aka HSA; system of paying advance into account with pre-IncomeTax dollars to later spend on medical expenses - typically used to cover gaps in High Deductible Health Insurance

Samo Burja (Bismarck Analysis): Plastic Recycling Does Not Work. For many materials like metals or paper, recycling drives down costs, saves energy, and substitutes for resource extraction. Plastics, however, are not conducive to large-scale recycling. (more)

Brian Marick on Coding, New Hampshire Style. In late 2023, I did a series of podcast episodes on ecological and embodied cognition. (more)

frenchie deconstructionism (more)

An umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German Umwelt meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the specific way organisms of a particular species experience the world, which is dependant on what their sensory organs and perceptual systems can detect and interpret.[1] In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexkull and Thomas Sebeok, it is considered to be the "biological foundations that lie at the very center of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal". The term is usually translated as "self-centered world".[3] Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The term umwelt, together with companion terms Umgebung (an Umwelt as seen by another observer) and Innenwelt (the mapping of the self to the world of objects),[4] have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians because they offer a potential solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt

Donald Alan Schön (September 19, 1930 – September 13, 1997) was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sch%C3%B6n

Marc Hedlund (ex-co-founder of Wesabe) on why Wesabe lost to Mint.com. First, we chose not to work with Yodlee, but failed to find or make a replacement for them (until too late)... Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratification as soon as they possibly could; we completely sucked at all of that. (To be defensive for just a moment, their data accuracy -- how well they automatically edited -- was really low, and anyone who looked deeply into their data at Mint, especially in the beginning, was shocked at how inaccurate it was. The point, though, is hardly anyone seems to have looked.) (more)

Past and present reads. Bolded-titles were faves. See esp. Greatest Books (more)

Rebecca Wirfs-Brocc: Discovering Our Software Umwelt. Last week ¾ of the family Wirfs-Brock present the talk, “Discovering Your Software Umwelt”, at the Onward! Essay track of the SPLASH 2024 conference... The back story on how we wrote our essay: Initially, we had no idea what we could write about together… (more)

Rebecca Wirfs-Brocc: Observations on Growing a Software Design Umwelt. Pattern authors ostensibly are experts on the topic their patterns address. Since most software developers don’t share those experts’ underlying design values, practices, and principles—let alone their design context—there’s a disconnect between what is said in pattern descriptions and that which is perceived and understood by pattern readers (more)

Incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ IN-sel; a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate"[1]) is a term associated with an online subculture of people (racially diverse but mostly white,[2] male and heterosexual[3]) who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, and blame, objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result.[4][5][6] The movement is strongly linked to misogyny. Originally coined as "invcel" around 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as Alana, the spelling had shifted to "incel" by 1999,[7][8] and the term later rose to prominence in the 2010s, following the influence of misogynistic terrorists Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian.[9] The subculture's attitude can be characterized by resentment, hostility, sexual objectification, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, sense of entitlement to sex, blaming of women and the sexually successful for their situation (which is often seen as predetermined due to biological determinism, evolutionary genetics or a rigged game), nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active.[10][25] Incel communities have been increasingly criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, the endorsement and encouragement of violence, and extremism.[26] Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple mass killings, mostly in North America, perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel

David Ronfeldt (from 2002) on "NGOs, Network-s, and Future Social Evolution" - This framework holds that people have developed four major forms for organizing their societies: first tribes (Tribalism), then hierarchical (Command And Control) institutions, then Markets, and now Networks... Today, it is often said that "government" or "the market" is the solution. In time, it may well be said that "the network" is the solution. (Network Economy, Network Enlightenment) (more)

BigCo, Big Media, Big Government, Big Agriculture, Big Medicine, Big Education, Big Retail, Big Religion, etc. (more)

Samuel Stebbins Bowles (/boʊlz/; born June 1, 1939),[1] is an American economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he continues to teach courses on microeconomics and the theory of institutions.[2] His work belongs to the neo-Marxian[3][4][5] (variably called post-Marxian)[6][7][8] tradition of economic thought. However, his perspective on economics is eclectic and draws on various schools of thought, including what he and others refer to as post-Walrasian economics.[9]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist)

Cinema audience historian at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Sometime educational designer with a focus on spatial and navigational models for thinking and learning... worrying about climate, healthcare governance, international education....

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the Newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case (Murray Gell-Mann), physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the Journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. Michael Crichton in "Why Speculate?" speec. (more)

Within the permaculture movement, more and more of us have been looking at aspects of something we’ve come to call “social permaculture.” But what is that? People often think of permaculture as another system of gardening or land management, but it is far more. Permaculture is a system of ecological design that looks to nature as our model. It originated in the ’70s with Australian ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who were looking to create a “permanent agriculture.” Now it has become a worldwide movement, and expanded to encompass “permanent culture.” (more)

Exploring the Remarkable Regenerative Patterns and Practices of the IETF, by Kaliya “Identity Woman” Young and Day Davis Waterbury. (more)

mentor of Tim O'Reilly, relating to General Semantics (more)

A particulate air filter is a device composed of fibrous, or porous materials which removes particulates such as smoke, dust, pollen, mold, viruses and bacteria from the air. Filters containing an adsorbent or catalyst such as charcoal (carbon) may also remove odors and gaseous pollutants such as volatile organic compounds or ozone.[1] Air filters are used in applications where air quality is important, notably in building ventilation systems and in engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_filter (more)