Clay Shirky on the Healthcare.gov Project Failure as the responsibility of delusional Management. The idea that “Failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers... Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”... The project’s managers weren’t avoiding those failures. They were saving them up... The problem with Healthcare.gov was not timeline or budget. The problem was that the site did not work, and the administration decided to launch it anyway. This is not just a hiring problem, or a procurement problem. This is a management problem, and a cultural problem. (more)

Scott Alexander: Things That Sometimes Help If You Have Depression. first I’m going to talk about figuring out if you need help. Then I’m going to recommend you see a psychiatrist. Then I’m going to accept that in reality a lot of people for whatever reason can’t or won’t see a psychiatrist, and grudgingly recommend some lifestyle interventions you can make. Then I’m going to accept that in reality a lot of people for whatever reason can’t or won’t make lifestyle interventions, and grudgingly recommend some over-the-counter medications and supplements that might be helpful. (more)

magic blame for everything?

time management technique

Hiten Shah: Why Zoom doesn’t have product/market fit. If any company has product/market fit, it’s Zoom. Right?... Except Zoom doesn’t have product/market fit or high customer satisfaction. (more)

Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable — the market has its valuation all wrong, says Adam Schwab. Until a few months ago, no company had created more wealth for its shareholders than Sydney-grown Atlassian. At its peak in October 2021, the Nasdaq-listed business was valued $162 billion. ($445/share) (Jun'2022 low $178/sh; 2023 low $118/sh) (more)

was Micro ISV, now (since 2010) mainly founder of WPEngine - http://blog.asmartbear.com/jason-cohen (more)

Scott Alexander: I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup. If I had to define “tolerance” it would be something like “respect and kindness toward members of an outgroup”... So what makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences. (Cultural Pluralism) (more)

Brendan Eich (/ˈaɪk/; born July 4, 1961)[1] is an American technologist and creator of the JavaScript programming language. He co-founded the Mozilla project,[2] the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation, and served as the Mozilla Corporation's chief technical officer and briefly its chief executive officer.[3] He is the CEO of Brave Software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich (more)

Steve Denning: A Manifesto For Management In The Digital Age. The Most Serious Failures In Agile Came From Outside Software Development (more)

Kevin Owen McCarthy (born January 26, 1965) is an American politician who served as the 55th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from January to October 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U.S. Representative for California's 20th congressional district from 2007 until his resignation in 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McCarthy (more)

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on X. An advocate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Carlson has been described as "perhaps the highest-profile proponent of Trumpism",[3] and as "the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson

Addison Mitchell McConnell III[1] (/məˈkɒnəl/ mə-KON-əl; born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney who has served as Senate Minority Leader since 2021 and the senior United States senator from Kentucky since 1985, the longest serving senator in his state's history. He previously served as minority leader from 2007 to 2015, majority leader from 2015 to 2021 and was majority whip from 2003 to 2007. McConnell has been the leader of the Senate Republican Conference since 2007, making him the longest serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell

James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American venture capitalist, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023.[1][2] A member of the Republican Party, he came to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance

Steven Johnson: How To Decide. The headlines reporting the events of September 26, 2009 suggested that the day was generally speaking a slow news day (more)

Steven Johnson: Beyond The Semicolon. ...a gap that had generally gone unmentioned in the Creative Workflow series here: the role of a great Editor in helping you refine your ideas. (more)

Steven Johnson: Mulling Versus Making. ...we ended up explaining to them how the burden of a day job—and other daily imperatives, like parenting—didn't just interfere with writing productivity because it limited the number of hours you could spend at the word processor. The other cost—more subtle but in a way just as important—came from the way daily responsibilities hijacked your mind-wandering time. (more)

Steven Johnson: Timing It Right. A few days ago, I was having lunch with two friends, both of whom are working on long-form writing projects (using Scrivener naturally, thanks to my evangelism.) It came up in conversation that they were trying to organize their writing time using the Pomodoro Technique. (more)

Jon Udell on PostgreSql everywhere. SQLite is the world's most widely-deployed database engine. It’s in your phone, it’s in your browser, and if you search your computer you’ll find its .db files there too. SQLite was inspired by Postgres. Its author Richard Hipp has called SQLite a “conceptual fork” of Postgres. (more)

ToolsForThought-Rocks coordinated a Orion Reed presentation/demo on "Spatial Canvases: Towards an Integration Domain for HCI" (more)