Category Archives: Tech

Would anyone come to a Progress Studies Atlanta group?

A while back I had the thought that Progress Studies would would take the place of Effective Altruism after the PR and financial hit of the FTX implosion – that seems not to be happening.  I also had the thought that I should create a “Progress Studies Atlanta” group, but I’m not sure where to begin on that. The obvious answer is “Something, something Georgia Tech” but I have no connections there.

Ideally it would be a monthly gathering of technical experts or technical experts talking and letting information rain like manna from heaven to experts in other fields, a la a classic salon or the Lunar Society.

If you have any thoughts please leave them in the comments or contact me directly.

Belated post

  • Bet On America –

    The evidence for our nation’s downward spiral isn’t sufficient to rule out the very opposite possibility: that the United States will become, in purely geopolitical terms, even stronger in coming decades. The mistake we make is not so much overestimating our problems, but underestimating the problems of our potential rivals. We think we’re the only country with decline-and-fall issues.

    I’ll wager that many of the toughest challenges for Americans in the future won’t be associated with our geopolitical decline, weakness or decrepitude. No: Our challenges will be the unimagined consequences of our many successes.

  • A travelogue on East St Louis
  • Predictions from the year 1900 – a must read
  • ASP.net Chart Controls
  • The economics of Scientology

Friday link clearing

  • Sarah Silverman, Obama, and the Jewish vote – not safe for work, but worth watching
  • Small Banks are doing fine it seems
  • Israel asked Bush for permission to bomb Iran, and it seems Bush refused! Good. No point in throwing away all the gains in Iraq
  • Making money twice – worth reading
  • Who serves in the military? Well worth reading.
  • Jetpacks!
  • The difference between Sunni and Shia in short form
  • And this little nugget – via Ezra Klein

    Dear American:

    I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

    I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

    I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

    This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

    Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

    Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Your Monday reading

Throwing stuff to the wall

Via Marginal Revolution, here comes today’s quote of the day

Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of [Perl or PHP] hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.) Don’t overplan something. Just do it half-assed to start with, then throw more people at it to fix it if it works.

The market is a discovery process after all.