Featured Links - July 10, 2023

 Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A rose from our front yard

• Local historian shares fascinating story of Toronto's first-ever cat. Yes, Toronto had a first cat, all the way back in 1793.
• Here are the 2023 Hugo Award Finalists. "Award ballots are generally a good barometer for the state of a community." Some good observations on the Hugo finalists from Andrew Liptak. Also on the subject, see this from John Scalzi.
• Real Engineering's deep dive on the "questionable engineering" of Oceangate's Titan. "Here is a fifteen-minute explainer by Real Engineering, a well-loved YouTube channel, on the many problems with the Titan submersible. Real Engineering offers precise, easy-to-understand analysis, and as writer/narrator, Brian McManus is a composites design engineer and offers a fantastic view of what went wrong."
• The world just broke a stunning slew of heat records. Why right now? "There’s more than one factor at work as our warming planet kicks into overdrive."
• Is A.I. the Future of Astrology? (no paywall) This doesn't surprise me. When I was in university (before personal computers), a friend programmed horoscopes on the university mainframe.
• Science activism is surging – which marks a culture shift among scientists. "With colleagues, we recently reviewed and summarized a growing body of studies examining how scientists are mobilizing for social activism and political protest. We also surveyed 2,208 members of the Union of Concerned Scientists Science Network to learn more about scientists’ political engagement. Here is what we have found so far."
• Scams upon scams: The data-driven advertising grift. "Digital advertising is a scam from top to bottom. In fact, it’s several scams stacked on top of each other, wearing a trenchcoat, and some of the foundations of fibs are so effective that otherwise reasonable people entirely buy into them."