Lottery winner's cry - I am rich
"Blue zones" are areas of the world where people live considerably longer lives. On these territories we can find octogenarians, nonagenarians and many centenarians, and even some supercentenarians (people who have reached the age of 110).
Australia's best beaches announced
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In America and beyond, the spirit behind public lands is at risk Guardian. “The idea of a public good is non-Merkin.”
Snowy owl sightings on the rise — especially along Great Lakes shorelines: ‘It’s the stuff of mythology’ Chicago Tribune
The misuse of NZ companies, Part III. Backdoor access via the UK – a classic cross jurisdictional regulatory arbitrage play Interest.co.nz. Includes shout-out to our own Richard Smith.
Eight 100-meter-long metal warehouses in northern China are a case in point. Bitmain Technologies Ltd. runs a server farm in Erdors, Inner Mongolia, with about 25,000 computers dedicated to solving the encrypted calculations that generate each bitcoin. The entire operation runs on electricity produced with coal, as do a growing number of cryptocurrency “mines” popping up in China.
The global industry’s power use already may equal 3 million U.S. homes, topping the individual consumption of 159 countries, according to the Digiconomist Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. As more bitcoin is created, the difficulty rate of token-generating calculations increases, as does the need for electricity.
“This has become a dirty thing to produce,” said Christopher Chapman, a London-based analyst at Citigroup Inc.
'I didn't take them seriously at first': how Tom joined the bitcoin boom
I try to tell my students that where the rubber hits the road for many tax issues is in valuation. Here's a great story about one aspect of valuation disputes from the Washington Post Magazine: "The Secretive Panel of Art Experts That Tell the IRS How Much Art is Worth"
Each year, bequests and donations of art generate tens of millions of dollars in potential tax revenue. But to be accurately taxed, an artwork needs to be accurately valued, and the owner who has to pay the tax can’t be expected to provide the last word. When an artwork is sold outright, the Internal Revenue Service needs no help in determining how much to tax; it has the purchase price and the sale price and it knows how to subtract. (The maximum federal tax rate on profits from the sale of art and collectibles is 28 percent, higher than the 15 to 20 percent for stocks.) Things get trickier, however, when an artwork passes to an heir or is given to a museum. The agency still needs to know, as of the date of death or donation, how much the art is worth, but without a current sale price that figure can be debatable.
My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice... I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience….
George Orwell
Why I Write
Why I Write
Work Define Us. Why Not Play? Hobbies aren’t just fulfilling—they keep us sane
How to Shape a Story: Three structural guides by three famous writers that provide templates for good writing in literature, theater, and film and TV.
‘Amazon Effect’ Goes Beyond Business: Huge e-commerce companies using the internet to sell things for cheap is likely to be one of the biggest forces in our lives.
Ten Years Without a Book Deal: A writer explains her dedication to becoming a published author—and how her approach has changed over the last decade.
10 Books That Were Written on a Bet: From 'Frankenstein' to 'Green Eggs and Ham,' books and stories that wouldn’t have existed without a wager
How to Shape a Story: Three structural guides by three famous writers that provide templates for good writing in literature, theater, and film and TV.
A Guide to Opening a Bookstore: Check out a library assistant's advice and resources on how to run a bookstore, including "find a community."
Neil LaBute, Katori Hall, Quiara Alegría Hudes, And Other Playwrights On How They Think Of Audiences…
Hudes: "If you write solely to suit the audience, you'll be chasing your tail. That being said, I study them very closely - where they laugh, where they lean in, where they 'go fishing' in their minds." LaBute: "I want to get close to them and make them feel the events in a real way - to break the fourth wall, to look them squarely in the eye, and challenge them to leave, but force them to stay." … [Read More]
Duke Reporter’s Lab – Following a historic pattern, the number of American media outlets verifying political statements dropped after last year’s presidential campaign
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TEN years ago this month, America entered the “Great Recession”. A decade
on, the recession occupies a strange space in public memory. Its toll was
clearly large. America suffered a cumulative loss of output estimated at
nearly $4trn, and its labour markets have yet to recover fully. But the
recession was far less bad than it might have been, thanks to the successful
application of lessons from the Depression. Paradoxically, that success
spared governments from enacting bolder reforms of the sort that might make
the Great Recession the once-a-century event economists thought such
calamities should be. Good crisis response treats its symptoms; the symptoms of a disease, after all, can kill you. On that score today’s policymakers did far better than those of the 1930s. Government budgets have become a much larger share of the economy, thanks partly to the rise of the modern social safety net. Consequently, public borrowing and spending on benefits did far more to stabilise the economy than they did during the Depression. Policymakers stepped in to prevent the extraordinary collapse in prices and incomes experienced in the 1930s. They also kept banking panics from spreading, which would have amplified the pain of the downturn. Though unpopular, the decision to bail out the financial system prevented the implosion of the global economy. But the success...A decade after it hit, what was learnt from the Great Recession? |
Five myths about bitcoin - The Washington Post
What If The Enlightenment Didn’t Happen Where And When We Thought It Did?
What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob. … [Read More]
Interview gold as ABC journo grills tax cheat Airbnb
‘Internet
Service Providers Should Not Be Able To Decide What People Can See
Online,’ Says Man Who Decides What People Can See Online. “‘All
content should be treated equally,’ he added, the slightest hint of a
grin curling up the side of his mouth as the video ended.”