Quora - start with something interesting on the newsfeed and just follow recommended articles from there.
UI/UX is terrible now compared to early days but I can still get lost with hours of learning from some incredible writers.
Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
391–400 of 470 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#392Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…
My wife studies domestic violence and notes that there is no code for strangulation. Talk about bike-shedding.
How about T71.193A? http://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/S00-T88/T66-T78/T71-/...
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#393https://www.edge.org This is a very under-the-radar organization funded by the whos-who of Silicon Valley. See the "Billionares Dinner" they host yearly in Napa. They have great resources such as Philip Tetlock x Daniel Khanmen Superforcasting mini-course and thorough discussions by great thinkings around tech and ethics.
Meh.
I stumbled across The Edge via HN when the annual question issue was posted a few years back. Yes, there is the very occasional good response, but I'm increasingly underwhelmed by it -- the typical answer is self-serving (fund my research!), pie-in-the-sky, self-serving (fund my startup!), underinformed, self-serving (buy my product!), etc.
Yes, there are exceptions. No, Sturgeon's Law has no risk of being revoked.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#394The start of World War II, how Adolf Hitler came to power in the Weimar Republic, why the Nazis gained power and what motivated them to do what they did. I'm especially interested in the "unknowing participants" of the Nazi regime, like Wernher von Braun and Albert Speer. People who basically bought in to the ideal of a better German world and didn't really consider what that might cost in money, lives, and culture.
The parallels and precedents from other (mostly) European powers is also telling. England (Ireland, Boer Wars, China, India, Indians, Carribean), Belgium (Congo), United States (look up the history of the American Legion, or of the Los Angeles Times, just to mention two), make the history of Italian and German fascism all the more chilling. That wasn't a fluke.
As for Werner von Braun: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#395Ok, now I have +20 tabs open and I'm only halfway through the comments.
We know how most of the times we are compelled to read everything in a page until the end, but we also know how much does this attitude costs to us.
So from now on I will stop reading and only take in consideration those links who will be posted in response of this comment, if any. Let's see if magic, or coincidence, works!
I advise you to do the same! (If only we could come up with an acronym for this thing!)
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#396libgen.io ps: sci-hub too
Absolutely.
https://worldcat.org/ offers a unified online library catalog (though not the materials -- LibGen helps with that).
https://archive.org has a stunning collection of freely-distributable (out-of-copyright or publicly-licensed / public-domain) works.
The local library ain't bad either.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's almost part of the problem though. My feelings about LW/the Sequences/SSC/etc. are complicated with lots of positives and negatives-- way too much to summarize in an HN comment when I'm supposed to be working ;) -- but the main negative I was referring to here is that they are incredibly potent "insight porn". That term was originally coined to describe the work of hacks like Malcolm Gladwell, and while LW et…
Fair enough, I have had to make sure I don't lose myself as an insight junkie. When it comes to the consequences are you thinking of it damaging our ability to seek out insights for ourselves if they are so easy to read?
The reason these works feel so insightful is that they link all their material together into a massive, cohesive worldview. Each additional detail makes it sound more true, even though rationally each detail is one more thing that could be wrong (ironic LW link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ji/conjunction_fallacy/).
What you're left with after consuming the work is a single giant "fact" that's actually composed of a whole bunch of genuine knowledge and a whole bunch of nonsense, and it's mentally draining to toss the nonsense because it feels like it's somehow a key part of something valuable. The big cohesive viewpoint is a lot more seductive than the actual truth - that all of the material needs to be evaluated separately and there are no shortcuts for sorting it out.
Or another way to put it: You really need to keep a critical eye towards each new fact that's introduced, but the entire appeal of this sort of thing is the idea that it's all one super-fact, so your critical thinking is at odds with your desire to enjoy the big picture.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#398I listen to Robert Greenberg's classical music appreciation audio courses. He has published courses on Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, Mahler, Verdi, Wagner, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and also on horizontal subjects such as orchestral, piano, opera, baroque music, romantic music, symphony and quartets (and much more).
Sample: https://youtu.be/whgu7nX0sZc?t=522 (debunking some Shostakovich myths)
Greenberg is a gifted speaker, a composer and and music professor himself. He's sharing with us a burning passion for everything classical. If not for the informational content, then at the very least it's worth listening to him in order to infuse with his passion.
After taking some basic notions about composers and music genres, I started a YouTube safari for unknown music and composers, I am 7 years into my search already. I listened to hours of classical every day since I started. YT is a treasure trove of historical recordings, you can do comparative listening and refine your listening abilities.
There are so many composers almost nobody heard about, even professional musicians, that it's mind boggling. After all, there is a long history of classical music, hundreds of years in the making, and the level attained by Bach 300 years ago was already (and still remained to this day) cutting edge.
Imagine how interesting it would be to browse videos and papers from 300 years history of computer programming. We are overwhelmed even with the production of the last decade. Classical music has such a wonderful deep history that is endlessly entertaining.
A list of Robert Greenberg's courses is here: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/robert-greenberg/
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
The codes are used to make the reimbursement system complicated enough that it can be gamed. That's the general purpose of impenetrable bureaucracy.
Actually it's worth reminding that it's the opposite that is true. Bureaucracy, paperwork, are the only known ways to reduce gaming and enforce equal access to justice. O boy I hate paperwork, but it's there for a reason, a good reason.
Maybe that's the intention, but like code, the more complex you make e.g. tax laws, the greater chance there are loopholes (bugs). And there certainly are loopholes, if corporations' low/zero tax rates are any evidence.
It's not really equality when you raise the barriers to entry by giving larger companies an advantage when they can hire people who know how to game the rules, or who can hire lobbyists to write the rules in their favor, or get their own people into said bureaucracy (regulatory capture) and the little guys just don't have the money for any of that. You prevent people from entering the market, resulting in reduced competition.
Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some more: W2202XA Walked into lamppost, initial encounter W34111A Accidental malfunction of paintball gun, initial encounter W5629XA Other contact with orca, initial encounter Y36511D War operations involving direct blast effect of nuclear weapon, civilian, subsequent encounter V657XXA Person on outside of heavy transport vehicle injured in collision with railway train or railway vehicle in traffic accident, initial…
> Y36511D War operations involving direct blast effect of nuclear weapon, civilian, subsequent encounter If there's a nuclear war, I'm glad we'll still have the healthcare industry around to keep our priorities straight.
I'm curious about whether the "civilian" refers to the nuclear weapon or the person getting the diagnosis