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Semiconductors are so integral to the history of Silicon Valley that they give the region its name, and, more importantly, its culture: chips require huge amounts of up-front investment, but they have, relative to most other manufactured goods, minimal marginal costs; this economic reality helped drive the development of the venture capital model, which provided unencumbered startup capital to companies who could earn theoretically unlimited returns at scale. This model …

Dennis O’Keefe and Marsha Hunt in Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal 1948. While iconic film noirs grab our attention, films like Out of the Past, where Jeff Bailey’s (Robert Mitchum) past catches up with him lured by the complex and dangerous Kathie Moffet (Jane Greer), and while there’s nothing hotter than the steamy affair between Frank … Continue reading Under the Radar: The Unseen Side of Film Noir – Part 1

This May, Fantagraphics is collecting the various small square Peanuts books they’ve published into a new box set, Peanuts All Year Round Mini Collection. This includes: A Valentine for Charlie Brown — Valentine’s Day and romance strips Batter-Up Charlie Brown! — baseball strips Waiting for the Great Pumpkin — Halloween strips Snoopy’s Thanksgiving — Thanksgiving strips (yes, I know you could figure that out.) Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking — reprints …

Blocking sets are one of the central topics in finite geometry, which were originally introduced in the context of game theory under the name of `blocking coalitions’: On Finite Projective Games. I first learned about them during my Ph.D. as a source of challenging extremal problems that over the years led to the development of techniques like the polynomial method and the variance trick. The latter can sometimes be replaced …

20249″ x 11″ x 4″Bronze Discarded phones piling up waiting for the apocalypse. The post Planned Obsolescense first appeared on Doug McCune.

In our world, every copy of a photograph is the same. But in this world, every time you print a new photograph from a negative, the image subtly changes to show how the subject of the picture has changed in real life. That young oak overlooking the garden? In this new print, its branches spread even farther than when we took the original picture. The once peaceful garden? Faded from …

What can Americans do? What should Australia do? A few weeks ago, I drew up a flowchart to estimate the probability that Trump would establish a dictatorship in the US, which looked, at the time, like an even money bet. We don’t need to speculate any more. Trump has announced the dictatorship, and there is no sign of effective resistance. The key elements so far include Extremists announced for all …

My essay “From Justin Martyr to Alvin Plantinga and Back Again: Advice from the First Christian Philosopher” appears in the anthology Advice to Christian Philosophers: Reflections on the Past and Future of Christian Philosophy, edited by (and with an essay by) Christopher Woznicki. It’s a volume of articles inspired by Alvin Plantinga’s famous essay “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” which is included. Other contributors include Charity Anderson, Michael Austin, William Lane …

From years of working from home in a tiny house I mostly tune out Oblomovka’s work meetings, but today a particular cadence caught my ear. He was asking someone a list of pointed questions about a software project and the staccato back and forth – I could only hear his end of it mind you – sounded oddly mystical. Who maintains it? When was the last commit? What are the …

6 June 2024:Big news! Today we are announcing that Shopify is acquiring the Threads team.There are a million feelings and thoughts from this journey, but nothing more than gratitude to all of our users and customers for building with us, our investors for their unwavering support and guidance, and all of our friends and family who put up with the late nights, canceled plans, and the general roller coaster that …

The English alphabet includes only 26 letters. That’s one of the few limits to American baby-naming creativity and diversity—and we’re pushing its boundaries. Formerly rare letters like X are now popular, and new spellings and letter combinations continue to expand our name pool. Since the year 2000, 17 different letter pairs made their all-time debuts in US baby name statistics. Meet the new letter combos, and the names that introduced …

A new hat puzzle from Gribalko, reminding me of traffic lights. Puzzle. You and six of your mathematician friends each have a hat placed on your head. Each of you can see the hats of all the others but cannot see your own. You were all told that there were three red, three yellow, and three green hats in total, but two of them were hidden. Your friends began to …

This week, US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced that her choice to join her on the ballot as running mate is Tim Walz, who's currently governor of Minnesota.A number of people on Bluesky, in the …

Hearing rumours that the Americans have invented a holiday that is like Christmas, but exclusively the part where you get into arguments with your extended family. Fascinating.

A leader starts their management journey in reactive mode, and graduates to the strategic mode over time.