Month: May 2025

“Estonian E-government” – Joel Burke (Can we still govern?)

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“when the baby is born, that new little person is tagged to the parents’ profiles. Because the government already knows who the parents are and what they’re eligible for (such as tax benefits or social programs), the state can proactively send them money and access to the resources they need. No application processes to be discovered and completed. Plus, the automation of parts of the process have major time and cost-saving benefits for the government as well, with more than an estimated hour saved in application processing time for each birth”

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/estonian-e-government

“What Felt Impossible Became Possible” – Dan Sinker

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“When he wrote an editorial accusing circuit court judge Clarence Dearth of being a Klansman and stacking his juries with Klansmen, that judge sent Dale twice to perform hard labor on a penal farm. He later fled to Ohio to avoid arrest. When Dale got home, he picked up right where he left off and he and Judge Dearth fought a long and protracted defamation battle that left Dale broke”

https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-02-23-dale/

“The Code That Controls Your Money” – Clive Thompson (Wealth Simple)

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“The Commonwealth Bank of Australia tried to rewrite a core system in a fresh language; the project cost twice as much as they expected, $1 billion in Australian dollars. Len Santalucia, the longtime mainframe expert, once worked with the financial institution DTCC to investigate the possibility of converting their COBOL to Java.

“They probably have about seventy-five million lines of COBOL code,” he tells me, “and they found out that it would cost them so much that it would take, maybe, a couple of lifetimes to recover. It was ridiculous. And they have more money than God.”

So the banks shrug, and figure, screw it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Keep the old COBOL running”

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/cobol-controls-your-money

“How M.L.M. world works on Instagram and TikTok” – Becky Read (Max Read)

Selflinks_read

“Even putting it together as a joke I felt how seductive the biz opp can be, how we’re all constantly looking for our One Investment, the one ticket out of The Rut with all the other wage earning drones and up to the moon with the ownership class, a dream that seems to be slipping further and further away. Wouldn’t it be nice if my own book was the one product that changed my life? What a scam”

https://maxread.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-business-opportunity