Author Archives: Anton

adventures in language borrowing

In this episode of College Roomies from Hell!, there appears in otherwise Spanish dialogue (the author is Mexican, I believe) the word Sepa, which would be pronounced like French sais pas (“dunno”), which fits the context.

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concepts that are not quite writing

I was thinking about the notion of a brain interface that delivers text to a layer after vision: the user “sees” the letters at their most abstract, but not their graphic details. What would that experience be like? Could it … Continue reading

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a question of aspect

The refrain of P. F. Sloan’s song “Let Me Be” (recorded by the Turtles) concludes, I am what I am and that’s all I ever can be. Defiance or fatalism?

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upload/resurrection fantasy, again

Previous version. If your thousands of instances are linked in a line, the youngest and eldest are affected only very slowly by blending (if the middle is not to be hugely overrepresented); that is why I came up with daily … Continue reading

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oblique pedals

Pedaling a bicycle is painful for me, because a crooked hip makes the knee transmit force at an unnatural angle. But perhaps I could mitigate that (if I had any relevant skills) by making the pedals’ axis oblique, connected to … Continue reading

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toon trek

A few years ago I decided, having got behind and lost the thread of my favorite webcomics, to start them over; and then developed a more quixotic ambition: to sample as many webcomics as I can find and, more daunting, … Continue reading

Posted in cartoons | 4 Comments

more bent frets

Some simplified meantone guitars (here showing only the first octave): pentatonic (GDAEB); seven naturals; three flats and two sharps; six flats and six sharps.

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