This list over at Dynomight.net is maybe the lowest possible bar for being thankful but I still love it.
That hokey unfashionable techniques like practicing gratitude turn out to have strong scientific evidence behind them, and several countries happen to have a preexisting holiday that’s already, at least in theory, dedicated to this practice.
I missed the 50th anniversary of one of the pivotal books in my life. Slaughterhouse Five was published in 1969, just before I was born. I didn’t discover it until I was 16 years old. There was the time before I knew of Kurt Vonnegut and then there was the rest of my life. Today I can trace alot of my personal philosophy, cynism, and religion to Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse Five.
Warning Signs: President Trump May Violate Federal Law in Absolving Saudi Crown Prince | Just Security
As the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “we are aware of no President, not even such ruthless pragmatists as Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, who would have written a public statement like this without so much as a grace note about America’s abiding values and principles,” and that it was “startling to see a U.
I read this New Yorker article not because I care that much about Linux but because I became fascinated about the concept.
On Sunday, the benevolent dictator announced that he would be stepping down temporarily, to “get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately.” Torvalds, who is forty-eight and lives with his family outside Portland, Oregon, made clear that he wasn’t burned out. “I very much do want to continue to do this project that I’ve been working on for almost three decades,” he wrote in a post to the Linux-kernel mailing list.
This is an incredible piece of journalism by Ariane Lange at BuzzFeed:
Old letters, emails, and transcripts of AOL conversations between the women and Kricfalusi back up many of their claims. They each have witnesses to parts of their stories. Yet both women worried that they sounded “crazy.” For years, they chose to keep their experiences private, because coming forward didn’t seem like it was worth the risk. Rice feared retribution from his many supporters.
This episode of YANSS came along at a crucial time for me. I’ve been struggling with lesser traits.
I love the idea of the “out self” and how we align our internal compass to what we project outwardly. This isn’t just about politics. We all exhibit the most inexplicable tribalism that doesn’t have much meaning or benefit. I know I do. I pick a favorite computing platform. A preferred text editor.
These people are gone. The voices of reasoning that stood witness to our most terrible decisions as a country are rapidly vanishing. Now we, as a country, seem to have developed selective amnesia about where we come from.
The following videos on YouTube are from a series of lectures and discussions with several WWII veterans of moderate fame. I watched every minute attentively and without distraction. It was depressing and it was important at a time when our president thinks the threat of nuclear annihilation is a publicity event.
There’s a good deal of buzz around hypothetical details of the upcoming TouchID replacement.
I don’t have a strong opinion about the quality of the experience for unlocking my iPhone with my face. If it works, then great. If it doesn’t then I’d be disappointed.1 What really gets me excited is how this aligns with three other items that Apple has actually commented on: Siri voice control, A.R., and Machine Learning.
Sam Harris has an excellent and deeply intellectual podcast. This week’s episode features an interview with Professor Stuart Russell about the current and future state of A.I. and it’s potential impact on society.
I’ve taken a very specific stand against journalism paywalls in the past. It felt like an artificial barrier that restricted access to potentially vital information. It felt like a failure of foresight in an industry that refused to acknowledge the reality that they documented every day. I was wrong.
My tactic was to avoid pay sites. I avoided following and sharing links to paywalls. I wrongly refused even the steepest of discounted access.
