Month: December 2014

Decent cops are possible

unsurprisingly, if cops don’t act like dumb thugs, things improve.

The outpouring of community support has deep roots. Since Magnus became chief in 2006, 2 remarkable things have happened: violent crime is down an estimated 33%, and property crimes are down 36%. At the same time, he has curbed the use of force by police.

nk’s #1 export are rumors

When the country isn’t issuing condemnations of purged elites, complaining about forbidden ski lifts, or threatening World War III, it’s getting caught Photoshopping military exercises in an attempt to inflate its hovercraft arsenal. The mixture of genuine threat and laughable incompetence shapes our perceptions, and opens the door for greater lies and claims to take hold in our imaginations. It creates ideal conditions for rumors that paint the country in a negative and often mocking light.

The history of the pallet

pallets are to trade what packet switching is to the internet.

The magic of these pallets is the magic of abstraction. Take any object you like, pile it onto a pallet, and it becomes, simply, a “unit load”—standardized, cubical, and ideally suited to being scooped up by the tines of a forklift. This allows your Cheerios and your oysters to be whisked through the supply chain with great efficiency; the gains are so impressive, in fact, that many experts consider the pallet to be the most important materials-handling innovation of the twentieth century. Studies have estimated that pallets consume 12-15% of all lumber produced in the US, more than any other industry except home construction