Drugs, Xenobots, Liquid Super Teams, 2021-06-13

Welcome back to another Weekly Review. This week, I learned drug history and the future of liquid super teams... it was a cool week.

Drug Conspiracies, Simulations, Envy, and WtfHappenedIn1971, ..

A while back, I bumped into https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/, a great site that shows many diverging trends that started in the 70's. For the most part, they explore the exploding wealth gap we have seen in recent years.

I came back across this website this week when I read [[Higher than the Shoulders of Giants]]. This piece dives into a history of some of the most well known drugs - caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, hallucinogens - then uses that history to construct a (conspiracy?) theory that the [[1970 Controlled Substances Act]] was the monocausal event that led to all the diverging trends that began in 1970. The result is possible because "drugs are foundational technologies, like the motor, combustion engine, semiconductor, or the concept of an experiment. New drugs lead to scientific revolutions. Some of those drugs, like coffee, continue to fuel fields like mathematics and computer science, even some hundreds of years later."

Bold, I know, but quite entertaining.

I'm not convinced by this argument, but I did end up finding the https://twitter.com/WTF_1971 twitter account that aggregates a whole number of theories behind what has caused the many divergences in these graphs. From drugs to the rise of poultry consumption to Richard Nixon's policies, you can find it all there.

I feel some connections brewing to form my own half baked 1971 theory. For now, I'll just leave some links laying around:

New [[Xenobots]]!!

[[Xenobots]] are my new side obsession. They are [[Reconfigurable Organisms]] - aka the labs of [[Josh Bongard]] and [[Michael Levin]] turned frog cells into new organisms that scoot around in groups. Some even have memory. I have a lot more notes I want to share on these soon.

For now, check out this video

[[liquid super teams]]

Software Soft Skills

  • Here's a list of all the things software engineers like to consider "not actually work."


My Linked Notes

One last thing

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