Author Archives: Meredith L. Patterson
The Indifference Engine
(Foreword: No, I’m not dead! I’ve just been very busy. A lot of that has been cleaning, both of physical objects and of data. In doing so, I found this story which I never published. I release it here under … Continue reading
Tales from Underwater
“If you’re wondering whether it feels a little weird to have had someone you don’t clearly remember being make potentially life-altering decisions about you, the answer is yes.”
The Four Blind Men, the Elephant, and Alan Kay
“I made one other resolution this year: Get better enemies.”
So You Want to Move to the European Union
Welcome back, coastal elites! In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, many of you have expressed interest in moving to Canada or one of the 28 member states of the European Union. I can’t help you with Canada, … Continue reading
It’s Protein World, We Just Live In It
I didn’t have a lot to say about the election this year. To be perfectly level with you, this was largely because my friend Zooko precommitted to unfollowing anyone who was tweeting about it, and looking back from late November, I think he … Continue reading
Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote, Part 3
When we left off, we had examined the problem of self-organized criticality in social graphs, and were about to tackle the question of whether any more successful individual strategies exist. But before we dive into that, let’s talk about timing. And … Continue reading
Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote, Part 2
Previously, we discussed how sociopaths embed themselves into formerly healthy systems. Now let’s talk about what happens when those systems undergo self-organized criticality. Consider a pile of sand. Trickle more sand onto it from above, and eventually it will undergo a … Continue reading
Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote, Part 1
There’s a pattern most observers of human interaction have noticed, common enough to have earned its own aphorism: “nice guys finish last.” Or, refactored, “bad actors are unusually good at winning.” The phenomenon shows up in business, in politics, in … Continue reading
Miller’s Law in the Archipelago of Weird
How big is your filter bubble? What’s in it? What’s outside it? Okay, next question: how can you tell? In 2011, Eli Pariser defined a filter bubble as “that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by algorithms.” Unfortunately, he never defined a … Continue reading
Pieter Hintjens’ Last Hack
Update: Pieter chose euthanasia around 1pm Belgian time, October 4th, 2016. Everything else in this post is still accurate. Pieter Hintjens will most likely be dead before terribly much longer. Cancer, bile duct, metastatic. He is not exactly shy about any … Continue reading
Status 451 