Web Excursions 2022-04-07
Hi subscribers (according to Substack there’re 60 of you),
As of today I have been sending this daily “newsletter” for a whole year. It started as a toy project because (a) I wanted to try out the then-hyped Substack and (b) I wanted to force myself to digest what I read instead of just letting the words flow through my mind without any residual and persistent effect. And thus the format: Each day I export the highlights I made in the previous day from Readwise, split long sentences into indented bullet points, embolden the key points, paste whatever I got from Obsidian into Substack’s editor, and that’s it.
I’m not sure whether and how doing so is more helpful to myself than just passively reading as before, and can’t even imagine that it could be helpful to others. So even the subscriber count as petite as several dozens is surprising to know. Anyway, I’ll countinue to do this for myself, but there’s no commitment. So there’s no pressure to either keep subscribing or leave the party as you like.
How to read a patent in 60 seconds
Step 1: Skip the title
The title of the patent can be just about as general as the author wants
Step 2: Skip the drawings
Patent drawings are mostly similar to high school notebook doodles except that they cost $5,000.
They’re generally impossible to read and only indirectly have a bearing on the enforceability of the patent
Step 3: Skip the abstract
Patent abstracts are at best meandering and hard to read, and at worst deliberately misleading
Step 4: Skip the specification
You don’t care about the background, or the field. You don’t much care about the related art.
Step 5: Find the independent claims, and read them
The claims are the only part of the patent that have any actual legal enforceability.
While they’re still a pain to read, they’re forced to be one sentence so at least they’re relatively short
They can be wicked difficult to parse in detail, but a skim will get you pointed in the right direction.
Step 6: Back to skipping – toss the dependent claims
Any claim that starts with “The _____ of claim _____” is essentially a refinement or detail with narrower scope than the parent claim
And that’s it!
Bonus information: how the patent office reads your patent
They read the independent claims, then reference the drawings, and then move to the specification if a term or concept is unclear.
Why I Love Erotic Thrillers
The erotic thriller came to prominence in the prosperous Reagan era,
which was politically conservative yet culturally trashy.
These films fruitfully explored this contradiction, and by the ’90s, they were certified box-office gold.
They distilled the excesses and anxieties of yuppie culture into psychosexually messy yet stylized commercial products, before fizzling out in the aughts.
Building on the moody, femme-fatale-filled world of classic ’40s and ’50s film noir,
the erotic thriller was always gloriously excessive,
with a laser-sharp focus on beautiful women doing bad things.
[From Wikitionary] femme fatale /ˌfem fəˈtal,ˌfem fəˈtäl/
noun: femme fatale; plural noun: femmes fatales
an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who is likely to cause distress or disaster to a man who becomes involved with her.
"a femme fatale who plays one man off against another in pursuit of money"
Similar to: seductress, temptress, siren, enchantress, sorceress, charmer, Delilah, Circe, Lorelei, Mata, Hari, vamp, mantrap
Origin: late 19th century: French, literally ‘disastrous woman’.
For me, erotic thrillers are best consumed as escapist fantasies about a mythic figure I myself could never embody
But while I may sometimes wish for a femme fatale’s enviable style and mastery of seduction,
I also realize she’s a trope that was largely written by men as an embodiment of fears around powerful women.