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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 137 posts.
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For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades
Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today's real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
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Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution (2015)
How muggles and sociopaths invade and undermine creative subcultures; and how to stop them.
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Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement
A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.
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The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
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Money creation in the modern economy
Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1
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The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories (2014)
I. “Silliest internet atheist argument” is a hotly contested title, but I have a special place in my heart for the people who occasionally try to prove Biblical fallibility by pointing …
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Government Communication
When legally forced to provide information to government or law enforcement agencies, we'll disclose the transcripts of that communication here.
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Fertility Rate
Explore changing patterns in fertility worldwide, from birth rates to parental ages, twinning rates, reproductive technologies, and more.
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Around 90% of all river-borne plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from just 10 rivers
The world has become increasingly alarmed at the amount of plastic in its oceans. But where does all this plastic waste come from?
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Abortion
With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life? Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?
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Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
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Working Hours
How much time do people across the world spend working? How have working hours changed over time, and what do these changes matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on working hours.
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Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft (2014)
Wage theft—employers’ failure to pay workers money they are legally entitled to—affects far more people than more well-known and feared forms of theft such as bank robberies, convenience store robberies, street and highway robberies, and gas station robberies. Employers steal billions of dollars from their employees…
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The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (1991)
Before reading, please set your irony detector to the on position. If you find yourself inclined to dismiss the below as paranoid, you should know that the design behind the current American school system is very well-documented historically, in published writings of dizzying cynicism by such well-known figures as…
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The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
The Declaration of Causes made by Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.
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Better Genderless Pronouns in English
Writing or speaking English, we always face a conundrum when we need a pronoun to refer to a person without specifying gender. Previously we needed a way to cover both male and female; nowadays some people state that they don't want to be considered either of those, and I believe in respecting their wishes.
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How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?
There are large differences in the land of different diets, mostly depending on how much meat people eat.
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Emails suggest reviews from the Wirecutter are “pay to play” (2014)
Does the Wirecutter offers unbiased real reviews? Not even close. This story is about a little company taking on a fake review site owned by the NY Times.
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Dude, you broke the future
Back to: PSA: Please don't nominate the Laundry Files for a Best Series Hugo Award (this year) | Forward to: New Book Week!
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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities2018105 points186 commentscited by 18Society, Policy & Culture details
Data from a variety of sources contribute to a broad picture of strong growth and shared prosperity during the early postwar period, followed by slower growth and greater inequality since the 1970s. Within these broad trends, however, different data tell slightly different parts of the story, and no single data source…
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Conflict vs. Mistake
Jacobite – which is apparently still a real magazine and not a one-off gag making fun of Jacobin – summarizes their article Under-Theorizing Government as “You’ll never hear…
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Guns
Do you have a gun in your home? In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now? Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?
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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples
40 common false assumptions programmers make about names, debunked with real-world examples from global naming systems and identity practices.
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Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide
The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software — blender.org
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Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests
Online communities are in a precarious and unhealthy state right now. We can do better.
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Cancer
Cancers are one of the leading causes of death globally. Are we making progress against them?