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There’s an old Zen koan that goes, “if you meet the Buddha, kill him.”

In other words, when something is self-verifiable or self-iterating, looking too heavily towards the originator can be a distraction along the path. Results speak for themselves.

Some folks have applied that to Bitcoin as well.
https://t.co/NYk1IKFDt4

For example, sometimes there are debates about Satoshi Nakamoto’s original intent. Should block sizes be increased to facilitate “e-cash” or should block sizes be kept small for any user to run a node?


This is the type of problem encountered by engineers all the time: trade-offs.

A project can iterate or stay the same depending on what the market says.

Sometimes the successful product ends up being very different than the engineer initially envisioned. Sometimes it’s exactly like what they envisioned.

With Bitcoin, there are developer-vs-developer disputes, and disputes between finance-types and earlier users.

This is similar to natural selection, with “nature” as the market. Some creatures haven’t changed in hundreds of millions of years. Others have changed notably, or transformed into something else entirely.
I’m guessing these responses really reflect people’s weighted averages (age*current average effort fraction) though I kept it simple and asked for just averages.


I suspect a healthy weighted average should be ~ (age-20)/2. So a 30 year old should be at 5, a 40 year old at 10, a 50 year old at 15 etc.

Standard deviation should be ~average/3 maybe, so distribution spreads as you age and accumulate projects and get better at them.

Other things being equal, people get good at starting in their 20s, at follow through in 30s, at finishing in 40s.

No point learning food follow through until you’ve found a few good starts to bet on. No point getting good at finishing until a few projects have aged gracefully.

I’m in the 7+ range myself. Probably 8-9. Slightly less than healthy for my age.

I suspect most self-judgments on being good starters/follow-through-ers/finishers are really flawed because of the non-ergodicity of project management skill learning. You can’t learn good practices for the 3 phases in an arbitrary order. On,y one order actually works.
It's the last day of this dumpster fire known as 2020
Let's recap some shenanigans - #Ward45 sure had plenty

In January, Jimmy called out The Crew at Copernicus 
A photo bomber, a bounty, and the mayor visited us

https://t.co/YHgWKxWv8m


The Point is resurrected in February - now ten storeys instead of 10
A firetruck can’t make a turn and Cuyler Plaza meets its end
Jimmy shows how tough he is and takes a stand against graffiti
A vigilante video offering a hundred-dollar bounty


March first Jimmy does the polar plunge with Team Alderbear
And barely wins committeeman - his enormous signs everywhere

In April Willie Wilson donates masks, Jimmy hands out burgers Epically
He can't seem to figure out how to wear a mask properly


In May at the little free library we meet (with complements) Al Chemist
Jimmy patrols the ward from the threat of antifa activitists


It’s June and Jimmy is hiding behind his office
While constituents march for racial justice
“Where’s Jim Gardiner” the crowd chants
Asked if he believes Black lives matter by a Black man
Jim doesn’t answer, instead just deflects
A defining cowardly moment - one we won’t forget
It was December of 1992 and I was six, and "Aladdin" was in theaters. My sister and I weren't seeing it. My mother couldn't afford the tickets. I remember this because the three of us were sitting in the car and she cried + apologized for not being able to take us. (thread)


The strange thing is that I don't think I had even heard of "Aladdin" until she said anything. Maybe? I'm not sure. But I don't remember feeling like we were expecting to see it. I don't remember being disappointed. But to her, I think it felt like one more way she had failed us.

This was in the final year of her marriage to her second husband--our first "stepfather"--and there were reasons the three of us were in this car and not back at our place with him and his two kids. He was very abusive, and these car rides felt like a break.

So, we were sitting there in the car while she was contemplating how to get us out of this situation, but by now, it had become almost a weekly ritual, which was not lost on us, obviously. So, we're sitting there, and she starts crying and says the thing about "Aladdin".

And then, while crying, she says: "You've never been to the movies," which was true. My sister and I had not been to a movie theater up to that point in our short lives. I remember saying "that's okay", and my sister said the same and put her little hand on my mother's arm.
1)
Five Eyes is VERY important.
It won’t be around much longer.
Relevant here but not the focus.

2)
https://
https://t.co/f24vLp3Z5h


3)
The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.

4)
The origins of the FVEY can be traced back to the post–World War II period, when the Atlantic Charter was issued by the Allies to lay out their goals for a post-war world.

5)
During the course of the Cold War, the ECHELON surveillance system was initially developed by the FVEY to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, although it is now used to monitor private communications worldwide.
I’ve asked Byers to clarify, but as I read this tweet, it seems that Bret Stephens included an unredacted use of the n-word in his column this week to make a point, and the column got spiked—maybe as a result?


Four times. The column used the n-word (in the context of a quote) four times. https://t.co/14vPhQZktB


For context: In 2019, a Times reporter was reprimanded for several incidents of racial insensitivity on a trip with high school students, including one in which he used the n-word in a discussion of racial slurs.

That incident became public late last month, and late last week, after 150 Times employees complained about how it had been handled, the reporter in question resigned.

In the course of all that, the Times' executive editor said that the paper does not "tolerate racist language regardless of intent.” This was the quote that Bret Stephens was pushing back against in his column. (Which, again, was deep-sixed by the paper.)