Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Link”
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"The Everything Town In The Middle Of Nowhere"
How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana, became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain
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The Atlantic: I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled Into International Phone Fraud
People are nothing if not creative at making money.
“I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled Into International Phone Fraud”
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The Intercept: NYU Accidentally Exposed Military Code-breaking Computer Project to Entire Internet
A fascinating read about data leaks and what the NSA is working on to crack modern encryption:
From The Intercept: “NYU Accidentally Exposed Military Code-breaking Computer Project to Entire Internet”
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The Boston Globe: George Conway is the man at the center of everything
From The Boston Globe, how we got Kellyanne Conway: “George Conway is the man at the center of everything”
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Quartz: The psychological importance of wasting time
https://qz.com/970924/the-psychological-importance-of-wasting-time/
There will always be an endless list of chores to complete and work to do, and a culture of relentless productivity tells us to get to it right away and feel terribly guilty about any time wasted. But the truth is, a life spent dutifully responding to emails is a dull one indeed. And “wasted” time is, in fact, highly fulfilling and necessary.
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Recipe fun care of a neural network
Overall, the results are rather hilarious: http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/tagged/recipes. They’re improving, too!
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Washingtonian: The Strange, Spectacular Con of Bobby Charles Thompson
Donors all over America opened their wallets for his United States Navy Veterans Association. Politicians all over Washington posed for grip-and-grins with him. But not only was he not a legitimate fundraiser for military families—he wasn’t even Bobby Charles Thompson. A look inside the hunt to catch one of the country’s biggest con men.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/03/19/the-strange-spectacular-con-of-bobby-charles-thompson/
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The Globe and Mail: The graffiti kids: How an act of teenage rebellion sparked the Syrian war
It started as simple teenage rebellion but ended up tearing Syria apart, setting in motion events that continue to rock the Middle East — and the world. The boys behind the graffiti would become unlikely revolutionaries and reluctant refugees. Not all of them would survive the upheaval they helped unleash.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-graffiti-kids-who-sparked-the-syrian-war/article33123646/
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Bloomberg: "Bro, I’m Going Rogue": The Wall Street Informant Who Double-Crossed the FBI
He considered becoming a police officer after graduating from high school, but instead took a job as a syrup quality-control inspector at a Coca-Cola plant.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/-bro-i-m-going-rogue-the-wall-street-informant-who-double-crossed-the-fbi
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The New Yorker: When Things Go Missing
Data from one insurance-company survey suggest that the average person misplaces up to nine objects a day, which means that, by the time we turn sixty, we will have lost up to two hundred thousand things. […] Granted, you’ll get many of those items back, but you’ll never get back the time you wasted looking for them. In the course of your life, you’ll spend roughly six solid months looking for missing objects….
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Forbes: Cartapping: How Feds Have Spied On Connected Cars For 15 Years
Forbes published an interesting review of the government’s use of in-car technology in criminal investigations. It’s a nice reminder that that disabled satellite radio or navigation service might not be as inactive as one thought.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/01/15/police-spying-on-car-conversations-location-siriusxm-gm-chevrolet-toyota-privacy/#650201b649b5
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Yes, Ventura's getting more breweries!
When I moved to Ventura in 2014, I recall two or three breweries in the city. The last two years changed that, and 2017 promises more. Just another reason I love living here.
http://www.vcstar.com/story/life/columnists/lisa-mckinnon/2016/12/23/cafe-society-ventura-county-all-pok-2016/95614862/
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RCMP: Impaired driver nabbed by excavator
A Canadian drunk driver confronted an excavator operator, and the operator won:
In conversing with the driver, the operator observed signs of intoxication and as a result ‘prevented’ the driver from fleeing with the ‘bucket’ on the excavator…
The photo that accompanies the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s press release is spectacular. 😂
http://www.rcmp.gc.ca/en/news/2016/22/q
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VICE: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free
VICE featured a story yesterday about two guys who bought a few of those reflective vests that construction and maintenance workers wear, and used them to get into random places they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed. I’m genuinely impressed with how effective the vests were.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/turns-out-wearing-a-hi-vis-vest-gets-you-into-everything-for-free
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The Guardian: Everyone thinks there are more Muslims in their countries than there actually are
The Guardian reviewed a new study that shows that those in Western countries have no idea what percentage of their populations are Muslim. In every country examined, the population’s estimates were many times higher than reality.
For example, respondents assumed that one in six individuals living in the US is Muslim, while in reality, it’s closer to one in 100.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/datablog/2016/dec/13/europeans-massively-overestimate-muslim-population-poll-shows
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NPR: Once The Stuff Of Jazz Legend, 1930s Recordings Are Finally Out
In 1938, Ella Fitzgerald sang her first big hit, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” for a national audience on CBS Radio. Now, a global audience has access to this performance again — thanks to the discovery and restoration of the Savory Collection, a legendary private trove of nearly 1,000 recordings that haven’t been heard by the general public since the 1930s. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired them in 2010, and today they’re beginning to make their way to a new generation of jazz fans.
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Ars Technica: A three-second laser strike cost Barry Bowser everything
Cyrus Farivar writes in Ars Technica about a California man’s misadventure with a laser pointer, and the devastating consequences of aiming it at an aircraft.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/a-three-second-laser-strike-cost-barry-bowser-everything/
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Fortune: US Supreme Court may stop patent trolls from venue shopping
As reported last week by Fortune, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging where patent lawsuits are filed. As has been widely reported, notably by NPR’s This American Life, the individuals behind malicious patent lawsuits have found favorable venues, such as the Eastern District of Texas, in which to file their suits, even though it’s rare for the suit or those involved to have any connection to the area.
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Vox: America now has 1.2 billion pounds of excess cheese — and nowhere to put it
Better settle in for a lengthy cheese-eating session. According to a story from Vox, the amount of excess cheese in storage works out to 3 pounds per person in America, on top of the 36 pounds the typical American already consumes in a year.
http://www.vox.com/2016/10/13/13268980/cheese-glut-united-states