Link Archive 10/1/15 – 12/1/15

If you want to say Thank You, don't say Sorry

The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture "We wear our unpaid, uncompensated overtime as a badge of honor. We sleep less, brag about our caffeine intake, and are available for calls and emails 18 hours per day. We measure our importance by how many half hour slots during the day are double or triple booked, and we perversely consider it honorable to do this for free."

Beyond Gun Control In 2012, 90 people were killed in mass shootings. Nearly 6,000 black men were murdered with guns. Ceasefire dropped youth homicides by 63 percent in the two years after it was launched assessment from a White House staffer: There was no political will in the country to address inner-city violence. "These are men who do not trust the police to keep them safe, so “they take matters into their own hands,” It’s long-running feuds, Crandall said, that drive most murders in Oakland. Men involved in these conflicts may want a safer life, but it’s hard for them to put their guns down. “The challenge is that there is no graceful way to bow out of the game,”

The media has no idea how to deal with Donald Trump's constant lying - "this dynamic is generally why liars and conspiracy theorists aren't allowed on respectable news programs."

Fast-Talking High-Trousers! I love the way that accent sounds (or sounded, I guess) Why Do People In Old Movies Talk Weird?

Hardball Questions For The Next Debate includes a very convincing narrative relating how Bush's grandfather stole a holy relic from the defeated Nazi government at the end of WWII and used it gain political power(!) (In the question to Rubio)

The Modern Workplace Is Designed To Make You Sick. My fellow office workers know what he's talking about.

How Facebook is Stealing Billions of Views >< I know, I know - we're not the customer, we're the product. But outright theft is really a step beyond the pale.

Jim's rule of buts - Reverse your but. For serious guys. "what follows ‘but’ always dominates what precedes it. Compare, “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but what you said made me really angry.” and “What you said made me really angry, but I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

If you have Facebook M, you have a free, human personal assistant. I can't imagine Facebook will be subsidizing free assistants for all of us for very long... what's the end-game here?

Hang The Jedi "when Anakin Skywalker turns to mass murder - he isn't even so much as censured, let alone removed from the Council and brought to justice." "The Jedi only seem to protest chattel slavery of humans when it inconveniences them personally, and themselves casually keep mechanical sentients ... that can be sold, destroyed, or even mind-wiped at the whim of their owners."

(and if the payload delivered in the last paragraph of the article interests you, I highly recommend the related links: The Hobbit: How the 'clomping foot of nerdism' destroyed Tolkien's dream - and the fantasy genre & very afraid (Worldbuilding is dull) )

Over Half the Student Body of One Colorado High School Facing Felony Charges. For sexting. Thank god they broke up that crime ring. What other crimes can you be both the victim and the perpetrator?

MLP vs Your Civics Textbook "My Little Pony Friendship is Magic presents a bitterly cynical portrayal of democratic elections. Pip is a silent pawn of the organized minority special interest group, the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They control every aspect of his election, handle his marketing and stir up support among the rationally ignorant and ideologically motivated electorate." "Pip did what politicians do best: smile and wave. He kept his mouth shut and presumed not to know anything about actual electioneering."

According to Alex Irvine on Twitter, Ted Chaing has a new anthology coming out from Knopf! According to google "Ted Chiang's second collection, gathering together seven stories and one novella..." and the rest is behind a paywall. I'm wondering how many will be new! /excited

Just in case anyone missed it when it went around - Best Star Wars theory since "you need to die in front of Luke to get a ghost body". Jar Jar Binks was a trained Force user, knowing Sith collaborator, and will play a central role in The Force Awakens. Trolling level = Epic How Do You Paint 10,000 Paintings a Month? "A painter with rows and rows of the same half-finished canvasses scooped up paint and went down the row. He painted an identical brushstroke on each painting, and then repeated the process. One brushstroke at a time, the paintings made their way toward completion." "the painters did not have set hours, and they did not clock in and out every day. In most cases, the owners let the painters fulfill orders on their own and, after checking the quality, paid the artists per painting." "Although painters will work together, assembly-line-style, to meet large orders, Wong writes that these situations are “intermittent.” The norm is for painters to work individually."

"Republicans in Congress has given Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) - the head of the House science committee - authority to demand any document he wants for whatever reason. He uses this power to create huge financial and logistical burdens on any scientist who reports conclusions he does not like - demanding years of emails and document not only from them but from anybody they may talk to."

Trolley problem answers measured in relation to how drunk the subject is. Either "drunk people are emotionally steeled rationalists who are willing to do whatever it takes to save lives" or "drunk people are more willing to "just go with it" when a random graduate student asks them to participate in a thought experiment about killing people." :D

I know I just linked to it a few days back, but: Over the past few years I've come to accept that News, like Politics, is primarily about keeping the American middle-class entertained and has little to do with the Public Good. This article confirms my biases, so I will share it. "there turns out to be a huge market for thoughtless inflammatory contrarianism, and much less of one for anything reflective or nuanced." "the real problem is that these blossomings of controversy are (1) manufactured for consumption and (2) totally disconnected from any kind of meaningful action in the real world. As to point (1), it’s odd that I can get paid to think of ways to poke the internet hornets’ nest, because if I can get a bunch of people to shout about a thing, a company makes money." "Clickbait gets clicks. I click on it. I mean, I would have read my own article, even if I would have been bored by it and then fumed about how petty and humorless the author was." "It’s not that editors are bad gatekeepers, then. In fact, I’m astonished by how perceptive they are. They know exactly what succeeds." "there’s something brain-deadening about “current” affairs, because remaining current precludes getting in-depth background knowledge. The more time you spend trying to “stay informed,” the less informed you actually become compared with someone who doesn’t stay informed but goes and learns things."

"Human beings are not in general Colour-blind.  The law is not Colour-blind.  It makes a difference not only what bits you have, but where they came from." Huge bonus points for making something understandable by extensive reference to Paranoia. "The US Naval Observatory Web site provides information on that site about when the Sun rises and sets and so on... but they also provide it under a disclaimer saying that this information is not suitable for use in court. If you need to know when the Sun rose or set for use in a court case, then you need an expert witness - because you don't actually just need the bits that say when the Sun rose. You need those bits to be Coloured with the Colour that allows them to be admissible in court, and the USNO doesn't provide that."

From Jai, who blogs rarely because he only posts when it's perfect: Foes Without Faces. "The enemy is out there. The enemy does not know love, or hope, or anything of what it is to be human. The enemy does not mourn its countless victims." "The “Mayhem” series has won over 80 advertising awards, Since launching in mid-2010, Allstate’s stock has more than doubled." "The US spends $16.6 billion on counterterrorism efforts every year. Terrorism, in turn, kills fewer than 10 people in the US most years. That comes out to about a bit over five million dollars per life saved. What makes us so much more determined to fight terrorism than traffic accidents?" "Enemies are fun."

Chivalry Isn’t Dead, You Just Don’t Know What the Fuck it is. "See, the word “chivalry” comes from the French word “chevalier,” which comes from “cheval,” which means “horse.” Chivalry is literally just “rules for if you have a horse.” This was an important set of rules to have in chivalry times. Horses were the Blackhawk Helicopters of the Middle Ages; if you had a horse, you could absolutely kill anybody who didn’t have a horse and nobody was going to say a god damn thing. The only thing stopping you was chivalry."

"New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprints in the United States: less than 30 percent of the national average" If everyone in the sprawling suburban wastelands would move into compact housing in urban centers, just imagine how much land could be returned to nature to preserve wildlife, grow forests, etc.

UC Berkeley - where if you do your job too well and you make the old guard look bad, they fire you.

"Instead of trying to figure out what his child was learning, Herrmann did what so many parents do these days: He complained about something he doesn’t understand. The problem with the method people like Herrmann learned is that it didn’t work when the math got harder. Instead, Herrmann wasted everyone’s time by writing a useless check and putting it on Facebook. Because, to people like him, ignorance is hilarious."