Monday, February 11, 2019

Wiggle, wiggle.

I had a productive morning of mathematics. I also had a nice Spanish class this afternoon. One of my classmates, Jake, is from the UK. He's probably around 23 years old. He's come to Sevilla for a few months on his own dime. He's basically a street dancer and supplements his income by busking around the cathedral on weekends. He shared that this weekend the police were particularly aggressive about clearing out buskers. He was chased out of a number of locations that he'd used before. To his credit, he has looked into getting a permit. However, in classic Spanish bureaucracy, while there does appear to be a busking permit on the books, no one knows where you can apply for or get one. Even the police have no idea, as Jake claimed was discussed in one of his encounters this weekend.

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I continued to read Everybody Lies. An interesting revelation about large internet companies like facebook and google, even when the entire country seems to be up in arms about some issue or other, behind the scenes on facebook and google, data scientists know that often times the outrage is disproportionate. I.e. that there exists a greater number of people that are quiet supporters of the issue or simply ambivalent.

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I went for a bit of a walk after class today. I still admire the scope and variety of graffiti here. This wall looked particularly striking in the dusk:


Our bridge in the calm dusk:


I've only recently noticed this plaque commemorating the famous Camino de Santiago on the east end of our bridge:


I didn't realize that there were segments of the route here in Sevilla, or even in Andalucia. I thought the majority of the route was in northern Spain. If you look at the map here:


you can see that the primary route is in northern Spain, but that there are a number of "tributary" routes including the one that terminates in Sevilla called "via de la plata". I guess this marker is a waypoint on that trail.

Finally, there's an old English sheepdog in our neighborhood. I saw him out for his walk this evening along the river. I like they his fluffy butt wiggles when he walks: