Honesty and the Human Body

by Kevin Simler 03.05.2013

Kevin is a 2013 blogging resident visiting us from his home blog over at Melting Asphalt. In economics and biology, honesty is understood in terms of signals. Signals are anything used to communicate, to convey information. A price is a signal of value. Conspicuous consumption is a signal of wealth. A growl is a threat — and [...]

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Binoculars versus Cameras

by Venkat 02.28.2013

I don’t normally pay attention to token gestures, but Mar 1/Mar 2 are the National Day of Unplugging. I don’t know who is behind this idea, or how much momentum it has, but I really like it. My one experience of joining a Jewish friend to observe Sabbath was both deeply relaxing and thought-provoking. A complete unplugging happens [...]

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Solidarity and Recursion

by Mike Travers 02.20.2013

Mike is a 2013 blogging resident visiting us from his home blog Omniorthogonal. Also, Gregory Rader of On the Spiral is joining us as a blogging resident on the Tempo blog this week.  “Solidarity” is an old-fashioned term, trailing connotations of earlier generations of union activists and leftists, but rarely used in mainstream discourse. We [...]

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Adventures in Amateur Talking-Headery

by Venkat 02.15.2013

It’s now been over two years and a dozen talks since I first started speaking with my blogger hat on. Each time I go to one of these things, I realize just how out of place I am. The talking-head conference circuit (as opposed to academic) is designed around polished and powerful speakers with a [...]

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Machine Cities and Ghost Cities

by Drew Austin 02.05.2013

Drew is a 2013 blogging resident visiting us from his home blog over at Kneeling Bus. “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”   -Henry David Thoreau New York and New Jersey have a first world problem: The Bayonne Bridge, which connects the two states, will soon block the entrance to the largest seaport [...]

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Stone-Soup for the Capitalist’s Soul

by Venkat 01.31.2013

The fable of Stone Soup is probably my favorite piece of European folklore. In the Russian version, which I prefer, called Axe Porridge,  the story goes something like this: A soldier returning from war stops at a village, hungry and tired. He knocks on the door of a rich, stingy Scrooge of a woman. In response to [...]

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Jailbreaking the City: Announcing Refactor Camp 2013

by Venkat 01.28.2013

On the weekend of March 2 and 3, we will be organizing the second annual Refactor Camp. The theme for Refactor Camp 2013: Jailbreaking the Bay Area. The event will be held at the San Francisco zoo, same as last year. Regular tickets are $75 and sponsoring attendee tickets are $150.  The ticket includes lunch [...]

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Eternal Hypochondria of the Expanding Mind

by Venkat 01.16.2013

The story of neurasthenia or “invalidism” is a curious mid-nineteenth-century chapter in the story of the emancipation of women. As Barbara Ehrenreich argues in Bright-Sided, it was almost entirely a social phenomenon: The largest demographic to suffer from neurasthenia or invalidism was middle-class women. Male prejudice barred them from higher education and the professions; industrialization was stripping away the [...]

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Refactorings Extended: Please Welcome Mike, Drew and Kevin

by Venkat 01.11.2013

I’ve been writing ribbonfarm as a solo act for over five years now. Blogging can get to be a pretty lonely activity, so I figured I could use some company for a change. I didn’t quite like any of the existing models of collaboration in blogging, so I invented my own: the blogging residency. Think of it [...]

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Schumpeter’s Demon

by Venkat 01.02.2013

For a while now, I’ve been dissatisfied with our shared mental models around the creative destruction being unleashed by the Internet. On the one hand, we have coarse-grained and abstract models based on long-term historical cycles and precedents. This is the sort of thing I’ve explored quite a bit in previous posts. It involves careful [...]

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