Nikola Kotur @kotnik@mastodon.social

"You can actually get away with a lot of weirdness in abstract ideas, if you are ordinary enough in manners and style."

Dear Young Eccentric
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/01/dear-young-eccentric.html

"The U.S. doesn’t have a Politburo, but if you calculate the median age of the president, the speaker of the House, the majority leader of the Senate, and the three Democrats leading in the presidential polls for 2020, the median age is … uh … 77."

America, the Gerontocracy
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/03/america-gerontocracy-problem-politics-old-politicians-trump-biden-sanders-227986

"Before reading this book, I was already 85% confident that Kim Jong Un would rule North Korea for life.  Now I’d go up to 90%."

The Great Successor: Inside North Korea, by Bryan Caplan
https://www.econlib.org/the-great-successor-inside-north-korea/

"many engage in intellectual masturbation that society doesn’t care about"

Why #Philosophy gets no Respect in Society – Outlook Zen
https://outlookzen.com/2014/06/08/why-philosophy-gets-no-respect-in-society/

“Poisonous leaders use their power to protect their evil”

Principal Tied To Censorship Arrested, Faces Child Pornography Charges
https://bookriot.com/2019/08/28/principal-tied-to-censorship-arrested-faces-child-pornography-charges/

"I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth"

What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

"be skeptical"

'If I Happen to Fall out of a Window, You Can Be Sure I Was Pushed'
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-edward-snowden-about-his-story-a-1286605.html

"Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates..."

The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess

"the future belongs to computational photography"

Camera sales are falling sharply
https://om.co/2019/09/03/camera-sales-are-falling-sharply/

"If you do not know why your detector detects something that does not look like what you expect, how can you trust it in the cases where it does see what you expect?"

What’s up with #LIGO?
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-ligo.html

"Orient furniture around a window or fireplace rather than a TV."

The Case for Doing Nothing
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/smarter-living/the-case-for-doing-nothing.html

"pizza might protect against illness and death, if the #pizza is made and eaten in #Italy"

The 2019 Winners
https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/the-2019-winners/

"China is probably 10 years ahead of the UK and the US in the race to completely eliminate all privacy from life."

Five facts about #China
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/five-facts-about-china/

"twenty years on, #DRM is revealed to be exactly what we feared"

Cory Doctorow: DRM Broke Its Promise
https://locusmag.com/2019/09/cory-doctorow-drm-broke-its-promise/?

"The next bigenerational burst of violence is scheduled for about 2020 (realistically +/- a few years)."

Book Review: Ages Of Discord
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/02/book-review-ages-of-discord/

"I'm going to explain to you the whole indie games biz, from soup to nuts."

I Am the Cheapest Bastard In Indie Games
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2019/08/i-am-cheapest-bastard-in-indie-games.html

"Today’s generation doesn’t have the luxury of being able to argue that it was never warned or did not understand the consequences of where lies will take you."

I Survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Here Are the Lessons I’d Like to Pass On.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/i-survived-the-warsaw-ghetto-here-are-the-lessons-i-d-like-to-pass-on

"why so many authors write books for juveniles and young adults that expose the protagonists to so much misery"

Duty and Dystopia: Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein
https://www.tor.com/2019/08/29/duty-and-dystopia-citizen-of-the-galaxy-by-robert-a-heinlein/

"stop optimizing for storing knowledge and instead optimize for retrieving knowledge"

How to Get Smarter Without Knowing Anything
https://www.cdevn.com/how-to-get-smarter-without-knowing-anything/

"the cheaper interactions become, the more intensely a system is corrupted. The faster interactions become, the faster the corruption spreads"

Absolute scale corrupts absolutely
https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190819