Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)
— Banks’ Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills - NYTimes.com
Source: The New York Times
It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them.
Source: scottberkun.com
That is, it doesn’t matter to Google or to Android that Android OEMs are mostly much less profitable than Apple, so long as good Android phones keep getting brought to market (and they do). And the unprofitability of most Android OEMs tells us little or nothing about how much it matters to Apple that there are now a lot more Androids than iPhones out there. […] To put this another way, looking at ‘smartphone share’ or ‘profit share’ or ‘platform share’ all tell you something about the industry, but all three metrics mislead you if you try to treat them as a way to see who’s ‘winning’, because ‘winning’ means different things for Apple, Samsung or Google.
Source: ben-evans.com
Tattooing had gotten sucked up by reality shows and mall culture, and I wanted to fall back in love with a folk art,” […] “But in prison,” he says, “tattooing has always had a certain gravity to it because you have a population of people who’ve all been given an orange suit and a number, and been dehumanized as much as possible. Tattooing there has a greater purpose. It’s a connection to the outside and a reminder of love, so that [the inmates] feel less like animals in a cage.
Source: theaesthete.com
After the Apple II went on sale, the company began an aggressive trade-in program, offering Apple II’s and sometimes cash incentives in exchange for Apple-1’s
Source: The New York Times
The least successful athletes, those who have never won any victories, suddenly call themselves trainers and start shouting in harsh and barbarous tones, just like pigs” (Galen Thrasybulus 5.894)
— delanceyplace.com 5/24/13 - the olympics — sports in ancient times
Source: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
In 2010 the federal government opened investigations of 958 murder suspects. In the same year 31 people were charged with violating chapter 18, section 1958 of the U.S. code, “Use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.” Using these two figures we get a rough murder-for-hire rate of 3.2 percent — which, as we’ll see, is in the ballpark for contract hits reported elsewhere in the world.
The total number of U.S. murders in 2010 was 12,996. If we assume 3.2 percent of these crimes were committed on a commercial basis, we get 416 contract hits.
— The Straight Dope: How many people get hit each year by contract killers?
Source: straightdope.com
SIGGRAPH 2013 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer (by ACMSIGGRAPH)
Source: youtube.com
There’s a lot of technology involved, all to make you feel like you’re a regular everywhere you dine.
Source: whitetruffle.com
Not long after I took refuge from the academy to work in the policy centers of Washington, I visited one of D.C.’s landmark bookstores, Politics and Prose—a literary venue known, as its name suggests, for furnishing customers with the conceit that they’re browsing and shopping in a vaguely subversive fashion. But as I walked up to join the store’s cultivated and edgy communitas, I committed a terrible error: I asked a clerk where I might find the works of the Marquis de Sade. My request made its way up through an increasingly consternated group of shop assistants; I had to repeat it several times before they fully registered what I was asking for. At that point, I was told to leave the store immediately. The scene concluded on a perfect grace note when I was sternly conducted to the store’s exit by a female employee who was obviously French. […] Here, in the self-regarding intellectual center of a city justly famed for the free play of unleashed personal ambition and the basest kinds of instrumental manipulation of others, Sade was a four-letter word.
Source: thebaffler.com
