Author Archives: jsilter

Early Ebola Intervention

As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I’m a big believer in being rational about charity. Ideally, one has several independent randomized controlled trials on which to decide how cost-effective an intervention. But sometimes that just isn’t possible. Disease outbreaks are a … Continue reading

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Properties of angry speech

Note: This post contains profanity Sit down if you’re standing: There’s a lot of angry speech on the internet. There’s a lot of regular speech too. For exact meaning, the order and context of words is critical, but for general tone … Continue reading

Posted in Social Media, Text Mining | Leave a comment

Lifetime of Fortune 500 Companies

I often find myself discussing what the future world will look like. I might wonder out loud what will come after Facebook or Google or whatever. Frequently the response is “nothing”. As in, these companies are so huge that they … Continue reading

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Theoretical maximum of the Bechdel Test

Background: For those that may not know, the Bechdel test has 3 criteria. A movie/TV show/book/whatever must have at least 1 scene where there exist: 0. 2 female characters 1. talking to each other 2. about something other than a … Continue reading

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It’s the end of the world again

In a move that surprised very few people, the world did not end today. Or yesterday. Slightly more surprising was that it didn’t end Friday, but only slightly. Newton was apparently not a fan of the various apocalyptic predictions, and … Continue reading

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