Blog AF

I have not actually read Feinstein’s whole paper, but the abstract makes it seem like an amazing read:

In this paper we study the financial repercussions of the destruction of two fully armed and operational moon-sized battle stations (“Death Stars”) in a 4-year period and the dissolution of the galactic government in Star Wars. The emphasis of this work is to calibrate and simulate a model of the banking and financial systems within the galaxy. Along these lines, we measure the level of systemic risk that may have been generated by the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star. We conclude by finding the economic resources the Rebel Alliance would need to have in reserve in order to prevent a financial crisis from gripping the galaxy through an optimally allocated banking bailout.

Mind. Blown.

• It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill
  Zachary Feinstein - Washington University in St. Louis.
  
• The Donald and the Chump Factor
  Paul Krugman - The New York Times
  
• Autocorrect hates you
  The Oatmeal
  
• The Rise of Hate Search
  Evan Soltas and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz - The New York Times
  
• Thomas Piketty on Inequality and Capital in the 21st Century
  Econ Talk
  

• Book Consciousness
  Nick Szabo
  
• The Facts Have A Well-Known, You Know
  Paul Krugman - New York Times
  
• Email overload: Building my own email app to reach Inbox Zero.
  Chris Kirk - Slate.com
  
• Speaking up Against Trump
  Albert Wenger - Continuations
  
• The Right Way to Ship Software
  Jocelyn Goldfein - First Round Review
  
• -2000 Lines Of Code (1982)
  Andy Hertzfeld - Folklore.org
  
• #startupbullshit

This weekend I read two completely unrelated documents that have shaped, and in my opinion will continue to influence, the future of technology. Continue reading...

Well, I finished the first season of Startup, and then, I got bored… Take note Alex Blumberg! The reasons why I was enjoying it so much were the SV outsider tone, the feeling of surprise when lingo had to be explained, and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that I listened to a whole season of Reply All before I started with StartUp. To me, Gimlet is just a more interesting business to learn about than Dating Ring (sorry matchmaker aficionados).

Now, since I always NeedMoreContent™, I started a class on coursera and it has been awesome to learn about the low level pieces that make up a computer. It’s been less than a week since I started, and I am already halfway through week 4 of the course. The class is aimed at people with 0 engineering background, and I would definitely recommend it if you are interested in computing.

• The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified
  Sonny Bunch - The Washington Post
  
• Capital Is No Longer Scarce
  Albert Wenger - Continuations
  
• Our Year of Living Airbnb
  David Roberts - The New York Times
  
• "Market Rate" is for Lobsters
  Ernie Miller
  
• Hanukkah, Why?
  Emma Green - The Atlantic
  
• I don’t give a **** if we agree about climate change.
  Arnold Schwarzenegger
  
• Reading the world in 196 books
  Ann Morgan - BBC
  
• In Other Countries, You’re as Likely to Be Killed by a Falling Object as by a Gun
  Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz - New York Times
  
• Pythonic means idiomatic and tasteful
  Andrew Montalenti
  
• A bad citizen in Javaland
  Darren Hobbs
  
• What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks
  Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz and Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman - Graphics and Imaging Laboratory, University of Washington
  
• Chasing Unicorns
  Eric Lefkofsky
  
• How to do anything
  Justin Kan
  
• All the roads that lead to Rome
  Moovel Lab
  
• Teens can't tell the difference between Google ads and search results
  James Vincent - The Verge
  
• The Banality of Trumpism
  Paul Krugman - New York Times
  
• How Four Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil
  Planet Money (podcast)
  
• Auditing ISIS
  Planet Money (podcast)
  

I have been listening to Startup the past couple of days, so I have not been reading that much lately. It provides a view of the tech and startup world from an outsider’s perspective, and when discussing concepts that I take as general knowledge it constantly makes me think “Wait, most people don’t know that?”

If you have not listened to it, you should.

• China’s Renminbi Is Approved by I.M.F. as a Main World Currency
  Keith Bradsher - New York Times
  
• The Weight of the World
  Elizabeth Kolbert - New Yorker
  
• A Simulation in Emoji
  Nicky Case
  
• Pumpkin Pie in Miami: Thanksgiving Flight Patterns
  Josh Katz and Quoctrung Bui - New York Times
  
• My Life After 44 Years In Prison
  Elena Boffetta And Jenna Belhumeur - Al Jazeera
  
• Metadata Investigation : Inside Hacking Team
  Vladan Joler, Andrej Petrovski, Nikola Kotur, Tamara Pavlovic and Jan Krasni - Share Lab