How Uber surge pricing really works - The Washington Post

How Uber surge pricing really works - The Washington Post: "My analysis suggests that rather than motivating a fresh supply of drivers, surge pricing instead re-distributes drivers already on the road.

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I once tried to cheat sleep, and for a year I succeeded - Quartz

I once tried to cheat sleep, and for a year I succeeded - Quartz:

Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race | The Marshall Project

Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race | The Marshall Project: "We created a narrative of racial difference to maintain slavery. And our 13th amendment never dealt with that narrative. It didn’t talk about white supremacy. The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t discuss the ideology of white supremacy or the narrative of racial difference, so I don’t believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved. It turned into decades of racial hierarchy that was violently enforced — from the end of reconstruction until WWII — through acts of racial terror. And in the north, that was tolerated."

The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between Animals and Humans- page 1 | Science | Smithsonian

The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between Animals and Humans- page 1 | Science | Smithsonian: "Once Noc had been identified as the source of Bragget’s perceived evacuation order, Ridgway and his Marine Mammal Program cohorts began recording their precocious white whale’s by-then irrepressible speech episodes. He spoke both underwater and in open air, either spontaneously or on command, and yet only when around humans or off by himself, never with his fellow whales. Before long, Jeffries told me, she had only to point at Noc and say the word “out,” and he would start rambling away, sometimes as much as 30 or more unbroken seconds of his surreal juice-harp oratory.

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Carlos Henrique 'Kaiser' - The story of football's greatest conman

Carlos Henrique 'Kaiser' - The story of football's greatest conman: "Carlos Henrique, like most other kids in Brazil, wanted to be a football player. He was actually quite good in his early years as well, and was picked up by Mexican outfit Puebla. However, despite having realised that he lacked the talent required to make it big in the game, he did not give up. Instead, he decided to take destiny into his own hands, and two decades later, ended with a storied career as a striker who never scored a goal.
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Failure is an option for GSA's new 18F agile contract - FederalNewsRadio.com

Failure is an option for GSA's new 18F agile contract - FederalNewsRadio.com: ""I really expect the alpha BPA will give us a lot of opportunity to learn as we try different things," said Dave Zvenyach, the project lead for the new agile BPA. "At 18F, we enjoy the opportunity to evaluate the processes freshly and make sense of what works and what doesn't work. What I would really hate to see in terms of the outcome is to have the BPA be like any other procurement in the federal government. We're hoping that we can learn a lot of things in the alpha phase, refine a lot of practices, our processes and our tooling so that when we scale up beyond the alpha phase, it will be a new way of buying agile delivery services. The reason why I hesitate to give a specific date on the beta, I really want to spend ample time with the alpha, really trying to figure what works and what doesn't work before we start jumping into the next phase. And frankly one of the things we say too, this may not work. We recognize at 18F that not everything is a good idea, not everything works out for the future. So we want to experiment, we want to try and if it fails, we want to fail fast."

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Jimmy Lee Dead: Remembering the JP Morgan Investment Banker | Vanity Fair

Jimmy Lee Dead: Remembering the JP Morgan Investment Banker | Vanity Fair: "I once made the mistake of standing up for some principle when it came to selling a business out of Verizon, the big telecommunications company. Jimmy wanted one of his favorite private-equity clients to have the inside track on the sale of the business, even though the firm had never before bought a telecom business. Is it qualified to be the leading candidate to buy the business? I had the temerity to ask Jimmy. That question bought me a trip to the woodshed and a 33-minute uninterrupted diatribe—the clock on my office phone dutifully recorded the time that had ticked away—as Jimmy made 100-percent sure I comprehended my error in judgment. The reason we had won the assignment to sell the Verizon assets had nothing to do with me, he reminded me, but rather was a result of years of goodwill that Jimmy had built up with the Verizon executives. I am not sure before or since I have heard so many expletives recited at such a high volume. I should remember to do what I was told to do, he admonished.

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BSR SUPER SLIDE - The Royal Flush in 4K - YouTube

BSR SUPER SLIDE - The Royal Flush in 4K - YouTube:



This is a view of a certain kind of summer fun that I always enjoyed.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald: "You mocked him for this stance in an opinion concurring with the majority, invoking as justification for capital punishment the horrific 1983 case of an 11-year-old girl who was raped then killed by having her panties stuffed down her throat. “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection,” you wrote, “compared with that!”

[....]

 For you, Sabrina Buie’s rape and murder was one of those, a symbol of why we need the death penalty.

As you have doubtless heard, it now turns out McCollum was innocent of that crime"

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald: "You mocked him for this stance in an opinion concurring with the majority, invoking as justification for capital punishment the horrific 1983 case of an 11-year-old girl who was raped then killed by having her panties stuffed down her throat. “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection,” you wrote, “compared with that!”

[....]

 For you, Sabrina Buie’s rape and murder was one of those, a symbol of why we need the death penalty.

As you have doubtless heard, it now turns out McCollum was innocent of that crime"

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: What do you think of the death penalty now, Justice Scalia? | Miami Herald Miami Herald: "You mocked him for this stance in an opinion concurring with the majority, invoking as justification for capital punishment the horrific 1983 case of an 11-year-old girl who was raped then killed by having her panties stuffed down her throat. “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection,” you wrote, “compared with that!”

[....]

 For you, Sabrina Buie’s rape and murder was one of those, a symbol of why we need the death penalty.

As you have doubtless heard, it now turns out McCollum was innocent of that crime"

Europe Is Urged to Prepare for Greek Default as Stances Harden on Debt Deal - The New York Times

Europe Is Urged to Prepare for Greek Default as Stances Harden on Debt Deal - The New York Times: "Mr. Sakellaridis repeated, however, that Greece would not cut pensions or raise the valued-added tax on basic goods, steps that, according to the government, the creditors have insisted Athens must take to release the bailout funds. Asked whether Greece would submit new ideas to creditors, he said that the government had “to a great extent reached its limit on proposals.”

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In A.I.G. Case, Surprise Ruling That Could End All Bailouts - The New York Times

In A.I.G. Case, Surprise Ruling That Could End All Bailouts - The New York Times: "“The court bizarrely expressed repeated sympathy for A.I.G. while failing to properly weigh the economic wreckage suffered by the American people,” Mr. Kelleher said in an email. “It’s the U.S. taxpayers that have been victimized here by A.I.G. when it acted recklessly, precipitated the crash of the financial system, took a $185 billion bailout, and then gave bonuses to some of the very same people who irresponsibly sold the derivatives that blew up the company.”

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yodatsracist comments on /u/postslongcomments posts a long comment explaining how Zimbabwe got such high inflation and why the kept printing more after they were worthless.

yodatsracist comments on /u/postslongcomments posts a long comment explaining how Zimbabwe got such high inflation and why the kept printing more after they were worthless.:



Read more about the details of thehistory land reform in Zimbawbe here, but suffice to say that this move in 2000 was disastrous to the economy. The Supreme Court ruled it illegal in 2002, but it had no effect. By 2005, the land grabs could no longer even be challenged in court. The people who knew how to far (white farmers and their black employees) were removed from the land, and replaced with people who knew little about industrial agriculture. Tobacco had long been one of Zimbabwe's biggest exports. In 2005, Zimbabwe produced a third of the tobacco it produced in 2000. You can literally see per capita income free fall after the land grabs started. You see it even before hyperinflation sets in 2003/2004, and before hyperinflation peaks in 2008. The land grabs led to an international credit freeze among other things, which led Zimbabwe from a strong trade surplus to a trade deficit almost immediately. You often see peaks in the bad policies of Mugabe's government around election times and referenda.



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The Other Side of Diversity — TheLi.st @ Medium — Medium

The Other Side of Diversity — TheLi.st @ Medium — Medium: "I arrived in the Bay Area in August of 2008. Being in Silicon Valley has been simultaneously great for my career but bad for me as a person. I’ve been able to work on multiple different teams and really interesting projects. Unfortunately, my workplace is homogenous and so are my surroundings. I feel different everywhere. I go to work and I stick out like a sore thumb. I have been mistaken for an administrative assistant more than once. I have been asked if I was physical security (despite security wearing very distinctive uniforms). I’ve gotten passed over for roles I know I could not only perform in, but that I could excel in. Most recently, one such role was hired out to a contractor who needed to learn the language the project was in (which happened to be my strongest language). I spent some time and energy trying to figure out why that happened, if it was to do with unconscious bias or if it was an honest mistake.

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The Loneliness Of The Female Coder | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

The Loneliness Of The Female Coder | Fast Company | Business + Innovation: "Most people have good hearts and really DON’T want to offend. But when men feel terrified of offending the women they work with, it only contributes to our sense of isolation and inequality.

If women can keep in mind that few people consciously WANT to exclude them, and if men can keep in mind that women feel excluded for most of their careers, it brings the emotional temperature down."

The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education: We are no more a slave to nature in reasoning than we are in morality. Few people would argue that we are genetically programmed to be moral. We may be hard-wired to do things that increase the survival value of our genes, like killing our rivals when no one is looking, but we do not do them, because they are unethical. If we can make such a choice in morals, why not also with reason?

If High Taxes In The '50s And '60s Produced Good Growth, Then Let's Have High Taxes Again

If High Taxes In The '50s And '60s Produced Good Growth, Then Let's Have High Taxes Again: That is, the post-war growth happened despite those taxes and unions, not because of them. And if you start your economic analysis in 1929, or 1930, you’ll see that the period 1930 to 1970 was not in fact remarkable. It’s just that if we start at 1945 we’re looking at the effects on GDP of 40 years of technological advance being exploited in 20 years. This is not something that’s going to happen again by increasing taxes nor favoring unions.

At which point we can go back to economic normality. Freer markets, a lower burden of government, increases the growth rate.

It’s a bit like those arguments over the pause in climate change. If you’re allowed to pick your start and end points in measuring a cyclical occurrence then you can prove pretty much anything you like. Counting economic growth from the moment we stopped blowing stuff up is going to make that period look good whatever the policies.

The Most Cursed Sports Cities in America - NYTimes.com

The Most Cursed Sports Cities in America - NYTimes.com: Many Atlanta fans take some solace in caring more about college sports than pro sports. But it’s not as if Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia have been winning many titles lately, at least not in the sports with the largest fan followings. If LeBron James can bring a title to Cleveland, Atlanta becomes a candidate for the nation’s worst-suffering sports town.

The weaker sex | The Economist

The weaker sex | The Economist: One group in particular is suffering (see article). Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.