18 December, 2016

Deggit comments on What do you find most annoying in Reddit culture?

Deggit comments on What do you find most annoying in Reddit culture?: "The faster people can read something, the more likely they'll upvote it which means other people see it and upvote it. I do recognize the value of getting to your point fast, but most of the ideas that get upvoted are easily digestible. They get upvoted because you don't have to consider them, only recognize them."



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17 December, 2016

Nine New Findings About Inequality in the United States - The New York Times

Nine New Findings About Inequality in the United States - The New York Times:


In a paper published last week, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman expand their earlier work, examining how taxes and government spending affect income inequality.



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13 December, 2016

Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded - NYTimes.com

Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded - NYTimes.com:

In the United States, Britain and across the European Continent, people are convulsed with political frustration and anxiety about the future. Refugees and migrants clamor for the chance to live in these safe, prosperous countries, but those who already live in those promised lands report great uneasiness about their own futures that seems to border on hopelessness.
Why?
A small hint comes from interesting research about how people thrive. In one shocking experiment, researchers found that senior citizens who didn’t feel useful to others were nearly three times as likely to die prematurely as those who did feel useful. This speaks to a broader human truth: We all need to be needed.


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Forget AT&T. The Real Monopolies Are Google and Facebook. - The New York Times

Forget AT&T. The Real Monopolies Are Google and Facebook. - The New York Times: "The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner has drawn censure from both sides of the political aisle, as well as a Senate hearing that looked into the potential for the combined company to become a monopoly.

But if we are going to examine media monopolies, we should look first at Silicon Valley, not the fading phone business."

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09 December, 2016

John Glenn’s War Nickname Was “Old Magnet Ass” For All The Right Reasons - The Drive

John Glenn’s War Nickname Was “Old Magnet Ass” For All The Right Reasons - The Drive: "In the end maybe John Glenn’s passing will be a stark reminder of what the greatest among us are capable of, when the right medium for fostering massive success is put into place. In the meantime, we can also all admire a special man that became a hero so many times over, and that accomplishing amazing things became the norm not the exception.



 I mean you don’t get the name “Old Magnet Ass” for playing it safe right?"



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Ohio Takes Page from 18F to Launch Inclusive Procurement, Attract New Bidders

Ohio Takes Page from 18F to Launch Inclusive Procurement, Attract New Bidders:


Rather than struggling through a typically lengthy RFP process, Davis said he and his team began looking at how to streamline the process. The CIO looked to the disruptive, but effective, team within the federal General Services Administration (GSA) known as 18F for guidance. 18F made waves in the federal procurement space with tools like micro procurements and new vendor on-ramping techniques.
The outcome was two pages of notes and suggested changes that could curtail the lofty requirements and attract a greater diversity of bidders. Though conversations did not ultimately evolve into a cooperative agreement between the state and the federal innovation agency, Davis said their suggestions were an invaluable piece of the process.


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06 December, 2016

Trevor Noah: Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule. - The New York Times

Trevor Noah: Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule. - The New York Times: "When I took over “The Daily Show” from Jon Stewart in 2015, I was surprised to learn that my job as a late-night comedy host was not merely to entertain but to eviscerate — to attack, crush, demolish and destroy the opponents of liberal, progressive America. Very quickly, people from some quarters — mostly those same liberal progressives — criticized me for not maintaining the minimum acceptable levels of daily evisceration that were established by my predecessor.

"



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MiltownKBs comments on [Video] As a child, growing up with this man was one of the best things to ever happen to me and millions of other children.

MiltownKBs comments on [Video] As a child, growing up with this man was one of the best things to ever happen to me and millions of other children.: "I moved to Pittsburgh 5 months ago. I was unaware that was where he was based from, and that the city had a reverence for him. I was walking along the north shore during summer, and I heard this music wafting through the air...and I wondered who the hell was playing the Mister Rogers theme along the shore, nestled among major sports stadiums. I walked closer and closer to the music, and found that there was a Mister Rogers memorial loudly playing not only his theme, but also various songs he sang over the years, including a statue of him tying his shoe while smiling at you. I had to stop and collect myself as I shed a few tears, looking out over a city that paid homage to a man that was a huge part of my childhood, that we should all strive to be a little more like.
"



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04 December, 2016

Metro Inspectors Feared Retaliation For Reporting Faulty Tracks, Interrogations Reveal | WAMU

Metro Inspectors Feared Retaliation For Reporting Faulty Tracks, Interrogations Reveal | WAMU: "Metro track inspectors said fear of retaliation by immediate supervisors and middle management led them to produce years of inspection reports that failed to depict accurately the severity of deteriorating tracks. These track conditions contributed to the slow-speed derailment of a Silver Line train in Northern Virginia on July 29, according to transcripts of interrogations published by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday.

"

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Going Positive - The New Yorker

Going Positive - The New Yorker: "“Long before I was struck with cancer, I felt something stirring in American society,” [Lee Atwater] wrote. “It was a sense among the people of the country—Republicans and Democrats alike—that something was missing from their lives, something crucial. I was trying to position the Republican Party to take advantage of it. But I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘it’ was. My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.” With forgivable grandiosity, he called for the leaders of the nineties to “speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”"



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I was a Turkish child bride. We need to be protected from rapists, not married to them | Anonymous | Opinion | The Guardian

I was a Turkish child bride. We need to be protected from rapists, not married to them | Anonymous | Opinion | The Guardian:

The change in the law being proposed is cultural, not moral, and the government knows this. It argues it’s for the good of the raped child and her offspring – that it will make her more respectable, save her honour and keep the family together. But actually it’s all about getting the man off the hook. If they change the law, men will be able to rape girls and then say, “I’ll just marry her.” And what’s the good of that? Once you’re married, you’re given the licence to be raped, again and again and again. At least if it wasn’t legal then you wouldn’t have to be married. At least you wouldn’t be sentenced to be your attacker’s sex slave.
Condemning a girl to a lifetime of rape is taking everything from her – her youth, her future, her happiness. When I heard the news, I knew I had to share my story. I want people to know what it’s like to go through this.


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mCL3Ksi.jpg (1600×1067)

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03 December, 2016

MyPenisIsaWMD comments on CBC: The real cost of the world's most expensive drug (2015) - Alexion makes a lifesaving drug that costs patients $500K a year. Patients hire PR firm to make a plea to the media not realizing that the PR firm is actually owned by Alexion.

MyPenisIsaWMD comments on CBC: The real cost of the world's most expensive drug (2015) - Alexion makes a lifesaving drug that costs patients $500K a year. Patients hire PR firm to make a plea to the media not realizing that the PR firm is actually owned by Alexion.: "please recall that for the actual people who founded this company and for the scientists doing the research, they are most often driven by a desire to cure horrific diseases and change the world. The money aspect is a necessary evil that good people need to navigate. Consider that a typical PhD scientist makes about 1/4 as much as a physician and spends a similar amount of time in education (13 years for me from BS to end of postdoc). The people actually researching new drugs are doing it because they are passionate about human health. Not because they are 'shills'."

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The Last Diplomat - WSJ

The Last Diplomat - WSJ: "“If somebody tells you something in one conversation, you might write that up and it becomes classified,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean the next time you see them that you can’t talk about what you’d already talked about.”

"

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02 December, 2016

In Aleppo, I Saw Why Assad Is Winning - POLITICO Magazine

In Aleppo, I Saw Why Assad Is Winning - POLITICO Magazine: "When I met with Assad days earlier, he posited, “Let’s suppose that these allegations are correct, and this president was killing his own people and committed crimes…after five years and a half, who supported me?” From my brief visit to Aleppo, it was clear that it was not Syria’s silent majority. On the journey to the city, I saw a Hezbollah funeral procession outside Homs. In Aleppo, Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units held positions in Bani Zayd, a neighborhood which houses no Kurds. Iranian backed Shi’i militias actively post their exploits on social media. And though the skies were quiet during my visit, Russian fighter jets have been pummeling rebel held areas of east Aleppo for months. Assad is winning this war because his backers have zealously embraced the use of overwhelming force while his adversaries, and their supporters, have not.

"

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Virginia schools ban 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Huckleberry...

Virginia schools ban 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Huckleberry...: "The decision to remove "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain and "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee came after a parent filed a complaint, WAVY reported. The parent cited excessive racial slurs as the reason for wanting the books banned, Superintendent Warren Holland told the news station.

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01 December, 2016

Viral James Mattis Email About Reading - Business Insider

Viral James Mattis Email About Reading - Business Insider: "The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

"

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Another Mass Grave Dug by ISIS in Iraq, and a Ghastly Ritual Renewed - The New York Times

Another Mass Grave Dug by ISIS in Iraq, and a Ghastly Ritual Renewed - The New York Times: "For Iraqis, the pain of not knowing can be the worst of all. The International Commission on Missing Persons, a Netherlands-based organization, has estimated that up to a million Iraqis have gone missing in recent history. That encompasses the war between Iran and Iraq, the mass killings ordered by Mr. Hussein after a Shiite uprising in 1991, the Iraqi government’s Anfal chemical-weapon strikes against the Kurds in the late 1980s, and the more recent sectarian civil war of the last decade.

"

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Climate change will stir 'unimaginable' refugee crisis, says military | Environment | The Guardian

Climate change will stir 'unimaginable' refugee crisis, says military | Environment | The Guardian: "Brig Gen Stephen Cheney, a member of the US Department of State’s foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said: “Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We’re already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal.

"

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What are you proud of, but can't tell anyone who knows you? : AskReddit

What are you proud of, but can't tell anyone who knows you? : AskReddit: "So I double down on her request now: Don't let an internet stranger explain to your family why you're gone."



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