daltonlp

Direct link to the live editor: https://github.com/mermaidjs/mermaid-live-editor

Another diagram-from-text tool: https://www.diagram.codes/

There's a nifty interactive tool for playing with costs! https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54351

I gave it a whirl. There are some built-in constraints. For instance, you can't take away minuteman missiles. Nor can you cancel dental insurance for servicemembers.

Also, you are not allowed to entirely disband any component. There must be at least one aircraft carrier, one army brigade, etc. Force reductions in general staff are limited to 50%.

But I tried. I took away everything I could. Cranked every slider to its minimum value.

For a total reduction in personnel of 1,071,000.

For a grand total annual savings of...$184 billion.

That savings is roughly 30% of the actual us military budget (depending on what year you compare with)

In other words, if the US military shrinks to its absolute minimum level, it somehow still costs 2/3 of the money. According to the CBO's online slider tool, at least.

His "Uncle Tungsten" is in my lifetime top 10 favorite books. It is ridiculously amazing.

You are not the only one.

This piece is almost a self-parody. Here's a quote:

Get him started on the subject, ale in hand at The Garden Gate, or on those rare occasions he called in to correct a glib host on talk radio, and Van Allen could go. “We’re an island of, what, 96,000 sq miles? Population that’s sky-high, growing, and the same number of houses we had 40 years ago. Too many people! Not enough houses! Me and most of my friends, we’re all in the same boat, long-termers, a community hundreds of thousands strong, not crashed in the gutter, people in paid employment, and all fucked – have been for years. It’s the way the legislation is … We didn’t choose this friggin’ path. This is the Housing Act of 1996 and every bullshit piece of legislation that’s been put in place since. It’s not our path. I fought it for years and then I threw in the towel. Said to myself: ‘Fuck it, I’m going camping.’”

This is like a McMansion hell of words.

I can't even capture it all with HN's markdown syntax. You have to look at the article. To see the real italics. To see the embedded link.

But you can see the wild flips in perspective, tense and syntax. You can see the nested quote marks at the end. You can see "sq miles".

Riddley Walker is easier to parse than this.

By contrast, I'm currently reading a book by Peter Hessler. He also practices non-linear storytelling. But his words are clear and carefully placed (or well edited). The narrative is not random. There is a continual sense that the reader's trust in the author will be rewarded.

> I do think that the US government propagandizes inside, and outside all the time and has done so continuously, since the birth of the modern communication era.

This is a valid point, and one that deserves focused thought. Because it's both very right and very wrong.

The US does generate constant propaganda on most issues of consequence. BUT. The US also generates constant propaganda on multiple sides of every issue.

The propaganda ecosystem is far more robust and distributed in the US. Whether it's straight journalism or spambots, or individuals expressing their heartfelt beliefs.

Maybe that's doing it better? Maybe it's just one mess after another?

One thing I know - it's quite a different from the sort of propaganda you get from a country where the national government maintains a list of forbidden words, events, and attitudes.

> Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships

"Vague" is a neutral way of putting it.

The laws are "whatever the party declares today. Also, whatever the party declares tomorrow."

The whole value proposition of doing business in China is a gamble that tomorrow's set of party strictures will be equal or better than today's.

(Spolier: they won't!)

And yes, "the party" isn't a single monolithic thing. It's shorthand for "whichever levels of authority have influence and interest in what you're doing."

And no, this isn't comparably similar how the US or any other democratic nation operates.

This isn't a flame piece. This is what journalism looks like. This sort of elbow-throwing happens at every level of reporting, from local ordinances on garbage collection to international politics.

> 100's of millions of dollars is pretty small in McKinseys organization, and there really is no evidence of a systemic problem here, just a small anomaly/mistake that a few partners called the shot on.

Take a moment and think about what you wrote here.

If you were a partner at McKinsey, is this what you'd tell yourself?

If you were a non-partner employee at McKinsey, how would you feel about your own retirement funds being invested in MIO, given its performance?

William Manchester is about the only writer who comes near Robert Caro. If you liked The Power Broker, you may want to read his American Caesar, or The Arms of Krupp.

The Private Life of Chairman Mao is another tremendous account of the excesses of power.

http://www.colr.org/ does something very similar.

You're saying the "pointless legislation" had a point. Just not one that you agree with.

This is a guess, but I suspect the point had to do with data privacy. Maybe someone wrote legislation that prohibits public websites from hosting ads, or third party browser-tracking software. And google maps fits that.

In the parent comment, there's also this bit:

> but it is a lot cheaper than google maps

If true, this is an example of government regulations working as intended, and saving money.

> Hopefully the US military will be able to upgrade the nuclear triad in time to maintain MAD and eliminate this potential threat.

I consider MAD to be a greater threat. We are talking about extinguishing all human life.

Some reference material:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-cont...

Just recently published: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25663779-the-doomsday-ma...

> But I think the best solution would be for the entire G7 to develop independent MAD systems so there's never any doubt that it remains in effect.

Comprehensive MAD would be a wonderful thing, if you had utter certainty that the chance for accidental launch was zero. If the chance is nonzero, you've put a time limit on civilization. How long? A hundred years? Three hundred?

You refer derisively to "1950s-era" technology. And you have a point. I'm agreeing with that point, and using it to make the case for a real chance of accidental nuclear war based on flawed or worn-out technology.

The third book in the list above goes into stark detail about the other danger - that of nuclear war based on flawed human decision-making.

"Backbone all day."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944631

Choose a stable foundation. Think about the tradeoffs, and accept them.

There is much beauty and satisfaction in using a framework that is straightforward to understand, and does its designed job very well.

Some fun facts and thoughts:

- Seuss sought input on the book from his acquaintance, marine General Victor H. Krulak.

- Like The Lorax, the story is structured as a tale from an older generation to a modern one, where the younger character is a stand-in for the reader.

- As much as Seuss was against transparent moralizing, he delighted in obvious satire, and he wasn't afraid of being too on the nose. The Chief Yookeroo, the back-room boys with their slide rules and spectacles, the butter-up band. The "Your yookery" sign. The slavic-named antagonist VanItch.

- This book is interesting to compare with Seuss' editorial cartoons decades earlier, during WWII. At that time, he was producing unabashed anti-axis propaganda. During his lifetime, he had not just observed the kind of wartime fervor the Yooks subscribed to - he had been an active participant in it. http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dswenttowar/

- Writing a funny and poignant children's book about nuclear war is a hell of a challenge. The Butter Battle Book is a masterpiece.

The article links to https://founderbliss.com/, which has no site.

The author's linkedin profile links to http://bliss.ai, which is a domain placeholder in Chinese.

A google search yields http://www.blissai.com/, which appears to be the actual website.

Looks like all hustle and no execution.

This is totally anecdotal, but I want to post it here. In 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, the math curriculum was extremely boring. Lots and lots of repetitive basic operations. Day after day.

But all around the edge of the room was optional extra-credit work. Different teachers had different things. One had worksheets. One had piles and piles of Games magazines. One had puzzles.

There was a huge contrast between my mindset when doing boring pencil problems and my mindset when doing fun logic puzzles. But those mindsets would often overlap. I'd be constantly looking for patterns in the math problems (to avoid boredom). And some of the games magazine brain puzzlers could only be solved with repetitive trial-and-error grunt work.

My gut sense is that when it comes to teaching and learning, boredom is not a thing to be avoided, but a thing to be harnessed.

I'll have to read this Bored and Brilliant book and see if it has any evidence to support or contradict that belief.

Also excellent:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28187234-wolf-boys

That's certainly not true. The fundamental "strategy" of the cold war, specifically the production of ~70,000 nuclear weapons, was about ensuring that no aggressor would survive. Submarine-launched missles are the primary tactic.

Here's a possibility:

http://www.teamup.com/

Shadows on the Koyukuk, by Sidney Huntington

Skunk Works, by Ben Rich

Good recommendation.

A few more books worth reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Life_of_Chairman_M...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_China_Blues

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118690.This_Kind_of_War

It may not be possible to fully understand China's 20th century struggles, but it's a fascinating subject.

My highest benefit/cost habit is viewing the diff immediately before each commit.

It's simple, concrete, and not onerous. The benefits are amazing.

If you're interested in this kind of API, http://www.colr.org has one too.

A great satire of these:

https://medium.com/@localweb/forward-slash-the-story-of-how-...

Worth reading for the "Tri-Venn Diabrand"

100% agreement. I can't get over how valuable boredom was for me and my sibilings growing up, and how challenging it is to give my kids any kind of similar value/opportunity.

I'd love to know if anyone has seen research, books, or articles on this (pm me).

Projects end late whenever they are started late.

If a project is a month past its deadline, that means it should have begun a month sooner (in order to meet the deadline).

It's surprising how little attention is paid to this fact in the professional world. So many teams and managers focus on the end date, and ignore the start date. In truth, the start and end dates are precisely equal in importance.

You might consider reading the article before commenting.

wolfcastle.gif

Dr. Seuss had quite a few D's and F's - but that didn't slow him down. His "5000 fingers" film was a flop. His attempts to produce works for an adult audience went nowhere.

But he never, ever quit. And he had extremely high standards. As a result, some of his funniest and most creative work was seen only in newspaper ads and trade shows.

He also had a run of amazing editorial cartoons during WWII (Dr. Seuss Goes to War is a great collection of them.)

This isn't a new tactic. When visiting Beijing several years ago, I discovered that searches for sensitive terms would result in a dropped connection, with progressively longer reconnect delays for each additional action.

I imagine the permanent cutoff is a few steps up the scale of punishment.