a more or less weekly digest of juicy stuff

• what's the big idea? toward a pedagogy of idea power, the ability to program would allow a student to learn and use powerful forms of probabilistic ideas. it did not occur to me that anyone could possibly take my statement to mean that learning to program would in itself have consequences for how children learn and think. highly recommended (pdf)
• how much optimization is the right amount? recommended
• why most economists' predictions are wrong, the truth is that we live in an age not of extraordinary progress but of technological disappointment. and that's why the future is not what it used to be
• silent technical privilege
• the most important question of your life, at the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing to sustain
• is going for rapid growth always good? aren't startups so much more? i want the definition of startup back. to be used by anybody who is willing to take the risk to quit their corporate job and go out and try and build an innovative, disruptive, tech-enabled business that tries to change the way things work in the world
• "do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. all life is an experiment. the more experiments you make the better", ralph waldo emerson
• can-do vs. can't-do culture, the trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time. that's why they are innovative - until now, nobody ever figured out that they were good ideas
• the secret law of page harmony, a method to produce the perfect book
• stop sending emails for real time requests
• the problem is with the product, when your own employees don't use or support your product, the problem is with the product, not the employees
• the ultimate cheat sheet to starting and running your own business
• diamonds are bullshit, diamonds are not actually scarce, make a terrible investment, and are purely valuable as a status symbol. to put it delicately, they are bullshit
• a soft murmur, ambient sounds to wash away distraction
• nolunta's, great rock & folk band