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
13 July, 2023
/u/flyingkumot on love
Met an elderly hispanic lady at a bus stop in Albuquerque. We went back and forth in Spanish for a bit (I’m a white guy so she was pleasantly surprised) and she told me about her travel plans to go to her son’s wedding–a real cute story involving him and his high school sweetheart finding each other after a long time being broken up.
I had recently been dumped, and said something a bit mopey like “I wish I could find love like that someday.”
She smiled, shook her head and said “Chico, love like that isn’t just found. It’s built. How many perfect, decorated temples do you think my ancestors stumbled across in Tikal or Tenochtitlan? No. They found a good, level spot, maybe some water nearby, and said ‘Here. We can build something here.’ Look for a clearing in the forest, young man. Not a hidden city.”
That one will stick with me for years.
09 July, 2023
How to Blow Up a Timeline
https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2023/7/6/how-to-blow-up-a-timeline
One of his key insights is what I think of as his theory of group inertia. Groups are hard to form in the first place. Think of how many random Discord communities you were invited into the past few years and how many are still active. “Organization for collective action takes a good deal of time to emerge” observes Olson.
However, inertia works both before and after product-market fit. Once a group has formed, it tends to persist even after the collective good it came together to provide is no longer needed.
The same is true of social networks. As anyone who has tried to start one knows, it’s not easy to jump-start a social graph. But if you manage by some miracle to conjure one from the void, and if you provide that group with a reasonable set of ways for everyone to hang out, network effects can keep the party going long after last call. The group inertia that is your enemy before you’ve coalesced a community is your friend after it’s formed. Anyone who’s ever hosted a party and provided booze knows it’s often hard to get the last stragglers to leave. We are a social species.
03 July, 2023
Why the Champions of Affirmative Action Had to Leave Asian Americans Behind
Affirmative action, in my view, was doomed from that moment forward because it had been stripped of its moral force. It is one thing to argue that slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and centuries of theft demand an educational system that factors in the effects of those atrocities. If that principle were to express itself in, say, a Black student who was descended from slaves and had grown up in poverty in an American inner city receiving a bump on his application when compared with a rich private-school kid from the suburbs, so be it. But that is not, in fact, how affirmative action usually plays out at élite schools. Most reporting on the subject—including my own, as well as a story in the Harvard Crimson—shows that descendants of slaves are relatively underrepresented among Black students at Harvard, compared with students from upwardly mobile Black immigrant families. It is easy and perhaps virtuous to defend the reparative version of affirmative action; it is harder to defend the system as it has actually been used
30 June, 2023
I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admissions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/opinion/college-admissions-affirmative-action.html
Many prestigious institutions have themselves racially gamified the admissions process, finding ways to maximize diversity without making dents in their endowments. For example, some colleges and universities boost diversity statistics on the cheap by accepting minority students who can pay full freight. And even purportedly need-blind institutions seem to have a remarkable track record of recruiting minority students who don’t need financial aid. (By some estimates, over 70 percent of Harvard’s Black, Latino and Native American students have college-educated parents with incomes above the national median.)
26 June, 2023
ROBERT A. CARO ON THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY
https://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/caro/desktopnew.html
Every time a youth from a poor family gets to go to college because of one of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, and thus to escape from a life in the ghetto, and every time a black man or woman is able to walk into a voting booth and cast a vote because of one of Lyndon Johnson's Voting Rights Acts, that is a more significant example of political power. And so, unfortunately, is the fact of a young man dying a needless death in a useless war in Vietnam. In order to demonstrate and illuminate political power through a biography of a single individual, the biography has to be of the right individual. I selected Robert Moses because in The Power Broker what I was aiming at was to show how urban political power worked in America in the middle of the twentieth century--how power worked not just in New York, but in all our great cities; to show what was the true essence of urban political power, not the trappings but the heart, the raw, naked essence of such power. I selected Moses because he was never elected to anything. But for forty-four years he exercised more power in New York City and New York State than any official who was elected--more than any mayor, more than any governor. Therefore, I felt, if I could show what Moses' power consisted of, and how he got it and how he wielded it, I would be showing the true essence of urban political power. Since no one else ever wielded such power, Moses was the ideal subject.
24 June, 2023
It’s Not Possible to ‘Win’ an Argument With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/opinion/rfk-jr-joe-rogan.html
But now I see where I went wrong. Not on the merits; there’s still no case that Kerry actually won in 2004. My mistake was attempting to debate and debunk Kennedy in the first place. At best, the effort was a waste of time and energy; at worst, a big bow-wrapped gift of the thing a conspiracy theorist desires most — recognition that his arguments are important enough to merit serious debate.
After getting in the mud with Kennedy all those years ago, I realized something important that we’d do well to remember now, as Kennedy mounts a long-shot run against Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination: You can come armed with all the facts in the world, but when you’re dealing with a conspiracist, there’s no real way to “win” an argument. For people whose views aren’t anchored to facts, winning is simply getting attention — and when you publicly argue with someone like Kennedy, you’ve already lost.
19 June, 2023
u/ubercorey on western meditation culture
https://www.reddit.com/r/HubermanLab/comments/14cizcn/you_dont_suck_at_meditating/
It's so important I'm going repeat it. You cultivate what the mind is best at, instead of against it. WE DO NOT FORCE IT TO BE QUIET, we encourage it to roar, but very channeled. Like you were saying, into laser focus. The defuse power becomes a beam, focused on a specific goal. You use its natural tendency to be extremely active and constantly create. Instead of fighting it, you use that to create what you want. That is what the meditation masters discovered. That mind has a superpower and we can harness it. This is what NBA coaches know, that we can improve free throw shots just as much using visualization as on the court practice.
The way pop culture teaches meditation now, without the foundational practices first, would be like taking a wild horse who's kicking and smashing his stall and just the keeping the wild horse in his stall all day today to force him to calm down, he would start to go stir crazy in his muscles would waste. So messed up... This is how we treat children in schools who have a lot of energy. And what happens, it breaks their spirit.
In contrast, the foundational practices are like like taking the horse out and running on a certain path that horse gets better and better on that path
17 June, 2023
103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known
https://kk.org/thetechnium/103-bits-of-advice-i-wish-i-had-known/
Several years ago on my 68th birthday I wrote up 68 bits of advice for my adult children, and posted them here. The bits were extremely popular, and they were widely shared by others. I was encouraged to write up more bits of wisdom on my following two birthdays. On my 70th birthday I wrote up 103 bits of advice I wish I had known earlier, which were also widely shared. The first six bits are here:
• About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.
• No one is as impressed with your possessions as you are.
• Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become.
• Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.
• Don’t keep making the same mistakes; try to make new mistakes.
• If you stop to listen to a musician or street performer for more than a minute, you owe them a dollar.
The Procedure Fetish
https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-procedure-fetish/
If America has a procedure problem, it may be because it has a lawyer problem. Among lawyers, anxiety about agency legitimacy is reflexively invoked to defend the legally imposed procedures that structure agency decision-making. Here’s Richard Stewart, a titan in the field: “The traditional conception of administrative law . . . bespeaks a common social value in legitimating, through controlling rules and procedures, the exercise of power over private interests by officials not otherwise formally accountable.” Similar statements abound in the literature. Every procedure under the sun has been defended, at one time or another, as a guarantor of the fragile legitimacy of the administrative state.
But it pays to be precise. It is reasonable to believe that procedural regularity is an important facet of government legitimacy. But legitimacy is not solely — not even primarily — a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive, and fair. Mandatory procedures may sometimes advance those values. They can focus agencies on priorities they may have ignored, orient bureaucracies to broader public goals, and improve the quality of agency deliberations. But procedures can also burn agency resources on senseless paperwork, empower lawyers at the expense of experts, and frustrate agencies’ ability to act. When procedures impair an agency’s ability to do its job, they can drain an agency of legitimacy.
In Defense of The West Wing
https://www.slowboring.com/p/in-defense-of-the-west-wing
I find the way “The West Wing” came up in the 2016 primary interesting because one of the main themes of the show actually illustrates the way that entire dynamic ran off the rails. I think it’s easy to understand why Sanders liked a show about a cantankerous politician from northern New England who took on the Democratic Party establishment in an underdog primary campaign and captured the White House. But it’s also easy to see why Whitford felt that Sanders’ “political revolution” concept was entirely contrary to the ethic of the show.
And that’s because “The West Wing” correctly illustrates that traditionally, the voters have appreciated outsiders in presidential politics but not radicals. If you look at Bartlet and Matt Santos, they don’t have much in common biographically. But they are both alternatives to the establishment insiders (Hoynes and Russell) and both inspired idealistic people on their staff and in the electorate. They are fresh, interesting characters who promise a break from the grubbiness and opportunism that people see as endemic to the political system. But in terms of public policy, neither of them is anything particularly special. They are both pretty banal liberal incrementalists. In ideological terms, Bartlet breaks with his base a bit on free trade and Santos with the teachers unions on tenure. But their outsider-ness is meant to convey honesty, integrity, and realness, not policy radicalism.
This is a template that we’ve seen over and over again from John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and it’s exactly what makes the 2016 and 2020 races a little bit odd.
People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened
Of the 30 participants who were told they had committed a crime as a teenager, 21 (71%) were classified as having developed a false memory of the crime; of the 20 who were told about an assault of some kind (with or without a weapon), 11 reported elaborate false memory details of their exact dealings with the police.
A similar proportion of students (76.67%) formed false memories of the emotional event they were told about.
Intriguingly, the criminal false events seemed to be just as believable as the emotional ones. Students tended to provide the same number of details, and reported similar levels of confidence, vividness, and sensory detail for the two types of event.
Shaw and Porter speculate that incorporating true details, such as the name of an actual friend, into an account that was supposedly corroborated by the student’s caregiver likely endowed the false event with just enough familiarity that it came to seem plausible.
14 June, 2023
I’m an ER doctor. Here’s how I’m already using ChatGPT to help treat patients.
In doing so, I’ve come to realize that dealing with ChatGPT is like working with an incredibly brilliant, hard-working — and occasionally hungover — intern. That’s become my mental model for considering the usefulness of ChatGPT.
Now, for any potential application, I think, “Would a dedicated but occasionally hungover intern working on this make things easier for me and my staff — or would the work required managing them end up being more effort than just doing it without their involvement?”
Seen from that perspective, ChatGPT or a hungover intern can still, for instance:
- Take down my patient’s history
- Create long-form written communication for patients and staff
- Explain highly technical information to patients simply with empathy and compassion
07 June, 2023
Super-rich abandoning Norway at record rate as wealth tax rises slightly
A record number of super-rich Norwegians are abandoning Norway for low-tax countries after the centre-left government increased wealth taxes to 1.1%.
More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv. This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, it added. Even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year because of the increase in wealth tax in November, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax receipts.
Many have moved to Switzerland, where taxes are much lower.
Two friends were denied care after Florida banned abortion. One almost died.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/10/pprom-florida-abortion-ban/
She had intended to deliver the fetus in a hospital, a doctor by her side. When her water broke the night before — at least six weeks ahead of when a fetus could survive on its own — she drove straight to the emergency room, where she said the doctor explained that she was experiencing pre-viability preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (PPROM), which occurs in less than 1 percent of pregnancies. The condition can cause significant complications, including infection and hemorrhage, that can threaten the health or life of the mother, according to multiple studies.
At the hospital in Coral Springs, Fla., Cook received antibiotics, records show. Then she was sent home to wait.
Cook’s experience reflects a new reality playing out in hospitals in antiabortion states across the country — where because of newly enacted abortion bans, people with potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications are being denied care that was readily available before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
The Texas Legislature Finally Comes for Ken Paxton
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/ken-paxton-impeachment-texas-house/
But it’s important to understand the latest allegations of Paxton’s wrongdoing as an extension of a pattern that dates back to when he was a lowly state representative, from 2003 to 2013. Among other infractions, he took money from a company that benefited from a state contract, and he invested in a property in his district that a local government would soon buy at a markup. In private life he was a probate lawyer, adjudicating wills and estates, and he stood accused of improperly skimming money off the top from a wealthy deceased client. He infamously stole a fellow lawyer’s Montblanc pen at the Collin County Courthouse, and only returned it after he was caught red-handed on security camera footage.
He nonetheless rose through the ranks: first to the state Senate, and then to the AG’s office. In his 2014 race for AG, it was reported that in private practice, Paxton made a habit of advising his legal clients to invest in his friends’ companies or investment firms without telling them he was getting a cut for referring them. In the baroque terms of the legal profession, that type of behavior is known as “criming,” or “doing crimes.” This did not stop Paxton from winning office, but shortly afterward he was indicted for felony securities fraud. This was an earthquake. If convicted, he would be booted from office: felons can’t be attorneys general.
Wow. What did the jury say?
Nothing, yet! The indictment came down nearly eight years ago. Paxton got the case kicked back to Collin County, his home base, where he would be “among friends,” as a mobster might euphemistically say. He and his lawyers have used a long series of procedural and political maneuvers to postpone the trial. As it stands, there’s no resolution in the criminal case.
03 June, 2023
The New Media Goliaths
https://www.noemamag.com/the-new-media-goliaths/
“Manufacturing Consent” ended with an optimistic take: that what was then a burgeoning cable media ecosystem would lead to more channels with varying perspectives, a recognition that truly independent and non-corporate media does exist and that it would find ways to be heard. But Chomsky and Herman also cautioned that if the public wants a news media that serves its interests rather than the interests of the powerful, it must go find it. Propaganda systems are demonstrably effective precisely because breaking free of such a filtered lens requires work. Perhaps by articulating to today’s public how the system has shifted and highlighting the new incentives that shape the media-of-one ecosystem, we may reduce the public’s susceptibility to the propaganda it produces.
01 June, 2023
Don’t Pretend the Ugandan Homosexuality Law Is Christian
One does not honor the authority of Scripture if one obscures its meaning. Leviticus 20 explicitly condemns almost every form of sexual immorality—premarital sex, extramarital sex, and nearly every other kind of nonmarital sexual expression. Sexual sins are included alongside occultic practices, necromancy, and the cursing of one’s mother and father.
Of course, this is consistent with the rest of the biblical witness (whatever one thinks of its authority). Yet the penalties of death that come with those violations are situated in a very specific context in redemptive history. God revealed that the theocratic civil code, as well as its punishments, was for a purpose: to separate his people from the rest of the nations to prepare them to enter the inheritance of the land (Lev. 20:26).
To cite such passages of the old-covenant civil law as a mandate for a civil state outside that covenant is a misinterpretation that doesn’t fit with any historic, apostolic teaching of Christianity. In fact, it’s in line with those who would argue against any ethical content of the Christian faith by saying, “Yeah, well, if the Bible’s true, we couldn’t eat shellfish either.”
[I still don't agree with this post but this is interesting because of the author]
30 May, 2023
A SONG LED THEM HOME
https://www.harrisnecklandtrust.org/amelia-s-song
In 1933 African American linguist Lorenzo Turner and musicologist Lydia Parish visited Harris Neck and recorded 53-year-old Amelia Dawley singing a song that had been taught to her by her mother. The song, in a language unknown to Mrs. Dawley, had been passed down in her family from mother to daughter as far back as anyone in Harris Neck could remember.
In 1997 Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran, and other members of the Moran family were invited to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they were welcomed in Freetown by Sierra Leone’s President and then flown by helicopter to the country’s interior. There, in the small village of Senehun Ngola, Mary and Bendu Jabati met and sang this song together for the first time. Years earlier, Bendu’s grandmother had told her that this song, which had been passed down in her village from mother to daughter for centuries, would one day reunite her to long-lost relatives.
Through a series of amazing and perhaps miraculous events – and lots of hard work – beginning in the late 1980s, anthropologist Joseph Opala first rediscovered this song and then, with the help of musicologist Cynthia Schmidt and others, traced the song from Senehun Ngola to Harris Neck.
29 May, 2023
The Resentment Fueling the Republican Party Is Not Coming From the Suburbs
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opinion/rural-voters-republican-realignment.html
Urban-rural “apartheid” further reinforces ideological and affective polarization. The geographic separation of Republicans and Democrats makes partisan crosscutting experiences at work, in friendships, in community gatherings, at school or in local government — all key to reducing polarization — increasingly unlikely to occur.
Geographic barriers between Republicans and Democrats — of those holding traditional values and those choosing to reject or reinterpret those values — reinforce what scholars now call the calcification of difference. As conflict and hostility become embedded in the structure of where people live, the likelihood increases of seeing adversaries as less than fully human.
The First Interview with the Panama Papers Whistleblower
DER SPIEGEL: What kind of instability do you mean?
Doe: The rise of fascism and authoritarianism globally, from China to Russia to Brazil to the Philippines, but especially now in the United States. America has made some terrible blunders in its history, but it has served as a balancing force against the absolute worst regimes when needed most. That balance has functionally ceased to exist.
DER SPIEGEL: Tax havens seem to be of crucial importance for strongmen in autocratic regimes.
Doe: Putin is more of a threat to the United States than Hitler ever was, and shell companies are his best friend. Shell companies funding the Russian military are what kill innocent civilians in Ukraine as Putin's missiles target shopping centers. Shell companies masking Chinese conglomerates are what kill underage cobalt miners in the Congo. Shell companies make these horrors and more possible by removing accountability from society. But without accountability, society cannot function.
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