Shared posts

17 Jul 22:19

‘The Axis Is Constructive-Destructive’

by John Gruber

Steve Jobs, in a 2010 conversation with Rupert Murdoch, in which Jobs told Murdoch he was “blowing it with Fox News”:

“The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you’re not careful.”

I thought this was interesting in light of my comments yesterday regarding the power that Murdoch, by way of Fox News, holds over Donald Trump’s presidency.

This line from Jobs — “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive” — is truly the best summary of Trumpism I’ve seen. Trump supporters aren’t conservatives, they just want to see the liberal world order burn down.

(Thanks to Chloe Deguzman.)

10 May 03:28

SPFBO 2017 - Phase 1

by Mark Lawrence
Initially this page has the list of entries, assigned to the ten blogs. It also has links to reviews and blog posts from phase 1, listed as they show up, and the entries will be coloured red as they are eliminated, light green if they graduate from any sub-groups the blogs may consider, and bright green if chosen for the final. Individual reviews will also be linked from the book names.

Click on the book titles for links to reviews.

You can see the blogger list and the duties they've agree to here, And the call to authors here.




A note to authors:

First let me say thank you to all the authors who sent their work in. You were so numerous I wasn't able to respond individually but at the end of this post is a list of all the entries I received, which blogger they went to.

Almost everyone who sent in thanked me for taking the time to do this - of course I've spent only a modest amount of time on the project and it is the bloggers who are going to put in the real hours.

Almost everyone who sent in thanked me for the opportunity. And it is a great opportunity - but let's take a moment to keep expectations real here. If we have 300 entries and each blogger is going to select the book they feel is best from the 30 entries sent to them ... that means that 97% of you will fall at the first hurdle. That's just the unforgiving mathematics of the thing.

You may have written a great book, but there may be one in that 30 that the blogger likes better.

Here are my views on 'failure'.


& the annual title wordle!



From which we can see that our average title hovers in the "Magic Storm-Dragon" to "War of the Blood Empire" region.

And the gender breakdown:




SPFBO 2017 posts
- There is now a discussion group on Facebook, open to all.
- How it will go down at Fantasy-Faction.
Nitty gritty details from Bookworm Blues.
- Fantasy-Faction talk about SPFBO 3 and the world of self-pub.
- Booknest lay down the law!
Spiffbo central for the Qwillery.
- Pornokitsch claims not to be a dick.
- On Fantasy Book Critic Mihir tells us what plans he and Cindy have.
- On Fantasy-Faction Laura provides banners galore.
- The eponymous Lynn reminds us that there can be only one.
- Kitty G video blogs on the SPFBO and the titles allocated to her.
- I am collecting the finalists for the cover contest here.
- For Fantasy Book Review James selects his three favourite covers from their batch and joins in the prediction game!
- Pornokitsch offers some unwanted writing advice.
- On Venturelaxread Katherine selects her cover finalists.
- Fantasy Book Critic select their top covers.
- Bookworm Blues posts their finalists for the cover contest.
- Fantasy-Faction kick off their campaign.
- On Lynn's Books we see her favourite covers!
- Fantasy-Faction talk about the cover contest.
- James chooses Fantasy Book Review's overall top 4 covers
- Lynn is ready to go!
- Booknest kicks off with the first review of SPFBO 2017
- Booknest reviews Throne of Ice
- Pornokitsch reviews and cuts 26 titles!
- Booknest reviews Mercenary
- Lynn reveals her first 5
- On Kelly Stock's blog there's an SPFBO tag & reviews of her fellow contestants
- On Bookworm Blues the first semi-finalist is chosen
- Booknest reviews The Final Harvest
- On Fantasy Book Critic news of a contestant give-away.
- Kitty G on youtube talking about her 1st SPFBO books.
- Booknest review The Ring and The Flag.
- Booknest review A City of Hope and Ruin.
- Booknest review Shadow Shadow
- Bookworm Blues chooses a 2nd semi-finalist!
- Booknest review The Fading Dusk
- Booknest review 99 Days
- Booknest review Blossom and the Beast
- Venturelaxread swings the axe and twenty titles go down
- Booknest choose their first semi-finalist
- Booknest review Men and Dragons
- Fantasy Book Review select Winter's Reach as their 1st semi-finalist
- Fantasy-Faction cut five titles.
- Pornokitsch has criteria!
- Pornokitsch reviews Under Witch Moon
- Pornokitsch reviews Dead Letter
- Pornokitsch reviews Irons in the Fire
- Booknest reviews Spire City
- Pornokitsch selects their finalist!
- Booknest reviews War of the Black Tower
- 1st Semi-finalist selected on Fantasy Book Critic
- Booknest reviews City of Masks
- Booknest reviews Shadowbane
- Booknest reviews The Shattered Orb
- Venturelaxread reviews Magic comes to Whiteport
- Four titles go out on Lynn's Books
- Booknest reviews Rune Empire
- Booknest reviews Requiem for the Wolf
- Booknest picks a second semi-finalist!
- Lynn selects her next 5 titles
- Fantasy Book Critic reviews The Crimson Queen
- Booknest reviews The Silent Song
- Booknest picks a third semi-finalist!
- Booknest reviews Fall Far From The Tree
- Bookworm Blues chooses a third semi-finalist!
- Booknest reviews The Tainted Shrine.
- Kitty G video blogs about her first five titles
- Fantasy-Faction cut more books
- Fantasy Book Critic choose a 2nd semi-finalist!
- Kitty G video reviews semi-finalist The Exercise of Vital Powers.
- Kitty G video reviews semi-finalist Gift of the Phoenix
- Lynn deals with her second batch
- Booknest reviews Pilgrim of the Storm
- Kitty G youtubes about her 2nd group
- Fantasy Book Review reviews semifinalist A Threat of Shadows
- Fantasy Book Review reviews semifinalist Where Loyalties Lie
- Venturelaxread reviews A Conspiracy of Shadows
- Venturelaxread reviews Toric's Dagger
- Venturelaxread reviews Destiny of the Wulf
- Booknest reviews Wreckers Gate
- Fantasy Book Critic reviews semifinalist Neferitis' Heart
- Fantasy Book Critic interviews A.W. Exley
- Booknest review A Star Reckoner's Lot
- Kitty G video reviews Devil's Night Dawning.




122 of 300 eliminated.


Entries 

Reviews (where available) are linked from the book titles. Just click.


M.M. Perry - Whom The Gods Love
Ginny O - The Lone Prospect
T.O. Munro - The Medusa's Daughter
Kathy Cyr - Max Hamby
Trip Ellington - Evermage: Clash of Chaos 
Glenn G. Thater - Gateway to Nifleheim
Marie Andreas - The Glass Gargoyle
Elizabeth Baxter - The Last Priestess
Gemma Perfect - The Kingmaker
Taddeus White - Kingdom Asunder
Dale Triplett - Halcyon's Wake: Faith
Bethany Adams - Soulbound
Joyce Reynolds-Ward - Pledges of Honor
Nancy Foster - An Ominous Book
Brian Decker - Lamentation's Peak
Grace and Thomas Lockhaven - Quest Chasers - The Deadly Cavern *
James Beach - Ghost Magnet
Luke Chmilenko - Ascend Online
Steven Kelliher - Valley of Embers +*
Elena Bryce - Guardian of the Grail
Howard Gurney - Twin
Jonathan Yanez - Of Angels and Men
Joshua Robertson - Anaerfell +
Linn Tesli - Reborn
Alesha Escobar - The Tower's Alchemist
Stephan Morse - Once Lost Lords
Kit Abbey - All The Things You Have To Burn *


Ginny O - The Dawn Warrior
A.R Winterstaar - The Child Revealed
Meghan Richardson & Tina Verduzco - Storm and the Mermaid's Knot
Alexia Purdy - Ever Shade
Richard Parry - Knight's Favour
Ryan Mueller - Empire of Chains *
Scott Fitzgerald Gray - Clearwater Dawn
Melissa Snark - Valkyries' Vengeance
Brian D. Anderson & Steven Savile - Akiri: The Scepter of Xarbaal
C.D. Gallant-King - Ten Thousand Days
Marina Finlayson - Stolen Magic
Charlotte E. English - Draykon
Terri Bruce - Hereafter
Angela Holder - The Tale of Gurion Thricebound
K.S. Villoso - Jaeth's Eye (*)
V.R. Cardoso - The Dragon Hunter and the Mage *
Jade Kerrion - Illusions
Kristal Shaff - Life-charmer
Brett Herman - Chaos Trims My Beard
Frances Smith - Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury
Ulff Lehmann - Shattered Dreams
Nigel Bird - Drawn In
Michael-Scott Earle - Wings of Justice
Joe Bailey - Spellsinger *
Brandon Barr - Ella Dethroned
Guerric Hache - Zeroth Law
Bill Hiatt - Living With Your Past Selves
Christopher G Nuttall - The Zero Blessing
Gus Campbell - Pagan Heart
Christopher Bunn - A Storm in Tourmay


M.M. Perry - The Arbiter
Charlotte E. English - Miss Landon and Aubranael
Tiffany Cherney - Forgotten Relics
Victor Poole - The Slave From The East
Pippa DaCosta - The Heartstone Thief
Danielle E Shipley - The Ballad of Allyn-a-Dale
Matthew Presley - The Woven Ring
Dominique Kristine - Shadows for a Princess
J.C. Staudt - Warcaster
Amelia Smith - The Defenders' Apprentice
Rachel Medhurst - Thunder Hunter
Alex Hutson - The Crimson Queen +
R.A. Steffan - The Lion Mistress
C.H. Baum - Gods of Color
A.W. Exley - Nefertiti's Heart +*
Dale Kutzera - Andy McBean and the War of the Worlds
Laura VanArendonk Baugh - The Songweaver's Vow
Ken Lozito - Haven of Shadows
S.K. Wee - Absence of Color
Quenby Olson - The Half Killed (*)
Benedict Patrick - Where The Waters Turn Black :: 1st place in cover contest.
Richard Writhen - The Hiss of the Blade
JT Stoll - The Rift
Adrian G Hilder - The General's Legacy
A.M. Macdonald - Dybsy
S.J. Lem - The Waterfall Traveler
Dhesan Neil Pillay - Wrath of the Exiled
Samuel Gately - Night of the Chalk *
Derek Siddoway - Windsworn


Justin Sloan - Land of the Gods *
Elizabeth Baxter - Everwinter
Charlotte E. English - Faerie Fruit
Ken Lozito - Road to Shandara
Layla Nash - War Witch +
Watson Davis - The Archbishop's Amulet
Aldrea Alien - The Rogue King
Jenna Elizabeth Johnson - Faeborne
Tirzah Duncan - Grace the Mace
Josh Rhoades & Mike Rutledge - The Apotheosis Break
Alan Tucker - The Devil You Know
Scott Haworth - Dark Moonlighting
Jordan R Murray - The Emperor's Horn
C.V. Dreesman - Cursefell
Kelly Stock - The Soul Guide
Burke Fitzpatrick - Today Is Too Late
James Jakins - Jack Bloodfist
Clayton D Baker & Michael H Kuecker - The Sage of Dirt and Poncho +
Patty Jansen - Sand and Storm
Gayle Torrens  - The Tralls of Nindarry
Rob Cornell - Darker Things
Phil Tucker - The Empire of the Dead *
Jim Beach - Wishful Thinking
Anthea Sharp - Feyland: The Dark Realm
Ilana Waters - The Age of Mages
Sandy Hyatt James - A Gaze of Flint
Autumn M Birt - Spark of Defiance *
S.E Burr - Goblin Fruit
Tiffany Turner - The Lost Secret of the Fairies
Tom Gaskin - Search of the Lost


James Jakins - Son of Thunder
Matt Gilbert - The Dead God's Due
Rachel Aaron - Nice Dragons Finish Last
Alexander Grant - The Forbidden City
Simon Rudman - Threads of an Empire
Katika Schneider - Devotion
Brandon Lee - The Beginning After The End
Tamra Westberry - Curse of the Ice Dragon
Lindsey R Loucks - Petrified City
K. Bird Lincoln - Tiger Lily
C.K. Rieke - The Road To Light
M.T. McGuire - Few Are Chosen
Jack Simmonds - The Boy With Purple Eyes
M.R. Anthony - Soldiers' Redemption  :: 2nd place in cover contest.
Pauline M Ross - The Dragon's Egg
Lucia Ashta - Magic Awakens
Sandra Ulbrich Almazan - Seasons' Beginnings
Jessica V Fisette - Fire and Ice
Mathew Moss - The Path of Man
Vicki L Weavil - Crown of Ice
Alex Vick - Breaking Magic
Anthea Sharp - Elfhame
D.K. Holmberg - Soldier Son
Elle Casey - War of the Fey
Jeramy Goble - Souls of Astraeus *
Linda Acaster - Torc of Moonlight
Cynthia Clay - The Romance of the Unicorn
K.R. Boyter - The Legends of Grimous Ironblood
Sonja Black - The Snow White Files
Adam Vine - Corruption *


Antonio Urias - Irons in the Fire +
Benjamin Descovich - Dead Letter +*
Alex Perry - The War of Undoing
Maria Schneider - Under Witch Moon +
Devin Madson - The Blood Whisperers
Phil Norris - Life in the Fast Lane
Watson Davis - The Devil's Library
Alexia Purdy - Reign of Blood
Alison Blake - The Road to Cordia
Peter Petrack - Wayfarers Highway
Kerry La Porte - Past Perfekt
Brian Terenna - Talent Storm
J Philip Horne -
21 Dec 18:25

#1278; The Novel Naughties

by David Malki

The remarkable thing is that he managed to cover *EVERY INCH* of the Dodge Caravan with only 8 jars! This boy is showing serious mustarding talent!!!

10 Nov 20:13

Post Election Thoughts

by Hugh Howey

I have the luxury of being a jumble of thoughts today. My gay friends, female friends, Muslim friends, and immigrant friends are a jangle of nerves. I can’t imagine waking up in this country full of fear, but that’s the place in which many find themselves. This feels like a massive step backward for our country, but as a science fiction author full of optimism about the future, I’m going to stick to my naive and positive ways.

First, however, my dire thoughts, so I can end on all my positive notes:

  1. The Supreme Court. The ultimate check and balance in our triumvirate is going to go conservative. I worry about reproductive rights, gay marriage, gun control, and so many more issues where progress has been made (or where we hoped it might be made). My naive optimism tells me that despite this, what we call conservative today would be considered liberal in the past, and that trend will only continue. And the Supreme Court tends to rule according to public will (see gay marriage). So as long as the populace improves, the courts will as well. Only 18% of Americans voted for Trump, and many of those because of distaste for Clinton (who also got 18% of the vote). MOST of Americans support gay marriage. MOST of Americans care about the environment. MOST of Americans want reproductive choice. The court will continue to reflect this.
  2. Free trade. Trade protectionism has been likened to shooting a hole in your own boat hoping to get your rival’s boat to sink faster. I worry about rolling back NAFTA and the death of TPP. One of the reasons net immigration from Mexico has been flat or negative has been the rallying of their economy (a wall will only make it harder for some illegal immigrants to get home!). Cheaper than building a wall is to help job growth south of the border. Guess what? They buy more of our stuff as they develop a middle class. Having a 3rd world country next door is worse than losing some manufacturing jobs.
  3. Foreign perception. Hey UK, you owe us one for making you look good.
  4. Uncivil discourse. Our top spot belongs to someone who has made fun of the disabled, the overweight, the fairer sex, African Americans, and immigrants. This can only embolden others to spread a message of hate. And the other side of the political spectrum will likely return in kind. We need an end to this cycle, and it has to start somewhere. My naive optimistic take is that a Clinton win would have put the onus on conservatives to accept the outcome and dial back the negative rhetoric. It’s not an easy thing to do. I welcome the challenge.

Now for some unwarranted and unbridled positivity:

  1. Progress is going to happen no matter what. It always has, even with some baby steps backward. Take the environment: Solar panel costs are plummeting. Solar is now cheaper to install than any other power source (even without subsidies). The economic advantage means that even Republican governors are green-lighting solar plants purely for financial considerations. Going solar, and adopting electric vehicles, are the surest long term way out of our global warming ways. This will happen even if pipelines are opened and we start to subsidize coal just to win a handful of jobs back. Those job hires will no longer be profitable. Legislation won’t save them or their polluting industry. (I dream of solar panels and robots being manufactured in the rustbelt)
  2. Social progress is going to continue as well, over the long term. The only evidence I have of this is that the trend has been moving in one overall direction for a few thousand years. Future generations tend to be more compassionate and liberal than previous generations. So even the young Trump supporters who rail against Islam don’t justify slavery or say that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. I know that previous sentence sounds ridiculous, but that’s the point. Yesterday’s social movements are today’s satire.
  3. A brief spate of trade tariffs might have benefits in the long term. No trade deals are permanent, nor are free trade deals off the table forever. Everything is negotiable and renegotiable. An end to free trade will help a small segment of the population (mostly wealthy owners of manufacturing concerns here in the States and a handful of low-wage jobs), but the cost is going to be higher prices of imported goods for all citizens. Maybe we need a reminder that this is how trade protectionism works: Every consumer is harmed to protect the interests of a small group of people, who are also consumers, and so are also getting hurt. It could lead to saner policies in the future. Here’s hoping.
  4. There’s no chance in hell of this happening, because the people it targets are the people who would be displaced, but I really like Trump’s call for term limits. Trump won the highest office while spending half as much as his opponent, defying all odds and professional punditry, with an anti-establishment cause that has some planks that might as well be Bernie’s. Maybe this will spur others to run against incumbents in the House and Senate with a primary goal of establishing term limits. I don’t like the analogy of Congress needing a grenade lobbed into their midst, but a flash-bang might not be a bad idea.
  5. Yeah, the rest of the world is laughing at us for putting a Cheeto in the oval office. But Putin might not want to laugh too long. When Trump is sworn in, future Russian hacks are going to be against HIS (Donald Trump’s) country. Right now, those hacks are against the establishment. There are going to be some 3am Tweets that arrive closer to lunchtime in Moscow. The overseas operators who enjoy screwing with us, and are cheering a Trump presidency, are going to have some regrets.
  6. Civil discourse. I was heartened by speeches from Obama, Clinton, and Trump after the election. This is how democracy works: You fight for your candidate, and when you lose, you hope your opponent does well while the other side calls for unity. Country comes before party. This is rarely how it works, of course. Politicians sabotage their country all the time to lay blame and maintain power. But the way to fight this is to lead by example, not counter every ill with more sickness.On Twitter, I joked that my leaving the country for 4 years couldn’t have come at a better time, but that’s actually an unfortunate coincidence. In truth, this is the worst time to be going. Leaving means ceding the country to those who think the past was better than the future. This election would have gone differently were it not for the drain of liberalism out of our small towns and rural America to the universities and vibrant cities where progress is made, but where blue votes cluster uselessly. Just as the rest of the world agonizes over the “brain drain” as their finest students come to our great universities to study (and often stay), we should worry about a drain of liberalism as our most worldly citizens cross borders both state and federal. Maybe it’s time to move back to Arkansas to launch that startup. Or re-friend those we’ve blocked to renew some discourse. Or to just approach those who think hate will make this country great again and offer them a hug in response.

My heart breaks for those who are now fearful of their rights and their safety. My heart also breaks for those who have lost their jobs to technological progress and globalization and who think that immigrants are to blame. We are going through a period of global upheaval, which will all be for the better, but will be painful for many in the short term. Social progress and economic progress are going to come in fits and starts. Things are changing so rapidly that we find ourselves bewildered, lost, and unable to adapt in time. Some can’t adapt to the idea that men and women have fluid genders and differing sexual preferences, and the backlash is awful. Some can’t transition careers as quickly as markets are overthrowing entire industries, and those people deserve our sympathy as well. White men can’t deal with an end to a millennia of power, and this is the last-gasp death-spasm as demographics change forever.

You can’t convince me that 2100 won’t be a better year to be on Earth than 2016. Even as we build levies to keep back the rising sea, we’ll build them together. Even as computers, AIs, and machines take more of our jobs, we’ll transition together. More of our world will thaw, and maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. Perhaps in the future, we’ll be looking at moving to Canada not out of protest, but because of the weather.

Whatever happens, we’re in this together, the entire world, every human being. As I come out of the state of shock from the election results, I find myself wishing Donald Trump well. Despite all the vitriol and all the ways that I disagree with him. Despite the fear his policies place in the hearts of those I love. I hope the weight of the office, and our collective well-wishes, and the awesome strength of our people, make the next four years ones of progress. I care more about this country than I do the letter beside someone’s name, or who wins power in the next election, or who gets credit for our steady march onwards. What I care about is that onwards means upwards.

Now to write some more science fiction. These dystopias don’t create themselves, you know.

 

 

The post Post Election Thoughts appeared first on The Wayfinder - Hugh C. Howey.

30 Jul 19:39

#1242; The Art of the Meal

by David Malki

But if ENOUGH people ask for pizza ENOUGH times, maybe the lunch counter will hear what everyone is saying, and decide to put up a sign saying SERIOUSLY: THERE IS NO PIZZA

26 Jul 21:23

Preen® Bird Products Ad



Preen® Bird Products Ad

03 Jun 21:10

News Post: It Sucked Basically

by Tycho@penny-arcade.com (Tycho)
Tycho:

Jesus Christ.  I thought for sure that as an “introductory class,” they’d be taking it easy on us; that they would be incentivized to trick us into thinking it was something we were capable of.  So that we would, like, come back.

I learned something very important.  They do not care if you come back.

These mothertruckers only care about jumping over boxes and shit.  I was there with my son, and I had imagined a universe where I sorta thought the two of us would be doing parkour, but at a lower resolution, because he was a child.  Like how parkour would be on the Xbox One.  Right?  Still parkour, maybe missing some of that vertical resolution.  But they separated us at some point, and I never saw him again until later.

But it turns out that the way kids are normally is already fucking parkour.  You don’t have to teach them shit, they’re always trying to fucking kill themselves.  Not me.  I’m always trying to stay alive.  Eating stuff.  Avoiding danger.  Breathing in, and - crucially - breathing back out.  I sure as shit don’t go outside and run when the fucking sun is out, and I don’t crawl through dirt and get cut and bleed on myself while lithe elves writhe and gambol.

Eventually I found myself able to smoothly traverse various obstacles, at least, I think I could.  You’d have to ask someone else.  It might be Stockholm Syndrome.

After like forty five minutes of this shit, I couldn’t see my son Elliot over there anymore.  He had found some kind of manual for a lumbar support belt and he was reading it underneath an awning kids were jumping off of, taking shelter from a nonexistent rain.  I said that what he was doing was not parkour.  He pinched his brows together.  “It’s parkour for the mind, dad.”

I struggled to maintain my rage.

(CW)TB out.

18 May 00:22

#1223; In which a Shoe is lost

by David Malki

This shoe was just PERFECT and the OTHER one was like... its complete and utter mirror image

10 Feb 04:27

Getting Ahead vs. Doing Well

by John Gruber

Seth Godin:

One unspoken objection to raising the minimum wage is that people, other people, those people, will get paid a little more. Which might make getting ahead a little harder. When we raise the bottom, this thinking goes, it gets harder to move to the top.

After a company in Seattle famously raised its lowest wage tier to $70,000, two people (who got paid more than most of the other workers) quit, because they felt it wasn’t fair that people who weren’t as productive as they were were going to get a raise.

They quit a good job, a job they liked, because other people got a raise.

This is our culture of ‘getting ahead’ talking.

This is the thinking that, “First class isn’t better because of the seats, it’s better because it’s not coach.” (Several airlines have tried to launch all-first-class seating, and all of them have stumbled.)

10 Jan 23:31

shibboleth

by Word of the Day Editors

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 5, 2016 is:

shibboleth • \SHIB-uh-luth\  • noun

1 : catchword, slogan

2 : a widely held belief or truism

3 : a custom or usage regarded as distinctive of a particular group

Examples:

The town's name is a shibboleth: locals know its pronunciation does not reflect its French spelling but others use the Gallic pronunciation of the more famous European city.

"For Gorbachev, schooled in the rusty shibboleths of party ideology, the West was intent on destroying the Soviet Union." — Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 12 Nov. 2015

Did you know?

The Bible's Book of Judges (12:4-6) tells the story of the Ephraimites, who, after they were routed by the Gileadite army, tried to retreat by sneaking across a ford of the Jordan River that was held by their enemy. The Gileadites, wary of the ploy, asked every soldier who tried to cross if he was an Ephraimite. When the soldier said no, he was asked to say shibbōleth (which means "stream" in Hebrew). Gileadites pronounced the word "shibboleth," but Ephramites said "sibboleth." Anyone who left out the initial "sh" was killed on the spot. When English speakers first borrowed shibboleth, they used it to mean "test phrase," but it has acquired additional meanings since that time.



29 Dec 07:33

#1185; A Late Night Discovery

by David Malki

Oh, what a laugh it would have been/ If Daddy had only seen/ Mommy watching Christmas with the Kranks alone for the thirtieth time

29 Dec 07:31

Benedict Evans: 16 Mobile Theses

by John Gruber

Benedict Evans, surveying the state and future of the entire industry. Here, on the “Internet of Things”:

Our grandparents could have told you how many electric motors they owned - there was one in the car, one in the fridge and so on, and they owned maybe a dozen. In the same way, we know roughly how many devices we own with a network connection, and, again, our children won’t. Many of those use cases will seem silly to us, just as our grandparents would laugh at the idea of a button to lower a car window, but the sheer range and cheapness of sensors and components, mostly coming out of the smartphone supply chain, will make them ubiquitous and invisible - we’ll forget about them just as we’ve forgotten about electric motors.

06 Dec 22:05

Gun Industry Executives: Mass Shootings Are Good for Business

by John Gruber

Lee Fang, reporting for The Intercept:

Last year, Tommy Millner, the chief executive of Cabela’s, a retailer that sells guns, boasted at an investor conference in Nebraska that his company made a “conscious decision” to stock additional weapons merchandise before the 2012 election, hoping Obama’s reelection would result in increased sales. After the election, the Newtown mass shooting happened, and “the business went vertical … I meant it just went crazy,” Millner said, according to a transcript of the event. Describing the “tailwinds of profitability,” Millner noted Cabela’s “didn’t blink as others did to stop selling AR-15 platform guns,” and so his company “got a lot of new customers.” The AR-15 is a high-powered assault rifle based on the military’s M-16 model but without the full automatic capacity,

Steven Miller, the chief executive of Big 5 Sporting Goods, another gun retailer, was asked by investor analysts in 2013 to describe the state of the market during a conference call that year. The “real surge” in firearm sales, Miller said, “took place following the tragedy in Sandy Hook.”

Should be a busy weekend for Cabela’s.

04 Dec 22:48

Colin Nissan: ‘It’s Rotting Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers’

by John Gruber

Colin Nissan:

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get these decorative gourds the fuck out of my house. The clock expired on these goofy goose-necked bastards about six weeks ago, but I pushed it and the shit got real on me. It’s Autumn overtime up in here and these fuzzy fuckers need to go. When my guests come over I’m gonna be like, SORRY! My bad on all these rancid ornamental vegetables, you guys. I really should have stayed on top of this perishable shit.

The rare sequel that lives up to the original. (Via Kottke, of course.)

27 Nov 04:41

Enjoy Your Shit-Assed Little Bark Machine



Enjoy Your Shit-Assed Little Bark Machine

02 Nov 19:11

Vanguard Founder’s Son Tries To Beat the Market

My dad told me that I shouldn’t try it. With just $400 in my pocket, no maps, no ability to speak Portuguese, Spanish or French, I wanted to ride my bike from southern Portugal to northern France. I was 18 years old.

“It’s just not a practical thing to do,” my dad had said. And he was right. I got into a pretty tight jam during that trip. I ran out of money. Some nuns gave me cash when mine ran out.

Fathers are usually more practical than sons. Life experience helps. But children like to forge their own paths—to find out for themselves. Perhaps that’s what John Bogle’s son tried to do.

John Bogle is the champion of index fund investing. His son—who’s also named John—runs the actively managed Bogle Small Cap Growth Investor Fund (BOGLX).

The older Mr. Bogle says investors should stick with low cost indexes. Active management, he argues, rarely wins after fees. The 86 year old proves his point in a few classic books. One is Common Sense On Mutual Funds. A shorter version of the first is The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Both show the reader, through reams of evidence, that active managers rarely overcome the fees they charge.

Bogle says that market-beating funds do exist. But one decade’s winning fund often becomes the next decade’s loser.

Sometimes managers hit a lucky streak—before their fortunes falls flat. Brad Steiman, of Dimensional Fund Advisors figured out how many years a manager would need to beat the market before his success could be deemed skill, and not luck. He says it takes thirty-six years. “Based on these parameters,” says Steiman, “by the time you are reasonably confident there is some amount of skill, the manager is likely retired and on her yacht!”

In 2013, The Wall Street Journal profiled the two Bogle men. The younger Bogle’s fund had thrashed its comparable small cap index. Liam Pleven wrote, “[The] Bogle Small Cap Growth Fund was launched 14 years ago and has delivered an annualized return since then of 12.4 percent, compared with 8.6 percent for its benchmark index.” Was the younger Bogle skilled? Or was he just plain lucky? Based on Steiman’s assessment, Bogle required 22 more years of market beating performance before time revealed the answer.

Since 2013, two more years have passed. Perhaps time has delivered its verdict. During the past 12 months, ending September 30, 2015, the Bogle Small Cap Growth Fund dropped 11.98 percent. That compares to a loss of just 0.28 percent for Vanguard’s Small Cap Index (NAESX). This changes everything. Vanguard’s small cap index now has a better 3 year track record than Bogle’s Small Cap Growth Fund. The index also has a better 10 year return, and a better 15 year return.

For the record, Morningstar categorizes the younger Bogle’s fund as a “small blend” fund in spite of having the word “growth” in its name. So this is an apples-to-apples comparison.

John Bogle senior does own shares in his son’s active fund. As he told Liam Pleven, "We do some things for family reasons. If it's not consistent, well, life isn't always consistent." The elder Mr. Bogle may not be a billionaire. But he sure isn’t hurting when it comes to spare change. He can afford to take risks.

Most investors, however, aren’t well-heeled enough for that. When it comes to investing, long term evidence should drive our decisions.

John Bogle senior writes and speaks compellingly. He says trying to beat the market with actively managed funds just isn’t practical. But when fathers talk to sons, well…sons don’t always listen.

1 Year Returns 3 Year Returns 5 Year Returns 10 Year Returns 15 Year Returns
Bogle Small Cap Growth (BOGLX) -11.98% +11.59% +13.03% +5.83% +7.31%
Vanguard Small Cap Index (NAESX) -0.28% +12.33% +12.83% +7.61% +7.52%
Source: Morningstar.com – Returns to September 30, 2015

Andrew Hallam is a Digital Nomad. He’s the author of the bestseller, Millionaire Teacher and The Global Expatriate's Guide to Investing: From Millionaire Teacher to Millionaire Expat.

21 Oct 00:28

Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part I







Blade Runner Voight-Kampff Tests Part I

03 Oct 06:24

The Normalization of Gun Massacres in America

by John Gruber

The Economist, back in June:

The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become — for those not directly affected by tragedy — ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America’s political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.

17 Aug 06:47

U.S. college majors: Median yearly earnings vs. gender ratio

by Randy Olson
Last year, I looked at the gender ratios across college majors and discovered an interesting-yet-spurious correlation: College majors with higher male:female ratios (i.e., with more men than women) tend to have students with higher estimated IQs. After much debate, the…
14 Jul 06:11

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part III









Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part III

23 Jun 06:37

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part I









Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part I

16 Jun 07:06

144 years of marriage and divorce in 1 chart

by Randy Olson

I’ve always been curious about the history of marriage and divorce in the United States. We often hear about how divorce rates are in flux, or how marriage rates are declining, but we’re rarely given a real sense of the long-term trends in marriage and divorce. Since I couldn’t find a chart showing the long-term marriage and divorce trends in the U.S., I decided to crawl through the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) database and collect the data myself.

If you’re not familiar with the NCHS, they publish monthly reports on vital statistics about Americans such as birth rates, death rates, causes of death, and — you guessed it — marriage and divorce rates. Most of the historical data is hidden away in PDFs of these monthly reports, so I had the pleasure of scraping data from scans of dozens of CDC reports that were published 30 years before I was even born. I’ll save you the laborious effort of repeating my scraping efforts by sharing the data set here.

To provide a more visual view of the data set, I charted the per capita marriage and divorce rates below, with a few annotations to denote major historical events.

marriages_divorces_per_capita

Click here for the interactive version of the per capita chart

It’s fascinating to see the effects of WWI and WWII on marriage and divorce rates in the United States. At the beginning of America’s entry into WWI (1917) and WWII (1941), we see notable spikes in marriage rates as the young conscripts rushed to the altar thinking it would be the last time they would see their lover.

Similarly, after the conclusion of WWI (1918) and WWII (1945), those same young men and women coming back from the war seemed eager to elope and start a new life after spending years experiencing the destructive nature of war. Interestingly, the only notable spike in divorce rates in the past 144 years also followed the conclusion of WWII, likely due to many of the pre-WWII marriages coming to an abrupt end once the romance of wartime marriage wore off.

The most notable drop in marriage rates occurred during The Great Depression in the early 1930s, with a sudden 25% drop in marriage rates during America’s greatest time of hardship. It seems when Americans fall on hard times, marriage is one of the first things to take the back seat.

One particularly confusing aspect of this data set was the fact that the post-war era in the 1950s and 1960s seemed to experience a significant drop in marriage rates, despite the fact that the 1950s and 1960s were known as a time of nearly-universal marriage in the U.S.

To provide a clearer view of the 1950s and 1960s, I plotted the raw counts for marriages and divorces below.

marriages_divorces

Click here for the interactive version of the raw counts chart

With the raw counts in hand, the explanation for the drop in per capita marriage rates becomes abundantly clear: People weren’t marrying less in the 1950s and 1960s, but the surge of newborn children during the Baby Boom artificially decreases the per capita rates. Once the Baby Boomers came of age in the 1970s, marriage rates returned to pre-WWII levels — barring a slight drop in marriages during the dramatic conclusion of the Vietnam War (1975).

Looking to more recent history, there has been a steady decline in marriage rates (and consequently, divorce rates) since the 1980s, with no sign of slowing down. In fact, when taking population into account, marriage rates in the U.S. are now at the lowest they’ve ever been in recorded U.S. history — even lower than during The Great Depression!

If you think you know why marriage rates have been declining in the U.S. since the 1980s, I’d be curious to hear your theories in the comments.

13 Jun 23:31

EGG LW

06 Jun 19:27

“Oh, what a day… what a lovely day!”



“Oh, what a day… what a lovely day!”

09 Apr 01:04

Highball 1.0

by John Gruber

New free iOS cocktail app from the clever fellows at Studio Neat. Their novel idea: shareable recipe cards, like this one from yours truly (riffing off Jim Coudal’s canonical Perfect Martini). They might have actually found a good use for QR codes.

08 Apr 19:29

Ok, some disclaimers to start: It's been a while since I read comics, many comics are badly written male power fantasies, I don't really care about Thor or the marvel mythos. That said, femThor seems to be really, really badly written (tumblr isn't letting me include links here, but I can provide them on request). You seem to support the (laudable) political cause advanced by femThor, but do you think the comic itself is actually, well, good? (from an artistic standpoint, not a moral one)

Yes, I think the new Thor series (don’t call it FemThor) is incredible, and my favorite Marvel book being put out right now. Have you actually read the comic? I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to have no interest in reading these comics and yet suddenly has an opinion on their “quality” when there’s a progressive shakeup.

Thor’s been my favorite superhero since I was a kid, and one I’ve been familiar with for decades. This new series is likely my favorite since Walt Simonson’s legendary run, and it does a similarly great job balancing the epic scale of Thor’s mythology with a core humanity and sense of humor.

Also there’s an evil company run by a Minotaur who employs corporate warlocks. So yeah, everyone should read this book.

04 Feb 19:34

Cats

Cats
10 Jan 19:48

Celebrity attendance, U.S. falconry events, 2013







Celebrity attendance, U.S. falconry events, 2013

22 Dec 23:25

Word Up! Twine 2 Released

by Alice O'Connor

Twino.

Psst, hey, here’s a fun idea for the holidays: make a thing. Not a vow to e.g. stop drunktexting – everyone finds that charming, I’m sure. Nor do I mean assembling a weird toy a young nephew received. Make a thing wot people can play and go “Coo I thought you were a worthless lump, but look at you now, some kind of literary giant with these fine words and lawks a lummy look at the clever design you’ve got going on.” Or keep it a secret all for yourself. Just make a thing.

After a fair while in beta, Twine’s update/remake/”sequel” Twine 2 has launched. You could use that. It’s a fairly big overhaul of the write-o-game-maker tool.

… [visit site to read more]

22 Dec 22:17

David Carr on the Slippery Slope of Sony’s Cowardice

by John Gruber

David Carr, writing for the NYT:

It was a remarkable and disorienting turn of events: a tiny, failing state that lacks the wherewithal to feed its own people was deciding which movies we can and cannot see, while the industry it had attacked watched silently from the sidelines, and the president of the United States felt compelled to step into an international confrontation catalyzed by a lowbrow comedy. […]

The threats and subsequent cancellation will become a nightmare with a very long tail. Now that cultural discourse has become the subject of online blackmail, it is hard to imagine where it will end. Documentaries, which have become increasingly important sources of news and information, could suddenly be in jeopardy. And if you’ve been watching the current season of “Homeland” on Showtime, you know that Pakistan’s more sinister operations have been on wide view.