Chicago Suburb schools? (more)

But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling Suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble (Credit Crisis 2008) has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster - his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: "California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America."... Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit's... The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's Public Schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation... "They came here, they educated their kids, they had a pool and a house. That was the opportunity for a pretty broad section of society," says Joel Kotkin, an urbanist at Chapman University, in Orange County. This was what attracted immigrants in their millions, flocking to industries - especially defence and aviation - that seemed to promise jobs for life. But the newcomers were mistaken... One in four American mortgages that are "under water", meaning they are worth more than the home itself, are in California. (more)

Something that will happen post-Collapse as people abandon areas of Sprawl. Something we could do on purpose even without a Collapse, given our low overall Population Density. (more)

from Alexander Patterns: (more)

Taylor Pearson: How to Create a Personal Vision Statement. In 2012, I was mainly suffering from a failure of imagination. While there are legitimate obstacles that hold people back, often times the biggest one is our own conception of what is possible. (Part of Effective Entrepreneur process.) (more)

Vitalik Buterin: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again. ...deeper vision underlying crypto: we are not here to just create isolated tools and games, but rather build holistically toward a more free and open society and economy, where the different parts - technological, social and economic - fit into each other. (more)

"The medium is the message" (more)

I saw Warning: Parental Advisory the other night. It certainly wasn't great. But I was amused by the point that the Music Industry (RIAA) rolled over in order to get its tax on blank recording tape passed, With Frank Zappa noting that none of that money was going to get seen by any actual musicians. That doesn't sound familiar, does it? The tricky question Of The Day is: who would you rather give undue influence of US Congress to: their dim wives (PMRC), or Michael Eisner (Disney)? (more)

KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strategic partners, hedge funds... Since its founding, KKR has completed a number of transactions, including the 1989 leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, which was the largest buyout in history to that point, as well as the 2007 buyout of TXU, which is currently the largest buyout completed to date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts

MH Sub I, LLC, doing business as Internet Brands, is a digital media, marketing services, and software company based in El Segundo, California, United States, that operates online media, community, e-commerce, and SaaS businesses in vertical markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Brands (more)

Martin Cagan on High-Integrity Commitments. In most Agile teams, when you mention commitments (like knowing what you’re going to launch and when it will happen), you get reactions ranging from squirming to denial. (more)

A High-Integrity Commitment is basically a project with a deadline, within the context of product teams that should minimize them. Inherently shifts focus from outcome to output. Beware its presence among your OKRs, you might be creating Feature Teams.

Rahul Vohra Shares Superhuman's Product-Market Fit Framework. We had set up shop and started coding Superhuman in 2015. A year later, our team had grown to seven and we were still furiously coding. By the summer of 2017, we had reached 14 people — and we were still coding. I felt intense pressure to launch, from the team and also from within myself. (more)

Erik Hoel is an American neuroscientist,[1] neurophilosopher[2] and fiction writer. His main areas of research are the study and philosphy of consciousness, cognition, biological function of dreams, and mathematical theories of emergence. He is noted for using information theory and causal analysis to develop mathematical models to explore and understand the basis of consciousness and dreams.[3][4][5][6] Hoel holds a PhD. degree in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is recipient of Forbes 30 Under 30 – Science.[7] He is currently working as a research assistant professor at Tufts university.[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Hoel (more)

company of the Koch Brothers

one of the Koch Brothers

Future #65: Where the game's made up and the points don't matter (more)

Cedric Chin: The Dangers of Treating Life as a Game. Late last year I wrote an essay titled Are You Playing to Play, or Playing to Win? which seems to have haunted a great many people. (2021-09-21-ChinAreYouPlayingToPlayOrPlayingToWin) (more)

"another fucking opportunity for growth"; see SelfImprovement; sometimes ordered as AFGO,

I'm pondering some thoughts around gardening an Agile Product Development process, inspired by (more)