mtowle

We should try to lower this number as much as possible!

>It took me less than a minute to google "social mobility in the US today" (non-leading query) to find the following examples with data (and there are many more from other respectful sources):

Non-leading query. Hahahaha. As if that matters. There are two types of articles written on the topic, and you found the one you were looking for. This is evidence of exactly nothing.

NB: the presence of a '%' in an article does not a well-done study make. Further, studies on this topic have been commissioned by double-blind souls approximately never.

YMail also lets you sign in with GMail. Obv, we're all aware of the Mayer connection, but it's still a curious move. What's Yahoo's play here? "Users." Okay, but what's the play? Cast aside all notions of vanity, and keep your eye on what you really want? (To train eyes on their content portal?) (Can it really be the case that Y.com is last man standing in the portal wars? Huh!)

>the fact that we should

Can't have a factual should. Shoulds are normative.

>What is kind of useless is a word that can mean some thing or its opposite

Is the word really useless or indeed useful if no one can provide a 'real' example of actual ambiguity between the two meanings? Furthermore, it's not as if ambiguity between one meaning and an opposite meaning is the greatest ambiguity there is-- if anything, it makes it particularly obvious which meaning the speaker intends.

What do you call predictions whose sum is not predictive?

A noble thought, but given the way TechCrunch, et al. scour the site for something, anything to blow out of proportion, a policy section could be asking for trouble. Nothing worse than bloggers conflating your personal politics with would-be thought-leaders whose endowment of idle time is surely coincidental.

Only forums on which there is no point in activism, of either sort(1), can survive their own prosperity. Forums are conversational; activism is the antithesis thereof.

PG is trying, and you have to tip your hat, if the 4-hours-per-day stories are true, but talk about Sisyphean.

(1) "I" or "We"

When writers get on soapboxes, they open themselves up to this category of response. Mere question-asking ("Is there a disparity? If so, why?") on Brad's part would be one thing, but his article is accusatory; he condescends to everyone but himself. And if he were right, again, that would be different, but he's not. He's just being a dick. Fuck him.

Ah, and were he not to have done so, are we so sure the NSA bits and pieces would be dominating the headlines, or might those have drifted into the background regardless? Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.

Litotes

Apparently WaPo's key demo is imbeciles.

>You can play around with the graph here, and the trends don’t change substantially if you try “NSA” instead of “National Security Agency” or look at how the whole world is searching rather than just Americans.

Oh yeah? What if you combine the two?

Further, Brad Plumer, you may want to put yourself in the position of someone doing a Google search before you announce what people are trying to find info on. If I search NSA, what happens? I get results that don't have anything to do with the PRISM story. Same goes for the word 'prism'. 'Snowden', on the other hand, will bring me exactly what I need, so that's what I'm going to search for. Or don't they teach you how to Google at the Post?

I'll stop there. Anybody with half a brain could think of another dozen mundane ways to call Brad Plumer stupid. Except, of course, for Blad Plumer, who is stupid.

Ohhh I get it. Very clever, Wikileaks!

Certain countries, I believe Switzerland is one, require for asylum some proof that your home country/maybe certain other countries can't protect you.

This was a show of proof. They knew somebody would take the bait.

A man after my own heart. Do programming textbooks/tutorials pain you as well?

BREAKING: In a surprise belated April Fool's joke, Google revives Reader, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt, "just to fuck with everyone who spent money developing a shitty alternative."