Hasnain says:

This was a really interesting human interest story.

"The colorful court case, held in Jacksonville, Florida, started September 10, 2001, the day before terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The stunned news media quickly forgot about the McDonald’s trial, which explains why so few Americans remember the scandal, or how it ended. During the trial, jurors watched defendants celebrating in McDonald’s commercials, including the fake one filmed by the FBI. Glomb recalled that the victim of the McSting, Michael Hoover, told him that he thought Amy Murray “kind of liked me,” before learning she was part of an FBI operation."

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Posted on 2018-07-29T18:14:50+0000

Hasnain says:

"The shift from factory to office and other sedentary jobs created other social upheaval. The more recent shift in bargaining power from workers to large corporations – and consequentially, the dramatic widening of inequalities of income, wealth, and political power – has had a more unfortunate and, I fear, more lasting consequence: an angry working class vulnerable to demagogues peddling authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia."

Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-07-29T05:09:13+0000

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Posted on 2018-07-29T04:50:43+0000

Hasnain says:

I'm all for regulation that makes living standards and competition fair for all workers and companies, big and small.

But this law in mountain view, and the proposed law in SF, confuse me. I don't see how they make things better, and only see ways they make things worse.

I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong.

Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-07-23T04:46:37+0000

Hasnain says:

“Why would Jews — or Hindus, or Buddhists, or agnostics, or atheists — be good if they don’t believe in heaven? That’s the sort of religious illiteracy we should be worried about, not unfamiliarity with evangelical names for Christ — religious illiteracy that assumes features of one’s own tradition are essential to ethical behavior. It will never be eradicated if religious literacy is defined in terms of uncritical familiarity with a single tradition.”

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Posted on 2018-07-21T15:56:15+0000

Hasnain says:

Ouch

Hasnain says:

Ouch

Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-07-16T05:28:47+0000

Hasnain says:

"The politicians of your country and the people you elect are reflective of the larger public – after all, the corrupt and greedy politicians we despise so much are all coming from within our own people. If anything, the vile and vulgar comments we see on social media day in and day out make it evident that our people are as bad as our politicians.After all, we can only blame politicians for so much; overtime, we’ve transformed precisely into the politicians we love to hate so much. "

Hasnain says:

“It’s a lovely solution—so much so, in fact, that Caplan’s book puts it into its own subtitle: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV. And at the heart of the answer lies a subtle change in the way the problem is understood. Other measures, like putting up a sign, focused on the idea that both doors had to have locks, when the lock is really just an interim solution to the underlying problem, rather than the problem itself. As Petroski puts it: “The basic design objective is to achieve privacy for whoever might be using the bathroom.” And once the problem is phrased in such a way as to leave locks out of the equation entirely, you’re that much closer to figuring out how to address it.”

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Posted on 2018-07-15T04:01:07+0000

Hasnain says:

“At the OECD, Sebastian Königs cites much closer links between education, employment and social services than in most other countries as an effective way of supporting young people in the early stages of their careers. Every Norwegian school leaver gets a personal follow-up phone call to discuss their options if they don’t enter the employment market or pursue further studies, for example.”

Hasnain says:

TL;DR: XARs are great. Use them!

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Posted on 2018-07-13T07:08:56+0000

Hasnain says:

This was nuts

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Posted on 2018-07-12T03:39:04+0000

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Posted on 2018-07-11T14:41:09+0000

Hasnain says:

Please don’t ruin HBO :(

“Stankey isn’t the only executive worried about the rise of Netflix. Disney is preparing to launch its own streaming service, and its proposed acquisition of Fox would help fill out its library of properties. The future of media will certainly revolve around subscription-based streaming services. But Netflix is turning into a kind of broadcast-TV network: a big umbrella for lots of different kinds of programming. Founded more than 45 years ago, HBO has long been a challenge to broadcast television, staking its reputation on offering something different. As the slogan went, it’s not TV, it’s HBO. Now, Stankey wants to make it TV.”

Hasnain says:

“The strange story of Rob Wielgus is a tale of what happened to one loud scientist who ran afoul of powerful forces. More broadly, it’s a parable of the American West in the 21st century and of how little we still can agree what it should look like. And it’s a reminder that, if you find yourself in a powder keg, the last thing you want to be is a struck match.”

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Posted on 2018-07-09T00:04:17+0000

Hasnain says:

"“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them."

Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-07-08T02:29:17+0000

Hasnain says:

"Clarke says the same thing could go for food. A culture may seem unfamiliar to a person, but after that person discovers the way people from an unfamiliar culture “prepare their food, the way they eat, somehow they understand it. There’s link between you and them, and that gives you insight.”

Food alone, though, is often not enough to complete the trip to another culture. The journey needs other people."

Hasnain says:

“In 1921, The Soda Fountain, a monthly trade magazine to the soda industry, published an article touting “Ice Cream as Americanization Aid,” declaring that serving ice cream to on Ellis Island would help them acquire “a taste for the characteristic American dish even before they set foot in the streets of New York.” This would not only help new immigrants assimilate to the American “standard of living,” but it would also inculcate American values: “Who could imagine a man who is genuinely fond of ice cream becoming a Bolshevik? Even strawberry ice cream would arouse no latent anarchistic tendencies, while vanilla or peach would be soothing to the very reddest of the Reds. There is as yet no record of a dangerous plot being hatched over a dish of ice cream; the temperature is too low to promote incubation.””

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Posted on 2018-07-07T06:00:14+0000

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Posted on 2018-07-06T22:59:43+0000

Hasnain says:

“When people emphasize just how overworked they are today, they’re not simply complaining of burdens, they’re also signaling their diligence and good standing in this moral economy. As Graeber shows, this notion is inherently Judeo-Christian. But, though 2,000 years of religious teaching have solidified this credence, Aristotle saw things differently. The theory that working hard signifies morality is widely-accepted but, ultimately, far from objectively true, and there’s no reason we should continue to buy into this belief.”

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Posted on 2018-07-05T20:23:21+0000

Hasnain says:

This was a really cool read

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Posted on 2018-07-05T03:50:05+0000

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Posted on 2018-07-04T03:18:28+0000

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Posted on 2018-07-04T03:08:27+0000

Hasnain says:

I’m not sure how believable this is.

Kinda horrifying take on business practices - from 2015

Hasnain says:

“In the last few years I have lost count of the times mental illness has been compared to a broken leg. Mental illness is nothing like a broken leg.

In fairness, I have never broken my leg. Maybe having a broken leg does cause you to lash out at friends, undergo a sudden, terrifying shift in politics and personality, or lead to time slipping away like a Dali clock. Maybe a broken leg makes you doubt what you see in the mirror, or makes you high enough to mistake car bonnets for stepping stones (difficult, with a broken leg) and a thousand other things.”

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Posted on 2018-07-04T01:35:06+0000

Hasnain says:

This was an amazing short story about how blind scientific progress for just the sake of progress can cause problems.

Should be mandatory reading for software folks before they commit to a rewrite of a big system.

"The ultimate cause of our failure was a simple one: despite all statements to the contrary, it was not due to lack of bravery on the part of our men, or to any fault of the Fleet's. We were defeated by one thing only - by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat - by the inferior science of our enemies."

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Posted on 2018-07-03T05:24:04+0000

Hasnain says:

This was a sad but interesting human interest story

Hasnain says:

This was so depressing I couldn’t pick out the most horrible quote to post - there were too many. So I’m going with the first one.

“Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments. Other Danish citizens are free to choose whether to enroll children in preschool up to the age of six.”

Hasnain says:

“Synergistic finished Hellfire ahead of schedule and submitted their content for approval. For security reasons, Blizzard preferred to send and receive code submissions on CD-ROM over FedEx, stating that email and FTP servers could be compromised. Both Blizzard studios weighed in on submissions. According to Synergistic’s developers, North was easier to please than Entertainment, whose artists took umbrage with what Hellfire’s team perceived as quibbling issues such as an off-color pixel in one corner of the screen that needed to be changed to match the others.”

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Posted on 2018-07-02T00:49:33+0000

Hasnain says:

"While China manufactures most of the world’s smartphones and computers, it imports almost all the semiconductors needed to provide the logic and memory that run the gadgets. Last year, China paid $260 billion importing chips—60% more than it spent on oil. Chinese leaders want homemade chips to account for 40% of locally produced smartphones by 2025, more than quadruple current levels."

Hasnain says:

This is nuts.

"The typical U.S. homeowner is gaining $7.09 of equity in their home every working hour, $0.16 less than federal minimum wage."

Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-07-01T17:45:13+0000

Hasnain says:

This was a heartwarming personal interest story about a man who started a business hiring ex convicts and giving them the second chance that is so sorely needed to help them rehabilitate.

Hasnain says:

Solid read on jobs, labor, and ends on a good use case for UBI.

“Because, you know, why am I complaining? If I complain to someone they’re just going to say, “Hey, you’re getting something for nothing and you’re whining?” But it shows that our basic idea of human nature, which is inculcated in everybody by economics, for example — that we’re all trying to get the most reward for the least effort — isn’t actually true. People want to contribute to the world in some way. So, that shows that if you give people basic income, they’re not going to sit around and watch TV, which is one objection.

The other objection, of course, is that, maybe they will want to contribute to society, but they’re going to do something stupid, so that society is going to be full of bad poets and annoying street musicians, street mimes everywhere, people developing their crank perpetual-motion-devices and whatnot. I’m sure there’ll be some of that, but look: if 40 percent of people already think their jobs are completely pointless, how is it going to be worse than it already is? At least they’re going to be a lot happier doing that stuff than they are filling out forms all day.”