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Treat money as the public good it is (pdf) - "The Swiss will vote on a proposal that, if passed, would transform the economy even more radically than UBI would have done."
comment posted at 1:21 PM on Jun-10-18

A logician approaches two men, knowing that one always tells the truth, and one always lies. She does not know which is which.
She asks the man on the left "Would your fellow tell me that Raymond Smullyan has died?"
The man replies "no."
The logician weeps.
Raymond Smullyan (1919–2017)
comment posted at 6:42 AM on Feb-11-17

Jason Kottke turned 40 today. Some of his friends threw a party on his blog.
comment posted at 9:24 AM on Sep-28-13

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Sep-9-13

The Ethics of Saving Lives With Autonomous Cars Are Far Murkier Than You Think
comment posted at 8:08 PM on Jul-30-13

Jail for sharing HBO Go passwords New York Times tech journalist Jenna Wortham made a confession that could be used to send her to prison for a year or more. What was the startling criminal admission? She uses someone else’s password to sign into the cable-subscriber-only HBO Go app to watch ‘Game of Thrones.’
comment posted at 2:03 PM on Jun-2-13
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comment posted at 3:40 PM on Jun-2-13

In the Internet era, a very few companies control our information destiny. In this talk, and in her new book "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age," Susan Crawford—a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy—demonstrates how deregulatory changes in policy have created a communications crisis in America. The consequences: Tens of millions of Americans are being left behind, people pay too much for too little Internet access, and speeds are slow. But everyday people can change this story - and what happens in the year ahead could change the game for good.

A ~40 minute lecture with questions afterward.

comment posted at 1:13 PM on Mar-7-13

Though it was discussed before in beta, If This Then That lets you do amazing things by connecting web services together. There is a good Lifehacker guide to getting started, but then you can create your own "recipes:" automate job searches, download torrents by sending emails from your phone, text to escape awkward situations and much more
comment posted at 8:39 AM on Feb-12-13

Once the financial sector achieves a certain size, its continued expansion reduces economic growth, according to a new study by two senior economists at the Bank for International Settlements, Stephen Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi, using a large international data base stretching back more than 30 years.
comment posted at 1:38 PM on Oct-26-12

Holt’s philosophers belong to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Compared with the giants of the past, they are a sorry bunch of dwarfs. They are thinking deep thoughts and giving scholarly lectures to academic audiences, but hardly anybody in the world outside is listening. They are historically insignificant. At some time toward the end of the nineteenth century, philosophers faded from public life. Like the snark in Lewis Carroll’s poem, they suddenly and silently vanished. So far as the general public was concerned, philosophers became invisible.
comment posted at 12:58 PM on Oct-21-12

Michael O'Hare, the Chicago-born actor who is best known for his role as Jeffrey Sinclair in the science fiction television series Babylon 5 has died, aged 60 (non FB link) O'Hare suffered a heart attack on September 23 and had remained in a coma until the 28th, when he passed away.
comment posted at 5:40 AM on Sep-29-12

Many people say that a law degree enables the holder to do virtually anything. Am Law Daily explores the logical fallacies behind this statement.
comment posted at 4:00 PM on Aug-17-12
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What did Michael Milken, Enron, and Goldman Sachs have in common? Not only were they at the centers of three of the biggest financial scandals of the last 30 years, but it turns out they all used the same financial instrument to help pull off their plans. A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: from Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs
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comment posted at 11:32 AM on Aug-15-12

John Goerzen, an IT development manager in Kansas and a developer for Debian, has been teaching his two sons, ages five and two, respectively, how to use Linux.
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Jul-8-12
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Jul-9-12

Researchers found [.pdf], after a series of four studies that "husbands embedded in traditional and neo-traditional marriages (relative to husbands embedded in modern ones) exhibit attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that undermine the role of women in the workplace." The potential resistors focused on are husbands embedded in marriages that structurally mirror the 1950s ideal American family portrayed in the “Adventures of Ozzzie and Harriet” sitcom.
comment posted at 6:49 AM on Jul-6-12
comment posted at 11:59 AM on Jul-6-12

"Dwarfing even the $2 trillion borrowed for the Railway Ministry’s high-speed networks since 2008, and the thousands of kilometres of 4–6 lane toll roads with barely a vehicle on them, China’s building binge is the most striking example of what Prime Minister Wen Jiabao famously, but impotently, denounced in 2007 as the country’s “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated and unsustainable” model of economic development. Now, with house prices and sales sagging in response to government restrictions aimed at deflating history’s biggest ever property bubble, and with local governments as deep in bad debt as the developers, I asked the businessman what was to prevent the bubble actually bursting, in a spectacular financial explosion? "
comment posted at 7:06 AM on Jun-22-12

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game
comment posted at 7:44 PM on May-31-12

Despite low mortgage rates (and rising rental demand), home ownership levels among young people remain at their lowest levels in decades--a trend that began even before the housing market crash. Although unemployment and other debts may be precluding many young people from buying a house now, it may also be part of a societal shift where renting is considered just as good as, or superior to, owning. NPR's On Point discussed the question today, as well as linked to NYT and US News stories on the subject. Megan McArdle offers a dissenting view.
comment posted at 4:58 PM on Mar-7-12

The set of groups that rip, encode, and disseminate pirated materials on the internet, known as The Scene, recently revised their encoding standards of SD television to switch from the video codec Xvid AVI to x264 MP4. A few recipients of pirated material had a few carefully worded comments about this new decision. Most of the aggression stems from the fact that some consumer DVD players included XviD compatibility and cannot be upgraded to play x264 files.
comment posted at 7:03 PM on Mar-5-12
comment posted at 8:22 PM on Mar-6-12

Google has altered the architecture of Blogger to allow censoring blogs on a country by country basis.
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Feb-1-12

If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you.
comment posted at 5:53 AM on Jan-13-12
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comment posted at 5:27 PM on Jan-13-12

The New York Times once again shows how not to doctor photographs (previously)
comment posted at 7:45 PM on Dec-28-11

Counterparties is a nice little collection of curated and tagged economic news stories, 5-8 every day. It is edited in part by the admirable (and MetaFave) financial journalist Felix Salmon.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Dec-22-11

Sociologist Lauren Rivera of Northwestern spent two years researching the way elite financial and law firms really select their new hires. The original paper is behind a sciencedirect paywall, but Bryan Caplan has a nice write-up about the results. You're much better off with a degree from a tippy-top school than just any Ivy -- but they don't actually care about what you learned there. Your grades don't matter that much as long as they're not bad. Climbing a famous mountain or making a varsity team, especially if you're nationally competitive, would be wise. And oh yeah -- they do care what you got on your SATs. More reax from the Chronicle of Higher Ed and physicist Steve Hsu.
comment posted at 5:16 AM on Nov-21-11

Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit "My goal is to inspire people to get fit, teach them how to do it and give them hope that it IS possible to get fit and stay fit. "
comment posted at 11:26 AM on Nov-5-11

We are the one percent. We stand with the 99 percent!
comment posted at 5:56 PM on Oct-12-11

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world? Whose monopolistic practices makes WalMart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector. It is anything but. Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities.
comment posted at 5:55 PM on Aug-30-11

Can't wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic? You'd better be Jedi fast! EA wants you to pre-order its game real bad.
comment posted at 4:56 PM on Aug-23-11

Riots have broken out in the Tottenham area of London Saturday night after a protest over a fatal police shooting on Thursday. A double-decker bus and several police cars have been set on fire, and one policeman is said to be in hospital. Shops have been looted, and several buildings have been set on fire.

BBC and Sky News camera crews have moved away from the scene for safety reasons, but LBC Radio is reporting live.
comment posted at 7:58 AM on Aug-7-11
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comment posted at 9:26 AM on Aug-7-11

Who is Tom Bombadil? [Via a more wide-ranging discussion on reddit.]
comment posted at 11:25 AM on Jul-28-11