Events

Via Bruce Schneier's recent essay on complexity, I found a blog post on the work of Ronald Coase, which really resonated: Ronald Coase observed that an organisation could be considered as a collection of contracts, and asked why, in that case, did organisations even exist. His answer was that contractual relationships have transactions costs. When these transactions costs outweighed the expense of organisation, organisation would predominate. Also, there were limits to transaction; it might be actually...

My home office has an unobstructed eastern view, and it sits in a loft above my bedroom. That means my bedroom gets indirect eastern light. The blinds in my office don't block all that light, however, so for three months of the year my bedroom gets awfully bright before 6am. Today, for whatever reason, I didn't sleep through it. Fortunately the sun rises before 6am only from late April to mid August, so I will get to sleep later eventually. And I do like that the sun sets after 7:30pm from early April...

Every other Tuesday we release software, so that's what I just did. It was so boring we even pushed the bits yesterday evening. In theory we always have a code-freeze the night before a release, but in fact we sometimes have just one more thing to do before we commit this last bit of code... And yet, the world outside keeps becoming less boring: Paul Krugman thinks President Biden should toot his own horn a bit more. Michelle Goldberg reminds us all that the XPOTUS meant "lock her up" literally: "A...

The last three days—i.e., the first three days of Summer—have shown us most of the weather we can expect this season. It rained most of Saturday, yesterday we had cool, sunny, and eminently walkable weather, and today it's hot and sticky with thunderstorms on the way. At least Cassie and I got to spend most of yesterday outside. In other news: David French argues that Justice Sonia Sotomayor's (I) recent opinion defending the National Rifle Association "reinforced the constitutional wall of protection...

Over the weekend, Mexico and South Africa made history. In South Africa, voters turfed out the African National Congress Party, which had held a majority of seats since the end of Apartheid in 1994: Final results from Wednesday’s seismic South Africa elections have confirmed that the African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy, firing the starting gun on unprecedented coalition talks. The ANC, which led the fight to free South Africa from...

Piping plovers Imani and Searocket, the former an offspring of the famous pair Monty and Rose, are expecting: A piping plover nest has been spotted at Montrose Beach. The nest, which has one egg, is the result of a recent pairing between the beloved Imani, a male plover born at Montrose Beach in summer 2021, and Searocket, a female chick released at the beach last summer, according to a Friday news release from the Park District. The egg is expected to hatch “within a month,” according to the Park...

Summer officially begins today. We tied for 3rd-warmest spring in history, the second top-3 finish this century and the 3rd in my lifetime. And it turns out that we tied for the most sun in May as well. The CPC predicts June will start cool, but with the lake 2°C above normal already we could be in for a very warm summer. Cassie and I started the season with a 5.6-kilometer walk through Lincoln Square and North Center (and a little bit of Lakeview), so we're both feeling pretty relaxed. And now we're...

Despite a high, thin broken cloud layer, it's 23°C with a light breeze and comfortable humidity at Inner Drive Technology World HQ. Cassie and I had a half-hour walk at a nice pace (we covered just over 3 km), and I've just finished my turkey sandwich. And yet, there's something else that has me feeling OK, if only for a little while... Perhaps it's this? Maybe this? How about this? Or maybe it's Alexandra Petri? In other news: President Biden just announced that Israel has proposed a three-phase peace...

The Manhattan jury in the first felony trial of a former president took only about 10 hours to reach a conclusion. He's GUILTY. Let the op-eds flow!

Oh, so many things: Ankush Khardori lays out how "the Alito scandal is worse than it seems." US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former constitutional law professor, has a plan for how to get Justices Alito (R) and Thomas (R) to recuse themselves in any January 6th case. The non-disclosure agreement The Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt signed to work on the show recently expired, and wouldn't you know, he has tapes. Pass the popcorn. Matthew Yglesias describes his drift from left to center-left....