A virus that passes from animals to humans. Examples include: SARS, Swine Flu, and COVID-19.

A pattern for traversing a tree of heterogeneous objects. Decoupling the algorithm for traversing the tree and the code operating on the objects leads to a much cleaner (and easily extensible) code.

Example usages include traversing an AST, the AST does not need to be changed to accomodate new code that is operating on it e.g. linters.

Posits that there were previous civilizations on Earth before humans. Some scientists are conducting research to see if we could detect changes in things like atmospheric carbon, plastics, and nuclear fallout since it’s highly likely no other physical evidence would exist e.g. buildings and artifacts.

Intertwines documentation and source code which emphasizes the need for code to not only be understood by the compiler, but also by future engineers trying to reason about your code.

Introduced by Donald Knuth in his book Literate Programming written in 1984 and implemented in the CWEB tool.

Literate programming with org-mode

Here’s an example of weaving the execution of code into this document which exports both the code block and output:

import random
print random.randrange(0, 100)

54

To tangle this code such that it exports to a source code file we can add the following heading to the source block tangle: hello_world :exports none which will export the code block to a file hello_world.py.

Read more about literate programming in org-mode using org-babel

A rating for the ability of a virus to spread. R of 1 would indicate each infected person infects one person. Anything higher than 1 has the potential to grow the number of cases exponentially (i.e. an outbreak or pandemic). For example, measles had an R value of 15.

This is similar to big O notation in estimating computation complexity. R1 would be constant time and R1+ would be O(N^1+).

A document that keeps track of critical decisions made by a team to raise awareness and provide a reference for future discussions that involve some form of ‘why did we decide to do x?’.

A shell holding company goes public with the intention of raising money to merge with a private company—effectively making the private company public without having to go through the listing process.

While the fees tend to be higher than the private company going through the process of IPO-ing, they only need to make a deal with a single party (the SPAC) which significantly simplifies the process.

See also:

• 165 SPAC IPOs from January to October 2020

In finance, the plutonomy is the small group of people that control most of the wealth.

Plutonomy is also the study of production and distribution of wealth.

A framework for starting companies that focuses on better understanding of customers and markets by building minimum viable products to validate assumptions.

Just about anything that companies do can be considered securities fraud. There is a very wide definition and application of securities laws that make it seem like just about everything meets the definition.

See also:

• Matt Levine from Money Stuff coined the phrase and is a common theme in his articles

The understanding of knowledge and distinguishing between truth and beliefs.

Knowing how we know what we know is vital to thinking clearly about problems and coming up with the right solution.

Knowledge that can not be transferred through words alone. For example, it won’t help someone learning to ride a bike to make them read an instruction manual and expect they can flawlessly ride a bike afterward.

See also:

• Tacit Knowledge is More Important Than Deliberate Practice essay which discusses tacit knowledge as it applies to knowledge workers. In one of their examples, they talk about a senior engineer that somehow anticipates future changes and architects an appropriate system consistently. They can explain the principles that lead to a decision, but can’t necessarily explain fully–it requires emulation and accumulation of experiences.

A mathematical function that produces an ‘S’ shaped curve when plotted and is used to transform a number into a value between 0 and 1 (also -1 and 1).

This is useful in preparing data for machine learning models or linear programming where you need values to conform to a specific range.

Scientific change doesn’t happen because because people change their mind, but because the next generation of scientists have different views.

This is similar to startups and larger companies. As new people come in, they bring in new ideas and change happens (both good and bad).

Thurgood Marshall made the comment that we have “substituted economics for race” in his dissent to the San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.

The Supreme Court ruled that the right to be educated was not covered by the 14th amendment and that school funding based on property tax was ok even though Black people were systematically pushed into low-income areas and therefore had no means to fund schools like the white neighborhoods.

Thurgood Marshall’s comment calls out the veiled racism and attempt to legitimize segregation by reducing the matter to an economic issue.

A financial instrument that spreads the risk of corporate loans across many investors. The money is loaned to companies that typically can’t raise money otherwise e.g. through a traditional bank loan.

This is similar to CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), but instead of mortgages it’s corporate loans.

During the COVID-19 economic crisis, CLOs are starting default at the highest rates ever which leads some to believe banks are over levered (carrying too much risk) which could create a cascading effect similar to the 2008 financial crisis.

Thoughtful economist from George Mason University, author, blogger, and podcast host.

See also:

• Marginal Revolution, blog that Tyler runs and often publishes to which combines current events and economic thinking.
• Conversations with Tyler, a podcast where Tyler interviews different academics, experts, and intellectuals about a wide range of topics.

A russian word with many facets to it’s meaning that roughly translates to depression and longing, love-sickness, and unbearable feelings. It’s also meant positively as truly living your emotions.

Racism that has been deliberately built into systems that govern and organize our lives including education, courts, laws, constitution, law enforcement, etc. that deprives and inhibits the progress of Black Americans from colonization to present day.

This was the central theme of White Rage, that describes the numerous and horriffic acts taken at every level of society to enforce slavery, inhibit freedom, and systemically undermine progress of Black people even after events like the Emancipation Proclamation, passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and Brown v. Board of Education.

A victory that results in self-inflicted devastation equivalent to defeat.

For example, in 1955 Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools had already shut down for four years rather than comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Then they enacted the Gray Plan to divert public school dollars to private schools for white children. Due to lack of budget both white and black students suffered throughout the sate and ~20% closed altogether while costing the tax payers dearly (totaling ~$1MM per 1% of student population). This resulted in tremendous damage to generations of Virginians who suffered from a poor education and were then unable to make the transition to knowledge work. (See White Rage).

A theory that states, the future of an idea or technology is proportional to how old it currently is so that every additional period results in longer life expectency.

For example, the IRS use of Cobol–each year the systems written in Cobol exist, the greater the likelihood Cobol will stick around for many more years.

In technology, this happens regularly. In the case of programming languages, once it has reached a certain age and has been used in some critical systems, it’s much harder to justify rewriting it. As it gets even older and the programming language ‘falls out of style’ the pool of workers shrinks, knowledge of the system is lost (e.g. the IRS lost the source code!) and the cost of replacing it with a new language means writing it again from first principles–including the now multitude of years of exception handling.

Lindy’s Law: the article in the New Republic that first coined the theory.

See also:

• Path dependence

An illusion of a choice between two inequivalent options.

Hobson ran stable filled with many horses. This gave customers the impression that they would have many to choose from. However, he required that customers can only buy the horse in the first stall or nothing at all. This was to prevent the best horses from being chosen repeatedly and overused.

For example, White Rage describes the negotiations of school segregation as a Hobson’s choice—the state says you can either continue with segregated schools or have no Black schools at all.

A duality, having two different and opposing faces. Comes from the Roman god of beginnings.

The day that marks proclaiming that slaves in Texas are free, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

It highlights the enormous difference between an event marked by history as the end of slavery and the resistance to change, not just in Texas, but everywhere that exists to this day.

It’s a reminder that we are still in that transitionary period and racism and injustice remain unaddressed.

See also:

• White Rage
• Structural racism