Why Not Mars (Idle Words)
It's slow, expensive, the engineering is mostly port-a-potty chemistry, and the best-case outcome is that thirty years from now we’ll get to watch someone remotely operate a soil scoop from Mars instead of Pasadena
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Confessions Of A Navy F-14 Fleet Pilot Turned F-5 Aggressor
Francesco "Paco" Chierici talks fighting in Tomcats and Tigers, losing comrades, and flying 737s during the week and fighters on the weekend.
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Carolina Stories (Practice Different)
Practice Different “What is it you do to practice that is analogous to how a pianist practices scales?” — Tyler Cowen (professor, blogger, podcaster, and co-author of Talent) Since reading Talent, I haven’t been able to get this question out of my head.
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Learning at Scale
An Interview with Stewart Brand A few months ago Stewart Brand, a reader of this newsletter, signed up to become a Member of Scope of Work. Stewart’s work - as a writer, as an initiator, and as an advocate for humanity - is both broad reaching and specific. Best
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Applying the Principle of Least Astonishment: Improving Code Quality and User Experience
Learn how to apply the principle of least astonishment in development through real-world examples in JavaScript. Improve the usability & maintainability of code. A must-read for software developers & engineers
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2023-01-30 — Scope of Work
Kelly and Anna Pendergrast on rising to the challenges wrought by disasters, corralling invasive carp, and subsea cable chokepoints.
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Origami is revolutionizing technology, from medicine to space
The centuries-old art of folding paper is yielding new applications in spacecraft, architecture, and even the human body.
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Goolsbee and Syverson on Construction Productivity
Several people have asked me about a new NBER working paper that takes a look at construction productivity (a popular topic around here), “The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the US Construction Sector,” by Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson. This paper doesn’t bring any new data to bear on the construction productivity question - it uses the same Bureau of Economic Analysis data that
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To reignite the joy of childhood, learn to live on 'toddler time'
The days might seem long, but the years go by quickly, friends warned when my son was born. I wanted to savor each precious memory, but how? Living on "toddler time," showed me the way.
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What the hell are stock buybacks?
Major corporations are buying back their own stock at alarming rates. But whom does the practice really benefit?
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The Eternal Modern - TheMoneyIllusion
Every place seems to resemble its golden age. Last January, I visited Miami Beach, where the dominant style is art deco. Last spring, I visited Palm Springs, where the style is midcentury modern. In the fall, I visited Prague, Budapest and Vienna, which are full of art nouveau buildings. At one time, all those styles were
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Netflix’s New Chapter
Netflix waited out Blockbuster with better economics, and it’s seeking to do the same with its competitors today; the key to the company’s differentiation, though, is increasingly creat…
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2023-01-23 — Scope of Work
Amreeta Duttchoudhury on the joys of unfinished projects, tool-in ceremonies, and the recent NOTAM outage.
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The Controversial King of Hardcore Climbing
When I strolled into base camp at Ama Dablam, the 22,349-foot peak known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, the mountaineer Nims Purja was locked in a fierce…
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The Rise of Steel Part II
Welcome to the Rise of Steel part II. We previously looked at the early stages of industrialization of iron and steelmaking, between roughly 1200 and 1850. To briefly recap, making steel was an involved, multistep process. Iron would first be smelted from iron ore in a blast furnace, resulting in high-carbon pig iron. This pig iron was then placed in a special furnace (initially a finery furnace, later a puddling furnace) to remove the carbon and other impurities, resulting in wrought iron. Wrou...
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The Whippet #162: Nectar Crash
Cursed knowledge in this issue: parrot mouths, unseeable number truths. Blessed knowledge: hearts, sunbirds, joyful mice.
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A Human-Centered Approach to Developer Productivity | IEEE Journals & Magaz
Measuring the productivity of software developers is inheritently difficult; it requires measuring humans doing a complex, creative task. They are affected by both technological and sociological aspects of their job, and these need to be evaluated in concert to deeply understand developer productivity.
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Life as a 21st-Century Trucker
1 When Jay LeRette preaches the Word, he transforms from a mild Midwesterner—one who loves country gospel, rides a horse he has trained to roll over and grin,…
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The Big Lie About Bike Helmets
Last year, health officials in Seattle decided to stop requiring bicyclists to wear helmets. Independent research found that nearly half of Seattle’s helmet…
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