August 13, 2019
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This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry
“There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was…”
August 11, 2019
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This Land Is the Only Land There Is
“Climate change could make water even more scarce in naturally dry areas, the report warns. Australia’s ranchers have struggled under a drought for years. Brook…”
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I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.
“My college class asks what it means to be white in America — but interrogating that question as a black woman in the real world is much harder to do.”
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“Cemeteries and funerals are beautiful, because they tell a story of the past that we care about. They’re also somewhat expensive: families routinely spend on…”
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“1905 Illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele Jeff Jarvis Jul 26 · 7 min read Disclosure: I raised money for my school from Facebook to aggregate signals of quality…”
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The Big Little Lie of the TV kitchen island
“I n In the first episode of the first season of Big Little Lies , the blended Mackenzie-Carlson family sits down to dinner together. Roast chicken, green beans,…”
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“Competitive advantage can be represented visually as one or more feedback loops. These create the advantage “flywheel” that maintain and grow a moat over time.”
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“As a kid in the ’80s, I hated the preppy craze. But did I really understand the book that started it? “The Official Preppy Handbook,” published in 1980, sold…”
August 10, 2019
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Why You Should Try Micromastery
“When I returned to London I told people about the beaches and baguettes in France, but I mostly wanted to talk about how I could now officially drive…”
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How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning
“”Civilizations with long nows look after things better,” says Brian Eno.”
August 9, 2019
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More hidden mothers in Victorian photography
“In 19th century photographs of children, you can sometimes spot a mother hiding.”
August 8, 2019
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“Mark Twain once wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” According to historians, the groundwork for the New Gilded Age began in 1990. Nearly…”
August 7, 2019
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Thought
Always check the battery and spark plugs in your getaway vehicle BEFORE the getaway.
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You can’t stop mass shootings by punishing people with mental illnesses
“When President Trump declared Monday that people with mental illnesses should face “involuntary confinement,” if necessary, to prevent mass shootings, my heart…”
July 28, 2019
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Thought
“Saturday Night Fever” and “Sid and Nancy” are set at (roughly) the same time in the same city.
July 26, 2019
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Vanished: How Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Disappeared
“At 12:42 a.m. on the quiet, moonlit night of March 8, 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER operated by Malaysia Airlines took off from Kuala Lumpur and turned toward…”
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The 100 Best Movies of the Decade
“The best movies from a decade that changed everything.”
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Review
Infinite Detail (Tim Maughan, 2019)
Reminded me a lot of Cory Doctrow novels, in a good way. As a technology collapse pushes the world back to the dark ages, technology also continues to exist and stir memories for some lost in the middle of the chaos.
July 25, 2019
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Sufjan Stevens and the Curious Case of the Missing 48 States
“Remember when indie rock turned into a whimsical, state-by-state geography lesson? Sufjan Stevens was our banjo-plucking…”
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New Coke didn’t fail. It was murdered.
“In late May, Coca-Cola announced it would produce 50,000 cans of New Coke as part of a promotional campaign linked to the third…”
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Decrappification, DeOldification, and Super Resolution
“In this article we will introduce the idea of “decrappification”, a deep learning method implemented in fastai on PyTorch that can do some pretty amazing things, like… colorize classic black and white movies—even ones from back in the days of silent movies, like this:”
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Deconstructing Brian Eno’s Music for Airports
“In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports , a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn’t the first ambient album by any…”
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I Found the Key to the Kingdom of Sleep
“In order to fall asleep at night, I must run a gantlet of bedtime rituals. I must be marinating in overnight-skin-care products from head to toe. One (but only one) of my legs must be hooked around the side of my covers, poised to alert me to the presence of monsters. I must be lying on my stomach, with one arm folded under my head between me and my pillow. Not only must the air in the room be frigid, but it must be blowing directly on me.”
July 22, 2019
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“But as much as I’ve thought about networks over the years, I didn’t appreciate (until very recently) the importance of simple diffusion.
This is our topic for today: the way things move and spread, somewhat chaotically, across a network. Some examples to whet the appetite:”
July 20, 2019
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Review
This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone, 2019)
I can see why people like this flowery, metaphor-filled fantasy full of word-play and clever ideas. But it felt a bit over my head. I don’t feel that often, but on occasion I find a book that wants me to be smarter than I can put the effort into being.
July 19, 2019
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Thought
Ugh. This heat is horrendous.
July 18, 2019
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Archivists race to digitize slavery records before the history is lost
“Sierra Leone Public Archive, Freetown, Sierra Leone, February 2019. Credit: Courtesy of Kartikay Chadha/Visual Analytics Laboratory, OCAD University Abu Koroma…”
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Momentum isn’t magic – vindicating the hot hand with the mathematics of streaks
“It’s NCAA basketball tournament season, known for its magical moments and the “March Madness” it can produce. Many fans remember Stephen Curry’s superhuman 2008…”
July 16, 2019
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Review
Theory of Bastards (Audrey Schulman, 2018)
Boy I’m glad I picked this up despite the apparently intentionally off-putting cover art. It’s a story of a near-future where the technology isn’t the story. It’s about human relationships with much of the action being between Bonobos and other Bonobos, or Bonobos and humans.Loved it.
July 13, 2019
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Review
Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell (Neal Stephenson, 2019)
Yeah, this is a bit of a mess.
Easiest way to explain this loonnng-ass book is that you start out in a fair approximation of a William Gibson novel, but slowly end up in Lord of the Rings. And not really in a good way.
Still giving it three stars because I enjoy Stephenson’s writing style even when he loses the plot like this.