Web Roundup: Links for October
They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth… Such are the autumn people.
–Ray Bradbury
It’s October, which implies more links. Last month’s links are here.
I’ve corresponded with the smartest man alive, sort of — Terrence Tao answered one of my questions. (I am unreasonably proud of this.)
Peter Thiel on the great stagnation: “Is the iPhone 5, where you move the phone jack from the top of the phone to the bottom of the phone really something that should make us scream Hallelujah?”
How René Girard influenced Peter Thiel. (As you might have noticed, I’ve been caught up the Peter Thiel hype machine, because the dude is everywhere promoting his new book, Zero to One.)
Speaking of Zero to One and the hype machine, I read the book. Gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I’m not going to get around to a full review, but I get the general impression that I’m a little less hot on it than most people. I disagree with Thiel on a couple of points, most strenuously religion and the general applicability (and wonderful aesthetic) of a probabilistic world-view. I’m also not convinced Thiel is a genius or a particularly brilliant businessman, given that he set billions of dollars worth of investors’ money on fire. Terrence Tao is a genius. Everyone else is sorta smart.
Speaking of investors’ money: The best introduction to investing that I’ve yet read. I’ve been on an investing and finance kick lately while working on content for Top Financial Advisor, and I agree with close to 100% of it.
How to design killer graphics for your blog posts. I had no idea that there is a sort of “open source” photography movement, but in hindsight it seems obvious that something like this would exist.
I’ve written before about spaced repetition, along with Anki tips and lessons learned after 10,000 flash cards. The author of a new app, CleverDeck, contacted me and, since I’m excited about all things spaced repetition, I promised to share it with all of you. It’s specifically targeted at language learning (one of the world’s most popular goals, by the way). If you have an iPhone, check it out.
“When the KGB tried to blackmail Indonesian President Achmed Sukarno with videotapes of the president having sex with Russian women disguised as flight attendants, Sukarno wasn’t upset. He was pleased. He even asked for more copies of the video to show back in his country.” Dude has my vote. (via SlateStarCodex)
Speaking of which, I’m looking forward to the day when Mike Rowe does an episode of “Dirty Jobs” on being president. Thomas Jefferson: “To myself, personally, it brings nothing but unceasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.” (I still kinda want to be president, though. It might even make me live longer.)
“In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said that they would feel ‘displeased’ if their son or daughter married outside their political party. By 2010, those numbers had reached 49 percent and 33 percent.” Bet they hate atheists even more, though. (via Tyler Cowen)
John Bogle famously quipped, “In investing, you get what you don’t pay for.” I have a new heuristic: everything really expensive is a scam. In investing and in life generally, you get what you don’t pay for. On a totally, definitely-not-at-all-connected note, those taking MITx’s free mechanics course learned more than those in a traditional classroom based setting.
Chinese restaurant owner laced noodles with poppy to get customers addicted. The evil genius in me wants to root for this guy, but his implementation was so disappointing–the police released him because the dosing was all wrong. It was just… food. A more realistic version of Walter White. (via SlateStarCodex)
This article confirms all my biases, therefore I must link to it: The Daily Show is a propaganda machine. “Washington Redskins fans agreed to go on ‘The Daily Show’ to defend the team’s name. In the course of negotiating their appearance, the fans asked whether they would be confronted by American Indians on the show. The producers said no, and then surprise! They were ambushed by irate American Indian activists.”
“My present exercise routine is to enter the gym and to choose a random sequence of exercises at random weights as though they are part of a complex task I have to complete.” It occurs to me that one cannot say something both reasonable and interesting — everything novel sounds unreasonable. Like this exercise routine. But I’m still not going to try it.
I’ve discovered the coolest AB testing library ever. You define some variants for your page, and then Genetify (the library) treats it like an optimization problem — using traffic to evolve the best performing variant. I’m using it on the homepage. And this page. And every page. I’m experimenting on you and you and you and everyone else.
You are bad at generating random numbers, and I’ll prove it. (via Ben Kuhn)