Brazil, Canada and Australia have some of the lowest homophobia rates in the world

That above chart is from The Atlantic Cities; as you may know, the Sochi Winter Olympics begin this evening, and Russia hasn’t exactly been the friendliest of places for homosexuals leading up to the Games. If you look at the map, red… Continue Reading

What will Obama discuss in the State of the Union address tonight?

Logically you’d assume some of the following things need to come up: gay rights, privacy, marijuana, inequality, job creation, student loan debt, and ObamaCare. On the last one, he needs to showcase its recent successes while also taking credit for… Continue Reading

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Year Up, fresh off the 60 Minutes profile, could be a hugely positive thing — or maybe it’s just a calculated media play

Last night, 60 Minutes profiled Year Up, a non-profit organization that basically takes disadvantaged, poverty-stricken students and gives them an intense career boot camp experience in either IT or financial operations. Ultimately, many of the graduates of the program — right now… Continue Reading

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36 million tons of food waste goes to landfills every year (just in the U.S.) That’s about 30-40 percent of all food. Can we do something?

From PBS NewsHour: basically, about 30 percent of the food produced in the United States ends up as waste. 36 million tons goes to landfills, which is bad news for the environment — food waste ultimately converts to methane, which is… Continue Reading

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Lentils (superfood!) are the future, and you can either embrace it or form an orderly line of haters to the left

I’ve been cooking for about four years now, and I’ve done all variety of different types of crap (literally, some of it has tasted very bad). In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been messing around more and more with… Continue Reading

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Some nice inequality headlines to start your Tuesday: the 85 richest people in the world have as much as the 3.85 billion poorest people. Yea.

Inequality is a big topic all over the world — in America it might be one of the biggest, simply because it’s going to frame the next two major election cycles (’14 and ’16) and the whole Baby Boomers vs. Millenials… Continue Reading

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Yea, this is pretty much why a lot of America is obese and/or fat — but there’s hope

This is via Mother Jones by way of Amber Waves. This is Chart 1. It compares at-home spending patterns of U.S. households (i.e., at the supermarket) with USDA recommendations: Now, here’s Chart 2. It looks where Americans are eating — fast food, restaurants, at… Continue Reading

“I’m interested in changing the type of system that produces this type of man,” or why Martin Luther King ultimately deserves a day of recognition

Martin Luther King Jr. was responsible for a heck of a lot of good in this world. Here’s a timeline of his accomplishments, here’s another one, here’s his Wiki, and here are two takes on his importance. If you took… Continue Reading