Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
short
Gogo In-flight: Crummy. Slow. Expensive. Ubiquitous. Why? - Slate
- ... since there's no increase in supply, all dynamic pricing means is the flights where Gogo Wi-Fi is slowest are also the ones where it's most expensive.
NASA versus Katrina: Saving Michoud, August 29th, 2005 - Ars Technica {Hubski discussion here}
- “If we lost the levee, we would shut down the NASA space program,” Wood says. “We manufacture every vehicle here, so how are you going to get to space unless you go through New Orleans? That’s the most catastrophic event you could’ve had. If Michoud was totally flooded, NASA has to say, ‘Alright, we’re out of the space business right now.’ That would’ve been years and years of damage.”
The Pros and Cons of Populism - The New Yorker
- Trump (whatever he really believes) is playing the game of anti-politics. From George Wallace to Ross Perot, anti-politics has been a constant in recent American history; candidates as diverse as Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama have won the Presidency by seeming to reject or rise above the unlovely business of politics and government. Trump takes it to a demagogic extreme. There’s no dirtier word in the lexicon of his stump speech than “politician.” He incites his audiences’ contempt for the very notion of solving problems through political means. China, the Islamic State, immigrants, unemployment, Wall Street: just let him handle it—he’ll build the wall, deport the eleven million, rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment, create the jobs, kill the terrorists. He offers no idea beyond himself, the leader who can reverse the country’s decline by sheer force of personality. Speaking in Mobile, Alabama, recently, he paused to wonder whether representative government was even necessary. After ticking off his leads in various polls, Trump asked the crowd of thirty thousand, “Why do we need an election? We don’t need an election.”
long
Why Utah is giving homes to the homeless - Aeon
- Precious few places have had the nerve to fully implement a Housing First policy, though hundreds of cities have drawn up the plans. But the approach has been successful in Utah, where chronic homelessness is down 91 per cent over the past decade, and where rapid rehousing programmes have housed thousands of newly homeless veterans and families quickly and cheaply.
Digital star chamber: judge, jury, and executioner - the unaccountable algorithm -- Aeon
- ... a former Uber driver named Mansour gave a chilling description of the new, computer-mediated workplace. First, the company tried to persuade him to take a predatory loan to buy a new car. Apparently a number cruncher deemed him at high risk of defaulting. Second, Uber would never respond in person to him – it just sent text messages and emails. This style of supervision was a series of take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums – a digital boss coded in advance.
funny
- We were arguing. She took a sandwich out of my hands and threw it all over the street. Tuna everywhere.
I bet the Old Man and the sea never knew he was catching tuna so it could lie dead in pieces in the street because of my ex.
