Tag: government
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Preventing Harry Tuttle
My last post, Democracy’s Soft Underbelly warned how algorithms for content distribution and advertising have been weaponized to alter public opinion. The most disturbing aspect of the affair is there is no public evidence of the ad campaigns so there is literally nothing to talk about. When there is no public record of what ad…
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Political Theatre
A detailed breakdown of how the Senate health care vote went down in the dead of the evening. John McCain’s mic-drop moment when he went against his party and voted against repealing legislation enacted by his opponent in the 2008 presidential campaign. Buzzfeed has an annotated blow-by-blow of the historic moment, complete with animated GIFs,…
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Is Comcast the new AT&T?
We all know this stuff goes on. Lobbyist ghost writes letters for elected officials or even drafting legal amendments to try and turn their way towards their clients. But it’s not pretty when you see it in broad daylight like this. The latest exhibit is from Comcast who is using their influence to fabricate support for their…
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A tale of two incentives
Meanwhile, the bullet train has sucked the country’s workforce into Tokyo, rendering an increasingly huge part of the country little more than a bedroom community for the capital. One reason for this is a quirk of Japan’s famously paternalistic corporations: namely, employers pay their workers’ commuting costs. Tax authorities don’t consider it income if it’s…
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Obama Up, Romney Down
The New York Times’ wonky FiveThirtyEight blog posted this rather dramatic graph showing the poll numbers of Obama and Romney over the past few weeks. What used to be a 1-2 point difference is now a 5-6 point gulf with the lines getting further, not closer, together.
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SOPA in Plain English
This post is for me to point folks to who are asking about why all those black “Stop SOPA” banners are popping up all over the internet. In a way, editing the DNS infrastructure of the internet in order to disappear sites suspected of pirating is the same as people who wash out their kid’s…