If you're on a Mac and are rather addicted to these sorts of websites, SelfControl (funny name) can be used to block sites for however long you want after some tweaking. I use it when I notice myself opening a new tab in the browser and instinctively going for the "r" or "h" keys.
I too notice that when I block these sorts of websites, even though I still have access on my phone, I start reading a lot more and getting more stuff done. Now that I think about it, I should try the 30 day challenge. The most I've gone is 15 days. Peace out!
Current CS undergrad at Berkeley. This is the main problem I have with Berkeley. You can interact with the faculty plenty (at least in my experience), especially when you get to your upper division classes. I don't really do that much anyway and care more about how well professor's lecture than anything else.
The problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to get into the upper division classes you're interested in. There are just too many people and not enough space. My smallest class is 30 people, but it's a graduate level course, while my other two upper division CS classes have 400 people and 315 with 75 on the waitlist. I thought my classes would get smaller as the semesters went on, but that has not been the case.
If you read the entire article you'll notice that this isn't the only "interactive graphic". Go down further to where it says "How the Tax Law Might Affect You". It pretty much covers all the bases.
This submission seems to be deliberately misleading. The article itself is far less insulting.
I think the act of actually paying a tax is quite important, despite the bureaucratic overhead. For the same reason, I think payroll taxes and the like should be directly paid by checks (not just deducted from pay and handled by the employer). This way, a person would actually have that money and then have to commit the physical act of giving their money to the government instead of just seeing it as money not in their paycheck.
> Would you fire one of them if he sleeps with the other's girlfriend, or would you consider this a 'personal matter' and not interfere?
If I am a small business and only have ~50 employees, I would probably fire them. It's only a personal matter until it affects work. This would obviously affect work.
> As opposed to jetti, I'm not sure the wife would just have found somebody else.
Irrelevant.
Here's the problem:
"At the same time, every time I see his face, I feel like that just kills me inside."
It is silly to think that this doesn't affect productivity and won't affect the business in the future, especially with communication between these two individuals. A person's well being does is in fact a work matter, the acknowledgment of which makes the employees position absolutely untenable. You cannot possibly sleep with a fellow employee's spouse (regardless of whether it is a superior or not) and not expect that to be a work matter.
> It's as if they expect the boss to be able to tell employees who they can fuck.
This isn't about telling the employee who they can fuck. It's about fostering a productive and positive work environment. Knowingly choosing to create animosity between yourself and a superior (or any fellow employee for that matter) in such a hurtful manner is simply stupid.
> But here I am, feeling normal and useless. I lead a moderate sized club at RPI, but I don't even feel accomplished for it. I haven't seen any of the job offers that I felt were promised to me when I enrolled at the school, I haven't gotten any major internships.
I struggled with this as well. A big turning point for me was dropping entirely the notion of being entitled to anything. In reality, no one owes me anything just because I think I'm smart or because I think I work hard.
> As a kid I used to hit the video games pretty hard, but at some point I started to realize how fake the achievements felt. I literally can't stomach playing video games anymore. It feels like taking some sort of numbing drug. I have good memories, and I don't even regret most of the weekends I devoted entirely to video games (and the costs associated).
Me too! It sucks sometimes because I want to enjoy playing a game but don't. I've found that I can't play games, like Skyrim, that are just time-based grinds. Instead, I play games for the nostalgia, the story, for creativity elements, or for the competition/skill factor. Sometimes even then I feel uneasy playing games because I feel like I should be doing something more productive.. that's a tough feeling to get over.
> I worked a job last summer teaching kids. I still visit from time to time, and the trend of positive reinforcement and lack of criticism seems to be gaining momentum in our youth. My boss would not let me criticize my own students.
I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. You can certainly criticize and be positive (or at least not negative) about it.
Libertarian is a broad term. You have anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, libertarian socialists, etc. The least authoritarian, an-caps, do wish that everything was voluntarily. Then there those in America who I'll call practical libertarians who simply want to follow the U.S. Constitution more closely than has been done while still adhering to libertarian principles.
In this case, they believe that the federal government should be involved in defense and aiding interstate commerce (without abusing the terminology as has been done by Congress), and leave everything else, as the 10th amendment states, up to the state.
True, but those things are quite inexpensive compared to all of the other stuff that governments spend taxpayer money on, at least in the United States.
Because it's still too expensive when compared to flying. Just look at the cost of the high speed rail plan in California. Until the price of jet fuel is much higher, economically, it makes more sense to fly.
I say let the high speed rails come naturally (because they will eventually): don't try to force it.
> (Not least because one of it's biggest problems is that it pisses off entitled white kids like you and starts pointless internet flames like this.)
> Right now all you're doing is whining.
Stop the nonsense.
I'm going to specifically look at college admissions since it's a pretty interesting area. Specifically, I want to point out a passage from here (the article itself is worth reading): http://www.tnr.com/book/review/disadvantages
> Moreover, some universities have been successful in maintaining racial diversity despite a ban on using race in admissions. At UT Austin, which was forbidden by a lower court from considering race between 1997 and 2003, a class-based affirmative action plan, combined with a plan to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their high school class, resulted in a net increase in racial diversity. In 1996, prior to the ban on race, African Americans and Latinos made up 18.8 percent of the freshman class. In 2004, under the socioeconomic and top 10 percent plan, the combined representation had risen to 21.4 percent.
Not only is such policy less racist, but it is more effective!
On the pharmaceutical industry: part of the problem is the government and the enormous number of regulations and necessary steps to bring a drug (which still could harm people regardless of how many trials are done) to market. As such, while someone may want to research some new but unproven idea, the time and cost and risk involved would be far too great as a result of regulations.
I do agree with your point though. The government should invest in research, not companies.
I don't think you understand what I mean by liberty. Try to not let your political goggles blind you here.
> "pursuit of equality" = giving medicine, schooling to the poor
I'm all for achieving the best results. I want to see more education and better healthcare for everyone. What we're doing, however, is not achieving the best results. Why is it that these areas with the most government involvement (education, healthcare, and banking) seem to have the most problems? We spend more on education than anywhere else in the world (http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographi...) yet the results aren't there. Same with healthcare.
How about tax cuts for everyone? No more income tax, no more corporate tax, no more FICA? What about removing regulations that encourage the growth of monopolies and too-big-to-fail banks, removing subsidies, and removing tax breaks for everyone? How about no more bailouts?
> And where people's freedom is actually destroyed, down the rathole of militarism and corporatism, well that's just "patriotism".
Militarism / corporatism are products of big government. How about a much smaller federal government?
I too notice that when I block these sorts of websites, even though I still have access on my phone, I start reading a lot more and getting more stuff done. Now that I think about it, I should try the 30 day challenge. The most I've gone is 15 days. Peace out!