Yet more keen links one might want to share

[Gravdigr]

Man Tweets Positive Things That Happened in 2017

[xoxoxoBruce]

Even though it doesn’t seem like it, crime has decreased by 2.7% this year.

Yeah, but the crimes that did happen were yuge.

[xoxoxoBruce]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/free-we...n-dc-1.4457664

[xoxoxoBruce]

This NY Times article about a guy from New Jersey who is selling private jets from his store in London. Kind of long but I found it s fascinating look at dealing with the top 0.0001%.

The fact that the administration backed a tax-reform plan that enshrines an exemption for private-jet owners has only confirmed for its critics their sense that Trump’s party cares inordinately for the well-being of the 1 percent. This is not the case; this solicitousness is rather more accurately geared toward the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1 percent. There are only around 22,000 private jets in use worldwide, and even a majority of these are simple minivan-size craft and other puddle-jumpers, commonly flown by hobbyist pilots; they would strike most observers as less luxurious than alarming. The number of truly elite planes is just 7,000, give or take, in the divisions that the industry calls “super midsize,” “large-cabin” and “heavy” or “bizliner.” Often they are technically owned by governments, large corporations and offshore shell companies, though irrespective of paper tenancy almost all of them are ultimately operated for, and exchanged among, a globalized confraternity of individual potentates: a commingled class of plutocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs, financiers, technologists, real-estate and natural-resource barons and blue-chip celebrities. Imagine, if you will, in the unbreathably thin, cloudless, low-pressure air high above your head, our modern royalty aloft on their way to Davos, making enviable time.

[Gravdigr]

Confraternity.

Hey, I learned a word.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Confraternity = a group of people who should be in prison.

[Flint]

UT, thought of you,

Social media is giving us trypophobia

In recent years there have been calls for regulators to have access to algorithmic blackboxes to lift the lids on engines that act on us yet which we (the product) are prevented from seeing (and thus overseeing).

Rising use of AI certainly makes that case stronger, with the risk of prejudices scaling as fast and far as tech platforms if they get blindbaked into commercially privileged blackboxes.

No one would now doubt these platforms impact and shape the public discourse. But, arguably, in recent years, they’ve made the public street coarser, angrier, more outrage-prone, less constructive, as algorithms have rewarded trolls and provocateurs who best played their games.

So all it would take is for enough people — enough ‘users’ — to join the dots and realize what it is that’s been making them feel so uneasy and queasy online — and these products will wither on the vine, as others have before.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A lot of people are predicting self driving trucks will put a million or more drivers out of work. But some others are saying no, it will make jobs for more drivers.

This is interesting, but time will tell.

But a counter-narrative is emerging: No, skeptics in the industry, government, academia are saying, trucking jobs will not be endangered by autonomous driving, and in the brightest scenarios, as in new research by Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, there may be an increase in trucking jobs as more self-driving vehicles are introduced.

[Gravdigr]

Swearing/cursing in Quentin Tarantino movies

That seems like a lot of info on the bad words in his movies.

[Diaphone Jim]

Are ambulances trucks?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'd say technically yes, but practically no.

[glatt]

I understand they have special shocks for a smoother ride. Other than that, I would say trucks.

[Gravdigr]

I often wonder why it takes a thirty thousand pound truck to carry three ppl, a resuscitator, an O2 tank, and some band-aids.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You don't have to be into basketball to appreciate Steve francis' story.

Just think about this.…
At 18, I’m selling baggies on the corner in Takoma Park, getting robbed at gunpoint.
At 22, I’m getting drafted into the National Basketball Association, shaking David Stern’s hand.
Guess where the draft was held that year? Washington, D.C.
How the hell do you explain that?

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Military Industrial Powerpoint Complex.

A wide variety of powerpoints none of which reveal secrets but are interesting nonetheless. Things like...