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Has Apple Been Neglecting Politics?

I did some research and discoved that Apple has not used lobbying and campaign contributions as much as might be expected by one of the largest companies in the world … read the whole thing →

merlin:

And now it’s all this.

I support this Kickstarter.

(via merlin)

The political brilliance of FOX’s made up War on Christmas

politicalprof:

… is pretty simple to understand. The notion that there is a WAR ON CHRISTMAS in the United States – a country where huge percentages of its citizens attend church regularly, where evangelicalism has been on the rise for 30 years, where 25% or more of many stores’ annual sales are seasonally derived, and where Christmas carols and Christmas specials are an inescapable fact of life – is so gobsmackingly absurd that it renders people with even the slightest amount of intellectual honesty or discernment utterly speechless. It is an unanswerable charge because it is completely, unspeakably – literally unspeakably – false.
it is a topic, therefore, perfectly attuned to FOX’s “news” strategy: it allows FOX hosts to scream about the end of the world while facing no actual challenge or opposition to their ideas … especially on FOX News itself.
It’s actually brilliant. It also just happens to be false. But those two things don’t seem to cancel themselves out much these days, do they?

You Say You Want a Revolution (The Critical Path #163 on 5by5)

Horace Dediu interviewed me on his podcast The Critical Path:

Horace discusses politics and disruption with Michael Tofias. Is disruption of government possible? Michael pursues the study of American political institutions, elections, Congress, and computational political economy to reveal how disruption might play out within governments.

It’s a pretty wide-ranging discussion, but a pretty fun one too. I hope that you’ll give it a listen.