Travel as an alternative to boredom induced alcoholism.

Too many people want to travel

Travel is not worth it

Travel photos

Travel photos are underrated

View a .bit domain

To view a .bit domain you need to update your browser with the dotbitme plugin. More information also at dotbitme and meowbit. Namecoin client available here.

Register and set up a .bit domain

I am using Hostgator as my hosting service.

Namecoin

1. Claim and configure .bit address with the Namecoin client

2. Configure the domain using nameservers as I don’t have a dedicated IP address

Hostgator

1. create add-on domain ‘public_html/lostnation.bit’

   • all content goes under this domain
   • (I put it under public_html/lostnation.bit)

2. Redirect any .net name to this .bit directory

   • redirect lostnat.net -> lostnation.bit/lnsDFoKytr
   • redirect lostnation.bit -> lostnation.bit

3. create ftp account for uploading files

   • lnsDFoKytr@lostnation.bit
   • provides access to /home2/myname/public_html/lostnation.bit

Hexo _config.yaml

/# Deployment
/#/# Docs: https://hexo.io/docs/deployment.html
deploy:
type: ftpsync
host: mydomain.net
user: lnsDFoKytr@lostnation.bit
pass: mypass
remote: /
port:
ignore:
connections:
verbose: true

Buy a hot domain name: crispr.bit

The other day I was reading an article about the transfer and potential worth of the crispr.com domain name and wondered “is crispr.bit available?” I fired up my Namecoin client and lo and behold it was! I claimed both crispr.bit and crisprcas9.bit. If you arrived at this page, dear Reader, because you typed crispr.bit in your browser, wondering “is crispr.bit for sale?” - yes indeed it is. $100,000 for either crispr.bit or crisprcas9.bit or a whopping 25% discount - $150,000 - for both. If you are interested, do the following:

1. Transfer $100,000 or $150,000 worth of Bitcoin to my wallet ID 18Vvgw9bNmpwwH4pWJ646YAFVa3n6TXSfS. For your convenience a QR code is on my about page.

2. After 6 confirmations send me an email at mbcladwell@gmail.com including your Namecoin wallet ID and the domain name you are interested in.

3. Using the Namecoin client I will transfer the domain to you.

4. Thank you. It was a pleasure doing business.

A Time to Fast

Benefits of fasting

Book review: The Hungry Brain Leptin, hyperpalatable food, lipostat, neo-Puritan asceticism, MealSquares

Mannerbund

Why women destroy nations

Can Africa Rise Above Its Poverty and Low IQ?

A recent paper Social Epistasis Amplifies the Fitness Costs of Deleterious Mutations, Engendering Rapid Fitness Decline Among Modernized Populations provides a mathematical model to show the effects of behaviour of a subpopulation (carriers with behavioral mutations) on the total population. I was interested in playing with the parameters and so created a shiny app that would allow me to do so.

Assume co-mingling of a wild type population pop1 with a carrier population pop2. pop2 has deleterious behavioural mutation(s) that affect pop1 via social epistasis. Example behaviors that might have a negative impact on the population might be extreme altruism or free riding. The following equations from the paper describe the population growth of the two intermixed populations.

To convert this to R code I utilize a vector indexed by the variable i which will represent the flow of time in generations. pop1[1] is the first generation, pop[2] the second etc. and more generally pop1[i] is followed by pop[i+1]. Likewise birthrate1, which is population size dependent, will be indexed by i, with a potentially unique value for each generation.

Start by defining variables and setting their values to the defaults used in the paper. pop 1 and 2 will be vectors

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   birthrate2 <-  1
   birthsmax1 <- 1.7 ##maximum birth rate
   deathrate1 <-  1
   deathrate2 <- 1.2
   gens <- 30  ##number of generations
   p12 <- 0.2  ##proportion of carrier births
  
   pop1 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)  ## wild type
   pop2 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)  ## carriers
   birthrate1 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)   
pop1[1] <- 10  ##initial starting population

Loop over the generations, adjusting population sizes and birthrate1’s value, which is population size dependent.

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for( i in 1:(gens-1)){
           birthrate1[i] <- birthsmax1*( pop1[i]/(pop1[i] + pop2[i]))
           pop1[i+1] <- ((1 - p12)*birthrate1[i]*pop1[i] - deathrate1*pop1[i]) + pop1[i]   ###wild type
           pop2[i+1] <- birthrate2*pop2[i] - deathrate2*pop2[i] + p12*birthrate1[i]*pop1[i] + pop2[i] ##carriers
       }

Then plot

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plot(1:gens, pop1, type="l",  xlab="Generation", ylab="Population size", main="Assess mutation load")
points(1:gens, pop2, type="l", col="red")
legend(x = 0.75*par("usr")[2], y = 0.75*par("usr")[4], 
   legend = c("Wild type","Carrier"),
   col = c("black","red"),
   pch=16)

I would like to make this a Shiny app where I can dynamically change the variables and see the effect in the plot. Take the constants and wrap them into a reactive function. Here is server.R:

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shinyServer(function(input, output) {
  
    p12func <- reactive({
         input$slider1 
    })
    br1maxfunc <- reactive({
         input$slider2 
    })
    br2func <- reactive({
         input$slider3 
   })
    dr1func <- reactive({
         input$slider4 
   })

    dr2func <- reactive({
         input$slider5 
   })  
   genfunc <- reactive({
         input$slider6 
   })
    
    output$plot1 <- renderPlot({
                                       
        birthrate2 <- br2func()   ## 1
        birthsmax1 <- br1maxfunc() ##1.7 maximum birth rate
        deathrate1 <- dr1func() ##default  1
        deathrate2 <- dr2func()  ##1.2
        gens <- genfunc() ##30  number of generations
        p12 <- p12func()  ##proportion of carrier births
       
        pop1 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)  ## wild type
        pop2 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)  ## carriers

        pop1[1] <- 10
        birthrate1 <- vector( mode="integer", length=gens)

        for( i in 1:(gens-1)){
            birthrate1[i] <- birthsmax1*( pop1[i]/(pop1[i] + pop2[i]))
            pop1[i+1] <- ((1 - p12)*birthrate1[i]*pop1[i] - deathrate1*pop1[i]) + pop1[i]   ###wild type
            pop2[i+1] <-             birthrate2*pop2[i] - deathrate2*pop2[i] + p12*birthrate1[i]*pop1[i] + pop2[i] ##carriers    
        }
        
        plot(1:gens, pop1, type="l",  xlab="Generation", ylab="Population size", main="Assess mutation load",ylim=c(0, max(max(pop1),max(pop2))))
        points(1:gens, pop2, type="l", col="red")
        legend(x = 0.75*par("usr")[2], y = 0.75*par("usr")[4], 
       legend = c("Wild type","Carrier"),
       col = c("black","red"),
       pch=16)
    })  
})

And the interface:

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shinyUI(fluidPage(

  title = "Assess mutation load",
  
  plotOutput('plot1'),
  
  hr(),

  fluidRow(
    column(3,
      h4("General"),
	sliderInput("slider1", label = h3("Proportion of carrier births"), min = 0, max = 1, step=0.1, value = 0.2),
        sliderInput("slider6", label = h3("Number of generations"), min = 10, max = 100, value = 30, step=10)
   
    ),
    column(4, offset = 1,
      h4("Population 1 - Wild type"),
     sliderInput("slider2", label = h3("Pop1 max birth rate"), min = 1, max = 3, value = 1.7, step=0.1),
	sliderInput("slider4", label = h3("Pop1 death rate"), min = 1, max = 3, value = 1, step=0.1)


           ),
    column(4,
      h4("Population 2 - carriers"),
    	sliderInput("slider3", label = h3("Pop2 birth rate"), min = 1, max = 3, value = 1, step=0.1),
	sliderInput("slider5", label = h3("Pop2 death rate"), min = 1, max = 3, value = 1.2, step=0.1)
           )
  )
))

Here is a reproduction of Figure 1 from the paper:

Here is the app on shinyapps.io. There is a monthly limit of free hours on shinyapps.io so you may have to come back if I have surpassed my limit.

Here is John Tooby with some commentary on purifying selection.

Ethnocentrism dominates humanitarianism.

Commentary on Viktor Orban’s July 22 2017 speach. National policy alone isn’t enough. You need the cooperation of your women. Huxley said it best: You can’t give women power until you can take the responsibility of reproduction away from women.

The modern sexual market

We hear much about how the middle class is being hollowed out. Never has it been so easy to live on so little, with so many luxuries close to free (communication, entertainment, travel). But peer pressure / advertising have us consuming that $5 mochacrappacino latte and $100/month cell phone plan. A little common sense and you can live better than kings of yore:

• Only drink coffee you brew yourself at home.

• Books are free. Borrow them from the library or download from manybooks.net

• Never purchase new: bicycles, computers, musical instruments. Look on ebay and craigslist.

• Only buy used cars, 2 years old, 30,000 miles. Do not finance with loans, save in advance so you can pay cash.

• Monthly pay off your full credit card balance - never carry a debt.

• Do not use national banks, use a local credit union.

• Do not invest in safe, low yield investments (treasury bills, bonds, etc.) Use that money to pay down your mortgage.

• Buy real estate near a job center.

• Pack a lunch every day.

• Do not ingest candy, soft drinks, dessert. Minimize packaged foods. Shop the perimeter of your supermarket.

• Never use a financial advisor. No one beats the market long term - invest in index funds.

• Minimize health care expenditures by sleeping well, excercise, balanced diet. Walk and use stairs when given the option.

• Minimize expenditures on phone plans - live with a dumb flip phone, no data, $10/month.

• Do not take vacations that involve air travel.

This article argues that money should be given directly to the needy, and all foreign aid agencies should be dismantled.

…One estimate, generated by Laurence Chandy and Brina Seidel of the Brookings Institution, recently calculated that the global poverty gap — meaning how much it would take to get everyone above the poverty line — was just $66 billion. That is roughly what Americans spend on lottery tickets every year, and it is about half of what the world spends on foreign aid….

The Coffee Shaman discusses the genesis of the Coffee Connection and George Howell’s quest for the perfect cup of coffee.

STAT“We cannot say coffee will prolong your life. We can say moderate coffee consumption can be incorporated into diet for a healthy lifestyle. For most, it seems, it likely won’t cause harm.”

Best job description ever: “I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want.” Anthony Bourdain

Future work

Do platforms work?. Coasian theory identifies 3 advantages to the corporation:

1. resourcing: it’s less expensive to find and recruit people with the right skills and knowledge from inside the company than to look for them externally every time you want something done.

2. transacting: managing processes and resources - it’s less of an administrative burden to have teams in-house than to keep an eye on multiple external contractors.

3. contracting: every time work takes place within a company, the rules and conditions are implied in the employment contract, not negotiated afresh each time.

By reducing these three costs, Coase claimed, corporations are the optimal structures for increasing economic activity. This article suggests platforms/communication technology renders these less of an advantage.

Talent effects, inequality, and the mythical man month

The Precariat

Don’t work so hard

The illusion of competence and the impact of luck.

The quitting economy Hayek and neoliberalism; Increase sharholder value; Me Inc.; no loyalty;

On total work

Darwin was a slacker and you should be too So if there is so much evidence that shorter hours, naps, walks improve efficiency, why hasn’t some forward looking company offered these as benefits? Shouldn’t said company be able to attract and retain top talent? Personally I am much more productive working two 3 hour shifts with a lunch/nap in between. Try that in today’s corporate setting.

Asceticism of the wage cuck “The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom… If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” David Foster Wallace

Trickle-down workaholism in startups

Happy Ambition: Striving for Success, Avoiding Status Cocaine, and Prioritizing Happiness

Why do we work so hard?

Who screwed the American worker?

You really don’t need to work so much.

Chicago: the semi-elite city If I want to live in NH does that mean I am not ambitious?

The happy state The decommodification of work as a path to societal happiness.

Tyler Cowen: Why don’t we work less and have more sex?

The Sliding Scale of Bullshit Jobs

First, Let’s Get Rid of All the Bosses A radical experiment at Zappos to end the office workplace as we know it. Self organization chaos at Zappos. Amazing the tyranny CEOs can wreak over their servants.

Find your purpose

Against work-life balance

Miscellaneous

Team building doesn’t work.

Intermittant interactions provide the best solutions.

On the personalities of tech leaders

Stamina is important

Agreeableness is important

Patience is important