Blaming “mental illness” is a cop-out — and one that lets us avoid talking about race, guns, hatred and terrorism

Great discussion of the challenges of minimalism and the trade-offs involved.

Malcolm Gladwell’s look into how automotive safety recalls work, and don’t. But hidden inside is a look at how we examine and evaluate risk and where we place priorities. And the sometimes insurmountable gulf between what engineers see and what normal, emotional people see. And the consequences in safety for how we prioritize and deal with public safety issues. A good read.

Can we all take a moment to remember the phenomenon that was Jennicam? The 90s — such a wonderful, simple time.

An excellent distillation of one of the most important issues of the next decade.

Update (2015-03-29): This post sparked a few conversations with friends that have caused me to revise my opinion. I still believe that rising economic inequality, lack of opportunities, decreased social mobility, and poor measures of success focused on economic growth are all major problems for our society. I’m not convinced that technological progress is the major cause of this shift or that this technological age is fundamentally different from previous periods of “creative destruction.” That said, I do still worry about the types of new jobs that are currently being created, many of which in the “gig economy” offer very little economic security and no benefits.

Ignore the hyperbolic headline and drink in the facts and figures that refute the general negative feeling about the state and outlook for America in 2015.

Really good read, explains a lot of our biases.

And it is definitely not dead.

I’ve been doing a bit of traveling lately, and I’m about ready for a re-org.  Good tips.

Apparently it’s more of a selection bias sort of thing.

This week’s New York Times Magazine cover story is an in-depth and pretty devastating critique of three decades of breast cancer awareness campaigns, especially focused on the Susan Komen foundation. The one sentence summary: Komen’s campaigns aren’t helping to cure or prevent cancer, they aren’t dispensing good medical advice, but they are causing women to live in unnecessary fear.

I’m proud of how the people and politicians of Boston reacted to the bombing of the 2013 Marathon and resulting manhunt. But I share a lot of this columnist’s anger at the choices we as a country have made about how we confront terror, and what those choices have cost us.

This guy is my hero. Down with common sense!

NPR’s Planet Money investigates the 14 million Americans on a “hidden” form of welfare — disability. Eye opening.

This analysis makes me feel relatively better about Google’s Chrome Sync and relatively worse about Apple’s iCloud sync. Of course these and any of the other sync security options could change instantly if the vendor releases a browser update (in the case of Chrome a silent one) that modifies the behavior.

Cory Doctorow’s moving tribute to Swartz, 26, who was recently found to have committed suicide. I never knew Aaron, but I’d occasionally see him around Harvard. I recognized him because I followed his blog, digital activism, and standards-making work since I was in high school. He was a brilliant and driven thinker and doer in the digital law and public policy space. He also helped create (or at least rewrite) the early Reddit, crafted the Creative Commons license framework, and helped build the RSS specification. That’s a lot to accomplish in a lifetime, and he did it all in his teenage years and early 20s. He is a few years younger than me, and at times I found him inspiring, at other times inscrutable, but always I kept an eye out for his latest work. Sometimes I wondered — if I had done things differently, been more passionate, just a bit smarter — if I could have been like Aaron. Now, learning about his demons, I’m just sad for him, and for us, who no longer have him around.

The best and most enlightening thing I’ve read so far on why people own and carry concealed weapons.

Bruce Springsteen spills all to America’s Finest News Source