I count 18¾.

I can't remember how Ravikant made his fortune in the Silicon Valley. Nowadays he spends a lot of time on Twitter trying to compose good aphorisms... He rarely succeeds, but he's a fine talker and he knows a lot of sharp people, and has been in a couple of good podcasts lately.

The first is with Nick Szabo, who may well be one to the greatest and most consequential geniuses of this lifetime. This podcast goes on for two and a half hours, but it explains some really important things in language that most anyone can appreciate. You ought to listen to every second you possibly can, and then another half-hour.

(The price of Bitcoin passed $4,000 yesterday. How are your investments coming along?)

The second podcast including Navikant is a breezy half-hour long. It's a tidy consideration of the possible impacts of blockchain in almost every realm.

But that second one is optional. Please listen to the first one. Szabo is brilliant in ways that may well transform global culture.

In other news, Ravikant recently posted this old thing. For any other President, such a scheme would be a considerable constraint on impulses....

Szabo shimmers. Consider this essay on the transformation that clocks brought to human affairs:

Between the 14th century (by which time the sandglass and mechanical clock had been invented and the use of the time-rate wage was accelerating) and the 19th century (when slavery and serfdom finally disappeared in the First World) occurred the most rapid transformation of economic institutions in human history. During this era physically coerced labor gave way to worker choice; serfdom and slavery succumbed to the time-rate wage. First with the bell towers, then with their new clocks, Europeans measured with increasing accuracy and integrity the quantity of a most basic human quality – the sacrifices we make for each other.

Cosh thinks and writes often of Lincoln, and has noteworthy thoughts about Charlottesville.

Forewarning: You will cringe at the depth of his Canadian presumption: "That may be worth one statue, if we can decide on one to keep."

Couldn't agree more about "flattery of their feelings."

We are in an ideological civil war with occasional real world attacks by leftist radicals. Americans must wake up to that reality.

https://twitter.com/johncardillo/status/897554692062019586

Nah.

After diversity attempts at large companies and my own startup and the attempts to start tech early with my own children, I can tell you that our obsession with diversity and attempts to solve it are only fucking it up for the actual women in tech out there!

What do I mean by this?

We get upset about the state of gender diversity in tech

We make a pact to hire more women

The pool has (a lot) more men than women

After some rounds of low to no success, we start to compromise and hire women just because we have to

These women show up at work and perform not as great as we want them to

It reinforces to the male population that was already peeved by the diversity push that women aren’t that good at tech after all

They generalize that observation on the entire women in tech community

Sooner or later, some such opinions get out there

The feminists amongst us go crazy

The diversity advocates are caught in a frenzy and make a pact to hire more women (again)

This loops. Infinitely.

https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999

Probably the best way to handle the SJW / antifa / anti-free-speech folk.

Short and to the point.

And the media wonders why we laugh at them.

Not that I don't like a nice watch. But Jesus on a saltine, "the watch your wife buys you when you get married"?

Agreed Gog. Who owns a watch anymore? The watch you get when you make partner? Is this a lawyer thing?

> Nah.

What are you, thirteen?

Breaking: In the GOP primary for the Alabama Senate special election, it's going to a runoff between Roy Moore and Luther Strange. Mo Brooks finishes third. Now I'm conflicted; our choice will be between the combative social-conservative Moore, and Strange, who oddly has support from both Trump and the GOP establishment (he received millions from Mitch McConnell's PAC). To make it weirder, Brooks, a House Freedom Caucus member and Ted Cruz supporter, has thrown his support to Moore. This apparently is happening because Strange ran a lot of (pretty effective) attack ads against Brooks.

Because Alabama doesn't have party registration, a lot of Democrat voters are likely to cross over in the runoff and vote for Moore, attempting to stick the GOP with the nominee that they perceive as the least electable and most likely to divide the GOP support. And they're probably right. Fasten your seat belts.

The only watch you need:

https://www.amazon.com/Casio-A158W-1-Stainless-Steel-Digital/dp/B000GAYQJ0

> thirteen?

Muffin, it ain't the grown men who sit in air-conditioned rooms chirping with wide-eyed enthusiasm about "civil war" and the need of others to "wake up to that reality."

They "must," you say.

I think you're lonely and desperate for entertainment, but not willing to leave the air conditioning to get it.

Luke Vader must bring the dilithium crystals from Glorb planetoid to the Pookiebun Nebula before the Vulcan Bird of Prey decimates the entire Alderon system with Romulan Fartgas....! Basketball is a peaceful planet!

To each of you, it all makes perfect sense... But these dearest morsels of insight seem always to be *perfectly* idiosyncratic. And oh, how you struggle to be clear about them.




Also, Barro is totally correct about Robin Wright. Every five years she gets a little more annoying.

Sorry about the extra comma. I'll make it up to you... I always do.

In the harsh light of morning, I feel bad about the word "political" twice in one sentence, too.

Anyway, this thought from Carney seems often to apply to Trump voters as well.

And by golly, this Williamson article on the Tiki Torchers calls you to mind so clearly :

They are the products of the soft liberal-democratic society they hold in contempt — and upon which they depend, utterly.

"The only watch you need"

Yep. I always travel with a cheap watch and the least amount of tech I can get away with.

Thieves and They'll Steal Anything agents (sorry, that's redundant) can go after Mr. & Mrs. Louis "Matching Rolexes" Vuitton instead.

But that Casio is...

Well, it didn't take too long for digital watch displays to seem ugly. LCD sweep-handeds looked like a better way to go. As a technical dorkasaures, I had a couple of these, remembered now with imperfect fondness.