On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. –Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” 1861 * Charles Darwin was an introvert. Granted, he spent alm…
How the world’s smelliest fruit could power your phone
The lithium-ion batteries in our devices degrade over time and come with a large environmental cost. Are there better ways to store and carry energy that are kinder to the planet?
Analogy and Strategy: U.S.-China Competition through an Edwardian Lens - American Affairs Journal
Competition between the United States and China frequently triggers Cold War comparisons. Ideologies are contrasted, alliances are touted, and geopolitical maneuvers are proposed. These sorts of comparisons are tempting. China is no longer Maoist in orientation, but still ostensibly Communist and still autocratic. The Cold War is also still within the living memory of most…
Data In The Dark: How Big Tech Secretly Secured $800 Million In Tax Breaks For Data Centers
Local governments are dangling hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to persuade companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft to build server farms in their backyards. But the deals are shrouded in secrecy and the average cost of $1 million per job raises questions about their value.
The membership payers do not pay to get news for themselves (they already know the news). … They require newsrooms to operate with values, not news. This slowly forces journalism to mutate into crowdfunded propaganda—postjournalism. … Classical journalism pretended to be objective; it strived to depict the world-as-it-is. Postjournalism is openly normative; it imposes the …
Film noir The Big Sleep was released 75 years ago. While its plot has been criticised as 'cryptic' and 'confusing', that can also be a virtue, argues Nicholas Barber.
We have been wondering if current methods for art generation could be used for practical applications. We tried CLIP with various "generators" and methods to see if Deep Learning can help with logo design.
The Rich Barton Playbook for winning markets through Data Content Loops Preface: This is part of a longer private memo analyzing Zillow and its recent shift towards Opendoor’s model. May publish rest of memo at some later point. But wanted to share first part, on Rich Barton and Zillow’s initial rise. Have had many recent … Continue reading Making Uncommon Knowledge Common →
When we first started travelling the world aboard jet-powered passenger aircraft you could almost be certain your plane would have engines in the rear.
John B. Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia Experiment and Reflections on the Welfare State | Lawrence W. Reed
The turning point in the "mouse utopia" project—a behavioral research experiment that provided mice all the food and water they needed and ensured no predator could gain access—occurred on Day 315. Some of the aberrations recorded may surprise you.
In Pānadurē in the British colony of Ceylon in 1871, a Buddhist monk and a Christian missionary debated each other in front of five thousand people over which religion was the more scientific.