31 July, 2015

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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28 July, 2015

‘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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27 July, 2015

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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26 July, 2015

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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22 July, 2015

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."


20 July, 2015

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."


18 July, 2015

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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13 July, 2015

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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11 July, 2015

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.

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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."


09 July, 2015

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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08 July, 2015

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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05 July, 2015

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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04 July, 2015

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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03 July, 2015

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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02 July, 2015

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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