shiny things 31/ Bach is beautiful
Multi-armed bandits for medicine, fake brands explain real brands & a wild story of upscale foodie tourist traps
Music is math and Bach is a genius. Old news. But Bach’s written music is an artistic and mathematical rabbit hole of its own. He even signed his name in adorable musical notation (3 quarks)
Data Science coming to Clinical trials — but not in the way you would expect: multi armed bandits are being tested in clinical trials.
By week four, the guests were blurring together into a generic mass of pasta-hungry, khaki-wearing tropes. Each of them had a son in college studying computer science, or a second home with a kitchen undergoing a gut renovation. They all gazed at the pecorino with wonder. I took pleasure in loathing them. At the ceremony each Friday night, the guests chortled with pleasure as Maria and Matteo handed out their certificates, posing for photos one by one with looks of surprised delight, like actors who didn’t expect to win Oscars.
This reads like a McSweeney’s article aimed at r/selfawarewolves. My conclusion - instagram ruins everything.
“The voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. - Bernard Suits
7 games: A human History — Checkers, Chess, Go, Poker, Scrabble and Bridge. Fascinating stuff, though as the book predicts the accelerating death of Bridge due to lack of interest from younger generations, I lost interest during that section.
unconnected but related, a board game popped up in a archeological dig in Poland
“A lot of products and fictional brands are associated with characters. In a way, they’re character accessories that help establish who that person is.”
Creating fake brands for film and TV has remarkable creativity in it, and begs some interesting questions about brands in real life — we are all somewhat defined by the brand choices we consistently make. (metafilter)