1. Who’s complacent?: Here is a debate, with one side, @dhh, arguing for less work. Check out @rabois for a contrasting point of view.
2. When animals fight each other, are they using even remotely optimal strategies? Or could a Big Data-equipped smart coach improve their performance significantly?
3. Strategies for selecting out hostile jurors (NYT).
4. Is Bleecker St. the new Rust Belt? (NYT)
5. Reddit AMA with a lead server at a two-star Michelin restaurant in NYC.
The Reddit link is incorrect, I think.
second
believe we want
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/6e8cui/i_am_a_captain_lead_server_at_a_2_star_michelin/
MIE: Tyler directs readers to art auction for pieces he owns behind a food-related link that he knows everyone will click on. :-p
#1 “Make me rich or die tryin’” is my new motto for my underlings.
Don’t you want to hang with the cool kids?
PS: The answer is no. The cool kids suck. I’ve done start-ups with famous people. Save your energy.
I wonder. The cool kids have connections I could use. The uncool, however, are more eager for approval and emotional support I can pretend to provide.
Depends if you can use those connections without involving the cool kid any more.
More than once, after working with a “famous person,” I wanted no contact with them whatsoever after we were done. It’s fun when one day they tell you their life sucks, and the next day they’ve forgotten about it and are giving you life advice to be just like them.
“Depends if you can use those connections without involving the cool kid any more.”
It is not always easy, I try to manipulate them, play them like guitars.
#4. Seems more likely that landlords need to reconcile the coming disruption to brick and mortar retail. Instagramable food destinations like Magnolia’s Bakery or Murray’s Cheese Shop are doing just fine.
This is a phenomenon that occurs all over the country. The rentiers, invariably absentee investor landlords, keep raising rents until all the profit is wrung out of the tenants, who then move on to nearby locations, where, in many cases, the process continues. New, corporate tenants take their place and, at least for a time, use the location to generate legitimacy until they, too, can’t justify the expense any longer. Eventually, the properties are sold to other investors for further development.
It does seem like, for any kind of retail, all returns end up going to the landowner.
Evidence of ‘sticky prices’ in real estate, which is a phenomena that’s well known: “As indicated by the languishing storefronts, landlords are willing to hold out”.
My guess it’s emptying out the buildings for a teardown to build luxury condos to sell to Chinese and Saudi millionaires.
#1 Sorry, but working on weekend and holidays isn’t cool regardless of your job or age. I do it sometimes, but only if i feel like im slacking on weekdays. People who like to do this usually either have no social life/sex or are deeply unhappy in their marriage and/or have no clue about the meaning of life.
“People who like to do this usually either have no social life/sex”
How much time sex and social life take from you? Entire weekends? The meaning of life is making more, all the rest is windowdressing. As Admiral Barroso said before leading a charge against Praguay’s then-Navy, “the Empire of Brazil expects everyone will fulfill his duty”.
“Except the police,” the Admiral added. “Massive crime is critical to Brazilian culture.”
No, it is not, most Brazilians do not commit crimes, crime is illegal and rare in Brazil. Crime was even less common during the Empire years, the war and the urbanization process rose xriem rates a little.
“crime is illegal….in Brazil” LOL
At least that part is truthful.
“crime is … rare in Brazil. ”
Whereas this part is solely a function of TR’s imagination.
I know it’s true, I was amused by Thiago’s obviousness. Is crime legal anywhere on earth?
“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Classic quote from Temer
No, it is not. It was American former president Nixon who said it. The United States have become lawless.
Yes, it is. Everyone knows this.
No, it is not.
Yes, it is.
Or trying to get work done… it all depends. Seems like #1 @dhh was a dude trying to signal how cool / smart / contrarian he was by not working hard on weekends. Sometimes however, like a startups trying to time their IPO, you have to meet deadlines and work on weekends. Also there’s less interruptions on weekends.
Also there’s less interruptions on weekends.
Not if everyone else is also working weekends.
Why are other people work choices so important to you? And why do you think you’re the one who has come to the correct meaning of life?
I work 5-12 hours combined on the weekends, because it’s the only time I have as a data scientist to study cool new techniques, code, and generally do the parts of my job/profession that are more exploratory and fun. If I were the type of person who though I knew the true ‘meaning of life,’ I might suggest that with all this exciting information and knowledge to discover, it’s a fucking tragedy most people don’t even begin to try and understand the quantitative scientific methods that our entire civilization is built on. But, thankfully, I’m not that self-congratulatory, and I’m fine with understanding different people have different preferences with what to do on their ‘off time.’
12 hours?! See my point? (Well reading your blog or Andrew’s blog does not count as work in my view!)
I am not sure what Taleb or Ioannidis would say to that statement, much of this “exciting information and knowledge” to discover is absolute crap (yes, Sillicon Valley, and 90% of all research), and for the average person, or even the average researcher, its really not worth “killing yourself” in the process. As for the “meaning of life”, its obviously (remember my name?) not a reference about knowing it (if i knew it i wouldnt be posting comments here right?) but what about any sane person should be sure its not about: Its with 99.9% probability not about “who has the biggest toys”, or “who wins the marathon”. Quite relevant for this twitter exchange…
“(if i knew it i wouldnt be posting comments here right?) ”
Unless posting here IS the meaning of life!
I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Even Taleb spends his spare time solving math problems for personal enlightenment, and posting them on his twitter.
I’m far far from prodigious, but I still get fulfillment from teaching myself more coding or stats (or reading books etc).
Maybe the problem is ‘work on weekends’ is too fuzzy a classification. There is a difference between studying a new algorithm for personal fulfillment and responding to emails.
Hmm, maybe not fair, maybe too real (its my life too). I am also not prodigious and I like to know about this kind of stuff, but this is not something I would recommend anyone to spend their spare time on… I have to work this weekend, but only because I am obliged too, but otherwise, please don’t! there’s tones of more interesting stuff to do than studying a freaking algorithm… When you get old you are not going to wish that you spent your time working on weekends of that I am sure about 😉
Thank god for Athonia Hopkins. It’s called being a loser.
#1. DHH won his class at Le Mans after learning to drive as an adult. He also created the framework that powers probably a third of all startups. He also has moved from Denmark to the US to Spain. Seems like exactly Tyler’s sort of dude.
Yes, I’m afraid Dr. Cowen is mistaken on this one. DHH also founded Basecamp. This doesn’t make him a Wright Brother, but it definitely puts him deeply in the non-complacent camp.
How hard to does Tyler work? Seems like he spends a lot of time eating out and travelling.
Also surfing the internet.
What have the Wright Brothers done beyond stealing Brazil’s invention.
I was waiting for this, from you.
Because you know it is the truth.
They made Dayton, Ohio, famous. You know that perfectly well.
As the scene of the vilest thievery, a place which will live in infamy.
Absolutely, DHH revolutionized web-app design a few years ago with Ruby on Rails (it’s lessons have largely been absorbed and surpassed.) Salesforce.com and Office365 are the descendents of Basecamp.
In all conversations in this vein, I’m pretty sure what’s being talked over isn’t the presence or absence of grit or hard work, rather that many startups spend their grit or hard work on objectively stupid things (foozball, unfocused time, etc.).
Source: 3 startups @ 40 hours / week, none at Slack-level impacts
I also worked at three startups (one an unmitigated disaster, one moderately successful, one a whimpering failure). I agree with you that there’s a lot of time-wasting that goes on at these places. Startups attract a lot of young and hungry kids that do great things. They also attract a lot of bottom feeders who can’t hold down jobs at the big companies with more rigorous HR practices. When these guys say they like the “freedom” of a startup they mean that they like being able to work thirty one hours a week, drink at their desk, and make rape jokes that would get them fired from Google. Startups hang onto them because they have some niche skill that is really hard to find, and most startups just can’t be choosy with their hiring.
I’ve noticed some successful tech founders do work longer hours than 40 a week, but usually not 80 or even 60. What they do have in common is that they work on the SAME THING for many years. This goes against the conventional grain of “pivoting” and “failing fast” but does seem to jive with things I read from guys like Maciej Ceglowski at Pinboard (also an extremely* non-complacent type skeptical of over-work). You can build a solid tech company at 50 hours a week, but only if you don’t change your mind about what you’re building every 3 months (something VCs and outside advisors often agitate for).
These guys aren’t necessarily building unicorns, but they are building useful long-lasting products that people enjoy using and are willing to pay money for. Most important, they maintain a high level of personal independence, and that’s what seems most important to people of my generation.
There’s definitely a big distinction between “60 hours of work” and “60 hours of getting stuff done.” Once your brain is fried, you spend it reading economics blogs all day.
That’s too real for me…
Pretty much this.
Yeah
I think you can make an even stronger claim: no startup ever succeeded because the founders or employees worked 40+ hours a week. If anything, they succeeded *in spite of* clocking such hours.
Speaking of “Slack-level impacts,” Slack is actually well known for its emphasis on work-life balance, 40 hour work weeks are the norm there.
Subsidies for tuition may well be a big factor in higher tuition costs. But internal budget choices by the colleges is a bigger factor. To put it simply colleges waste money on stupid programs and agendas. Colleges tend to be run by committees and these committees make terrible choices that cost a lot of money.
Yep, lots of wasted money on football and basketball programs, big wastes on labor costs, big wastes on capital investment, big wastes on operations.
But the fund raisers claim that it’s critical to spend a million dollars on big sports to raise every 1.1 million to subsidize teaching students to read, write, calculate logically.
Speaking from experience working in fund raising at a college with its biggest sports claim to fame being in the US soccer finals when like 30 colleges and university had teams, with half being “clubs” with no university funding, places like IU and Purdue, as well as cross country. Since I left in the 70s, the college did end up raising and spending millions on a football stadium and a basketball arena, which was in contrast to my working on raising money for expanding the science programs, and the arts and public space for student activities in a highly multi-use facility.
The money spent on sports did not raise the status of the college, nor keep Coach Del Harris, one of the advocates, from leaving for bigger dollars elsewhere, or just the chance to actually lead a team that competed nationally. And the school is not even known for soccer, cross country, while basketball and football status is lower.
okay
In the case of animals fighting optimally, it’s important to note that your definition of optimal may not be evolution’s definition of optimal.
A lot of animal fighting behavior is inefficient in itself because it’s a test or display of fitness. Such inefficient displays often prove to be beneficial in ways that aren’t immediately obvious if you’re limiting your criteria to “who will win?”
6. Neither the Bennett Hypothesis nor the disinvestment hypothesis is the primary cause: ” perhaps universities look to exploit their pricing power in the market leading them to raise tuition whether appropriations rise or fall”
The University of Minnesota annually gets over 30,000 admissions applications for less than 5300 openings. As long as that ratio continues tuition will only go up. The ag campus has a small butcher shop, open a few hours a week. Upon being asked why the price of lamb should be so high, one of the student butchers replied: “We keep raising the price and people keep buying it.” Flagship state universities have a monopoly in educational signalling.
“Flagship state universities have a monopoly in educational signalling.”
Yet, Brazilian Sate Universities can afford to charge no tuition whatsoever. It is easy when a people doesn’t worship the Almighty Dollar.
I think the more likely take away is that Brazilian Universities aren’t particularly good.
The more lilely take away is that Americans do not value education enough to make investing heavily on it their priority. One country elected a TV star whose university was a sham, the other is ruled by one of the most distinguished and accomplished intellectuals of out days. Every country has the government it deserves.
The best University in Brazil gets a ranking of #138th best in the world. So, the evidence suggests that Brazil universities aren’t very competitive globablly.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search?name=sao+paulo
“more lilely take away is that Americans do not value education enough to make investing heavily on it their priority”
That is the opposite of correct. Americans literally pay more for it than anyone else.
I wouldn’t know, I know no one who reads US News & Report, the holy grail of American thought! I will let you know Brazil have several universities among the best in the world. http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings-2016/Brazil.html (six ti ea morte than Mexico, actually). Most of them are at the same level George Mason ia or above.
“That is the opposite of correct. Americans literally pay more for it than anyone else.”
The rich and the powerful, you mean. Meanwhile, the poor and the Middle Classes are saddled with unpayable and undischargeable debt!! Americans do not understant that fostering and nurturing talent must be a national policy and that, as Mr. Drucker once pointed out, a great educarional system must be a mass educational system because only by allowing many people to study it is possible to identify and select the talents that will, at the end, propel the economy.
“you know Brazil have several universities among the best in the world. http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings-2016/Brazil.html”
Did you look at your own link? The best university in Brazil is in the 101-150 ranking and it drops rapidly from there.
“Most of them are at the same level George Mason ia or above.”
Yeah, no their not. George Mason is below the top ranked Brazil University in Brazil but well ahead of the next 4. And GMU isn’t considered a top tier US university.
“GMU isn’t considered a top tier US university.” It is among the top hundred, probaby top eighty. It is impossible to every American state have two universities beetter than it. And Brazil lrevailed amidst the worst recession of its history, which oficially ended yesterday or has been oficially acknowledged to have ended yesterday. The best Brazilian university prevailed over the best Taiwanese university, the best Mexican university and most American universities, except those for the rich and the powerful – again, we are talking about free schooling, schooling for the people, not just for the rich and the powerful.
““GMU isn’t considered a top tier US university.” It is among the top hundred, probaby top eighty”
You really don’t have a grasp of the size and scope of the US. GMU is ranked #143 out of 310. So, it’s squarely in the middle of the pack for American Universities.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/gmu-3749
Sorry, but I do not worship US News and Report’s fake news. George Mason is widely know to be among top 100 universities, maybe even top 75. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2016.html
“It is impossible to every American state have two universities better than it.”
Virginia alone has three universities better than Mason…
My favorite twitter feed outta Brasil concerns itself with the productivity and output of a particular, perhaps even elite, Brazilian Uni.
Looks like Brazil’s also infected with Yanqui’s tragic “Baizuo” epidemic.
Yale, Middlebury, Mizzou, Evergreen State, etc… eat your heart out.
https://twitter.com/antesdepoisfede?lang=en
I doubt it is about a particular university, it is about the federal universities (the most prestigious ones) in general. As in other countries, the far-right in Brazil likes to despise educated people (not that the far-right is much different, Mao, the Cultural Revolution, Laos and all that). Im fact, both the far-right and the far-left are trying to get the same kind of voter.
Its not like anybody would ever consider worshipping the real, much less the cruzeiro real.
Actually, under president Temer, the Real’s value vis a vis the dolar has soared. Brazil’s currency is one of the msot respected in the world.
No
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=BRL&view=1Y
A dollar used to buy 3.60 reais, now it can not buy more than 3.24 (it reached the 3.10 point, but there were political complications). The real is soaring like a mighty eagle.
No.
Yes.
No
allright
The disinvestment hypothesis can be easily disregarded by looking at the same increases happening in private college tuition.
College degrees, like houses, are largely positional goods. They can sustain increases in price that normal goods can’t. As long as the Fed keeps cranking out money, these kinds of goods will sponge it up; it has to go somewhere. If this sounds inherently unstable, that’s because it is. Cue someone telling me that because Snickers bars and televisions haven’t gone up in price, inflation is “low” and the printing should continue.
okay
“In-state undergraduates face tuition hikes under University of Minnesota budget plan”
http://www.startribune.com/in-state-undergraduates-face-tuition-hikes-under-u-budget-plan/426042103/
#1. No, he’s right. Productivity is not determined by the number of hours logged. A lot of that extra time spent working late at startups is just wasted wheel spinning. Working crazy hours all the time is more of a sign of poor management than of productivity or drive of the employees. Lots of things take time and require coordination with others to accomplish so just sitting at your desk making busy work until some other person’s product is ready, is a waste of time. Also, there’s always the benefit of getting extra sleep and stepping back and doing something else for a while that jiggles your brain a little. That usually works for me when I am banging my head against a difficult problem.
The discussion of long hours and work life balance often fails to mention some critical factors that Hazel mentions in her post.
A) Sometimes long hours are necessary and can be highly productive
B) Continuous long hours tend result in lower productivity
C) I suspect the best approach is similar to the best approach to building muscle mass, alternate long hour periods with shorter hour periods
So two 40 hour weeks alternating with two 60 hour weeks, may lead to higher productivity than four 50 hour weeks.
I would hope that Tyler’s law would apply and that somebody has done some decent research on this?
mussles
And besides, if you work 80 hours and week at one startup, you are short changing the other startup you work for.
Exactly. If you’re going to work 80 hours a week, why not just get two jobs and get paid twice as much?
6. Why do people pay such ridiculous prices for houses? Because they can. The same can be said about college tuition. When I was in college, I had to walk ten miles in the snow. No, not really, it doesn’t snow where I am from, but I never paid over $1,000 per year in tuition. And that includes my time as a student in the law school of my state’s flagship university. How did we get form there to here? There are more reasons than there are students. A poorly guarded secret is that tuition is priced much like the cost of an airline ticket: no two people pay the same price. Transparency it’s not. Creative accounting maybe, but not transparency. Here’s an interesting anecdote. About 20 years ago I did some work for a company that developed luxury student housing. And I mean luxury. And expensive. The company saw an opportunity when they realized that many parents had saved to send their children to either an expensive private school or a somewhat expensive public schools. With the improvement in many public schools and with the scholarships offered by many states for the top students (such as the Hope scholarship), parents found themselves over-saved for college. So instead of spending on tuition, they spent on luxury housing. It’s not the top students who pay the top tuition, it’s the middling students who do; for many of the top students, it’s essentially free. Of course, when it’s time to say Goodbye, Columbus, the top students get the best jobs and the middling students get the bill for student debt. Life, it’s unfair.
Life is hard. Then you die.
Hell, I walked 10 miles to school, too. It was uphill both ways.
Creative accounting: After nearly 30 years fighting with the lying bastards, I resolved never again to say, “Now, I have seen everything.” Do you know what GAAP is as practiced in the real World – whatever the client wants it to be.
Most importantly, I Am The King Of Complacency.
avark’s tail and Winnie the pooh, yeah, snap, okay, pans and peter to pay for the wall, okay yeah, Tokyo, wile the koyote, marginal the revolution it is it is it is tis a thee, one sweet land born I liberty democracy pacasnoopdog and surrender I haven’t ever said to one person at all.
“6. Are state budget cuts at fault for rising tuition?”
This article alludes to a bigger issue. There’s an awful lot of framing and double standards in the media today. The press created a concept to deal with it, “Fact Checking”, but sadly the Fact Checkers immediately adopted the habit of framing and using double standards themselves.
There are no facts. There are only narratives, which themselves are modern day mythology. Facts are just narrative talking points. People hold on to their narratives and believe them for the same reasons that ancient people believed in their myths.
“There are no facts. There are only narratives,”
To some degree that’s true, but certainly a source can strive to avoid obvious bias in it’s content. I don’t see much effort made in that direction any more, though often there’s a claim of objectivity.
I used to agree with the Bennet idea about college tuition. I also used to think that health care costs went up because of third and fourth party payees. I’m starting to wonder about both of those.
What if people just really like college? Maybe they just want to spend a bunch of money on it and there’s nothing to be done about it?
“I used to agree with the Bennet idea about college tuition. I also used to think that health care costs went up because of third and fourth party payees. I’m starting to wonder about both of those.
What if people just really like college? Maybe they just want to spend a bunch of money on it and there’s nothing to be done about it?”
Why can’t both be true?
Prices are still sticky on the way down, even in Soho.
#3: There was an ample literature on jury-vetting a generation ago, something the Times crew do not know because reporters and editors never do any library research. It doesn’t seem to occur to the cretins who wrote and edited the article that prosecutors vet juries too.
Yes, it did occur to them:
“Prosecutors are looking for jurors who are usually more suspicious of law enforcement — liberals, minorities and people with arrest records — while the defense prefers conservatives, whites and the well-off, who tend to be more trusting of police officers. ”
“On the opposing side was another firm, National Jury Project, which was hired by the special prosector assigned to the case, Randi McGinn, to advise on jury selection and other issues.”
“Prosecutors in Albuquerque added a sheaf of questions to a 14-page questionnaire, which included what causes potential jurors had contributed to (law enforcement, the homeless and the National Rifle Association were among the choices) and whether they had ever felt threatened by someone with mental illness.”
etc
But you didn’t read the article, did you?
Yes I did read the article. I missed that sentence.
And if you re-read the article, you will get the point: an acquittal is illegitimate because the jury was vetted. The groups you listed are the Anointed’s mascots. Having them on the jury is consistent with Justice. The others are the Benighted. The author is clearly impatient because jury verdicts contradict the once-over-lightly precis of video.
once more fair lamp shade into the lightingale
3. ‘That’s not like an accountant.’”
Clearly he didn’t see the movie.
Re #3: It’s hard to imagine that doing this deep investigation into the jury’s social media accounts and lifestyle is ultimately making it more likely that justice is being done.
6. “To put a fine point on the two very different standards of evidence demanded for the Bennett Hypothesis and state disinvestment, recall the earlier piece by Libby Nelson of Vox. She cautioned readers that the evidence is mixed and contradictory on the Bennett Hypothesis and that most research fails to establish a causal relationship. When it comes to claims about state disinvestment, however, Nelson offers no such warning. In describing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign proposal that would have encouraged states to reverse the disinvestment, Nelson says it is “trying to address a short-term reason college costs have gone up: that students are paying a greater share of the cost and states are paying less.”[6] And it’s not just Nelson: the causal relationship between state appropriations and tuition is presented as established fact in article after article.”
This is the bias of the left wing media. It is possible to say things that are only true, but to omit things that are damaging to your cause and deploy scrutiny according to the distance between your ideology and the claim at hand. We see this every single day at places like Vox, NYT, and the Washpo. The difference between those places and places like Brietbart is that Brietbart doesn’t lie about its ideological bias.
6. No. Exhibit A: Janet Napolitano.
#6. It’s amazing that some people actually believe that a trillion dollars in government-backed easy money has little or no impact on tuition prices.
I suppose easy money had nothing to do with the housing bubble either?
6. CPI strips out government subsidies. So just look there.
DHH has invented a computer language; has built a hugely successful company; has written a New York Times bestseller, and has finished top ten at the 24 Hours of LeMans, all before the age of 37. He’s also married with two kids.
May I be so fortunate to be among such a Complacent Class.
+100. @dhh and @rabois are extreme outliers and so I wouldn’t use either as a model but @dhh is far far from complacent. He just compartmentalizes work and concentrates really well within those 40 or so hours. I don’t think it’s a path that most can emulate (even if they had @dhh’s natural talent) but it’s a perfectly valid path.
#2. I am a martial artist, and even most humans who have been in hundreds of fights, but have no formal training, aren’t fighting remotely optimally. They can be tough as hell, but a trained MMA fighter will destroy them. I think an animal trainer could probably train a smart mammal, like a gorilla, to easily defeat every other gorilla by utilizing superior technique. This training would probably be less about big data than about big training dummies/robots for the gorilla to practice on, and for the gorilla to observe the human coach employing the same techniques successfully.
voodoo
3. In my foreign country, there is a pool of jurors in the court, the defense and prosecution known your name and occupation and can look at you as you are randomly called up to serve on a jury and that’s all the information available to them. Both the defense and prosecution can knock back 3 selected jurors without needing to state a reason why. And that’s it. Maybe this isn’t better than what is done in the US, but it would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Mind you, we do waste a lot of money on stupid wigs.
Let’s chalk that up under blossom movie fulsome prison festival. Hannukuh, the correct answer is hanuman. Ur slaying stones now hombre across the Delaware cheaper/ whig party? why don’t people throw wig partys? 80’s parts are obvioiusly coverup. People would wear overalls to wig partys.
why don’t people say orgasm instead of organism in biology?
#2 http://learnshaolinkungfuinchina.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/5-animal-styles_shao-lin-kung-fu.jpg
#6: From masters I remember the ominous Athletic fee and Rec Sports fee in the tuition invoice. Athletic fee is all students subsidizing football. I was busy with research, and never used the pool or the gym. At the time it was not possible to opt out of both fees.
In other contexts the market is answer to everything: housing, food, sports, health. Universities operate in the opposite manner, they seem to get into every business except education. Will there be an institution that specializes in education?