What we’re seeing is a reversion back to old ways of thinking about power and place and identity. And I think part of our complacency grew out of the notion that once the Berlin Wall fell and Nelson Mandela was released and the world was flat and you had McDonald’s everywhere, and now suddenly that was it—we were done. And we forgot that that post–World War II 50-years stretch to 60-years stretch—that’s the anomaly. And that there is millennia of brutality and pillage and violence and displacement and cruelty, and we created a set of institutions out of 60 million people dying in World War II and tried to reconfigure how we might organize our societies. But it is not self-executing. It’s something that we have to continually nurture and respond to new circumstances, whether that’s changes in technology, changes in globalization, climate change—all those things require us to say, All right, what does that mean for our capacity to maintain human dignity and freedom and self-governance? And that’s the prism through which we should be examining these questions and being willing to modify, adjust, reform our institutions to keep up with that. And that’s something that I think we have not done as well as we need to.
This is a very plain blog with quotes from and links to articles I found interesting, thought-provoking, or relevant to the times. Linking is neither endorsement nor condemnation. Run by http://willslack.com
26 January, 2023
Heresy
http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html
A heresy is an opinion whose expression is treated like a crime — one that makes some people feel not merely that you're mistaken, but that you should be punished. Indeed, their desire to see you punished is often stronger than it would be if you'd committed an actual crime. There are many on the far left who believe strongly in the reintegration of felons (as I do myself), and yet seem to feel that anyone guilty of certain heresies should never work again.
There are always some heresies — some opinions you'd be punished for expressing. But there are a lot more now than there were a few decades ago, and even those who are happy about this would have to agree that it's so.
In defense of "The West Wing"
https://www.slowboring.com/p/in-defense-of-the-west-wing
And something “The West Wing” deeply gets about politics is that there are a lot of people like that kicking around. Are there kooks and grifters and opportunists and criminals and morons? Sure.
But you genuinely can’t understand key developments in American political history — good ones like the Affordable Care Act or bad ones like the Dobbs decision — without understanding the large and often critical role played by earnest people who sincerely believe in what they are doing. Even a lot of the really bad characters in politics — Paul Ryan, for example — are extremely sincere. And when you look at someone who is both bad and also non-sincere like Donald Trump, you can’t understand Trump’s successes without understanding the sincerity of many of his collaborators. For better or worse, helping Trump beat Clinton seemed like a good way to try to advance the causes of making abortion illegal and taking health insurance away from poor people, and unless you grasp the sincerity with which lots of Republicans believe in those causes, you won’t be able to make sense of how he related to the party’s professionals.
22 January, 2023
Mapping out the tribes of climate
https://nadia.xyz/climate-tribes
Climate is a gravity well for talent, but why don’t other, equally impactful topics attract talent in the same way? Why isn’t everyone dropping everything to work on homelessness, or global poverty, or curing cancer? With many peers in tech now working on climate issues, I tried to understand why this topic holds such purchase for so many people – and its incredible staying power over the decades.
Initially, I started with the idea that climate was an attractive industry for “doomer” types, and I painted their motivations monolithically. I was searching for the one weird reason that was causing hordes of people to drop what they were doing and march, hypnotically, towards the same problem space.
What I found instead is that while the media still portrays climate as a simple question of beliefs, the climate field has long moved on to diversified solutions. Whether one believes in climate change is no longer the interesting question; now it’s “What do you think is the right approach?”
Pass through the asteroid belt of climate doomerism, and the universe expands into a rich panoply of different climate tribes. People who work in and around climate don’t all believe the same things. Instead, they inhabit a parallel, mirror world that looks a lot like the non-climate world. Just like in the regular world, there are factions, politics, and competing belief systems.
Guessing C For Every Answer Is Now Enough To Pass The New York State Algebra Exam
My student, River, spent more time in the courtroom than the classroom last year. One Friday night in September, a drunk friend called and asked for a ride home from a party. River obliged. That’s a problem when you’re 14 years old. On his excellent adventure with his drunk friend, River drove over the landscaping of several local businesses and ended with his car in the woods caught in a web of maple sugaring lines. Things spiralled from there.
All of which is to say that River didn’t learn algebra last year.
I mean it: zero algebra was learned. He wasn’t even present in my classroom for most of three marking periods. At the end of the year, he asked me how he was supposed to pass the state test.
“No problem,” I said. “Just pick all Cs.”
“What?”
“Try it. I bet it will work.”
It worked.
20 January, 2023
20 Things I’ve Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer
https://www.simplethread.com/20-things-ive-learned-in-my-20-years-as-a-software-engineer/
2. The hardest part of software is building the right thing
I know this is cliche at this point, but the reason most software engineers don’t believe it is because they think it devalues their work. Personally I think that is nonsense. Instead it highlights the complexity and irrationality of the environments in which we have to work, which compounds our challenges. You can design the most technically impressive thing in the world, and then have nobody want to use it. Happens all the time. Designing software is mostly a listening activity, and we often have to be part software engineer, part psychic, and part anthropologist. Investing in this design process, whether through dedicated UX team members or by simply educating yourself, will deliver enormous dividends. Because how do you really calculate the cost of building the wrong software? It amounts to a lot more than just lost engineering time.
3. The best software engineers think like designers
Great software engineers think deeply about the user experience of their code. They might not think about it in those terms, but whether it is an external API, programmatic API, user interface, protocol, or any other interface; great engineers consider who will be using it, why it will be used, how it will be used, and what is important to those users. Keeping the user’s needs in mind is really the heart of good user experience.
4. The best code is no code, or code you don’t have to maintain
All I have to say is “coders gonna code.” You ask someone in any profession how to solve a problem, and they are going to err on the side of what they are good at. It is just human nature. Most software engineers are always going to err on the side of writing code, especially when a non-technical solution isn’t obvious. The same goes for code you don’t have to maintain. Engineering teams are apt to want to reinvent the wheel, when lots of wheels already exist. This is a balancing act, there are lots of reasons to grow your own, but beware of toxic “Not Invented Here” syndrome.
18 January, 2023
The Plan Was Simple: Infiltrate MAGA World and Tell Everyone What She Saw. Then She Was Found Out
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/amanda-moore-undercover-maga/
The “fringe” that Trejo was involved in had developed a parallel world organized alongside more mainstream events. For example, she recalled attending the conservative organization Turning Point USA’s student action summit in Tampa in July, where the American Populist Union, a pro–white power group, had scheduled an event on the same day at a hotel just across the street. APU’s event started in the evening, as Turning Point’s general session was ending. “I already had a ticket for APU, but multiple people told me to make sure I got one at various events during TPUSA,” she explained. Republicans for National Renewal used the same playbook in December, holding its own event in Phoenix at the same time TPUSA hosted “Americafest.” She witnessed something similar at 2021’s CPAC conference, where white power activist Nick Fuentes held his own nearby gathering.
16 January, 2023
Silenced Women–Modern Lessons from an Ancient Murder
https://bethallisonbarr.com/silenced-women-modern-lessons-from-an-ancient-murder/
I often assign Regilla’s story in my upper level Women’s History course. The text makes a significant impression on my students. Questions spill from them during our discussions. How in the world was Herodes acquitted? Why in the world did the Roman legal system provide so few protections for battered women? Why were women in the ancient world so disempowered that their voices–just like Regilla’s–could not be heard? How did a woman who was so powerful and wealthy in her own right end up in such a desperate and deadly domestic situation?Although we discuss these questions from a historical context, we can’t really answer them. There are no good answers to why Regilla was killed by her husband nor to why he escaped punishment.
12 January, 2023
Cultivating agency
The world doesn’t happen to us; it is shaped by us. More people now have access to simple tools that allow them to “program,” or modify, the world around them. Teaching kids that the world is programmable – whether it’s through actual coding, games like Roblox and Minecraft, encouraging them to ask for what they want, or even white-hat social engineering – is a critical skill that prepares them to tackle the social challenges of the future.
If Gen X and Millennials grew up with a “digital divide,” perhaps Gen Z will face an “agentic divide”: those who believe they have the power to change their circumstances, versus those who do not. And this belief in personal agency appears to be a critical difference between social movements that have pronatalist versus antinatalist outcomes.
If you believe that the world is shaped by your and others’ actions, then the climate crisis or other global catastrophic risk don’t look quite so scary: they’re an opportunity to do something meaningful. If you believe that the world’s problems are solved by people, then having children doesn’t seem like a waste of resources; it seems, in fact, like the most good you could do in the world.
The opposite of agency is learned helplessness. If people believe that we can’t do very much to stop the world’s problems, it’s unsurprising that they’d be terrified to bring children into the world. But this seems like a mental trap that we can, and should, teach people to resist falling into. As Clare Coffey writes in “Failure to Cope ‘Under Capitalism’”: “[A]n imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible.”
Schedule F: An Unwelcome Resurgence
https://www.lawfareblog.com/schedule-f-unwelcome-resurgence
Over 2 million career civil servants working across dozens of large and small agencies are hired under the competitive service process. More than 70 percent work in national security-oriented agencies, such as the Defense Department, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Energy Department. Many more work in technical, administrative, policy, and legal roles. They do work that often results in news that makes headlines—negotiating sanctions policies, advising on the legality of drone strikes overseas, maintaining relationships with allies and partners, preparing procedures and resources for future pandemic response—and a great deal more behind the scenes that may end up on a cabinet secretary’s or president’s desk for consideration.
Author Michael Lewis describes civil servants’ responsibilities in the “The Fifth Risk,” calling the U.S government the manager of “the biggest portfolio of [catastrophic] risks ever managed by a single institution in the history of the world.” Some are obvious—the threat of nuclear attacks, for example—but most are glacial and opaque, demanding a portfolio of reliable and steady risk managers who can prioritize the nation’s security without fearing for their job security.
10 January, 2023
u/ReverendDizzle on third places
Third places have been in catastrophic decline for decades. The book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community came out in 2000, talking about the collapse of community activities and third places (and that book was, in turn, based on a 1995 essay written by the author).
Discussion of the collapse of third places goes back even further than that, though, the seminal work on the topic, Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place was published in 1989.
One of the reasons the show Cheers was so profoundly popular in the 1980s was because generations of Americans were mourning, whether they realized it or not, both the death of (and the crass capitalization of) the third place. Cheers functioned as a pseudo-third-place that millions of people sat down to watch every night to feel like they were going to the third places that were fading from the American experience.
A lot of people don't think about it, but part of the death of the third place is the crass capitalization mentioned above. How many places can the average American go anymore without the expectation that they spend their money and get out?
Sure, many current and historic third places have an element of capitalism (after all, the public house might be a public house, but somebody needs to pay the land taxes and restock the kegs). But modern bars and restaurants fail to fulfill the function of a pub and most would prefer you consume and leave to free up space for another person to consume and leave. The concept of the location functioning as a "public house" for the community is completely erased.
Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.
Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.
Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published today in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour ’14, PhD ’21, and four others.
08 January, 2023
40 questions that lead to love
The famous "36 questions that lead to love"... don't. The NYT and everyone else reported a different set of questions from the same authors, modified to be less romantic! The original set of *40* questions wasn't online, but I emailed the authors and got a copy. Details in 🧵
— Ivan Vendrov (@IvanVendrov) January 7, 2023
05 January, 2023
How a Sprawling Hospital Chain Ignited Its Own Staffing Crisis
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/business/hospital-staffing-ascension.html
Stephanie Bates, a Genesys nurse who works a 12-hour shift ending at 11:30 p.m., said that multiple times a week, she is ordered to work until 3:30 a.m. She said that she refuses so that she can care for her young children early in the morning. Other nurses echoed her experience.
On at least four occasions this year, managers have written in nurses’ employment files that refusing to work 16-hour shifts “is not in line with our value of dedication,” according to internal disciplinary records reviewed by The Times.
Nurses in nearly every unit at the hospital said in interviews that they were regularly required to care for more patients than allowed under their contract — restrictions that are supposed to ensure the safety of patients. “You just try to do damage control your whole shift,” said Stephanie Atchley, a Genesys nurse. “It just all snowballs into very poor care.”
Dr. Dale Hanson, a physician who treats patients at Genesys, said that most days, there are not enough nurses, resulting in prolonged hospital stays for his patients. Some get marooned in the emergency room because of nursing shortages in other parts of the hospital.
Dr. Hanson blamed Ascension’s aggressive cost-cutting, which he said has resulted in “miserable” conditions for patients and staff.
Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy
The next day, 15 September 2018, a woman with a long, Latin-sounding name bought a one-way ticket from Naples, Italy, to Moscow. For around a decade, this individual had travelled the world as a cosmopolitan, Peru-born socialite with her own jewellery line. Later that evening, she landed in Moscow and is not known to have left Russia since. She flew on a passport from one of the number ranges Bellingcat had outed the previous day – in fact, hers only differed by one digit from the passports on which Boshirov and Petrov’s GRU boss had flown to Britain just six months earlier.
The name on her passport was Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, and as Bellingcat and its investigative partners have discovered, she was a GRU illegal whom friends from NATO offices in Naples had for years believed was a successful jewellery designer with a colourful backstory and chaotic personal life.
04 January, 2023
Bible Quotes for Religious Hypocrites:
https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/vebbgu/massachusetts_school_can_no_longer_be_called/icpfdlq/
Bible Quotes for Religious Hypocrites:
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:34
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‘Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
Deuteronomy 27:19
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I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Matthew 25:35
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Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Romans 12:13
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The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Leviticus 13:45-46
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But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. ...
2 Timothy 3:1-17
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Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:3-4
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And all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their property and possessions and distributed the money to those according to their needs.
Acts 2:44-45
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03 January, 2023
How Elites Abandoned the Masses
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/how-elites-abandoned-the-masses
Our old elites used to share a sense of common responsibility and noblesse oblige — not just to give back, but to expect the masses to act in a way that would let them rise up as well. Old elites knew that on average they had more productive habits than the masses (e.g. marital fidelity, two-parent households, steady employment, etc), and so it was thus their job to provide the masses an example to aspire to.
But our new elites are less likely to admit they’re more productive; if anything, they deny it. While this humility seems generous on the surface — it’s nicer to imply that elites are successful solely because of privilege and not also because they’re more productive — this also denies the elites of any responsibility to the masses.
02 January, 2023
The Hero America Has Earned
https://www.dogshirtdaily.com/p/the-hero-america-has-earned
This brings me to the most important aspect of Santos: He is exactly the politician we deserve.
If a political society doesn’t punish liars, it encourages politicians to lie, and it encourages the lying liars that tell lies to become politicians. If a political society doesn’t punish politicians for grifting, it encourages grifters to become politicians and more politicians to become grifters. If a political society doesn’t punish figures who adopt new ethnic or social identities, guess what?
Santos is just the reductio ad absurdum of everything we have signaled as a political society that we don’t mind—which is fabulous if you think about it.
01 January, 2023
The internet wants to be fragmented
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-internet-wants-to-be-fragmented
That experiment failed. Humanity does not want to be a global hive mind. We are not rational Bayesian updaters who will eventually reach agreement; when we receive the same information, it tends to polarize us rather than unite us. Getting screamed at and insulted by people who disagree with you doesn’t take you out of your filter bubble — it makes you retreat back inside your bubble and reject the ideas of whoever is screaming at you. No one ever changed their mind from being dunked on; instead they all just doubled down and dunked harder. The hatred and toxicity of Twitter at times felt like the dying screams of human individuality, being crushed to death by the hive mind’s constant demands for us to agree with more people than we ever evolved to agree with.
But human individuality would not die. Instead it is centralized social media that is dying.