nikhil.io

The first two-thirds are brilliant. As for Olivia Wilde and her riveting performance:

[. . .] it’s still good to see a cunning and capable actress rise above her usual projects, such as stupid fodder like Tron or Cowboys and Aliens, or labels like “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.”

After Enough and five Death Wish movies, the revenge genre is not without its recurring clichés, many of which get defrosted and microwaved again in A Vigilante. The point, if there is one, is that “heinous criminal felonies are acceptable if they are justified by a woman driven beyond the limits of reason.” As one battered wife says, “Every graveyard is full of people who didn’t make it.” The same is true of old movies gathering dust in Hollywood film vaults.

– Rex Reed, Olivia Wilde Goes Full Charles Bronson in the Brutal Revenge Thriller ‘A Vigilante’

At least in Civilization:

[. . .] Gandhi tends to be the first to use nuclear weapons, and spares no expense on wiping your civilization off the map. You probably always thought you were crazy — how could a series that prides itself on historical accuracy portray Gandhi so wrong? Well, you’ll be happy to know that both your sanity and Civilization’s historical integrity aren’t at fault. Instead, a bug’s to blame.

In the earlier Civs, leaders are given a set of attributes that dictate their behavior. One such attribute is a number scale associated with aggressiveness. Gandhi was given the lowest number possible, a rating of 1. However, when a civilization adopted democracy, it granted a civilization -2 to opponent aggression levels. This sent Gandhi’s rating of 1 into the negative, which swung it back around to 255 — the highest possible rating available, and thus, the infamous warmonger Gandhi was born.

– Geek.com, What caused Gandhi’s insatiable bloodlust in Civilization

And they just left it in there as an homage:

This cyclical aggression scale was fixed in later versions of the game, but Gandhi wasn’t totally cured of his bloodlust. The team fixed Gandhi’s aggression rating, but as an Easter egg paying homage to the earlier aggressive versions of Gandhi, ramped his nuke rating through the roof. So, while it may be difficult to push Gandhi over the edge, he goes from zero to nuclear option once you do.

Via MS.

This video of a ball swinging in front of concave mirror (starts at 2:00, cannot embed for some reason) reminded me of simulations of what it would be like if one fell into a Black Hole.

Here’s a Schwarzschild Black Hole, one “with mass, but with no electric charge, and no spin.” (Source)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and
without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the
speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow
down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and
exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep
isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has
jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less
visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway.
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the
mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.

– Robert M. Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

via BG

Can attest 😆. Via.

Via GLP, a University Title Generator that generates “prestigious” titles and associated salaries. A few random gems

• Associate Coordinator of the Subcommittee for Community Services
• Deputy Vice President of the Office of Alumni Planning
• Provost for the Subcommittee for Investor Diversity
• Vice Chair of the Subcommittee for Donor Technology

It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.

– Conrad, Heart of Darkness (taken completely out of context…)

Amar Bose on education, teaching, purpose, creativity, not whinging, Norbert Weiner (under whom he was a grad student), and working with the right (and ethical) people. Starts around 24:00.

OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I’m not aware of them.

– Dr. Alan Kay on the Meaning of “Object-Oriented Programming”

So… Erlang? (RIP Joe Armstrong 🙏) And that was before this

(I’m not against types, but I don’t know of any type systems that aren’t a complete pain, so I still like dynamic typing.)

Indeed, Dr. Kay.

As the final season of HBO’s blockbuster television series Game of Thrones hits screens around the world today, audiences in China are begging for the explicit scenes of sex and violence not to be censored.
[. . .]
Disgruntled viewers in China have previously compared the significantly edited version to a “medieval castle documentary”.

Which natually leads to (which won’t embed for some reason so here)

Ramin Nazer on some models he entertains of what happens to us after we die. A few of my favorites

Brilliant, beautiful.

Best thing I’ve seen this year. About as spiritual as it gets.

After an unimaginable length of time, even the black holes will have evaporated and the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons, gradually tending towards the same temperature, as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero. Once the very last remnants of the very last stars are finally decayed away to nothing and everything reaches the same temperature, the story of the universe finally comes to an end. For the first time in its life, the Universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy finally stops increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered.

Nothing happens. And it keeps not happening forever.

😢 how beautiful is that? And black holes take a long, long time to evaporate

A black hole with the mass of the sun will last a wizened 10⁶⁷ years. Considering that the current age of our universe is a paltry 13.8 times 10⁹ years, that’s a good amount of time. But if you happened to turn the Eiffel Tower into a black hole, it would evaporate in only about a day.

And that’s after this happens

It will take hundreds of trillions of years for the first stellar remnant to cool completely, fading from a white dwarf through red, infrared and all the way down to a true black dwarf. By that point, the Universe will hardly be forming any new stars at all, and space will be mostly black.

BLN and I spoke about how we simply have no good strategy to attempt a comprehension of “hundreds of trillions” of years.

Captured the city’s many contrasts quite well. Felt like I was watching Mirzapur again. The excellent Pankaj Tripathi plays the same wealthy, powerful, morally bankrupt, declining patriarch as in the show. Pretty much the same deal if they’d cast a mannequin instead of Akshay Oberoi.

Everything I expected from an Anurag Kashyap movie. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal were 💯 The real Raman Raghav story is quite crazy.

Remake of the Telugu Temper. Saviour Porn. Read this article on “procedures established by law” and mind-boggling backlogs in the Indian Legal System.

Not much of a story but loved the cinematography and pre-Independence setting. Easily the best Indian horror movie I’ve seen after Manichithrathazhu.

Fell asleep about three times trying to finish this visual overload. Ended up taking a walk right after this exchange

“You expect me to call you Your Highness?”

“No, I expect you to call me… Ocean Master.”

Found screenshots of a beautiful vintage theme I’d installed on my iPhone 5 via Cydia when I was stupid enough to jailbreak my phone. Wish I could still use it though 😍

A great complement to the book.

When I think of Theranos, I really think that there were two entirely different worlds. There was the carpeted world and there was the tiled world. In the carpeted world where Elizabeth was a goddess. Everyone, you know, almost worshipped the ground she walked on. She could do no wrong. She was the next Steve Jobs. Theranos was changing the world. And then you go into the tiled side and nothing works. We’re on a sinking ship. Everything is a lie. Reconciling the differences between those two worlds was really hard for me to do.

[…] I would leave the tiled world thinking, ‘Oh man, sinking ship.’ And I would go have one conversation with Elizabeth. And I would be so motivated to go back and work and I felt like I was changing the world again. And I would go back into the tiled world and I would go, ‘Wait, what just happened?’ You want it to be true so badly and even for me, I was working with these devices every single day and she could still kind of convince me. When I think back on those conversations, I just think ‘How did she do that?’

– Tyler Schulz

via /r/desmoines. Source unknown.

Saw with LD. Long, slow, visceral, beautiful, gory. Kept me guessing. Excellent stuff.

There’s a pervasive hush and sense of stillness that lingers over the region of Gokseong, and scenes of brazen, crazed madness are often preceded by shots of tranquil mountain vistas whose lush, thickly forested landscapes increasingly feel smothering and secretive. This is a film as beautiful as it is gory, as painstakingly scenic as it is committed to stark visual interplays between darkness and light.

All the while, the story of Gokseong unfolds in fits and starts, each puzzle piece more confusing than the last. Are the residents of the town being systematically poisoned with a drug that causes them to become frenzied, savage killers? Are they being cursed? Or is it both, and for what reason? Na’s writing layers tension upon tension, particularly through the escalating paranoia that each of the townspeople comes to feel for any and all outsiders.

However, answers are much harder to find in this film than accusations. Horror fans wanting a plot whose ending dovetails nicely with all the elements that preceded it may wind up feeling frustrated, though many more may be drawn into the heart of its darkness: the conviction that terror has come to this town and there is no escape to be had.

– Aja Romano, The Wailing is the most unsettling Korean horror film in years, but it offers more chills than answers

Garrett Whisten made a most amazing CVS receipt generator (cached).

He even wrote a scraper that gets real product names off their website 🙏 🙌

Rajnikanth was 49 when this “mega-hit” was released.

Does The Dog Die? is a publicly curated database of sensitive, “emotional spoilers” for books, movies, TV, and many more categories. Unconsenting Media is a similar database of “sexual violence in broadcasting”.

A delightful, 20-minute video from the Hamilton Watch Company¹

and a tl;dw version of the above

1. Bought one after looking to get the “Murph Watch” in Interstellar. That article notes that they only made 10 for the movie (and gave one away.) Well, they’re offering it now 😍↩︎

Watched with D and M. Good thriller. Dharmendra was great. Was made aware of Neil Nitin Mukesh jokes.

A few favorites from a selection of Kenny Shopsin’s infinite wisdom. He ran this diner (which doesn’t really sound like one…)

On ambition

It’s just an initiation into the idea until the abilities to appreciate life forthe moments in a row starts to make you a deeper and more fulfilled person, and the energy you put towards pursuing the goals … it starts out obsessive.

The point of goals

My stupid goal: I’ve risen above that and I don’t need a goal, I’m just stupid. I just float free, knowing that after you’ve pursued a stupid goal for a long time, even if you understand it’s not important, you understand it’s a device to help you overcome the absurdity of life.

Social Media (article lists this as “on getting involved”)

[One] modern phenomenon is that people have begun to savor their spectatorship rather than being involved. They don’t want to be a part of it, or if they do, they don’t know how. They construct an artificial wall between reality and themselves — and they don’t cross it.

And on life

The only way to not be crushed by the stupidity of life is to pursue something energetically and gain as much satisfaction as you can before it gets stupid — and just ignore the fact that it’s stupid. The whole thing is shitty. You’re gonna fucking die.

“No really, why do you do this to yourself?” - KS

Features, in my estimation, the greatest solo special ops scene ever committed to film. No expert, but the knee-pillow fire might be related to why Seal Team Six attempted to destroy one of their damaged choppers.

Witch is cmd + tab on steroids.

A pure CSS still life by Ben Evans who appears to be working on an online story with pure CSS illustrations as well. Via Deepu.

All Yesterdays is an exploration of things we know we will never know about “dinosaurs and prehistoric animals” . Jonathan Wojcik at bogleech.com has an excellent review of the book. Of particular interest: We know little-to-nothing about the creatures’ anatomies and morphologies because of missing soft tissue data. Here are paleoartists’ recreations of a cow and a swan:

Looked up a sperm whale’s skeleton and can’t imagine how lacking a recreation would be:

Source

This article discusses the history and current state of paleoart. And this post is the ultimate TL;DR on the subject

As C.M. Kosemen explains throughout All Yesterdays, we really can’t ever know how much fat and other soft tissues contributed to the overall shape of dinosaurs since that’s the first thing to rot and shrivel tight against their bones and like even a sperm whale has a little skinny skeleton.

so like

how would we know?

Makes amazing sculptures. See the ones of Freddie Mercury and Doc Brown posted on social media quite often. Has an active YouTube channel.

Cached a list of CNN-IBN’s list of “the 100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time” for later perusal because the source website is cancer.

Gave Hugo a try and was quite impressed by the ease and speed. The official documentation kinda sucks at introducing key ideas (like taxonomies) in a gradual way that’s helpful to newcomers, but is great for variable and function references. Found these two posts very helpful. Here’s another that explains template variable scope well. And another that goes over theme development step-by-step.

Sticking to Jekyll for now since

• I don’t post that often and can wait a minute for recompilation if/when I have that many posts
• Hugo does not compile SASS like Jekyll; don’t want to make an asset pipeline or turn to readymade solutions like this
• It doesn’t do archives like Jekyll. Approaches like these might be creative but… 🤷‍♂️

Hugo is as insanely fast as advertized. I love the section and taxonomy abstractions, myriad content types, and I18n support. I’d use it to build any static website that’s not a blog. For now, Viva Jekyll.

Brooding and wonderful stuff by the brothers Jacobo and Sergio Abril of Nada Studios (who are architects.)

makes absolutely mesmerizing cyberpunky, vaporwavey 3D art.

The Des Moines Register on how to send them email in (I’m guessing) the late 80s/early 90s.

An article on how Baud Rate isn’t the same as Bit Rate

Baud rate refers to the number of signal or symbol changes that occur per second. A symbol is one of several voltage, frequency, or phase changes. NRZ binary has two symbols, one for each bit 0 or 1, that represent voltage levels. In this case, the baud or symbol rate is the same as the bit rate.

– Lou Frenzel, Electronic Design, “What’s The Difference Between Bit Rate And Baud Rate?”

Via /r/bitcoin

Can’t Unsee is “Spot the difference” for UI nerds. 6530. On the “hard” sections, wondered how much the minutiae matter if a user is unable to discern the difference between two comps after a few seconds.

Via Deepu

I think my job doesn’t have an end goal. Words like “finished” or “complete” don’t exist. We do our best with today’s menu and entertain our guests. That’s all for today, it’s repetition.

– Chef Nozumu Abe, Sushi Noz

In an age where we interact primarily with branded and marketed web content, Cameron’s World is a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the Internet. This project recalls the visual aesthetics from an era when it was expected that personal spaces would always be under construction.

I don’t understand the ratings and the hullabaloo over what was affluence porn with a tired Bollywood plot (Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham came to mind but I’m sure there’s something else that aligns better with CRA.) Might be a satirical, over-the-top take on new and old money in Singapore, though I wonder it was construed as such by the target audience.

And then:

Racism against minorities is endemic in Singapore. Job advertisements frequently only ask for those who can speak in English and Mandarin, and even if minorities are able to do so, they are told that only ethnic Chinese are wanted. Muslim women in hijabs are kept out of certain civil service jobs because of their headwear. While there are police bans on speaking in Tamil, there are yearly tax-funded programs to promote speaking in Mandarin. Minority representations are rife with stereotypes and the idea of the quintessential Singapore girl is one that embodies only East Asian beauty standards. The country’s ruling power has stated that Malay-Muslims in Singapore cannot be trusted in the armed forces due to their divided loyalties between religion and state. It has further accused them of being unable to ‘integrate’ an irony considering that Malay people are considered the original inhabitants of the land. The founding father of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, holds views on genetics that would seem disconcertingly similar to eugenicist and white supremacist ideals, as he has touted the genetic superiority of the Chinese as stronger and hardier, with Indians not being as bright, but still better than the lazy, un-driven Malays. Chinese people wear Indians in ‘brown face’ and many elite public schools are reserved for them.

[. . .] Given this context, this movie is actually perpetuating the state of racism and Islamophobia in Singapore. The only Brown people in the movie are opening doors or in service of the elite Chinese in the movie. Minorities only exist in the periphery of the film. Why is this being lauded as revolutionary?

What people celebrating this movie are doing is bringing a Western racial framework to bear upon a Singaporean one.

– Sangeetha Thanapal, “Crazy Rich Asians” Promotes The Ongoing Systematic Erasure And Oppression Of Singapore Minorities On A Global Screen.

A slasher version of A Quiet Place except The Monster gets you when you open your eyes (but only at key moments that further the plot.) Snoozefest after the first half. Had no idea that the lanky, highly tattooed extra is a famous rapper. A few plotholes that bugged me:

What exactly constitutes a safe barrier between your vision and the outdoors? By the movie’s standards, a thin-fabric blindfold and a sparse canopy of leaves count, but a security camera does not.

How did Trevante Rhodes manage to keep such a defined six-pack over the course of five home-bound years, and would he be willing to share that workout routine?

Elsewhere, Gizmodo on how the unseen monster is an allegory for the pernicious effects of social media on our lives. Huh.

A masterpiece. Powerful and harrowing. Glad I stayed till the end of the credits.

Still, the film doesn’t hold back in its depiction of the brutality of trench combat, and how most British soldiers started seeing the war as a pointless effort the longer it dragged on. “The strongest opinion they would have had was, ‘The German army’s in Belgium and France, and we’re coming over here to push them out because we’re friends [with Belgium and France],’” Jackson said. “I don’t think people could quite get their heads around why the British and the Germans were suddenly enemies.” As the conflict winds down and more prisoners of war are taken, testimonial after testimonial in They Shall Not Grow Old suggests that British soldiers saw little difference between themselves and their supposed adversaries.

“They were dealing with the same hardships, eating the same crappy food, in the same freezing conditions, and they felt a sort of empathy,” Jackson said. “They were there because their governments told them to be there.” That empathy, mixed with a sense of futility, is what makes They Shall Not Grow Old such a precise triumph. Jackson takes whatever amorphous ideas the average viewer might have about the First World War and uses real human experience to give them shape. As the film’s hundred-year-old footage springs to life, each face—whether muddied, wearied, relieved, or overjoyed—suddenly belongs to a recognizable person again. It’s both thrilling and humbling to witness.

– David Sims, “They Shall Not Grow Old Is a Stunning World War I Documentary”

It was the greed of rich belligerents trying to get richer. W.E.B. Du Bois, the black writer and activist, said it was the competition over resource-rich colonies in Africa. It was a struggle between liberty and autocracy (although czarist Russia’s alliance with France and England undercut that argument). It was because mankind’s moral instincts—this was philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell’s view—lagged behind its material wealth. It was Germany’s psychological insecurity, triggered by Britain’s naval supremacy and the fear of Russia’s rising might. It was, simply, the insanity of the only carnivorous species that kills its own kind for no good reason.

– Burt Solomon, "The Tragic Futility of World War I
"

In programming, it is also common to refer to the “NIH syndrome” as the tendency towards reinventing the wheel (reimplementing something that is already available) based on the belief that in-house developments are inherently better suited, more secure, more controlled, quicker to develop, and incur lower overall cost (including maintenance cost) than using existing implementations. In-house developments are often collaborative with each other. When two in-house developments come together, it is informally known as “computer incest.”

– Wikipedia

Found when I was looking for a dependency-free XML-to-JSON parser wherein the author notes the “fine NIH tradition of JavaScript developers everywhere.” Reminded me of this

Via

By John Atkinson

Recommended by Uber driver. Watched since I love a good revenge flick. Terrible. Had a good nap, though.

Set to “Destino”

💗💗💗