Special Guest: Slaviša Tasić.

Special Guests: Ivan Marović and Slobodan Milić.

Special Guests: Ivan Marović and Slobodan Milić.

Special Guests: Ivan Marović and Slobodan Milić.

Special Guests: Ivan Marović and Slobodan Milić.

Links:

• US still has the worst, most expensive health care of any high-income country | Ars Technica — Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn't know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system's failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
• U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022 | Commonwealth Fund — Health care spending, both per person and as a share of GDP, continues to be far higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. Yet the U.S. is the only country that doesn’t have universal health coverage.

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• Milky Eggs » Blog Archive » What the Accelerationist’s Political Compass says about us — Every now and then, this “political compass” of acceleration vs. deceleration, hyperhuman vs. unhuman pops up. It’s a pretty interesting breakdown so I wanted to jot down a couple thoughts.

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• A randomized controlled trial to isolate the effects of fasting and energy restriction on weight loss and metabolic health in lean adults | Science Translational Medicine — Intermittent fasting is increasingly popular, but whether fasting itself offers specific nutritional benefits in lean individuals compared to traditional daily calorie restriction is unknown. In a small clinical trial of healthy individuals, Templeman et al. found that alternate-day fasting without energy restriction was ineffective at reducing body mass. Even with net energy intake restricted to that of daily dieters, alternate-day fasting less effectively reduced body fat content and offered no additional short-term improvements in metabolic or cardiovascular health compared to daily energy restriction.
• A Pattern Language - Wikipedia — A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, and community livability.

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• Aphantasia - Wikipedia — Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one's mind. The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter. Zeman's team coined the term aphantasia, derived from the ancient Greek word phantasia (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ), which means "imagination", and the prefix a- (ᾰ̓-), which means "without".

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• The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream: Cowen, Tyler: 9781250108692: Amazon.com: Books — Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist and best selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition―we’re working harder than ever to avoid change. We're moving residences less, marrying people more like ourselves and choosing our music and our mates based on algorithms that wall us off from anything that might be too new or too different. Match.com matches us in love. Spotify and Pandora match us in music. Facebook matches us to just about everything else.

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• Fooled by Randomness - Wikipedia — Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets is a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that deals with the fallibility of human knowledge. It was first published in 2001. Updated editions were released a few years later. The book is the first part of Taleb's multi-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled the Incerto, which also includes The Black Swan (2007–2010), The Bed of Procrustes (2010–2016), Antifragile (2012), and Skin in the Game (2018).
• Pareto distribution - Wikipedia — The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian civil engineer, economist, and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto,(Italian: [paˈreːto] US: /pəˈreɪtoʊ/ pə-RAY-toh), is a power-law probability distribution that is used in description of social, quality control, scientific, geophysical, actuarial, and many other types of observable phenomena. Originally applied to describing the distribution of wealth in a society, fitting the trend that a large portion of wealth is held by a small fraction of the population.

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• Stream 4.54 - Eric Collisson Professor, GI Oncologist, Physician Scientist by Plenary Session | Listen online for free on SoundCloud — I talk to UCSF Professor Eric Collison about his lab, grant writing, the physician scientist life, cancer, and a doctors duty.
• Is Science Stagnant? - The Atlantic — Despite vast increases in the time and money spent on research, progress is barely keeping pace with the past. What went wrong?
• Priključenija 84: Kompleksnost — ✓ Šta je komplikovano, a šta kompleksno? ✓ Kako se ljudski um nosi sa kompleksnošću? ✓ Kakve to ima veze sa teorijama zavere?
• Bullshit Jobs - Wikipedia — Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth.
• Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » On blankfaces — What exactly is a blankface? He or she is often a mid-level bureaucrat, but not every bureaucrat is a blankface, and not every blankface is a bureaucrat. 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. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare—a blank stare that, more often than not, conceals a contemptuous smile.

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• Priključenija 44: Mask — Da li je Elon Mask ho(h)štapler ili vizionar? Koje su prednosti i mane eksponiranog CEO-a? Ima li nečega dobrog među Maskovim projektima?
• Priključenija 28: Tviter
• 420 (cannabis culture) - Wikipedia — 420, 4:20, or 4/20 (pronounced four-twenty) is cannabis culture slang for marijuana and hashish consumption, especially smoking around the time 4:20 p.m., and also refers to cannabis-oriented celebrations that take place annually on April 20 (which is 4/20 in U.S. form). At locations in the United States where cannabis is legal, cannabis dispensaries will often offer discounts on their products on April 20.
• Priključenija 59: Generacija — ✓ Zašto plaćati sportistima za osvojenu olimpijsku medalju? ✓ Ko može da priušti sebi Roleks? ✓ U čijem dvorištu raste drvo sa parama?
• What Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and Others Are Learning From Curtis Yarvin and the New Right | Vanity Fair — They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics.
• Curtis Yarvin, Political Theorist - Tablet Magazine — How computer programmer Curtis Yarvin became America’s most controversial political theorist
• Jeff Bezos on Twitter: "Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?" / Twitter — Apropos of something: -Tesla's second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US) -Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla's EVs. -After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform -That may have just changed
• Jeff Bezos on Twitter: "Agree — this is a fascinating piece — no one drawn as a cartoon. Thanks for the link and reco." / Twitter — This Vanity Fair article on the "New Right" by @jhensonpogue is so conspicuously different because he does something so rare for modern journalism: he wrote about controversial thought/people to understand and explain it, not prove he's on the Good Side:
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue: Holiday, Ryan: 9780735217645: Books - Amazon — In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental--it had been masterminded by Thiel.
• A look at Jeff Bezos' D.C. Estate - Daily Beat — Bezos paid $23 million for the 27,000-square-foot mansion at 2320-2330 S Street NW in 2016. Neighbors in the upscale Kalorama neighborhood include President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also right around the corner. Bezos’s home was formerly the Textile Museum. He immediately undertook a $12 million renovation, which turned the mansion into an estate.
• Peter Thiel Buys $13 Million DC Mansion in Year's Top Sale: Report — No longer an open secret among neighbors, Peter Thiel was revealed as the "mystery buyer" of a $13 million mansion in Washington, D.C. in Monday's edition of Politico Playbook. Thiel, a tech billionaire and the co-founder of PayPal, made the district's biggest home purchase of the last 12 months by using an LLC to buy it from Wilbur Ross, the former Trump commerce secretary, according to Politico. The lavish home is located in Washington's ritzy Woodland-Nofmanstone neighborhood. Notable residents include former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who lives just across the street from Thiel's new property, according to Playbook.

Links:

• Scripting News: The iPhone 13 epilog — As I reported yesterday, the iPhone 13 Pro arrived yesterday. So the embarrassing saga is over. Now I want to clean up, by finishing the story.
• Daring Fireball: The New Siri Remote (and Updated Apple TV 4K) — The new aluminum Siri Remote that ships with the new 2nd generation Apple TV 4K looks, feels, and acts like the black Siri Remote never happened. I mean, just look at the three of them: the new aluminum Siri Remote looks like the direct successor to the 2012 Apple Remote. Hallelujah.
• Hypercritical: An Unsolicited Streaming App Spec — I subscribe to a lot of streaming video services, and that means I use a lot of streaming video apps. Most of them fall short of my expectations. Here, then, is a simple specification for a streaming video app. Follow it, and your app will be well on its way to not sucking.
• Rogue Amoeba | More Info On Rogue Amoeba — Rogue Amoeba is a privately held software company, based in the USA with offices around the globe. Since 2002, we've been making tools to assist you with all your audio needs on MacOS. In that time, we've delighted millions of users and earned some of the highest honors in the industry.
• What Is the Dark UX? — Self-interested brands use tricky web design tactics designed to deceive website viewers for their own gain. These tactics are called dark UX or dark patterns
• darkpatterns.org on Twitter: "How Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract. Thread." / Twitter
• Old Friends. New Fun (Facebook / Meta - Superbowl reklama)
• Ubik - Wikipedia — Ubik (/ˈjuːbɪk/ YOO-bik) is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation. It follows Joe Chip, a technician at a psychic agency who, after an assassination attempt, begins to experience strange alterations in reality that can be temporarily reversed by a mysterious store-bought substance called Ubik.
• Four kinds of knowing: John Vervaeke and a more grounded way to grow - YouTube — Sazetak novih pogleda na vrste znanja / mudrosti - metafizika uklopljena u nova znanja iz neuronauka. Vise u odlicnoj seriji John Vervaeke-a (psiholog sa Univ u Torontu): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY

Links:

• Coca-Cola® with Coffee Dark Blend | Coca-Cola® — Great Coca-Cola® taste infused with Brazilian coffee in Coca-Cola® with Coffee Dark Blend.
• Apple Events - October 2021 - Apple
• The Metaverse and How We'll Build It Together -- Connect 2021 - YouTube — This year at Connect, we're sharing our vision for the metaverse.
• The 2021 Microsoft Windows Event - YouTube — See what's next for Windows.
• Microsoft Ignite 2021 - YouTube — Join CEO and Chairman, Satya Nadella on the virtual stage at Microsoft Ignite on November 2, 2021.​
• Bill Gates Jumps Over Chair - YouTube — Bill Gates demonstrates his chair jumping skills in front of Connie Chung.
• Steve Ballmer Runs Around Like A Maniac On Stage (Motivational Presentation) - YouTube — Steve Ballmer is worth $16 Billion.
• Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor race; Terry McAuliffe concedes : NPR — Youngkin's victory could be a template for other Republicans. The former private equity CEO and first-time candidate drew raucous crowds in the closing stages of the race by channeling conservative outrage over public education. Many supporters said they were enthusiastic about his defense of parents who are concerned about the way race is taught in school, as well as new protections for transgender students passed by the Virginia legislature.
• Koreni wokisma - by Slaviša Tasić - Tržišno rešenje — Razvoj wokisma odvija se iz nedelje u nedelju pred našim očima. Ne isključujem da ću menjati mišljenje o njegovim korenima, uzrocima i posledicama, jer pravih materijala i tumačenja će tek biti. Sigurno je, u svakom slučaju, da se ovde radi o veoma starim idejnim strujama koje sada vidimo u jednoj savremenoj i radikalnoj manifestaciji. Zato nisam spreman da otpišem wokism kao privremenu i prolaznu budalaštinu.
• The Woke Meritocracy - Tablet Magazine — What is new about education’s turn to woke identity politics is not the fact that administrators and faculty are influencing students’ sense of self, but rather the sort of values that the new ideal personality is supposed to uphold. The contemporary ideal, increasingly, is no longer someone so charmingly personable that others forget he is in fact a ruthless competitor, but a person who so convincingly narrates her having overcome some kind of social injustice that others forget she is in fact a beneficiary of systems of privilege.
• Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism | The Economist — A bullshit job is one that even the person doing it secretly believes need not, or should not, exist. That if the job, or even the whole industry, were to vanish, either it would make no difference to anyone, or the world might even be a slightly better place.

Links:

• McMansions 101 Special Edition: Mansion vs... | McMansion Hell — I get a lot of emails these days, (a good thing!) and a lot of them involve people sending me links to houses (or pictures of their own) asking me whether or not the house in question is or is not a McMansion. This post aims to explain the important differences between the two.
• McMansion - Wikipedia — In suburban communities, McMansion is a pejorative term for a large "mass-produced" dwelling marketed to the upper middle class mainly in the United States.
• Crown New Home Communities | Gaithersburg, Maryland Homes | Pulte — Already 87% sold out! New, 4-level townhomes with lofts and rooftop terraces in Gaithersburg, MD, from the mid $600Ks. Spacious, two-level condos from the low $500Ks. These new homes for sale are footsteps from restaurants, shops, Harris Teeter, the amenity center, LA Fitness, outdoor festivals & exciting nightlife in Downtown Crown. Life here is inspiring, connected, & full of energy.
• 453 Salk Cir, Gaithersburg, MD 20878 | MLS #MDMC743238 | Zillow — Wormald Homes coveted Estate Home model presents living on a grand scale with soaring ceilings, oversized rooms and a fluid transition between indoor & outdoor living with screened porch, deck, terrace and recently completed hardscape with fireplace, all overlooking tranquil water.
• NIMBY - Wikipedia — NIMBY, an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard", or Nimby, is a characterization of opposition by residents to proposed developments in their local area, as well as support for strict land use regulations. It carries the connotation that such residents are only opposing the development because it is close to them and that they would tolerate or support it if it were built farther away. The residents are often called Nimbys, and their viewpoint is called Nimbyism.
• YIMBY - Wikipedia — YIMBY is an acronym for "yes, in my back yard", a pro-housing movement in contrast and opposition to the NIMBY ("not in my back yard") phenomenon. The YIMBY position supports increasing the supply of housing within cities where housing costs have escalated to unaffordable levels. YIMBYs often seek rezoning that would allow denser housing to be produced or the repurposing of obsolete buildings, such as malls (shopping centers), into housing. Some YIMBYs have also supported public-interest projects like clean energy or alternative transport.
• Decal - Wikipedia — A decal (/ˈdiːkæl/, US also /dɪˈkæl/, CAN /ˈdɛkəl/) or transfer is a plastic, cloth, paper, or ceramic substrate that has printed on it a pattern or image that can be moved to another surface upon contact, usually with the aid of heat or water. The word is short for decalcomania, which is the English version of the French word décalcomanie.
• Whither Tartaria? - Astral Codex Ten — Imagine a postapocalyptic world. Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization - St. Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers - dwell savages in mud huts. The savages see the buildings every day, but they never compose legends about how they were built by the gods in a lost golden age. No, they say they themselves could totally build things just as good or better. They just choose to build mud huts instead, because they’re more stylish.
• Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture - Astral Codex Ten — How come we don’t have architects saying “Of course I’d like to build something ornate, but it costs too much”? How come we don’t have rich people (and the occasional cash-flush government working on a monument that it really cares about) saying “screw the price, I really want this one thing to look nice”? I feel like I’m doing some kind of weird archaeology here to try to discover why this happens, whereas every single person in architecture and construction and so on should know whether or not this is true.
• YIMBY Poland 🇵🇱🥟 on Twitter: "It's Saturday, so it's time for a thread 🧵 on another Polish urban phenomena - *pasteloza*! If you have ever been to Poland and some other Eastern Bloc countries, perhaps you've noticed that the socialist-era housing estates in Poland tend to be more... colorful. But why? https://t.co/es0pJfwxgB" / Twitter — It's Saturday, so it's time for a thread 🧵 on another Polish urban phenomena - *pasteloza*! If you have ever been to Poland and some other Eastern Bloc countries, perhaps you've noticed that the socialist-era housing estates in Poland tend to be more... colorful. But why?
• Inside Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's 'horrifying' mansion — A bleak scene graces the March cover of Architectural Digest magazine showing a curved staircase against a backdrop of neutral tones and a table with nary a fake fruit atop it.
• Burt Reynolds regrets naked 1972 Cosmopolitan centerfold photo | Daily Mail Online — Burt Reynolds became the first man to pose naked for a magazine when he shot a centerfold for girls mag Cosmopolitan, but it's something he now says he wishes he hadn't done.
• Kumail Nanjiani: See Photos Of His Transformation For Marvel Movie – Hollywood Life — While Kumail was always a good looking comic and actor, he debuted his six-pack and Chris Pratt–like transformation for the MCU in 2019, when he took to his Instagram to show-off his muscular new physique. The Stuber star joked about showing off his new body at the time. “I never thought I’d be one of those people who would post a thirsty shirtless, but I’ve worked way too hard for way too long so here we are,” he wrote in the caption.

Links:

• Peter Thiel - Wikipedia — Peter Andreas Thiel (/tiːl/; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook.
• Zero to One - Wikipedia — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a 2014 book by the American entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel co-written with Blake Masters. It is a condensed and updated version of a highly popular set of online notes taken by Masters for the CS183 class on startups, as taught by Thiel at Stanford University in Spring 2012.
• Penzije i nagrade - by Slaviša Tasić - Tržišno rešenje — Nacionalne penzije uvela je vlada DSS-a i DS-a, nastavio SNS, niko drugi ko se bori za glasove ih ne pominje i ja mogu samo da zaključim da ideja ima veliku podršku u javnom mnjenju. A užasna je na nekoliko načina.
• We Can’t Go Back to a Golden Age of Capitalism — Q: One of the main ideas in your book has to do with how, if we narrow our focus on the super rich, we observe that the composition of capital and labor in that class has changed a great deal in the last thirty years. Can you explain that idea? A: It goes back to the concept of “homoplutia” that I mentioned earlier, where we have people at the top of the income distribution who are both rich in the sense of capital and labor income. This is a new development.
• U Trst po farmerke - CdM — Početkom 1960-ih počinje era šoping-putovanja u Trst i ona će potrajati sve do kraja 1980-ih. Pogranični grad, ekonomski slabo razvijen, pun ksenofobije i nacionalizma odjednom se pretvorio u mravinjak, prvu adresu zapada za stanovnike komunističke Jugoslavije.

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• Elon Musk Just Revealed More About His Plan to Colonize Mars — When Elon Musk announced his plans last year to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars, many did not think his futuristic goal would or could be achieved in their lifetime. But the SpaceX founder has now penciled in a date when he hopes the first human landings on Mars could take place—and it’s as early as 2024, just seven years away.
• Elon Musk: The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is 'one in billions' | The Independent | The Independent — Elon Musk has said that there is only a “one in billions” chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation. Our lives are almost certainly being conducted within an artificial world powered by AI and highly-powered computers, like in The Matrix, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested at a tech conference in California.
• Elon Musk Embraces His New Status As Memelord — Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, can add a new line to his resume: memelord. Ever since the 47-year-old co-hosted PewDiePie’s “meme review” with Rick and Morty creator and voice actor Justin Roiland, he’s risen to a new status. Musk has long enjoyed a good meme, but following his meme review appearance, his appreciation for them seems to have grown.
• Tesla’s Elon Musk smokes weed on Joe Rogan podcast, havoc ensues - Vox — ust as the dust had settled in Elon Musk’s will-he-won’t-he take Tesla private drama, the electric car company ran into a new set of troubles. Much of the turmoil was driven by the chief executive himself. Here’s what happened: On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News published emails from Musk doubling down on his insistence that one of the Thai cave rescuers was indeed a pedophile who had moved to Thailand to take a child bride. (The rescuer has denied all of this, and Musk previously apologized for the accusation back in June.) Then on Thursday, Musk appeared on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast for a two-hour conversation in which he smoked what Rogan said was marijuana and drank whiskey. On Friday, two of Tesla’s top executives resigned. The US Air Force, which has multiple contracts with Musk’s SpaceX, reportedly began looking into Musk’s marijuana use, because it’s prohibited for someone with a government security clearance. The Air Force denied there’s an investigation and said it needs to determine “the facts and the appropriate process to handle the situation.”
• Elon Musk Accused of Bitcoin Market Manipulation By Top Economist | Tom's Hardware — Just last week, news broke that Tesla had purchased $1.5-billion in Bitcoin to 'maximize returns on cash,' and somewhat unsurprisingly, eyebrows are being raised. As reported by Markets Insider, Economist Nouriel Roubini is accusing Elon Musk of market manipulation and stating that the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) should investigate. The basis of Roubini's accusations stems from Elon Musk's tweets. Roubini accuses Elon of using his Twitter platform to pump up the price.
• Elon Musk on SNL: The controversy, explained - Vox — Elon Musk — Tesla CEO, SpaceX man, and one of the richest people in the world — is hosting Saturday Night Live on Saturday night. As always when it comes to Elon Musk, his immense power and wealth have combined with his seemingly complete lack of self-awareness to create the perfect storm of something to be mad about for a bit. A handful of SNL cast members have expressed their irritation, and the show has reportedly made clear to all cast members that they’re allowed to skip out on Musk’s episode if they like.

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• The Colonial pipeline ransomware cyberattack: How a major oil pipeline got held for ransom - Vox — A major oil pipeline is coming back online after a several-day outage resulting from a cyberattack that caused gas prices to surge and gas stations in multiple states to experience shortages. After nearly a week of being shut down, the Colonial Pipeline Company announced on May 12 that it was restarting pipeline operations and that the supply chain would “return to normal” within the next several days.
• Health care provider Universal Health Services hit with cyberattack — A nationwide cyberattack has crippled operations at Universal Health Services, one of the nation's largest health care providers. As a result, health care personnel reportedly began keeping records on paper as computer systems began failing over the weekend and some hospitals have sent incoming ambulances to other neighboring hospitals.
• Environmental Concerns Arise Over Energy Needed To Mine Bitcoin : NPR — In one upstate New York community, a Bitcoin mining operation is drawing criticism from people who say the natural gas burned to make the cryptocurrency is causing too much pollution.
• Bitcoin Security Model: Trust By Computation — Bitcoin is a distributed consensus network that maintains a secure and trusted distributed ledger through a process called “proof-of-work.” Bitcoin fundamentally inverts the trust mechanism of a distributed system. Traditionally, as we see in payment and banking systems, trust is achieved through access control, by carefully vetting participants and excluding bad actors. This method of trust requires encryption, firewalls, strong authentication and careful vetting. The network requires investing trust in those gaining access.

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• Beware Goldman workhorses, deferred gratification is the worst kind | Financial Times — The enjoyment of life is a skill. The idea that it can be switched on after decades at the grindstone underrates the force of human habit. Thinking of the retired or semi-retired workhorses I know, it is telling how structured and deliberate their recreations tend to be. The wine venture, the competitive sailing, the art-dealing: these are corporate-style projects by another name. The talent for doing nothing, for succumbing to the moment, was never developed. Perhaps this is what “born” A-type personalities would be doing anyway. Just as likely, it is the conditioning that starts with those 20-hour days as impressionable youths. If so, Goldman’s alleged snowflakes are understating their case. Pleasures deferred can be pleasures foregone.
• At Some Medical Schools, Humanities Join the Curriculum - The New York Times — Art and medicine have worked hand in hand for a long time. To improve his art, Leonardo dissected bodies. To improve his anatomy treatise, Andreas Vesalius relied on the artistry of Titian's workshop. But the other day, in the European paintings wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a group of seven would-be doctors had a different kind of reason to appreciate the 17th-century Dutch biblical scene before them: course credit. Three years ago, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine began an art-appreciation course for medical students, joining a growing number of medical schools that are adding humanities to the usual forced march of physiology, pathology and microbiology.

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• Da li je vakcinacija uspeh? - Tržišno rešenje
• Nassim Taleb: How to Not be a Sucker From the Past — History is useful for the thrill of knowing the past, and for the narrative (indeed), provided it remains a harmless narrative. One should learn under severe caution. History is certainly not a place to theorize or derive general knowledge, nor is it meant to help in the future, without some caution. We can get negative confirmation from history, which is invaluable, but we get plenty of illusions of knowledge along with it.
• Why some Texans are facing catastrophic electric bills after a winter storm - Vox — In Texas this week, freezing temperatures overwhelmed the state’s power grid, triggering rolling blackouts, multi-day power outages — and, catastrophic electric bills. According to the Dallas Morning News, some Texans have been hit with power bills totaling as much as $17,000 for only a few days of electricity, many times more than the usual cost of power in Texas. Specifically, it’s Texas residents who rely on a wholesale power plan, rather than a fixed-rate plan, who have seen their bills climb after the demand for power jumped dramatically across the state this week as Winter Storm Uri struck and temperatures plunged. Texas, which has a deregulated electricity market, has a number of providers, both wholesale and fixed rate.
• Tucker Carlson: The great Texas climate catastrophe is heading your way | Fox News — Green energy means a less reliable power grid. Why do our leaders deny that?
• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Wikipedia — In 1967, when the plant was built, TEPCO levelled the sea coast to make it easier to bring in equipment. This put the new plant at 10 meters (33 ft) above sea level, rather than the original 30 meters (98 ft).[12] On 27 February 2012, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered TEPCO to report its reasoning for changing the piping layout for the emergency cooling system. The original plans separated the piping systems for two reactors in the isolation condenser from each other. However, the application for approval of the construction plan showed the two piping systems connected outside the reactor. The changes were not noted, in violation of regulations.[145] After the tsunami, the isolation condenser should have taken over the function of the cooling pumps, by condensing the steam from the pressure vessel into water to be used for cooling the reactor. However, the condenser did not function properly and TEPCO could not confirm whether a valve was opened.