#history
US elites (cultural, government, and security) conspired to make American modernism a successful counterpoint to the socialist realism of the Soviet Union.
An interesting conversation from 1989 from a mailing list, discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This is the best book about Steve Jobs, because it’s built with direct quotes from Steve (interviews, emails, notes-to-self). While most meander around the details of his personal life or glorify him as a tech prophet, this book homes in on some practical takeaways from his success and worldview. It demystifies him.
In the Soviet Union, even vacation was regulated by the Party.
Important quote from George Box. I came across it in the context of AI, but it applies to all science. We’re just building models for understanding nature, which is probably too complex to truly understand, but some of our models are useful nonetheless.
Today is the fifty-third anniversary of the most thrilling jazz album I’ve ever heard. Bitches Brew by Miles Davis.
Monica Macias was just seven when her African despot father left her under the guardianship of Kim Il-sung. A fascinating story about growing up in North Korea.
Not your average wordcel, it sounds like Twain was somewhat of a techno-optimist, friend of Tesla, and even tech investor.
Alex Murrell laments and explains how all types of design have regressed to the mean.
This book seeks to answer one question: what makes nations rich? The answers are almost entire consistent with status quo economics from the 1950s:
When predicting the impact of AI on society, we too often reach for very recent technological shifts. I think moments like the Industrial Revolution and the invention of electricity are more relevant. When electricity came around, it wasn’t immediately seen as a necessity. Of course nobody wants to live in a world without electricity today.
Most non-fiction books focus on a very specific topic, and when you read them, a small corner of the patchwork than makes up your worldview evolves. It is probably a good thing that most books are specific in topic because most people are unqualified to make broad, sweeping, opinionated, and strongly held assertions about the world.
Not a lot of money, but it’s important to understand when considering future banking crises. Keeping the system together is always going to be worth it, but it’s especially encouraging to note that the taxpayer was made whole.
This is increasingly the issue of my generation in many countries and yet we don’t seem to be solving the supply/demand imbalance in housing almost anywhere.
As a lover of alternate history fiction, this is a fun project. What would English be like if it hadn’t borrowed so much from other languages?
The premise of this book is that every information technology (e.g., Oral language, hand-writing, books, newspapers, smoke signals, radio, TV, blogs, Twitter, Instagram) creates a medium (e.g., television, literature, social media) and every medium is biased towards different types of content. Therefore, the proliferation of a technology and it’s medium(s) inevitably leads to the proliferation of the type of content that this technology favours. So, as television sets became more popular, television (the medium) proliferated, and so did the kind of content that television is biased towards.
An interesting series of studies that show that people don’t know how public opinion has shifted over time.
Interesting commentary on the recent paper exploring “self-healing” Roman concrete.
In the 90s, Bill Gates predicted that the web would disrupt Windows. He imagined it would be through Java, which was incorrect, but the overall trend that Java was a part of was absolutely the downfall of the Windows cash cow.
This article descends into dense negativity, but contains the most compelling explanation for why buildings are so ugly these days.
Essential reading on how philosophical studies lept into the realworld to facilitate the invention of computing.
Great letter from Elvis, to Nixon, offering his aid (ratting on hippies) as Federal Agent at Large.
Lipsyncing is a common practice now, but it caused Milli Vanilli to have their Grammy revoked not too long ago.