Linkfest 2022-06-10: S-curves
FreakTakes: When do ideas get easier to find?
Last week I said that I’m convinced that the progress of technology usually follows an S-curve. This is a good illustration of what I mean. If you pick your metrics right, you can make a story of linear progress on the back of multiple logistic growth curves. Jerry Pournelle and Stefan Possony [and their secret co-author Francis X. Kane] pointed this out in The Strategy of Technology.
However, it really bugs me that whoever made this chart started the solid line at the average of the first point and ended it at the maximum of the last point. You are a fucking liar. I see you.
Marginal Revolution: A Bloody Waste
Alex Tabarrok asks about the justice of the Red Cross’ policy that prevents people with hemochromatosis from donating blood, not because it would be a problem for the blood supply, but because donating blood is a treatment for hemochromatosis, and therefore a benefit to people with that condition.
This article and the associated Damn Interesting article on rogue waves reminds me of the West Hunter blog post on red sprites:
In yet another example of long-delayed discovery, forms of high-altitude lightning were observed for at least a century before becoming officially real (as opposed to really real).
The attitude of scientists on this really bugs me. It would be one to thing to say “I don’t know how to verify this thing you reported and I haven’t seen it myself”, but the response is almost always “this thing you said you saw can’t exist; you didn’t see that”. Get bent losers.
The Long View: Our Global Neighborhood
The Great International "Them" Unmasked!
A synopsis of drinking by Edward Caswall
I recently starting reading Uller Uprising by H. Beam Piper, a riff on the Sepoy Mutiny, and so here is one of Piper’s most famous works in this universe.
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