After a 10-month hiatus I am reactivating my linkblog account on Radio3, one of Dave Winers' many great projects. It has cross-posting to Micro.blog which Just Works™️. Happy days.

It is remarkable how quickly the new Verge homepage became my go-to for tech information. Nilay Patel’s introductory article from two months ago was prescient.

An interesting task popped up on my to-do list this morning. ⊕ Not important for the story, but some may recognize that this is OmniFocus. I’ve been using it with great success for more than a decade and cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who has to juggle between work, family, and — and this is what tipped me to using it but probably won’t apply to you — the massive amounts of paperwork needed for US immigration.

It was one year ago yesterday, then, that during a buisiness trip to California, over drinks and appetizers, I was subjected to an hour-long tirade about the evils of fiat currency and the brilliance of digital gold that is bitcoin, and why would I want to miss out on the future of finance?

This was from two friends, both half a decade or so younger than me, who hadn’t previously met but quickly found common ground in their love of decentralized finance and Tesla stock.

I held my ground and tried to explain — as well as I could after a few beers — that I wasn’t much of a gambler, and that even if I was I would rather have gambled somewhere that has free drinks and livelier entertainment. I told them to read the Incerto. One of them had the books but hadn’t gotten around to reading them, and disliked Taleb on principle. We agreed to disagree, and parted ways with this task dictated on my phone.

And here we are today.

They are both fine, or so I’ve been told, because they sold everything at just the right time. My task is therefore complete, although I didn’t have to wait a full year to check it off. The value then, after all, was the same as it is now, which is to say exactly zero.

Today is Election Day in America. By law, this is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Why pick such an impractical day for voting, when people need to take time off work and kids have to miss school?

Because Americans used to be a bunch of farmers. Of course.

Angela Lansbury (1925-2022). The original production of Sweeney Todd is my favorite work of hers, and The Worst Pies in London one of my favorite parts. I hear she’s known for other things as well.

Rem Koolhaas:

Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or, more precisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational program: to share the blessings of science, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown…

This article will be 20 years old next month, and I am only hearing about it now. Hard to think of a better descriptor for the post-WW2 detritus we inhabit.

This FT lunch interview with Piers Morgan was written for someone more clued in to British media than I am, but he seems to be an insufferable oaf, and proud of it! Even if just a facade — though one that pays off handsomely — is that how you want people to see you?

Charlie Warzel puts out a brilliant newsletter every week, and today’s is no different. “Business dude lorem ipsum” indeed.

An old one but good one from Scott Aaronson:

A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions.

Dealing with some government bureaucracy today and boy does this word fit for some — not all! — of the people involved.

Katherine Eban at Vanity Fair:

Though Fenton is a FEMA superstar with ample experience responding to tornadoes and hurricanes, it would have been more logical for the top person to come from within the HHS family of agencies, though a division director from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was assigned as Fenton’s deputy. The choice “reflects the fact that CDC can’t operate its way out of a paper bag,” said the former HHS official.

Third year into the covid-19 pandemic and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that the CDC is moribund. Institutional decay comes for all during the fat and lazy times.

Katherine Eban also wrote this brilliant account of the lab-leak hypothesis and a hair-raising book about the FDA that made the agency’s fumbles, unlike the CDC’s, not at all surprising.