Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. Informally, this is “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a…
This was brilliant. Payload: Not all ideas are the same, and not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy. If you feel isolated by this, that your views are basically unwelcome in tech and can’t be spoken about… well, that’s a fair point. These views are fundamentally corrosive to any organization they show up…
For years, the Republican right suggested that if Obamacare passed, the result would be “Death Panels” which would choose whether or not individuals would get the healthcare they need. We all denounced those claims as specious; there was no such provision in the ACA. Now that the Republicans have control of the government, they’ve trotted…
You may have played the game “Set”: Invented in 1974, Set has a simple goal: to find special triples called “sets” within a deck of 81 cards. Each card displays a different design with four attributes—color (which can be red, purple or green), shape (oval, diamond or squiggle), shading (solid, striped or outlined) and number…
I believe in this dream of America: a place where no one profits from the misery of others, where the suffering of the smallest child matters as much as the glory of our captains and leaders. I believe in a place where we seek truth, where we treat disagreements with respect and patience, where honesty…
Let’s be real. We shouldn’t need much more than these two statistics: 4 in 10 U.S. women rely on health centers like Planned Parenthood as their only source of medical care. The services Planned Parenthood health centers provide save us over $10 billion a year. But if you need to understand what those statistics mean…
Representative Rodgers had an opinion piece published in the Washington Post a couple days ago. Here is my response to it: Ms. Rodgers: With all due respect, your article is a lie and you are a hypocrite. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You voted on this bill, and posted that opinion piece, before…
This is ridiculously fascinating. I mean, just the basic premise is astonishing: no two cells in anybody’s brain have the same genetic code. We are not made up of a single genetic encoding; our bodies carry around literally billions of unique combinations of our genetic code. That’s a bit world-altering, at least for me. Also,…
