In politics, regulatory capture (also called agency capture) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group.[1][2] When regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society. The theory of client politics is related to that of rent-seeking and political failure; client politics "occurs when most or all of the benefits of a program go to some single, reasonably small interest (e.g., industry, profession, or locality) but most or all of the costs will be borne by a large number of people (for example, all taxpayers)"... For public choice theoryists, regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with high-stakes interests in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

like regulatory capture, but for journalists... (more)

Jason Cohen: The "Great" Product Manager, a.k.a. the Impossible Product Manager. According to the Internet, being a Product Manager is impossible. Can you ever measure up? No. But don’t worry, there’s a better answer. (more)

The word model is used in various contexts meaning something (abstract or physical) that represents "the Real World". That entity may be anything from a single item or object (for example, a bolt) to a complete system of any size (for example, the Solar System). In general, a model is an object which we study, not for its intrinsic interest, but because it is a formalized or simplified representation of a class of phenomena which can be studied easily... Typically a model will contain only the significant features or aspects of the item in question, and two models of the same item may differ quite significantly. This may be due to differing requirements of the model's end user (one user may be interested in aspects of the item which are quite separate from those of another user) or, perhaps more simply, this may be due to the difference in perception of that item by the modeller and decisions made during the modelling process. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model (more)

My summer job for 4 years of college. https://www.flodynecontrols.com/ (more)

I worked NASA's Kennedy Space Center for a few months (roughly Sept84-Jan85), as a consultant employed by Science Management, working for the Center's logistics contractor (they ran the warehouses, security, fire stations, etc.). (more)

Backlog size is inversely proportional to how often you talk to customers. ..every spare hour has been poured into a venture I started providing event and ticket management services for comics. It’s been relatively successful with tens of thousands of tickets sold (more)

The Regulatory Cathedral and the Bazaar. Yochai Benkler ponders the death of the newspaper: Critics of online media raise concerns about the ease with which gossip and unsubstantiated claims can be propagated on the Net.... It was precisely this respect and authority that made The New York Times’ reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so instrumental in legitimating the lies that the Bush administration used to lead this country to war. (more)

Electronic Music generated by computer algorithm: music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_music (more)

To Get Into the Ivy League, ‘Extraordinary’ Isn’t Always Enough These Days. Harvard University received a record 61,220 applications during the current admissions year and accepted 1,954 (3.2%). (more)

Andrew Gelman: I can’t quite say I’m shocked that people aren’t more shocked about Harvard University and the CDC’s latest misdeeds . . . but I’m disappointed that people aren’t more disappointed. Here’s what really stunned me. Not that Harvard and the CDC made embarrassing stupid errors—again, we all do that; I proved a false theorem once, and one of my articles has an incorrect definition of p-values in its first sentence, granted that particular error was introduced in the editing process, but it’s still my job to read my damn articles before they go to press, right?—; and not even that they haven’t shown any interest in fixing these mistakes. No, what really bothered me was the reaction of our blog commenters. (more)

aka user acquisition - part of funnel (see AARRR) where you first "get" a user - you could define that as site-visit, or email-address-collect

Dave McClure has a presentation on "Metrics for Pirates", using the AARRR Sales Funnel/Life Cycle model. (Acquistion, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) (more)

Elena Verna There's a whole lot of ugly out there when it comes to growth teams. It’s hard to believe that 15 years ago, growth as a discipline didn’t exist. Yet nowadays nearly every company wants to cash in on the growth team ‘promise’: for growth to take them on that coveted exponential growth curve to unicorn status (more)

team responsible for growth (hopefully in Revenue and then Profit) :) see esp Growth Hacker, Product-led Growth, Pirate Metrics

Alex Steffen: Getting the Memo on Climate Risk. The chasm between the way things work now and how they’d need to work to thrive in this planetary crisis means that the systems that make our lives possible are woven through with massive, unattended risks. (climate change) (more)

Alex Steffen: When Shit Gets Real. The heat has come. In Portland, Oregon, it was hotter (108ºF) Saturday than it’s ever been there. . (more)

Alex Steffen: Ruggedize Your Life. How do we get smarter about making that choice? (more)

Alex Steffen: Discontinuity is the Job. *This is When *it Gets Real, part two. (2021-06-28-SteffenWhenShitGetsReal) (more)

Cedric Chin: Jobs's Second Act at Apple - The Next Big Thing. In an illuminating anecdote in the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, author and business professor Richard Rumelt describes the following story, shortly after Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. (more)