In Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962 to 2016: Has Middle Class Wealth Recovered?, an NBER working paper by NYU economics professor Edward N. Wolff, we get an… Read the rest of the article: Share of national wealth held by America's 1% hits 50-year high
Business is booming for Silicon Valley modeling agencies that specialize in "ambiance and atmosphere models" who are sent to company Christmas parties after being briefed with back-stories that allow them… Read the rest of the article: Bosses seed Silicon Valley Christmas parties with models who impersonate fellow employees, after briefing them with back-stories
The "inappropriate behavior" that caused Rep Trent Franks [R-AZ] to resign from Congress wasn't fondling or hugging or pressuring his staffers for sex: it was pressuring his female staffers allow… Read the rest of the article: Congressman Trent Franks [R-AZ] resigns amidst accusations that he pressured his female staff to bear his children as surrogate mothers
Massdrop's Hammer Fidget Spinner Artisan Keycap cost $20-$22, and fit any Cherry MX-compatible keyboard, with shipping in February. (via Ohgizmo)
Jordan Peele — whose 2017 surprise low-budget smash Get Out was one of the best movies I saw this year, is executive producing a Twilight Zone reboot for CBS.
Japanshop's Hanaga Tap Nose Outlet aren't cheap ($48), they take up two precious outlets and only give one back, and are two-prong only, but they still make me giggle. (Thanks,… Read the rest of the article: Electric nostril plugs
Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church says he's working with Vladimir Putin to convene a Church-based inquiry into whether the execution of the royal family by revolutionaries in 1917… Read the rest of the article: Russian Orthodox Patriarch announces church-government inquiry to prove that the Tsar was killed in 1917 as part of a Jewish ritual
Vox undertook a deep investigation into emergency room pricing, finding that emergency rooms, being the most monopolistic aspect of hospital care (because you don't shop for an ER while you're… Read the rest of the article: Investigation into emergency rooms shows that for-profit hospitals engage in billions in price-gouging
As the Republicans plow ahead with their plan to transfer trillions of dollars from the poorest Americans to the richest, to the expense of children's health, teachers, grad students, cities,… Read the rest of the article: Sanders, vindicated: Senior Democrats say the GOP's tax-plan has started a class war, and they're going to fight back on those terms
Dean Harvey is the co-founder of Factory Furniture, the company that created the Camden Bench, a piece of street furniture designed to stop anyone from using it for anything except… Read the rest of the article: The father of the most hostile piece of street furniture in world history explains why he thinks he's right to make life harder for homeless people and socializing kids
Got a relative or friend who doesn't understand the stakes in the net neutrality debate? The FCC Internet Porn Scrambler will help bring the issue into focus: "all of your… Read the rest of the article: A Chrome plugin that scrambles porn sites is a post-Net Neutrality internet simulator
The latest stupidospheric controversy in Donald Trump's America is Donald Jr's hard-to-parse claims of attorney-client privilege; Junior told Congress to go fuck themselves when they asked him to testify under… Read the rest of the article: Understanding attorney-client privilege with Donald Trump Jr and Ken "Popehat" White
When Princess Harriet Hamsterbone was born, her royal parents naturally didn't invite the evil fairy, and so of course the evil fairy cursed her to prick herself on a hamster wheel on her twelfth birthday and die; and of course the three good fairies softened the curse — and that's where things get really funny in Ursula Vernon's 2015 middle-grades fantasy Hamster Princess: Harriet the Invincible, the first in a wildly successful series.
Joey from ASU's Center for Science and the Imagination sez, "Today, we published Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities, a free digital collection of fiction and nonfiction about the near future of… Read the rest of the article: A free sf anthology about space travel, inequality, equity and public policy: Kim Stanley Robinson, Madeline Ashby, Eileen Gun, Ramez Naam, Steven Barnes, Karl Schroeder and more!
Tomorrow, people across America will stand in front of Verizon stores, calling on the FCC — whose chairman, the Neutracidal Maniac Ajit Pai, is a recovering Verizon lawyer — is… Read the rest of the article: Make a plan to attend one of these nationwide Net Neutrality protests tomorrow!
After Digiconomist's analysis of the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain went viral, Timothy Lee at Ars Technica provides a much-needed reality check in the form… Read the rest of the article: How much energy does Bitcoin consume, and can it improve?
Vice reporter Eve Peyser spent a weekend on the road with Bernie Sanders, and writes vividly and charmingly about the personal habits and behind-the-scenes homeliness of the famously non-materialistic, idealistic… Read the rest of the article: Hanging out with Bernie Sanders: it turns out that standing FOR something is a lot more politically important than merely standing AGAINST Trump
Oobah Butler once had a job writing fake Tripadvisor restaurant reviews for £10/each, paid by restauranteurs; having learned how powerful these reviews were, he decided to turn his south London… Read the rest of the article: A guy tricked Tripadvisor into making his garden shed the top-rated restaurant in London
Air force pilots in WWII got shot like crazy and suffered farcical levels of fatalities; in an effort to save airmen, the Allies used statistical analysis to determine where the… Read the rest of the article: To build the future, we must escape the present, or, "The bullet hole misconception"
Back in the days of the Howard Dean campaign, it seemed that the political left had a near-monopoly on brilliant, technologically sophisticated "netroots" activists, a situation that carried over to… Read the rest of the article: How Momentum UK learned from the Sanders Campaign to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime-Minister-in-Waiting
