alec resnick

"Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:06:27 -0400

“Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)”

- Banks’ Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills - NYTimes.com

"It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:05:16 -0400

“It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them.”

- Inside Pixar’s Leadership

"That is, it doesn’t matter to Google or to Android that Android OEMs are mostly much less..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:19:06 -0400

“That is, it doesn’t matter to Google or to Android that Android OEMs are mostly much less profitable than Apple, so long as good Android phones keep getting brought to market (and they do). And the unprofitability of most Android OEMs tells us little or nothing about how much it matters to Apple that there are now a lot more Androids than iPhones out there. […] To put this another way, looking at ‘smartphone share’ or ‘profit share’ or ‘platform share’ all tell you something about the industry, but all three metrics mislead you if you try to treat them as a way to see who’s ‘winning’, because ‘winning’ means different things for Apple, Samsung or Google.”

- On market share — Benedict Evans

"Tattooing had gotten sucked up by reality shows and mall culture, and I wanted to fall back in love..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:15:00 -0400

““Tattooing had gotten sucked up by reality shows and mall culture, and I wanted to fall back in love with a folk art,” […] “But in prison,” he says, “tattooing has always had a certain gravity to it because you have a population of people who’ve all been given an orange suit and a number, and been dehumanized as much as possible. Tattooing there has a greater purpose. It’s a connection to the outside and a reminder of love, so that [the inmates] feel less like animals in a cage.””

- The Illustrated Man | The Aesthete

"After the Apple II went on sale, the company began an aggressive trade-in program, offering Apple..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:07:20 -0400

“After the Apple II went on sale, the company began an aggressive trade-in program, offering Apple II’s and sometimes cash incentives in exchange for Apple-1’s”

- Apple-1 Computers Jump in Value at Auctions - NYTimes.com

"The least successful athletes, those who have never won any victories, suddenly call themselves..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:35:23 -0400

““The least successful athletes, those who have never won any victories, suddenly call themselves trainers and start shouting in harsh and barbarous tones, just like pigs” (Galen Thrasybulus 5.894)”

- delanceyplace.com 5/24/13 - the olympics — sports in ancient times

" In 2010 the federal government opened investigations of 958 murder suspects. In the same year 31..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:32:24 -0400

“

In 2010 the federal government opened investigations of 958 murder suspects. In the same year 31 people were charged with violating chapter 18, section 1958 of the U.S. code, “Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.” Using these two figures we get a rough murder-for-hire rate of 3.2 percent — which, as we’ll see, is in the ballpark for contract hits reported elsewhere in the world.

The total number of U.S. murders in 2010 was 12,996. If we assume 3.2 percent of these crimes were committed on a commercial basis, we get 416 contract hits.

”

- The Straight Dope: How many people get hit each year by contract killers?

SIGGRAPH 2013 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer (by...

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:16:20 -0400

SIGGRAPH 2013 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer (by ACMSIGGRAPH)

"There’s a lot of technology involved, all to make you feel like you’re a regular..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:51:23 -0400

“There’s a lot of technology involved, all to make you feel like you’re a regular everywhere you dine.”

- Cover | Whitetruffle

"Not long after I took refuge from the academy to work in the policy centers of Washington, I visited..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:34:58 -0400

“Not long after I took refuge from the academy to work in the policy centers of Washington, I visited one of D.C.’s landmark bookstores, Politics and Prose—a literary venue known, as its name suggests, for furnishing customers with the conceit that they’re browsing and shopping in a vaguely subversive fashion. But as I walked up to join the store’s cultivated and edgy communitas, I committed a terrible error: I asked a clerk where I might find the works of the Marquis de Sade. My request made its way up through an increasingly consternated group of shop assistants; I had to repeat it several times before they fully registered what I was asking for. At that point, I was told to leave the store immediately. The scene concluded on a perfect grace note when I was sternly conducted to the store’s exit by a female employee who was obviously French. […] Here, in the self-regarding intellectual center of a city justly famed for the free play of unleashed personal ambition and the basest kinds of instrumental manipulation of others, Sade was a four-letter word.”

- The United Sades of America | Hussein Ibish | The Baffler

"Tesla Motors announced that it has paid off the entire loan awarded to the company by the Department..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:09:41 -0400

“Tesla Motors announced that it has paid off the entire loan awarded to the company by the Department of Energy in 2010. In addition to payments made in 2012 and Q1 2013, today’s wire of almost half a billion dollars ($451.8M) repays the full loan facility with interest. Following this payment, Tesla will be the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.”

- Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early | Press Releases | Tesla Motors

World GDP per capita (via delanceyplace.com 5/22/13 - 2.5...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:19:17 -0400

World GDP per capita (via delanceyplace.com 5/22/13 - 2.5 million years of economic history in a nutshell)

"The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:18:46 -0400

“The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.”

- Arthur Conan Doyle - Wikiquote

"The mainstream press, regardless of ideological colouration, has reacted with uniform anger to the..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:54:13 -0400

“The mainstream press, regardless of ideological colouration, has reacted with uniform anger to the revelation of the buried years-old co-conspiracy theory the government used to get its search warrant on Mr Rosen. The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has been tweeting furiously about it. There was no such solidarity in reaction to the government’s open, public accusations against Mr Assange.”

- Press freedom: Fox News and Julian Assange | The Economist

(via Twitter / @garystager: In a session by MIT Asst Admissions...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:15:00 -0400

(via Twitter / @garystager: In a session by MIT Asst Admissions Director called, “When Makers Apply to College.” (…)

Screen Shot 2011-10-06 at 8.00.23 AM

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:12:53 -0400

Screen Shot 2011-10-06 at 8.00.23 AM

MITERS’ response to Gizmodo: “Instructables, but...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:11:01 -0400

MITERS’ response to Gizmodo: “Instructables, but we’ll pay you money and the quality will be way lower.”

“SPOCK: TEENAGE OUTCAST”

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:02:21 -0400

“SPOCK: TEENAGE OUTCAST”

"Flip this around: if you were given 1.1 billion dollars, would you be able to build a service used..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:22:28 -0400

“Flip this around: if you were given 1.1 billion dollars, would you be able to build a service used by more than ten million people for more than an hour a month? You could not.”

- hello typepad: Frequently Asked Questions about Yahoo’s Acquisition of Tumblr

(via Twitter / Pliny_theElder: why is my country so terrible...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:21:37 -0400

(via Twitter / Pliny_theElder: why is my country so terrible …)