I don’t know if anyone’s noticed this, but it seems to me that the French Revolution kind of got out of hand.

A newly published festschrift for Stafford Beer.

"A collection of essays, reflections, and tributes from scholars, practitioners, and friends who gathered to celebrate the centenary of Stafford Beer — pioneer of management cybernetics, architect of the Viable System Model, and originator of Team Syntegrity. Free to read, free to share.”

https://staffordbeer100.com/festschrift

Editor-in-chief of Transactions on Machine Learning Research wanted to interview authors of ten (already desk-rejected) papers about the content of their own paper. The expected ensues.

3 dodged the interview.
3 could not answer basic questions.
3 could answer basic questions, but struggled with technical ones.
1 success

"The value of publication as a signal of researcher contribution is much weaker when authors cannot explain or defend their paper.”

https://medium.com/@TmlrOrg/asking-authors-about-their-own-papers-3d2e04e5dee0

⁃ Emitting weird messages toward foreign governments that they find hard to sensibly respond to? ✅

⁃ Erratic? ✅

⁃ Impulsive? ✅

⁃ Vengeful? ✅

⁃ Obsessive about strange things? ✅ (cannons rather than catapults and battleships and ballrooms) (2/3)

The “Rest is History” podcast has an episode describing the character of Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia (1818–1868), titled “The Mad Emperor of Abyssinia (Part 1)”¹. It’s a better dissection of the general category of crazed ruler than “The Madness of King George.”²

Of course, I could not help comparing Tewodros to Trump.

⁃ Prone to weird crushes? ✅ (Kim of North Korea, Putin)

⁃ Very needy about emotional support from subordinates? ✅… (1/3)

> Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department used Flock’s surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop’s stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock’s system, was “LMAO.”

Other reasons included “LOL,” “Hehe,” “Haha,” “idk,” “blah,” “TBD,” and “robbery I don’t remember the case number leave me alone”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

https://www.404media.co/cops-search-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mlevison/117248223184590261

Woah. “73 percent of the accidents for which information was available occurred on the first day the captain and first officer had flown together. A NASA study found that fatigued crews who had a history of working together made about half as many errors as crews of rested pilots who had not flown together before.”

(Citation given in the linked article. I didn’t check it.)

What does Omarchy need all money *for*? @neauoire https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/117241849685090319

A surprisingly gut-wrenching decision (putting the Canadian flag as my avatar)

https://blog.oddly-influenced.dev/2026/08/30/i-changed-my-mastodon-profile.html

Ratko Mladic has died, aged 84. The Grim Reaper’s aim is getting better.

https://www.reuters.com/world/bosnian-serb-general-ratko-mladic-convicted-genocide-has-died-serbian-tv-reports-2026-08-27/

It’s weird to think that George “Boolean logic” Boole’s life overlapped considerably with that of Georg “there are different infinities” Cantor.

I mean:

Boole: 1815 – 1864
Cantor: 1845 –1918

Both Boole and Cantor shook things up. But there seems to be a difference in kind.

The late 1800s were, I claim, a lot crazier period than we really appreciate.

Reports are that Trump wants to change the design of Ford-class aircraft carriers to move the command center tower forward for aesthetic reasons. (I admit, it does look kind of dorky way in the back.)

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-to-order-redesign-of-aircraft-carriers-because-they-dont-look-right

I have a better idea. Leave the tower where it is, but build a triumphal arch on the middle of the deck. You want cool? Imagine jets taking off *through the arch*. *That* is cool.

C.S. Peirce coined what’s come to be called “the pragmatic maxim”. It is, I think, a heuristic more people should keep in mind, Hence:

The pragmatic maxim, with examples
https://blog.oddly-influenced.dev/2026/08/11/the-pragmatic-maxim-with-examples.html

(8 minutes reading time)

RIP John Crowley, author of /Little, Big/, the only book I’ve read twice to Dawn, I think.

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/john-crowley-has-died

“The downfall of robot solutionism” does that most important service: hang a memorable-because-weird word or phrase onto a problem. “To Abelard Snazz it up.”

"If you don’t think in this way, you’re liable to Abelard Snazz it up, providing ever more complicated solutions for already-complex problems, many of which you have created yourself thanks to your past problem solving efforts.”

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-downside-of-robot-solutionism

Similar to the Red Queen hypothesis in biology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis

Now there’s a headline that will cause company PR to take up day-drinking:

“The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor”

“Put into context, the revelation is a horrifying twist in an already nauseating story of corporate greed and deregulation. Though the institution of slavery may have been formally abolished, its legacy lives on — fully embraced by the for-profit companies pumping our food supply full of parasites.”

https://futurism.com/science-energy/diarrhea-lettuce-taylor-farms-prison-labor

The former is more satisfying – less dissatisfying – as the latter forces me to acknowledge that my property tax dollars are wasted on guardians of public order who probably think the males disturbing the peace are way cool. (2/2)

People may ask “Why are you spending endless hours writing on things like science methodologies and how to recognize that book authors are playing you for a sucker?”

The answer is that, otherwise, I’d be standing on street corners with a microphone and camera, documenting people riding in motorcycles and cars who are bent on showing their asses with loud engine noises and music, demanding we acknowledge their power to compel our attention.. (1/2)

I’m reading @adapalmer’s /Inventing the Renaissance/¹. I’m struck by how her description of letter-writing during the Enlightenment resonates with the glory days of blogging (early 2000s?) Public writings (intended to be read by many), diverse topics, establishing status when higher-status bloggers respond or link to you, etc.

Ah, blogging… I wonder if things work the same in the substack era. Are there pingback-equivalents?²

¹ https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/inventing-the-renaissance/

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback

German speakers: when I was young, visiting grandparents in Germany, my Oma would tell my mom to chill out when I did something mildly wrong, using a two word phrase I want to spell “lossen doch”, which I remember means something like “leave him alone.” Is that anywhere close to the correct phrase?