July 11th, 2021
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Most people are now looking back at 18 months of pandemic, but I’m looking back at 30 months of such craziness. At the end of 2018 my 90 year old mom developed pneumonia, was in the hospital and then a terrible rehabilitation clinic for some weeks, and was then released, and I was left largely alone to nurse her back to health (our society does not offer much support to families in crisis). I’ve written about this in my book ...
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October 15th, 2019
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I am not convinced that consolidating of the structures is a sign of tyranny. It could simply be a sign of consolidating. Humans living in the same place for a century would presumably build roads that would become more fixed over time. And if there was a dictatorship, we would see more signs of concentrating wealth, such as larger homes. Interesting:
Wondrously, the archaeologists did not find indicators of wealth inequality, social stratification, or hierarchies in prehistoric Trypillian societies – not ...
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October 15th, 2019
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This is what I’ve seen as well, large investments in what is described as AI or Machine Learning or Data Science, which break down into two things:
1.) people are actually talking about standard statistics and ordinary Business Intelligence
2.) people are talking about Machine Learning, but the results are difficult to connect to actual business needs.
Interesting:
We found that driving true business impact is amazingly hard, plus it is difficult to isolate and understand the connection between efforts on modeling and ...
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October 14th, 2019
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It is odd that “respect people’s civil rights” is a new policy:
In the 1990s, for example, a deputy group called the Lynwood Vikings, described by a California judge as a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang,” was responsible for incidents that led to millions being handed out in lawsuit settlements, and was also the subject of a 1991 lawsuit from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The case later led to the 1992 Kolts report, which called for station commanders to “root out ...
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October 14th, 2019
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Self-serving, since they need the algorithms to target advertisements. But also interesting to think that people might sometimes want some kind filter. People pick their friends on LiveJournal, why hasn’t LiveJournal swept the world? Is it the algorithm that made Facebook a juggernaught? People seem to want control over what they see, is there a middle ground, away from algorithms designed to maximize engagement, but offering enough filters to protect people from the most boring material? How much novelty do ...
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October 14th, 2019
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I record this only because, later on, it will be difficult to believe this was real. This is how fascists now describe their conferences:
This May 2020 we’re hosting HERETICON, a conference for thoughtcrime. Here’s why:
From Galileo to Jesus Christ, heretical thinkers have been met with hostility, even death, and vindicated by posterity. That ideological outcasts have shaped the world is an observation so often made it would be bereft of interest were the actions of our society not so entirely ...
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October 7th, 2019
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How does this happen?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says the man who claims to have killed more than 90 women across the United States is the most prolific serial killer in the country’s history.
In a news release on Sunday, the FBI said Samuel Little confessed to 93 murders. Federal crime analysts believe all of his confessions are credible, and officials have been able to verify 50 confessions so far.
Not that this is necessarily about serial killers:
Dawn Wilcox adds more ...
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October 7th, 2019
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Paul Krugman should be pleased:
State pensions have also been boosted. The retirement age has been lowered and the minimum wage raised. In a second term in office, Law and Justice has promised to double the minimum wage by 2023, distribute annual cash bonuses to pensioners, boost farming subsidies and invest heavily in improving transport in the provinces and rural areas.
The huge level of state spending appears to have boosted rather than damaged Poland’s finances. Levels of private consumption have gone ...
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October 7th, 2019
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“Every good Pole should know what the role of the church is … because beyond the church there is only nihilism.”
– Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of the Law and Justice party, 7 September
—————-
This is an interesting line because everywhere else in the West the right-wing has become synonymous with nihilism. Trump is a nihilist who believes in nothing, he is a being of pure lust, greed and spite. Boris Johnson may not be a nihilist in his heart of hearts, but ...
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October 7th, 2019
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For a 3 month loan? I wonder if this was considered a criminal loan at the time, or if this was normal? The only non-criminal uses of 3 month loans, that I can think of is loans to farmers right before harvest time, and then modern loans to governments.
One tablet, found in the courtyard of the pillared house, documents a land sale in the year 698 or 697 B.C.E.. The other tablet was inside a different structure and documents a ...
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October 7th, 2019
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Interesting to realize there was a moon god named Sin.
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1https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-tablets-reveal-2-700-year-old-forced-relocation-by-assyrian-conquerors-1.7906334
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October 7th, 2019
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This is interesting. Israel had very few Jews in the 600s BC, which is actually too early to be the Babylonian Exile. So the Exile was real, but it had other causes, and then later when all of this got written down, priests blamed everything on Babylon?
In fact, the former territory of the Kingdom of Israel may have had very few Israelites left during the 7th century B.C.E., archaeological evidence suggests.
The two tablets, made of clay and inscribed in ...
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October 6th, 2019
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If elites are bad, what about the foreign oligarchs who buy up London real-estate, drive up rents, drive up home prices, and then leave the real estate unused? Why does the Johnson government only complain about people who write?
She thinks the idea of a liberal elite is an anachronism, partly because in the age of social media and the internet, ideas are less geographically tethered and more widely disseminated. But also due to the effects of high finance.
“It’s more ...
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October 6th, 2019
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The end of magazines is part of the new world where everyone gets their news from social media, and where everyone reads slogans instead of essays. The resulting extremism undermines the political system. That extremism undermines the support of a tolerant society that allows diverse views. It also undermines support for the freedom of capital, what some refer to as a free market. If the free market allows the destruction of the politics that allowed a free market, then surely ...
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September 26th, 2019
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I realize people ask this question about the USA a lot, but it’s also worth asking about Britain. All of this is far removed from the culture that the British have boasted about for centuries:
Maria Miller also insisted that Labour only had itself to blame for the Sulk’s behaviour. The real victim in all this weren’t MPs receiving death threats, it was Boris himself. He had been pushed to the edge by an opposition that was totally unreasonably blocking his ...
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December 24th, 2017
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I have had good results with a style of management where I mostly have one-on-one meetings. These meetings can be just 15 minutes, or maybe 30 if there is a serious issue that needs to be discussed. If I’m leading a small team (less than 20 people) I’ll have meetings with each person at least once a week, but with key players more often than that.
In a meeting of two people, both people typically feel involved with the conversation, ...
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February 8th, 2017
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I agree that pushing the legal boundaries could have been a blunder, but was more likely an attempt to get other people to show their hands.
I see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get Americans to the ...
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June 29th, 2016
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An interesting article, from a tutor, about the way wealth sometimes protects mediocre students, and allows them to get into good colleges:
Because UT Austin is a terrific place—the rare kind of school that radiates both capaciousness and prestige—it is the top choice for many Texas high school students, and its unique admissions policy carries a lot of weight. It is discussed ad nauseam during application season; however, the reasoning behind this policy—behind the 10 percent rule, behind affirmative action—is not. ...
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December 30th, 2015
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When I was younger, my friends and I used to wonder why all of the women’s magazines were misogynist. The advice they gave was always anti-woman and pro-convention. This made no sense to us. It was as if the magazines were at war with their own customers. As near as I can tell, this misogyny was editorial policy for the entirety of the 20th Century.
Things have changed dramatically over the last 15 years, and especially the last 8 years. ...
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January 18th, 2013
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This makes it look very easy to send email from Clojure. The interface looks more pleasant than what I have run into in the world of, say for instance, PHP. But you do have to have all of your credentials, usernames, passwords, port numbers — stuff that PHP usually comes pre-configured to deal with.
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1http://will.groppe.us/post/406065542/sending-email-from-clojure
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March 16th, 2012
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Public whitelisting for pingbacks. Allow auto accept of others whitelist.
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June 10th, 2011
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The distance to other starts. An amazing read.
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1http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html?
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February 8, 2022 9:33 am
From Michael S on How I recovered from Lyme Disease: I fasted for two weeks, no food, just water
"Did you have Bartonella, too? Seems it uses autogenesis..."