Epicene Cyborg

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July 22, 2017

America’s hidden philosophy. When Cold War philosophy tied rational choice theory to scientific method, it embedded the free-market mindset in US society.

Under Senate’s Obamacare repeal, some Americans would have to pay more than their total income for health coverage.

Amazon’s foray into groceries means more mergers of food companies, experts say. Agreed. And will be bad for everyone.

Dictionary money.

As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers race to replace workers with robots.

Yes, ancient civilizations on Mars sounds crazy. And yet….

Stanford researchers found that U.S. adults who believed that they were less active than their peers died younger than those who believed they were more active – even if their actual activity levels were similar.

Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world. It’s not just a populist backlash – many economists who once swore by free trade have changed their minds, too. How had they got it so wrong?

California decided it was tired of women bleeding to death in childbirth. The maternal mortality rate in the state is a third of the American average. Here’s why.

Against History: A Lesson from Simone Weil.

A New Book Explores How Science Has Misrepresented Women.

Short Interest and Aggregate Stock Returns. In short, short sellers make short work of predicting market returns.

How Subprime Car Loans Are Ruining Lives And Repeating The Mistakes Of The Housing Crisis.

Abuses Hide in the Silence of Nondisparagement Agreements.

Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.

July 21, 2017

Attached to Our Places: The Foundation of Citizenship.

Consumer expenditure survey (illustrating the income divide).

Say Goodbye to Spain’s Glorious Three-Hour Lunch Break.

Media Consolidation Is in the Air, and John Malone Is Fanning It.

The Al Capone theory of sexual harassment.

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals.

Bedtime – Construct or Cruelty.

The Immense, Eternal Footprint Humanity Leaves on Earth: Plastics.

July 20, 2017

Democrats, Wake Up and Smell The Failure.

“Neoliberalism” isn’t an empty epithet. It’s a real, powerful set of ideas.

How bosses are (literally) like dictators. Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies.

An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development.

This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit.

Pussy Riot Founder Says American Liberals Scapegoat Putin To Distract From Democrats’ Problems. Nailed it.

About 40% of Americans with student loans aren’t paying, Wall Street Journal reports.

Science Says Period Brains Aren’t A Thing: Women Are Not Surprised. Very small sample size for this type of study.

The United States government funded research and development of a new vaccine against Zika. But the Army, which paid a French pharmaceutical manufacturer for its development, is planning to grant exclusive rights to the vaccine to the manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, along with paying Sanofi up to $173 million.

The West Is on Fire. Blame the Housing Crisis.

The “Will & Grace” Conjecture That Won’t Die.

July 19, 2017

Distributed energy sources can reduce cost of electricity up to 50%, study says.

He Thought He Could Intimidate Me Into Sacrificing a Stranger. Superheroes already walk among us.

Before the end of the century, long before, things are going to be thrown into chaos.

Back to Work. How Democrats can win over Americans left behind in the new economy.

Jobs Charted by State and Salary.

Summary Statistics Tell You Little About the Big Picture.

Wall Street has developed a new way, clouded in obscurity, to fleece the hundreds of millions of Americans who have money invested in company pension plans, mutual funds and insurance policies. This is not new, contra this article, but is getting worse.

How California’s Record-Setting Rains Are Reshaping the Ecology of San Francisco Bay.

Here we leverage the wide usage of smartphones with built-in accelerometry to measure physical activity at the global scale. Due to smartphones, this is the first time in history we have accurate data on physical activity.

The Art of Doing Nothing: An Ode to Ferry Boats.

July 18, 2017

Democrats, get a grip: Emmanuel Macron is not your progressive savior.

As companies relocate to big cities, suburban towns are left scrambling. This is very bad for nearly everything and everyone.

Link Worker social prescribing to improve health and well-being for people with long-term conditions: qualitative study of service user perceptions.

Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have spent $572 million on lobbying the government to kill net neutrality.

The Russia scandal dots are never going to connect.

The Physical Origin of Universal Computing.

Jeremy Corbyn, Emmanuel Macron and the age of volatility.

How hospitals got richer off Obamacare. After fending off challenges to their tax-exempt status, the biggest hospitals boosted revenue while cutting charity care.

July 17, 2017

One of the most common questions in American small talk is seen as rude in much of the world. As it should be.

The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events.

Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less. Yep. I have raised my salary very significantly by moving around when I get bored. Never would’ve happened without that.

California makes almost 50% of the nation’s solar.

How Can We Ensure Survival in a New Era of Nuclear Brinkmanship?

The Fragility of Truth.

On Matthew effects.

Working Past 70: Americans Can’t Seem to Retire. Not a choice for most people, though this article tends to frame it that way.

Where Do Pro-Social Institutions Come From?

July 16, 2017

Of course, there are many other reasons to worry about living in a cashless (or “less cash”) society that were not offered as an option in the survey, including the vastly increased power it would give to political and monetary authorities as well as the near-impossibility of ever escaping from the clutches of the banking system or central banks’ monetary experiments.

Home care workers have our lives in their hands. They’re paid only $10 an hour.

Quit Your Job for a Better One? Not if You Live in Idaho.

‘Quite odd’: coral and fish thrive on Bikini Atoll 70 years after nuclear tests.

How Cash-Strapped Local Governments Target the Poor

Where did the term ‘nothing burger’ actually originate?

Not so fast, everybody! Despite the Donald Jr. sideshow, it’s way too easy to blame Putin for everything that went wrong in 2016. Dem strategy: blame all on Putin, don’t change, lose again in 2018 and 2020.

Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets.

Older generations — boomers and seniors who were raised in an era of stronger unions, a strong middle class, cheap or free college and pensions being common — have trouble fathoming that my generation did not grow up with any of these.

English as she isn’t spoke (Part 4).

July 15, 2017

Rooftop Solar Is No Match for Crony Capitalism.

Scrap dealer finds Apollo-era NASA computers in dead engineer’s basement.

Fracking can contaminate rivers and lakes with radioactive material, study finds. Stream sediments were found to be so radioactive they were nearly at the level that would require disposal in a specialist facility in some US states.

Canada Capitulates: Supreme Court Throws Away Government’s Great Pharma Patent Victory.

Work from home people earn more, quit less, and are happier than their office-bound counterparts. And vastly more productive too in my experience.

Visa Considers Extending ‘War on Cash’ Business Incentives Outside US. A cashless society is more dangerous than many of the “great dangers” people fret about.

Emerald (Directed by Oilhack & Thomas Blanchard).

Why the Post Office Gives Amazon Special Delivery. A Citigroup analysis finds each box gets a $1.46 subsidy. It’s like a gift card from Uncle Sam.

The New Abnormal in Monetary Policy.

As Media Focuses on Russia Collusion, Trump Is Quietly Stacking the Labor Board with Union Busters.

July 14, 2017

The commonest speech sounds.

The Mysteries of Means and Medians.

Induced defences in plants reduce herbivory by increasing cannibalism. Plants…you are starting to worry me.

Millennials Should Lead the Next Labor Movement.

Behold What a Union Gets You.

Archaeological analysis rewrites the cautionary tale of Easter Island.

The Return of Monopoly. With Amazon on the rise and a business tycoon in the the White House, can a new generation of Democrats return the party to its trust-busting roots? No.

July 13, 2017

The right is coming after college next.

Firefox tracks users with Google Analytics in the add-on settings. Seems all browsers are now malware.

Fear of crime is contagious, even in low crime communities. Fear of crime is perpetuated by the opinion of others, and often doesn’t correlate to the actual likelihood of experiencing crime, according to new UCL research.

The nation’s largest electric company wants regulators in North Carolina to force consumers to pay nearly $200 million a year to clean up the toxic byproducts of burning coal to generate power.

United Wants to Sell Your Seat to Someone Else for More Money.

Tim Berners-Lee Sells Out His Creation: Officially Supports DRM In HTML. Everyone has a price.

For the first time on record, U.S. companies are actually dying at a faster rate than they’re being born, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group, a non-profit research and advocacy organization.

A Saturn-size low-mass star at the hydrogen-burning limit. A cute li’l baby star.

3 ISPs Have Spent $572 Million to Kill Net Neutrality Since 2008.

July 12, 2017

Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign. Company paid $5,000 to $400,000 for research supporting business practices that face regulatory scrutiny; a ‘wish list’ of topics. ~~Don’t~~ Be Evil.

HBO and George R.R. Martin Set To Produce Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death TV Series.

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