A feature documentary on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam.

The opening of my talk Of Time And The Web deals with our collective negativity bias. The general consensus is that the world has become worse.

pseudoprose is pseudocode[^1] for writers.

So, I suppose the moral of the story is: find yourself work you can give a shit about. And work with people who give a shit. It’ll make shit a lot more pleasant – I guarantee it.

Reponse to Marc Andreessen's “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

Mickey Angelov - Look Aside Films

They make more money from mileage programs than from flying planes

Wonderful trompe l'oeil tumbling block design quilt incorporating signatures from such luminaries as Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rembrandt Peale, and Abraham Lincoln ( one of eight American presidents represented ).

On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

3/23

the Forecasting Research Institute has released the results of the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament

I started writing on my blog some years ago, and since then I’ve had a lot of reasons to stop writing. Here’s a list of why nobody cares about your blog

Study: Some consumers have an unerring knack for buying unpopular products.

Terence Eden - Discord is perfect for ephemeral communications. But it is not a fucking substitute for documentation!

Jeff Hewitt - Television’s language and logic in everyday life.

In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of fundamental principles claimed to exist in an objective reality.

Jeremy Keith on syndication to social networks - https://adactio.com/journal/7698

Paul Graham Essay - How to do great work

Vonnegut, Kurt | Vonnegut's stirring response to the censorship and burning of Slaughterhouse Five. Typed letter signed ("Kurt Vonnegut"), to Charles McCarthy, head of the school board at Drake High School in North Dakota, responding to the censorship and burning of Slaughterhouse Five at Drake - https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/fine-books-and-manuscripts-including-americana/vonnegut-kurt-vonneguts-stirring-response-to-the

Isn’t that what we want from the internet? I’m sitting in a small room in an old house in Durham, North Carolina...

Long before the invention of the general-purpose computer, bureaucrats and researchers had begun gathering and cross-tabulating sets of numbers about populations—heights, weights, ages, sexes, races, political parties, incomes—using punch cards and tabulating machines. Sergey Brin said "Auto insurance companies analyse accident data and set insurance rates of individuals according to age, gender, vehicle type,” he pointed out. “If they were allowed to by law, they would also use race, religion, handicap, and any other attributes they find are related to accident rate.”

The Oatmeal - You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you - This is a comic about the backfire effect.

A creature is formed of clay. A puppet becomes a boy. A monster rises in a lab. A computer takes over a spaceship. And all manner of robots serve or control us. For generations we’ve told ourselves stories, using themes of magic and science, about inanimate things that we bring to life or imbue with power beyond human capacity.

Let’s start with one of those insights that are as obvious as they are easy to forget: if you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements of your field. It is therefore not surprising that those who grow up to be exceptional tend to have spent their formative years surrounded by adults who were exceptional.

Reid Hoffman - Many of the most popular websites leveraged humanity’s less virtuous impulses.

If someone can taste the difference between a Merlot from ’78 and a Merlot from ’98, they are conservative but have a son who dropped out of college to join Antifa.

Artists’ meditations on time suggest that speed needn’t be the only goal in our online experiences.

We are inviting artists to illustrate scientists, activists, poets, and pioneers who are not visually represented on Wikipedia

Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. An edited extract from Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari, published on 6 January.

This is a list of common misconceptions. A common misconception is a viewpoint or factoid which is often accepted as true in current times.

The ethics of AI are constantly debated. But does anyone ask the AI?

Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years? | Hacker News

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool - Richard Feynman. Cargo cult science is a pseudoscientific method of research that favors evidence that confirms an assumed hypothesis.

July 15, 1979 - President Carter addressed the nation about the ongoing energy crisis and about the mood of America as a result of the crisis. He expressed concern that American democracy was threatened by “crisis of confidence” in which cynicism toward government had eroded faith in the American way of life.

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the price of peace is rising") or the understanding of time in terms of money (e.g. "I spent time at work today").

But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.