2012, part one
1. Break 9:00 on Hawk Hill
2. **********
3. ********
4. Write a track
2. **********
3. ********
4. Write a track
Because otherwise I will never find it
The Wirecutter. A product review site that only lists the best stuff in every category. (Thanks, Eric.)
Bismuth crystals
How to make Bismuth crystals at home. Anybody want to do this? Bonus: they're (slightly) radioactive.
A justification for income redistribution
Let's say the Los Angeles city government has an empty lot they want to get rid of. They want something that will maximize economic return, in order to provide jobs and tax revenue (it might be worthwhile to dive into what measure of economic return they should use, but we'll ignore that for now.) Additionally, they're risk-averse and need to be able to generate public support for the plan in order to make it happen.
Now, which one of these plans will they choose?
They'll always choose the first. The additional administrative complexity and risk involved in the second make it a non-starter. And, in this understandable way, they make the rich richer.
The government makes a ton of decisions beyond selling land that similarly impact the concentration of wealth, and an analogous process usually holds - if we need to regulate banks, for example, who should we turn to for advice? A million small players, or a few big bankers?
So, on average, government decisions will tend to be made in concert with large existing interests, and will tend to increase the concentration of wealth. I think this problem is structurally unfixable, and provides some of the justification for redistributing wealth.
Now, which one of these plans will they choose?
- Engaging a large, well-known real estate developer who provides a nice 3D rendering of the shiny, multi-million dollar mixed retail/residential development he'll build
- Selling off subdivided lots piecemeal to smaller developers or individual owners
They'll always choose the first. The additional administrative complexity and risk involved in the second make it a non-starter. And, in this understandable way, they make the rich richer.
The government makes a ton of decisions beyond selling land that similarly impact the concentration of wealth, and an analogous process usually holds - if we need to regulate banks, for example, who should we turn to for advice? A million small players, or a few big bankers?
So, on average, government decisions will tend to be made in concert with large existing interests, and will tend to increase the concentration of wealth. I think this problem is structurally unfixable, and provides some of the justification for redistributing wealth.
Forgot how gorgeous light during winter can be
Hunky punk
"Some theories consider that the balance of good and evil, created in church design to remind worshippers of the narrow path they tread, was present in everything. This meant that for every good and benign creature such as a saint or an animal to signify purity, there had to be an opposite to bring out the fear of evil. In York Minster, for example, the carvings in the Chapter house, which are particularly disgusting and obscene and which were supposedly created as caricatures of the then Dean and Chapter, were put there above the seats to create an opposite to each occupant, who we might like to assume was not in fact the foul person their carvings made them out to be."
wikipedia
wikipedia
The chimera of Financial Stability
"I have never understood why Financial Stability should be an objective of public policy. Desirable, measurable outcomes of benefit to the public should be the objectives of public policy. Stability is a silly and impractical goal in a capitalist economy ... One strength of the US banking system from the 1930s to the 1980s was that failures were dealt with quickly and certainly. Foreclosed properties had to be sold by banks within two years of repossession, leading to a quick and certain reallocation of assets from failed borrowers to new owners. The FDIC swiftly and mercilessly shut down failed banks ... with forbearance now institutionalised at all levels of the US economy, we are seeing Japanification instead of recovery. And it is even worse just about everywhere else where dominant banks are much more influential."
Why I Oppose Financial Stability
Why I Oppose Financial Stability
Markets are built of regulations
I've been simmering on this point for ages, waiting for someone to speak my mind for me. Regulations are not just an imposition on markets - the choice is not between free markets and regulated markets. Markets are constructed by multiple sets of regulations, beginning with property rights. The regulations we choose have consequences for who can enter markets, how those businesses can operate, and on what market outcomes are.
Whenever someone argues for de-regulation, they argue for removing a small piece of this whole edifice. They aren't arguing for truly free markets, they're arguing for a specific rule change that will have (usually clearly identifiable) winners and losers. These same people will often later be found to be advocating for greater regulation in some other area, in the name of punishing wrongdoers.
My first economics class made the simple point that rent control artificially limits the supply of housing, creating shortages. What was never mentioned in that class was that that in many cities regulations make building houses, especially low-income housing, nearly impossible. Ending rent control without making it possible to build more housing means that we are choosing to make housing more expensive, period.
That's why it's so laughable when banks kindly request the government to stay out of their business. Financial markets above all grow out of the regulations that define them.
read what sparked this rant at rortybomb
Whenever someone argues for de-regulation, they argue for removing a small piece of this whole edifice. They aren't arguing for truly free markets, they're arguing for a specific rule change that will have (usually clearly identifiable) winners and losers. These same people will often later be found to be advocating for greater regulation in some other area, in the name of punishing wrongdoers.
My first economics class made the simple point that rent control artificially limits the supply of housing, creating shortages. What was never mentioned in that class was that that in many cities regulations make building houses, especially low-income housing, nearly impossible. Ending rent control without making it possible to build more housing means that we are choosing to make housing more expensive, period.
That's why it's so laughable when banks kindly request the government to stay out of their business. Financial markets above all grow out of the regulations that define them.
read what sparked this rant at rortybomb
San Francisco hillside
Which cuisines are better in NYC/SF?
System D follow-up
Alan Furst described it as a kind of romantic improvisation in impossible circumstances. Foreign Policy says it's another phrase for the black market, and that it may be the future. The article cites sources claiming:
"... half the workers of the world -- close to 1.8 billion people -- [are] working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes."
"... people in the European countries with the largest portions of their economies that were unlicensed and unregulated -- in other words, citizens of the countries with the most robust System D -- fared better in the economic meltdown of 2008 than folks living in centrally planned and tightly regulated nations."
"... half the workers of the world -- close to 1.8 billion people -- [are] working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes."
"... people in the European countries with the largest portions of their economies that were unlicensed and unregulated -- in other words, citizens of the countries with the most robust System D -- fared better in the economic meltdown of 2008 than folks living in centrally planned and tightly regulated nations."
Just following orders
I wanted to share this in Google Reader, but that's gone now. Anyway:
PBA Official 1: Okay, we've sent text messages to at least 400 delegates, and they're all going to come to court tomorrow to protest the arraignment of our brother officers. We've called this meeting to decide what signs they should hold up for the myriad news cameras that we expect to be there. I'll open this up to the floor - any ideas?
PBA Official 2: How about 'Just Following Orders'?
All the world's religions
Posting this to inaugurate a new category here: iPad bait.
Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
The Boundary Waters are on fire
When I was a kid I used to go to Camp Widjiwagan in northern Minnesota, where we'd go on long canoe trips in the Boundary Waters and Quetico - the wilderness areas on the Minnesotan and Canadian sides of the border. Since then I've never been anywhere that felt as remote or as eerily peaceful. 93,000 acres are on fire right now after a drought and a lightning strike, apparently the biggest fire in Minnesota since 1918.
Dating Without Kundera
One of the terrors of dating is Milan Kundera, and specifically, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the sexually-transmitted book that this Czech-born author has inflicted on a generation of American youth.Dating Without Kundera via Enthusiasms.
I fully recognize the important role of the dating book, that is, the carefully selected work you lend a prospective lover sometime in the golden honeymoon period between your second cup of coffee together and the first time you spend a night in the same bed without touching ...
Still learning the basics
Good product managers find and champion great ideas more than they create them. Raw creativity is great, but in this role taste and empathy are probably more important.
So it turns out if you keep walking up 17th Street (which is not always easy) you end up in the middle of a forest.
speaking of the ineffable
Laurel Halo
aquifer mp3
So now Brooklyn is turning out awesome electro-techno. Not fair.
That's some OG New York synth wizard, Oneohtrix Point Never in the middle and Laurel Halo to his right.
"One of my friends brought his daughter round – she’s 14, and she had her iPod on. And I said to her, what are you listening to? And she said, it’s this group called Joy Division. And I had to smile a little bit."
- from an interview with Bernard Sumner
- from an interview with Bernard Sumner
pardon me, explosions incoming
"I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes these alternatives!" - Voltaire
Summer gets deeper
Pink ocean with violent sky
Something brilliant about features from another Lukas
Think of it like this: jumping in a Mario game is very simple. You hit a button, Mario jumps. But once you know how to jump, you can use this ability to jump over gaps, jump on top of bricks, kill enemies, destroy bricks, hit coins out of coin bricks, get mushrooms, jump on top of flagpoles to get points, and much more. Learning one simple thing unlocks a very deep array of options. These are the kinds of features you want in your application.- Lukas Mathis
This brings to mind a number of different analogues, but none of them fully capture what Lukas is saying: composable functions, rule-based systems - we can say "what is the simplest set of orthogonal abstractions that will enable all the desired outcomes" but that fails to capture the joyful feeling you get watching your character bounce across the screen, which even spreadsheets should in their own way aspire to.
System D
RB: In The Polish Officer, you introduce the word "debroullier"...- from an interview with Alan Furst.
AF: Yes, system D. Getting it done. It means to improvise. Life is so impossible, so confusing, everybody does everything wrong all the time. Somehow we are going to manage. The source was from the First World War with regard to railroad transport of troops and goods. To 'debroullier,' to muddle through. But it became known almost immediately as system D. And everybody in Paris says system D, "How am I gonna get this done, how are we going to find it, how are we going to buy it. Oh, don't worry about it, system D."
Except this time I'm not an engineer
The line for the open bar wasn't as long as you'd expect, but the bartenders were mixing complicated drinks designed to impress, so there was a wait. Eventually a circle formed to make space for the belly dancer, pushing the bar line away and moving people closer to the bouncy castle, the fire engine red Tesla and the indoor waffle truck. The music went from hip-hop to something vaguely Middle Eastern. I didn't stay for the fire dancing, but it must have been a trick to thread the poi balls through all the hanging paper lanterns.
Joseph and I goggled.
"Do you have any idea what this company does?"
"None."
Next night, Sichuan food.
"Hey Kasima, know any engineers looking for work?" And we laughed and laughed and laughed.
And ... yes, I'm at a startup, again, in a converted industrial space in one of the highest-crime areas in San Francisco. Venture funding inside, 10% unemployment outside. Let's not fuck up.
Joseph and I goggled.
"Do you have any idea what this company does?"
"None."
Next night, Sichuan food.
"Hey Kasima, know any engineers looking for work?" And we laughed and laughed and laughed.
And ... yes, I'm at a startup, again, in a converted industrial space in one of the highest-crime areas in San Francisco. Venture funding inside, 10% unemployment outside. Let's not fuck up.
Periscope
This summer.
I have not forgotten
I am in the office at 6:52 after an all-nighter, the kind where you're playing catch-up and scrambling to meet a deadline. Embarrassing. And I'm listening to UB-40, so doubly embarrassing. But that's not why I decided to write. I decided to write because I just remembered my first and only visit to Parrotfish Records in St. Thomas, USVI. My mom took me because she knew I was a music geek. The color scheme, the decor, the stuff on display, all Jamaican. Not the proprietor, clearly a mainlander, middle-aged and sour-looking. I didn't know much about reggae or dancehall, so I asked for some dub. For my trouble I got a five minute lecture about how nobody in Jamaica listens to that "drug music" any more. And after lecturing me on "drug music" he tries to sell me some dancehall! The record sleeve was probably covered with five-pointed leaves! The fucking nerve!
red planet red planet red planet red planet red planet red planet red planet
Welcome to Earth, Alex - a Red Planet mix. Red Planet is a totally unique brand of techno. It probably won't convert you if you hate techno, but if you've ever enjoyed music by that name this is a must-listen.
Bay Area shows
last.fm has great event recommendations if you've scrobbled a lot of tracks there, but sometimes you want something more exhaustive:
Noooooo
CAT series training rides around SF
Need to add more routes to my routine.
Like how the dof worked out here
ART THOUGHTZ: Post-Structuralism
cutup ffwd summer 2011
Tricksters
I think I’ve figured it out: what is enjoyable about trolling done well is exactly what is enjoyable about the trickster archetype. The trickster is amoral, chaotic, beyond good and evil; his actions are not, for the most part, guided by a moral compass, and as such he seems incoherent when analyzed in moral terms.
The trickster archetype appears all over mythology, religion and literature, but the instance I’m most familiar with is Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology. And the frustrating thing about Loki as a literary character, as a person, is that he appears not to have a character: at one point he’s helping the good guys, the next he is their bitter enemy, and at no point does he seem to undergo a transformation of character that could account for the change. Both sides are integral to his character, but a traditional literary character cannot exist in a superposition of good and evil for any extended period of time, so the trickster appears like an anomaly. This is the same tendency we see with Anonymous: one moment, “Anonymous” appears like an internet army of white knights; the next, they’re fucking with people’s reputations, livelihoods and families for fun. These actions are not opposed, but simply expressions of the trickster archetype. The internet troll has made Loki into an ethos; but, as per the Trickster’s nature, the troll doesn’t take an ethos or code of conduct particularly seriously, so deviations from the established norm are, in a sense, normal. The Trickster’s character is charismatic, chaotic, amoral, highly sexually charged, and guided by a hedonism built around amusement of a hybrid sort: it’s an intellectual amusement, in that cleverness is a highly prized characteristic, and yet it’s also a juvenile amusement, in that it is often petty and frequently takes immature topics as its subjects.
If trolls got laid more, they would perfectly embody this archetype.
Enthusiasms: lol. This is actually more interesting in helping me understand Loki than helping me understand 4chan.
Statistical data mining tutorials
Tuesday links
- The best weather page I've ever seen
- WeatherSpark may be even better
- A javascript interface to the Mechanical Turk API
- The totally freaky shit they did to my eye yesterday. While he was taping my eyelids back, the doctor asked "have you ever seen the movie Clockwork Orange?"
February mixed
1. Jonny Greenwood - Moon Mall
2. Young Galaxy - Blown Minded
3. Oneohtrix Point Never - Format & Journey North
4. Terry Riley - Happy Ending
download
Dan & Brian
Co-worker with a blog! Co-worker with a blog!
Ok, so it is a startup. Tons of people probably have blogs. But we can't bring it up in person. Oh, the embarrassment.
Ok, so it is a startup. Tons of people probably have blogs. But we can't bring it up in person. Oh, the embarrassment.
