How the tax software industry lobbied against free, simple tax filing

The non-profit investigative journalism outfit ProPublica just received its third Pulitzer Prize in seven years since it started in 2008. The organization is one that I have been financially contributing to for some time. It was created at a time when newspapers were cutting back on investigative reporting because of the cost involved, though one could argue that it should be the heart of any news outlet.
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Why can’t we all get along?

As one music group and business after another announce that they will be avoiding North Carolina after that state adopted its new law, ostensibly aimed at restricting the bathrooms transsexuals can use to only the ones that correspond to the gender assigned to them on their birth certificates but in fact allows wider discrimination against the LGBT community and others, Stephen Colbert wonders why we can’t get along the way that Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee did after the bitter civil War.
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Fascinating science gifs

I visit a lot of websites and a lot of them are like my own where there is a paragraph above the fold that indicates what the post is about and, if one is interested enough to read the full post, one has to click on the ‘more’ link. I have noticed more and more people using gifs (those videos that last about a second and repeat endlessly) above the fold.
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New York primary results

The result of the New York primary is not good news for the Bernie Sanders campaign. While he was expected to lose, the almost 16-point margin of defeat (57.9%-42.1%) is large enough that it has to be seen as a major setback and a downer after his recent string of successes, even though he still picked up 106 delegates to Hillary Clinton’s 139. He will have to do much better in the five primaries next Tuesday (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island).
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How do you feel when the audience ignores you?

I often feel sorry for music performers at restaurants, especially when it is a band and not (say) a solo pianist who knows that he or she is there to just provide background music. It must be galling when the people in the room completely ignore you and continue to talk and eat and I often wonder how they feel. Maybe Ted Cruz can tell us because he recently had that experience when he spoke at an event in New York City as part of his campaign in that state’s primary being held today.
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