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  1. Reflections on President-Elect Trump

    Originally posted on Facebook

    The realizations of Trump's election are slow to come for me, and I can only imagine how much harder they're hitting for people less insulated than myself.

    I'm afraid for the implicit acceptance of racism that this means. But I'm white and will be isolated from …

  2. Corrupt retirement savings system

    Before I get into this, let me say that Linqia is a great company to work for. I have many friends from my time there and I have no problem with them as friends knowning any of this info. My complains are of the system and how it would hurt …

  3. US Senate Candidates

    Note: This post was written based on the impression one gets from the voting system. I have a follow-up post with more details highlighting more severe issues

    I know the US has been in the news as a joke due to Donald Trump somehow rising to be the presumptive candidate …

  4. Airline flotation devices

    In the past year, both United and Delta airlines have created new airline safety videos. They both use comedy, and show things like seatbelts and exit rows that we're all used to seeing the attendants demonstrate and point to before takeoff. In it, they also show the inflatable life vests …

  5. Kaiser and Streisand

    This poster started showing up on the subway I take to work:

    opening poster

    I disregarded it without giving it much thought, based on apathy and cynicism:

    • Kaiser Permenente is huge, and is in the quagmire that is the health care industry. Of course there's going to be bad stories about it …
  6. Promoting cars over mass transit

    So last year (2014) I spent just over $2650 on transit. I take BART (light rail) in to work every day, and it adds up. It's mass transit, which means I can read or sleep or work, instead of having to drive. Transit is also better than driving in pretty …

  7. Finding more proof

    I've been talking to a friend of mine about The Alethia Project and he's brought up a number of concerns. Mostly the concerns all revolve around the idea that, if you trust your source, you can use the conclusion. If you don't, you need to take on all the complexity …

  8. The Alethia project

    I've had a project bouncing around in my head for about a year. It's atleast a little naive (but hopefully not fatally so), and has some significant hurdles for it to actually work, but if it's actually possible, it's worth doing. I invite people to comment below about why it …

  9. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

    There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard gets stuck on some planet with a Tamarian. Picard can't really communicate, because even though he can understand the words the Tamarian says, the Tamarian language is nothing but metaphors.

    The Tamarian spends the whole time saying stuff like …

  10. Pride in faith

    I watched Religulous a couple days ago.

    It was fun. It was obviously skewed, but some of the stuff was scary even taking into account the bias. One interesting thing that was brought up is that not only can we (and should we) question our beliefs (and those of others …

  11. To the bandwagon

    Lots of people have blogs, and more and more are being created all the time. Lots (most) of those people's thoughts aren't important to 99.99....9% of the people online, but they've got blogs anyways, because it's not like the internet is going to 'run out of room' anytime …