2024-08-26

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If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention

What is there to do, then, except to look again, and with care, almost as a matter of faith, although a faith encouraged by each fleeting encounter with beauty we have been graced to experience. To stare awkwardly at things in the world until they cease to be mere things. To risk the appearance of foolishness by being prepared to believe that world might yet be enchanted. Or, better yet, to play with the notion that we might cast our attention into the world in the spirit of casting a spell. We may very well conjure up surprising depths of experience, awaken long dormant desires, and rekindle our wonder in the process.

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The Real Reason Why Oranges Are Sold In Those Red Net Bags | IFLScience

A red or orange plastic net around the fruit helps to give the impression that the orange peel is a richer orange color, thereby making it look juicy and appealing to consumers. If the fruit is unripe, the colored net will also downplay its greenness and boost its orangeness, making it look ripe and more appetizing. Similarly, lemons are often put in yellow net bags to enhance their natural color. If they were put in red bags, they’d look orangey and not as conventionally appealing. The principle is based on the confetti illusion, a visual phenomenon where the perception of colors is strongly influenced by its surrounding context. In this optical illusion, a neutrally colored ball is placed within a grid of differently colored lines. When the lines of a particular color are in the foreground, the ball's color appears to blend with that of the lines.
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Are US manufacturing jobs worth fighting for?

historically, manufacturing jobs were seen as tickets into the middle class. They were relatively stable, offered decent pay and benefits and disproportionately employed people without college degrees. Supporters point to high “employment multipliers” — one job in manufacturing supports or even creates others along lengthy supply chains. With low unemployment, anyone deployed in an extended supply chain could simply be doing something else. But on some dimensions manufacturing jobs do seem somewhat better than average. They are still slightly more stable than those elsewhere in the private sector. And in March 2024 benefits were still relatively generous, averaging $15 an hour compared with just under $13 in service-providing industries. Stability and benefits are nice, but what about cold hard cash? This is where it gets complicated. Data from the Current Employment Statistics survey suggests that average hourly pay in manufacturing relative to the rest of the private sector has been falling for decades, and in May 2018 finally sank below. Among production workers the premium vanished in September 2006.
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What We Know About Kamala Harris’s $5 Trillion Tax Plan So Far - The New York Times

In a campaign otherwise light on policy specifics, Vice President Kamala Harris this week quietly rolled out her most detailed, far-ranging proposal yet: nearly $5 trillion in tax increases over a decade. That’s how much more revenue the federal government will raise if it adopted a number of tax increases that President Biden proposed in the spring. Ms. Harris’s campaign said this week that she supported those tax hikes, which were thoroughly laid out in the most recent federal budget plan prepared by the Biden administration.

Why scientists are trying to reengineer the cow's stomach
- Cow farts bad; buffalo farts good. The two are closely related enough to interbreed, with fertile offspring. One might almost suspect the difference isn't in the animals.