2025-07-12 00:38:29
The internet continues to feed my compulsion to click on anything that mentions card counting.
For Bloomberg, Sonali Basak talked to hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein on card counting, as it relates to investing. It’s about measuring risk and taking advantage when odds are in your favor. I like how they casually comment that the interview and card demo is in a real casino, because Weinstein’s childhood friend happens to own the place.
To go with the piece, Dorothy Gambrell illustrated a comic verison of the interview that better appeals to my senses.
Tags: blackjack, Bloomberg, Boaz Weinstein, comic, uncertainty
2025-07-11 19:04:02
Eric Katz reporting for Government Executive:
Staffing at the National Weather Service will be a top priority for Neil Jacobs if the Senate confirms him to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nominee told members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. NWS, which has shed hundreds of employees since Trump took office through firings and separation incentives, has come under scrutiny after flooding in Central Texas this month led to the death of more than 100 people.
“If confirmed, I will ensure that staffing the Weather Service offices is a top priority,” said Jacobs, who led NOAA on an acting basis in Trump’s first term. “It’s really important for the people to be there because they have relationships with people in the local community. They’re a trusted source.”
Fire a couple thousand people from NOAA. Nominate someone to lead NOAA who prioritizes filling vacancies. This does not seem very efficient for the government.
Tags: government, Government Executive, Neil Jacobs, NOAA
2025-07-11 04:17:52
For NPR, Jenna McLaughlin breaks down DOGE access to sensitive USDA data and potential usage to stop loans and payments.
“USDA has a lot of data that people should be very concerned about protecting for a lot of different reasons,” said one current USDA employee who requested anonymity due to ongoing fear of retaliation. “Farmers’ financial and production data should be protected at all costs, for privacy reasons and because of competition. If you got access to disaster payments, you would be able to layer a lot of data and arrive at a lot of valuable conclusions about productivity and U.S. farmland, futures markets, and commodity prices. You can hedge a lot of bets and make a lot of money if you know what’s happening with U.S. agriculture.”
If DOGE were to combine that sensitive data with other sources of government information that it has sought access to, such as Internal Revenue Service and Social Security records, it could create an incredibly detailed dossier of farmers’ and ranchers’ lives, along with their networks and the people they employ, sell to and contract with.
It should not be this easy.
Tags: DOGE, farmer, government, NPR, privacy
2025-07-11 01:18:41
The New York Times mapped an overhead view of Camp Mystic with flood-risk area near the Guadalupe River. Cabins, including those just built in 2020, fall within the yellow area.
“The river is beautiful, but you have to respect it,” Mr. Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990.
More disasters followed. In October 1998, flooding in Central Texas, including much of the Guadalupe River basin, killed 12 people and injured 4,290. In the years since, floods in the area have killed 35 more individuals, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Tags: Camp Mystic, flood, New York Times
2025-07-10 23:08:31
Hi all. Nathan here. This is the Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members on the minutiae of making charts, because we know it’s the sum of tiny changes that put us on the path beyond defaults. This week: axis positions.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
2025-07-10 17:57:43
Joan Westenberg had been writing notes and storing bits for seven years in an effort towards personal knowledge management, to remember everything. She deleted it.
PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it – and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.
Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder. I stopped wondering and started processing.
I immediately thought of Funes, the Memorious by Jorge Luis Borges. The short story is about a boy who remembers everything, which makes it difficult to function in everyday life. Westenberg references The Library of Babel, another short story by Borges, which imagines an infinite library that seems like it would be useful to access infinite knowledge, but most of the books turn out to be non-sensical.
Borges wrote those stories in the 1940s, but I think there might be a metaphor in there for the present day.
Tags: Joan Westenberg, Jorge Luis Borges, memory
