lsc

We have a super-robust set of tools for this for fiction; I'm still chewing through the list generated by 'all Pulitzer prizes for fiction written during my lifetime' - and all of them have been quite good. ('the Orphan Master's Son' so far has been my least favorite, though it was still really quite good. And because these were chosen /at the time/ you get a glimpse into what people were thinking at the time. Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" was a wonderful book in it's own right, but I think was also a historical slice of 'the discourse' at the time.)

For Movies, I find that Ebert aligns a lot with my taste. If he says it's good, it's really good. I mean, that doesn't help with recent movies, but there's more than enough of the old good stuff. (There's a lot to be said for consuming old media; it gives it time for critical opinion to stabilize. )

I mean, of course, all of these methods will leave out a lot of really good stuff. But... that's kind of the point; there's way more media than I can consume. There are professional reviewers that can give you more really good media than you could consume in a reasonable lifetime. I'm not quite halfway through the 'Pulitzer prizes awarded in my lifetime' list, and I've started a few years back. (I mean, I was 40 or so by the time I started, and so I had read a few of the books just 'cause they were popular books that people recommend. McCarthy's "The Road" is exactly the sort of thing I like, so I read it before on another person's recommendation. But still, like, you see some really great work outside your genre; I'm not normally a romance novel kinda guy, but Lurie's "Foreign Affairs" was absolutely beautiful, and absolutely not a thing I would have read without this project.)

I haven't completely solved the problem for technical books, just 'cause people who have good up to date knowledge of an area have often built up that knowledge over time. they read some books but those books are long out of date, they've brought their skills up to date with mailing lists, which they then vet based on their knowledge of the reputation of the person posting.

I mean, I think it's pretty easy for the non-perishables, "The C Programming Language" is a thing you should read if you work with computers. But which tomb on docker is up to date enough and pretty good? that can be a difficult question to answer, and is often answered based on the author's reputation for other technical work they do, which usually tells me something about the accuracy of the book, but doesn't tell me if it's well written or if it's up to date enough. (On the other hand, if you are well known for writing a big part of the subsystem I wanna learn, eh, I don't feel too bad about giving you money for a book even if I later decide that the book is not written in a way I find engaging, like, you earned it and I'll buy another book.) And... I dunno. often you can get sample chapters, and that gets you a pretty good idea of how engaging the writing is.

I mean, one way to address it is to start at the base... "go read the gang of four design patterns books, and then use your knowledge of object orientedness to make sense of modern object-oriented configuration management systems" - which does make some sense. But still, I should spend the time to find the tech book awards that match up with my taste.

Eh, I don't really care about 'edgy' but it bothers me that so many projects, especially when those projects are computer commands, are hard to search on. Like, ss or ip. I mean, in those cases, they're central enough to my world (I'm a sysadmin) that it's worth just memorizing to the point where I rarely need to look it up, but looking up an 'ip' command is way harder than looking up an 'ifconfig' command. Not everyone writes "Iproute" before pasting their 'ip' command.

I mean, I think it's less of a problem for projects that are not commands... really my whole complaint is that a lot of the commands in my universe used to be super unique; you aren't going to get a lot of off the wall results for lsof or ifconfig; but ss and ip? yeah, even when you limit it to my work context, you get conflicts on those.

I think a lot of it is politics and labor leverage and education. after the new deal and the second world war and the GI bill, a lot of our workers had free education. We had a serious safety net for the time and a very progressive tax system with very high top marginal rates to pay for it. and lots of unions. All things that give workers more negotiation power.

for me, devices of different sizes do different things; I carry a lot of specialized devices, from a small laptop to a giant e reader to a regular sized ereader to a cellphone to a watch, and for me? the thing that is currently missing is a thing I can input text on with one hand (while doing something with the other hand) the SE original filled that gap; the iphone 7 is slightly too large to comfortably input text with using one hand, it's a little cramped to input text with two, at least for my hands.)

I should try one of those pop-out deals and see if it makes using the iphone 7 with one hand practical.

> The continued gains in productivity we have seen since that time have come by way of mechanization/automation.

but that has been true since the first chimp figured out how to shove a stick into an anthill and get more tasty bugs than just picking off the ants on the surface. We use tools, better tools are how productivity advances.

Yes, yes, we have better tools than ever before, to the point where they don't look like tools. We can build a machine to do a thing and then leave, and only come back and tinker with it when it breaks.

Some time in the previous century basically everything switched over to assembly-line type production, where nobody built the whole widget themselves. the current switchover is to, uh, I guess you would call them robots. Tools that do the thing with one time input to guide them (and, of course, lots of ongoing maintenance)

But make no mistake, these "robots" we have are still just tools; tools that give massive leverage to the labor that programs those robots and that maintains those robots.

My understanding is that a lot of those young people end up needing to go to the hospital, and only survive because of treatment.

If the hospitals are overwhelmed, the death rate is going to go way up.

dunno, I kinda think that the right actions at the right time can [could have] make a huge difference. I think that if the rest of the country shut down the way CA and NY did... we'd have a real chance at this thing being a month-long crisis. (Of course, the real test here is how bad it ends up getting in CA; California shut down earlier in it's spread than NY. If I'm right, that means the peak won't be as bad here... but that is yet to be seen.)

I also think the cuts to the county health department are... normally mitigated by an ample federal response.

I agree with you... last week.

I mean, sure, we should lock down now, but my feeling is that it's mostly too late for the urban areas.

The rural areas might have a chance... they need to lock down hard right now. But... from talking to rural family... I'm not sure that's culturally possible.

I'm not questioning the need. I'm just saying that it seems to me a lot more realistic that we'll be able to short-term ramp-up production of 1 and 2 than it is to think we'll be able to adequately ramp up 3.

The stories I hear from medical people I know (and this is just anecdotal) is that they are only given serious PPE when they know there is an infection, but it's less clear if that's just standard policy or if that is due to limited supply.

I do agree that if PPE isn't used early and often here, we're going to be short medical personnel, and I think getting those back online is probably going to take longer than throwing money at manufacturers to build more PAPRs.

the disrespect for sleep the medical profession has is insane.

If someone is gonna be cutting on me, I want them to have a good night's rest. They tell me to sleep consistently and well quite often. seems like if it's good for me it would be good for them, too.