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Why Care That “The Rings of Power” Is Mediocre?
“The Rings of Power” is a new streaming series based on Appendix A of “The Lord of the Rings”. It gives the history of Middle Earth before the War of the Ring: the second rise and fall of Sauron, the … Continue reading
Ukraine v Russia Is a Tech War Like Union v Confederacy
In the 1860s the Europeans watched the American Civil War in horrified fascination. It had been almost 50 years since the Napoleonic Wars, when they had been in a real war with matched combatants. They had been mainly fighting colonial … Continue reading
My Mother Was a Ukrainian Refugee
Let me start by encouraging you to support the Ukrainians in any way you can. I gave money to AmeriCares, a relief outfit that is sending medical supplies and personnel to help refugees in Poland. The International Red Cross was … Continue reading
Why Care That “Foundation” Is Bad?
The new TV miniseries “Foundation” is full of meaningless CGI, ponderous religious imagery, thudding messages about terrorism, imperialism and climate change, and dialogue so clunky that even a serious actor like Jared Harris can’t deliver it. So what? There are … Continue reading
We’ve Got to Get To America 4.0
Every 80 years or so this country has been rebooted. Long-felt tensions exploded, and the country took a new direction. We’re at that point now. There is an outright criminal in the White House, there’s been a massive death toll … Continue reading
GM Abandons Green Cars, And Blue Staters
I’ve been a pretty satisfied customer of the Chevy Volt for three years now. It’s a plug-in hybrid, meaning that it will go for about 50 miles on battery power and then switch over to a gas engine. It’s quiet, … Continue reading
Who Is the Most Corrupt US Businessman?
Paul Waldman of the Washington Post was recently writing about the raid on the office of Donald Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, which is likely to uncover lots of shady dealings. Waldman wrote “He [Trump] may well be the single most … Continue reading
When Modeling Goes Bad – “Weapons of Math Destruction”
The political modeling that I talked about in the last post now affects most decisions that institutions make with respect to individuals. This is nicely described in in the recent book Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil. She has … Continue reading
Weaponized Psychology Helped Elect Trump
The US has just elected a president who is an outright criminal – a man who cheats contractors, steals from investors, and assaults women. What on earth happened? Everyone has a theory, but let me add one more – his … Continue reading
Rebecca Leaf, Engineer Heroine from MIT
I recently came across a striking set of stories about leftist women who attended MIT. The school has had female graduates longer than any other major US university (their first was in 1873), and they’ve done remarkable things. It turns … Continue reading
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Tagged energy-ish, mit-ish, political-ish, Tech life in New England
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A Niche in the Library of Babel 