They are converting a modern office building into condos a few blocks down from my apartment, and by the looks of it they may as well have torn everything down and built it anew. I hope they will do that will all the brutalist federal garbage downtown, the FBI building first. Meanwhile, the late 19th-early 20th century townhouses scattered around DC have been switching seamlessly from commercial to residential and back for a hundred years now for little to no cost.
Optimization and scale: they work great, until they don’t. Just ask a salaried physician working for a conglomerate in the medical-industial complex, a large-scale operation which is being optimized to death (sadly not its own, but that of its component parts — patients and health care workers alike). All those large reptiles and mammals are extinct for a reason.
We discussed the problem of scale at the first RWRI I attended back in August 2020, the Beirut explosion still fresh in everyone’s mind. Less than a year later, a big ship blocked the Suez channel, as if to reinforce the message. I expect Nassim Taleb’s next book will have a chapter or three on the problem, even if “scale” doesn’t make it into the title.
What goes for biology, architecture, and logistics also goes for industry, and if there is one hyper-optimized massive-scale operation around, it’s Apple’s iPhone production. If and when its production chain comes toppling down, it will not be a black or a gray swan event, it will be snow-white, which is why I suspect (or, as an iPhone user, hope) they have contingencies.
And in practicing what I preach, I have slowly been transitioning away from GTD levels of hyper-productivity and into a 40,000 weeks mindset. Whether this is a sign of wisdom, experience, or just plain old age, well, who is to say? Why not all three?
Two blog posts of the old-school kind, as in people writing in depth about things they love:
And both out on the same day (I’m behind on my feeds!)
🏀 Two weeks in, and the Nuggets are at 7–1, the Wizards at 1–5. So no, I wasn’t joking.
The holiday season starts as soon as I get my first email from the Wikimedia Foundation, reminding me that “last year, you donated x dollars…”. And those emails work, despite some recent made-up controversies. Wikipedia is the wonder of the modern world.
It was better than the average Netflix series — which isn’t saying much — but also has a better than average time travel story line, so definitely recommended. The premise, which you get from the promo, is that the same dead body shows up in the same London alley in four different time periods; the following few bullet points have mild spoilers, so, caveat lector:
Michael Bonner on MAID, Canada’s euthanasia program:
In Canada, patients can wait years for medical treatment in the country’s overburdened and underfunded health-care system. The baby boomer population, as it ages, will only increase the strain on the medical system, the welfare state, and the Canada Pension Plan. A 2017 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggested euthanasia could save the country between $34.7 million and $138.8 million annually—a “substantial savings,” the authors said. Is this why the government is eager to expand MAID?
Kurt Vonnegut, 2 B R 0 2 B:
Got a problem? Just pick up the phone. It solved them all — and all the same way!
Rejoice, our eight-month long nightmare is over. For now.
As We May Think is one of the greatest essays ever written, and I am all for popularizing it, but one thing about the most recent mention just rubbed me the wrong way in how it presented its author, Vannevar Bush:
Bush was part of the Oppenheimer set; he was an engineer whose work was critical to the creation of the atomic bomb.
This paints the picture of an engineer working at Los Alamos under Oppenheimer to make the bomb, when in fact Bush was leading the United States' nuclear program for two whole years before Oppenheimer became involved. Oppenheimer’s predecessor? Sure. Part of his set? Misleading.
I suspect it was presented this way because of that movie; the more I keep seeing these kinds of distortions as a result, the less I think of it. This is why I will keep recommending The Making of the Atomic Bomb to everyone and anyone who was tickled by the Los Alamos scenes — the only ones worth watching.
Speaking of Rao, I missed this recent nugget of his about the affairs of the world:
At best you could say: With negligible power comes negligible responsibility. So why are we all acting like we’re Marvel superheroes and supervillains with the weight of the world’s fate on our shoulders?
I’ve wondered the same thing myself! People are disavowing and reaffirming left and right, and for what?
Next Wednesday looks busy, but there is a Thanksgiving-sized gap in the calendar.