Recent content on meanderingexile
//I never want to end up piloting a nuclear reactor.// 

 At some point in the past, I’d picked up the bit of trivia that the Chernobyl
nuclear reactor had to be much more actively controlled than I realized leading
up to the accident, with the human operators actively in the loop. 
 I recently became curious, and tracked down the source of that claim to an
article,…

 //Shipping and swashbucklers//The Good Old Days//Opportunity in complexity// 

 I recently read The World For Sale, an investigation into commodities trading
in the 20th century. While the whole book is a good read, the early chapters in
particular are a ton of fun, following the swashbuckling post-WWII days
where traders made fortunes with chutzpah and instinct. 
 I…

 //Military enterprisers//the feudal and the federal//Putting pikemen on your credit card// 

 If there was a ever a time to be a mercenary, it was Renaissance Italy. The
condottieri, or “contractors” were masters of the art: skilled at fighting,
certainly, but also the art of waging war for profit, and living long enough to
enjoy your rewards. 
 While the…

 //the beginning of digital flight control//vibe astronautics//the human wants to be in the loop// 

 Mindell’s Digital Apollo is a great book, and not just for the space-obsessed.
Spaceflight was intertwined with the development of cybernetics, modern control
systems, and the digital computer. Re-reading it recently while recovering from
an illness, I found certain…
//two volcanoes, both alike in dignity (but not in violence)//lava-passata theory//the pacific rim//the big rip at
Þingvellir//making sense of the world// 

 In the last year, I’ve passed close to a couple of volcanoes, one of
which is known for exploding violently and killing people, and one of
which is not. I decided to try to understand a little bit about why.
…
I never thought of myself as an anxious person, but for a few years fear
and anxiety became a pretty big part of my life. An increasing number of
things became stressful, and I made an increasing number of decisions,
big and small, to avoid those stressors. It wasn’t a great time. 
 There was a lot of stuff involved in digging out of that hole, but one
thing that helped a…