Feb 9Member-onlyCollectivism in Nordics and Asian ComparedHow do Nordic and Asian culture around individualism and common good differ? — Nordic societies are famous for social democracy, which is a social and economic model where the government takes an active role in ensuring the health and wellbeing of all citizens. In a corporate setting or in sports, the group is often emphasized over the individual; what did we achieve together…Culture15 min readCulture15 min read
Feb 8Member-onlyWho Would Win a Battle Between the Nordics and Russia?Assuming Russia attacked and Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland all stood united with no nukes involved — I saw this kind of silly hypothetical question on Quora and thought it would be fun to speculate and compare. Russia has some obvious numerical advantages. The whole Nordic region only counts 27.36 million people, which is much smaller than the population of Ukraine of 43.79 million people. In comparison…Nordics12 min readNordics12 min read
Feb 7Member-onlyJordan Peterson is not an OracleCanadian professor of psychology Jordan B. Peterson offers his views on every possible topic, but should we listen? — This article began as I was writing about highly intelligent and successful figures in academia who abuse their well-earned recognition in one area to peddle pseudo-science and nonsense in other areas. I began by writing about William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, who after his successful scientific career spent…Science13 min readScience13 min read
Feb 4Member-onlyThe Big Rocket Showdown: Neutron vs. Falcon 9A discussion of the different design philosophies and strategies of SpaceX and Rocket Lab — Let us do a comparison between the current king of the rocket launch industry, Falcon 9 manufactured by SpaceX and the upcoming contender Neutron being designed by Rocket Lab, a company originating in New Zealand. While you may not have heard about Rocket Lab, it is probably the most successful…Rocket Lab23 min readRocket Lab23 min read
Feb 1Member-onlyHow to Pick the Optimal Rocket EngineFrom ion thrusters to staged combustion engines — Rocket engines come in much larger variations than car or airplane engines. But why is there so much variation and not more standardization? Why not use the same type of engine in different sizes depending on how big the rocket is? The key driver of the great variation of rocket…Rockets11 min readRockets11 min read
Jan 31Member-onlyWhat is the Best Rocket Fuel?Rocket engines are run on Hydrogen, Kerosene and lately Methane. Is there a best fuel? — Modern rocket building companies such as SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Blue Origin and Isar Aerospace are almost exclusively opting for rocket fuels such as methane, natural gas or propane. Does that mean methane is the superior rocket fuel? And if that is the case, why has methane been entirely ignored in…Rockets8 min readRockets8 min read
Jan 25Member-onlyWill Starship or Neutron Replace the Falcon 9 Rocket?A discussion of differences in rocket design philosophies and strategies of SpaceX and Rocket Lab — Falcon 9 is currently dominating the rocket launch industry. No rocket is launched as frequently as the Falcon 9 rocket. A key part of this success comes from the ability to reuse part of the rocket. Allow me to clarify how: A modern rocket launched into space is composed of…Rockets14 min readRockets14 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jan 23Member-onlyWriting Code Without Plain Text FilesThe Unison programming language doesn’t store code in files, but in a database. What is that like? — For about a week, I have had the unusual experience of writing code without the usual hierarchy of folders and plain text files that us programmers are accustomed to. Instead, my code has been living inside an SQLite database, stored as abstract syntax trees (ASTs). If you don’t know what…Unison15 min readUnison15 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jan 22Member-onlyReading Files in UnisonHow do you do I/O in a pure functional language using Algebraic Effects? — I have covered how to deal with side effects in Unison previously, but I could not make space for discussing I/O in earlier articles. It is time to remedy that omission. Reading and writing to files, sockets, processes, or console requires you to tag your functions with the IO ability…Functional Programming13 min readFunctional Programming13 min read
Published in Better Programming·Updated Feb 8Member-onlyHandling Side Effects in UnisonHow to separate pure functions from functions with side effects — In the world of pure functional programming, the big bogeyman is functions with side effects. What exactly do we mean by side effects? A pure function works like functions in mathematics. The output of the function is defined exclusively by its input arguments. However, in programming, some functions are sneaky…Functional Programming18 min readFunctional Programming18 min read
