1. On epistocracy

An interesting idea many will despise:

Epistocracy comes in many forms. An epistocracy might give everyone one vote, then grant extra votes to citizens who pass a test of basic political knowledge (such as the citizenship exam). Or it might grant the right to vote only to citizens who pass such a test.  Or it might instead hold an “enfranchisement lottery”: Immediately before an election, choose 10,000 citizens at random, and then those citizens, and only those, are permitted to vote, but only if they first complete a competence-building exercise.

Trump would have likely fared better under an epistocracy.

2. Apparently cows like to milk themselves

3. The Sinbad genie movie (very interesting)

4. Reddit has a meme economy

5. What’s the most mysterious photo ever taken?

6. Soviet era minced meat commercial is strange in many ways

That is the title of a profound article from The Guardian. There are many points of interest.

One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough. And so we find ourselves, for example, travelling to unfamiliar places not for the sheer experience of travel, but in order to add to our mental storehouse of experiences, or to our Instagram feeds. We go walking or running to improve our health, not for the pleasure of movement; we approach the tasks of parenthood with a fixation on the successful future adults we hope to create.

The article concludes that productivity is just a way to avoid asking and answering hard questions about how you’re living and a way to artificially feel immortal in a existence that always ends in death. Do read the whole thing.

You can seek to impose order on your inbox all you like – but eventually you’ll need to confront the fact that the deluge of messages, and the urge you feel to get them all dealt with, aren’t really about technology. They’re manifestations of larger, more personal dilemmas. Which paths will you pursue, and which will you abandon? Which relationships will you prioritise, during your shockingly limited lifespan, and who will you resign yourself to disappointing? What matters?

Somehow I’m late to finding this. But it’s amazing. More here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTRxrbgOHnw

One of my 2017 goals is to be more involved in online and offline communities. As such I’ve started posting on Twitter. Follow me if you dare: @jjmccammon

Via The Seattle Times:

…an Amazon patent document published in April: flying warehouses held aloft by blimps.

It would float above a city at 45,000 feet of height, and hold not only thousands of items, but a fleet of drones.

Gravity would make the drones more energy efficient, as they wouldn’t have to power up until they’re close to the ground.

The drones could make their way back to the mothership in a shuttle, accompanied by packages and workers not afraid of heights. It could move to hover over other cities based on demand.

That futuristic vision is preceded by a discussion of Amazon’s Voltron-like drone patent.

• Russell Westbrook has the highest PER in the NBA, but the lowest True Shooting % of any player in the Top 30 (ranked by PER).
• Eric Gordon has more 3’s (121) than Steph Curry (120). Through 32 games last year Curry had 140 3’s despite missing two more games. Curry is averaging under 40% from three-point range despite a career average of 44%.
• Jeremy Lin has a higher PER than Klay Thompson, although in fairness Lin has been injured and played in only 1/3 the games. Still Lin is having his best season.

Do we think this NBA season is better than last? For some reason I find the major story lines this year less compelling than the 2016 season. Yes, I know Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple double and is well on track to finish out the season that way, but gimme Steph curry hitting 5 crazy threes a game. The Warriors narrative of a super team with Kevin Durant hasn’t turned out to be nearly as fascinating as last year’s team that set the NBA record for wins or even the Cleveland team vying for redemption.

I was surprised to find out the term Indian is not as offensive as I understood and in some cases is preferred over the term Native American. For example, see here, here, and here.

Unsurprisingly there are many different points of view.

From PBS:

A 1995 Census Bureau survey that asked indigenous Americans their preferences for names (the last such survey done by the bureau) found that 49 percent preferred the term Indian, 37 percent Native American, and 3.6 percent “some other name.” About 5 percent expressed no preference.

Moreover, a large number of Indians actually strongly object to the term Native American for political reasons. In his 1998 essay “I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!”, Russell Means, a Lakota activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), stated unequivocally, “I abhor the term ‘Native American.'” He continues…

I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins. … As an added distinction the American Indian is the only ethnic group in the United States with the American before our ethnicity.

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. “We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please.”

From Jessica Lee on Quora:

As with any cultural group, you will find that different people prefer different things. Personally, while I don’t feel that most people I have met use the term Native American maliciously, I do feel the term is… maybe minimizing is the right word? Hard to describe but what I mean is that there are hundreds of tribes and each is unique. The distinctive aspects and differences between the tribes are usually lost on the non native population. Anyone who knows me well knows I prefer the term Cherokee, I am a little less than half Cherokee on my fathers side. However, you just meeting me on the street, I wouldn’t expect you to know that, so Native American is fine, but try to learn a person tribe of possible. It’s usually the best option.

From Debora Spotted Eagle on Quora:

I prefer ‘First Nation’, ‘Native’, or ‘Indigenous’. I was born in the United States and an enrolled member of Canadian tribe, so to be called ‘Native American’ excludes the Canadian part of me (where both my parents were born). I don’t remember being referred to as ‘American Indian’ (if I were, it would be same as being called ‘Native American’).

I don’t mind ‘Indian’ although it’s the LEAST of my preference. I seems like a blah ‘name’ to me, like being called ‘Hey you female’ or ‘hey lady’, although both are true, they dont feel respectful or honoring, although I realize there might not be any disrespect from the one using it. I just prefer it LESS. Natives are honoring people’s in general.

This is one of the weirdest, coolest, and most creative technological innovations I’ve seen recently.

As reported by Popular Mechanics:

Two years ago, the New Mexico Department of Transportation decided to spice up a particularly desolate stretch of Route 66 between Albuquerque and Tijeras by adding grooves in the road that will play music when you drive over them. If you drive the speed limit of 45 mph for the quarter-mile stretch, you can hear “America the Beautiful” play through the vibrations in your car’s wheels.

The grooves in the road work just like the rumble strips or “drunk bumps” that vibrate your car when you start to drift out of your lane. But these rumble strips are precisely positioned to create different pitches when you drive over them. The result? The notes to “America the Beautiful” rising from the bottom of your car.