The reason every meme uses that one font - Vox

The reason every meme uses that one font - Vox: "The reason every meme uses that one font
"



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Mashup!

Wonderwall You Know (Alone Mix) (Oasis VS Two Door Cinema Club) Fissunix Mashup - YouTube

The extraordinary life of the first American to join China's Communist Party

The extraordinary life of the first American to join China's Communist Party: "Rittenberg believes that American officials' perception of communism as monolithic led to major miscalculations throughout the Cold War. The United States had a golden opportunity to exploit the factionalization of communist governments and movements  —  and failed to take it.



Instead, the Americans' refusal to negotiate sent the Chinese communists down the path of not just closer ties with Stalin's Russia, but toward Stalinist ideas and governance. "History could have been very, very different.""

Forward with Fukuyama | The Point Magazine

Forward with Fukuyama | The Point Magazine: "But Morgan Stanley is not a local chieftain, and the interest groups that dominate contemporary politics are hardly analogous to the kinship groups of non-industrial societies. If the Weberian state is losing its coherence, this may not represent a retreat to the particular, to the local, to some sort of vaguely defined biological sociability. It seems rather to represent a new kind of impersonality, still more impersonal than the territorially rooted governments that it is challenging"



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How Will You Measure Your Life? - HBR

How Will You Measure Your Life? - HBR: "The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool."



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How Will You Measure Your Life? - HBR

How Will You Measure Your Life? - HBR: "The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool."



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It’s Not Climate Change — It’s Everything Change — Matter — Medium

It’s Not Climate Change — It’s Everything Change — Matter — Medium: "Planet Earth — the Goldilocks planet we’ve taken for granted, neither too hot or too cold, neither too wet or too dry, with fertile soils that accumulated for millennia before we started to farm them –- that planet is altering. The shift towards the warmer end of the thermometer that was once predicted to happen much later, when the generations now alive had had lots of fun and made lots of money and gobbled up lots of resources and burned lots of fossil fuels and then died, are happening much sooner than anticipated back then. In fact, they’re happening now."



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We’re Making Life Too Hard for Millennials - The New York Times

We’re Making Life Too Hard for Millennials - The New York Times: "TO some, millennials — those urban-dwelling, ride-sharing indefatigable social networkers — are engaged, upbeat and open to change. To others, they are narcissistic, lazy and self-centered.

I’m in the first camp, but regardless of your opinion, be fretful over their economic well-being and fearful — oh so fearful — for their prospects. The most educated generation in history is on track to becoming less prosperous, at least financially, than its predecessors."

The Flying Machines of Flugtag - The Atlantic

The Flying Machines of Flugtag - The Atlantic: "Since 1992, Red Bull has been organizing Flugtag (“flying day”) events around the world, where participants build and pilot homemade flying machines off a 28-foot-high flight deck above a body of water. Entries are judged for distance, creativity, and showmanship. The aerodynamic qualities of many of the creatively built aircraft are questionable, and most do not so much fly as... plummet. In 2013, the team “The Chicken Whisperers” set a distance record of  258 feet (78.64 meters) in Long Beach, California. Gathered here are images of Flugtag events over the past several years.
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7 Muslim-American Actors on Hollywood's Terrorist Typecasting | GQ

7 Muslim-American Actors on Hollywood's Terrorist Typecasting | GQ: "Here's another irony in the lives of these men: While they profoundly wish they didn't have to play terrorists, much of our lunch is taken up with them swapping tips on clever ways to stand out at terrorist auditions.



"If I'm going in for the role of a nice father, I'll talk to everybody," Sayed tells the table. "But if you're going for a terrorist role, don't fucking smile at all those white people sitting there. Treat them like shit. The minute you say hello, you break character.""



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Farewell to America | Gary Younge | US news | The Guardian

Farewell to America | Gary Younge | US news | The Guardian: "To even try to have the kind of gilded black life to which these detractors alluded, we would have to do far more than just revel in our bank accounts and leverage our cultural capital. We would have to live in an area with few other black people, since black neighbourhoods are policed with insufficient respect for life or liberty; send our children to a school with few other black students, since majority-black schools are underfunded; tell them not to wear anything that would associate them with black culture, since doing so would make them more vulnerable to profiling; tell them not to mix with other black children, since they are likely to live in the very areas and go to the very schools from which we would be trying to escape; and not let the children go out after dark, since being young and black after sunset makes the police suspect that you have done or are about to do something.

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Corpuscle comments on ELI5: Entropy.

Corpuscle comments on ELI5: Entropy.: "In nature, systems always tend to move from low-entropy to high-entropy states. In the most abstract sense, this is just because of pure dumb luck: There are more combinations of coins that add up to "some of each" than either "all up" or "all down," so pure random chance dictates that we're far more likely to go from the all-up state to the some-of-each state than the other way around … and furthermore, that as we continue to shake the box, we're far more likely to stay in the some-of-each state, because the odds against getting all the coins to land heads-side-up are enormous.
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What Voters See in Donald Trump - WSJ

What Voters See in Donald Trump - WSJ: "His rise is not due to his supporters’ anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government, for the men and women in Congress, the White House, the agencies. It is precisely because people have lost their awe for the presidency that they imagine Mr. Trump as a viable president. American political establishment, take note: In the past 20 years you have turned America into a nation a third of whose people would make Donald Trump their president. Look on your wonders and despair.

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Kentucky man shoots down drone spying on 16-year-old daughter

Kentucky man shoots down drone spying on 16-year-old daughter: "Merideth claims that the drone was first spotted hovering over his neighbor's house—a claim his neighbor confirms—and he had no intentions of taking any actions against it until it entered onto his own property. Merideth's 16-year-old daughter was laying out by their pool at the time, and when the drone pilot decided to stop his vehicle and get an electronic eyeful, he decided enough was enough. 

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A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared - The New York Times

A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared - The New York Times: "Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees."



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‘They Just Know You Up to No Good’ - POLITICO Magazine - POLITICO Magazine

‘They Just Know You Up to No Good’ - POLITICO Magazine - POLITICO Magazine: "Southeast D.C. teenagers open up about cops, guns, prison and the perils of growing up in a neighborhood that’s a short distance from the Capitol—but a world away.
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First, his father slipped beneath the Chesapeake Bay’s waters. Then his uncle disappeared, too. - The Washington Post

First, his father slipped beneath the Chesapeake Bay’s waters. Then his uncle disappeared, too. - The Washington Post: "“Dad, we’ve got to swim,” Jason remembers shouting at him. “We can’t stay out here.”

The 37-year-old’s head bobbed in and out of the bay. He told his son to leave him.

“I love you,” his father said, then disappeared into the dark blue water."



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In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me. - The Washington Post

In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me. - The Washington Post:



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I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill.

I had conducted the same kind of raid on suspected bombmakers and high-value insurgents. But the Fairfax County officers in my apartment were aiming their weapons at a target whose rap sheet consisted only of parking tickets and an overdue library book.

35 Bill Cosby Accusers Tell Their Stories -- The Cut

35 Bill Cosby Accusers Tell Their Stories -- The Cut: "Perhaps the most shocking thing wasn’t that Buress had called Cosby a rapist; it was that the world had actually heard him. A decade earlier, 14 women had accused Cosby of rape. In 2005, a former basketball star named Andrea Constand, who met Cosby when she was working in the athletic department at Temple University, where he served on the board of trustees, alleged to authorities that he had drugged her to a state of semi-consciousness and then groped and digitally penetrated her. After her allegations were made public, a California lawyer named Tamara Green appeared on the Today show and said that, 30 years earlier, Cosby had drugged and assaulted her as well. Eventually, 12 Jane Does signed up to tell their own stories of being assaulted by Cosby in support of Constand’s case. Several of them eventually made their names public. But they were met, mostly, with skepticism, threats, and attacks on their character."



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The Pixar Theory of Labor - The Awl

The Pixar Theory of Labor - The Awl: "This excess, epitomized as the complete entanglement of an individual’s private life with their employment, is at the core of Pixar’s conceptualization of what it is to be a person: In every Pixar film, the protagonist’s arc is oriented toward the ultimate goal of being an efficient, productive worker—whether employment has been thematized as being a father, princess, robot janitor, toy, ant colonist, harvester of screams, adventurer in South America, or otherwise. For Pixar, to live is to work. "



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Daniel Kahneman: ‘What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence’ | Books | The Guardian

Daniel Kahneman: ‘What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence’ | Books | The Guardian:



He advises, for example, that meetings start with participants writing down their ideas about the issue at hand before anyone speaks. That way, the halo effect – whereby the concerns raised first and most assertively dominate the discussion – can be mitigated, and a range of views considered. Then there is the concept of adversarial collaboration, an attempt to do away with pointless academic feuding. Though he doesn’t like to think in terms of leaving a legacy, it’s one thing he says he hopes to be remembered for. In the early 2000s Kahneman sought out a leading opponent of his view that so-called expert judgments were frequently flawed. Gary Klein’s research focused on the ability of professionals such as firefighters to make intuitive but highly skilled judgments in difficult circumstances. “We spent five or six years trying to figure out the boundary, where he’s right, where I am right. And that was a very satisfying experience. We wrote a paper entitled ‘A Failure to Disagree’”.

Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free | Rolling Stone

Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free | Rolling Stone: "Schlappig owes his small slice of fame to his blog "One Mile at a Time," a diary of a young man living the life of the world's most implausible airline ad. Posting as often as six times a day, he metes out meticulous counsel on the art of travel hacking — known in this world as the Hobby. It's not simply how-to tips that draw his fans, it's the vicarious thrill of Schlappig's nonstop-luxury life — one recent flight with a personal shower and butler service, or the time Schlappig was chauffeured across a tarmac in a Porsche. But his fans aren't just travel readers — they're gamers, and Schlappig is teaching them how to win.

"



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The art of the interchange

The art of the interchange - Photos - 17 of 17 - POLITICO Magazine - POLITICO Magazine: "In planes and helicopters, Peter Andrew chases the seductive tangle where megahighways meet.
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Google Wants a Piece of Air-Traffic Control for Drones - Bloomberg Business

Google Wants a Piece of Air-Traffic Control for Drones - Bloomberg Business: "The search-engine pioneer is joining some of the biggest companies in technology, communications and aviation -- including Amazon.com Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Harris Corp. -- in trying to create an air-traffic control system to prevent mid-air collisions.
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SPIEGEL Interview with African Economics Expert: "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" - SPIEGEL ONLINE

SPIEGEL Interview with African Economics Expert: "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" - SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor."

Morale over a project lifecycle — Medium

Morale over a project lifecycle — Medium: "This is a post about the different mental states I have experienced when building a product out of nothing. This comes from a couple years of experience building projects, both with teams and alone, that I was extremely excited about but were very short lived for one reason or another. For some the company ran out of money, others traction just wasn’t there. There are probably some lessons in here but really I just want to document it and say “THIS IS A THING! THIS IS REALLY HOW IT GOES!” for my own sanity."

How a defector from North Korea realized almost everything she learned about her country was a lie | National Post

How a defector from North Korea realized almost everything she learned about her country was a lie | National Post: "Lee defected at 17, embarking on a perilous journey. Now 34, she has finally written her account of life and escape from the Hermit Kingdom in a new book, The Girl With Seven Names.

"



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The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle - The New Yorker

The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle - The New Yorker: "Together, the sloshing, sliding, and shaking will trigger fires, flooding, pipe failures, dam breaches, and hazardous-material spills. Any one of these second-order disasters could swamp the original earthquake in terms of cost, damage, or casualties—and one of them definitely will. Four to six minutes after the dogs start barking, the shaking will subside. For another few minutes, the region, upended, will continue to fall apart on its own. Then the wave will arrive, and the real destruction will begin."

The homeless man who graduated Harvard Law with John Roberts - The Washington Post

The homeless man who graduated Harvard Law with John Roberts - The Washington Post: "He wanted more than what his parents had. So after graduating from the District’s Coolidge High School, he juggled a day job while working his way through an associate’s degree at Strayer College. Achievement fed achievement. He passed the CPA exam and took a job as the audit manager at an accounting firm, Lucas and Tucker, where he said he pulled in an annual salary of more than $50,000 — big money back then. But Postell wasn’t done. He went to the University of Maryland for a degree in economics. Then, even before he’d graduated, he clacked off an application to Harvard Law — and was accepted.

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The Secret Startup That Saved the Worst Website in America - The Atlantic

The Secret Startup That Saved the Worst Website in America - The Atlantic: "And the new login system, which MPL launched in February 2015, is remarkable. It is faster and it is cheaper than the old one: The old system responded to requests somewhere between two and 10 long seconds; the new one takes 30 milliseconds, on average. The old login system cost $250 million to build and would have required another $70 million annually to stay online. The new system cost about $4 million to build, and its annual maintenance cost is a little less than $1 million.

"

Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found

Researchers confirm: The Largest Pyramid in Mexico has been found: "Researchers discover immense pyramid in Mexico, larger than Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun. Researchers in Mexico have discovered a Pyramid that, according to initial measurements, is larger than the Great Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan. Initial excavations were done in 2010.

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I, Racist — Medium

I, Racist — Medium: "But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.



 Ask any Black person and they’ll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system."

Thoughts on my First 6 Months as an EM Attending: | EMBlog Mayo Clinic

Thoughts on my First 6 Months as an EM Attending: | EMBlog Mayo Clinic: "Supervising is even harder--it really does seem that interns exist to keep you sharp so you can prevent them from killing patients (sorry interns, but mostly true ... less so but still probably true for the second years ...)
"



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How Climate Scientists Feel About Climate Change Deniers - Jason Box Tweet Controversy

How Climate Scientists Feel About Climate Change Deniers - Jason Box Tweet Controversy: "For more than thirty years, climate scientists have been living a surreal existence. A vast and ever-growing body of research shows that warming is tracking the rise of greenhouse gases exactly as their models predicted. The physical evidence becomes more dramatic every year: forests retreating, animals moving north, glaciers melting, wildfire seasons getting longer, higher rates of droughts, floods, and storms—five times as many in the 2000s as in the 1970s. In the blunt words of the 2014 National Climate Assessment, conducted by three hundred of America's most distinguished experts at the request of the U. S. government, human-induced climate change is real—U. S. temperatures have gone up between 1.3 and 1.9 degrees, mostly since 1970—and the change is already affecting "agriculture, water, human health, energy, transportation, forests, and ecosystems." But that's not the worst of it. Arctic air temperatures are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the world—a study by the U. S. Navy says that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice by next year, eighty-four years ahead of the models—and evidence little more than a year old suggests the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is doomed, which will add between twenty and twenty-five feet to ocean levels. "



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Abby Wambach or Chuck Blazer: The Face of American Soccer - The New Yorker

Abby Wambach or Chuck Blazer: The Face of American Soccer - The New Yorker: Who is the real face of American soccer: Abby Wambach, the forward who has scored more goals in international matches (a hundred and eighty-two) than any player, of any gender, in the world, or Chuck Blazer, a now-disgraced member of FIFA’s executive committee and one of the top soccer officials for the Americas, a Queens native who may be best remembered for an apartment in Trump Tower, paid for with soccer money, which he kept for his cats"



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Here Be Monsters | GQ

Here Be Monsters | GQ: "There were, as it turned out, three people on the boat. Three boys. Two were 15 years old and the third was 14. They were naked and emaciated. Their skin was covered with blisters. Their tongues were swollen. They had no food, no water, no clothing, no fishing gear, no life vests, and no first-aid kit. They were close to death. They had been missing for fifty-one days.

"



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POPPING THE BIDEN BALLOON – LOCAL LABOR hearts Sanders -- S.C. SHOOTER’S FRIENDS may be prosecuted: cellphone, computer records – SUNDAY SO FAR: Sanders, Santorum, Christie, Cruz, Perry, Huck, Cotton - POLITICO Playbook - POLITICO

 "At the same time there’s been a historic income gap in America, there’s also been increasing segregation within American society along class lines. ... We are much less likely now to live near people who have different incomes or different educational outcomes than we used to be. So we’re increasingly living among rich enclaves or poor enclaves.”"



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One Night at Kachka | Eater

One Night at Kachka | Eater: "The real life of a restaurant extends far beyond a line cook’s shenanigans or the number of covers turned each night. It’s the happily tipsy regulars, the vivacious playlist, the backstory of the iconic dish. We're looking at the big picture — and the small ones: minute by minute, dollar by dollar, vodka shot by vodka shot. Welcome to One Night at Kachka.
"



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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.

"

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.”

"

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.”

"

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.



'via Blog this'

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.

"



'via Blog this'

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.

Chinese man 'with 17 girlfriends' arrested for fraud - BBC News

Chinese man 'with 17 girlfriends' arrested for fraud - BBC News: The man from Hunan province made headlines last month when all 17 women discovered each other when they rushed to his hospital bedside.

The allegation of fraud relates to sums of money which he regularly took from the deceived women, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The women set up an online chat group called "revenge alliance", SCMP said.

It was on this chat group that they discovered he would ask some of his girlfriends for money every month, the paper said.

Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide - The Atlantic

Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide - The Atlantic:

Arnold says she handed the bottle back. She told the doctor the
hospice was going to bring a machine that would administer Falk’s pain
medication automatically.





“And he looked at me,” she says, “and he held my gaze for a second. And he put it back in my hand and he said, ‘You might need it.’”





She slipped the vial into her purse.

The Perfectly Preserved World War I Trench | Atlas Obscura

The Perfectly Preserved World War I Trench | Atlas Obscura: The fields of Northern France and Belgium still bear many of the scars of last century’s Great War, but they are a faint reminder of battle carnage on the Western Front. After the Armistice, farmers returned to find their fields and villages totally destroyed by four years of trench warfare. Craters mark spots where artillery shells exploded but much of the area is now covered over with grass, hedgerows and forests.



 Except for one place.

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.

I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.: Other than those fibs, the study was 100 percent authentic. My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.

FIFA Rocked as U.S. Charges 14 in Corruption Investigation - WSJ

FIFA Rocked as U.S. Charges 14 in Corruption Investigation - WSJ: The U.S. and Swiss probes detail by far the most far-reaching accusations against the group, formally known as the International Federation of Association Football. The 47-count indictment released by the Justice Department accuses two generations of soccer officials of working with sports marketing executives to shut out competitors and keep lucrative contracts for themselves. Prosecutors allege U.S. and South American sports marketing executives paid more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to FIFA officials to obtain media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments.

Woman sparks 51,000 acre wildfire to help bored firefighters

Woman sparks 51,000 acre wildfire to help bored firefighters: Johnson told investigators she set the fire because her firefighter friends were bored and needed two day's work and did not expect the fire to grow so quickly and affect a large land area.

▶ John Marek - Back of My Head (Guitar Drums @ the Same Time) - YouTube

▶ John Marek - Back of My Head (Guitar Drums @ the Same Time) - YouTube

This Is What It's Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn't Exist - BuzzFeed News

This Is What It's Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn't Exist - BuzzFeed News: Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud – a multi-year hoax that depended on stealing someone else’s life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.

'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams speaks: The ultimate Arya interview | EW.com

'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams speaks: The ultimate Arya interview | EW.com: If Arya had gone through what Sansa has, she’d be dead. If Sansa had gone through what Arya has, she’d be dead. They’re both just good at handling what they’ve been put under.

Can the Islamic State Survive? - NYTimes.com

Can the Islamic State Survive? - NYTimes.com: But the Soviet example is still a useful reminder that the “inevitable” fall of fanatical upstarts is not always actually inevitable. And it offers a few lessons in how, against all odds, the Islamic State might actually survive.

First, because great powers get war-weary and distracted. As different as our situation is from the aftermath of World War I, it’s clear that the United States would be more involved militarily against ISIS if we didn’t have the recent disillusioning experience of a bloody occupation in Iraq. And it’s easy to imagine events intruding — another economic crisis, a hotter war in Ukraine, brinkmanship with China — that could make Ramadi look as remote to our interests as Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok seemed to the average Westerner in 1919.

IRS Seized $107,000 From Him. He’s Fighting to Get It Back.

IRS Seized $107,000 From Him. He’s Fighting to Get It Back.:

Then, the agents told the small business owner something that shook
him to his core: The Internal Revenue Service had seized all of the
money in L&M’s bank account: $107,702.66.


“‘Are you telling me you took my money?’” McLellan recalled asking
the agents. “I didn’t understand what was going on. They dropped a bomb
on me. I was lost for five to 10 minutes. I can’t believe that y’all
guys can walk in here and tell me y’all took every bit of my money out
of the bank.”


After law enforcement cleared McLellan’s store, he drove to Lumbee
Guaranty Bank. The agents had been there hours earlier and emptied his
account, McLellan recalled, walking out of the building with a cashier’s
check.


McLellan walked out of the bank with nothing.

'Late Shift' Author Bill Carter Pens David Letterman Tribute: Laughs, Legacy and Leno - Hollywood Reporter

'Late Shift' Author Bill Carter Pens David Letterman Tribute: Laughs, Legacy and Leno - Hollywood Reporter: The bulk of Dave's life was defined by a daily routine of scripted laughs and formalized conversations. That is about to change. Associates wonder what it will mean for someone who, at numerous points in his life, conceded he was happy only during the one hour a day when he was taping his show. The birth of son Harry, now 11, clearly added much joy and seemed to mellow Letterman in ways that surprised people.

The real story behind ‘Flashlight’ (the new ‘Cups’?) from Pitch Perfect 2 | EW.com

The real story behind ‘Flashlight’ (the new ‘Cups’?) from Pitch Perfect 2 | EW.com: Thus, “Flashlight” was born from a very specific songwriting brief that Moore and company put out to potential writer-musicians. “We knew it needed to have an emotional component about friendship; we wanted it to sound great in a big, gospel-type arrangement; and since we needed the audience to invest quickly, it had to create a hook that very instantly got inside your ear,” Moore explains.



“Sia was the one who nailed it.”

Sia’s song “Titanium” got such good play in the first Pitch that she developed a friendship with Moore in the ensuing years. “Chandelier” hadn’t happened yet, but the singer was in the studio working on her 2014 album when Moore contacted her personally to gauge her interest in the songwriting challenge. With assistance from Sam Smith (who was still under-the-radar at this point) and Christian Guzman, she submitted “Flashlight”—and the filmmakers loved it.

Poor Little Rich Women - NYTimes.com

Poor Little Rich Women - NYTimes.com:

But as my inner anthropologist quickly realized,
there was the undeniable fact of their cloistering from men. There were
alcohol-fueled girls’ nights out, and women-only luncheons and trunk
shows and “shopping for a cause” events. There were mommy coffees, and
women-only dinners in lavish homes. There were even some girlfriend-only
flyaway parties on private planes, where everyone packed and wore
outfits the same color.

“It’s easier and more fun,” the women insisted when I asked about the sex segregation that defined their lives. 

“We
prefer it,” the men told me at a dinner party where husbands and wives
sat at entirely different tables in entirely different rooms.

Sex
segregation, I was told, was a “choice.” But like “choosing” not to
work, or a Dogon woman in Mali’s “choosing” to go into a menstrual hut,
it struck me as a state of affairs possibly giving clue to some deeper,
meaningful reality while masquerading, like a reveler at the Save Venice
ball the women attended every spring, as a simple preference.

And then there were the wife bonuses.

It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science - NYTimes.com

It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science - NYTimes.com: The myth of the finches obscures the qualities that were really responsible for Darwin’s success: the grit to formulate his theory and gather evidence for it; the creativity to seek signs of evolution in existing animals, rather than, as others did, in the fossil record; and the open-mindedness to drop his belief in creationism when the evidence against it piled up.

The mythical stories we tell about our heroes are always more romantic and often more palatable than the truth. But in science, at least, they are destructive, in that they promote false conceptions of the evolution of scientific thought.

The Last Day of Her Life - NYTimes.com

The Last Day of Her Life - NYTimes.com: Mapstone showed Sandy a line drawing and asked her to copy it, and then to draw it from memory 10 minutes later. He read her a list of words and had her recall as many as she could. He gave her two numbers and two letters and asked her to rearrange them in a particular order: low letter, high letter, low number, high number. Thank goodness that last one wasn’t timed, she thought to herself, as she focused all her mental energy on the task. She felt as gleeful as a kid who had earned a gold star when Mapstone said, “Yes, that’s right.”



After three hours, Mapstone gave a preliminary diagnosis: amnestic mild cognitive impairment. At first Sandy was relieved — he had said mild, hadn’t he? — but then she caught the look on his face. This is not a good thing, Mapstone told her gently; most cases of amnestic M.C.I. progress to full-�blown Alzheimer’s disease within 10 years.

kleinbl00 comments on The Epic Losing Streak of M. Night Shyamalan, Explained

kleinbl00 comments on The Epic Losing Streak of M. Night Shyamalan, Explained: So now Shyamalan is a magical X-Factor that nobody understands - a magic black box that turns mystery into money. Hell - he managed to turn Bruce "Mercury Rising" Willis back into a movie star. Whatever that kid's next project is, give him money.

And M Night Shyamalan never had to write seven drafts of anything ever again.

The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall | WIRED

The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2: The Fall | WIRED: But it didn’t take long for Ross’ programmed utopia to resort to programmatic violence. It’s an age-old story, the bloom and wilt of revolution. After tearing down the establishment’s walls, the new regime soon realizes the rubble would make a fine set of gallows. Just as Tarbell thought, all systems are the same. At the beginning of Silk Road, what Ross created was just a system. Then, at a certain point, it became his system—at which moment the system was doomed.

The Wedding Sting - The Atlantic

The Wedding Sting - The Atlantic: After months of undercover work, Williams and Moon had information on more than 40 suspects, but the department realized it didn’t have the funds or the manpower to round them all up. So it had to come up with clever ideas. “Cops used to offer parolees free tickets to the Detroit Lions, then arrest them,” recalls Peggy Lawrence, a Flint historian. On one occasion, Moon quietly arrested and locked up stolen property dealer, announced his death in the newspaper, and arrested gang members who showed up at his fake funeral. “Sometimes you gotta do things that are simply funny,” Moon later told a television reporter. “People gotta go to jail, but it don’t always have to be sad.” In 1990, the department planned a particularly elaborate operation: Officers would throw a fake wedding, invite all the suspects, and arrest them.

Scenes From a Life in Negroland by Margo Jefferson - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Scenes From a Life in Negroland by Margo Jefferson - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics: We knew what was expected of us. Negro privilege had to be circumspect: impeccable but not arrogant; confident yet obliging; dignified, not intrusive.

I was an undercover Uber driver :: Cover :: Philadelphia City Paper

I was an undercover Uber driver :: Cover :: Philadelphia City Paper:

Until the week this article published, the only numbers Uber would
discuss were gross fares — that's the total amount drivers bring in, not
the lower amount they end up with after expenses and Uber takes its
percentage. On top of that, Uber employs different rates in different
areas. Taking an UberX in the Hamptons is vastly more expensive than in
the lowest-rate areas like Nashville, Providence and L.A. Philly started
out on the higher end of the rates spectrum in October. But as the PPA
stings died off and more drivers felt safe picking up passengers within
the city limits, fares were cut in January to somewhere in the middle of
the pack.




Uber spokeswoman Kaitlin Durkosh declined to discuss how the Philly
rate cuts affected driver take-home pay — well, she didn't decline,
exactly, she just answered a different question: "What we've seen from
lower UberX prices in Philly, is that there is greater demand for rides.
In the four weeks since the price cut, weekly request [sic] are up 47
percent."




I talked to lots of drivers. But few kept a meticulous enough log of
hours worked, miles driven and expenses paid that I felt comfortable
using their data alone. Many drivers worried about getting in trouble,
too — Uber can "deactivate" a driver for any reason. I needed someone on
the record, someone whose data I knew I could trust.




So, in January, I applied to be an UberX driver myself.

Labour would do better if it learned to like the English | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Guardian

Labour would do better if it learned to like the English | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Guardian: The universities, left press, and the arts characterise the English middle-class as Mail-reading misers, who are sexist, racist and homophobic to boot. Meanwhile, they characterise the white working class as lardy Sun-reading slobs, who are, since you asked, also sexist, racist and homophobic. The national history is reduced to one long imperial crime, and the notion that the English are not such a bad bunch with many strong radical traditions worth preserving is rejected as risibly complacent. So tainted and untrustworthy are they that they must be told what they can say and how they should behave.



What truth there is in the caricature is lost amid the accompanying hypocrisy. The intellectual left deplores racism but uses “white” as an insult. It lambasts the sexism of the right, but stays silent as Labour candidates run meetings where Muslim women’s inferiority is confirmed by stewards who usher them into segregated seating .

What gambling can drive us to

The rise and fall of the Bombshell Bandit - BBC News: Bank robbers are becoming an extinct species. The rise of electronic payments is creating a cashless society, and since 2003, bank robberies have fallen 47%. The crime is also an overwhelmingly male activity. According to the latest FBI figures, just 8% of America's 4,347 bank robberies last year were committed by a woman. "Traditionally women have been involved in bank robberies only as getaway drivers, or accomplices to male robbers," says Dr Richard Schmitt, a US criminal psychologist who has evaluated more than 50 bank robbers. Schmitt says that a robber who is an educated professional female, and a Sikh, is, "a highly unusual case… in the history of the United States you will not find another bank robber with this profile."

Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie — Medium

Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie — Medium: Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn’t just bad. It was, to me, proof that Marvel movies, even at their best, can only be bad. And that they are going to get worse. The human mission has been lost: these are faceless Stormtrooper movies, unleashed in waves upon the presumed-to-be-faceless Stormtrooper audience. Stories are an affirmation of our human value; they teach us what life means, make and keep us human. Marvel, by removing the human from its storytelling, may be bringing about the end of story altogether.

UK elections: 20-year-old Scottish student becomes youngest member of British Parliament - IBNLive

UK elections: 20-year-old Scottish student becomes youngest member of British Parliament - IBNLive: Black is the youngest lawmaker elected to the House of Commons since 1667, when 13-year-old Christopher Monck took his seat, the BBC reported.

Butchery is in the blood even of the meat-free – Amanda Giracca – Aeon

Butchery is in the blood even of the meat-free – Amanda Giracca – Aeon: If the first step was removing animal slaughter from the backyards and barns of civilians, out of the public eye, the second was the rise of factory-style meat processing. Fitzgerald draws on Upton Sinclair’s famous novel The Jungle (1906), which portrays lives of immigrant meat packers in Chicago’s infamous Stock Yard. With the industrial revolution came assembly-line style employment. Animal slaughtering is said to be the first ‘mass-production industry’ in the US – Henry Ford partially adopted the mechanisms in his factories from meatpacking factories. With that came expendable employees and a culture of meat-factory ghettos on the city’s edges where immigrants lived in destitution, as Sinclair details. It was a public health and human rights disaster.

British Election: What Republicans Can Learn From David Cameron - The Atlantic

British Election: What Republicans Can Learn From David Cameron - The Atlantic

A article defending Russia?s

The New York Times does its government’s bidding: Here’s what you’re not being told about U.S. troops in Ukraine - Salon.com: At this point, I do not see how anyone can stand against the argument—mine for some time—that Putin has shown exemplary restraint in this crisis. In a reversal of roles and hemispheres, Washington would have a lot more than air defense systems and troops of whatever number on the border in question.

A history of lock-picking, from 99 Percent Invisible and Roman Mars.

A history of lock-picking, from 99 Percent Invisible and Roman Mars.:

In 1851, London was hosting the Great Exhibition—the first
international exhibition of manufactured products. One of the attendees
was A.C. Hobbs, an American locksmith. Back in the States, Hobbs had
made a name for himself by showing bank managers that their locks could
be easily picked and convincing them to buy one of his. Hobbs was
selling lots of locks this way. On the first day of the exhibition,
Hobbs publicly announced that he would pick the Chubb detector lock—the
one that stops working if you pick it incorrectly.

A witness wrote that it took Hobbs about 25 minutes. And the
way Hobbs did it was to use the lock against itself. He would pick it
until he tripped the detector mechanism, causing the lock to seize up.
That would give Hobbs information about how it worked, and then he would
pick the lock in the opposite direction to reset the detector. He’d go
back and forth firing and resetting the detector until the lock told him
everything he needed to know about how to get it open.

‘Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us’ - NYTimes.com

‘Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us’ - NYTimes.com: If you ask Mckesson and Elzie why there is no central figure in today’s movement, they will again insist on the advantages of leaderlessness. If you bring up legislative reform, they will point out that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been all but rolled back and that their aims go well beyond small changes to the criminal-justice system. If you bring up nonviolence as the only civilized way to effect change, they will recite King’s words: “A riot is the language of the unheard,” or they will say they don’t condone rioting, but they understand it. Their resistance to confining the civil rights movement to a museum made Mckesson and Elzie an awkward fit for Selma, which was filled with people doing just that.

(1) James Gunn - Imagine being a guy, like Joss Whedon, who has...

(1) James Gunn - Imagine being a guy, like Joss Whedon, who has...: My plea to all of you - and this is nothing new - is that we all try to be a little kinder, on the Internet and elsewhere. And, honestly, that includes being kind to the people who are tweeting this nonsense. I don't believe you can tweet about wanting to find a movie director and "curbstomp" him and be a happy person. That person's statement might make you a little angry - that makes me angry too. But thank God the circumstances of my life and your life didn't lead us to being the person that has the need to anonymously tweet that to someone on the Internet. And, as much as we may want to respond with vitriol to these tweets, I think that just creates more insanity.

Climate change alarmist: Optimistic, realistic, not na�ve assessment of global warming.

Climate change alarmist: Optimistic, realistic, not na�ve assessment of global warming.

As a scientist and journalist, I’m not supposed to have
emotions. I’m supposed to calmly report researchers’ findings as if my
family and I weren’t also being affected. But looking at the data in as
much detail as I have, it’s impossible not to be alarmed. On an average
day, I’m also disgusted, terrified, and angry.

So why aren’t more people outraged?

Few things are more important to human life than the
environment, but hundreds of generations of experience have baked in a
reasonable assurance that the future will be approximately like the
past.

For the first time in human history, it won’t.

everything that you need to know about pop culture and adulthood | Fredrik deBoer

everything that you need to know about pop culture and adulthood | Fredrik deBoer: those who like any kind of art or media that has not been blessed to receive the bullshit, self-serving mantel of “pop culture” are subject to a never-ending stream of disdain, dismissal, and abuse. To believe that different types of cultural products should exist, and that some of these should create artistic pleasures based on work, ambiguity, or difficulty, is to be immediately and permanently labeled a snob, an empty signifier that exists simply to provide people with a convenient label to apply to those whose artistic tastes are different than their own. If you like any kind of artwork that does not leave its pleasures totally and utterly accessible at all times and to all people with no expectation that consuming art should involve effort, you will be lectured to by the aggrieved.

The Death of Adulthood in American Culture - NYTimes.com

The Death of Adulthood in American Culture - NYTimes.com: We Americans have never been all that comfortable with patriarchy in the strict sense of the word. The men who established our political independence — guys who, for the most part, would be considered late adolescents by today’s standards (including Benjamin Franklin (fig. 3), in some ways the most boyish of the bunch) — did so partly in revolt against the authority of King George III, a corrupt, unreasonable and abusive father figure. It was not until more than a century later that those rebellious sons became paternal symbols in their own right. They weren’t widely referred to as Founding Fathers until Warren Harding, then a senator, used the phrase around the time of World War I.

Pope Francisco writes to La Repubblica: "An open dialogue with non-believers" - Repubblica.it

Pope Francisco writes to La Repubblica: "An open dialogue with non-believers" - Repubblica.it: The first circumstance - that refers to the initial pages of the Encyclical - derives from the fact that, down in the centuries of modern life, we have seen a paradox: Christian faith, whose novelty and importance in the life of mankind since the beginning has been expressed through the symbol of light, has often been branded as the darkness of superstition which is opposed to the light of reason. Therefore a lack of communication has arisen between the Church and the culture inspired by Christianity on one hand and the modern culture of Enlightenment on the other. The time has come and the Second Vatican has inaugurated the season, for an open dialogue without preconceptions that opens the door to a serious and fruitful meeting.

The Trader In the Wild | Bloomberg Business

The Trader In the Wild | Bloomberg Business: They said goodbye. Matrosova switched on her headlamp and walked into the woods. Farhoodi had been planning to go skiing, but he found himself lingering in the parking lot, unable to drive away. Many times he’d watched his wife head out on some adventure. She was fearless; he loved her for that—from the beginning, he’d loved her for all the ways she wasn’t like him. And she had always come back.

'Batman' brings in suspect to Bradford police - BBC News

'Batman' brings in suspect to Bradford police - BBC News:

A man dressed as the caped crusader
Batman has handed over a wanted man at a Bradford police station before
disappearing into the night.

Police said the costumed
crime-fighter marched the 27-year-old man into Trafalgar House Police
Station, in the early hours of 25 February.

The man was charged with handling stolen goods and fraud offences.

Police said: "The person who brought the man in was dressed in a full Batman outfit. His identity remains unknown."

Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors | Peter Pomerantsev | News | The Guardian

Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors | Peter Pomerantsev | News | The Guardian:



As Shaun Walker recently reported in this newspaper,
at one “troll factory” in St Petersburg, employees are paid about £500 a
month to pose as regular internet users defending Putin, posting
insulting pictures of foreign leaders, and spreading conspiracy theories
– for instance, that Ukrainian protestors on the Maidan were fed tea
laced with drugs, which led them to overthrow the (pro-Moscow)
government.



Taken together, all these efforts constitute a kind of linguistic
sabotage of the infrastructure of reason: if the very possibility of
rational argument is submerged in a fog of uncertainty, there are no
grounds for debate – and the public can be expected to decide that there
is no point in trying to decide the winner, or even bothering to
listen.

Texas Governor Deploys State Guard To Stave Off Obama Takeover : It's All Politics : NPR

Texas Governor Deploys State Guard To Stave Off Obama Takeover : It's All Politics : NPR:








Since General Sam Houston executed his famous retreat to glory to
defeat the superior forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Texas
has been ground zero for military training. We have so many military
bases in the Lone Star State we could practically attack Russia.



So
when rookie Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was ordering the Texas
State Guard to monitor a Navy SEAL/Green Beret joint training exercise,
which was taking place in Texas and several other states, everybody here
looked up from their iPhones. What?

Quartz’s Kevin Delaney: Time to kill the 800-word article - Digiday

Quartz’s Kevin Delaney: Time to kill the 800-word article - Digiday:





The homepage isn’t dead, but it’s just a brand statement.

Quartz launched without a homepage. Instead, visitors were taken
directly to a feed of stories. Last year, it added in a twist on the
homepage. Rather than a list of stories published, Quartz has a
constantly updated stream version of its daily newsletter with the most
important things happening at that moment.


“The homepage communicates what a brand is. The basic idea is if
we’re going to make a homepage without a legacy, could you provide a
service to readers besides being an index of everything the site has
published in the last 24 hours.”

A good piece on engineering vs image/PR

How Do We Build a Safer Car? - The New Yorker: There is an old joke about an engineer, a priest, and a doctor enjoying a round of golf. Ahead of them is a group playing so slowly and inexpertly that in frustration the three ask the greenkeeper for an explanation. “That’s a group of blind firefighters,” they are told. “They lost their sight saving our clubhouse last year, so we let them play for free.”

The priest says, “I will say a prayer for them tonight.”

The doctor says, “Let me ask my ophthalmologist colleagues if anything can be done for them.”

And the engineer says, “Why can’t they play at night?”

The greenkeeper explains the behavior of the firefighters. The priest empathizes; the doctor offers care. All three address the social context of the situation: the fact that the firefighters’ disability has inadvertently created conflict on the golf course. Only the engineer tries to solve the problem.

How Washington Derailed Amtrak - NationalJournal.com

How Washington Derailed Amtrak - NationalJournal.com: Dove's plan might be more realistic if we conceived of Amtrak as a piece of infrastructure—like a bridge or a tunnel—rather than as a for-profit corporation that can't quite turn a profit. "This is a public service," argues Andy Kunz, president of USHSR. "Our highways don't make a profit. Our airports don't make a profit. It's all paid for by the government." (Together, the Highway Trust Fund and the Federal Aviation Administration receive about 45 times what Amtrak does, through subsidies and gas taxes.)