It’s a civic holiday Monday that feels like a Saturday, reminding me of an old Soviet-era science-fiction novel, Monday begins on Saturday, by the Strugatsky brothers. It’s also a rather gloomy Monday morning, so it’s time for me to grumble about a few things.
For instance, how politics infuses everything these days. I signed up to follow a Facebook group dedicated to brutalist architecture, which for some inexplicable reason, I like. The comments section in one of the first posts I saw rapidly deteriorated into political bickering, as to whether or not it was appropriate to repurpose one of the Nazi-era indestructible flak towers in Hamburg as a luxury hotel. Because you know, politics is everything.
Speaking of which, I saw another post elsewhere about employees of a large US company who, after being told how successful the company was last year, were informed in the same breath that the company will cut their pension plan contributions. Needless to say, there followed comments about the evils of capitalism. Having experienced both capitalism and one of its alternatives, a socialist economy with central planning, all I can say is that capitalism works most of the time until it doesn’t; but when it doesn’t, victims are ever so eager to replace it with something that never works instead.
Then there was this post at an online news site claiming that it is practically impossible to run an ethical AI company. Well, what can I say? If you are telling me that allowing machine learning algorithms to learn from accumulated human knowledge is unethical, then sure, you are absolutely right. Then again, I suspect that what mainly drives such complaints is blatant ignorance of how machine learning works in the first place.
OK, well, never mind that, there’s good news. A fusion energy breakthrough: Neutron impact on tokamak components uncovered. Er… Say again? You are telling me that after 70+ years of research, we are beginning to understand why, or how, a heavy neutron flux rapidly destroys test equipment in the lab? Isn’t that like, say, greeting it as a “steam turbine breakthrough” when a prehistoric tribe manages to draw a spark from slamming together two rocks?
Oh well. On mornings like this, I feel I am beginning to comprehend the mood of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut who once told the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti to go jump in a lake.
A fusion energy breakthrough:
Oh, I thought it is about the Hyderabad Cold Fusion demonstration month ago. Another one cold fusion, yep :) But interesting to learn anyway.
Actually I dared to comment on this post mainly due to its intro phrase: I was astonished close to “out of my wits” to learn that “Monday” by ABS is known overseas. I love the novel very much (unlike most other books by them), but always thought it is “too endemic” to hamper serious translation initiative.
I read “Monday” in Hungarian… it was published there in the early 1970s. I cannot judge the quality of the translation, but it was certainly an enjoyable (and as you can see, memorable) read.