The Suicide of Venezuela | Joel D. Hirst's Blog

The Suicide of Venezuela | Joel D. Hirst's Blog:

I know, because I have watched the suicide of a nation; and I know now how it happens. Venezuela is slowly, and very publically, dying; an act that has spanned more than fifteen years. To watch a country kill itself is not something that happens often. In ignorance, one presumes it would be fast and brutal and striking – like the Rwandan genocide or Vesuvius covering Pompeii. You expect to see bodies of mothers clutching protectively their young; carbonized by the force or preserved on the glossy side of pictures. But those aren’t the occasions that promote national suicide. After those events countries recover – people recover. They rebuild, they reconcile. They forgive.

No, national suicide is a much longer process – not product of any one moment.

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Give Us a King! - The New York Times

Give Us a King! - The New York Times: "But even if the risk of a true post-constitutional power grab is low, the arc of our history still bends toward a Trumpian conception of the presidency, which means the limits on its power will probably continue to erode — justified in the name of pragmatism, of Hamiltonian energy, of the need to “get things done.”

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The End of Empathy — Medium

The End of Empathy — Medium: "A question, sir: is it so far fetched that the father of two school-aged daughters would feel empathy for 26 slain children and their families? Couldn’t they just as easily have been yours or mine? Isn’t this what empathy is? Putting myself in someone else’s shoes with the knowledge and awareness that I, too, am human and, therefore, susceptible to this tragedy or any number of tragedies along the way?
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Trump-Sanders Phenomenon Signals an Oligarchy on the Brink of a Civilization-Threatening Collapse - Evonomics

Trump-Sanders Phenomenon Signals an Oligarchy on the Brink of a Civilization-Threatening Collapse - Evonomics: "“The collapse of urban cultures is an event much more frequent than most observers realize. Often, collapse is well underway before societal elites become aware of it, leading to scenes of leaders responding retroactively and ineffectively as their society collapses around them.” –  Sander Vander Leeuw, Archaeologist, 1997

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I’m With George Will | The Resurgent

I’m With George Will | The Resurgent: "If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power. Six times since 1945 a party has tried, and five times failed, to secure a third consecutive presidential term. The one success — the Republicans’ 1988 election of George H.W. Bush — produced a one-term president. If Clinton gives her party its first 12 consecutive White House years since 1945, Republicans can help Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, or someone else who has honorably recoiled from Trump, confine her to a single term.

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'I Am Becky With the Good Hair' - xoJane

'I Am Becky With the Good Hair' - xoJane: "There is a stigma attached to the other woman, the side piece. There is this notion that her position alone warrants shame but, honestly, I don’t see the difference. Becky may not have him all the time but what she gets of him is usually more honest, for he fears not being judged and there are no consequences, no higher standard, no vows to uphold.

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Donald Trump & #NeverTrump -- Election Loss Wouldn't Be Movement's Fault | National Review

Donald Trump & #NeverTrump -- Election Loss Wouldn't Be Movement's Fault | National Review: "But let’s go back to the claim that Trump will win in the general election by flipping blue states in a populist tsunami. If that analysis is even remotely plausible, why should #NeverTrumpers matter? Indeed, if you take Trumpian rhetoric from his talk-radio and other cheerleaders seriously, the anti-Trump forces are a negligible bunch of eggheads, pinheads, and finger-sniffing shut-ins completely disconnected from the authentic and volcanically powerful volksgemeinschaft. If Trump has any chance of flipping New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, we shouldn’t matter at all. And yet, according to the increasingly shrill and whining bleats from his supporters, we will be to blame if he doesn’t win. Well which is it? Is this a revolutionary populist movement that will sweep aside ink knights like me or not?

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Before the Tony-Winning Musical's National Tour, a Look at How Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home' Branded Queerness for Broadway - The Atlantic

Before the Tony-Winning Musical's National Tour, a Look at How Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home' Branded Queerness for Broadway - The Atlantic: "Last month, the novelist Garth Greenwell criticized the mainstream branding of queer lives in the broader context of American society. He acknowledged that gay people have finally attained some degree of widespread acceptance and legal rights—all of which is important, but nonetheless came at an enormous cost. “And that cost was a marketing campaign that took queer lives and translated them into values that could be appreciated by people who are disgusted by queer people,” he said. This meant presenting a queer life that looks like the most acceptable kind of straight life: “a monogamous relationship centered on the raising of a child.”

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Pentagon Details Chain of Errors in Strike on Afghan Hospital - The New York Times

Pentagon Details Chain of Errors in Strike on Afghan Hospital - The New York Times:

But an unrelated emergency call for air support forced the aircraft to take off 69 minutes ahead of schedule, the report said. There was no time to fully brief the crew members, and a database that would have allowed them to properly identify the hospital as a protected building had not been uploaded to the aircraft’s computers.

A satellite radio on board failed soon after the AC-130 climbed over the wide plain on which Bagram sits and headed across the Hindu Kush mountains toward Kunduz. The radio was the aircraft’s data link; without it, the crew could not upload the database or send and receive any other vital emails or information.

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If Not Trump, What? - The New York Times

If Not Trump, What? - The New York Times:

Donald Trump now looks set to be the Republican presidential nominee. So for those of us appalled by this prospect — what are we supposed to do?

Well, not what the leaders of the Republican Party are doing. They’re going down meekly and hoping for a quiet convention. They seem blithely unaware that this is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter.

The better course for all of us — Republican, Democrat and independent — is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that. This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country.

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Reality doesn't matter. Perception of reality is everything. Sadly.

President Obama Messaging: The Selling of Obama - POLITICO Magazine: "What happened to Obama’s message is not just an inside-baseball question. Perceptions of presidents matter: They can shape an administration’s ability to get things done, and even the way the nation thinks about itself. Obama may resent how “the narrative” judges long-term policies and even historical legacies according to the latest polls, but his struggles to make the case for his record have helped Republicans reclaim both houses of Congress, along with governors’ offices and legislatures nationwide. They also set the tone for this year’s campaign to replace him, with Republicans blasting him as a pure catastrophe while Democrats gingerly try to embrace him without denying the prevailing narrative of hard times.

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Maybe Twitter needs to get used to being small - Yahoo Finance

Maybe Twitter needs to get used to being small - Yahoo Finance: "But maybe it's destined to stay small, serving a vital, if limited, role for the public. Maybe Twitter just isn't meant to be an all-encompassing social utility. Maybe stock price is not the only lens through which a company can be valued. Twitter, perhaps even in spite of its difficult interface and site-specific lingo, has become a cultural force since its 2006 founding.

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Broken - Digg

Broken - Digg: "One group [of police officers] in particular ... from Brooklyn North believed that their Patrol Borough is considered a ‘dumping ground' within the agency. They stated that they are regarded by officers from other Boroughs, as well as by the Department's executive cadre, as a collection of misfits, incompetents, malingerers, and undesirables inhabiting a series of ‘shithouses.' This perception coexists with, and perhaps has created, a strong group identity marked by an undercurrent of perverse pride in their deviant status.
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The Case Against Reality - The Atlantic

The Case Against Reality - The Atlantic: "The formal theory of conscious agents I’ve been developing is computationally universal—in that sense, it’s a machine theory. And it’s because the theory is computationally universal that I can get all of cognitive science and neural networks back out of it. Nevertheless, for now I don’t think we are machines—in part because I distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality."



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Will History Only Remember the Founders as Slaveowners? | The American Conservative

Will History Only Remember the Founders as Slaveowners? | The American Conservative: "Two weeks into our journey, we arrived at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. In front of the ticket office was a sandwich board display advertising a smartphone app called “Slave Life at Monticello.” The goal of the tour and experience was an attempt to divert attention from the man who owned this property, one of America’s Founding Fathers, to slavery. The docent leading the tour of the house never missed an opportunity: as we moved from one floor to another, we were instructed to imagine how difficult it was for the “enslaved servants to carry meal trays up and down this narrow stairway.” At every hearth: “imagine enslaved servants having to carry wood up to these fireplaces…” It just went on and on.

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Friendship in the Age of Trump - The New York Times

Friendship in the Age of Trump - The New York Times:

Mr. Trump’s candidacy is putting more stress on more friendships than any other political development in my experience. Precisely because of the antipathy I have for Mr. Trump, I need to try doubly hard to resist the temptation to assume the worst of his supporters even as my worries about him mount. Absent compelling evidence to the contrary, I need to grant to them the same good faith I hope others would grant to me.

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If I Lose Friends Over Trump, So Be It

If I Lose Friends Over Trump, So Be It: "But Trump’s candidacy isn’t really about politics, which is why it divides people so deeply. Trump and his views are ghastly in a way that goes beyond politics. They challenge our human decency and patriotism. That’s why they test not only our political associations but our friendships.

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Sometimes, When “All the Facts are In,” It’s Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report – MiseryXchord

Sometimes, When “All the Facts are In,” It’s Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report – MiseryXchord: "I kept having to stop and slap my forehead over that one repeated phrase in the report: (this person or that) was under the impression she had made it clear that (some order was given), but nobody else present had that impression. Anybody who is “under the impression that they made it clear” that some order was given who who didn’t put it in writing and who hasn’t had that order paraphrased back to them? Should be slapped. Or at the very least demoted. Unless you actually said it, you didn’t “make it clear.”

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Uncanny Valley | Issue 25 | n+1

Uncanny Valley | Issue 25 | n+1: "It’s not just the salespeople, of course. It’s never just the salespeople. Our culture has been splintering for months. Members of our core team have been shepherded into conference rooms by top-level executives who proceed to question our loyalty. They’ve noticed the sea change. They’ve noticed we don’t seem as invested. We don’t stick around for in-office happy hour anymore; we don’t take new hires out for lunch on the company card. We’re not hitting our KPIs, we’re not serious about the OKRs. People keep using the word paranoid. Our primary investor has funded a direct competitor. This is what investors do, but it feels personal: Daddy still loves us, but he loves us less.
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The American Scholar: Antarctica: Cold Comfort - Emily Stone

The American Scholar: Antarctica: Cold Comfort - Emily Stone: "
One of the strangest sensations, which hits within days of arriving at McMurdo, is realizing how quickly you accept everything as normal: bright daylight at 1 a.m., rigid meal hours, no grocery stores, no cars, no privacy, no freedom. And then you take stock of your distorted reality.



 Like when the skuas arrive. South polar skuas are large sea birds that congregate around the station during the warmest months looking for a good meal. Both summers, the first time I spotted a skua I had the same reaction. First I thought, Huh, a bird. Then I immediately shouted, “Oh My God! Bird!”"



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William McRaven: A warrior’s career sacrificed for politics | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune

William McRaven: A warrior’s career sacrificed for politics | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune:

The case of Brian Losey is a miscarriage of justice. But the greater concern for America is the continued attack on leadership in the military.

During my past several years in uniform, I watched in disbelief how lawmakers treated the chairman, the service chiefs, the combatant commanders and other senior officers during Congressional testimony. These officers were men of incredible integrity, and yet some lawmakers showed no respect for their decades of service. I saw the DOD Inspector General’s Office frequently act as judge and jury, apparently accountable to no one, dismissing the recommendations of the services and ruining officer’s careers. I watched time and again how political correctness and pressure from Capitol Hill undermined command authority and good order and discipline.

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A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens - The New York Times

A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens - The New York Times: "Turkey’s ossified position, so at odds with the historical scholarship, is a legacy of how the Turkish republic was established after World War I. Under its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, society here underwent a process of Turkification: a feat of social engineering based on an erasure of the past and the denial of a multiethnic history. The Armenian massacres were wiped from the country’s history, only to emerge for ordinary Turks in the 1970s after an Armenian terrorist campaign against Turkish diplomats.

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Luck Is a Bigger Contributor to Success Than People Give It Credit For - The Atlantic

Luck Is a Bigger Contributor to Success Than People Give It Credit For - The Atlantic:

Gratitude, in particular, is a currency we can spend freely without fear of bankruptcy. Indeed, if you talk with others about their experiences with luck, as I have, you may discover that with only a little prompting, even people who have never given much thought to the subject are surprisingly willing to rethink their life stories, recalling lucky breaks they’ve enjoyed along the way. And because these conversations almost always leave participants feeling happier, it’s not hard to imagine them becoming contagious.



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An Amateur vs. ISIS: A Car Salesman Investigates and Ends Up in Prison - The New York Times

An Amateur vs. ISIS: A Car Salesman Investigates and Ends Up in Prison - The New York Times: "He was shuttled among federal facilities in Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Without access to his records, prison psychologists assumed his tales of talking to Islamic State members were fiction, symptoms of a mental illness that made him incompetent to stand trial. Prosecutors sought a hearing to decide whether he should be forcibly medicated.

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The Secret History of Agile Innovation

The Secret History of Agile Innovation:

You hear a lot about “agile innovation” these days. Teams using agile methods get things done faster than teams using traditional processes. They keep customers happier. They enjoy their work more. Agile has indisputably transformed software development, and many experts believe it is now poised to expand far beyond IT.

Ironically, that’s where it began — outside of IT.

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Judge sentences veteran to 24 hours in jail, then joins him behind bars - U.S. - Stripes

Judge sentences veteran to 24 hours in jail, then joins him behind bars - U.S. - Stripes:

"When Joe first came to turn himself in, he was trembling," Olivera told the Fayetteville Observer. "I decided that I'd spend the night serving with him."

"Where are we going, judge?" Serna asked, the Observer's Bill Kirby Jr., reported Wednesday.

"We're going to turn ourselves in," the judge said.

As Serna sat down on the cot in his cell, WRAL reported, he heard the door rattle open again and saw Olivera standing before him. Olivera sat down beside him. Someone came and locked the door.

"This was a one-man cell so we sat on the bunk and I said, 'You are here for the entire time with me?'" Serna told WTVD. "He said, 'Yeah that's what I am doing.'"

A Gulf War veteran himself, Olivera was concerned that leaving Serna in isolation for a night would trigger his PTSD.

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'I Don't Know Whether to Kiss You or Spank You': A Half Century of Fear of an Unspanked Woman

'I Don't Know Whether to Kiss You or Spank You': A Half Century of Fear of an Unspanked Woman : "They all express the same idea: the “best wives and noblest mothers are, after all, but grown up children.” This statement comes not from a movie but a Long Island judge making his declaration validating wife spanking in 1902. The victims’ childishness repeatedly comes up in these proceedings. In justifying spanking his wife in 1958, a Santa Monica psychiatrist said, “Well, what can you do with a child?”



Many of these men treating their wives like children were, quite simply, married to children. Teenage wives as young as 13 reported being spanked. In 1908, a New York husband spanked his 16-year-old wife for standing on the street talking to some “strange men.”

“They were not strange men,” she asserted in court. “They were schoolboy friends.”"



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How the outdated, nonsensical Passover rules taught me what Judaism is really about - Vox

How the outdated, nonsensical Passover rules taught me what Judaism is really about - Vox:

I love Pope Francis as much as the next nice Jewish girl. But I get frustrated when people who identify as cultural or secular Jews praise Pope Francis's every ambiguous, possibly-poorly-translated offhand comment to the heavens. I get frustrated when progressives with roots in Judaism spend more time litigating whether attention to poverty is a "Christian value" as important as preserving the 20th-century family than they do considering whether they really want progressive "Christian values," or something else.

I get frustrated when people label the parts of religion they find ill-fitting or antiquated as "religion," and the parts of religion they're comfortable with — the economic moralizing or commitment to family — as "values." I get frustrated when people think of Judaism only as what's in the mental attic, rather than what's in their hearts.

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The smug style in American liberalism - Vox

The smug style in American liberalism - Vox: "A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional."



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a few thoughts on liberal smugness | Fredrik deBoer

a few thoughts on liberal smugness | Fredrik deBoer: "Jamelle Bouie noted on Twitter that Democrats lost the white working class in large measure because of civil rights and racism. That’s true, and important to point out; it’s an essential historical addendum. But there’s a few essential points. First, “white working class” is a vast and shaggy designation that pulls in huge numbers of people who share very little in common, a very large number of whom are not motivated by racial animus. Which doesn’t undermine Bouie’s important and correct historical point, but should lead us to use caution here. Second, I sometimes see an argument play out concerning these issues: we shouldn’t worry about the white working class because Democrats lost them thanks to racism, so therefore they don’t a) deserve our help and b) deserve to be in our coalition. Which, I think, is just an attitude that makes no sense in democracy. In democracy, your job is always to convince those who you disagree with. That’s true even if you have profound moral problems with them. This is especially true here because, despite how often people in progressive media reflexively talk about a “majority minority” country, white people in America continue to enjoy huge numerical superiority and even greater political and economic influence. Simply to say “arrivederci” to this huge group isn’t politically sensible, even setting aside our moral responsibility to improve the lives of everyone in our country."



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The Police Data Initiative Year of Progress: — Medium

The Police Data Initiative Year of Progress: — Medium: "What if we could help enable a new culture of open data in law enforcement agencies where police collaborate with their tech counterparts in local government and the community to publicly release incident-level, structured, machine-readable data on policing?
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Vromrig comments on TIL: Facts are increasingly ineffective at convincing people to change their minds and in fact will only root people deeper in their original beliefs.

Vromrig comments on TIL: Facts are increasingly ineffective at convincing people to change their minds and in fact will only root people deeper in their original beliefs.:

My brother has basically gone head over heels for Reddit and tumblresque style abrasive, "anyone who disagrees with me is literally killing science" kind of stupidity. He can be right about things, sometimes he even is, but he swaggers in with this air of superiority to put other people down and acts constantly indignant when he tries to explain things to people by talking down to them and they shut the door on his face.

This comes up a lot over evolution. Believe it or not people in Louisiana aren't huge on evolution. Again, it just doesn't come up in their day to day lives very often and even if they believed it, who cares? Mix some people with some fervant biases against evolution and you get more people not believing in it than believing in it.

There's my brother's way of approaching the situation. Telling people they're wrong, they're idiots, they're brain washed yokels, acting like he's doing them a favor by gracing him with his conclusions, all the while snidely talking out the side of his mouth as though he's distressed he has to actually explain this to anyone.

Maybe this satisfies his ego, maybe it makes him feel good about himself, but what it doesn't satisfy is convincing 40 year old farmers and their sons about evolution. It doesn't actually benefit his end goal any longer, he's not going to convince anyone by talking down to them like that.

And maybe it's for another discussion, but I don't think he wants to change their minds, I think he wants to feel vindicated and validated by belittling them.

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Somehow the opposite choice would seem more oppressive, though

Keep Harriet Tubman – and all women – off the $20 bill - The Washington Post: "I do not believe Tubman, who died impoverished in 1913, would accept the “honor,” were it actually bestowed upon her, of having her face on America’s money. And until the economic injustice against women in America ends, no woman should."



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On the VA's struggles

http://www.veterans.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/VA%20Sec%20Testimony%2001.21.2016.pdf



This chart shows a model I developed over my many years in the private sector, where these
attributes, or the lack of them, could make or break an organization. My assessment revealed
VA had many issues blocking our path to becoming a High Performance Organization.



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New tool launches to improve the benefits claim appeals process at the VA — Medium

New tool launches to improve the benefits claim appeals process at the VA — Medium: "Today, we are celebrating the nationwide launch of Caseflow Certification, the first of many tools that will begin to improve the processing of benefit claim appeals at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
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IUAA Womens 4 x 400m Relay Final - What a Finish!! - YouTube

IUAA Womens 4 x 400m Relay Final - What a Finish!! - YouTube: ""




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Celebrating Life with the Jason Sundy Home | News | News | Oakhurst Baptist Church

Celebrating Life with the Jason Sundy Home | News | News | Oakhurst Baptist Church: "When Roger and Neomia Sundy first told their 25 year-old son, Jason, that he was going to move into the Hess Drive Home, a group home that houses six developmentally disabled men and two house parents, to say he was reluctant would be an understatement. 

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On Feeling Weird About Tesla — Medium

On Feeling Weird About Tesla — Medium: "But even in my relatively large small town, the name “Tesla” carries a great deal of baggage.
The problem is, the Model 3 comes in a bit under the price of the ostentatious luxury vehicle. And it does it with a bunch of perks that I actually do want in my car (if all goes as promised.) It‘ll be safe, fun to drive, and carbon efficient. And yet it would make me socially anxious to drive one because…it’s weird."



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Innovation is overvalued. Maintenance often matters more | Aeon Essays

Innovation is overvalued. Maintenance often matters more | Aeon Essays: "Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value, like love, fraternity, courage, beauty, dignity, or responsibility. Innovation-speak worships at the altar of change, but it rarely asks who benefits, to what end? A focus on maintenance provides opportunities to ask questions about what we really want out of technologies. What do we really care about? What kind of society do we want to live in? Will this help get us there? We must shift from means, including the technologies that underpin our everyday actions, to ends, including the many kinds of social beneficence and improvement that technology can offer. Our increasingly unequal and fearful world would be grateful.

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College Student Is Removed From Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane - The New York Times

College Student Is Removed From Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane - The New York Times: "“That is when I thought, ‘Oh, I hope she is not reporting me,’ because it was so weird,” Mr. Makhzoomi said.

That is exactly what happened. An Arabic-speaking Southwest Airlines employee of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent came to his seat and escorted him off the plane a few minutes after his call ended, he said. The man introduced himself in Arabic and then switched to English to ask, “Why were you speaking Arabic in the plane?”

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rowdiness comments on Oh, so, homoerotic things make you uncomfortable?

rowdiness comments on Oh, so, homoerotic things make you uncomfortable?: "Hipsterism is the relentless pursuit of authenticity. Hipsters want something which is real, tangible, unique, genuine.
That's why vinyl, small batch brewed local beers, local bands, pour over coffee, single speed bikes and beards. These things are real, tangible. Authentic."



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Twisted: The Battle to Be the World's Largest Ball of Twine - The Atlantic

Twisted: The Battle to Be the World's Largest Ball of Twine - The Atlantic: "But which one of these balls is the biggest? It turns out that the answer to that question is hotly contested. All four giant twine balls claim to be the world’s largest, no one has provided consistent, up-to-date documentation of all of them. Very few have had the interest to travel the requisite 3000 miles to see all four sites, and even fewer have come with a mission to make an archival record of these artifacts for future generations. Until now.

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Good news: automation already destroyed most of the jobs - Vox

Good news: automation already destroyed most of the jobs - Vox:

But automating routine jobs isn't something that might happen in the future. To a large extent, it's something that already happened. Today, just 8 percent of American workers work in the manufacturing sector — less than a third of the share 50 years ago. Another 6 percent work in industries like construction, mining, and agriculture that are involved in producing physical goods.

At the start of the past century, these jobs accounted for a bulk of the work Americans did. But after decades of automation (and some increases in global trade), they've been reduced to a small sliver of the US economy.

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5 ‘big ideas’ to guide us in the Long War against Islamic extremism - The Washington Post

5 ‘big ideas’ to guide us in the Long War against Islamic extremism - The Washington Post: "

●The decisive terrain was the human terrain — and that securing the people had to be our foremost task. Without progress on that, nothing else would be possible.

 ●We could secure the people only by living with them, locating our forces in their neighborhoods, rather than consolidating on big bases, as we had been doing the year before the surge.

 ●We could not kill or capture our way out of the sizable insurgency that plagued Iraq; rather, though killing and capturing were necessary, we needed to reconcile with as many of the insurgent rank and file as was possible.

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Why Are America’s Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia? | Collectors Weekly

Why Are America’s Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia? | Collectors Weekly: "In response to these shifts, major corporations embraced the notion that suburban pastoral settings were beneficial to their workers and their business. “I was surprised how much corporate executives absorbed this Olmstedian vision of the pastoral context being conducive to clear thinking, decision making, happy employees, and so forth,” Mozingo says. “It’s amazing to me—it was repeated over and over again in their public statements, writings, and internal memos. By the 1950s, we had this idea that everyone could work and think better in the country, and the pastoral ideal became one of the primary justifications for moving these offices to the suburbs.”

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AnathemaMaranatha comments on Sword of honour given to black Sandhurst cadet who left school at 15 unable to read

AnathemaMaranatha comments on Sword of honour given to black Sandhurst cadet who left school at 15 unable to read:

"You want to win that fight, with those drunk boys? Be a better soldier than they are. Fight the long fight. Fight to win. Here in the Army, you already won most of it. You just have to be the best, do your best, and don't be running off to fight some honkey shithead just because he called you a name. Win! All of you! Win this fight! Use your heads, not your hands."

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was gobstopped. I hadn’t thought about any of this stuff. Over the next decades, I gradually learned how hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers had fought for the Union, and came back home to the Klan and institutional segregation. How Black soldiers from WWI came back to the same shit. How Red Ball Express and Red Tails came back from the first modern War, WWII, to ante-bellum crap, not just in the South but all over the country.

I suppose I should’ve been concerned about the mistreatment of all minorities, but it was the soldiers that hit home with me. Are you kiddin’ me? Is that how you treat someone defending your right to be a racist dickhead? I was ready to march into every city in the US and give ‘em the Truman treatment - straighten up, or else.

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The Next Conservative Movement - WSJ

The Next Conservative Movement - WSJ:

In its less cartoonish forms, today’s nostalgia is understandable. The America that our exhausted, wistful politics so misses, the nation as it first emerged from the Great Depression and World War II and evolved from there, was (at least for its white citizens) exceptionally unified and cohesive. It had an extraordinary confidence in large institutions—in the ability of big government, big labor and big business to work together to meet national needs. Its cultural life was dominated by a broad traditionalist moral consensus that celebrated two-parent families with children born into wedlock and frowned on divorce and abortion. And in the wake of a world war in which most potential competitors had burned each other’s productive capacities to the ground, the U.S. utterly dominated the global economy, offering opportunity to workers of all stripes.

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Donald Trump's Conservative Media Support -- I'll Never Join In

Donald Trump's Conservative Media Support -- I'll Never Join In: "If a president Trump does the right thing, I will say he did the right thing — because that’s my job. But I will never look at that fleshy pile of vanity, crudity, and deceit and say, “There’s a good and honest man.” Yes, yes, we all believe in redemption, so maybe he could have some Oval Office conversion, find a God that doesn’t consider profit maximization to be the key measure of a man’s soul, and become a good and honest man. Maybe the sudden bowel-stewing realization that he’s wildly unqualified for the job of commander-in-chief will arouse in him a humility never displayed in his gaudy romp across our airwaves.

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Barack Obama Never Said Money Wasn’t Corrupting; In Fact, He Said the Opposite

Barack Obama Never Said Money Wasn’t Corrupting; In Fact, He Said the Opposite: "The problems of ordinary people, the voices of the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo rather than a palpable reality, abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought."



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The Fall of the House of Saud - The Atlantic

The Fall of the House of Saud - The Atlantic: "Abdullah first had them zero in on expropriations. The practice had become so widespread among the lesser princes that it was completely alienating Saudi Arabia's traditional merchant class and fledgling middle class. A prince might walk into a restaurant, see that it was doing well, and write out a check to buy the place, usually well below market price. There was nothing the owner could do. He knew that if he resisted, he'd end up in jail on trumped-up charges."



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The Market Fairy will not solve the problems of Uber and Lyft | Ian Welsh

The Market Fairy will not solve the problems of Uber and Lyft | Ian Welsh: "These business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives.  They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

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Radiooooo.com - The Musical Time Machine

Radiooooo.com - The Musical Time Machine:



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Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong. | Brookings Institution

Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong. | Brookings Institution: "Most criticisms of the intervention, even with the benefit of hindsight, fall short. It is certainly true that the intervention didn’t produce something resembling a stable democracy. This, however, was never the goal. The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre.

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I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones | Voices | The Independent

I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones | Voices | The Independent:

I have travelled half way across the world because I want to resolve this dispute the way you teach: by using the law and the courts, not guns and explosives.

Ask me any question you wish, but judge me fairly – and please stop terrorizing my wife and children. And take me off that Kill List.

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Internet mapping turned a remote farm into a digital hell | Fusion

Internet mapping turned a remote farm into a digital hell | Fusion: "One important lesson of my sleuthing is that IP addresses, which get used as digital evidence in criminal trials and to secure search warrants, are not always reliable. Like Social Security numbers, they were a numerical system built for one purpose that are now used for something completely different. Social Security numbers were designed to keep track of a person’s earnings over their lifetime, but are now the security token used to lock down their entire identity. IP addresses were meant to allow computers to talk to each other, but have been repurposed to reveal details about the person behind that computer. The words “security” and “address” in their titles promise more than they can deliver.

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The American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership - William Deresiewicz

The American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership - William Deresiewicz: "How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude? I started by noting that solitude and leadership would seem to be contradictory things. But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

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Why I refuse to send people to jail for failure to pay fines - The Washington Post

Why I refuse to send people to jail for failure to pay fines - The Washington Post: "I used to prosecute felonies as an assistant district attorney in Brazos County. During that time, I worked for a year in the intake division. This drove home a lesson that my boss, the district attorney, had been trying to instill in me: Every case file is an individual whose rights are as important and sacred as mine or those of my family. The decision to charge or dismiss demands empathy and vigilance. Misdemeanor criminal cases provide an opportunity for a much happier outcome than most felonies because there is a genuine chance for a defendant to learn from a mistake and never set foot in a courtroom again — and keeping someone out of jail is a good way to ensure that happens. In these cases, it should be possible for defendants to resolve their cases without losing their liberty.

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Are Most Body Cavity Searches Even Constitutional? - The Atlantic

Are Most Body Cavity Searches Even Constitutional? - The Atlantic: "Americans routinely turn away from systematic violations of civil rights when they are perpetrated in the guise of fighting the war on drugs."



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Frontiers | Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases | Educational Psychology

Frontiers | Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases | Educational Psychology: "The goal of this article is to promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science by curbing terminological misinformation and confusion. To this end, we present a provisional list of 50 commonly used terms in psychology, psychiatry, and allied fields that should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats."



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The talk-radio godfather of Trumpamania: What Michael Savage can tell us about America’s white working class - Salon.com

The talk-radio godfather of Trumpamania: What Michael Savage can tell us about America’s white working class - Salon.com: "I have been a longtime listener to Savage because I think that, as a journalist, you risk being blindsided if you ignore someone to whom millions of your fellow Americans are tuning in. I saw the rise of Trump coming several months ago precisely because I know how deep the support runs in so much of America for Savage’s nativist mantra, that the very survival of the nation is threatened by the erosion of our “borders, language, and culture.”

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To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army - The New York Times

To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army - The New York Times: "“It was a regrettable game, but I enjoyed it,” Mr. Lee said during the award ceremony. (Regret, enjoy — these words do not compute.) He added that the contest “clearly showed my weaknesses, but not the weakness of humanity.”

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On Fifth Try, Mission Accomplished for SpaceX Booster Rocket - The New York Times

On Fifth Try, Mission Accomplished for SpaceX Booster Rocket - The New York Times: "For SpaceX, the fifth time was the charm in the impressive feat of landing a rocket on a boat.

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Inside the Unorthodox Donald Trump Campaign -- NYMag

Inside the Unorthodox Donald Trump Campaign -- NYMag: "Furthermore, he’ll take few over many. Trump’s campaign employs a core team of about a dozen people; his campaign lists 94 people on the payroll nationwide, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing (Hillary Clinton has 765). Trump has no pollsters, media coaches, or speechwriters. He ­focus-groups nothing. He buys few ads, and when he does, he likes to write them himself. He also writes his own tweets, his main vehicle for communicating with his supporters. And it was his idea to adopt Ronald Reagan’s slogan “Make America Great Again!”

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Red Teams — Starting Up Security — Medium

Red Teams — Starting Up Security — Medium: "High immersion, staged intrusions will exercise incident response capability in a way that further improves all facets of a security program. It’s possible to stage incidents that live somewhere between reality and drill. These exercises occur on our terms as Red Team designers, but are responded to as a real incident by a security response team (defenders).
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Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management — The Year of the Looking Glass — Medium

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management — The Year of the Looking Glass — Medium: "Unfortunately at many places, you’re roadblocked in advancing your career unless you become a manager. This sadly incentivizes the wrong outcomes, in which people who don’t love dealing with people become bad managers, and both they and their team suffers. "



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4a4a comments on Ken Jennings from Jeopardy! here, wearing out my welcome. AMA!

4a4a comments on Ken Jennings from Jeopardy! here, wearing out my welcome. AMA!: "legacy of that today is that Mormon congregations and communities are still incredibly tightly knit. There's no professional clergy, so everybody pitches in. If somebody's out of work or in the hospital or whatever, people mobilize. Small-town America stuff, the kind you thought didn't exist anymore."



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The Baptist-on-Baptist fight within Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ debate | Political Insider blog

The Baptist-on-Baptist fight within Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ debate | Political Insider blog: "“I find it somewhat ironic that today some in the religious community feel it necessary to ask government to confer upon them certain rights and protections,” Deal said. “If indeed our religious liberty is conferred by God and not by man-made government, we should heed the ‘hands off’ admonition of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

When it comes to religion, even when legislatures try to do good, Deal said, “the inclusions and omissions” in the laws they draft can lead to trouble. “That is too great a risk to take,” he said.

If you were raised anything other than Southern Baptist, there’s a good chance you didn’t hear that dog whistle. Others did."



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Trump’s Mess Has Become His Message - WSJ

Trump’s Mess Has Become His Message - WSJ:

It’s been going on for four or five weeks, and you can take your pick as to the tipping point. Maybe it was when he threatened to “spill the beans” on another candidate’s wife, or when he retweeted the jeering pictures of her and his own wife. Maybe it was his inability to clearly, promptly denounce the KKK; maybe it was when he hinted at riots if he’s cheated out of the nomination. Maybe it was Corey Lewandowski’s alleged battery of reporter Michelle Fields. Maybe it was when Mr. Trump referred in debate to his genitals, a true national first.

It has all added up into a large blob of sheer dumb grossness. He is now seriously misjudging the room. The room is still America.

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I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump – STIR Journal

I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump – STIR Journal: "And then we got down one day to the point — that was the second or third day — to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

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