Why Everyone Loves Japan — “Even more astonishing than my interview with Kodansha is the fact that to this day, I have not met a single Japanese person who has heard of the word ‘weeb’.”

The Next Renaissance is Coming

Vogue on Instagram: “Did @tchalamet study giraffes to prepare for his role in “Marty Supreme”? Yes, yes he did.

Epicycles All The Way Down. Not really sure what this means but, food for thought.

We simply do not know what a human being who has read a billion books looks like, if it is even feasible, so an immortal who has read a billion books feels about as smart as a human who has read a few dozen.

How To Find Time To Do Science

Strategy means sticking to what matters the most. On the science front, that’s getting results and writing about them. And so I try to spend most of my science time on this. These are the only things that matter. And so if I’m not doing either, I question why. … To reiterate – doing science means learning about the world, then communicating the results. That’s the ultimate end point, so it’s the thing I try to spend the most time on.

Statistics is a Scientific Instrument 

We don’t often think about statistics as being in the same category as a microscope. But if you think about it, it’s a tool (built with math rather than physical engineering) that enables us to observe phenomena in the world that are invisible with the naked eye. … Statistics is a powerful instrument, but like any instrument, it provides evidence that then needs interpretation to infer what’s going on with the underlying phenomena – it doesn’t generate truth directly. Look at the X-ray crystallography image of DNA: it’s nowhere near obvious that you’re looking at a double helix. Statistics is the same. The problem is that many people – both practitioners using the tool and people listening to them – treat it as some kind of oracle.

Book Week 2025, Day 6: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, by John Muir Laws

Fix Your Gut Health Forever by Thinking About Ice Cream

The first time I had the sense that I really needed a green vegetable, it shocked me. It was a new feeling. I’d had cravings before—the standard kind, for carbs and sweets and salty crunchy junk—and this was similar, but it was also distinct. There was a subtlety to it, a strength without the familiar urgency of carb addiction. Make no mistake: I’d always enjoyed green vegetables. But even in the deepest depths of my finals week burrito marathons, I’d never once craved them. 

On the same theme: Self Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants: An Experimental Study

Blind Spot Light vs Rear View Camera

In a hostile information environment, you want surface, NOT solve.

…

If the blind spot light stops working, you might think it was safe to turn.

If your fact checker made an error, you might update your world model with the error.

Reliance on these kinds of signals I think is worse than not having a signal at all. If I know that I do not know (whether there is a car there), I am forced to manually turn my head, or be more careful as I turn.

Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost? “The admissions in private that Oliver Sacks’ stories were too good to be true were less equivocal than what he hinted at in the preface to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” (literalbanana)

libraford:

Sorry I didn’t respond to your text right away- when the constant demand of staying connected gets too much for me I throw my phone into the woods. That weird text you got earlier was from a possum. Sorry if she was rude.

The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment "was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens," the Supreme Court said in Armstrong v. United States, "which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." That was just over 65 years ago.

It is, unfortunately, not living up to that promise.

For the latest example, we can look to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled last month that an innocent man whose business was destroyed by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers in pursuit of a fugitive is not entitled to compensation for damages under the Takings Clause. This is despite the law's pledge that the government provide "just compensation" when it usurps private property for a public use.

In August of 2022, an armed fugitive threw Carlos Pena out of his North Hollywood printing shop and barricaded himself inside it. Over the course of 13 hours, a SWAT team with the LAPD launched more than 30 rounds of tear gas canisters through the walls, door, roof, and windows. After the standoff, police discovered the suspect had managed to escape. But Pena was left with a husk of what his store once was, the inside ravaged and equipment ruined, saddling him with over $60,000 in damages, according to his lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles.

It's a suit Pena did not want to file, having repeatedly reached out to the government to recoup his losses before going to court. The city ignored him. Pena, meanwhile, was hemorrhaging income, resigned to working out of his garage at a much-reduced capacity with a single printer he purchased after the raid.

The recent ruling on Pena's claim joins a burgeoning pile of case law wading through this exact scenario. Each decision ultimately grapples with a version of a core question: Does the Takings Clause cease to apply in some sense when property is destroyed via "police power"?

Different circuits have come to varying conclusions. The 9th Circuit, for its part, declined to answer if a categorical exception exists. But the court did conclude that there is no taking "when law enforcement officers destroy private property while acting reasonably in the necessary defense of public safety" (emphasis mine). The judges said that doomed Pena's claim.

Their decision references a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which in 2023 considered a similar case: Police mutilated a woman's Texas house in pursuit of a fugitive who had locked himself inside her attic. Because law enforcement destroyed Vicki Baker's home "by necessity during an active emergency," the court ruled, it did not constitute a taking under the U.S. Constitution.

But the 5th Circuit did throw Baker a small bone. Writing for the majority, Judge Stephen A. Higginson concluded by citing Armstrong, that 1960s Supreme Court Takings Clause case whose spirit would seem to apply directly to this sort of situation. Baker "is faultless but must 'alone' bear the burdens of a misfortune that might have befallen anyone," Higginson conceded. "As a lower court, however, it is not for us to decide that fairness and justice trump historical precedent….Such a decision would be for the Supreme Court alone."

The Supreme Court declined to hear Baker's case late last year. "Whether any such exception exists (and how the Takings Clause applies when the government destroys property pursuant to its police power)," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a statement, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, "is an important and complex question that would benefit from further percolation in the lower courts prior to this Court's intervention."

The percolating has continued apace. About a month before the November decision in Pena's case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that Indiana woman Amy Hadley was not entitled to compensation under the Takings Clause after police wrecked her home looking for a suspect as a result of a faulty investigation. Why? "The Fifth Amendment does not require the state to compensate for property damage resulting from police executing a lawful search warrant," wrote Judge Joshua Kolar. In other words, the court found that a categorical police power exception does exist, departing from the narrower conclusions of the 5th and 9th Circuits.

As Higginson alluded to, only the Supreme Court can resolve such disputes. The high court is also the only body that can resolve the tension between these rulings and Armstrong, if the justices wish to ensure that individuals are not left alone to shoulder public burdens "which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole."

The post Innocent Man Sues for Over $60,000 After Police Blew Up His Business. A Court Says He's Entitled to Nothing. appeared first on Reason.com.