Tag: micro

I’ve read and watched more than my fair share of dystopian science fiction, and the thing it always gets wrong, it seems to me — based on the latest evidence — the thing that’s missing — is the relentless fucking mediocrity of it all. Admittedly there’s probably not much market for a YA trilogy about a dumb world of dumb shitbags who are, yes, evil fascists as well, but mostly just boring, charisma-free and so so so dumb.

None of the awful, witless oligarch caricatures currently attempting to carve up the modern world into medieval fiefdoms would make the C list of Bond villains. They’re rubbish. Rubbish. To the last man Jack.

Hannah Arendt identified the banality of evil, but Eichmann was fucking Hannibal Lecter in comparison to Trump and Musk. They are evil, but that word gives them too much credit. It glamourises the contemptible motherfuckers. Really they epitomise the banality of banality, the tautological ghastliness of the ghastliest people alive.

Still, it’s early days. There’s probably so much worse to come.

Liked Vollmond better this time around — last was more than 10 years ago, I guess? It is very much playing the hits, trademark longueurs included, but there’s a lot to be said for Pina’s hits and the youngsters gave it some welly.

It’s easy to forget just how shambolic lots of scientific software is. Companies like Google and Microsoft pour billions into favoured mainstream topics, sometimes producing vaguely coherent and well maintained libraries — though even those can be unstable, prone to being broken at the most inopportune moment. But step even slightly off the beaten path and you’re plunged into a steampunk wilderness of mismatched decaying Heath Robinson contraptions lashed together with fish guts and twine. And you have to catch and gut your own fish.

I mostly understand the reasons for this, but it’s still incredibly frustrating. It’s a miracle anything ever gets done, and a lot of the time it just doesn’t.

It has definitely been one of those weeks. I won’t bore you (myself) with the details, but it has included, inter alia, binaural recording with a wooden head and handwaving about aliasing and IIR filters. Also lunch with an old complexer I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, which was lovely but also evidence of the complete atrophy of my social skills.

I’m really not sure I know how to live in this world. (No, I have no intention of stopping.)