Good Reads

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6022/5951190233_00dacf1fa2.jpg
image courtesy Ohio Redevelopment Projects - ODSA (Flickr)

1. Youngstown, U.S.A.

The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.

For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
[...]
“Youngstown’s story is America’s story, because it shows that when jobs go away, the cultural cohesion of a place is destroyed,” says John Russo, a professor of labor studies at Youngstown State University. “The cultural breakdown matters even more than the economic breakdown.”
[...]
But even leaving aside questions of how to distribute that wealth, the widespread disappearance of work would usher in a social transformation unlike any we’ve seen. If John Russo is right, then saving work is more important than saving any particular job. Industriousness has served as America’s unofficial religion since its founding. The sanctity and preeminence of work lie at the heart of the country’s politics, economics, and social interactions. What might happen if work goes away?​

- read the full article A World Without Work (from The Atlantic)​

The huge problem we'll face soon is no work for the many Americans with low intelligence and few skills. A full 16% of Americans have less than average intelligence. Automated productivity is wonderful for corporation shareholders but kills low skill jobs. It wont be long before robots do all the call-center sales solicitations.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm reading FLAGS IN THE DUST by William Faulkner. Its the original unabridged SARTORIS, with 40K more words. Publishers rejected it because its many novels in one. The writing is wonderful but things come and go quickly.

 

[Laurel]

A short game sheds light on government policy, corporate America and why no one likes to be wrong. Here’s how it works: We’ve chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey — and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is.

We’ll start by telling you that the sequence 2, 4, 8 obeys the rule.

Now it’s your turn. Enter a number sequence in the boxes below, and we’ll tell you whether it satisfies the rule or not. You can test as many sequences as you want.

- read the full article A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving (from the New York Times)

That is an extremely cool way to illustrate a very important point.

 

[Sean]

A full 16% of Americans have less than average intelligence.

Um...that's a really fucking good number. In anything approaching a normal distribution, 49% or so would be below average.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

That is an extremely cool way to illustrate a very important point.

That's exactly what I thought. And I fell right into the trap.

 

[Conager]

That's exactly what I thought. And I fell right into the trap.

Me too.

 

[Queersetti]

A full 16% of Americans have less than average intelligence..

Please tell me you do this shit on purpose.

 

[Balladeer08]

Um...that's a really fucking good number. In anything approaching a normal distribution, 49% or so would be below average.

That's what I was thinking.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

MENTAL WELLNESS/ILLNESS APPS

These are all iPhone apps. I have no idea which are available on other phones.

Give some comfort and get some comfort..
- comfort spot

Meditation is so healthy for you. No matter who you are. I can’t sleep unless there’s a guided meditation playing.
- GPS4Soul
- Headspace
- Calm
- Relax & Rest
- Take a Break
- Anxiety Free
- Breathe2Relax
- Relax Lite
- Smiling Mind
- The Quiet Place

Noise machines for those nights that you can’t hear anything but your mind..
- Sleep Pillow
- Relax Melodies

Journaling apps for on the go feelings that won’t leave you alone
- Mood Journal
- GratitudeDiary
- TherapyBuddy
- Everyday

PTSD patients
- Reach Out
- PTSD Coach

Mood Trackers that actually work and don’t suck like most
- Optimism
- Rise Up

For when you’re so anxious you can’t make eye contact with anyone. (trust me I get it.)
- MindShift
- Thisissand

When suicidal thoughts are strong, but you can’t seem to tell anyone for find any help.
- ReliefLink
- Hello Cruel World
- Ask

Positive affirmations/reminders you’re amazing
- Daily Recovery
- Inspirations
- Today’s Step
- Affirmations
- Flatter Me!

http://recoverywarriorx.tumblr.com/post/90481616356/mental-illness-apps-one-reblog-could-help-or-even

 

[Balladeer08]

You missed "The Daily Puppy".

 

[Laurel]

A full 16% of Americans have less than average intelligence..

Please tell me you do this shit on purpose.

If you two had a show together, I'd watch every episode, every season. And I hate TV.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.fusedjaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/seahorses-hippocampus-breviceps.jpg

“Unlike most other fish, they [seahorses] are monogamous and mate for life.” – National Geographic

It’s a theme repeated over and over again in the media and in popular culture. The idea that seahorses are monogamous and mate for life is one that excites the imagination and has helped them gain recognition and notoriety as the most romantic of fish. But is it true?
[...]
The seahorse true love meme seems to go back to a study done by Amanda Vincent and Laila Sadler about pair bonding in the seahorse Hippocampus whitei in November 1991 to April 1992. Their results were published in the paper “Faithful pair bonds in wild seahorses, Hippocampus whitei” in 1995[1]. In that, they detailed their findings where the 98 seahorses they studied in the wild were part of monogamous pairs that stayed faithful to one another even if there were opportunities for mate switching. The only time new mate were found was if one disappeared, which only happened in a very small number of cases.
[...]
There was a problem with this; the study that showed this was specific to one species of seahorse only, and covered a limited time frame. The study speculated that pairs may persist outside of the breeding season, but it was not actually observed. And while the study ran through most of the breeding season of H. whitei, it missed the beginning of the season so initial pairing was not observed.

The conclusion that they’d only have one mate and would not find another if one died came about on its own, most likely due to anthropomorphizing the ideals of this monogamous fish. But that actually ran contrary to the findings of the study. What it actually showed is that widowed seahorses pair up with the next available mate as soon as they can. However, this one fact continually escaped mention both from conservation group’s press releases and the media in general.​

- read the full article What’s Love Got to Do With It? The Truth About Seahorse Monogamy (from Fusedjaw)​

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Please tell me you do this shit on purpose.

Its true, it called THE NORMAL DISTRIBUTION.

2/3rds fall within one standard deviation of the mean, and almost 1/3 fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean, the other 2% are idiots and Obama/Hillary. But you majored in Gay FARTS (fine arts), so you wouldn't know any stats stuff.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://38.media.tumblr.com/fe4ddc9b29dda1cbd2bc1660ce22ca10/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo1_500.gif

http://38.media.tumblr.com/413d16df1292555529ef168e23c764cf/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo2_500.gif

http://33.media.tumblr.com/b489e3f520b6ebdeaefaf04c16acbc31/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo3_500.gif

http://33.media.tumblr.com/81f7c43c9f3f3c8e7b2de65ffad1e96f/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo4_500.gif

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http://33.media.tumblr.com/e0266bddec9138667e73f81019727859/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo7_500.gif

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http://38.media.tumblr.com/88a847fd5191246aef10fdb1e7608fb7/tumblr_nr4mwpGksE1r83d7lo10_500.gif

Watch: Her bravery is utterly astounding — and the advice she offers to all victims of domestic violence is beyond necessary.

http://mic.com/articles/121861/youtube-video-reminds-us-not-to-ignore-domestic-violence?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/OHare-Honore-de-Balzac-Coffee-320-331-06162514.jpg

The nineteenth-century French writer Honoré de Balzac supposedly consumed fifty cups of coffee per day. Based on that information, and facts I vaguely remember from his Wikipedia page, here are what his thoughts probably were following each cup.

No. 1: Ah! What a great way to start my day, by drinking a cup of delicious hot coffee.

No. 2: Coffee two, down the ol’ hatch and into my stomach!

No. 3: I love writing, but I also love drinking fifty cups of coffee every single day.

No. 4: Rats! Put too much cream in that one. Luckily I have forty-five opportunities to right this wrong.

No. 5: Too much cream again. I will learn from this.

No. 6: Yikes. This time I didn’t add enough cream.

No. 7: Nailed the cream ratio, baby!

No. 8: I should have written down the ratio.

No. 9: “The more a man judges, the less he loves”—that’s from my 1829 work “The Physiology of Marriage.” I wrote it about coffee, and I should have remembered it when I was complaining about the cream.

No. 10: Well, that’s lucky cup No. 10! Time to get out of bed, and do what I do best: writing stories and tales.

No. 11: Maybe just one more cup before I get out of bed. Ha, ha.

No. 12: Maybe just one more cup before I get out of bed. Ha, ha.​

- read the full article What I Assume Honoré de Balzac Thought After Drinking Each of His Fifty Daily Cups Of Coffee (from The New Yorker)​

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London
by Matthew Beaumont


Before the age of the gas lamp, the city at night was a different place, home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctiambulators. In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beautmont shines a light on the dark perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers from Shakespeare, the ecstatic strolls of William Blake, the feverish urges of opium addict De Quincey as well as the master night walker, Charles Dickens.

"The city’s streets around Cheapside, London’s principal marketplace, were dark. This was the time of “shutting-in,” when the more diligent and prosperous householders, who had lit lanterns outside their houses at dusk, extinguished the tallow candles that guttered in these slitted metal cylinders. Even thoroughfares like Cheapside itself were no more than dimly lit by candle lanterns left burning outside the more prominent houses to provide a point of navigation. Most respectable citizens were already in the beds they shared with their spouses or even servants, their rooms still half-lit by the embers from the fireplace."

Published March 24th 2015 by Verso (first published March 1st 2015)


gsgs comment- Oh, yes, I would read this! /end gsgs comment

 

[bg23]

https://thsppl.com/i-racist-538512462265

I, Racist
John Metta

A couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about the one topic that I think about every single day.

Then, a terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went to, in a city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that despite any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.

You see, I don’t talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I’ll tell a story:

It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a single sentence, said by my Black sister:

“The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”
There was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about. It has become the single most important aspect of my aunt’s relationship with my Black family. She is still hurt by the suggestion that people in New York, that she, a northerner, a liberal, a good person who has Black family members, is a racist.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Um...that's a really fucking good number. In anything approaching a normal distribution, 49% or so would be below average.

If you ever taken a statistics course youd know AVERAGE and BELOW AVERAGE don't reference the same construct. Your meaning of average is what we call the MEAN. We say the average is the distribution of IQ scores one standard deviation above and below the mean. The whole distribution is called average intelligence.

Stay outta discussions where you don't possess the regulation equipment.

 

[Laurel]

More than five decades after Harper Lee published her first—and, so far, only—novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s publisher has announced that she plans to release a new one. The book, currently titled Go Set a Watchman, will be published July 14. … Scout, the little girl at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird, returns home two decades later as an adult. —NPR​

“The Greater Gatsby”

After Gatsby’s death, Nick Carraway is pretty bent out of shape. In an effort to cope, he starts wearing Gatsby’s old clothes. Then he starts talking like him. Soon, he starts introducing himself as Jay Gatsby and throwing lots of dope-ass parties. He ends up getting shot in the head for calling someone’s girlfriend “basic.” But the party is still pretty good.

“The Old Man and the Motorboat”

Santiago is back and better than ever in this follow-up to “The Old Man and the Sea.” After the whole “marlin thing” in the first book, Santiago realizes that seventy is the new thirty, buys a motorboat (to catch faster fish), and gets a hot girlfriend (to catch sexier fish). He goes out on a fishing trip with a cooler of Coronas and an eighteen-year-old babe named Cayenne and doesn’t come back for a week. Who knows if they catch any fish?

“Moby Dick 2: A Whale’s Tale”

Everything you liked about the first book, but more of it. More Moby. More Dick. No Ahab. (He’s still dead.) This book is seven thousand pages.​

- read the full article Inspired by Harper Lee, Other Literary Sequels (from The New Yorker)​

 

[Colonel Hogan]

If you ever taken a statistics course youd know AVERAGE and BELOW AVERAGE don't reference the same construct. Your meaning of average is what we call the MEAN. We say the average is the distribution of IQ scores one standard deviation above and below the mean. The whole distribution is called average intelligence.

Stay outta discussions where you don't possess the regulation equipment.

Since most people haven't taken a statistics course, I doubt that they know that AVERAGE and BELOW AVERAGE don't reference the same construct. I would bet that if you polled them, their definition of "average" would likely reflect the technical definition of the "MEAN."

So, while you are correct, it would seem that your use of the word would be misleading to most people, had you not taken advantage of the opportunity for clarification.

That just seems to me worthy of consideration.

 

[Aglaopheme]

A short game sheds light on government policy, corporate America and why no one likes to be wrong. Here’s how it works: We’ve chosen a rule that some sequences of three numbers obey — and some do not. Your job is to guess what the rule is.

We’ll start by telling you that the sequence 2, 4, 8 obeys the rule.

Now it’s your turn. Enter a number sequence in the boxes below, and we’ll tell you whether it satisfies the rule or not. You can test as many sequences as you want.

- read the full article A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving (from the New York Times)

Not sure why, but I started off entering 5 6 4

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Since most people haven't taken a statistics course, I doubt that they know that AVERAGE and BELOW AVERAGE don't reference the same construct. I would bet that if you polled them, their definition of "average" would likely reflect the technical definition of the "MEAN."

So, while you are correct, it would seem that your use of the word would be misleading to most people, had you not taken advantage of the opportunity for clarification.

That just seems to me worthy of consideration.

In other words it depends on what the meaning of IS, is. John Roberts thinks like you. A state exchange is a State exchange or vice versa.

Do you get hemorrhoids if anyone says SHIT!

 

[Laurel]

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2687/4413581935_28bfc98c45.jpg
image courtesy Gabor Dvornik (Flickr)

The man, called only “WO” by his physicians, woke up on the morning of March 14, 2005, at his military post in Germany. He headed to the gym, where he played a 45-minute round of volleyball, then returned to his office to answer a backlog of e-mails. In the afternoon he went to his dentist for a routine root canal treatment. He clambered into the reclining chair, donned a pair of tinted glasses, felt his mouth go numb as the dentist inserted local anesthetic.

Every day since, no matter what the actual date happens to be, WO wakes up thinking it’s the morning of March 14, 2005, believing he is still in Germany and that this is the day of his dentist appointment. His life is something of a “Groundhog Day” in reverse — while the rest of the world moves on, WO is the only person who isn’t aware of time passing. Starting from that moment in the dentist’s chair a decade ago, he hasn’t been able to remember almost anything for longer than 90 minutes. Then he forgets it, a switch flips, and he’s back to March 14, 2005, once more.​

- read the full article A baffling medical puzzle: How a man’s trip to the dentist cost him the ability to form new memories (from The Washington Post)​

 

[Jessie_Pinkman]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/13/nyregion/OCEANS-SHIP-01/OCEANS-SHIP-01-articleLarge.jpg

The Outlaw Ocean: Stowaways and Crimes Aboard a Scofflaw Ship

Murders regularly occur offshore — thousands of seafarers, fishermen or sea migrants die under suspicious circumstances annually, maritime officials say — but culprits are rarely held accountable.

No one is required to report violent crimes committed in international waters.

Through debt or coercion, tens of thousands of workers, many of them children, are enslaved on boats every year, with only occasional interventions.

On average, a large ship sinks every four days and between 2,000 and 6,000 seamen die annually.

The Dona Liberta has been among the most persistent of scofflaws, offering a case study of misconduct at sea, according to an examination of shipping, insurance and port records, and dozens of interviews with law enforcement, maritime experts and former company associates.

The vessel not only cast off stowaways — Jocktan Francis Kobelo, the second man ordered onto the raft, died from the 2011 ordeal — but has also been accused of a long list of other offenses over the past decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-ship.html

 

[Laurel]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/13/nyregion/OCEANS-SHIP-01/OCEANS-SHIP-01-articleLarge.jpg

The Outlaw Ocean: Stowaways and Crimes Aboard a Scofflaw Ship

Murders regularly occur offshore — thousands of seafarers, fishermen or sea migrants die under suspicious circumstances annually, maritime officials say — but culprits are rarely held accountable.

No one is required to report violent crimes committed in international waters.

Through debt or coercion, tens of thousands of workers, many of them children, are enslaved on boats every year, with only occasional interventions.

On average, a large ship sinks every four days and between 2,000 and 6,000 seamen die annually.

The Dona Liberta has been among the most persistent of scofflaws, offering a case study of misconduct at sea, according to an examination of shipping, insurance and port records, and dozens of interviews with law enforcement, maritime experts and former company associates.

The vessel not only cast off stowaways — Jocktan Francis Kobelo, the second man ordered onto the raft, died from the 2011 ordeal — but has also been accused of a long list of other offenses over the past decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-ship.html

I was going to post this because it is an AWESOME article. You beat me to it!