“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural… Continue reading

A thoughtful analysis of why Merrick Garland is not the best investigative target. A good infographic can summarize an area of information better than almost anything else. Wait, erase that “almost;” I can’t think of any candidates for something better. Anyway, here’s a compilation of the best infographics (charts) of 2024. The most interesting insights,… Continue reading

Darrell Huff wrote How to Lie with Statistics way back in 1954. It’s not just about lying with statistics; it’s about completely bungling your interpretation of what you think you’ve noticed. Some people even write books based on that kind of bungling. I haven’t read Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant, but… Continue reading

You are not free. At the very least, you’re nowhere near as free as you like to think you are. What it even means to be free isn’t really all that clear. The things you are free to do depend to some extent on where you live. In today’s world, you live in a “nation”… Continue reading

An updated retelling of It’s a Wonderful Life. The best(?) version of Carol of the Bells. Even pseudo-political figures are described as “brands” now. But the question remains, at least for me, why media-based branding works so damned well on so many people. Interesting but incomplete and not fully considered notes about, of all things,… Continue reading

I live in a house, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of my deed has been signed by the clerk, the mortgage officer, and I signed it. My name is good for anything I choose to put it to. My house is where I live. In my house there… Continue reading

“Coal” in US politics is not a fossil fuel; it’s an ideology. Coal used to be a very important fuel that powered the engines of expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mining coal back then was difficult, dangerous, and poorly paid, and the people who did it took pride in their barely-compensated… Continue reading

This is a really interesting analysis of the business of AI models. It’s a pretty convincing argument that it’s a pretty bad business, for some very thoughtful reasons. Continue reading