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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 318 posts.
We read, with no small concern, a recent CNN article by John D. Sutter, columnist. He notes several statistics that should not be ignored, such as, “three-quarters of all species could disapp…
Ranking the cities and states and release the most toxins into the environment.
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
Speed doesn’t seem to be at all correlated to how happy we our with our local transportation systems.
Read the latest news stories from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Discover breakthroughs, events, and campus updates.
“This phone saved me when I was dumped into the back of a car with four other boys and covered in a plastic tent.…this phone is my HERO!”…
We started with global health, then pandemics. Now we focus on AI risk. How our views changed and what problems we'd recommend you work on today.
“For Rent” signs are popping up all over Portland, signaling an easing of the housing crunch and foretelling falling rents
You want to keep your business ownership information anonymous. We can help you form your Anonymous LLC efficiently and securely. Anonymous LLC’s Only a very few states do not require...
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For nearly two months, the U.S. military has been detaining an American citizen at a secret jail in Iraq, denying him access to a lawyer and even refusing to release his name. The Trump administration is calling the citizen an “enemy combatant,” claiming he was fighting for ISIS in Syria, but it has not presented any…
So for me, this was really a new paradigm of composing. Changing the idea of the composer from somebody who stood at the top of a process and dictated precisely how it was carried out, to somebody who stood at the bottom of a process who carefully planted some rather well-selected seeds, hopefully, and watched them…
Mr Algorithm is always listeningThe advertising trial balloon from Google Home really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Okay, perhaps, the linguistic contortions performed by Google’s PR…
Why predicted gridlock almost never happens and what this teaches us about travel demand
Former philosophy professor and successful humorist Dennis Fried sent me some poignant comments on my piece in The Atlantic. Reprinted with Fried’s permission. Dear Dr. Caplan, I just read your article in Atlantic magazine and was blown away by the brutal honesty displayed there, especially coming from someone whose…
March 26, 2017 @ 9:24 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Information technology , Language and computers , Language teaching and learning , Writing , Writing systems
We’re working to put control of the internet back in the hands of the people using it.
Trust is essential for effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?
Being able to read and write opens up the world of education and knowledge. When and why did more people become literate? How can progress continue?
To understand California’s water, start here. Water use in California varies dramatically between wet and dry years: learn who’s using California’s water, where, and how much.
American students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and behind many other advanced industrial nations, in international assessments of math, science and reading.
How does your country measure up in the 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index?
In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became…
What quantitative data is there about violent deaths in non-state societies?
New Gallup global income data estimate the median household income across 131 countries at $9,733, and median per-capita income at $2,920. Incomes in the 10 wealthiest countries are more than 50 times those in the 10 poorest.
