for in Spotlight. Here’s an example where I’m launching Overcast and Photos has used “ov” to find pictures of ovens. This has actually been a great way to uncover how much more sophisticated Photos has become.

Our epistemic crisis is essentially ethical and so are its solutions

Before you know it, people have starkly different views on the matter, and their views are based on perfectly solid research. The point here is not that we can’t know anything, it’s simply that the world is a complex place, and that the search for simplicity is very often what gets us into trouble. For scholars, the most important thing is to strive to present their work in a way that’s as objective as possible (accuracy), and to present a range of reasonable results wherever possible, giving the fullest possible picture (sincerity).