Category: Control
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The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial Crisis | VICE United Kingdom
The whole sorry thing is both depressing and infuriating… When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn’t believe it. The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top…
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Freelance Nation: How to Become a Part-Time Worker Without Really Trying | The Nation
This originally appeared as a Tomgram over at Tomdispatch and was picked up by the Nation… …what a weird economic downturn and recovery this has been. From the end of an “average” American recession, it ordinarily takes slightly less than a year to reach or surpass the previous employment peak. …
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the escape from reality
Originally posted on coromandal: Here is the economist John K. Galbraith making two more excellent points about the popularity and insanity of speculation. He describes two reasons why after a bubble bursts — as it did in a spectacular fashion that echoed around the world in 2008 — the real reasons…
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dignity, trust, failure
Originally posted on coromandal: Acumen Fund’s observations about poverty alleviation at their 10 year anniversary. What does not help: money and markets as the only measure, parachuting solutions remotely, depersonalized analytic approach. What does work: dignity, local leadership, government, patience and longsuffering. From Design Observer: 1. Dignity is more important…
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Ripping Off of Young America: The College Loan Scandal
Good investigative piece from Matt Taibbi and well worth your time. If you are not sure, just read these few paragraphs and decide if you can afford to not read the whole article. …How is this happening? It’s complicated. But throw off the mystery and what you’ll uncover is a…
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Restore Honor and Pardon Edward Snowden | The Nation
…Julian Assange, no stranger to unrequited integrity, nailed it. “Today, the president of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program,” the WikiLeaks founder said in a statement posted Saturday, the day after Obama’s remarks. While boasting, “I called…
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Generation X gets really old: How do slackers have a midlife crisis? | Salon.com
…There is a reason, says historian and generational expert Neil Howe, why members of Generation X have been cast as perpetual adolescents. Their parents – “the Silent Generation” – originated the stereotypical midlife breakdown, and they came of age, and fell apart, in a very different world. Generally stable and…
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Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer | The New Yorker
Author Gary Shteyngart beta tests Google Glass… On February 23, 2013, I entered a Twitter contest run by Google to pick the first batch of Glass Explorers with the following tweet: “#ifihadglass I could dream up new ideas for the TV adaptation of my novel Super Sad True Love Story.” This…
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Concentrating on U.S. Prisons
Ted Asregadoo speaks with Truthout Executive Director, Maya Schenwar, about her current book project on prisons in the United States, solitary confinement, the nature of time, and why the humane treatment of prisoners is integral to the preservation of human rights via Truthout Interviews featuring Maya Schenwar – YouTube. Related…
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Corporate sell-outs exploit a secret new gimmick – Salon.com
With more and more operations of the executive and judiciary branches happening behind closed doors and out of public view, the legislative branch was bound to join Washington’s secrecy-fest at some point. That point apparently is now. As The Hill reports, the U.S. Senate’s “top tax writers have promised their…
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Searching for Integrity: The Politics of Mindfulness in the Digital Economy – Nomos Journal
Fascinating article by a friend of my dear brother, Carl S. With the proliferation of training courses espousing the benefits of yoga and meditation, critics have coined the term “McMindfulness” to describe a cottage industry whose profit motives appear to contradict the ethical foundations of the practices it appropriates. From…
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Whatever You Do, You MUST Mask the Suffering of the White Poor
Poverty has become a suburban phenomenon. That should not be a great surprise if you have been paying attention over the last forty years. But there is the rub: most are not paying attention. Even as professionals become poorer and poorer, not knowing where to turn even when they have…
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“You look like a cocaine dealer” | YouTube
Bill O’Reilly to Prof. Marc Lamont Hill… egads. At least Dr. Hill gets O’Reilly to admit to being a coke head. 🙂 Related articles The Sad Reality of White-on-White Violence (keithwaynebrown.com) Racial Profiling, Racial Stereotypes, and the Irrationality Of White Supremacy #GeorgeZimmerman (politicaljesus.com) Chris Hayes mocks Bill O’Reilly with satirical tirade…
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What’s Wrong With Business And The Economy | Business Insider
This sort of thinking is the very definition of what Martin Heidegger means by treating human beings or any kind of natural being as a “standing reserve.” …American corporations, which are richer and more profitable than they have ever been in history, have become so obsessed with “maximizing short-term profits”…
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Neuromorphics: Engineering the Shape of Thinking
ANALOGIES change. Once, it was fashionable to describe the brain as being like the hydraulic systems employed to create pleasing fountains for 17th-century aristocrats’ gardens. As technology moved on, first the telegraph network and then the telephone exchange became the metaphor of choice. Now it is the turn of the…
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Summer To Do List: Tank The Economy | Esquire
As I have noted again and again, op/eds and reporting at Esquire are so far beyond the majority of what is found at major networks and a good portion of newspapers. What are you doing for the rest of the summer? If only your plans were as solid as House Majority…
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The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish – Rebecca J. Rosen – The Atlantic
…Last year I wrote about some very interesting research being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At the time, his results were only preliminary, but they were nevertheless startling: There were as many books…
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Libertarian Populism Isn’t Populist | Business Insider
…a slash-the-federal-entitlement-state view also just isn’t populist. Federal entitlements protect the masses against problems like unemployment, retirement insecurity, and poverty. Seeking to dismantle them is the opposite of defending mass interests against elites. You can frame your desire to shrink these programs in terms of a desire to cut relatively…
CALL ME MAGGIE 