Erikun

That specific example is a bad one as you say. A better is perhaps student loans. I recommend checking out BBCs More or less, they has covered the issues with Oxfams claims several times.

Sweden has this too, but in recent years it is not enough. While the employers can't do background checks themselves, they are increasingly asking for the applicant to provide their criminal record. It's hard for the applicant to say no if they need/want the job.

Not quite that simple from what I understand. A week before the vote the Catalan parliament passed two laws, one that a referendum should be held and one that if yes to independence won, regardless of turnout, independence would be unilaterally declared. No way that the spanish government could allow that to go ahead unchallenged. Its worth noting that they have allowed nonbonding votes previously, there was one in 2014 with similar results and turnout. Its the fact that this one was binding that caused the crisis. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/09/e...

There's a wwdc presentation on this where they show the tools in action. The first part is Core ML and the Tools part starts at 21 minutes in (it is about 40 minutes in total so definitely worth watching I found). https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/710/

Apparently if you have less than 10000 in total views you can't monetise at all making the restrictions on sites such as Patreon even more troublesome for small channels. https://twitter.com/InnuendoStudios/status/91342618558922752...

Brought tears to my eye that one.

They seem to work hard to hint that aspartame can prevent weight loss, but are there actually any studies that show that? There are plenty that show that it has the same effect as drinking water.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12324283

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2349932

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7146134

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20303371

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9022524

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2178391

And the same for rats

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890951

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3190217

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15159141

edit Found an overview of the evidence for: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

I don't think keeping locally grown food prices and employment up are the key issues when the harvests are failing. The argument of giving them money instead of food and let them handle it themselves is not bad per se, the food would still not come from Zambia or the other countries though. While food aid can act as a domestic subsidy for the country giving it, that doesn't mean that it inherently bad, just that the donor country gets something out of it as well.

The following are some details from the famine of 2002:

Hundreds have already died in Malawi and the threat of famine looms large in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Lesotho.

Crops have failed due to droughts and floods. Attempts to deal with the problem have been hampered by political chaos and the inadequate infrastructure in the most affected places.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said that southern Africa needs 1.2m tonnes of food to help it through the year. The EU and the US are helping, but the main problem is effective delivery.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/25/famine.qanda

Surely the weird thing about removing the escape key is that it is used to bring up the force quit menu (cmd-option-esc). Pretty ingrained in my mind at least, but to be fair not needed that often.

Worth noting that Germany was considered "the sick man of Europe" due to its poor growth and high unemployment from the middle of the nineties to a bit into the 2000s. Not sure that is the entire explanation of his problems, but is probably related.

Planet money did an episode on this. As often is the case it starts with a change in regulation. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/02/05/465747726/-682-...

Egan's Permutation City is near future though, and pretty amazing that it was written in 1994 considering the topics.

I think you're right about the embassy bit. It wouldn't surprise me if the UN decision doesn't make any noise about the European Arrest Warrant or any of the the charges agains Assange. I'm guessing that they will state that since he has requested and received asylum by the Ecuador government, the UK should let him go there. This makes some sense from a general perspective as well. If someone applies and gets asylum at an embassy somewhere, the UN may not want to set the precedent that the host nation could block it by not allowing the person to leave the country.

I find it a bit humorous though, that Assange said he would honor the UN panels decision just moments before that decision is leaked to the press. Funny how he didn't make that promise when he first applied for the ruling...

This put me in mind of this QI episode and David Mitchell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9PSg0sQyfs

Very interesting. It is also much more informative than the Guardian article, for instance: "The data revealed that these groups all sleep for nightly blocks of 6.9 and 8.5 hours, and they spend at least 5.7 to 7.1 hours of those soundly asleep."

In short two things according to the Swedish department of Justice. 1. Ecuador require the Swedish prosecutors to grant Assange refugee status, but only the Migration Agency can do that, not the department of Justice or the prosecutors office. 2. Ecuador want guarantees that Assange will not be extradited to the US in the future. In Sweden extradition requests are handled by the supreme court and the prosecutor-general and a promise in advance never to extradite someone cannot be given.

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...

Planet money had a fascinating podcast on how trade deals are made with the example of NAFTA. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/26/417851577/episo...

NPR's Planet Money podcast had a show about Hutson and Pigeon.ly, well worth listening too. http://n.pr/1FZPCvw

If you hate being pedantic, why be it?

Average salary for programmers in the private sector, 25-29 years old in Sweden is 31 300 SEK/month. Average salary for programmers in the private sector, all ages, in Stockholm is 43 500 SEK/month. Cant find age and region data combined though. All figures are from the official Statistics Sweden database (government statistics bureau).