Bonjour bonsoir, et musique : David Peacock's Disasters for piano inspired by Disasterpeaces's video game pieces, Penguin Cafe Orchestra smoothness, Marcus Marr funky beats, 👌 new Rone (merci Rufin), and a solid new Rat & Co.

News:

• Jonathan Harris: Powers of ten, awesome selection. Via kottke.
• Parimal Satyal: Against an increasingly user-hostile web, via HN.
• [fr] Science étonnante #48 - La conscience.
• Kottke on Switzerland/Geneva freeports ("Ports Francs"), WJW.
• Scott Alexander:
  • Kolmogorov complicity and the parable of lightning
  • How did new atheism fail so miserably?

    This is 90% of popular intellectual culture these days: progressives regurgitating progressivism to other progressives for nothing but the warm glow of being told “Yup, that was some good progressiving there”. Conservatives make fun of this incessantly, and they are right to do so. But for some reason, in the case of New Atheism and only in the case of New Atheism, Progressivism itself suddenly turned and said “Hey, you’re just repeating our own platitudes back to us!” And New Atheism, caught flat-footed, mouth open wide: “But…but..we thought we were supposed to…we thought…”.

• Tech:
  • Power accumulation & monopoly: How the Frightful Five (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft) put start-ups in a lose-lose situation.
  • Linus shouting at kernel dev. for userland regression, Episode CXXVIII: THE SHOUTING, the reasonable explanation after boiling stopped. HN.
• What boredom does to you: The science of the wandering mind, via HN.
• SMBC on hotel faucets user-friendliness.