it sure is fun to go online and read about people who are better than you at all the things you value

The institution of get-out-of-jail-free cards for friends and family of police (via Marginal Revolution).

The relative success of the reform of the Camden police (via squareallworthy).

Ada Palmer's essay on censorship and genre fiction.

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai is a shounen (?) (apparently it was a light novel.) harem-comedy anime. I watched it at thirteen. It was one the first non-Pokemon/Bleach shows I saw. Now that I'm going and trying to watch anime without subtitles, I figured I would rewatch it. My memory of it was: blonde girl, black haired childhood friend, harem, lots of fanservice, mediocre. And that's pretty much correct. Except...

It could have been good!!!! The first episode genuinely surprised me. Not that it was a masterpiece or anything, but I thought it was legitimately funny. I liked the characters and their dynamics. It seemed like the plot might actually go somewhere. Of course it didn't, because it's an adaptation of a harem comedy, but I still hoped.

After the first episode things went downhill. I remember disliking the scientist genius girl, and yes I still do, though I do admire her willingness to go for what she wants instead of internally whining about it for a whole season. Yukimura-kun is cute.

Somewhere in the middle of episode two I had a thought: Kodaka (male MC) has no chemistry with either of the female leads. Absolutely none. He's more like an exasperated dad breaking up his kid's fights than any kind of legitimate love interest for either of them. Of course they're in love with him because that's the kind of show this is BUT, it feels incredibly contrived. Which of course it is. Where I was going with this is that I started shipping Sena and Yozora around the fifteen minute mark. Oh, they "hate" each other and constantly tease & insult each other yet they don't just literally leave the club instead of staying and suffering? They genuinely interact with each other more than with Kodaka. And that's another thing - I have a hard time Kodaka entertains any romantic feeling for either Yozora or Sena, because they're both absolutely obnoxious. I want to write a fic where Kodaka and Yukimura-kun get together and Kodaka is fed up with Y&S's nonsense, locks them in a room or something til they kiss and make up.

(Don't watch this show. It's not good.)

One of the seven helical coils that span the membrane (coil number 6) moves 1.4 nm and others move shorter distances. Together they open a cleft in the receptor molecule at the inner face to expose the G protein’s binding site. At the next collision, a G protein engages this site with a special knob and docks securely.

Did some single-plane downhill sliding today. A lot of little muscles around my feet and ankles are incredibly sore. Still, the feeling of getting better at something is fun, and I assume sliding downhill carving turns around the slowpokes is fun. One hilariously heavily-booted boot step at a time. (At least they're better than ski boots!)

did some gradient descent (and ascent) today

Because most worms use the same foraging circuits, they accumulate at the same sites — like undergraduates at a good café . And the subtext is similar: a place to feed is also a place to find mates. Moreover, the worms, unlike most undergraduates, are commonly hermaphroditic, so doubling their chances of a satisfying encounter.

Principles of Neural Design - Sterling, Laughlin

Interesting fact about learning languages: it's hard and it takes a long time. Shocking, I know.

I've been learning Japanese v e r y s l o w l y for the past year or so, taking it more seriously in the past month or so in my now copious free time. Mostly I've been drilling kanji (characters) and watching anime and dramas which I understand like 10% of. Still moderately enjoyable, especially when a whole exchange is comprehensible. Wow, it's like I'm really learning a thing!

Naturally, having attained a minimal amount of success in an area, it's time for me to overcommit my energies to expand my efforts in that area until I inevitably burn myself out (eh, it's pretty evitable). What I mean is that now I'm learning French too. Originally it was Dutch, but my brother objected. The plan is that we both learn a language so that we can communicate with each other in public without anyone else understanding unless we're in Montreal. Also there's a long running joke involving my inability to speak French but I won't get into that. There is a point to be made that no one particularly cares what we are talking about to each other, but who knows what might happen in the future. Perhaps we will be under risk of surveillance by unFrench-speaking secret agents. Best to plan ahead.

The interesting thing here is that I don't know how to proceed. I mean obviously it involves some amount of French media being input into me through my eyes and/or ears but which media and in what order? I have previously obtained the Assimil New French With Ease which is supposed to be pretty good, but I'm gravitating towards this 1968 "La francais dans l'methode naturale" or something like that. Give me a break, I've been studying for about ten minutes. This drew my attention because it's in the same pattern as Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, a wonderful Latin textbook which I read after I finished my high school Latin courses and then regretted not finding out about earlier. The idea is that the whole text is in French, including the instructions and explanations of grammar. In Latin that worked well, though maybe because I already had a background in Latin, shaky though it was. I guess I'll see if it works for me in French. If my brother doesn't change his mind about the language again.

For the past couple months I've been going to longsword classes at a local club. It's a real club, not like those weaklings with their "buildings" and "gyms" and "equipment". As according to tradition, we meet on Sundays in the Sword Lot, which is an empty lot in which we play with toy swords practice the noble and chivalric art of swordsmanship. Occasionally we share the Lot with tolerant dog owners playing fetch and dogs who would like to fetch us our chivalric implements.

I was thinking about how mindset affects performance in martial arts. I'm not exactly the most martial person in the world, this being my first exposure to any kind of martial art besides a few failed attempts at whacking my way through a wooden board when I was about ten. But in the bouts that I've been in so far, being in the correct frame of mind has been more important than anything else in determining my success. There's no time for me to process what's going on, so I can't go into the exchange in a thoughtful mood. This will lead to pausing after a parried strike to figure out what to do next, which leads to a swift stab into my face. Instead I have to go in with a sort of zenlike focus, in which I come up with a general idea of what I'm going to do and in what way I'm going to do it, and then I just let my body do the rest, using almost no conscious thought in the whole exchange. Thinking is just too slow. By the time my stream of consciousness resumes, the exchange is already usually over.

This is bizarre to me. Not having any prior serious athletic experience, I came into fencing with the tools that I apply to any other problem I have to solve. Those tools don't seem to work very well when a sword is flying directly at your eyeballs. Not that they're not useful in learning the forms, figuring out biomechanics, determining angles of attack, et cetera, but when actually trying to hit the other person, brain no worky, got to go on instinct. This is a problem when your instincts aren't well developed, but it's still stupidly fun. Even if you get bashed on the head repeatedly.