PicoBlog

The most important idea and paper I’ve encountered in the last 20 years is “availability cascades”. The paper is here: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=public_law_and_legal_theory ; the authors are Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein. What’s an “availability cascade”? It’s a combination of: “Availability” — short for “availability heuristic or availability bias, a pervasive mental shortcut whereby the perceived likelihood of any given event is tied to the ease with which its occurrence can be brought to mind”.

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts each Wednesday. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading. Bagel Oasis owner Peter Ryan is my dad. Not literally, of course. But as I stand there listening to him regale me with the stories that define his 35-year bagel-making career, I am struck by all of the similarities.

Traditionalism conceptualizes the divine in all-or-nothing terms – either there exists an omniscient, omnipotent creator God or there is no higher power, scripture consisting entirely of fairy tales. This reflects the All-or-Nothing fault common in much collective thinking. Climate change commentary is either doomsday or denial. Racism is said either ubiquitous or entirely eliminated. Politics is either far right or far left. There are numerous arenas in which we use an All-or-Nothing framework.

You know when you’ve been away from something long enough you forget how shit it was and want to do it again? It’s why people keep giving birth even though it hurt the first time, why we go back to our exes even though they suck, and why, even though hell was being a teenage girl, right now she’s all I want to be. As I type this I’m wearing chipped pinked nail polish, a beaded friendship bracelet, and orange jelly shoes.

Hi! Did you know that late September is peak Boy Scout popcorn season? All across the land, Scouts are tightening their neckerchiefs and heading out to hawk caramel corn to their uninterested neighbors. Selling popcorn was the bane of my existence, and of the various autumnal traumas of my youth (fighting with my ex-stepdad about leaf raking, not getting cast in the fall play junior year), it’s the one I flashback to the most this time of year.

The following was written for Clive Barker site around a decade ago, as the movie ‘Nightbreed’ was getting an extended ‘Cabal’ cut. I had been sent a preview copy, which I was very excited about, and this may be the first time I felt like a real commentator. “As the next day dawned, they called loudly upon Baphometh; and we prayed silently in our hearts to God, then we attacked and forced all of them outside the city walls…” Anselm of Ribemont

A snippet of our conversation below Transcript of our conversation 8 January 2023, edited for accuracy, with external links Eric Topol It’s a pleasure for me to have Liv Boeree as our Ground Truths podcast guest today. I met her at the TED meeting in October dedicated to AI. I think she's one of the most interesting people I’ve met in years and the first time I've ever interviewed a professional poker player who has won world championships and we're going to go through that whole story, so welcome Liv.

They're not a good team. They're not a fun watch. And they're a very small run of wins away from being back in the conversation. This is simply baseball in a just-win-54% world. This is the whole-summers-of-”contending”-ball expanding the playoffs was designed for. I tweeted the above words last Wednesday night, just after the conclusion of the Blue Jays’ third straight loss at the hands of the Boston Red Sox, and already they feel dated.

Q. Regarding your most recent  letter and answer on likable characters… funny that I've been thinking a bit about likability recently. Not about the characters but a story itself. I have one story I've written where this comes to mind. I'm actually proud of the story but ... well, the ending is definite in a way I don't usually write. It's also, for lack of a better word, kind of uplifting.