Agassi’s book suggests that a life of tranquility and satisfaction, “barbecues and ballgames,” is not compatible with high achievement. All the tennis stars are obsessed with their game, they never say “I’m good enough.” That gloom, the sticky paste of frustration and yearning to achieve our dreams, satisfy our absent fathers, make a lasting impact, be remembered, it can pull you down and it’s also what propels you forward. Onward!
I understand the point of the article to be that it's interesting when artifacts evolve and previously functional elements are retained for a purely decorative purpose. I take your point to be that it's not so interesting. Consider that a typical Kindle contains dozens of books, so it is more like a bookshelf than a single book. The original design intent was for the device to "get out of the way and disappear so you can enter the author’s world." The display may have a page-turning animation, or a dog-ear icon indicating a bookmark, or adjustable margins, but outside of the reading interface I don't see book-like structural features, certainly not a spine to hold the pages together and display the title while the book is shelved. A cover is a functional accessory "to keep clean and avoid problems with the screen" and not a merely decorative replacement for a formerly functional element. Hardback books have dust jackets that also have a functional purpose: to protect (and decorate) the book. I don't see the relevance of the floppy disk or save button. Storage media has evolved considerably, from flexible plastic disks to hard platters in metal enclosures, shiny CD-ROMs and DVDs, and now solid state flash memory. At no point was a previously functional element retained for decorative purposes. The GUI happened to become popular when the 3.5-inch disk was in service, the save button adopted that image as an icon and has not evolved since. Indeed, that must be why I was looking for dentils in my photo, but I forgot by the time I got to the nitpick-Devac stage. "Vestigial" is probably a better fit, but it implies uselessness so maybe we are stuck with "skeuomorphic."The OP said that.
The strategy of giving up on "determination, grit, self-confidence, desire" might be more relevant to the typical NYT reader if the author were not already an expert climber with decades of experience. The Everything Store has a preview of his book, The Zen of Climbing, in which he recounts this episode in more detail. The route, "a soft 5.13a/7c+, but not a gimme" is in fact the highest expert level, just before Super Expert, Elite, Super Elite, and Aliens. He did not give up on his hard-earned skills, nor the physical capability developed over years. "When I took away (the desire for success), my body moved with greater fluidity and naturalness." One wonders why he would even make a second attempt if there was no desire for success, but I think this implies a relaxing of the standard for success, not simply getting to the top but facing the challenge and learning from it. This sounds like good advice for someone who has reached the level of mastery at which "nerves" have become the biggest obstacle.I wasn't mad, but for the first time in my life, after climbing for nearly 30 years, it struck me that the desire to climb the route had actually been the thing preventing me from doing so. That was the beginning of a massive shift in my perspective.
Your only goal is to breathe, and stay there, each move by each move. Just execute. Try hard, but not too hard. But don't panic. Relaxed aggression. Poised, but with nothing to lose. Listen to exactly what your body needs. Respond as quickly as possible. Make good decisions.
We reserved a RAV4 “or similar” and they gave us this. Any GeoGuesses?
Two more stories in Jarhead Adventures.
I went to a game Monday with one of the Little League dads and the boys. The home team trails the league, has been eliminated, and was shut out. We mostly talked about trains. It was great.
johan you getting this
If lithium (or something) is responsible for obesity, we should see low levels near lean cities and high levels near obese cities
In the least obese communities, we found little evidence of lithium contamination. We were able to find drinking water measurements for five of these communities, and in all five, the level of lithium in their drinking water was quite low, with averages around 2 ng/mL.
In the most obese communities, we found abundant evidence of lithium contamination
Coal plants maintain groundwater testing wells to monitor contaminants, including lithium, and many of the most obese communities were downriver of plants with testing wells showing lithium levels above 100 ng/mL
We're still surprised at how well this lines up. We didn't expect cities to matter very much — but based on what we've found, there looks like a pretty strong relationship between obesity rates and lithium contamination in the local water
In an update Caplan shared correspondence from Applied Divinity Studies suggesting that the main value of including quantitative evidence is not that the reader will be persuaded after reviewing the numbers. One benefit to number-crunching is that the researcher may change their understanding after carefully combing through the evidence. ADS looked into San Francisco shoplifting and found that the data do not support popular perceptions of a crime surge. The other benefit to including spreadsheets is that it promotes a kind of reputational social trust. Most of the audience, including experts, won't carefully review numerical evidence that took months to compile. But there is a reputational reward available to anyone who can discredit a public figure by finding embarrassing errors in their work. Even an amateur with no field expertise can point out falsified figures and arithmetic anomalies. Hence Alexey Guzey launched his science career by debunking Why We Sleep. And Dan Ariely took a reputational hit when one of his studies on honesty was found to contain fraudulent data. It's easy to make vague explanations and predictions that can't be checked with facts. Including quantitative evidence suggests confidence by increasing the attack surface provided to adversaries. Caplan's blog is named "Bet On It" because of his conviction that "bets are one of the best ways to (a) turn vague verbiage into precise statements, and (b) discover the extent of genuine disagreement about such precise statements."
“Cissy Strut” heard in “Another Round.”
Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or for poetry in blubber.
Thanks! I was thinking about you braking on the downhills at your triathlon. If you knew nothing bad would happen, you could go faster, but it's hard to build that confidence.
I told a neighbor we were going to Greece because we couldn’t find any place hotter without visiting a wildfire. Then wildfires broke out in Greece. Long afternoon siestas watching Olympics, napping, and reading In Xanadu in the hotel room support the This Is Fine hypothesis even when the sunset is blotted out. 
Great observation, but is “unforkable” too strong? Say next year there’s a schism and we end up with ETH-chocolate and ETH-vanilla. Coinbase could exchange USDC for both, with initial exchange rates such that 1 ETHc + 1 ETHv = previous value of 1 ETH. Maybe with a 50/50 initial ratio. If you love chocolate, you can sell vanilla and buy chocolate and end up close to where you started. Or just hold your chocolate and let other vanilla detractors bid the chocolate price back up.
Hubski X Join code: hubski
Any updates before the new year?
"The rate-limiting step on terrorist destruction is how many people think that it’s a good idea to cause a lot of damage for no particular reason." Tyler Cowen seemed unimpressed by Pinker's response, but I find it persuasive. It's not just a lucky stroke that people generally prefer cooperation to combat, it's a primary reason that the species is so successful. "The amount of violence that we see is not limited by costs of technology. It’s limited by the number of people who think that it would be a good idea to blow a lot of stuff up for no reason other than attracting publicity."
Jorgensen said "I used to tell people the Libertarian Party is the best of both sides. We take the economic freedoms from the right and the social freedoms from the left. I can't even say that anymore because Republicans aren't acting like Republicans and Democrats aren't acting like Democrats." I agree the left offers more spectrum, having taken over most of the airwaves, media and academia. I am still partial to Caplan's Simplistic Theory of Left and Right, which says the right is defined by opposition to the left. Yudkowsky offers his take in a delightful parable.
Paging KapteinB
“According to the investigation, Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal access to Silk Road and thereby steal the illicit cryptocurrency from Silk Road and move it into wallets that Individual X controlled. According to the investigation, Ulbricht became aware of Individual X’s online identity and threatened Individual X for return of the cryptocurrency to Ulbricht.” The unknown hacker didn’t return or spend the bitcoin. Instead, Individual X on Tuesday signed a Consent and Agreement to Forfeiture with the US Attorney’s office in San Francisco agreeing to turn over the funds to the government. The feds just seized Silk Road’s $1 billion stash of bitcoinIn intriguing details that sound like they’re straight out of a crime novel, the complaint said that a mysterious hacker identified only as Individual X was responsible for transferring the seized bitcoin out of Silk Road coffers.
Probably the biggest demographic difference between red and blue is the rural/urban distinction. By June, bigger cities had already suffered the worst onslaught, and the infection was creeping into smaller towns and more rural areas. Correlations have little explanatory power.A '10,000' means 1% of the state's population has tested positive of COVID since June 1. June 1 was chosen as it was around that time that countries worldwide that had been sucker-punched months before had the opportunity to apply proven preventative measures.
The results suggest a strong correlation between a state's political leanings and its ability to employ proven science to slow the spread of COVID.
“Do you check your smart phone before you pee in the morning or while you pee in the morning? ’Cause those are the only two choices.” Line from Roger McNamee in “The Social Dilemma.” Someone pointed out that Facebook doesn’t sell user data, that’s the family jewels which they carefully guard, instead selling the opportunity to advertise to curated demographics. What behavior do you want to discourage? Would you want to block Mazda from running ads before car videos on YouTube rather than Mickey Mouse videos?
How many of us pay the mortgage by sitting in a padded chair all day? Perhaps we would be happier working in an agricultural commune, but I don’t see much interest in joining them.A bullshit job is not what Graeber calls “a shit job.” Hannibal, and many other of the bullshittiest employees, are well compensated, with expanses of unclaimed time. Yet they’re unhappy.
This is in my e-mail archives from February 4, noting that I received it from a Tesla fan at work in December: By my understanding, each option he bought for $2.45 in December could be exercised today to buy a share of TSLA at $710, which opened at $1012 this morning. Can't find the original tweet, but 123× in six months if accurate. At the time, I wrote "I told the fanboy that $2.45 sounded about right, thinking that I would be more or less indifferent between buying or selling at that price."
Ford Fischer provided compelling coverage of the D.C. protests, broadcasting live on Periscope. "This is Edison Carter coming to you very much live and direct on Network 23." Ford was live when he got hit in the forehead with a rubber bullet, and again later when he was caught in a police kettle. I waited until a calm Sunday afternoon to bike downtown and have a look around. Not every day you see military police on the streets around FBI headquarters. The new Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute was newly decorated with four-letter anti-Reagan slogans. Apparently there is a sniper team on the roof.
Reminds me that it's been a while since I got to start my week with a choropleth.
Home improvement "The basement is leaking!" This announcement from below got my attention and meant no ping pong session that evening. The dishwasher appeared to be the source, and I discovered the most common dishwasher installation defect. A piece of string took care of the missing high loop, but the sink has always been slow to drain and this provided the backup which flooded the dishwasher. A 25-foot snake can be had for less than a dollar a foot now. I had tried before with a toilet auger (going through the trap, in case that is less gross) but found nothing. The longer snake hit a snag some twenty feet in, and pulled up a pasty white material which looked like undissolved detergent. It was nasty, and my first instinct was to clean the barb by rinsing it off in another sink. That's not much of a home improvement, just trying to keep the place from destroying itself. The painting job is about half done, removing wallpaper and chair rail scars being the biggest efforts. Upgraded baseboard will require a mitre saw, and I'm unsure between renting and buying a good saw. Coding TensorFlow installation got bogged down in some kind of dependency hell. You google the error message and find ten ways to fix it, try and figure out which one is least likely to cause further problems and eventually try one at random and get a new error. While messing with the Raspberry Pi, I remembered the Pi-hole project. I've rarely used adblocking software, figuring the ads are a kind of tax on browsing, annoying little reminders that I could be reading a book. But it was so fun, and so easy to set up, and so satisfying to have this pocket-sized server filtering DNS for the whole house, and so interesting to see all the blocked lookups. I haven't mentioned the change, to see if anyone notices. Daytrading I got into a debate with a daytrading friend about the possibility of profit. I've seen some smart friends try to get ahead and not conspicuously succeed, and my gut feeling is that there is too much noise to allow any short-term signal to be recognized. Long term buy-and-hold is a proven technique, and in my view short term trades only work in a cumulative fashion by exposing the trader to the very long term 1.83% per year average per capita GDP growth in the U.S. (and transaciton costs plus capital gains taxes could easily consume this profit). An interesting conclusion is that I would not worry about the "emotional" investor who breaks the rules by selling low in a panic, or buys high with FOMO. There's a narrative showing these are mistakes if you look for it, but there is an equally plausible narrative that the seller avoided greater losses and the buyer got in while a winner was rising. If emotional investors predictably lost value, you could win by betting against them. I proposed a challenge in which I would simulate trades in a dartboard portfolio, selecting stocks at random from a list of most active stocks. At first I updated my positions once a week, but this was too arbitrary and mechanical. Things got more exciting when I set up a portfolio containing $1000 each of five randomly selected stocks and simulated limit orders by selling as soon as I became aware that any position had gained 2.5%, recording the 2.5% profit and rolling the returns into whatever stock was then most active. This is a brainless strategy and not recommended, but should be possible in practice. After two days the paper portfolio was up 2%, with five sells (a 380% APR!). By the end of the week the portfolio was flat again, at $5004. Despite my Google Apps script sending me an e-mail within ten minutes of a sell condition, my reaction time causes lags, so when SPCE rocketed from $32.17 to $38.67 today (up 20%), I only got two round trip sales out of it. But it doesn't matter! At any point in time, future performance is unpredictable, so there's no reason to prefer getting in earlier or later. The SPCE position is now down 8%, worth $1010, and the portfolio is down 0.9%. One simulated portfolio is too insignificant to prove anything. For more data, you could test strategies against past performance, but you can't trade in the past so that seems pointless. My expectation is that all five positions will eventually be too far underwater to recover quickly, and the strategy will revert to long-term buy-and-hold, which actually works. Peanuts and crows I have drawn the attention of many crows, and one Metro maintenance van, while hiding peanuts in various niches of the parking garage top deck. One difficult hiding place is regularly emptied between visits. On one occasion I had the opportunity to experience a bird in the hand while trying to rescue two young birds that got trapped in a stairwell. Kia KIA At 11:45 Saturday morning I parked our 2006.5 Kia Optima on the street, then went inside to get the kid ready for a class. At 11:46 a neighbor drove his Volvo 850 into the Kia, destroying the driver side wheels and door. Nobody hurt, but the tow driver and insurance agent agreed that it appears to be totaled. Cultural studies We have gotten pretty good at yogurt in the Instat Pot, and haven't had to use store yogurt as starter for weeks. The weekly loaf of sandwich bread in the Pullman pan is still irregular. Sometimes the dough rises so much it overflows the pan, other times it is sticky and low-volume. Assuming I am correctly counting four cups of flour (which is far from certain) I try to pay attention to ambient temperature, milk temperature, rest timing, and quantity of sugar (using maple syrup, which is too messy to measure). When there is overflow, the extra becomes rolls or pretzels or, this week, cinnamon buns which turned out much better than the loaf itself.
Update on the Boise office: CEO stuns employees with immediate $10K raise, pledges a $30K raise over the next 5 years Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based credit card processing company, recently acquired ChargeItPro in Eagle, Idaho, and the group moved into a new office space. Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price flew in to welcome employees to the new office -- and then stunned them with the news that many of the employees would get a $10,000 pay bump effective immediately and the minimum salary for employees would rise to $70,000 by 2024. A majority of the employees were making under $30,000 prior to the acquisition, according to Price. While checking the About page a bot asked me if I was interested in eliminating hidden fees. When I ignored it for a while, a human took over to ask if I had any questions. I asked about the minimum wage, and was told that it might vary by location (mentioning Boise in particular) but asked not to be quoted since the human doesn't work in HR. So employees at headquarters in Seattle (median household income $93,500 in 2018; can't find data for individuals) may receive the $70K minimum, while branch offices may not, which could explain the removal of the number from the web page as the company expanded. In 2024 we can check to see how $70K is working out in Boise, where the median household income is $56,275.Employees at an Idaho business got the news of a lifetime this week. Workers making $40,000 -- the company's current minimum salary -- would get an immediate $10,000 raise and that within five years, the minimum salary would increase to $70,000.
An unsigned essay titled "Responses to questions from readers" appeared on a new WordPress site: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-responses-to-questions-from-readers/ It was announced by an anonymous account. The response essay is just as scientificish as the book, appearing to express appreciation for the criticism but dodging the actual complaints.The book’s misattribution of the CDC statement to the WHO will be corrected in the next edition.
