Blood Is Another Word for Hunger. Rivers Solomon. https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S30C3504421 . 2019. Plot Points Sully slays slavers' family after their patriarch dies in battle. She did not feel any remorse nor relief.
The etherworld thrived on the impermissible. A young and tender girl murdering a family, and maintaining her rage after the fact, was so impermissible that it cut a path between dominions.
The etherworld births a teenage Ziza (died 200 years prior) through Sully, and then later births four more revenants, for the five kills that she’d committed....
LaGuardia. Nnedi Okorafor; Tana Ford; James Devlin. 2019. LaGuardia (2019) by Nnedi Okorafor. Image from nnedi.com
Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Novel, and the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album - Reprint.
Aliens exist (first landed in Nigeria); human-alien in the world. Main character: Future, a Nigerian-American doctor. Future sneaks in LetMeLive, an alien, into America to escape a genocide (largely imperceptible to humans) on LetMeLive’s kind....
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs Capitalism is meant to eliminate bullshit jobs, yet layoffs tend to fall on people making, moving, fixing and maintaining things, but not on the salaried paper pushers that effectively work 15 hours a week.
​From a political standpoint, a happy productive population with free time on their hands is mortal to the ruling class. Moreover, work is considered a moral value in itself....
Objective: Learn to read the game and make smart predictions. Reaction times are overrated; perception and prediction rule .
Watching film is a good way of training my mental basketball model. has a couple.
Offensive Playmaking and Scoring tracks the following play types: transition, isolation, pick & roll ball handler, pick & roll roll man, post up, spot up, handoff, cut, off screen and putbacks....
Bloom Filters In true fashion to Stigler’s Law of Eponymy (no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer ), Ross Ashby (1960) did a probabilistic analysis of Calvin Mooers’s Zatocoding (1947) (coding system for library cards). This predates Burton Bloom’s work (1970).
Motivation A Bloom filter for a set \(X: \{x_1, x_2, …, x_n\} \) from some universe \(\mathbb{U}\) allows one to test whether a given item \(x \in \mathbb{B}\) is an element of \(X\)....
A Zooming Web Browser. Bederson, Benjamin B.; Hollan, James D.; Stewart, Jason; Rogers, David; Vick, David; Ring, Laura; Grose, Eric; Forsythe, Chris. Multimedia Computing and Networking, 1996. Vol. 2667. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/454001 . https://www.connectedpapers.com/main/05064f81c4a6352889d2057214e75bb729f39c2f/Zooming-Web-browser/list . Interesting because these were the early days of the web, back when Netscape was king. The web could have evolved in different ways. Why didn’t the zooming browser catch on?
Problem Context Navigating the web presents a struggle between focus and context....
Method of Definition: Prototype Semantics There is a cognitive science view of categorization that says:
Category members need not necessarily share a single set of distinguishing features, and may exhibit features to greater/lesser degrees Some category members are more typical than others This reasoning goes against how I mentally picture a category.
Although lies may have identifiable features such as misrepresentation of belief, intent to deceive, falseness and reprehensible motives, not all features are always present, and not all features are equally prominent in every instance....
Reaction Times are Overrated Elite athletes do not display superior reaction times to those of average people; most hover at 200ms.
However, games are played at speeds where 200ms is too slow, e.g. 100-mph baseballs, 130-mph tennis serves, etc.
A reaction time of less than 100ms is deemed a false start in track and field sprints.
Superior Perception Athletes outperformed novices when asked if there was a ball in a rapidly flashed slide....
10,000 Hours, YMMV 10,000 hours introduced here 10,000 hours has been lauded by popular authors, e.g. Malcolm Gladwel’s Outliers, and Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated. Notably, Ericsson has dismissed the “10,000 hours rule” as misconstruing his positions: genetics play a role; 10,000-hours of deliberate practice is not all that counts.
Most data in support of the 10,000-hours rule has been cross-sectional and retrospective.
A cross-sectional study is a type of observational study that analyzes data from a population (or a representative subset) at a specific point in time....
Privacy and Human Behavior in the Age of Information. A. Acquisti; L. Brandimarte; G. Loewenstein. Science, Vol. 347, Issue 6221, Page 509-514. Jan 30, 2015. People’s uncertainty about the consequences of privacy-related behaviors and their own preferences over those consequences Incomplete and asymmetric information. People rarely know what info others, firms and govts have about them or how the info is used.
Some privacy harms are tangible, e....
The human genome has sequences of nucleotide base pairs that are repeated over and over again. At each locus of interest, a person has two sets of repeats inherited from each parent. Each possible difference at a locus is an allele. The combinations of the possible differences at multiple loci form a DNA profile that can be used to tie suspects to a crime scene.
The Accuracy of DNA Testing is Wanting 74/108 crime labs erroneously incriminated a suspect during a mock study....
Short Term Loans A common narrative for loan providers is financial inclusion. 69% of global adult population is not covered by credit bureaus. Using non-traditional data (e.g. text messages, location, contacts, call logs), more people can get scored.
If only \(x\%\) of people pay you back, then \(\frac{x}{100}(1 + r) \ge 1 \) suggests \(r \ge \frac{100}{x} - 1 \). If \(75\%\) tend to pay back, \(r = 33\frac{1}{3} \%\)....
Contact Tracing “Apps” in this context means contact tracing apps released by public health authorities to do contact tracing. The APIs are limited to them.
Big Picture Release APIs to enable apps to interoperate between Android and iOS devices. Bluetooth-based contact tracing baked into Android and iOS, such that no app is needed for broadcasting/listening. This ensures broad adoption, but will be on an opt-in basis....
Innovation Africa & Water Availability Bring in Israeli solar panels and drip irrigation. Pump water from the large reservoirs below. Cost $7,000.
Adapting to community: 6-8 weeks on committees, bank accounts; mobile charging stations and barbershops using solar panels for sustainability. Can’t sell the water, but you can subsidize it with complementary products.
Set up remote monitoring with real time stats in order to schedule maintenance.
Honorable Mentions Push Party by MSCHF is valued at $200m, led by The Founders Fund....
Exercise 1: Have a regular savings program. Start investing early because compound interest and time are you greatest resource.
When it comes to setting saving accounts' interest rates with regard to the interest rate that banks enjoy from the fed , banks are downwards-flexible and upwards-sticky. Depositors lose the tune of $100b when interest rates are rising.
One is better off with special accounts such as Marcus by Goldman Sachs (1....
Over the last 70 years, less than 10% of plastic waste has been recycled - it’s uneconomical. Recycling shifts attention from the environmental impact of plastics and their overproduction to the consumer’s willingness to recycle. Reducing and reusing is a much better environmental strategy.
Slots are increasingly designed for addiction, e.g. quick simple games, adding “near misses”, more ways to win (and therefore more “near misses” if one doesn’t bet on the additional ways), losses disguised as wins, random but weighted outcomes....
Garbage Collection Garbage Collection is about simulating a computer with infinite memory. Consequently, if you have more RAM than your program will ever need, then a null garbage collector is a valid one.
Traits of Beautiful Code is the chief designer of Ruby, and thus the frequent illustrations and praises for Ruby.
How do other chief designers explain their rationale? For instance, what would Java’s designer say to ’s criticism?...
Programmable Money South Korea’s COVID-19 stimulus payments were programmed to expire in Aug 2020, and could only be spent at qualifying shops. Australia’s cashless welfare card [currently in pilot stages] cannot be withdrawn as cash, nor used at alcohol, tobacco and gambling joints.
Monzo, a UK-based digital-first mobile baking app, supports IFTTT recipes. This enables budgeting logic, “If I spend at KFC, then move $5 to my penalty pot”....
Consultants are not well suited for strategy (you probably have a deeper understanding). They are also an expensive way of proving your point to management. However, they are good for emergency horsepower, e.g. data analysis, and for primary research within your industry (they probably have a broader understanding).
Having a competitive advantage may reduce the incentive to explore other ideas, especially ones that conflict with your chosen [successful] strategy. Additionally, having to maintain/exceed quarterly numbers dissuade incumbents from risk taking....
From my vantage point, it seems there are two camps. But reality is often a shade of grey. Interested in various arguments that frequently arise in this area. I have my opinions/biases, but nothing that I can defend rigorously.
Some (most?) of these claims are supported by anecdotal evidence, which is an avenue for belief fixation, and therefore makes it hard to come to a resolution .
I don’t know if it’s because anti-PC material is more viral, but most of the prominent publications are either anti-PC, or anti-anti-PC....