Many public things are utilitarian; they are also interfaces to what economists call public or common goods, like security and education and health care, that ideally are accessible to all without restriction.
Research found that the enhanced SNAP benefits helped to keep 4.2 million people above the poverty line … according to the economic think tank the Urban Institute.
Mar 3, 2023
Solitude, end of the night, business travel.
Mar 2, 2023
The weather looks more dreary than it is.
Mar 1, 2023
How to stop the internet becoming a junk heap - Prospect Magazine
We might also benefit from rethinking the incentives that make the current internet work. Spam is a function of an ad-supported internet with constant competition for users’ attention.
Feb 28, 2023
Feb 26, 2023
Kenya: Supreme Court rules in favour of LGBTQ rights group
…the right to freedom of association is a human right, vital to the functioning of any democratic society as well as an essential prerequisite enjoyment of other fundamental rights and freedoms…
This is your brain on fraud apologetics
Search Google … and the top result will be a paid ad for a scam. Sometimes it’s several of the top ads.
The PARA method from Forte Labs. Big fan, with a tweak. I’ve added “Responsibilites”: PARRA. Areas are topics in which I have ongoing interest — democracy, civil society, photography. Responsibilities are places that I must follow and maintain — marketing, revenue, parenting.
SNAP is returning to pre-pandemic benefit levels. It shouldn’t be.
“This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren’t aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.”
Finished reading: Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust by Loretta Lynn 📚
Prompted me to rewatch Ken Burns’ Country Music. It avoids the hard parts of politics and racism. Makes it hard to take it seriously.
Keeping an eye out
Writing an engineering strategy
“This document–often an implicit document that no one’s ever quite written down–is your constitutional document for running engineering, and writing it is one of the most valuable things you’ll do as an engineering executive.”
Finished reading: Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart 📚
I read and loved Shuggie Bain, also by Douglas Stuart. And Young Mungo has a lot in common — poverty, a mother who manages to be absent and cloyingly oppressive, a child whose difference brings on violence. Young Mungo has a kind of hope and beauty that Shuggie Bain lacks.
The violence in Young Mungo has a kind of intention that lets you see the characters as real people. Though the women in the book feel like caricatures of people, even when they are loving. The only woman that breaks out is a minor player, a neighbor who sees what is happening.