Archive: Best of Just Well Mixed


What to do with the Confederate monuments (August 16, 2017)

These monuments belong in hell. Let us therefore make a hell, and consign them to it.

The nuclear war America planned to fight over her own cities (May 30, 2017)

For two decades the U.S. military stood ready to counter a Soviet attack with a nuclear barrage of its own, right above the heads of the American people

People met in hotel lobbies (May 24, 2017)

Selections from the Washington Post’s Gilded Age coverage of notable visitors to the city

A well-regulated apocalypse: inside the Code of Emergency Federal Regulations (November 3, 2016)

A guided tour of the secret regulations that were to go into effect in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack on the US

Why Apple doesn’t care about professional Mac users anymore (October 31, 2016)

The Apple that made the systems pros love has been dead for a long, long time. Here’s why

What we talk about when we talk about a brokered convention (March 24, 2016)

What a brokered convention is, how it would work, and why you should care

“Rule the Waves”: a unique, compelling game of naval strategy (February 12, 2016)

“Rule the Waves” is hard to buy, hard to look at, and hard to play. But you should play it anyway, because the actual game is so good it’s worth it

Trump and Sanders: winning 2016 by a thousand OODA loops (February 10, 2016)

How John Boyd’s decision-making model explains the rise in 2016 of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders

Gear VR: The future is (not quite) here (December 19, 2015)

I wanted to see if the Oculus tech was equal to the Oculus hype, so I picked up a Gear VR and put it through its paces. Here’s what I found

What it is like to live with clinical depression (October 21, 2015)

Depression is a battle you know you can’t win, an enemy you know you can’t defeat. It’s a war that never ends. But you can arm yourself and train so you’re ready whenever it strikes

Ask Mr. Science: How to securely manage your passwords (September 16, 2015)

Securely managing all your passwords is easy! As long as you’re not stupid, lazy, or a Communist

“Show Me a Hero” and the limits of Life, the Movie (August 31, 2015)

To live in the world, the good guys have to accept that sometimes the only reward for doing the right thing is your own awareness of having done it

Book review: “The Paying Guests” (June 22, 2015)

The Paying Guests is a very, very good book. In fact, it’s the best novel I’ve read in quite some time

Make typing special characters stupid easy: meet the compose key (March 16, 2015)

Typing special characters probably seems harder than it should be. With this one tip, you can fix that

The secret of Sierra (December 20, 2014)

The deep truth about Sierra’s classic adventure games I never realized — until just now

Choreographing Armageddon in “Bravo Romeo Delta” (November 11, 2014)

A game that will give you a new appreciation for how absurd the whole idea of “limited nuclear war” really was

The Amazon endgame (July 16, 2014)

You have to stop thinking like everybody else and start thinking the way Amazon does. You have to start thinking long-term

Tech needs to decide which master it’s going to serve (May 28, 2014)

I want the things I use, the things I own, to serve me, not someone else

The Heartbleed Bug: what non-nerds need to know (April 9, 2014)

What we’ll be doing here is explaining three things in plain English: what the Heartbleed Bug is, how it probably affects you, and what you should do to protect yourself

Creation is a beautiful torture (February 2, 2014)

If you care about the work you find no matter how hard you try, the final result disappoints you. The only real questions are in what way and by how much

Against line-chart liberalism (January 24, 2014)

You have to reach out to people as they are, not as you would wish them to be. And framing your message with data alone does not accomplish that

The slow-motion crisis in America’s nuclear force (January 21, 2014)

There’s been a steady drumbeat of horror stories out of America’s nuclear forces for a while now. Why? And what can be done to turn things around?

BREAKING: Everything Hacked (October 30, 2013)

Everything. The whole enchirito. All of it

Native advertising: you can’t rent your credibility, you can only sell it (September 17, 2013)

The reason native advertising works is because readers don’t understand that it is advertising

STOVL, the F-35, and how we’re even more f’ed than David Axe suggests (August 15, 2013)

The F-35 is an extremely troubled program. But its troubles are just the tip of the iceberg