joshuago’s Bookmarks

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

Most Americans would like the blue model to stick around and are nostalgic for the security it once provided, but they understand that the great task of our times isn’t to save the blue model but to move on. The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party believes exactly the opposite: that the blue social model is the only way to go.

BlueCross BlueShield of Texas' blueprint for denying health policies.

An unruly market may undo the work of a giant cartel and of an inspired, decades-long ad campaign.

Forget aid—people in the poorest countries like Haiti need new cities with different rules. And developed countries should be the ones that build them.

Unified government makes the country virtually ungovernable. Reforms win broader acceptance and are more durable when both parties' fingerprints are on them. The two great domestic reforms of their respective eras, tax reform in 1986 and welfare reform in 1996, were products of divided control.

Decent and insightful list of technical specifications on what the replacement for the IMAP protocol should look like, given what we know now. Good argument for HTTP/HTTPS but seems to argue for more more developer-efficient than byte-efficient approach.

Neat ideas for improving email clients such as detecting/organizing/displaying emails into project- and task-based threads and visualizing the thread structure of a given email thread. Good luck getting people to use this stuff, though.

There's no known point at which more aerobic exercise will start to be detrimental, which means that we should just go ahead and do as much exercise as we can.

Graphical user interfaces are full of symbols. Symbols need to be reduced to their essence. This helps avoid cluttering the user interface with meaningless distractions, and makes it easier for people to «read» the symbol and figure out the meaning of an interface element. Realistic details can get in the way of what you’re trying to communicate to your users.