Author Archives: theusernamewhichismine

I wish PBS Spacetime would do more planetary science

For those who don’t know, PBS Spacetime is an awesome youtube series where real-life astrophysicist Matt O’Dowd discusses the most fascinating facts and theories about modern physics. They’ve had videos on everything from String Theory to General Relativity to alien spaceships buzzing our solar system. I’ve loved almost every video and topic they’ve discussed but one glaring omission that I’d love to see more of is planetary science, especially the formation of our solar system.

Our solar system is a weird and wonderful place, and there’s plenty to talk about that they haven’t gotten too. I’m particularly interested in the topic of solar system formation. When I read articles about exoplanets and foreign stars, they often discuss the Hot Jupiters and Super Earths that might be orbiting those. These stories make our solar system, with it’s cold Jupiter and it’s regular-sized Earth seem kind of lame. But how abnormal is our solar system? Are we out of the ordinary, or very ordinary indeed?

One really cool set of hypotheses I’ve read up on are the Nice Model and the Grand Tack. I don’t have near enough astrophysics background to explain these, but together they paint an exciting picture in which, during the early formation of the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn began to drift inward on orbits closer and closer to the sun. Eventually they got to orbits that are much closer to Mars’ orbit than what they have at present, before orbital resonances kicked them back out again into their present orbits. These theories propose to explain a lot of questions about our early solar system: the smallness of Mars relative to the Earth and Venus, how the current gas giants could have formed and reached positions so far away from the sun, and even perhaps explain the Late Heavy Bombardment of the inner solar system. I’ve often been curious if they could also be an explanation for why our sun doesn’t have a Hot Jupiter aka a gas giant orbiting very very close to the Sun. As stated, Jupiter and Saturn migrated inward before eventually turning around and migrating back out again. If they had not stopped, might they have formed a set of Hot Jupiters? Did the Hot Jupiters around other stars migrate inward to their positions, and Jupiter and Saturn once migrated?

It’s a tantalizing topic for me which is why I’d love to see a PBS spacetime episode on it?

I plan to do NaNoWriMo

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It’s a simple challenge intended to get people writing instead of just thinking about writing. I know myself this is a struggle, I often feel like I have lots of good ideas but never actually act on them, it’s one of the reasons why I started this blog (although I’m realizing it’s harder than it looks to get good ideas out of my head and onto a document). The rules of NaNoWriMo are simple: write a novel of 50,000 words or more over the course of a single month (November, to be specific). I plan to try to do this myself, and might even publish on my blog the bits of my novel as I write it, if I think they are any good. I might not, who knows. But I feel like by writing my plans down here and now, I’m going to be much more likely to stick to them instead of planning in my head and then just… not doing anything.

Quick one today

its hard admitting that I failed and it’s hard to go back to the places where I failed but I still gotta keep pushing on. When I started a new job a few months ago I had dreams in my head of what my life would be like. When I lost that new job of course all those came crashing down. But what else can I do but try again? I’ll keep trying until I succeed, I promise.

Some questions about a new Miracle Cure for degrading “Forever Chemicals” such as PFAS

Earlier I was sent a wonderful article by the BBC about a new breakthrough in degrading “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. PFAS aka “perfluoroalkyl substances” are common chemicals used to make all sorts of houseware from paints to pans to wrappers. They are highly resistant to liquids which is why they’re so often used, but that itself makes them difficult to degrade. Because they are difficult to degrade, they stick around and have been linked to some harmful health effects if they are present at very high levels. This is why the new breakthrough is so important, the ability to degrade these chemicals before they build up to harmful levels would be very useful.

After reading the BBC article I went to the paper itself to understand the science behind the breakthrough. Now here’s where I have questions, because I am not an expert here I’d love if some actual science experts could help me understand this. To start with, PFAS is basically a long string of carbon atoms ending in a carboxylic acid, and attached to each carbon atom is a bunch of fluorine atoms. Prior research demonstrated that the carboxylic acid can be popped off using high temperature (120 degrees C) and a polar, aprotic solvent (water is protic, DMSO is aprotic, aprotic means that is can’t donate hydrogen bonds, which water does do easily). Once the carboxylic acid is popped off by this high temperature and specific solvent, then all the fluorine ions are readily removed by the addition of NaOH. In the main body of the research this step was simultaneous to the popping off of the carboxylic acid (aka at 120 degrees C), but later on the paper said that removing the fluorines could also happen at lower temperatures.

Now this is all very cool but one of my questions is: what happens to all those fluorines? And especially what will happen if we try to industrialize this process to degrade PFAS on a large scale? It appears that the fluorines remain as F- ions in the solution, but from my understanding if even a small amount of water gets into the solution, they will readily turn into HF, a very dangerous acid. If this process is scaled up, it seems conceivable that the concentration of PFAS will be increased in the reaction vessel to more efficiently use space and heat for degradation, meaning the concentration of fluorine following degradation will also be increased, meaning that the possibility for high concentrations of HF will also increase. So basically: is this process ready for prime time, or do we need to add another step to safely remove the F- ions? Fluorine as an atom is very hard to move around, requiring special permits and special containers, so I can’t imagine you can just package and ship it to some plant for re-use in new PFAS production. So what’s the next step? What’s a good way to remove or neutralize the fluorine so it can either be safely disposed of or sold for re-use? I’d love if any scientists could help me understand this.

Update: I’m learning Unity

I’ve always enjoyed video games and wanted to create my own.  I may never actually make one but at least this is a way to exercise my creative side.  My wish is to make a game called something like “Build the Biggest Boom.”  It would be a game all about the chemistry of fire and explosions.  It would start by teaching the player how explosions work, how they can be shaped to send their force in a specific way, and why some compounds explode while others don’t.  There would also be an element of simple engineering to create the devices which would how explosive charge and to detonate.  The game would proceed similarly to Kerbal Space Program where instead of trying to build rocket ships to go to the moon, you build bombs to create the biggest boom.  You do simple research which teaches you the basic chemistry of explosions and then put parts and molecules together in such a way to create bigger and bigger booms, both by creating better explosive materials (for instance nitroglycerin instead of gunpowder) or by making things explode more effectively (ex the shape of the bomb).  There could also be an element of designing explosives to fulfill a specific purpose, such as proximity fuses to only explode when near something or waterproof fuses to explode underwater.

That’s all well and good, but so far I’ve done only the following:

-Make a cube that goes up when space bar is pressed

-Make a box that creates cubes when return is pressed

-Spawn a bunch of going-up cubes with return, then send them up with space bar

-Created a ceiling to stop things from going up too far.  Turns out that to create a ceiling, you have to create a floor upside down.  Who knew

So I want each “cube that goes up” to eventually be a particle in an explosive reaction.  Instead of just going “up” I want them to gain a force proportional to all the other particles near them (as an analogy for every molecule releasing explosive energy) and therefore “explode” outward when the space bar is pressed.  From there I can do the stuff of having different particles have different explosive energies, and having shape charges and stuff.

Game design: should AIs play to win, or play for the player to lose?

I’ve been playing a lot of Sid Meier’s Civilization recently and have thought about this conundrum: should AIs in video games play to win, or just play to make the player lose?  These are two different strategies mind you, if each AI is playing to win they will act in their own rational self-interest to pursue their own goals.  But if they are just playing for the player to lose, they may instead act against their own self-interest in order to hurt the player.  I feel like I see this “play for the player to lose” strategy a lot in games against the AI but I don’t know if it’s accurate or just my imagination.

Consider for instance the early phase of the game: settling.  The player and AIs all are scouting and settling in an attempt to claim as much land as they can to grow and become stronger.  I often appear to see AIs make baffling settling decisions, settling on terrible land with zero fresh water, and their decisions only seem to make sense if they are simply trying to box the player in, not actually win themselves.  Settling is an expensive process requiring a lot of food and production, so you want to settle as good a city as you can.  On the other hand giving the player a lot of land for themselves lets the player grow stronger and be more likely to win as a result. 

The compromise seems to be that in games I have played, the AIs nearest the player will settle on marginal lands in the direction of the player, boxing the player in and preventing them from expanding.  Other AIs will then have more room to settle good land and actually attempt to grow stronger and win the game.  In this way the game becomes more difficult for the player, even though some AIs are making choices that aren’t actually in their own rational self-interest.

To be blunt, I don’t like this.  I think AIs make the most sense when they act in their own self-interest, rather than having a secret alliance against the player in particular, I think it makes the most sense and more accurately represents how a player would play as well.  But like I said I don’t have any hard evidence that the AIs act this way, maybe they settle bad spots because they’re just poorly coded in general.  But it sure does feel like they’re all in on it.

I can tell you a game that DEFINITELY has an anti-player bias and that’s the Total War series, which is part of why I stopped playing them.  In the Total War series, every AI that borders the player in any way is just a short step away from war.  This was fine and fun in Rome and Medieval Total War, where the economics of the game made world conquests like this fun, but in Empire and later Warhammer Total war it just gets tiring and unfun. 

To give an example: Empire Total War takes place starting in 1700s Europe.  France and England both have colonies in North America, and there’s a Native American tribe, the Huron-Wyandot in central Canada.  If the player plays as Britain, this tribe will inevitably attack Britain and stay peaceful towards France.  If the player plays as France, this tribe will attack France and stay peaceful with Britain.  This again isn’t so fun.  Like I said, the economics of this game make world conquest a boring slog rather than a fun romp like in previous interactions, but also this is a historical strategy game that in certain ways does attempt to model diplomacy and agency of historically relevant peoples and nations.  Shouldn’t it be possible for France to attempt an alliance with Native American peoples to counter Britain, just as France did in real life?  I think the game would be a lot more fun that way instead of being railroaded into an “everyone against the player” scenario no matter what country you play as.

Anyway those are my thoughts on AIs, anyone else know of a game that seems to have a strong anti-player AI?

I’ve been playing Pillars of Eternity, and I just wanted to tell someone about it.

Pillars of Eternity (1 and 2) is a fantasy RPG duology made by Obsidian.  Now everyone I’ve known always tells me Obsidian always has the best writing, but honestly I’ve never seen it to be true myself.  I remember booting up Fallout:NV (seen by some as their magnum opus) and thinking “THIS is the bad guy factions?  A bunch of technologically illiterate spear-wielding Roman cosplayers is supposed to be a scourge of the wasteland?”  And the game never did enough to justify to me that these cosplayers were indeed deserving of their status as world-conquerors in a universe where GUNS are plentiful. Instead the game just wants to go into excruciating detail of their evil deeds like it’s written by an edgy teenager, and then I read afterwards in interviews and the like that Fallout:NV was supposed to be “morally gray,” like wtf? 

So I’ve never played an Obsidian game for the writing, the way I’d play an Atlus game for the writing or a Bioware game for the writing.  Obsidian to my mind is best at making interesting systems and gameplay loops that I want to interact with, OR by using someone else’s assets to make a follow-up sequel. They’re good at those, but I don’t expect them to be the best writers.

So with Obsidian’s first wholly new IP since Alpha Protocol (criminally underrated and overrated simultaneously) I jumped into Pillars of Eternity.  How would Obsidian fair when they don’t have a publisher breathing down their neck? 

It turns out publishers aren’t evil and all Obsidian’s bad habits reared their ugly heads.  Let me start by saying I do like this game (I’m replaying it) but I don’t think anyone besides me would ever like it and I can’t think of a single person I know who I’d recommend the game to.  I like it because it is an extensively deep Dungeons and Dragons-type game with real-time-with-pause combat.  I LIKE that. 

But there’s FOUR different saving throws and EIGHT different damage reductions, plus about two dozen weapons and a hundred different status ailments that can occur to your character.  Are you charmed?  Confused?  Dominated?  Those are all different.  Are you hobbled, dazed, dizzy, sickened, weakened, fatigued? The list goes on and on and each one does a different thing using a different skill targeting a different saving throw. 

You can specialize in 1-handed weapons, sword n board, two handed weapons, and dual-wielding and they will all force you to build your character a little different.  And if you want to play a barbarian I hope you know that Intelligence increases the range and duration of ALL abilities meaning a dumb barbarian will rage for mere seconds and then get slaughtered while a barbarian with a PhD in Barbarity can rage for days slaughtering his enemies before him.  Obsidian doesn’t like dump stats so every single stat does something for everyone, a wizard needs high Strength or his spells do no damage, a priest needs high Strength or his heals heal almost nothing, etc.

With all that said it’s the type of game that takes hours just to understand the combat systems and if you’re not the type of person who will read every tool-tip and check both the in-game manual AND the forums to understand how everything fits together, then you are going to have a rough time of it and won’t even know why you’re losing battles until you’ve already replayed them a dozen times. So while I like the combat I can’t imagine how most people would.

But the writing in this game is just not good.  There’s too much of it and every character will talk your ear off at the slightest opportunity without saying much more than “our village of Schitzville is so morally gray that by solving all our problems you’ve just creating new ones.”  The game is a lot less smart than it thinks and that runs through both the first game and it’s sequel. 

It also feels like a game written by teenagers that is so desperate to show you how mature it is that in the sequel half the characters will end every one of their sentences with a sex joke or innuendo.  I’m an adult, most of my friends are adults, sex has not been a common topic of conversation since we were teenagers (or when most participants are blackout drunk).

Finally it makes me sad that although I like Pillars of Eternity 1, Obsidian basically made me never want to play another Obsidian game when they released Pillars of Eternity 2. 

For as long as I’ve known them, fans of Obsidian have said that Obsidian makes the best games but gets screwed by publishers and forced to release buggy, unfinished messes.  Well Obsidian was given a big crowd-funded budget with no publisher to answer to, and they were tasked to follow up on their own IP. And in the end, they made a buggy, unfinished mess.  Combat just didn’t work, the story went nowhere and was a blatantly unfinished sequel hook to drum up interest for a third game that will now never come.  I remember getting to the end and audibly said “that’s it?” when the credits rolled.  Nothing happened and nothing mattered, and now I just don’t care to play new Obsidian games.

Did credit rating agencies make Italy’s borrowing costs go up all on their own?

Yesterday I discussed how credit rating agencies work and why they are a healthy part of a mature bonds market. To recap: credit rating agencies like Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P rate the creditworthiness of nations based on economic and political indicators, and publish those ratings to investors. Investors in turn pay for these in-depth credit ratings to decide exactly what bonds they should invest in and how much. Investors are willing to invest in lower credit-worthy bonds, but will only do so if they can get a higher interest rate due to the higher risk involved. That’s why it is big news when a ratings agency cuts their rating of a country’s bonds, such as Italy. This should directly translate into the market seeing Italy as a riskier investment and thus demanding higher interest rate to buy Italian bonds, forcing the Italian government to spend more and more money servicing its debt and deficit.

That’s the simple part but it doesn’t always work like that. Here for instance is the “spread” between Italian bonds and German bonds, it can be seen as how much more Italy has to spend to service its debt than Germany does. Germany’s bonds did not have any cut in outlook so they should be fairly stable, while Italy’s outlook was cut so it should have even more expensive bonds, right? Well not in this case, Italy’s outlook was cut on August 5th and since then Italy’s borrowing costs have gone down relative to Germany’s. Now I don’t want to ascribe too much to any one thing, analysts have a tendency to over-analyze market moves, but there is a sort of pattern that is often called “buy the rumor, sell the news.” In this case, investors expected Italy’s credit outlook to be cut, so they expected Italy’s bonds to get more expensive. They thus invested in such a way that the price of Italian borrowing went up prior to the actual cut, and then went down after it happened. Regardless, even with this messy pattern it’s hard to say that Moody’s alone was responsible for any increase in Italian borrowing cost, there’s clearly more to it than that.

And that’s an important caveat to the bond markets, Information from Moody’s and other ratings agencies are of course used by investors to inform their decisions, but they aren’t the only thing used. Indeed, Moody’s can sometimes seem reactive rather than proactive, it cuts a country’s credit rating after the country’s borrowing cost has already gone way up due to other economic or political news. Moody’s and the credit agencies are I think a big easy target for financially illiterate commentators because they’re easy to blame. The big bad American ratings agencies cut our credit score and made it more expensive for us to borrow. But these agencies are just one cog in the much larger bond market, and the individual actions of thousands of investors big and small is what causes the change in borrowing costs. If no one trusted Moody’s they wouldn’t have any effect on the bond market, and if they weren’t seen as trustworthy raters of bonds then no one would trust them. But Moody’s doesn’t have the kind of power and authority that its detractors ascribe to it, and Italy’s borrowing costs are expensive for many, many reasons that would not be fixed by Moody’s giving them an Aaa credit rating.