Category Archives: Links

Links: What does arousal feel like for women?, campus politics, decision fatigue, geography, and more!

October 22, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , , Leave a comment

* Mostly SFW: “girls of Reddit what is it like to be horny from a girls perspective?”

* “Why One Male College Student Abandoned Affirmative Consent;” I am endlessly struck by the gap between the commentariat and what I observe at Saturday night parties and bars.

* Relatedly, “Neo-Victorianism on Campus: Is this the end of the collegiate bacchanal?”, which is an underreported perspective and yet one Katie Roiphe discussed 20 years ago. The more I know, the more apt I am to be the annoying guy complaining about historical context.

textual-2047* On decision fatigue, which I definitely suffer from.

* Perhaps related to the above, “Doctors Tell All—and It’s Bad,” which can be profitably read in conjunction with “Why you should become a nurse or physicians assistant instead of a doctor: the underrated perils of medical school.”

* “Why Kids Sext,” a 100,000-word article that could be summarized as “For the same reasons adults do” or “cause it’s fun, the same reason why kid these days listen to that infernal devil music: Jazz.”

* “‘The Bell Curve’ 20 years later: A Q&A with Charles Murray;” the section about genetic alteration of genes that affect intelligence is of the most interest. I’m still not convinced our tests for measuring intelligence are great. Then again see “Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming.”

* Where young college graduates want to live; Portland and Austin are both on my radar.

Links: Are cops dumb?, humiliation, teachers, traffic, fear, how to be attractive to women, and more!

October 14, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , , Leave a comment

* Speculative, though it would explain a lot: “Can Someone Be Too Smart To Be A Cop?”

* This Is How Judges Humiliate Pregnant Teens Who Want Abortions.

* “This Is Not A Startup Story: In 2011, I started a book business with my best friend called Emily Books.”

* “A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned.”

* “Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now.”

* Why People Fear Vaccines, and Always Have; per another Slate article, parents who don’t vaccinate their kids should be sued and/or charged.

* How To Be Attractive To Women, Pt.2: Signaling Attractive Traits. Much of this is also applicable to women.

* “What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security,” a completely hilarious piece one could imagine Feynman writing.

Links: Becoming fluent in math, “How to be attractive to women,” essays, and more

October 9, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , Leave a comment

* “How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.”

* “How To Be Attractive To Women, Pt. 1: Our Embarrassing Stories,” which I wish I’d heard and absorbed when I was 12 or 13. I made pretty much all the mistakes discussed at the link.

* “Science proves that you love your dog like a baby,” which is unsurprising given how many people use pets as emotional substitutes for children.

* What is an essay? by John Jeremiah Sullivan, which should be read in tandem with Paul Graham’s “The Age of the Essay.”

* Yet another police brutality video: “Kid tapes cop smashing car window, dragging man away after tasering him.”

Links: Service, evil, math, writing, death, David Fincher, and more

October 3, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , Leave a comment

* “It is often more satisfying to serve others than to cultivate your own egotistical freedom.”

* Camille Paglia: “The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil.” In some domains it also cannot understand ambiguity. See also my essay “If you want to understand frats, talk to the women who party at them (paging Caitlin Flanagan).”

* “How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.”

* Someone got here by searching for “why chose pa instead of medical school.” Brilliant. That sort of person is exactly the one I sought to reach.

gazing-2018* Why academic writing sucks.

* Why are so few politicians willing to admit error?

* D.G. passes; see also his last post “Choosing life in the face of death.”

* “‘Any boy who tells you that he hasn’t seen porn is lying. Porn changes what you expect from girls:’ In the age of relentless online pornography, chatrooms, sexting and smartphones, the way teenage boys learn about relationships has changed dramatically.

* Playboy’s David Fincher interview.

* “Forfeiting The Patriarchal Dividend,” which is interesting for novelists and others; note again that linking does not imply endorsement.

Paul Graham and the artist

October 2, 2014 By in Culture, Links Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Paul Graham’s new essay “Before the Startup” is as always fascinating, but Graham also says several things that apply to artists:

The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don’t even realize at first that they’re startup ideas.

The same is true of ideas for novels, which often come from minute observations or moments or studies of character. They often don’t feel like novels at first: they feel like a situation (“What if a guy did this…”) and the full novel comes later. Artists often work at the margins.

He also writes in a footnote:

I did manage to think of a heuristic for detecting whether you have a taste for interesting ideas: whether you find known boring ideas intolerable. Could you endure studying literary theory, or working in middle management at a large company?

This may be why I and perhaps many other grad students find grad school worse as time goes on, and why MFA programs have been growing. Too many critics have ceased focusing not on how “to be an expert on your users and the problem you’re solving for them”—or, in this example, “readers” instead of “users”—and instead focus on straight forward careerism, which rarely seems to overlap with what people want to read.Paul Graham and the artist

Links: Productivity, adultery (not related to point 1), politics, firings, Caitlin Moran, and more

September 26, 2014 By in Links Tags: Leave a comment

* “Why Your Cousin With a Ph.D. Is a Basket Case: Understanding the Byzantine hiring process that drives academics up the wall,” or, don’t go to grad school.

* Megan McArdle: “California Accidentally Legalizes Campus Sex:” “It is, in other words, an impossibly overspecific standard that seems impossible to enforce consistently. And yet, while most of the commentariat views this overspecificity as a bug, I wonder if it isn’t actually a feature.” In general I am increasingly leery of new laws, since by now no one is innocent.

* David Mitchell on How to Write: “Neglect Everything Else”.

* 28 Steal-Worthy Tips From the Most Productive People on the Planet.

* “Up With Adultery! An Italian Woman’s Manifesto;” speculative.

* Someone found this blog by searching for “kayden kross y anna love,” though I suspect they are disappointed.

* Someone else found this blog by searching for “best english literature graduate programs,” the answer to which is: “Don’t go.”

* Forbes fires columnist for being a columnist; weirdly, none of the current talk in the pundit-o-sphere has moved past what Camille Paglia wrote 20 years ago.

* “‘I was terrified we’d lose all our money’: banks tell US customers they won’t work with Americans,” an underreported story.

* “Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel,” which sounds stupid but isn’t. I still don’t want to read the novel; it sounds too overtly political.

Links: Survival / apocalypse, cops, PhDs, bravery, writing, gender roles, rape dark numbers, and more

September 21, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

* “An Astrobiologist Asks a Sci-fi Novelist How to Survive the Anthropocene;” I’ve said it before, but extinction is an underrated risk.

* More about cops being jerks.

* “Why Haven’t Humanities Ph.D. Programs Collapsed?”

* The Great Unravelling, which reads like a Peter Watts novel and doesn’t feel like the world I inhabit, or feel like I inhabit.

* “The Astonishing Story of the Federal Reserve on 9-11,” which is indeed astonishing and fascinating.

* Terry Teachout: “Advice to young authors,” or, expect to do almost everything and not make a lot of money. This was written before the eBook age.

Disagree-9180019* In his fascinating new book the developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert argues that there is actually hard science behind many of our stereotypical gender roles.

* Amazon releases interesting Kindle hardware for the first time in ages; if you buy it from the link I get a kickback, FWIW.

* New York is actually a relatively poor place, at least in income terms; however, I think that New Yorkers are consuming non-income amenities (or just stealing from landlords  via rent control) as compensation.

* “How Sugar Daddies Are Financing College Education,” though it lacks data.

* How Many Rape Reports Are False? Be wary of anyone who wants to emphasize or parade the more general issue while wanting to minimize this question.

* Israel’s NSA scandal.

Links: Dating forums, bike lanes, Peter Thiel, Fuji X100T

September 13, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , , Leave a comment

* “Why Most PUA/Dating Forums Are Completely Fucking Worthless,” from a guy running a PUA/Dating Forum; most guys running PUA/Dating Forums appear to say this about other guys running PUA/Dating Forums, making the claim that others are completely fucking worthless a cliché of the genre.

* Counterintuitive: “Bike lanes have actually sped up car traffic in New York City.”

* “Is it okay to kill cyclists?” In the U.S., the answer is largely “yes.”

* “Elder Statesmen Declare a War on the ‘War on Drugs:’ What took them so long?” Excellent question.

* Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent.

Olympus 25mm 1.8-1022* Peter Thiel on the innovation environment; Zero to One comes out on Tuesday and you should read it.

* Peter Thiel Reddit AMA, and like the above it is consistently and exceptionally interesting.

* The Fuji X100T is an interesting looking camera that very annoyingly does not have a tilting rear LCD.

Links: Myths, Mean Girls, identity, people lie about sex

September 8, 2014 By in Links Tags: , Leave a comment

* “5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die.”

* “Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft,” from a technical and social hacking standpoint.

* “Ten Ways Colleges Work You Over,” and I wish I could get this in the hands of every high school student applying to competitive colleges.

* “An Analysis of Power And Social Dynamics In ‘Mean Girls;’” sounds stupid but isn’t.

* “Intellectual decay,” or, people in groups tend to identify based on opposition to the other group more than independent assessments of facts and situation.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA* An anecdote from Idiot Programmer on students, books, and cell phones.

* “Lies, damned lies and sex work statistics.”

* “Civil forfeiture: How prosecutors seize the assets of the innocent.” This is an evil practice, and I don’t use the term “evil” frequently.

* “Sometimes a Little Objectification Can Be a Good Thing,” which should be obvious to anyone attuned to desire and receptivity.

* “For Kayden Kross, the Family Business Happens to Be Porn” (SFW).

* “The Difference Between A Woman’s Behavior And Her Intent,” maybe, though I endorse the anti-conspiracy theory element. Think emergent behavior long before you spend a moment of thought on conscious conspiracy.

Links: Entitlement, Ferguson, blogs, reading, war

September 1, 2014 By in Links Tags: , , , 2 Comments

* “The Problem of Entitlement: A Question of Respect,” especially worth reading for teachers and students, though it is excellent throughout. This especially resonates:

The world of grad students two decades later is a lot different. Nearly all the students have smartphones, which they bring to class. Nearly all of them spend more time staring at screens than at books.

And the students I encounter seem to value reading less and less. I remember one especially galling workshop that I taught a few years ago, in which I asked the participants to read a single story, “Guests of the Nation” by Frank O’Connor. Hardly any of them bothered. They didn’t seem to understand—they were too entitled to understand—that the production of great literature requires a deep engagement with great literature. In fact, they were more likely to talk about a movie or TV show, or what they just posted on Facebook, than the last great book they read.

When I go into coffeeshops computers and phones outnumber books at least 10:1. That is worth contemplating for anyone who writes or aspires to write books. In many ways writing is more important than ever—in an email yesterday I said that books may be the (financial) wagging the cultural dog—but people are arguably getting paid either less or differently for it.

women with cell phone in coffee shop-1829* “How we’d cover Ferguson if it happened in another country.”

* Blogs will outlast the various “Social Media” companies.

* Housing policy is the biggest thing “blue states” are screwing up.

* “The Great Unread: Why do some classics continue to fascinate while others gather dust?” What is the role of the reader, and how will a given society evolve? To most 19th C writers, coming secularization probably wasn’t totally obvious. What are 21st Century writers underestimating?

The other reality of reading is that an infinite number of books can be read at a given moment. Even dedicated readers rarely read more than 100 books a year.

* Fundamentalists are not traditionalists.

* We cannot really understand the horror of the Eastern front in World War II.