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Well, this is depressing: more people die on Christmas then at any other time of the year

If you study the National Death Index — which is morbid, but some people do it for a living, like this guy — you would learn that Christmas, the day after Christmas and New Year’s Day are some of the… Continue Reading

Mikhail Kalashnikov, creator of AK-47, dies; ironically, the greatest asset of the weapon might be longevity

Truth: the gun has played an incredibly important role in history. Truth: the AK-47 is, essentially, the most popular small arms weapon in world history. And a third truth: Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of said gun, passed away recently at… Continue Reading

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Human Resources: Sometimes excellent, sometimes a train wreck, often in the middle

The top-rated article on HBR’s blog right now is called “How Netflix Reinvented HR.” It talks broadly about the “Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility” PowerPoint created by Reed Hastings and Patty McCord (who wrote the HBR article), that Sheryl Sandberg (of… Continue Reading

Let’s all talk about gifted and talented programs for a few minutes

This is an interesting topic, and a lot has been written about it recently because of a new study in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy that essentially says studying with other high-achieving peers has no real benefit. After 1.5 years of gifted and… Continue Reading

Tom Steyer could be the cage-rattler that liberals (and the Earth) need

Everyone has heard about the Koch Brothers by this point, it seems, but less people have heard of Tom Steyer, who is the liberal election-alterer of the moment. He made his money via hedge funds in the Bay Area, and now… Continue Reading

The Tyler Hadley story is one of the craziest, most awful things you’ll ever encounter

Rolling Stone just released a long-form article on the Tyler Hadley case, which you can read here. I won’t go too deeply into the background or even into this post because the whole thing is fairly depressing, but essentially, Hadley was a… Continue Reading

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The Milken Best Performing Cities list tells us to move west of the Mississippi and/or embrace Columbia, Missouri

The Milken Institute released its annual Best Performing Cities list this week. Here’s the methodology, and here’s the list of “best large cities” and “best small cities.” There are a bunch of cool features, including the ability to compare different cities,… Continue Reading

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WhatsApp might be poised to take over the world (provided it hasn’t already)

Check out this chart, which I found over on Quartz: The dominant social messaging app all over the world (in terms of areas, not necessarily per capita) is a thing called WhatsApp, which I had admittedly only heard of once… Continue Reading