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Groups of Homeless People
After modest amounts of research, here is how I am currently categorizing the homeless problem. This should be taken as a snapshot of my thoughts, not information for people who have actually thoug…
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 742 posts.
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Five Corrections to The New York Times
I am writing to request 5 corrections to the article on ancient DNA that appeared in this week’s The New York Times Magazine.
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A Ring of Controversy Around a Black Hole Photo
[Note Added: Thanks to some great comments I’ve received, I’m continuing to add clarifying remarks to this post. You’ll find them in green.] It’s been a couple of months si…
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Where Has the Magic Gone?
A big change that I’ve realised during undergrad is that engineering doesn’t feel ‘magical’ anymore.
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How common was it for parents to lose a child?
The death of a young child has always been the most devastating tragedy mothers and fathers could experience. How common was it?
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Servants Without Masters
When I visited Singapore a few years ago, I kept noticing novel bits of social technology that managed to solve problems that I didn’t ev...
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Lessons from the Long Depression
"war, after all, is a highly effective (though destructive) demand stimulus." Sinking new warships, new warplanes, new tanks in the ocean without ever having used them would still be a great demand stimulus. So why not sink the money in infrastructure etc. ?
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The Vision for Decentralized Web
created by tautvilas, powered by dpage
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What Hokusai’s Great Wave tells us about museums, copyright, online collections
Katsushika Hokusai died 170 years ago
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“May You Live in Interesting Times”
Chinese Curse? Austen Chamberlain? Frederic R. Coudert? Joseph Chamberlain? Diplomatic Staff? Albert Camus? Arthur C. Clarke? Robert F. Kennedy? Hillary Rodham Clinton?
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The Information Apocalypse (2018)
My friend Aviv was recently the subject of a popular Buzzfeed article about the possibility of an impending “information apocalypse”. tl;dr: Aviv extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016 to a world in which anyone can create AI-assisted misinformation campaigns indistinguishable from reality to the…
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Yellowstone National Park’s Sound and Video Libraries
Yellowstone National Park maintains a collection of sounds and videos taken in the park that are in the public domain and free for anyone to use. The collection
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I Win My European Unemployment Bet
In 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate exceeded Europe’s for the first time in decades. Apologists for European labor market regulation rejoiced, so I publicly bet that European unemployment would exceed U.S. unemployment over the next decade. The original authors I targeted turned me down, even after I offered a 1…
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When Having Friends Is More Alluring Than Being Right
“There’s this flat-earther documentary called BEHIND THE CURVE,” my wife said. “We have to watch it!” Of course we did. My wife will occasionally get into huge debates…
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Airbnb in the Himalayas
Above my mountain-top cottage in a beautiful Himalayan village, the road ends and the forest begins. After sunset, flying squirrels come out. Leopards
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Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going
An economist and a business advisor discuss what might happen if the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.
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Bandersnatch Shows You What Depersonalization Disorder Feels Like
Can a new interactive movie shed some light on a strange disorder?
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Entrepreneurism Is Overrated
Despite dropping out, Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg were immensely successful because of the alignment of many factors: connections (for elite universities, attending can be as valuable as graduating, due to connections), high IQ (which allowed them to get into such universities and be so successful at tech ), access to…
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Why we fall for cons
There may be times and places where it’s a good idea to talk back to a military officer — but Germany in 1906 wasn’t one of them. So the young corporal didn’t. The corporal — let’s call him Muller …
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What Is Amazon?
What exactly is Amazon? This is the question that has consumed me for the last ten years. I have sold to and bought from Amazon in about as many ways as one person can; I built an auto parts brand …
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Indiana Bell moved a functioning building in 1930
In 1930, Indiana Bell, a subsidiary of AT&T, needed a larger building for their headquarter. The problem? The old building needed to stay in operations at all t
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