I have never given Jeff Bezos a moment’s thought before this week. I am always interested in extraordinary achievement and often admire it. I am fascinated by what extraordinary achievers understand, and how evolved they are as people. Looking at him in his astronaut costume, and his cowboy hat, and…
For those asking from around the world how Britain has gotten into this mess: The Conservative Party has always been obsessed with Europe This caused divides making the party hard to manage Back in 2015 then Prime Minister David Cameron had an idea He promised a referendum on the UK’s membership of…
Someday aliens are going to land their saucers in a field somewhere in New Jersey and everything is going to go just fine right up until we try to explain our calendar to them “yeah we divide our year into a number of sub units called ‘months’ made up a number of days, and they’re not all the same l…
Americans are paying a quarter million dollars more for healthcare over a lifetime compared to the most expensive socialized system on earth. Half a million dollars more than countries like Canada and the UK. One in three American families had to forgo needed healthcare due to the cost last year. Al…
Amdahl’s Law The speedup gained from running a program on a parallel computer is greatly limited by the fraction of that program that can’t be parallelized. Augustine’s Second Law of Socioscience For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction. Brooks…
The Borremose Man died in the 7th century BCE. He was bludgeoned to death from the back of his head and had a rope with a slip knot tied around his neck. It is believed that he was a human sacrifice. He was found in the Borremose peat bog in Himmerland, Denmark in 1946. Shortly after, two other, le…
If the world were a village of 1000 people: 584 would be Asians 123 would be Africans 95 would be East and West Europeans 84 Latin Americans 55 Soviets (still including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, etc.) 52 North Americans 6 Australians and New Zealanders The people of the vill…
My university just announced that it’s dumping Blackboard, and there was much rejoicing. Why is Blackboard universally reviled? There’s a standard story of why “enterprise software” sucks. If you’ll bear with me, I think this is best appreciated by talking about… baby clothes! There are two types of…
Ayn Rand is to philosophy what Twilight is to horror fiction - being that the only people who like it have absolutely no experience of what the subject is really about and as a result have nothing to compare it to. Her influence only extends to the general public and she is pretty much ignored by ac…
Aquarius (Jan 23 - Feb 22) You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. You make the same mistakes repeatedly because you are stupid. Everyone thinks you are a fucking jerk. Pisces (Feb 23 - Mar 22) You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads.…
This is how I use the good parts of @awscloud, while filtering out all the distracting hype. My background: I’ve been using AWS for 11 years — since before there was a console. I also worked inside AWS for 8 years (Nov 2010 - Feb 2019). My experience is in web- sites/apps/services. From tiny persona…
The Alt-History YouTuber Whatifalthist decided to dip his toes into real history again and made a YouTube video in which he supposedly breaks down his top 11 historical misconceptions, in which he says a section entitled “7: All of Pre-Colonial Africa.” As a massive enthusiast of pre-colonial Subsah…
Here’s some Buzzword Bingo based on these words by the same company. accelerate accountability action items actionable aggregator agile algorithm alignment analytics at the end of the day B2B/B2C bandwidth below the fold best of breed best practices beta big data bleeding edge blueprint boil the oc…
2217 Time Zone V (EST) 7 Nov. 1970–NTC-- “Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10:17 P. M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must. The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty–five ye…
Rabies. It’s exceptionally common, but people just don’t run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats. Let me paint you a picture. You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the “rage” stages of in…
Back in the good old days – the “Golden Era” of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called “Real Men” and “Quiche Eaters” in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that…
THE influence of Pisces upon the Sun does not make specially for strength, except in the last decanate, which is ruled by Mars. Otherwise, there is a certain softness and placidity which diminish the vitality. The Pisces type is extraordinarily psychic, more so than is the case with that of any othe…