malvasian links

May 19

“What this meant, in its simplest form, is that these traders (or salespeople) could buy bonds at the “market” price from intelligent hedge fund managers in NYC and sell this same crap at much higher levels to unsophisticated (but legally considered “sophisticated”) pension funds and insurance companies in middle America. What I discovered, quite starkly, is that the part of Wall Street that I worked in was simply transferring wealth from the less sophisticated investors, often teachers’ pension funds and factory workers’ retirement accounts, to the more sophisticated investors that call themselves proprietary trading desks and hedge funds.”

My Time at Lehman | Thoughts from Brooklyn, NY by Nicholas Chirls

(via Wonkblog)

Girl Gamers vs Women Who Game - Does it Make a Difference?

Do You Play Like a Girl is getting a reboot, I like the first post.

May 18

“So what did I do? I did my research like a good little librarian. I figured out what the TSA could and could not do within the U.S., and since I travel internationally I looked into what was legal at border crossings, particularly at airports. Here are documents I suggest everyone read if you travel within the U.S. or internationally. Know your rights.”

All Your Data Are Belong To You: TSA, DHS, devices, and your rights | Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

Some info about your rights at border crossings. Encryption keeps looking like a better and better option.

(via chrischelberg)

High Scalability - High Scalability - Scaling Pinterest - From 0 to 10s of Billions of Page Views a Month in Two Years

Interesting Software Watch: Scapple Is Out of Beta - James Fallows - The Atlantic

I really should try out Scrivener one of these days… And actually Scrapple could be useful for me me at work right now.

(Amazing that the developers’ web site gives no indication that it’s available through the Mac App Store.)

Doodal - doodling with portals

A fractal drawing program. (Via pinboard/nelson)

May 14

“Then my future wife and I moved in together and DIY-renovated a junky house into a nice one, kept old cars while our friends drove fancy ones, biked to work instead of driving, cooked at home and went out to restaurants less, and it all just added up to saving more than half of what we earned. We invested this surplus as we went, never inflating our already-luxurious lives, and eventually the passive income from stock dividends and a rental house was more than enough to pay for our needs (about $25,000 per year for our family of three, with a paid-off house and no other debt).”

Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30 - The Washington Post

Sometimes I wonder: what if I’d made a conscious effort to keep my spending similar to what it was when I was in grad school?

Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.

“

The nun, the drifter and the house painter have been charged with two felonies whose combined maximum sentence is 30 years in prison. One of these felonies is rarely leveled against civilians: “intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States,” as written under the “Sabotage” chapter of the U.S. Code.

Their jury trial is scheduled to begin May 7 in Knoxville.

The defendants do not view it as their trial, even though they proudly admit to trespassing and damaging government property. By exposing what they believe to be the fallacy of national security, by smuggling their anti-war message into the judicial system through the back door, they believe they are putting the country on trial.

” The Prophets of Oak Ridge | Style | Washington Post

“All clients saw was a small number of crisply turned-out staff — coordinators and project managers — but behind them, the company hid a disordered mass of programmers working irregular hours from home offices and kitchen tables, many nursing young children.”

A Woman’s Place — Everything Old is New Again — Medium

Awesome. (Via Geek Feminism Blog)