That's deep.

"In this view, deleveraging Wall Street means killing the goose. The next decade or so will answer..."

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:04:30 -0500

“In this view, deleveraging Wall Street means killing the goose. The next decade or so will answer the question of whether a Wall Street that’s built on a more stable foundation—and with smaller bonuses—can sustain the city the way the last one did. But as banks cast about for a new business model, the city’s economy will need to find new sources of growth (this is why the Bloomberg administration has aggressively courted the tech and science industries).”

- The End of Wall Street As They Knew It

"It’s really simple to explain: things are complex."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:12:52 -0500

“It’s really simple to explain: things are complex.”

- An economist somewhere

"The Net Generation is one I feel truly sorry for. Somebody born in 1980 would have been 17-20 during..."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:02:52 -0500

“The Net Generation is one I feel truly sorry for. Somebody born in 1980 would have been 17-20 during the boom, 20-22 during the bust and 9/11 and then endured the mess that has been the past decade. It’s a recipe for schizophrenia, and that’s what you get. You have triumphalist stories like those of the Web 2.0 superstars, as well emerging adults (people in their 20s) living in their parents basements, stuck in anomie and despair.”

- The Evolution of the American Dream

"This idea of Colour is a problem for communication between those of us who work in the world of..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:48:21 -0500

“This idea of Colour is a problem for communication between those of us who work in the world of computers, where Colour does not exist, and those of us who work in the law, where Colour exists and is important. Lawyers will ask computer scientists questions about how to determine the Colour of bits (like “How can Friend Computer prevent the Commie Mutant Traitors from making illegal copies of files, while still allowing loyal Troubleshooters to use disk-copying equipment?”), and computer scientists will find it difficult to say anything in response that the lawyers can comprehend - because a big part of computer science is about understanding that Colour does not exist. Someone who cares a lot about what Colour the bits are, and spends a lot of resources on trying to answer that question, is a dangerous idiot if not a Commie Mutant Traitor. In intellectual property law the Colour of bits exists and is of absolutely paramount importance. A computer scientist who won’t tell what Colour the bits are is being deliberately unhelpful, and a computer scientist who denies the very existence of Colour (as any conscientious computer scientist must eventually do) is a dangerous idiot and/or a Commie Mutant Traitor.”

- What Colour are your bits? - Ansuz - mskala’s home page

"We find that things we look at—even in a casual, off-hand manner—are the things we think about."

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:45:50 -0500

““We find that things we look at—even in a casual, off-hand manner—are the things we think about.””

- What To Fix

"There’s a fourth option: Start a company, build a great product, sell your product to your..."

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:45:17 -0500

“There’s a fourth option: Start a company, build a great product, sell your product to your customers, generate revenue, keep overhead low, grow slowly and carefully, take in more money than you spend, generate a profit, and decide your own fate on your own schedule.”

- Jason Fried

"No medium has ever survived the indifference of 25 year olds."

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:22:17 -0500

“No medium has ever survived the indifference of 25 year olds.”

- Institutions, Confidence, and the News Crisis « Clay Shirky

"Some liberals suspect that the conservative changes of mind since 2008 are opportunistic and..."

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:53:31 -0500

“

Some liberals suspect that the conservative changes of mind since 2008 are opportunistic and cynical. It’s true that cynicism is never entirely absent from politics: I won’t soon forget the lupine smile that played about the lips of the leader of one prominent conservative institution as he told me, “Our donors truly think the apocalypse has arrived.” Yet conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.

Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the aughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.

”

- When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

"An Apocryphal tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the..."

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:59:20 -0500

“An Apocryphal tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant. “Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,” gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company. Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?””

- The Economist

"The designs in these concept videos are free from real-world constraints — technical, logical,..."

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:42:53 -0400

“The designs in these concept videos are free from real-world constraints — technical, logical, fiscal. Dealing with constraints is what real design is all about. Institutional attention on the present day — on getting innovative industry-leading products out the door and creating consumer demand for them — requires relentless company-wide focus.”

- John Gruber

"I think we are reaching a point where as much as we need to ask “Will it fax?” we need to start..."

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:50:40 -0400

“I think we are reaching a point where as much as we need to ask “Will it fax?” we need to start asking “Will it function as a window?”. It’s starting to become a bit of a cliché but we have to admit that that’s because the approach not only sells amazingly with clients but works visually well 99% of the time.”

- Brand New

"Jobs’s “first go-round at Apple, the company used to pride itself on being the first,” says another..."

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:12:54 -0400

“Jobs’s “first go-round at Apple, the company used to pride itself on being the first,” says another former employee. “Like Newton. Remember Newton? It was the first PDA. It might not have worked, but it was the first. That’s not what they do now. Now they start with what makes an existing experience crappy. And that’s where Jobs is a genius.”

- Print - Steve Jobs and the Portal to the Invisible - Esquire

"Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people..."

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:47:40 -0400

“Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.”

- Are jobs obsolete? - CNN.com

"Mark Zuckerberg wants you to share. He doesn’t much care if you want to share. Sharing, in..."

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:26:50 -0400

“Mark Zuckerberg wants you to share. He doesn’t much care if you want to share. Sharing, in Zuckerberg’s view, has morphed from an affirmative act—that video was hilarious, I think I’ll Like it!—to something more like an unconscious state of being. I watched that video, and therefore it will be shared.”

- Slate

"But there’s a dark side behind the advance of productivity: Cheaper goods need cheaper workers"

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 22:46:52 -0400

“But there’s a dark side behind the advance of productivity: Cheaper goods need cheaper workers”

- The Greater Recession: America Suffers from a Crisis of Productivity - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic

"“During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add..."

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:57:54 -0400

“

“During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!”

Wald had data only on the planes that returned to Britain so the bullet holes that Wald saw were all in places where a plane could be hit and still survive. The planes that were shot down were probably hit in different places than those that returned so Wald recommended adding armor to the places where the surviving planes were lucky enough not to have been hit.

”

- Marginal Revolution

"Minsky, who has followers on both the left and right, argued: socialise the banking system, rip up..."

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:59:08 -0400

“Minsky, who has followers on both the left and right, argued: socialise the banking system, rip up regulation for the private sector non-financial economy so it can grow, and abolish welfare, making the state the employer of last resort but forcing the unemployed to work.”

- BBC News - What to do if the double dip is real?

"Minimum viable products are about learning what you need to build."

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:07:46 -0400

“Minimum viable products are about learning what you need to build.”

- Ryan Singer

"It’s a bad idea to raise taxes on working Americans in a weak economy and with interest rates so low..."

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:58:49 -0400

“It’s a bad idea to raise taxes on working Americans in a weak economy and with interest rates so low the gains from reducing the deficit from current spending are low. Our political system is so dysfunctional, however, that Republicans may fail to support effective tax cuts precisely because a Democratic President regards them as important for economic growth.”

- Marginal Revolution

"So let’s review: We are increasingly taking easy credit, routine work and government jobs and..."

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:07:28 -0400

“

So let’s review: We are increasingly taking easy credit, routine work and government jobs and entitlements away from the middle class — at a time when it takes more skill to get and hold a decent job, at a time when citizens have more access to media to organize, protest and challenge authority and at a time when this same merger of globalization and I.T. is creating huge wages for people with global skills (or for those who learn to game the system and get access to money, monopolies or government contracts by being close to those in power) — thus widening income gaps and fueling resentments even more.

Put it all together and you have today’s front-page news.

”

- A Theory of Everything (Sort Of)