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Jul 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Oh God, the #Jan6thHearings is fucking it up. People want linear narratives:

This happened. Then that happened. Ooh, this other thing happened at the same time! Are they connected? Let's discuss!

Why. Are. They. Not. Telling. A. Story???
I was just complaining to Dawn about how the long paper I'm rereading to summarize for the podcast (marick.fastmail.com/random_content…) is organized around the final theory rather than around the history. It darts back and forth over the history, which. is. confusing.
So much work I'm having to do to reconstruct a history of what happened when from a bunch of disconnected references. People listening to this presentation are not going to put in that effort, so they will not get the message of how, hour after hour, Trump refused to do anything.
A timeline like this should be displayed throughout the proceedings.
We viewers should not have to mentally reconstruct such a timeline.

Damn!

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More from @marick

Brian Marick Profile picture
Jul 23
I'm reading about /Molecular Cloning: a Laboratory Manual/ (molecularcloning.com), a book first published in 1982 that hit a sweet spot: both a cookbook of techniques available to novices, plus... Part of a table of contents...
... "written in such a way that if they read it carefully and understood it, they could actually troubleshoot". We've had similar things - I was fond of @jbrains' /Junit Recipes/ (manning.com/books/junit-re…), ...
... but it seems to me that generally we in software neither luck into documentation suitable for troubleshooting nor get rewarded for intentionally thinking about helping people troubleshoot. (But I am out of touch with the state of the practice.)

If true, I wonder why?
Read 7 tweets
Brian Marick Profile picture
Jul 23
South Carolina bill outlaws websites that tell how to get an abortion
More states could follow, setting up a battle over the future of online speech across the country.

washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

This implies the bill has been *passed* when it has only been *introduced*.

1/4
In this case, the bill is newsworthy because it has enough organizational oomph behind it that it is likely to pass, although the article doesn't discuss that *at all*.

But I have a pet peeve about this sort of story.

2/4
It has ever been the case, especially in smaller states, that certain of our more ... eccentric state legislators love to introduce bills that are crazy/alarming – and that stand no chance of passing.

3/4
Read 4 tweets
Brian Marick Profile picture
Jul 22
In /Crafting Science/ (goodreads.com/book/show/1115…), Fujimura points out that recombinant DNA technology transformed cancer research in part because of top-down push (funding agencies, commercial interests).

I'm writing a script about how jUnit was essential for the success of TDD.
Perhaps what I'm now reading adds another wrinkle:

TDD succeeded as it has *because* it carried a theory alongside its technology.

... but it failed to reach its potential because there was no large-scale institution that made it an obvious problem-solving choice.
That was unclear. Fujimura's argument is that ideas-about-how-the-world-works are infectious because of their associated technologies. Ideas without associated technologies are more likely to fail. So jUnit spread TDD (and perhaps a Smalltalkish style of OO design).
Read 7 tweets
Brian Marick Profile picture
Jun 25
I recommend "Agora" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora_(fi…) a film about philosophy vs religion toward the end of the Roman empire. We tend to forget how quickly Christianity got taken over by zealots. (It wasn't just the 30 years war, justification of slavery, and, um, today.)
I really want to do a deep dive sometime on how Christianity became so obsessed and violent about the Donatist heresy, Arianism, etc. It is completely incomprehensible to me why it mattered: given that surely God would clarify such topics to the virtuous in heaven.
Donatism (how should we Christians deal with people who buckled under persecution) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism

Arianism: (did the Son come after the Father or was He always there)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism
Read 5 tweets
Brian Marick Profile picture
Jun 25
So here's my theory. The Founders created a Senate modeled after the Roman Senate. Look at the history of the Roman Republic: the Senate was at first good, but when it started to suck, it *really* sucked and had become so static it could not adjust to changing needs.
1/3
The Founders – educated men – understood that and *deliberately* used "Senate" to signal to people that the institution was destined to ossify and fail: it was their sign that we should be ever-ready to discard it Traditions when it had outlived its usefulness.
2/3
Because we stopped teaching Latin in school, we've completely missed their point.

P.S. I am not a crank.
3/3
Read 4 tweets
Brian Marick Profile picture
May 6
Comments on the Supreme Court. A response essay by a lawyer I've never heard of, but who is apparently famous enough to have a symposium named after him. balkin.blogspot.com/2022/05/conver…

A quote follows.
'I think it is telling that all of us seem to be fully comfortable with the idea of term limits. It is getting harder and harder to find anyone who genuinely defends either as “necessary” or even “proper” the truly exceptional national American practice of “full-life” tenure.
'[...] only one of the fifty American states allows similar full-life tenure. As is often the case, even a brief look at American state constitutions will reveal how “exceptional” the national Constitution is even within our own borders, let alone internationally.' First, I think it is telling that all of us seem to be full
Read 4 tweets

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