Brian Marick

Software person (programming and testing). Involved in Agile from relatively early on. One of those grumpy old-timers who think it's lost its way.

I retired during Covid. As I’m “broke to harness,” I keep up what was part of my schtick: read widely and oddly, then explain outside-tech ideas to a mostly-techie audience. Instead of talks, my venues are a blog, a podcast (infrequent), and link-heavy Mastodon posts.

I like boosting other people’s posts. My leftish #uspol posts are so labeled.

podcast: https://podcast.oddly-influenced.dev/
blog: https://blog.oddly-influenced.dev/
github: https://github.com/marick
location: Champaign, Illinois ("downstate"), USA

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Last Notes

2026-03-21 00:45:57 GMT

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Darwin’s 8 years working on dissecting barnacles is my go-to example when I want to tell theorists to stop despising the nitty gritty. Darwin weaved the theoretical together with the observational.
Can’t say as it’s ever swayed anyone.
https://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Richmond_cirripedia.html
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/darwins-barnacles/

2026-01-23 15:27:03 GMT

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A veteran magazine editor I worked with (~30 years ago) told me the justification for pull quotes was the belief that one way people decide what articles to read is by flipping through the magazine until something catches their attention. Pull quotes were intended to be one of those things.
That’s why she (rather than the author, or me, the interface-with-the-author editor) chose them: we would be bad judges of catchiness.
(It was a paper magazine.)

2026-01-14 00:47:24 GMT

Sometimes it’s the little things, the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I hope.
“I was going to school!” the 16-year-old citizen protested.
They choke-hold-ed him, then:
“Agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center.”
They took his phone and sold it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens
“At long last, have you no decency?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6Yo3A7CC8

2025-12-29 18:04:18 GMT

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I’m intrigued. Two questions:
1. Is there a free trial period?
2. Is cancelling as easy as signing up?
I’m always up for new experiences, but I’ve been burned before.

2025-12-27 02:35:56 GMT

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Crap, this wasn’t supposed to be a response to you but a response to my https://mstdn.social/@marick/115789169818897537

2025-12-27 02:34:52 GMT

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¹ I know Kuhn’s description of “paradigm” is confused. But I think blending the three main senses Margaret Masterman identified² in /Structure of Scientific Revolutions/with Lakatos’ notion of the “hard core” of a research programme is solid. Toying with a blog post focused on that topic, because I think people need to interrogate “disruptors” as to their “extended hard core”.
² In /Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge/, which is apparently open access: https://user.fm/files/v2-daa3ae64ecf3f61492a0a047a78de3d0/Imre%20Lakatos%2C%20Alan%20Musgrave%20-%20Criticism%20and%20the%20Growth%20of%20Knowledge.pdf
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/789/194/090/695/309/original/6a89386338f3f12e.png
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/789/194/159/516/468/original/38639f0cec34ba21.png
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/789/194/216/765/466/original/0d0d9fc52082c9dd.png
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/789/194/276/632/526/original/eb08ec9380ee0533.png

2025-11-25 17:24:12 GMT

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* Economic precarity is when your expenses are close enough to your income + savings that a major event will lead to bankruptcy/default. That in turn cuts you off from the credit market, anything that involves a credit check (like most rental housing), etc. High chance of permanent “economic inertness.” (2/7)

2025-11-25 17:24:12 GMT

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* When thinking about precarity, you don’t get to say that cars are way better than they were in 1963. The question is: how much does it cost to get to work? Or: what does the minimal car cost? It’s more expensive than in 1963.
* Minimal housing is way more expensive. Healthcare ditto.
* At one time, the poverty line was the precarity line. Unfortunately, it was set to 3X the cost of food (because that was the easiest to measure). (3/7)

2025-11-25 17:24:12 GMT

An interesting analysis of hidden increase in economic precarity in the US. Results are extreme enough that I’d like to see the analysis repeated for Scandinavian countries or Germany. https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie
Key points: (1/7)

2025-11-23 14:35:56 GMT

What I don’t understand is how someone can write a biography (granted: only a couple of printed pages) of Charles Darwin without mentioning the single most inspirational thing he ever wrote:
“But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.”
Gives the rest of us hope.

2025-11-19 15:22:36 GMT

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I’m a fan of citizen’s assemblies as done in, for example, Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Assembly_(Ireland) It’s a formal structure for involving citizens in legislative work.

2025-11-08 19:30:51 GMT

Well, looks like my son’s health insurance will nearly double.
Also, it’s likely that cuts to research will mean he won’t have a job come January.
Thanks, Republicans, for your devotion to the working class!
(While his job is funded by research programs on commercially-important fish and invasive species in the Mississippi River, his day-to-day work is mostly on a boat, out in the river, catching critters.)

2025-11-07 20:57:53 GMT

I’m looking for a particular mathematical satire. I think it might have been taking on those yellow Springer books. The nub of the joke was
1) a mostly textual paragraph or so either defining or proving something simple
2) Some transition like “from this it easily follows that:”
3. The rest of the page is solid equations, similar to the image (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_theory)
Anyone got a source for this? Thanks.
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/510/415/993/521/454/original/b9cffe3cb1f70ac1.png

2025-10-09 15:39:54 GMT

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Must say that the background scenery makes a lot of those pictures not ugly.
She and @npub1y4d…j3r5 should do a joint project. Some sort of compare-and-contrast thing?

2025-10-08 13:15:09 GMT

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Bruce Sterling’s /Holy Fire/ is on this topic:
"Set in a world of steadily increasing longevity (gerontocracy), a newly rejuvenated American woman drifts through the marginalised subculture of young European artists while dealing with the implications of posthumanism.”
"Holy Fire is the story of an old woman who has gained a second youth […] and who has an ontological transformation as a result.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Fire_(novel)

2025-10-05 23:09:28 GMT

I’m one of those who think metaphors do shape thought. Which made me think of the difference between “adopted” and “domesticated.”
“We’ve been instructed to adopt Scrum” vs. “We’ve been instructed to *domesticate* Scrum”.
“We’ll be adopting AI across the enterprise” vs. “We’ll domesticate AI across the enterprise.”
When you adopt something, you accept it as it is. It has the control. When you domesticate it, you change it, as wolves were changed into dogs. You have the control.

2025-09-26 14:03:09 GMT

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“What happens in practice ought to be possible in theory.” – Elinor Ostrom (paraphrase, referring to the theory of the Tragedy of the Commons)

2025-08-21 14:31:52 GMT

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Aw man, I hope you didn’t just permanently associate one of my favorite Stones songs to an image of Trump.

2025-08-11 13:25:42 GMT

Doesn’t it seem that, if the “tragedy of the commons” were true, Patreon couldn’t exist?
Ostrom’s Law¹ goes something like “if it happens in practice, it ought to be possible in theory.” (1/2)

2025-07-20 23:32:07 GMT

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We assholes thank you. I can take being called an “asshole,” but calling me a Republican – them’s fightin’ words.

2025-07-20 23:16:09 GMT

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Well, I’m kind of an asshole, and I don’t want to be lumped in with Republicans. I have my standards, sir.

2025-07-20 13:41:00 GMT

82-year old Chilean, granted permanent legal residency (political asylum) by the US in 1987.
Lost his “green card”. While getting it replaced, ICE snatched him. Family couldn’t find out where he was, thought he was dead. Then they were told he was dead (anonymously? - unclear)
Instead, he had been deported. Not to Chile. To Guatemala. He’s now in a hospital there.
His fate depends on the whims of the people who sent him, people immune to the law.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-deported-grandpa-green-card-b2792290.html

2025-07-07 22:59:55 GMT

cc// @npub1hr7…jxyc
⬇️ https://mstdn.social/@marick/114814403061622768

2025-07-07 13:58:01 GMT

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I wonder how many techbro billionaires view Gibson’s /Peripheral/ series as depicting a desirable (worse: inevitable) future, with them as the “klepts”, resource constraints solved by mass depopulation, etc.
https://thecinemaholic.com/what-is-the-klept-in-the-peripheral-explained/

2025-07-07 13:53:56 GMT

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Was reminded of William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” (1981) recently, which looks at the connections between the Art Deco / Futurist science fiction aesthetic of the ‘30s and fascist aesthetics (and content).
What’s interesting is how opinion-shapers can latch onto even robustly anti-fascist science fiction (like Iain M. Banks “Culture” novels) as inspiration for fascist-inflected visions of the future.

2025-07-06 12:20:09 GMT

Representative Derrick van Orden voted for a huge transfer of wealth from the rural poor.
He publicly responded to a list of consequences with the word “YES!”
He wrote a letter to his state’s (Democratic) governor asking that the state government find the money somewhere to save rural hospitals.
He is in a barely Republican district (R +3).
People are saying, “Boy, come the next elections, he’ll be in trouble.”
No.
1/
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/806/253/716/443/846/original/e5029627dcbd0ea6.png

2025-07-02 23:10:08 GMT

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Do people actually do that? Do they actually believe any employee will be more forthcoming? (I would hunker down and try to muzzle my reactions.)

2025-06-30 17:29:50 GMT

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So large-scale property damage suggests a real rupture in the social order in a way somehow more visceral. It’s not the damage to the property that amps up the feeling of violence, it’s the damage to society. As a social species that depends on society for our survival, that really hits home. (Violence of that sort *feels* like danger to us, up close and personal.)
Or so is my theory, anyway. So, my answer to your question is neither yes or no, but: mu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)#Non-dualistic_meaning (8/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:50 GMT

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If al Queda had killed 2,977 people in individual shootings, spread around the country, on 9/11, I venture that people would have been less shocked than by the image of those towers falling. After all, people die all the time, about 130 every day in the US from guns alone. People are ephemeral, but large-scale property is supposed to be *permanent*. (7/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:49 GMT

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If it was your *knee* I smashed with a hammer (to make it unusable), pretty much everyone would say that was violence.
A bunch of people acting in concert to smash a store window during a riot seems violent not just because of the act itself, but because of the number of people doing it and the general lack of order (which is scary in itself and also brings the possibility of escalation to mind). (3/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:49 GMT

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If I took my own computer disk drive into my driveway and smashed it with a hammer (to make unusable) few people would say that’s violent. It’s my own property, after all. But it’s more violent than ripping up a sheet of paper because it’s more dramatic.
If it was *your* disk drive I smashed (to make it unusable), that would be more violent. (More people would say so.) (2/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:49 GMT

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Also, people are weird. They often care more about property than strangers, in a way reminiscent of how people will munch popcorn, unfazed, as a movie villain kicks an onscreen victim, but show a villain kicking a *puppy* and you’ll get a reaction. (6/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:49 GMT

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Implicit, I think, in your question is “are people using the word ‘violence’ to describe property damage acting ideologically? In order to have their audience feel the connotations of extreme violence (mass murder, say) for an act that isn’t that extreme?” Sure, probably, though it’s entrenched enough that most people using it to criticize property damage are just saying it out of habit. (5/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:49 GMT

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If the window belonged to a mom-and-pop bodega the act would affect me more – would seem more violent – than if it were the window of a Wells Fargo branch bank. Why? Because I identify with the owners – they’re more like me – whereas Wells Fargo has no actual people who suffer any particular harm. (4/8)

2025-06-30 17:29:48 GMT

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Like all concepts, “violence” isn’t defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. (References available on request.) Instead, there are more or less good matches, defined by social consensus.
If I’d written up some notes about your question on a sheet of paper, composed these posts, and then ripped up the paper, only someone being deliberately pedantic would say that was a violent act.
If I ripped up your love letter to me, that seems more violent. (1/8)

2025-06-28 12:19:50 GMT

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“psychological safety”, because:
1. Shouldn’t we be focused on the jerks, rather than on the people being jerked around?
2. Jerks *like* causing a lack-of-psychological-safety. The term encourages them to keep “owning” others.
Compare “team members should have psychological safety” to “a team shouldn’t have jerks in it”.

2025-06-27 21:14:42 GMT

There’s a possibly apocryphal story about the computer scientist Mary Shaw, who took advantage of how old-timey computers produced static on the AM radio band, and the static varied according to which and how many core memories were active (or something like that). So Shaw used a portable AM radio to listen to the varying static produced by her (non-timeshared) program and let it help her debugging.
Can’t find a link. Any pointers?

2025-06-26 18:12:19 GMT

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I’m with you, though there’s plenty of room for non-silly non-commies.
Also, the manifesto should emphasize that it’s only that society *encourage* silly dance parties – you don’t have to personally *attend*. <shudders>

2025-06-25 21:55:24 GMT

No way my dad would be allowed in the USA today. Spoke little English. Poor. Didn’t have a high school diploma. Came from a recent enemy nation (Germany).
Died a wealthy man. Because he worked hard and well, lived frugally, ran his business conservatively, and played right by the people he built houses for.
It’s hard for me to resent immigrants. https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cak4klqoj3bqgk5rj6b4f5do/post/3lsha73xfn22f

2025-06-21 23:04:15 GMT

Regarding the “ My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts” article¹. No strong opinion about the article, but I was struck by it as an example of a certain rhetorical style that seems very effective with programmers. Some elements:
* What I think of as “pugnacious pragmatism.” “Other people are concerned with airy-fairy things; I care about getting the job done.” I confess I’ve used this myself. (1/6)

2025-06-01 23:45:26 GMT

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I thought *I* was a nerd.

2025-06-01 14:37:12 GMT

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At any given moment, half of the moon is dark.* Is there textual evidence that Pink Floyd was speaking of meeting on a permanent dark side, or just somewhere on the side currently dark?
* I’m ignoring the effect of light reflected from the earth. It’s a *metaphor*, dammit, not an astrophysics lecture.

2025-05-23 13:14:58 GMT

In /Danse Macabre/, Stephen King wrote "I recognize terror as the finest emotion [...], and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud."
This sort of applies to the Authors of our Timeline. They're traditionally more ironists than horror writers, but in the past decade, they've gotten *way* more obvious – the equivalent of going for the gross out. (1/2)

2025-05-06 21:50:52 GMT

The mechanics of how the Trump administration is strangling biomedical research in a way that keeps the story quiet:
1. Don't actually cancel grants or tell researchers to stop work.
2. But, at the end of the month, don't pay for work done.
3. Repeat.
4. Universities can't say grants have been canceled because technically they haven't.
5. Universities are incentivized to keep negotiating (and keep quiet) in hopes the NIH will change its mind.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/conspiracy-of-silence-how-trump-is-covertly-strangling-billions-in-disease-cure-research/sharetoken/54ea6c5a-61c7-4c4c-a19a-96017fef87b5 (not paywalled)

2025-04-17 22:27:38 GMT

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Forwarded to my son, who graduated from New College pre-DeSantis and is Not Pleased About What Happened. May it give him a bit of schadenfreude.

2025-04-16 22:25:08 GMT

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Funnily enough, I was just typing up notes on why governments should not be run like households. The different relationship to money has much to do with it:
"[G]overnments are not like households, and there are a number of reasons why. The first and most obvious one is that the government owns its own bank. Not only does it own its own bank, that bank is actually the creator of all the money in the economy." – Richard Murphy (https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/01/23/the-curse-of-the-household-analogy/)

2025-03-30 23:31:44 GMT

There was a book I read ~20 years ago that was about the early history of the Oxford English Dictionary. It was partly about all the people who contributed definitions. One very productive person was in an insane asylum.
I'd swear "harmless drudges" was in the title, but I can't find it.
I always thought that you could do worse in life than being one of those harmless drudges who just help other readers.
Links?

2025-03-27 18:24:08 GMT

Here's a long article about the steps that led to deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-alien-enemies-act-deportations-were-orchestrated-to-keep-the-courts-unaware
What's striking is how reporters, without the authority of the legal system, can find out what happened, but an actual judge is still being successfully stonewalled, not being told the (presumably) same details despite a series of demands for information (but, notably, no penalties for misbehavior.)
Justice deferred is justice denied, your honor.

2025-03-18 23:05:21 GMT

Something I think I've noticed. Both tech leaders and homeless people talk way more loudly than is necessary, with that coded-male attitude of aggressive self-confidence, and launch into rants at the slightest hint of contradiction.
Also they are not overly concerned with the negative externalities of their actions.
I'm not saying that startups should make homeless people their decision makers, but they might demand fewer stock options.

2025-03-03 13:53:51 GMT

For me, these two essays echo in interesting ways:
"Ten Observations about Tokyo": https://www.persuasion.community/p/10-observations-about-tokyo (via @npub144u…adjw, @npub153l…caex)
"A critical theory of (or for) America": https://josephheath.substack.com/p/a-critical-theory-of-or-for-america (via @npub1pz3…dwqw, [@swart](https://mastodon.cloud/@swart ))

2025-02-21 22:59:48 GMT

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Actually, that's starting to be a minor obsession of mine: models for capturing the TRVTH of the matter vs. models (designs) for taking the next few steps to see what happens.

2025-02-21 01:02:06 GMT

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A book that powerfully influenced me was Freeman Dyson's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_in_All_Directions, which presented the attitude, "there is always a next thing to understand. Isn't that *great*?”
Contrasted to the attitude that "we now understand all that's important. The rest is bookkeeping."

2025-02-21 00:59:03 GMT

Riding home, I reflected on our (programmer) obsession with simplicity. It occurred to me that I dislike simple models put forth as capturing some essence of a complex problem. But! There are a few people (Ward Cunningham, most notably) who put forward simple models as something you can *use* to better understand the complex reality.
One approach says "we're done here, except for boring details." The other: "Here. Use this to gain experience that will help you move forward."

2025-02-03 17:40:46 GMT

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Got through to Durbin, whose spokeswoman said she couldn't speak for the Senator. (I refrained from "But that's your job!") Duckworth had an "unusual call volume" message, so I commented via her form.
In addition to grinding the Senate to a halt procedurally, and no to any nomination, I pointed them to the Brooks Brothers riot as the optics their constituents need. Seeing a disabled veteran senator dragged out of her wheelchair by security would make for a good symbol.

2025-01-16 00:00:07 GMT

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I'm afraid I don't understand your message.

2025-01-13 16:23:47 GMT

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This has been my 2025 contribution to public health. Please forward to RFK Jr., who is in the "train it naturally" camp. Come to think of it, he's pretty damn fit for an old geezer – way more than me – and I've seen shirtless pictures of him but I can't recall ever seeing pictures of his legs. Hmm... (4/4)

2025-01-13 16:23:46 GMT

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So he started dressing in baggie clothes that obscured his body. Except he cut the legs of his sweat pants short so that the only muscles his fellow gym rats could see were his calves. Wounded pride drove him to work the calves to get them in proportion to the rest of his body. (2/4)

2025-01-13 16:23:46 GMT

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The immune system *is* trained by challenging it, just as muscles are. (Very different mechanism, though.) However, an unvaccinated person is like someone who never trains their calves. When they suddenly have to use them (measles, polio, covid), they'll pay the price.
Do they want to be like that fool at the gym who spends all his time on bench presses and curls and has pipestem legs and skinny forearms? (3/4)

2025-01-13 16:23:46 GMT

There are number of people who think they can train their immune system (e.g. by drinking raw milk or "raw water") to be tough enough to kick the ass of any infectious agent. I bet a good number of them compare it to building muscles. Maybe leaning into the comparison would help.
I remember reading that Arnold Schwartzenegger, like lots of people, early on overdid the upper body and tended to skimp on leg day, so was not well proportioned. His calves were particularly bad. (1/4)

2024-12-30 01:21:43 GMT

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A quick search finds that capital gains tax rates in the US haven't changed much over time. Peak looks to have been 35%, way less than income taxes. Declined after Reagan (now 20%), but nothing like the decline in the higher levels of income tax.
As a retired dude with money in the stock market, my finances wouldn't have been wildly different in 1968. (26.9%)
It remains true: once you have enough money, it multiplies by itself.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-capital-gains-rates

2024-12-30 01:15:18 GMT

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It would be hard. Even in the glory days, the rich could get their compensation in non-taxable forms (like car allowances). It's interesting: a lot of the discussion about the virtues of the past centers on CEOs, how they made X times the median employee vs. Y times now. But I wonder if that was because CEOs were more clearly employees then, vs. their current status as godlike.
What were the effective taxes on the passive investment class?

2024-12-29 00:01:16 GMT

"Street medicine providers and homeless outreach workers who travel into Las Vegas’s drainage tunnels have noticed an uptick in the number of people living underground."¹
Any other Olds noticing how much the vibe today resembles the dystopian "New Wave" science fiction of the late '60s and '70s?² Rather more than the later Cyberpunk genre.
¹ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-living-in-las-vegass-tunnels-urged-to-get-medical-treatment/
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_(science_fiction)

2024-12-17 00:36:00 GMT

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In my experience, it seems to be deployed as a meme ("the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must") less to justify the actions of the strong, more to persuade the weak that resistance is pointless.

2024-12-16 00:14:14 GMT

This youtube video on data visualization is pretty good. I've read Tufte, etc., but I still learned some new things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwtwOqdlY5E

2024-12-13 14:14:04 GMT

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In the Patreon extra for the genocide episodes, one of the hosts recounts asking a proud Greek for pronunciation of ancient Greek names. The Greek knows of the podcast, so he says, "Ah, doing an episode on democracy, right?" "Genocide. ... You don't get to dine out on this democracy shit forever. You invented all this sick stuff as well."

2024-12-13 01:08:32 GMT

I've become fond of the "Origin Story" podcast, where they trace the historical evolution of concepts. Their episodes on genocide¹ taught me some new things, made me think it's maybe, on net, not a helpful concept. Listening to their episode on anti-vaxxers² now. Their understanding of science in general is a little shallow (vulgar Popperism), but it's a good episode nevertheless.
¹ https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/genocide-part-one-the-ultimate-crime/id1624704966?i=1000657900163, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/genocide-part-two-the-search-for-justice/id1624704966?i=1000658623603
² https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/anti-vaxxers-herd-impunity/id1624704966?i=1000659398279

2024-11-27 22:34:33 GMT

Remember Covid? Remember how Covid demonstrated the fragility of supply chains? How maximizing throughput/efficiency pessimizes resilience and fault tolerance?
Did that lesson stick *at all*? Anywhere?
(Would legit like pointers to businesses/industries/governments who changed their practices.)

2024-11-19 22:35:32 GMT

Which countries have created regulations/laws mandating better ventilation in public spaces?

2024-11-17 23:27:02 GMT

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I occasionally feel the impulse to read https://worldcomp-proceedings.com/proc/p2013/ICA7331.pdf and then implement 7-valued logic as they did. For fun.

2024-11-16 23:41:27 GMT

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I wonder if there’s a connection. Buddhism and Jainism were, I think, intersecting religious/philosophical traditions.

2024-11-16 01:40:09 GMT

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You may be interested in Jainish seven-valued logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic. I think this podcast episode is the one that described it well: https://historyofphilosophy.net/jain-standpoints
(The wikipedia article isn’t great. What I’ve gathered about Jain logic is that it considers context. So, rather than `x is true`, you get `x is true under these conditions`. I think that’s neat.)

2024-11-13 13:33:34 GMT

‘The "Department of Government Efficiency" has co-chairmen.’
‘You couldn't make it up.’
– Jon Beeson

2024-10-30 15:09:24 GMT

I recommend this thread. Lots of anecdotes from oldsters about their experiences and their parents’ experiences. https://beige.party/@Lana/113392065393070274

2024-10-28 15:30:22 GMT

I feel this. My dad could walk down the streets of our suburban neighborhood and point at houses he, personally, had built. (He had help, yes, but he worked alone as much as he could.) 50-60 years later, I can point out the same houses. https://toot.cafe/@baldur/113384692542639962

2024-10-22 12:15:28 GMT

A historian takes on economists:
“This year the Riksbank awarded its [Economics Nobel] prize to a treatment of early modern institutions so selective it functions as a bedtime story for capitalists. The good institutions produced prosperity. The bad ones produced misery.
"But good and bad institutions have always been paired. It is not so easy to tease them apart into natural experiments, and just as useful to see how they’re connected.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1e2584d6-65ef-46de-bfb2-28811be65600

2024-09-29 17:26:33 GMT

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I’ve also been dipping back into Simak, most recently /The Werewolf Principle/.
Have read a fair amount of pre-1985 Wolfe over the past few years: New Sun, Fifth Head, a number of the stories.
/Star Beast/, which held up OK, have been wondering about rereading /Double Star/.
Was fond of New Wave back in the day, but recently bounced off Dann, /The Man Who Melted/.
Various Bradbury stories, though does he count?

2024-09-24 23:00:54 GMT

A Republican candidate for the US Senate from Ohio said:
“there’s a lot of suburban women […] that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ … OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
Oh! Oh! I know! Post-50 women have daughters and granddaughters. I know one.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-moreno-womens-focus-abortion-rights-little-crazy-rcna172405

2024-08-20 22:20:45 GMT

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Honest! This actually happened.
You make the call:
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/996/688/592/896/542/original/6130060c9774c9c5.png

2024-08-20 22:19:42 GMT

Hmm. Someone just walked past me and asked, “Aren’t you the guy who played <garbled>?”
Me: huh?
Him: You know, <garbled>? The guy in “Breaking Bad”?
I’m going to assume he meant Walter White, in his later, cool phase. But he probably meant Hank.
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/996/671/335/725/506/original/305762ef95586442.png
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/996/671/718/707/913/original/92e0559630078e8e.png

2024-08-19 23:17:46 GMT

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I have no idea who those people are.

2024-08-19 22:55:11 GMT

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A Real Man knows enough vi to get along on a system that doesn’t have emacs installed.

2024-08-19 12:36:14 GMT

It’s funny that the Republicans are freaking out over who’s a Real Man. Growing up in Springfield Illinois in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was obvious the defining characteristic of a real man is: good with tools. As I’m not good with physical tools, I have some insecurity about that. I displaced that into being good with programmer tools.
And an important component of being good with tools is improvisation, being good with balky, uncooperative tools. That is:
Real Men Use Emacs.

2024-08-16 22:12:26 GMT

I grew up in Springfield, Illinois, USA, lived there until I left for college. I never learned there was a famous race riot there.
‘“People are starting to take notice because it is an untold story," Teresa Haley, former president of the Springfield NAACP, said of the riot. “It’s a deep, dark, dirty secret that Springfield is scared of.”.’
Good for Biden, declaring a national monument.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/biden-designate-1908-springfield-race-riot-site-national-112846984

2024-08-09 14:20:11 GMT

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In the early days of XP, I remember it being said that pairing for a full day was too tiring. I’m pretty sure that @npub1c5m…t7d3 has said that of the Chrysler C3 project.
But you can do any intense thing longer. Just drain it of content, up the amount of empty ritual.

2024-07-18 02:28:53 GMT

Ever wonder how the world would be different if anyone in the Grateful Dead could actually sing?
No? It’s just me?
Carry on, then.

2024-06-17 12:33:17 GMT

Everyone makes a big deal about the people who designed and built Voyager 1 because it was supposed to last 4 years and it’s lasted for 47, but all that means is they spent money on reliability that could have been returned to shareholders in a stock buyback.