Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Not only have Sanders-backed candidates generally struggled to knock off opponents backed by the Democratic establishment, but the national organizations created to help them have already become mired in petty infighting and legal difficulties.
Billionaire businessman, philanthropist and political donor Charles Koch grabbed headlines this weekend for focusing a semiannual gathering of wealthy conservatives on a surprising topic: income inequality. It is a topic that has loomed increasingly large in Koch's mind recently and one that he expounded on in the spring in an interview with The Washington Post's Jim Tankersley.
If they make it through by rigging the system, then that's horrible, and that's a good part of the disparity we have. Whereas the median income -- which I think is a much better metric on well-being than GDP, hasn't gone up in the last decade -- and productivity has barely moved. And I think it is because of this corporate welfare and the Fed. So what we see happening is that because of that combination -- free money to big companies like ours or established companies and the difficulties in getting permits to do something new with all of the handicaps on innovation -- that rather than going in and investing in increasing productivity, it is investing in buying other companies.
To my surprise there's more I agree with than disagree with.
In the first of two articles, a Westerner with extensive on-the-ground experience in Syria and Iraq explains how the West's understanding of sectarian identity in the Middle East is fatally flawed.
Similarly, these same voices describe the Syrian government as an "Alawite regime" that rules and oppresses Sunnis. However, Sunnis are heavily represented at all levels of leadership in Assad's government. The territory it controls at this point in the war and at all points past is majority Sunni. And the Syrian armed forces are still majority Sunni. Alawites may be overrepresented in the security forces, but all that means is that they get to die more than others. It if it is an "Alawite regime," isn't it odd that includes and benefits so many non-Alawites?
Sunnis not only have political power in Syria, but they also have social power, more opportunities, and a greater range of choices in life compared to other states in the region ruled by Sunni heads of state. At the heart of this negligent misapprehension of what is actually happening in the Middle East is an acceptance and mainstreaming of notions of Sunni identity propagated by the most extreme voices in the Sunni world: Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Part 2: http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/washingtons-sunni-myth-and-the-middle-east-undone/
Instead, the workforce disadvantages women in subtler ways -- ways that ultimately show up in their paycheck but don't always begin there. The highest-paying jobs disproportionately reward those who can work the longest, least flexible hours.
These types of job penalize workers who have caregiving responsibilities outside the workplace. Those workers tend to be women.
... The data tells us that this can't be the entire story. It can't explain why the wage gap is so much bigger for those with kids than those without. One 2015 study found that childless, unmarried women earn 96 cents for every dollar a man earns. Remember that study we started with, the one about the MBA graduates? It showed that women with kids had a wage gap twice as large as women without.
Precise Digital Reproductions Allow More People to Own and View Masterpieces, Minus the Work's Soul
One might pay a fortune to get a work entirely painted by Rembrandt,
or a more modest sum for a work designed by Rembrandt but largely
painted by his staff. This did not mean that the less expensive option was
poorly made, and technically, it could even still be called a "Rembrandt."
This process was an entirely legal, artist-sanctioned form of forgery.
...
Experts and art lovers can tell the simulacrum from the authentic
work. The rest of the world could, likewise, if they tried, but
they may not care to. Perhaps they are just as happy with a Relievo
Collection van Gogh on their walls? A danger arises when amateurs
and bogus experts aren't able to tell the difference between what's
real and what's reproduced. Worse, they might see the digital copy
and decide that it is not worth the effort to see the original. They
might not think that the work is better, but it is unarguably more
convenient to access.
Has there been a scientifically controlled study that proves experts and art lovers can actually tell the difference just by looking?
It suffices for an intransigent minority --a certain type of
intransigent minorities --to reach a minutely small level, say
three or four percent of the total population, for the entire
population to have to submit to their preferences. Further,
an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority:
a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices
and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd,
it is because our scientific intuitions aren't calibrated for that
(fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments;
they don't work and your standard intellectualization fails with
complex systems, though not your grandmothers' wisdom).
...
A Kosher (or halal) eater will never eat nonkosher (or nonhalal) food,
but a nonkosher eater isn't banned from eating kosher.
The reason we cannot find other life outside of Planet Earth
is because we may be ahead of the curve, according to scientists
from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
...
Life first became possible 30m years after the Big Bang, when stars
first provided the universe with enough carbon and oxygen.
Life is predicted to end in 10 trillion years when all the stars
in the universe have faded and died. Loeb and a team of researchers
considered the likelihood of life between those two parameters.
After decades of practising as a psychotherapist, I am convinced that our treatment of psychosis is thoroughly wrong-headed
Most of modern psychiatry dismisses the idea that psychotic
experience is a meaningful response to the condition of one's
life in favour of the view that the voices, the visions, come
from meaningless disease. By contrast I've learned to distinguish
between the ravages of chronic psychotic disorder in the long
and persistently afflicted, and the kind of acute aberrations
experienced by Martha, which can usually be better understood as a
'spiritual emergency' instead of an impersonal state of disease.
...
Among the many fascinating facts that Whitaker has gathered is
that if you suffer a psychotic breakdown, your odds of complete,
treatment-free recovery are much, much better if you are treated in
a third-world country that cannot afford psychotropic medication. In
poor countries they treat psychotic breaks with various forms of
social support, and largely leave the brain alone and unaltered.
Google/Alphabet's annual spending on lobbying, for example, went from
less than $1 million a decade ago to $16.7 million in 2015, putting it
behind only Boeing and General Electric among American corporations.
...
Since Obama took office in January 2009, at least 250 people have
left Google and related companies for jobs in the administration or
vice versa. Oh, and in 2012 Schmidt actually helped recruit the Obama
campaign technology team and spent election night in the campaign
"boiler room" in Chicago.
Population aging is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth yet there is little empirical evidence about the magnitude of its effects. This paper starts from the observation that many U.S. states have already experienced substantial growth in the size of their older population and much of this growth was predetermined by historical trends in fertility. We use predicted variation in the rate of population aging across U.S. states over the period 1980-2010 to estimate the economic impact of aging on state output per capita. We find that a 10% increase in the fraction of the population ages 60+ decreases the growth rate of GDP per capita by 5.5%. Two-thirds of the reduction is due to slower growth in the labor productivity of workers across the age distribution, while one-third arises from slower labor force growth. Our results imply annual GDP growth will slow by 1.2 percentage points this decade and 0.6 percentage points next decade due to population aging.
Results of the study revealed the thinking group were far less active than the non-thinkers
Findings from a US-based study seem to support the idea that people with a high IQ get bored less easily, leading them to spend more time engaged in thought.
And active people may be more physical as they need to stimulate their minds with external activities, either to escape their thoughts or because they get bored quickly.
But note it ends with,Despite highlighting an unusual trend, generalising the findings should be done with caution due to the small sample of participants, it added.
Sounds bogus to me.There is of course a common thread to all three laws, namely you should not have too much confidence in your own judgment.
WikiLeaks has hit rock bottom. Once dedicated to careful vetting and redaction--sometimes too much redaction--the "whistleblower site" is now gleefully basking in its dump of thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee--most of which are full of personal, non-newsworthy information--published with the express intent of harming Hillary Clinton's political campaign. In this latest release, there is no brave whistleblower in sight, just an anonymous hacker believed by the FBI and U.S. intelligence community to be a front for Russian intelligence services. The WikiLeaks project has fallen far from the lofty heights of its founding a decade ago, when Julian Assange promised to "facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement."
Does your web browser have a unique fingerprint? If so your web browser could be tracked across websites without techniques such as tracking cookies. Additionally the anonymisation aspects of services such as Tor or VPNs could be negated if websites you visit track you using your browser fingerprint. This service is designed to test how unique your web browser's fingerprint is, and hence how identifiable your browser is.
User Interfaces Designed to Trick People
It happens to the best of us. After looking closely at a bank statement or cable bill, suddenly a small, unrecognizable charge appears. Fine print sleuthing soon provides the answer--somehow, you accidentally signed up for a service. Whether it was an unnoticed pre-marked checkbox or an offhanded verbal agreement at the end of a long phone call, now a charge arrives each month because naturally the promotion has ended. If the possibility of a refund exists, it'll be found at the end of 45 minutes of holding music or a week's worth of angry e-mails.
Everyone has been there. So in 2010, London-based UX designer Harry Brignull decided he'd document it. Brignull's website, darkpatterns.org, offers plenty of examples of deliberately confusing or deceptive user interfaces. These dark patterns trick unsuspecting users into a gamut of actions: setting up recurring payments, purchasing items surreptitiously added to a shopping cart, or spamming all contacts through prechecked forms on Facebook games.
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