Sam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
l33tminion) wrote2011-05-05 12:08 pm
l33tminion) wrote2011-05-05 12:08 pm
L33t Links: Too Many Shoes Edition
Anime: Japanator's top 50 for the decade. An interesting selection. I've watched all of 22 of those and touched on 6 more.
Clothes: Ties! Also, the other kind of ties! umbrellas! Blue shoes! Double monks!
It occurs to me that I've gone from two pairs of shoes (running shoes, black oxford dress shoes; three if you include beach sandals) to seven (running shoes (which I still wear at least 95% of the time), black oxford dress shoes, cheap old wingtips, moar better wingtips, thrifted fringe loafer, cheap blue canvas sneakers (CVOs), casual slip-ons (I like the idea of using those as beach shoes much, much more than sandals, which I hate)). Basically, if I ever win the lottery I'm in danger of becoming this guy. (Not really. I hope.)
Education: Here's a method of learning phonetic alphabets (like Japanese kana): transliterate random things.
An interview with the Olin College president. I find the answers both interesting and disappointingly moderate.
A Wellesley student discusses Wellesley's admissions office's discrimination against transgendered students. Yet another "the writing is on the wall for Wellesley as women-only" story, there were several others during my Olin days. A good example of how overt, allegedly acceptable discrimination leads to covert, obviously shady discrimination.
An MIT researcher turns his house into a (self-directed) panopticon, with interesting results. I discussed this at length on my other blog.
A discussion of the World Peace Game, an educational game of global politics played by fourth graders.
Random Interesting: Broken lottery scratch-off games and their relation to security, math, and crime.'
Overthinking It analyzes Rebecca Black's "Friday", which must be the most successful vanity video of all time.
Playing video games while blind.
A bit of randomly interesting math: What is the highest value of n for which the decimal representation of 2^n has no 0s?
An article on a handbook for overthrowing dictators, which has evidently been quite influential this year.
An article on the psychology of (media) overabundance.
Better libertarian rhetoric with regard to "anti-privilege" liberals. Good stuff.
Dinosaur Comic's take on polyamory. Read the extra title text. I love that brand of subtle snark.
Clothes: Ties! Also, the other kind of ties! umbrellas! Blue shoes! Double monks!
It occurs to me that I've gone from two pairs of shoes (running shoes, black oxford dress shoes; three if you include beach sandals) to seven (running shoes (which I still wear at least 95% of the time), black oxford dress shoes, cheap old wingtips, moar better wingtips, thrifted fringe loafer, cheap blue canvas sneakers (CVOs), casual slip-ons (I like the idea of using those as beach shoes much, much more than sandals, which I hate)). Basically, if I ever win the lottery I'm in danger of becoming this guy. (Not really. I hope.)
Education: Here's a method of learning phonetic alphabets (like Japanese kana): transliterate random things.
An interview with the Olin College president. I find the answers both interesting and disappointingly moderate.
A Wellesley student discusses Wellesley's admissions office's discrimination against transgendered students. Yet another "the writing is on the wall for Wellesley as women-only" story, there were several others during my Olin days. A good example of how overt, allegedly acceptable discrimination leads to covert, obviously shady discrimination.
An MIT researcher turns his house into a (self-directed) panopticon, with interesting results. I discussed this at length on my other blog.
A discussion of the World Peace Game, an educational game of global politics played by fourth graders.
Random Interesting: Broken lottery scratch-off games and their relation to security, math, and crime.'
Overthinking It analyzes Rebecca Black's "Friday", which must be the most successful vanity video of all time.
Playing video games while blind.
A bit of randomly interesting math: What is the highest value of n for which the decimal representation of 2^n has no 0s?
An article on a handbook for overthrowing dictators, which has evidently been quite influential this year.
An article on the psychology of (media) overabundance.
Better libertarian rhetoric with regard to "anti-privilege" liberals. Good stuff.
Dinosaur Comic's take on polyamory. Read the extra title text. I love that brand of subtle snark.
no subject
1) The idea that less state intervention implies smaller companies is in direct conflict with the robber barons of the late 1800s...
2) The idea that the "freed marked" can deal with environmental concerns doesn't deal with the fact that the environment is a giant tragedy of the commons waiting to happen.
no subject
To play devil's advocate, the robber barons also had a lot of lobbying power, influence over political "machines", and indirect government subsidies that disproportionately benefited big players.
2) The idea that the "freed marked" can deal with environmental concerns doesn't deal with the fact that the environment is a giant tragedy of the commons waiting to happen.
Right. Basically, greedy algorithms don't work for all problems, so there are cases where everyone making locally-optimal choices screws things up for everyone.
There are also cases where the overhead of market choice (oversupply) greatly exceeds the benefit of increased choices (e.g. infrastructure). Cases where the financial facilitation of a given economic activity becomes so influential that it destroys the economic activity it's allegedly facilitating (mortgage-backed securities, health insurance). And cases where technically voluntary choices are de facto coercive because one party has a much greater cost of walking away from negotiations (employment, most of the time). And instances where giving decision-making power to everyone (as opposed to just people with money) is the right thing to do.
In conclusion, I'm not a libertarian.
Where I agree with the author of the article is that liberals and left-libertarians have a lot of common cause (there's a lot of once-sensible regulation that has become counterproductive, and a lot of devil's-compromise-regulation that lightly restrains with one hand and grants a permanent monopoly with the other, not to mention outright regulatory capture and corporate welfare). And that some libertarians are far too vigorous in defending the pro-big-business parts of the status quo and seem to only care about fairness in the context of criticizing government.