Venkatesh Rao framing for true future shock since 2016 (aka PermaWeird). https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-great-weirding https://www.ribbonfarm.com/series/weirding-diary/ (more)

Teresa Torres tool for Agile Product Development framing: connecting big desired-outcomes to specific pains/opportunities, to solutions/hypotheses, to experiments.... aka OST (more)

AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go.[1] It was developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies,[2] an acquired subsidiary of Google. Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed under the name Master.[3] After retiring from competitive play, AlphaGo Master was succeeded by an even more powerful version known as AlphaGo Zero, which was completely self-taught without learning from human games. AlphaGo Zero was then generalized into a program known as AlphaZero, which played additional games, including chess and shogi. AlphaZero has in turn been succeeded by a program known as MuZero which learns without being taught the rules. AlphaGo and its successors use a Monte Carlo tree search algorithm to find its moves based on knowledge previously acquired by machine learning, specifically by an artificial neural network (a deep learning method) by extensive training, both from human and computer play.[4] A neural network is trained to identify the best moves and the winning percentages of these moves. This neural network improves the strength of the tree search, resulting in stronger move selection in the next iteration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo

I just discovered that Phil Agre is missing. Agre, 49, was reported missing by his sister, who has not seen Agre since spring 2008. An out-of-state resident, Agre's sister said she became concered about him when she learned he had abandoned his apartment and his job sometime between December 2008 and May of this year. He's described as a white male with blonde hair and blue eyes. At 6 feet tall and 120 pounds, he suffers from manic/depression. He sometimes wears a full beard. Jeez. (more)

see Privately Held (more)

Review: The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers. The Germans were voting, in the absent-minded way of democratic voters everywhere, for easy reassurances, for stability, with classes siding against their historical enemies. (more)

person with too much money - wealth inequality

Computer Mandate, supposedly from a 1979 internal IBM presentation. (more)

Talented And Gifted programs in Public Schools, esp for Educating Kids In Nyc (cf Nyc Specialized High School) (more)

Venkatesh Rao: Book Review: Slouching Towards Utopia. One of the things I got done was finishing Brad DeLong’s highly anticipated new book, Slouching Towards Utopia. I rarely review books on this newsletter, but this felt like a worthwhile exception. (more)

aka Palestine, see Israel-Palestine

John Carl Malone (born March 7, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman, landowner, and philanthropist. He was chief executive officer (CEO) of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), a cable-co and media giant, for twenty-four years from 1973 to 1996. Malone is now chairman and largest voting shareholder of Liberty Media, Liberty Global, and Qurate Retail Group (formerly known as Liberty Interactive), and also owns 7% of Lionsgate and Starz Inc.[1][2][3][4] He was interim CEO of Liberty Media, until succeeded by former Microsoft and Oracle CFO Greg Maffei. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Malone

Mario Joseph Gabelli (born June 19, 1942) is an American stock investor, investment advisor, and financial analyst. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Gabelli Asset Management Company Investors (Gamco Investors), an investment firm headquartered in Rye, New York. Forbes Magazine listed him as #1712 in December 2022 on the list of Billionaires, with a net worth of $1.7 billion US dollars.[1] On January 10, 2000, Gabelli was inducted into the "Barron's All Century Team," their list of the most influential mutual fund industry portfolio managers... Gabelli put into practice the theory of value investing he had learned at Columbia. He rated companies not by earnings but cash flow, analyzing a firm in great detail to calculate what he called private-market value: not the share price at which a stock was selling on an exchange, but the price per share someone would be willing to pay in order to buy the whole company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Gabelli

Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is a billionaire American hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York. Within ten years, it was infused with a US$5 million investment from the World Bank's retirement fund... Dalio is the author of the 2017 book Principles: Life & Work, about corporate management and investment philosophy. It was featured on The New York Times best seller list, where it was called a "gospel of radical transparency." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio

Vicky Ward: I Tried to Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. It was the fall of 2002... whom I’d been assigned to write about by my then-boss Graydon Carter. (more)

book (Design Fiction?) by Adrian Hon ASIN:B00EX8QRPM http://ahistoryofthefuture.org/ (more)

David Wong: Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia (Zoey-Ashe 3) ISBN:1250285933 (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz On the Latest TikTok Bill. TikTok Might Get Banned Soon. This attempt is getting reasonably far rather quickly, passing the House with broad support. (more)

Billionaire's Secret Buyout Formula. Vista Equity Partners: The goal of the Austin, Texas-based firm, which is 18 years old, is to transform business-software companies into profit machines. Behind its approach is Mr. Robert Smith’s belief that certain aspects of the companies Vista buys are interchangeable. “Software companies taste like chicken,” he said at a conference in New York a few years ago. “They’re selling different products, but 80% of what they do is pretty much the same.” (see related (2024-01-23) Brown Dark Software) (more)

Systems Thinking 1975 book by John Gall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics (more)