30 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2023
    1. In her markings, Rose Caylor gave us a sense of her husband, the playwright Ben Hecht. In her copy of “A Child of the Century,” which Mr. Hecht wrote, she had drawn an arrow pointing to burns on a page. “Strikes matches on books,” she noted about her husband, who was a smoker.

      This is a fascinating bit of reading practice.

  2. Apr 2023
  3. Jan 2023
  4. Dec 2022
  5. Nov 2022
    1. Computers can only deal with well-structured problems

      ie, "well-defined problems" in John Vervaeke's language. Cultivation of wisdom, per Vervaeke, is developing the capacity to navigate a ill-defined problem space, and realize (ie, recognize, and make real) what is relevant to resolving the situation.

      Examples of ill-defined problems: - how to take good notes? - how to tell a funny joke? - how to go on a successful 1st date? - how to be a good friend?

      May relate to Shapiro's "role theory". Needs further research

  6. Oct 2022
    1. Congratulations (I guess?) on finding my semi-secret Substack: a place away from my main site to discuss my journey from technologist (a pompous term that really just means I do computers) to writer (a pompous term that really just means I do computers but now it’s art).

      This quote is art... :)

  7. Sep 2022
    1. Whatever Musk ends up doing, this possibility is what the right is actually celebrating.

      It is quite clear that the right "celebrates" Elon Musks eventual purchase of twitter as his political views as a billionaire would align closer to what the right views than what those on the left would. This would make Elon Musk buying twitter a larger advantage than one would think in the grand scheme. Twitter is heavily used throughout the political atmosphere to spread beliefs, campaigns and other politic related movements. By removing a previous owner who has been known to "censor" what is being tweeted, (which has prominently been on the right side, politically) , right wing ideas will have a greater chance of sticking with larger amounts of people. This is why this move is seen as worth celebrating on the right side of the political spectrum.

  8. Jul 2022
  9. Apr 2022
  10. Mar 2022
    1. The danger of working at "internet time" is that hasty decisions may be poor, and rapid changes may cause troubling turbulence for many users.

      In 1998, Ben Shneiderman wrote "The danger of working at "internet time" is that hasty decisions may be poor, and rapid changes may cause troubling turbulence for many users." He's essentially admonishing against the dangerous and anti-social idea of what Mark Zuckerberg would later encourage at Facebook when he said "move fast and break things."

    2. The current situation is deteriorating as the proliferation of formats reduces the capacity of users to share their work.

      Already in 1998, Ben Shneiderman has presaged and highlights the point of the classic XKCD comic #927 on standards.

  11. Feb 2022
  12. Jan 2022
  13. Apr 2021
    1. Maryland offers a microcosm of the issues states face as they rush to open enough vaccination sites to meet President Biden’s goal of making every adult eligible for Covid-19 shots by May 1. It has encountered nearly all the geographic, demographic and human behavioral challenges that come with a public health task of this scale.

      Hi Ben

  14. Feb 2021
  15. Aug 2019
    1. The Daily Beast got it right with a subhead about a recent right-wing terrorist, the one who blew himself up in his home full of bomb-making materials: “Friends and family say Ben Morrow was a Bible-toting lab worker. Investigators say he was a bomb-building white supremacist.”

      The Daily Beast quote is found here.

  16. Jan 2019
  17. Mar 2016
    1. Froissart

      Best guess is having some kind of resemblance to the artistic renderings of Medieval historian Jean Froissart (~1470), whose large tapestries often depicted courtly life enacted in loud and theatrical fashion.

  18. Nov 2014