Bizzarre Japanese sorting and exploding things

Programming

• Sorting in Japanese is hard

  There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko. This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji:

  • 淳子 (Junko)
  • 淳子 (Atsuko)
  • 淳子 (Kiyoko)
  • 淳子 (Akiko)

• AMP for email is a terrible idea

  TL;DR: yes.

Articles

• Israel’s Moon lander crashed, and that’s OK

  TL;DR: Still, it was quite a feat, and they’ll likely continue trying.

  (Although I thought the correct term for it was “lithobraking”, not “crashing” xD)

• How to quit caffeine in one week

  (NB: premium article)

  TL;DR: It’s apparently not that hard and can be done in the course of a couple of weeks. Tyrosine and/or phenylalanine supplements are recommended.

• Four new DNA letters double life’s alphabet

  TL;DR: scientists created four more artificial bases that can be used in place of (or together with) the usual ATGC in the DNA. This artificial DNA can even be transcribed onto RNA, but more tests are necessary.

• Normalization of Deviance

  TL;DR: Just a good engineering rant by @Foone on why things fail

• Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness Connected to the Hard Problem in Physics?

  TL;DR: everything is, like, conscious because physics is, like, not absolute truth and just, like, theories, and, like, electrons must have expierences like ours because how else would we get consciense, like, dude, now pass me some more of that lsd

Music

• Neural network generating technical death metal, via livestream 24/7 to infinity.

Art

• Bracelli’s Bizzarie di Varie Figure

  Very trippy and abstract for 1624, I like

Games

• Switch’N’Shoot is surprisingly good

Books

• Still reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It’s cute and sad. I’ve seen the movie when it came out, but don’t remember much of it.