Enlaces para Leer y Pensar

Julio Diaz remembers being robbed on a subway platform in the Bronx: “As he's walking away, I'm like, 'Hey, you forgot something...'” (*****)

Today You, Tomorrow Me: 'But we aren't done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won't take it. All I can think to say is "Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor" with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English: "Today you.... tomorrow me."' (*****)

A real Good Samaritan: "The police called at my student hovel early evening, but I didn't answer as I thought they'd come to evict me. I hadn't paid my rent in months." (*****)

Advice I want to tell my daughters: Sixteen years later I’m sitting with one of my daughters. Its dark outside and little hailstones flick at the window. The night’s demons clamoring for our attention. She has insomnia and her mind is racing. There’s things I want to tell her.

Comparative advantage
Ricardo's Difficult Idea, Paul Krugman's exploration of why non-economists don't understand the idea of comparative advantage

Young Entrepreneurs: 2 Minutes

Reading the Book

Robert Greene's Speech at Yale - December 3, 2010

9 Nifty Pneumatic Train Illustrations
The transit problem in New York 1830— 1866
Atmospheric railway

30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Their 30th Birthday
28 Dignified Ways to Impress Everyone Around You
18 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was 18
50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do
10 Simple Truths Smart People Forget
10 Mistakes in Behavior Change

¿Y en España qué? ¿Hacíamos algo? Por Daniel Rodríguez Herrera

I Paid a Brive

Padres a quienes impiden educar a sus hijos en casa exigen un nuevo modelo (Homeschooling)

The Stick of Jan Sloot

Las misteriosas estaciones de números. (****)

Be Happier: Rent Everything

6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes

Getting shot by a handgun :-O

Kevin Connolly's guide to American culture

A chip and a chair - Lecciones del póker (Don't Give up)

Minimum Survival Kit

The Mumbai Attacks: Sixty Hours of Terror

Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?

How I got an uncooperative eBay buyer to pay for her purchase. "First of all, I am not claiming to have invented this trick. I imagine others have used it with varying degrees of success. I also want to point out that nothing here is embellished or exaggerated. I had tickets to a sporting event and couldn't attend. I made a 1-day listing and clearly stated that the tickets must be picked up in person within 24 hours (the game was the evening after the auction ended, so there wasn't any time to ship the tickets). A woman won the auction for about $600. The auction had ended at 10:00am and by 5:00pm she still hadn't responded to my emails trying to organize the exchange. Finally, at 9:30pm, I got a one-liner email: "I overbid and my husband won't let me buy these. Sorry and enjoy the game! :)" I first tried explaining that I wouldn't have the time to resell the tickets (I already got turned down by the losing bidders). She said, "... that's not my problem. It's eBay, not a car dealership. I can back out if I want." I still don't understand the car dealership reference. I was pretty upset. I was basically going to be stuck with tickets to an event that I couldn't attend. That's when I got the idea to convince her to change her mind. I created a new eBay account, "Payback" we'll call it, and sent her a message: "Hi there, I noticed you won an auction for 4 [sporting event] tickets. I meant to bid on these but couldn't get to a computer. I wanted to take my son and dad and would be willing to give you $1,000 for the tickets. I imagine that you've already made plans to attend, but I figured it was worth a shot." At 11:30pm she responded to Payback: "I'll do it for $1,100, no less. I can meet you at the game if you agree. I need your phone number." At 11:35pm, Payback wrote: "Deal. Here is my number..." (Thanks Google Voice for the throwaway number). She called a few minutes later and made Payback "promise" to go through with the deal. She emphasized that she'd be out a lot of money if Payback backed out. Payback swore he would never do such a thing. At 11:45pm, the woman emailed me: "Fine. I'll buy them. But you have to drop them off at my house tonight. I'll have the cash ready." So at fucking midnight I drove to her house across town and met her on the road in front of her apartment building. She was a nasty and rude individual. Things didn't get any better when I told her I wanted an extra $20 for the trouble of driving there at midnight (yeah, pushing my luck, I know). It became very awkward and she literally threw 31 $20 bills at me. I counted them before handing over the tickets. I said, "thanks for the great transaction" as she flipped me off while walking away. At 10:00am she called Payback to make sure they were still on for the exchange. Payback said that he could no longer go to the game and wouldn't be able to do the exchange. She blew her fucking top and I swear to god started speaking in tongues. Payback said, "Ma'am, this is eBay, not a car dealership" and hung up. I got a rabid email 10 minutes later telling me that I was going to hell and that she's reported me to the local police, FBI, and... the fire department. WTF? I never heard another word from her. I have no idea if she went to the game or not." (*****)

SR-71 Blackbird: El avión más rápido y el más lento del mundo

The curse of giftedness: children deemed exceptional often don't go on to be hugely successful. Often they’re only truly happy as adults once they've left the ‘gifted' tag behind

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief "The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile aboveground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness. He plummeted for a second, then pulled his cord, slowing to a nice descent toward the tiled roof. It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. If it kept cooperating, Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that held the Koechert Diamond Pearl. He steered his parachute toward his target."

Kettling, also known as containment or corralling, a police tactic for the management of large crowds during demonstrations or protests. It involves the formation of large cordons of police officers who then move to contain a crowd within a limited area. Protesters are left only one choice of exit, determined by the police, or are completely prevented from leaving. In some cases protesters have been reported to have been denied access to food, water and toilet facilities for a long period.

How to handle the cops if they knock on your door

Forward Intelligence Team, Urban Exploration,  Infrastructuras Críticas, Tirachinas profesional, Tarjeta de crédito convertible...

Wealth, Income, and Power

Schneier on Security: Recording the Police "Privacy has to be viewed in the context of relative power. For example, the government has a lot more power than the people. So privacy for the government increases their power and increases the power imbalance between government and the people; it decreases liberty. Forced openness in government -- open government laws, Freedom of Information Act filings, the recording of police officers and other government officials, WikiLeaks -- reduces the power imbalance between government and the people, and increases liberty."

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

Multi-tabling poker player plays 120 tables at a time, verified human.

The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

Notes to Self: Coveting possessions is unhealthy.

Ocean's One: What's the point of stealing casino chips? An armed gunman stole $1.5 million in chips from the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas early Tuesday. What's the point of stealing casino chips? Do they have any value outside the casino?

Como Cagancho en Almagro: El origen de una hermosa expresión :-)

El rincón de Jesús Alonso (Colaborador de la revista MicroHobby y autor del libro"Curso de Código Máquina del ZX Spectrum")

Too much time on his hands - Boing Boing (Ciertísimo, el primer comentario que suelo oir cuando muestro un hack, da igual del tipo que sea, es es "joer, a este como le sobra el tiempo, que friki, etc etc")

Ni se folla más ni te pagan las copas: Lo que pasa cuando sales en Meneamé. (****)

No pidas ayuda en un foro (****)
 On improving when your friends arent Most people don’t like to change after they get established. If you improve quickly, it can upset and turn off old friends and cause breaks in friendship.

Peso

The hot girl effect is, at least in theory, as follows.  Once a girl passes a certain degree of hotness, the amount of guys hitting on her drops dramatically.  Why? Because they assume that she is not in their league so they don’t bother.  This could mean that getting a date for a guy with a very hot girl could be easier than one with a merely hot girl. It’s a bit silly, but there is a grain of truth to it.  It also is very true in networking.

North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns

Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines. To handle over 30 million annual visitors — many of them during this busiest time of year for the megaresort — Disney World long ago turned the art of crowd control into a science. But the putative Happiest Place on Earth has decided it must figure out how to quicken the pace even more. A cultural shift toward impatience — fed by video games and smartphones — is demanding it, park managers say. To stay relevant to the entertain-me-right-this-second generation, Disney must evolve.

The Meritocracy Myth we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake.

New York City blackout of 1977 The New York City Blackout of 1977 was an electricity blackout that affected most of New York City from July 13, 1977 to July 14, 1977. The only neighborhoods in New York City that were not affected were the Southern Queens, and neighborhoods of the Rockaways, which are part of the Long Island Lighting Company System. Unlike other blackouts that affected the region, namely the Northeast Blackout of 1965 and the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the 1977 blackout was localized to New York City and the immediate surroundings. Also in contrast to the 1965 and 2003 blackouts, the 1977 blackout resulted in city-wide looting and other disorder, including arson.[1]

Northeast Blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km2) were left without electricity for up to 12 hours.

Future Shock? Welcome to the New Middle Ages. Imagine a world with a strong China reshaping Asia; India confidently extending its reach from Africa to Indonesia; Islam spreading its influence; a Europe replete with crises of legitimacy; sovereign city-states holding wealth and driving innovation; and private mercenary armies, religious radicals and humanitarian bodies playing by their own rules as they compete for hearts, minds and wallets. It sounds familiar today. But it was just as true slightly less than a millennium ago at the height of the Middle Ages.