January 2012
6 posts
“On average the 31 companies in the Euro Stoxx Banks Index trade for 39
% of...”
– Why Zombie Banks Hate To Write Off Bad Loans - Jonathan Weil, Bloomberg
“Four years after the banking system nearly collapsed from reckless mortgage...”
– The watchdogs that didn’t bark - Scot Paltrow, Reuters
“[E]very single photograph uploaded to Facebook is put through facial recognition...”
– Eben Moglen
“Nowadays, yakuza run hedge funds. They speculate in real estate. The...”
– All Due Respect - An American reporter takes on the yakuza - Peter Hessler, The New Yorker
“When the era of wishful thinking ends, Europe will face a stark choice. It can...”
– How bad ideas worsen Europe’s debt meltdown - John H. Cochrane
“As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good...”
– Tyler Cowen
December 2011
5 posts
“It’s quite simple,” Sarkozy said. “Beginning in the cradle,...”
– No Exit - Can Nicolas Sarkozy - and France - survive the European Crisis - Philip Gourevitch for The New Yorker
No Death, No Taxes - The libertarian futurism of a... →
Also, incredibly inspiring feature of Peter Thiel. He is one of the most important people of the current generation, considering all the ideas he’s introducing to the world and the impact he is having.
“Her two overriding characteristics are independence and drive, and her...”
– Her Way - A pianist of strong opinions, by D.T. Max for The New Yorker
An utterly inspiring feature about Hélène Grimaud, also one of the most fascinating descriptions of a person I’ve ever read.
“When people ask you no questions about yourself, the issue tends to be envy, not...”
– Alain de Botton
True Grits - In Charleston, a quest to revive... →
The fantastic facts and people you get to know about if you keep an open mind (as open-minded as reading The New Yorker is, heh) and read articles you wouldn’t normally be interested in. Awesome article by Burkhard Bilger for The New Yorker.
October 2011
15 posts
“He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures....”
– Mona Simpson (A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs - The New York Times)
If you don’t want to read Isaacson’s biography, at least read this.. it’s utterly beautiful in so many ways. And it gives you a first glimpse at what it must have been like..
“[…] a firm culture that allows, or tolerates, audit approaches that do not...”
– The firm that is Deloitte Touche (New York Times)
“This is the mindset of the ambitious educational elite: You go to Harvard (or...”
– James Kwak
““Full time,” for Murakami, means something different from what it does for most...”
– The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami - Sam Anderson, The New York Times
“In a sense, the elites of Silicon Valley have a good reason to be suspicious of...”
– How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley - Michael Wolff, Wired Magazine
“Most Americans are probably unaware, for example, that the US Air Force now...”
– Predators and Robots At War - Christian Caryl, The New York Review of Books
“We need science and technology to dig us out of our deep economic and financial...”
– Peter Thiel
“Bachmann told me, “It was very helpful to join the prayer group. That’s when I...”
– Leap of Faith - The making of a Republican Front-Runner - Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker
“[T]he remaining years of his presidency, I visited Bush several more times,...”
– Dubya and Me - Over the course of a quarter-century, a journalist witnessed the transformation of George W. Bush - Walt Harrington, The American Scholar
“In our conversation about Facebook’s face-recognition software, he added, “It’ll...”
– The Visionary - What Jaron Lanier thinks of technology now - Jennifer Kahn, The New Yorker
“Stories spread that [McChrystal] ate just one meal and ran 10 miles every day....”
– ‘Top Secret America’: A look at the military’s Joint Special Operations Command - Dana Priest, William M. Arkin, Washington Post
“It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without...”
– California and Bust - Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair
“FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of...”
– The Informants - Trevor Aaronson, Mother Jones
“The money ran out in June and what you are seeing now is the beginning of a new...”
– Uh-oh.
September 2011
7 posts
“It’s common to hear today that the dangers of avian flu were exaggerated. I...”
– Contagion - Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution
“The road map for Europe is still 2008 in the US, with the end game a country by...”
– Jeferries describes the endgame: Europe is finished - Zero Hedge
“Hier stehen zwei der drei, vier besten Köche Deutschlands herum, sozusagen der...”
– Die ganze Wahrheit kennt nur der Wurstseppel - Jakob Strobel y Serra, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Each animal, independent of size, gets about a billion heartbeats per life.”
– Geoffrey B. West - Why Cities Keep on Growing, Corporations Always Die and Life Gets Faster
“It is a broiling November day, and John and I are driving through the wreckage...”
– How The World Failed Haiti - Rolling Stone
“Every generation gets the self-help guru that it deserves. In 1937, at the...”
– Better, Faster, Stronger - Silicon Valley’s Self-Help Guru - The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead
“I’ve done a lot and I’m really just getting started. But the more you do, the...”
– Sebastian Marshall - The Million Dollar Question
August 2011
2 posts
“Germans longed to be near the shit, but not in it. This, as it turns out, was an...”
– The Scheisse Hits The Fan - It’s the Economy, Dummkopf - Michael Lewis for Vanity Fair
Scott Adams - The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing... →
July 2011
2 posts
“You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people...”
– Paul Graham - The Acceleration of Addictiveness
Sheryl Sandberg
Really great article about her in the New Yorker - such a fascinating, intelligent, smart and great person!
New Yorker article
Afterwards, go watch her TEDWoman talk “Why we have too few woman leaders” - equally inspiring and awesome.
June 2011
4 posts
The Hustler - Meet Tommy Goldstein →
“We let Congress profit from insider trading that would be illegal for corporate...”
– Congress Sells Secrets? - Overcoming Bias, Robin Hanson
“More likely, the discrepancy in these numbers is a matter of unconscious bias....”
– Paper Tigers - What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends? - New York Magazine, Wesley Yang
May 2011
1 post
“There you have it. The government doesn’t want you to know whether your...”
– FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue - ACLU
April 2011
1 post
Excellent readings from the last few weeks
Bad Education - Malcolm Harris, n+1 mag
An excellent primer on student debt and why this up to $800 billion bail-out will hit the US federal balance sheet pretty soon. Not necessarily lots of new information, just an overall excellent piece.
Russia’s Crime of the Century - Jamison Firestone, Foreign Policy
It’s cliché to say that organized crime is the Russian state, but this story...
March 2011
3 posts
“It’s now clear they used fake data to deceive the media and lie to...”
– Women’s Funding Network Sex Trafficking Study Is Junk Science - Village Voice
“[… ] direct instruction made the children less curious and less likely to...”
– Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School - New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire - Alison Gopnik, Salon
Great articles from the last few months
The Day The Movies Dies - Mark Harris for GQ Magazine
Excellent article about the reasons for declining movie quality, why Hollywood works the way it does and why, ultimately, you just have yourself to blame.
The Someone You’re Not - Mike Sager for Esquire
You cannot possibly imagine what it feels like to be falsely imprisoned for nearly 30 years for a rape you haven’t committed....
February 2011
4 posts
“The problem isn’t that the Decline Effect happens in science; the problem...”
– The Decline Effect is Stupid - The Last Psychiatrist
“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably...”
– Secrets of a Mind-Gamer - New York Times
“This isn’t Iceland” is what Lenihan actually says. “We’re not a hedge fund...”
– The Irish Finance Minister has got to be f* joking - unbelievable. I actually laughed out loud upon reading that statement.
“I’d call it the worst cell phone I’ve ever used, but to do so would...”
– The Worst Cell Phone on Earth - Slate