"It turns out that we don’t know the procedure. We haven’t got any clue to just how difficult the procedure is. We aren’t computers. We don’t follow procedures. And so comparing the complexity of the manual task, to the complexity of the procedure is invalid.

This is one of the reasons that estimates are so hard, and why we get them wrong so often. We look at a task that seems easy and estimate it on that basis, only to find that writing down the procedure is actually quite intricate. We blow the estimate because we estimate the wrong thing."

"What I feel like we are still fighting for, in the places where our freedom is still contested, is neither rights nor freedoms nor any particular bundle of privileges, but some more fundamental, and fundamentally religious, human right that has only begun to be articulated: the right to self-definition, to say that I exist—and to be believed."

'While “self-styled” seems mostly a put-down, it is a notably weak one. The user of this phrase notes that someone claims something, but lacks an official credential, or strong consensus, supporting this claim. But we the reader can also note that this speaker offers no stronger criticism, and is not willing to directly contradict the offending claim. After all, instead of calling someone a “self-styled visionary,” you might say “he calls himself a visionary, but he’s not; he hasn’t has a vision in years.”'

"The argument and the answers clearly revolve around how we define (or operationalize) “individualism.” In any case, the comparative data does put the U.S. into perspective and Fischer’s discussion leaves a lot to unpack."

"All rolled into one big ball, the biggest thing to take away from this post is to find the job that will make you happy. These are all just things that I have that make me happy, so maybe they’ll help you find that great place to work. Because of all these reasons and probably some others I’ll think of after publishing this post, thoughtbot has my heart. Barring anything very unexpected, and until I’ve gotten sick of design, you’ll find me here at my desk inside thoughtbot HQ. I can only hope you have the same luxury or soon find a place that makes you just as happy."

"Computational Complexity studies the power and limitations of efficient computation. So is efficient computation purely an abstract mathematical object or is it trying to model a real world phenomenon? I would argue the latter. Efficient computation occurs not just in computers but in biological systems, physical systems, chemical systems, economic systems and much more. Physics focuses on the "what", computational complexity on the "how"."

"What makes you think that once we write that text we “simply have to write because we’re writers,” that we’ll be compelled to put it somewhere where you can read it?"

"Both McLuhan and Heidegger are unequivocally pessimistic about technological change. I wonder if it’s not possible to do further damage to their ideas by blurring their warnings together. I wonder if McLuhan isn’t also talking about reframing thought as a reified and externalized storehouse of “raw material”. Certainly, when you watch digital addicts trying to function in the physical world, you recognize their discomfort with the body (boring!); but also their discomfort with the mind as private, internal, and sacred (even more boring!). The mass Gnosticism of the internet seems more like yearning for release from body and soul. Nevertheless, we remain nailed in place."

"[W]hy didn't prints displace paintings the same way that printed books displaced manuscript codices? Why didn't it become expected that visual artists, like writers, would primarily produce works for reproduction?"

"When I’m talking about Your People, I am not thinking of your best friend. Sure, your best friend might be Your People, but I’m talking about a larger population who aren’t necessarily your friends and who isn’t your family. These are a strange lot of people you’ve discovered in a motley array of places because you were searching for them."

"They love to make it sound like making articles available free online is what killed newspapers. After all, then the problem is freeloading readers, news aggregators, and blogs. But in the case of classifieds, newspapers are getting trounced by a product that’s pretty much better and more efficient in every way, which casts them in a much less sympathetic light. Which just underscores the point that the industry needs to redouble its efforts to find a new model, rather than preserving an old one that was bloated and inefficient in many ways."

"What’s the gap between dreams being fantasy and reality? Obviously, it’s a matter of action. But, what makes the free man take action where the cubicle citizen recoils? This is the question that has been burning in my mind for some time. This mindset makes the difference between success and near certain failure."

"I have watched as the language of personal development—the building of inner strength and vision—has taken over in the fashionable process known as ‘management development’. Team building is now the experience of value in the management development tool-shed: an activity based on suffering together to achieve self-discovery and group resourcefulness in the face of artificially created adversity .
The old-fashioned idea that people need supervision to assist them, especially to learn how to do a job when they enter a new work situation, is now rejected. ... We are expected to take [people's] assumption of personal competence at face value.
Mastery of a trade or profession through apprenticeship has also been fudged by the theory that all learning can be broken down into a series of unit standards; and that competence means acquiring a pass mark in sufficient units of learning to be awarded a certificate."

"I also am still unable to shake the sense that I am somehow responsible for my failure, that it was about something lacking in my character or skills, rather than about the market and the odds. If only... I had published more. If only... I had taken that job instead of that other one. If only... I was better at writing cover letters. If only... my interests were more marketable. If only, if only, if only.

I feel like I was crippled, and that I still struggle with the effects of that now.

What kills me, particularly, is that the experience of that career trauma is what has made it so challenging to move on. In some essential way I feel damaged, and it carries over into all of my subsequent efforts to remake myself and my career. An unfriendly market becomes a personal career failure becomes a personal failure, period."

"This may all sound sinister and manipulative, but the impulse behind it is getting people past the blinders that inhibit them from helping to shape the solution. The point is to enable a constructive kind of academic citizenship, rather than the usual dichotomy of either apathy or total war. Once they grasp the contours of what we're up against, they're in a position to craft actual solutions, and to defend their own interests more effectively. I want that to happen, since I can't help but think that we're smarter together than separately."

"... We’d hate that to happen to you, because you can actually write, and having giles coren is a sanctimonious little twat who needs to get over himself could be quite costly in T-shirt lettering...."

When it comes to graceful expertise, I am reminded of the intentional stance Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson take in their work.

"There should be a two-year waiting list to get into your company."

"... the entrepeneur working to create an alternate institution is always forced to devote significant resources to making the risks of the existing network more apparent..."