veddox

I spent many fun hours there! It blew my mind to discover a game world that was so deeply player-driven and offered so many possibilities - my main character became a professional author...

I earned my first money in-world by writing poetry. At first I hand-wrote it and sold it on the street to other players (probably because they had compassion on a poor first-level wizard who didn't know anything about the game). Later on I had a book of my poems printed and sold in the local bookshops, and went on to write for one of the player-run newspapers. Good fun :-)

Very cool! I expected this would be quite a rudimentary map, but it actually uses OpenStreetMap, so you can zoom right in to the street level.

That depends on what threat scenario you're looking at. If your government wants to track you, they'll find a way, regardless of what phone you're using (or not).

But the privacy gains of not installing a load of third-party apps from a dozen different data-selling businesses (or using an operating system built by the mother of all data-selling businesses) are very substantial.

Replacing stable, working "low-tech" solutions with less user-friendly, unstable "high-tech" approaches is not "progress"!

Just because something is newer doesn't mean it's better. Obviously, the reverse is also true, but there is so much tech naiveté going around that this needs saying repeatedly. We'd have saved our society a lot of trouble if we'd first thought about draw-backs of new technology, before hooking everything in our lives up to it.

I've been thinking about moving to a dumb phone again for the past few months, but so far I've decided against it, for three reasons:

1. Signal/Whatsapp/Threema: biggest reason by far - while I message much less than many others, these platforms are just the way a lot of (group) communication works nowadays. It is possible to go without, but it causes so much hassle when organising things or trying to stay up to date with what's happening in a group, and would disrupt my international friendships.

2. Maps & public transport apps: are just super useful to have available, especially if you regularly travel in places you don't know (well).

3. Camera: This one I'm still a bit undecided on, but I think I would miss not having it at hand.

However, I do try to actively give my phone as little space in my life as possible. I have no social networks on it (I don't have any left by now, anyway), and no other apps that involve scrolling. And I continue to think about how I can avoid distractions from it.

All through university and for several years afterwards I had an Online Vision Classic, which served me very well. Unfortunately I lost the first one at some point, and its replacement had various issues. So a couple of months ago I decided to go for a really good pen, and got an Otto Huth design 04. It looks great, lies comfortably in the hand and has an excellent nib.

Ditto for the fountain pen. For the past few months I've been trying to switch off the computer as much as possible and do as much writing as I can by hand. I can concentrate a lot better and I enjoy the physicality of handling a good pen and actual paper.

I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm one of the movers myself, and I know why I moved, but I feel the cost of lost relationships quite heavily.

While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone use, while a problem, is not the root cause.)

Hm, I think I understand your point, but I still disagree. For three reasons:

First, Tolkien isn't writing another Grimms' fairy tale. His world has sufficient depth to it that we can make valid comparisons to real-world societies. Aragorn and Theoden are not generic fairy tale kings of some unspecified country. We know a lot about the geography, culture, history, and political organisation of their realms. We can see how they raise their armies, how they interact with their vassals, how they see themselves. They are not just "vaguely feudal in feel", they are actual (albeit fictional) examples of feudal rulers in action.

Second, these are not just incidental details that make the story more fun to read, they are highly relevant for the development of the plot. Questions of succession, legitimacy, and loyalty drive the attitudes and actions of Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, Denethor, Theoden, Eowyn, Eomer, and Imrahil. The values to which these characters hold themselves are, in many ways, typically feudal.

Third, we know that Tolkien spent his life studying these societies, and he himself often talks about where he got his inspiration from. Unfortunately I haven't read his letters myself yet, but I know from other sources that he is often quite explicit about where he drew his ideas from (see e.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influences_on_J._R._R._Tolkien).

I still wish I could work in Lisp, but have also become very happy with Julia.

Julia is not as elegant as Lisp and doesn't offer as many powerful language constructs. But it is a very cleanly designed and well thought-out language that is fun to work in. I especially love its metaprogramming abilities (heavily drawn from Lisp), which include "real" macros.

In the end, the reason I use Julia over Lisp is the community and the ecosystem. As an ecological modeller, Julia is something my colleagues have at least heard of and that I can convince a few to use (instead of R and Netlogo). I fear that I could never convince anybody to use or contribute to a software written CL. Also, the Julia standard library is just very well put together and there are more packages available for the things that I need to do, compared to CL.

I still love CL as a language and sometimes toy with the idea of going back to it, but for the moment, practicality beats purity.

Can you elaborate? I'm using Julia macros to help make my research software easier to extend for others, so would be interested in your experiences.

I partly agree.

Aragorn is not a ‘feudal king’, he is a king of legend.

I was not using "feudal" to denote a time period in our world's history, but rather a system of governance based on liege-vassal relationships. I agree with you that Gondor feels more classical than medieval, but as a king, Aragorn is quite clearly the liege-lord of vassals (Imrahil, Faramir, the Thain) who hold their lands by his bequest. So while Aragorn is definitely legendary in the sense that he is an idealised fictional figure, in-universe he is very much a feudal king.

The journey in the Lord of the Rings is almost as much a journey back through deeper and deeper legend as it is through space - the hobbits travel from a Napoleonic era Shire, through Renaissance Rivendell, back to a medieval Rohan then classical Gondor, and then into the strictly mythological Mordor.

Yes, absolutely. Tolkien creates the countries of Middle Earth out of many different historical inspirations, with a heavy dose of mythology mixed in. I find it good fun to see where he got his ideas from - for example the parallels between Beowulf and Rohan (compare the great halls of Heorot and Meduseld).

But of course Tolkien never simply mixed and matched. His creativity drew on things he knew, but he didn't just recombine them, he amalgamated them into something really new. So I agree, seeing Middle Earth as "medieval Europe with a different geography" is just plain wrong, on many different levels. But still we can analyse the ingredients that Tolkien used to create his world, and use that to gain a richer understanding of it.

If you think the Lord of the Rings is one big trope, you really haven't given it enough consideration. Yes, Tolkien has very clear moral and social ideals, but using this as grounds to portray LotR as "two-dimensional" absolutely does not do it justice. There's so much more nuance to it!

The Shire is idyllic, but no paradise. Its inhabitants are lovable, but petty and smallminded, they squabble and feud and betray each other. Good and evil exist, but aside from Gandalf and Sauron, all "good" characters have faults and mixed motivations and all "evil" characters are at least potentially redeemable. The stories of Middle Earth are shaped by Tolkien's (conservative, Christian) worldview, but he definitely did not write a utopia.

I would rather take it at face value, as a perhaps surprising but nevertheless fitting display of magnanimity and mercy.

Theoden has been restored to his right mind and character. The whole thrust of the his character plot (in the books) is that he ends his reign as noble as any of his forbears; freed from the influence of the lies of Saruman, he becomes an exemplary king. And one kingly virtue that Tolkien presents again and again is that of magnanimity to defeated foes: Bilbo doesn't kill Gollum (which Gandalf explicitly praises), the Rohirrim don't kill the Dunlendings, Gandalf doesn't kill Saruman.

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment."

Here's the tax policy quote in context: https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2014/04/grrm-asks-what-was-ar...

being a wholesome person is largely orthogonal to being a good king

I disagree with Martin here. Of course, not every good person also makes a good king, and not every good (i.e. politically effective) king was a good (i.e. morally upright) person. But the thing to realise is that the political power of feudal kings was much more limited than we often assume, and was based to a large part on the continued loyalty and goodwill of their vassals. In other words, a king's power rests on the relationships he has; it is both personal and relational.

This means, of course, that a king who is perceived by his vassals as being a bad person is unlikely to keep their support and allegiance for long. He might be able to cow individual vassals by force, but the more his relationships degrade, the more precarious his position will be. (For example, King John's scandalous behaviour and personal conflicts with his barons were one of the main causes for the Baron's Revolt and the Magna Carta.)

With that in mind, it is little surprise that medieval handbooks for rulers heavily emphasise a good character, loyal relationships, and morally upstanding behaviour as key to being a successful aristocrat. Tolkien understands this, and so his depiction of kings and aristocrats focusses strongly on the relational ties between them: the fealty and oaths they have sworn, the ancient friendships and marriages that connect them, the personal admiration and sympathy they have for each other. Put differently, medieval aristocrats would readily recognise Aragorn, Theoden, Eomer and Imrahil as model princes.

(For a more detailed discussion of medieval aristocratic values, see here: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/27/a-trip-through-dhuoda-of-uzes-.... For a discussion of personal kingship - based on Crusader Kings III - see here: https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-c...)

Because this opinion has surfaced a number of times here: Yes, Tolkien did care deeply about the realism of his world. And because he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies, the societies he creates in Middle Earth do function very realistically. I think there are two reason why many readers miss this:

(1) Much of Tolkien's world-building is implicit rather than explicit. He doesn't talk about Aragorn's tax policy because he doesn't need to; Aragorn is recognisably a feudal king and there is a standard way taxes are done a feudal system (i.e. the vassals take care of gathering them). Tolkien has a deep understanding of how such societies function, but much of this comes out indirectly in the story, through the way the characters behave and what they can and cannot do.

(2) Pre-modern societies are so deeply different from modern ones (economically, culturally, and socially) that I think many readers stumble across things they find unexpected and dismiss it as "unrealistic fantasy", without understanding that in such a context, this is exactly how one would expect the world to work. For example, the deep devotion and self-sacrificial service Sam shows to Frodo is often discussed in terms of friendship (and it is a great friendship), but one cannot fully understand it unless one also understands it as a (very positive) master-servant relationship.

If you want a better understanding of the deeper realism of LotR, I cannot recommend Bret Devereaux' blog highly enough. He is an ancient military historian and has written extensive (but entertaining!) analyses of both LotR and GoT. See here for two samples: https://acoup.blog/2020/05/22/collections-the-battle-of-helm..., https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa...

Speaking as a biologist, it saddens me every time I hear somebody say that they dropped biology as soon as they could in high school, because they inevitably do so just before it starts to get interesting.

The problem is that biology is a subject where you need a lot of fundamental knowledge before you can start to understand how things actually work - simply because the systems involved are so complex and have so many interacting parts. You need to learn an awful lot of facts before you can start putting the puzzle pieces together to see the big picture. But once you do, the view is amazing!

As an aside, I lament that the author equates "biology" with "molecular biology". He completely ignores the wonders of ecology - the beauty of biodiversity, the marvel of trophic cascades, the intricacies of ecosystem functioning. In fact, I think the challenges he sees for molecular biology are heightened for ecology: what you learn of it in high school is often even drier, you need even more background knowledge to be able to see the big picture, and research is even more challenging because experiments can seldom be done in a lab. Yet, once you've dug your way into it, you get to see systems at work that span the globe, that are as complex as anything that happens in a cell, just more vibrant and tangible and alive.

Just to add as a caveat that Wohlleben's books are regarded quite critically by most forest ecologists I know. The general consensus seems to be that he picks up on real phenomena and is a vivid science communicator, but has a tendency to greatly exaggerate what we know.

Aldo Leopold, "Sand County Almanac".

In German: Josef Reichholf, "Mein Leben für die Natur".

You're doing to ecology exactly what the author complains teachers are doing to molecular biology.

Learning about molecular biology often begins with memorising what the cell is made of. I understand that many students find this dry and tedious. But it is in a way necessary, because only once you have this foundational knowledge can you go on to begin to understand the amazing complexity of how it all actually works.

Ecology is similar. Yes, taxonomy can be a drag (certainly in high school, or even early college). But you need to learn something about what's out there before you can start to think about, and wonder at, how it works. Ecology is an amazing subject, as complex and intricate as anything in molecular biology. (In a way, it's even more cryptic than the latter, because most of the experiments can't be done in a lab.) The problem is that most people have no clue what's out there, and so they never see the beauty that surrounds them, or realise the wonderful web of life playing out all around them.

Come for a walk with me through the woods, and let me tell you something about how ants grow their own food, or go to war with a neighbouring tribe, or treat their wounded with antibiotics. Or let's take a look at a dead tree, and see how the fungus has softened the wood, how beetles have burrowed through it, how they in turn attract woodpeckers, whose holes are then re-used by owls.

Due respect to Feynman as a physicist, but he had no clue about ecology. We are not collecting stamps, we are collecting the stories they tell - stories you'll never hear if you don't look at a few stamps first...

A list of my favourites:

3. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon."

14. "In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble."

19. "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing."

55. "A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing."

I've seen several of these before in SICP and other places, but happy to find a longer collection here! Perlis just has his own style and humour...

That's an unnecessary insult to what could well be an honest question.

The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population.

That is certainly one of the most important issues. However, habitat loss is even more critical (not only but also because it also decreases insect numbers).

Is there a study about the effects of decreased pollination?

Pollination and other ecosystem services have been heavily studied in the last decade. Putting precise numbers on it is tricky though, because there are so many context-specific factors that play a role. However, this is one important global study that shows a clear effect of pollination on yield: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121

Principally the direct payments. Farmers in the EU get a certain amount of money for every hectare of land they farm. This accounts for 40% of all CAP payments, and disproportionately benefits large farms, as they not only get much more money but also benefit from economies of scale.

Adding to that, compulsory environmental regulations are quite lax, while voluntary environmental measures are often poorly recompensed, and are thus economically not viable.

See here for some further reading: https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080 (There's lots more, but this should be a good starting point.)

Sorry, that's just not true. Just type "renewable energy bird populations" into Google Scholar and work your way through the results. There's tons of research on that out there.

See e.g. here for a recent study: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.211...

If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land.

That is a big debate in conservation biology (known as "land sparing vs land sharing"). One of the major problems of the land sparing approach, which you outline above, is that there is nothing that makes (at least European) farmers as upset as the requirement to give up farming on part of their land. So while it's neat in principle, many conservationists doubt its political practicability.

Your first point is partly correct, but your conclusion isn't.

The authors split up their results by country to show exactly the differences you mention. However, you have to keep in mind that the EU Common Agricultural Policy applies to all these countries, and actively promotes large-scale intensive agriculture. Bird collapses after a country joins the EU have been shown, for example in the Czech Republic [1]. So yes, while the magnitude may vary, the negative trend is a Europe-wide phenomenon.

There's also been a lot of research done on what aspects of farming cause declines [2]. It's partly species-specific, but the three major causes are: loss of semi-natural habitat area (e.g. hedges, fallows), disturbance mortality (e.g. from harvesting), and pesticides (often mediated through the loss of insects as food source).

[1] https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585 [2] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14400, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13531, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2003.06.004

I reference this paper in almost every science-communication talk I give as an ecologist.

It was not a new result by any means, we've had a whole range of other studies showing the same over the last three decades [1]. But it was still a very important study, simply for the sheer amount of data they collated: analysing 170 species trends across four decades across Europe is quite a feat!

Taken together, it really drives home the message that modern agricultural practices are shredding the environment, but also that there is a lot of nuance behind biodiversity declines that we need to look into further, and that offer hope for improvement.

[1] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45854-0, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585,https://doi.org/10.1111/c..., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.05.006, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2004.00375.x