Hands-Free Kafka Replication: A Lesson in Operational Simplicity. Self-recommending.
This is a great essay by Michael Anissimov discussing why people who know an unpopular secret about the world should publicly tell the world that secret. It's certainly discouraged by our anti-intellectual culture, however. Toward that end: I publicly state that I find neoreactionary types to be the most insightful political thinkers today. Among other things,
The Tragedy of Light - a discussion on how nerds are insufficiently ambitious. I've observed this as well - consider Salman Khan's claim that his academy is is not about replacing teachers, it’s about empowering teachers.
Great article on a Thiel Fellow addressing reputation problems in India - his startup Oyo Rooms purports to provide hotel rooms with a guaranteed baseline of quality. I'll definitely try it out. Another article on reducing information problems w.r.t domestic help, travel and garbage collection.
Free Monads are Simple by Noel Welsh. A very practical/coder perspective.
Introduction to F-Algebras by Bartosz Milewski. A pretty simple explanation of how one can use F-Algebras (a category theory concept) to encode the concept of evaluation of expressions in a functional language.
Postgres’s publish-subscribe features made better with JSON.
Managing a 14TB Reporting Data Warehouse on a single postgres instance.
Python boltons - a great library of stuff that probably should be added to the standard lib. Atomic file saving, queues, caches, etc.
Robin Hanson hypothesizes that the great filter might consist of predator/prey dynamics descending to a low-dimensional subspace, since the resources needed by most spacefaring civilizations will be similar.
Is China "destroying" the American middle class, while creating a massive middle class of their own? The papers Noah Smith links to are pretty good. This will surely be unpopular, and lends credence to causes (protectionism) I don't support, but it's very interesting nonetheless.
No Physical Substrate, No Problem. Scott Alexander discussing some fairly plausible mechanisms by which a superintelligent AI could bootstrap it's way from living on the internet to ruling the world.
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Zombie. A very interesting fanfic addendum to the original fanfic. The same author also wrote Branches on the Tree of Time, a very nice Terminator fanfic. From the author of Metropolitan Man.
The Capitalist’s Zombie is an article about capitalist simulations of local culture. One might ask whether starbucks effectively captures the essence of local hipster coffee shops - perhaps not. But what about Think Coffee? Compare a Capitalist's Zombie to a Philosopher's Zombie - a being which looks and behaves just like an ordinary human but is not conscious.
Still not significant. But there is a clear tendency toward significance (p=0.052), and I want to be published!
Men Are More Likely to Go Back in Time and Kill Hitler Than Women Are, Says Study.
Fascinating article about how Hasidic Jews pro-development attitudes keep housing prices down, at least in neighborhoods that they control. HT @MarketUrbanism.
Tangles of Pathology. In which the author argues that "You may pick two, but no more than two, of...Liberalism, Inequality [and] Nonpathology".
Anti-intellectualism watch: Burn Her! She Would Act Like a Witch in a Situation That Will Never Come Up! I'm getting sick of these too, I just wish the world wouldn't provide so many.