From the Green Book to Facebook, how black people still need to outwit racists in rural America
A historical travel guide once listed safe pit stops for black motorists. When a family sought similar advice last year, they were deluged with replies
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-04-23T05:35:31+0000
Opinion | The Democrats’ Gentrification Problem
Allies on Election Day, the two wings of the Democratic Party are growing further estranged in other aspects of their lives.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-04-23T04:32:06+0000
How the Elderly Lose Their Rights
Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.
Hasnain says:
This article was very depressing and made me lose some faith in humanity.
I didn't know whether to share the quote about how one of the folks managed to get a courtroom shutdown, but this took precedence:
"Parks and other private guardians appeared to gravitate toward patients who had considerable assets. O’Malley described a 2010 case in which Parks, after receiving a tip from a social worker, began “cold-calling” rehabilitation centers, searching for a seventy-nine-year-old woman, Patricia Smoak, who had nearly seven hundred thousand dollars and no children. Parks finally found her, but Smoak’s physician wouldn’t sign a certificate of incapacity. “The doctor is not playing ball,” Parks wrote to her lawyer. She quickly found a different doctor to sign the certificate, and Norheim approved the guardianship. (Both Parks and Norheim declined to speak with me.)"
Posted on 2018-04-23T00:34:09+0000
U.S. Stood By as Indonesia Killed a Half-Million People, Papers Show
The killings in 1965-66 played to anti-Communist attitudes, and U.S. diplomats mostly stayed silent while tallying the deaths, documents show.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-04-23T00:07:43+0000
Raqqa’s dirty secret
The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters – including foreign militants - and their families escape from Raqqa in Syria. In exchange for freeing hostages, a convoy which stretched for miles, was able to leave the city freely - under the gaze of the US and UK-l...
Hasnain says:
"Has the pact, which stood as Raqqa’s dirty secret, unleashed a threat to the outside world - one that has enabled militants to spread far and wide across Syria and beyond?
Great pains were taken to hide it from the world. But the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal."
Posted on 2018-04-22T23:36:02+0000
Blind since birth, writing code at Amazon since 2013
Michael Forzano said he has a good “mental map of the structure of the code,” which allows him to help colleagues and provide unique feedback to his team.
In 1973, I invented a ‘girly drink’ called Baileys
We got £3,000 all-in for the creation of the world’s most successful cream liqueur
Hasnain says:
"People nowadays often ask me how much money we get per bottle sold. My answer is that we were paid about £3,000 all-in for the development – though the company did keep employing me for another 30 years."
Posted on 2018-04-22T03:14:41+0000
Algorithmic Arrangements
Tom Quisel, former CTO of OkCupid, discusses matching algorithms, designing for an inclusive user experiences, and the ethics of user experiments.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-04-22T00:51:12+0000
The Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2018-04-21T17:18:16+0000
The Great Pot Monopoly Mystery
Some very powerful people are trying to corner the market on legal weed. Who are they? And can they be stopped?
Hasnain says:
"Pot is an industry worth over $40 billion, which makes it the second-most-valuable crop in the U.S. after corn. And even though weed is still federally forbidden, it sounded like whoever was behind BioTech Institute had spent the past several years surreptitiously maneuvering to grab every marijuana farmer, vendor, and scientist in the country by the balls, so that once the drug became legal, all they’d have to do to collect payment is squeeze."
Posted on 2018-04-21T17:06:49+0000