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What Colin Kaepernick, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Russell Wilson do and do not show us about building NFL franchises

The AFC and NFC Conference Championships are set, which means a couple of different things — for one, most of America will be watching TV for a good portion of Sunday (more than 55 million people watched the 2010 and… Continue Reading

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In which things like Badgeville and gamification destroy the office world

There’s a broad idea called ‘gamification’ — essentially, turning something fairly tangible (education, business) into a game that can be tracked and lead to rewards. It’s obviously a controversial approach and the data on it is a little bit not all… Continue Reading

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Aereo vs. ABC to the Supreme Court can change everything about how we watch TV — and could put the NFL on cable, finally

Let’s say you’re tired of how cable companies are straight-up gouging you (I was), so you cut the cord (I did). What are your options for watching the shows you still love? You can go with a combo of Netflix… Continue Reading

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Thomas Garrett, a legislator in Virginia, seems hell-bent on criminalizing oral sex between teenagers

Thomas Garrett is a State Senator in Virginia; he covers District 22, which is kind of an odd middle section of the state in between Richmond and Roanoke. He’s a Republican and fairly conservative; here’s a list of some of… Continue Reading

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Political polarization explained via Gallup: the Democratic Party in America has become more liberal over time

One of the biggest things we’ve been hearing about in American politics for the past 18-24 months is the increasing polarization and partisan breakdown of how things function. It all seems pretty logical, but now, via a new Gallup study… Continue Reading

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What exactly is happening with the contaminated water situation in West Virginia right now?

You can find pretty good summaries all over the Internet (including here, here, and here), but the basic situation is this: a company called Freedom Industries — which actually works with water treatment chemicals — spilled 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or… Continue Reading

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Todd from Breaking Bad (i.e. Jesse Plemons) as a young Luke Skywalker in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars movie? Sure.

Depending on your particular streaming video obsession, you know Jesse Plemons as either Landry from Friday Night Lights or Todd from Breaking Bad. I watched both shows, although I was a lot more into Breaking Bad all told, and I think Plemons has one… Continue Reading

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Did Comcast partner with Khan Academy just to get new, low-income customers — and then drop the ball? (Perhaps.)

By now, you’ve probably heard of Khan Academy — hell, it got a 14-minute profile on 60 Minutes a while back (embedded above). It’s an online education community that strives to create a new model for how people are educated around the… Continue Reading