the way of ginsu
I am not a close relative of Yoon Suk Yeol, the thirteenth president of the Republic of Korea. But we are in the same clan, the Papyeong Yoons. So of course I noticed that he received a life sentence last week for his failed coup d état of December 2024, even though as an American, I m Continue reading The Yoons Remember
Gentle Reader: this is one of those pieces where ya write the title first, and then ya see what comes out the fountain pen. Love, Politics, Technology I mean, shoot for the moon, land on the roof, amirite? Love What do I know about love? Less than any good 3-minute hit song on Continue reading love politics technology
Scotch Plains, New Jersey, was the perfect American town. I m sure that some of you feel that you grew up in the best small town in America, and if you re lucky enough to feel that way, I m not trying to tell you that you re wrong. I m just saying, I feel the same way. Obviously, I m Continue reading July 4, 1976
Valar Morghulis means All Men Must Die in High Valerian. Valerian is not a real language, it s from the fictional world of Game of Thrones but perhaps the phrase is now better known than its original Latin counterpart, Memento Mori. Remember Death the sentiment is the same: we are all mortal, and reflecting Continue reading corporate valar
There s a difference between having a plan and changing it, and never having one at all. 6th Uncle I was twenty-one years old when my uncle said that to me in Minnesota, and I m still thinking about it now, more than three decades later. When he laid these supposed pearls of wisdom on me, I d Continue reading bill ted s unconscious competence
I enjoy mentoring as a stress-relieving hobby. I don t mind stress, I consider it a byproduct of pursuing my goals, and I m still willing to suffer if required to achieve my goals. I ll probably need to let go of that at some point. But I m still trying to do my best, at my advanced age, Continue reading truly universal advice
Don t Be Evil. If you recognize this as Google s former corporate motto, you probably regard it as a broken promise. But arriving too quickly at this judgment misses the lesson of the journey. It may be true that we now live in a tech dystopia created at least in part by those who once proclaimed, Continue reading don t be evil
Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world. Archimedes (apocryphal) When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, all I ever wanted was to get out, across the river to the bright lights big city. I assumed that New Yawk City was the place that moves Continue reading a lever and a place to stand
When I turned 40 years old, I wrote a short series of four posts to try to sum up the four most important lessons I d learned to that point. For most of the past decade, I thought I d do the same at 50. I certainly have learned a lot far more than I expected Continue reading nifty fifty
I somehow just stumbled across a years-old interview with the actor John Cho, who, like me, is of Korean ethnic background. The Korean soccer team slogan, made famous in their run in the World Cup a while back, was Fighting! Somehow that came up during the interview, and John Cho explained: This is our condition. Continue reading Fighting Korea
Silence is compliance is a phrase that many people toss off without thinking through how it works. People who use the phrase earnestly think that it s obvious that silence in the face of injustice is equivalent to complicity in that injustice. But apparently, it s not so obvious, because many people quote the phrase with a Continue reading the logic of silence is compliance
In the future, the police as we know it today will not exist. This is not a political statement, it s simply a technological fact. Now, it s essential to remember that all technological facts are endlessly contingent. For example, it s a technological fact that if you click on a link, another webpage will open. But that s Continue reading police technology
The first scientific mnemonic I can remember is King Philip Came Over For Good Spaghetti: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. That was a long time ago, and biological classification now seems very different (as far as I can tell from Wikipedia), though it s unclear to me whether cladistics wasn t the standard back then, Continue reading the missing links
In 1959, C.P. Snow delivered a lecture called The Two Cultures, about a vexing divide that he saw in the academic circles of Oxford and Cambridge in the middle of the 20th Century. Snow was a rare bird, as a professional scientist who was also an esteemed novelist. Although the two cultures he describes are Continue reading the tragic triangle of the three cultures
Many people have remarked that this month is the longest in memory, so much so that as you lie awake in bed at night, you can hardly believe that this morning was the same day. This has a very simple explanation. At one time or another in your life, you ve probably gotten the advice to Continue reading present time
or, an Outline of Everything I ve Read on Twitter in 2020 so far The most basic criticism of capitalism is that it is inexorably tied to growth. Capitalism is the most efficient way to allocate resources. Efficiency always favors scale. Scale favors inequality, because greater extraction of resources is enabled by more underclass, so resources Continue reading Why The Next Financial Crash Will Be…
I was wrong about why Warren would win the Presidency, bringing a merciful end to my brief non-career as a political prognosticator. (Though really, if a poor record ended dumb predictions, there would be no pundits at all.) I have a lot of the same thoughts that many other Warren supporters have; I don t have Continue reading wishful thinking
I named this blog ginsudo in 2007, saying that it means the way of ginsu. That was a lazy evasion, as the natural follow-up question should be Sure, but what exactly is your way? And I had no answer. Sure, I had theories. I always have a theory. A good friend called me out on Continue reading my way
When I first started getting glum about the future, I thought that maybe I was just getting old and grumpy. But now I ve noticed that an increasing number of people are concerned about the direction we re all heading. In fact, it seems that the younger you are, the more likely you are to have some Continue reading bottled up
Although being a visionary seems fruitful, you never want to be too far ahead of the times. When you can predict the future very far ahead about something that s very important, the more fervently you behave in accord with that prediction, the more of a lunatic you will seem. An clear example is that all Continue reading over easy
What does it mean for one candidate to be more electable than another? Some people object to even posing this question, arguing that electability is just a cover for maintaining the status quo, generally favoring dominant class, race, and gender patterns. In other words, by electability many people just mean that they want a candidate Continue reading what we talk about when we talk about…
Join me, friends, in the Wayback Machine In 2007, Facebook sent a couple of strategists to Linden Lab to ask us about virtual currency. Of course they would ask us at the time, we were the world s leading experts in managing a virtual economy, heading towards a billion dollars of L$ transactions. Yes, Continue reading from Linden to Libra
I m absurdly proud of having predicted Trump as President, more than two months before the Republican convention, and six months before the general election. I know of only two earlier public predictions, by a professional pollster two months before me and a cartoonist extraordinaire more than eight months before me. Ah, but pride goeth before Continue reading why warren
This week s first-ever picture of a black hole was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, which is named after the critical boundary around the black hole. Once an object crosses the event horizon into the black hole, it will never be seen again by any observer on this side of the horizon. The pictured black Continue reading the story of the end
p. 96: I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. When you live alone in a feudal mansion, with gardens spuming the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate, how do you mask the inescapable stink of loneliness? What Continue reading celebrated people