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Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
The Alchemist asked if I wanted a drink. I did, but no amount of staring could make my eyes settle on the color of the liquid in the flask. And the gold the alchemists paid the taxmen smelled funny…
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
8132
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
On Medium, Nassim explains how once an intransigent minority reaches a tiny percentage of the total population, the majority of the population will
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Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilization
This week’s post is the first in a four part series (II, IIIa, IIIb, interlude, IV) looking at what I’m going to term the Fremen Mirage (a play on Le Mirage Spartiate, which we’ve…
8134
In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization
[Content warning: Discussion of social justice, discussion of violence, spoilers for Jacqueline Carey books.] [Edit 10/25: This post was inspired by a debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook w…
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Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and Software License FAQ
A: To answer common questions about the Debian Free Software Guidelines and how we judge whether some piece of software is free.
8136
Know Your Amphetamines
In the 1950s, a shady outfit called Obetrol Pharmaceuticals made a popular over-the-counter diet pill called Obetrol...
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Community and Diversity
[I hope that it’s obvious from what follows that this is a statement of personal opinion, not an official Mozilla document.]
8138
Verizon doesn't know Dollars from Cents
Click here for Audio (27 minutes - PutFile is reporting the time wrong) Here's the background: I have a Verizon unlimited data plan in the ...
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Target didn’t figure out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did
And that one article that said they did was silly and bad
8141
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
The Mortal Passage Trilogy: An Epic in Four Stories is now available. That link leads to Amazon, but you can find it on iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and elsewhere too.
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WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise
What does running a medical database teach you about why everything sucks?
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Right Is The New Left
[Content warning: some ideas that might make you feel anxious about your political beliefs. Epistemic status: very speculative and not necessarily endorsed. This post is less something I will defen…
8144
Social Justice And Words, Words, Words
[Content note: hostility toward social justice, discussion of various prejudices] “Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through. First from him, now from you. Is tha…
8145
Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants
Copyright is a hot-button topic these days. Does information want to be free…or just reasonably priced? I discussed copyright at some length 25 years ago—a year before the first TCP/IP wide area network in the world went operational—two years before the first Macintosh went on sale!—in the following story. It won the…
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Gell-Mann Amnesia
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so…
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The Intellectual Yet Idiot
(Chapter in Skin in the game )
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The “Why your anti-spam idea won’t work” checklist
This comes up regularly on Slashdot and I find it hilarious each time, but can never find it when I go looking for it. So, here it is: