This is, by the way, the dirty secret of the machine learning movement: almost everything produced by ML could have been produced, more cheaply, using a very dumb heuristic you coded up by hand, because mostly the ML is trained by feeding it examples of what humans did while following a very dumb heuristic. There’s no magic here.
…
Anyone can, in a few seconds, think of some stuff they really want to buy which The Algorithm has failed to offer them, all while Outbrain makes zillions of dollars sending links about car insurance to non-car-owning Manhattanites. It might as well be a 1990s late-night TV infomercial, where all they knew for sure about my demographic profile is that I was still awake.You tracked me everywhere I go, logging it forever, begging for someone to steal your database, desperately fearing that some new EU privacy regulation might destroy your business… for this?
Housing policy rant
All these new apartment buildings look the same! Why the hell is that? Part of it, it turns out, is that a combination of flame-retardant lumber and sprinkler systems make wood-frame midrise construction allowable in many building codes, and the financing works out in areas with moderate-to-high demand, and that’s why we have this particular shape of 3-5 story building with parking and/or retail on the ground floor.
Before you begin calling the 5-over-1 or 3-over-1 buildings “monstrosities,” note that they’re not. Here’s a Twitter threat touring some of the most beautiful ones around the world.
Or take it from the English, who have been dealing with 3-4 story buildings for quite some time:
Can confirm 3 storey buildings are a huge problem. Some idiots built a 3 storey pub in my village back in 1780 and a 3 storey manor house in 1671. Never been the same since.
— Gavin (@GavinMSchofield) February 15, 2019
Meanwhile, exlusionary zoning requiring only single-family homes is just segregation by another name.
Anyway, legalize apartments.
Data visualization
W.E.B. Dubois’ beautiful hand drawn charts about African-Americans, presented at the 1900 Paris Expo.
Zoom Zoom
A record number of Americans are more than 90 days behind on car payments.
“Predatory lending practices and a lack of real transportation options leave many households trapped in debt with few ways out,” said Faye Park, president of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which advocates for consumer protections.
Meanwhile, CityLab asks us: As the planet warms, who gets to drive? Why do so many jobs require us to own cars?
Social Media Curation
Reminder: Batman is actually bad.
Sing along with “My Neck, My Back, We Tried This In Iraq…”
Counterpoint: there’s actually a difference between being snarky on twitter and assembling a gang of 15 guys to ambush someone and dismember them. https://t.co/voBrwEc2q4
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) February 14, 2019
Cultivating Joy
Rough neighborhood: This crow has an ankle monitor and a knife.
Which is better? The tiny dog winning the agility championship? Or the slightly-larger dog just sort of chillaxing along the agility course?
Cat ladders!
This dude who just really enjoys growing prize-winning giant vegetables.
Pangolins. Just…. pangolins.
There is now an official archive of Prince gifs.
Secretly Ironic 