I agree that in SF it has gotten out of hand. But the concept that communities can establish rules for what you can build in those communities seems acceptable?
If I moved to a a suburb because I wanted a smaller scale, and my neighbor wanted to build an apartment building next door, I'd probably push back against that. It feels like what is happening in SF is some extension of that.. projects getting caught up in community board reviews that happen slowly and unpredictably, and are staffed by old-timer SF residents who want to keep the city small. Frustrating for sure, but hard to fault them for that, if that's why they moved there pre-tech boom?
I personally live in NYC and appreciate that you can build whatever you want here!
This is awesome to see - I built myself an incredibly similar version of it using Airtable as well. I send myself 3 names per week, and found that's the right number for me to send outreach to.
To me, it doesn't feel forced at all - it's up to me whether I want to contact the suggestions, or ignore. Often times I get a suggestion for someone who I've spoken to recently, and I can happily ignore the reminder!
The biggest issue I have with it is keeping the contact list up to date. I would love if someone built software that did exactly this, but also let me sync my Linkedin / Instagram / Gmail accounts and suggested new people to add to my list, based on who I've newly connected with recently. Or if there's a way to do it in Airtable, even better.
I really liked this post - but a huge part of the game that the author didn't mention is that there are almost two related games being played at the same time - the meta game by the coaches, and the actual game by the players.
Before each play is run, the coaches decide the personnel package - which players from their team should go onto the field, based on what they predict the opposing team will do. If the offense runs out a jumbo package with a lot of larger, slower players who are good at blocking and the defense runs out a dime package - smaller, faster players to defend against a pass - the offense will likely win on a running play, but lose on a passing play. That is, if the players execute. Personnel mismatches are often exploited for big gains.
Then coaches also typically call the plays, although more experienced players will modify the play on the field based on what they see. NFL playbooks are incredibly complicated with hundreds of plays, which can each be countered with the right defensive play. Coaches are guessing what their opponent will do based on the situation, dynamically adjusting their play calls throughout the game, and setting up deceptions that build throughout - for example, one of the most common deceptions is a "play action" that is fake run passing play, which only works if the team has been consistently calling running plays. Coaches must "invest" in running possibly unsuccessful plays that set up deceptions, and then cash in at the right time. Successful trick plays are often the result of running a play multiple times earlier in the game (or even, earlier in the season!) and then modifying it for a surprise.
Great players will look for clues for what play their opponent is running, to exploit it. Some of the greatest quarterbacks - like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady - are more successful because of their ability to decode the defense before the ball is snapped, modify the play at the line of scrimmage, and know in advance which receiver is most likely to be open, than because of their athletic ability itself.
I think that "nerds" who don't follow football could appreciate the strategic game that coaches are playing just as much as the physical game the players are playing. For people who dislike football because of how it stops and starts, well - between the plays is when the coaches are playing, and it's just as exciting once you start to follow along.
This comment made me think about how uneven the expectations are about whether data is owned by the person who collected it or the person who it was collected about.
I think most people would agree that if you take a photo of someone who agrees to you taking it, you own the rights to that photo. But if a company collects data about someone voluntarily using that company's product, the person owns that data? I don't understand where the line is drawn.
If you're interested, the context is that capacity was historically used in the utilities industry to refer to generation capacity, which is in MW or GW. E.g., the capacity of a power plant could be 500 MW, which for the decades of power production preceding renewables, could be sustained indefinitely as long as you're feeding it fuel.
By extension, when you talk about battery capacity in the context of the electrical grid, you're talking about the MW or GW of generation that you can replace during peak loads. The ability to distribute batteries across a grid to meet peak demand (and defer infrastructure/peaker plant construction) is the best way (today) to justify investments in batteries.
I think a lot of people miss the important distinction between jargon and buzzwords.
Jargon: special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
Buzzword: a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.
A lot of these "corporate-speak" terms that are easy to poke fun at are jargon created to describe very specific, nuanced ideas within a professional group - they make communication easier. Then maybe the popular ones get used more broadly as buzzwords, by people who don't really know what they're talking about, and then it becomes assumed that anyone using that term doesn't know what they're talking about -- a huge disservice to the original creators of the jargon term, who coined it because they needed a word or phrase for nuanced communication with each other.
In my old management consulting job, we used this kind of jargon all the time. We knew it was jargon, many (but not all) of us never spoke like that in our personal lives. But at work, it helped us be more effective communicators.
Low-hanging-fruit is an example - does anyone have a shorter way of describing the idea? Sometimes we called them "easy wins", but that's as jargon-y as anything else I've heard.
The education that Kamenetz describes could be offered for free at wikipedia.org.
By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers.
University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.
If you're such a heavy gmail user, I'd recommend using keyboard shortcuts for linking, formatting, adding cc/bcc, etc.
Once you enable them, you can easily check if you've forgotten by hitting ?, and within a month you won't have to touch your mouse (or navigate the UI) for anything save for the esoteric features.
If I moved to a a suburb because I wanted a smaller scale, and my neighbor wanted to build an apartment building next door, I'd probably push back against that. It feels like what is happening in SF is some extension of that.. projects getting caught up in community board reviews that happen slowly and unpredictably, and are staffed by old-timer SF residents who want to keep the city small. Frustrating for sure, but hard to fault them for that, if that's why they moved there pre-tech boom?
I personally live in NYC and appreciate that you can build whatever you want here!