• Bering in Mind: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself
  covers baumeister's 6 steps to suicide. informative, disturbing
• More reasons to support congestion pricing:
  " we compare infants born to mothers living near toll plazas to infants born to mothers living near busy roadways but away from toll plazas with the idea that mothers living away from toll plazas did not experience significant reductions in local traffic congestion. We also examine differences in the health of infants born to the same mother, but who differ in terms of whether or not they were “exposed” to E-ZPass. We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 6.7-9.1% and 8.5-11.3% respectively, with larger effects for African-Americans, smokers, and those very close to toll plazas."

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• The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books
  charter schools aren't a magic bullet, teachers only responsible for ~10-20% of student gains. new teaching documentaries are not very accurate
• The Last Psychiatrist: The Military And PTSD: A Star Wars Guide
  The amount of perceived control affects total stress, not amount of actual control. Soldiers who think they are in more control have less psychological dropouts. Psych dropouts match physical casualties 1 for 1 in most armies

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• International Migration and Human Rights - Gordon Hanson - NBER paper
  The typical individual who migrates from a poor developing country to the United States sees an increase in income by a factor of four, largely as a result of the immense international differences in labor productivity that exist in the world today. As an illustrative example, I estimate that migration from Mexico to the United States raises global income by an amount equivalent to roughly one percent of US GDP.
• Intrade Prediction Markets - Will California's marijuana legislation pass?
  64% chance although low volume at the moment

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• The Facebook News Feed: How it Works,10 Biggest Secrets - The Daily Beast
  summary: you can't stalk your way into someone's news feed but if a lot of people are viewing your page you'll show up in many. sharing links more likely to get you in than sharing vanilla status updates. you won't show up in people's feeds if they have many many friends. new users don't show up in news feeds. commented posts show up in top feeds.
• Eye Tracking vs. Mouse Tracking | GazeHawk Blog
  whoops, this isn't good news
• Stop the Signature File Insanity. - NYTimes.com
  agreed, cut my signature from 7 to 2 lines in january: "If I put my edits into play, and add a soupçon of design, Blofeld could have something like this: Ernst Stavro Blofeld | Leader, Number 1 | SPECTRE +33 1 12 34 56 78 | @ernieblo | skype: meanguyspectre"

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• McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Small Talks.
  on a meta level, small talk sounds really pathetic... Buying Lunch at the Food Cart Customer: Weather joke! Server: Ha ha ha! Customer: Ha ha ha! Server: Weather complaint. Customer: Additional weather complaint. (Homeless man runs by wearing pants over head.) Customer: Job market joke! Server: Ha ha ha!

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• Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science - Magazine - The Atlantic
  His model predicted, in different fields of medical research, rates of wrongness roughly corresponding to the observed rates at which findings were later convincingly refuted: 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials. The article spelled out his belief that researchers were frequently manipulating data analyses, chasing career-advancing findings rather than good science, and even using the peer-review process—in which journals ask researchers to help decide which studies to publish—to suppress opposing views.
• BBC News - Merkel says German multicultural society has failed
  In her speech, the chancellor specifically referred to recent comments by German President Christian Wulff who said that Islam was "part of Germany" like Christianity and Judaism. While acknowledging that this was the case, Mrs Merkel stressed that immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.
• SLAM ONLINE | » Jumping Misconceptions, Pt. 2
  don't crouch before jumping, don't lean forward, take two quick steps right before jumping, i might be able to add inches to my vert this way
• You Walk Wrong
  to send to people who ask about vibram five fingers, in addition to tim ferriss's article
• Learn Python The Hard Way: Learn Python The Hard Way
  how to learn how to code, for the absolute beginner. covers how to execute programs, and emphasizes difficulty of said task, thank goodness. will be recommending this to people who ask
• James Elkins: How to Look at Mondrian
  a student fails to copy a mondrian, there are subtleties that make it excellent, difficult to replicate. this is good because i've wanted to learn more about what makes good artists so good

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• 2 Years In Prison - A Man's Story
  what life is like in prison
• Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good? // ben's blog
  how to hire, tons of great questions to ask, what procedure to follow, excellent
• Stadiums | Bidding Nation Qatar 2022
  when you're gonna build all the stadiums from scratch and hire great architects to do it they look awesome. US might win on size though we can fit 40k more people in each game

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• Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers
  The researchers designed a series of four experiments to test and manipulate Stanford students' beliefs about willpower. After a tiring task, those who believed or were led to believe that willpower is a limited resource performed worse on standard concentration tests than those who thought of willpower as something they had more control over. They also found that leading up to final exam week, students who bought into the limited resource theory ate junk food 24 percent more often than those who believed they had more control in resisting temptation. The limited resource believers also procrastinated 35 percent more than the other group.

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• How do I know if I am good enough? | Hacker News
  "Definitely. If you want to grow, make sure you're thinking "I don't know what the hell I'm doing" on a regular basis. When you're comfortable with everything you do, get new stuff to do or get a new job."
• Clone Scripts - Premium PHP Scripts Directory
  copy any website, haha
• 55 Creative Coming Soon' Pages
• Blockbuster, Netflix, and the future of rentals : The New Yorker
  Places like Netflix and Amazon have demonstrated the great irony that computer algorithms can provide a more personalized and engaging customer experience than many physical stores.
• A Primer On The Foreclosure Crisis - CNBC
  Banks can't prove they actually own houses, homeowners are more and more asking banks to produce the documents. So they're halting foreclosures to review process for defects, but this isn't good for banks, homeowners, buyers, the economy. interesting throughout.
• Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex « OkTrends
  gays are not trying to "convert" straights, gays don't have more sexual partners, a large number of straight people have had homosexual experiences, large personality differences between gays and straights
• What's working in music: Having a ball | The Economist
  Live concerts, TV licensing (commercials etc), online booming, record companies, not so much

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