Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid 02/25: Holding Pattern. It was a quiet week, with no big news on the Covid-19 front. There was new vaccine data, same as the old vaccine data – once again, vaccines still work. Once again, there is no rush to approve them or even plan for their distribution once approved. Once again, case numbers and positive test percentages declined, but with the worry that the English Strain will soon reverse this, especially as the extent of the drop was disappointing. The death numbers ended up barely budging after creeping back up later in the week, presumably due to reporting time shifts, but that doesn’t make it good or non-worrisome news. (more)

The Three Languages of Politics. When it was first released in 2013, Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages of Politics was a prescient exploration of political communication, detailing the “three tribal coalitions” that make up America’s political landscape. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians, he argued, are “like tribes speaking different languages"... The first edition did not make it sufficiently clear that the three‐​axes model is meant to describe political psychology and political communication, rather than to dissect political thought. The second edition clarified that. (more)

Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman book ISBN:1108760007 (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: CDC Issues New Covid-19 Guidance on Opening Schools. (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 2/18: Vaccines Still Work. (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: The Case Against Education (Schooling). (more)

Martin Cagan: Empowered Product Teams. Many teams get quite good at the techniques of product discovery, yet are not able to actually apply those techniques and work the way they need to... The issue is that they are often not allowed to work as they need to. Specifically, in so many companies, they are not truly empowered to work as they need to. (more)

Joel Spolsky description of good developer: "Smart and Gets Things Done". In 2007: became book. (more)

John Cutler: The (Messy) Shift to Starting Together. The transition to more mission driven, autonomous product teams is often characterized by an awkward period. Whereas before, teams were used to a prescriptive backlog of “things to do”, now it is very common to feel like you are in limbo. (more)

Martin Cagan: Product vs. Feature Teams. In the tech world, there are really three distinct types of, loosely speaking, “product teams. (more)

Bill Gates: Management tips from a brilliant business leader (more)

Why join an organization (esp BigCo, but even SmallCo), vs try to survive as a Free Agent/One Man Show? (more)

Fredrik DeBoer says Scott Alexander is not in the Gizmodo Media Slack. (more)

Scott Alexander: the NyTimes Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog. Last week I talked to a New York Times technology reporter who was planning to write a story on Slate Star Codex. (more)

Cade Metz: Silicon Valley’s Safe Space. The website had a homely, almost slapdash design with a light blue banner and a strange name: Slate Star Codex... written by a Bay Area psychiatrist who called himself Scott Alexander. (more)

Sense Making? cf Model-Building (more)

Elizabeth Spiers on Slate Star Clusterfuck. Scott is not the first subject who’s unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of journalism who, confronted with a portrayal he didn’t like, attributed all forms of bad faith to the person who produced the portrayal. (more)

Scott Alexander: Statement on New York Times Article. There was recently a negative article about me and my blog in the New York Times. Most of you already know the history behind this, but for anyone referred here by NYT, this is where I give my side and defend myself. 2021-02-13-MetzSiliconValleysSafeSpace (more)

Scott Alexander: Update On My Situation. It’s been two and a half months since I deleted the blog, so I owe all of you an update (more)

Scott Alexander: WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise. (more)