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Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.

Fireworks, Past, Present and Future

Victor Grossman Berlin Bulletin
New Year's Fireworks: While the statistics prove that the immigrants, their labor, their taxes and their children are actually a boon to the economy, those on the right only increase their ranting about the “continuing misuse of European travel freedom for poverty migration”, helped by all those in the media who stoke fears of “free loaders and criminals”.

2014: Seize the Moment

Bernie Sanders Common Dreams
We can no longer allow the billionaires and their think tanks or the corporate media to set the agenda. We need to educate, organize and mobilize the working families of our country to stand up for their rights. We need to make government work for all the people, not just the 1 percent.

Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience

John Markoff The New York Times
These computers are not programmed instead, connections between the circuits are “weighted” according to correlations in data that the processor has already “learned.” Those weights are then altered as data flows in to the chip, causing them to change their values. That generates a signal that travels to other components and, in reaction, changes the neural network, programming the next actions much the same way that information alters human thoughts and actions.

Bluegrass Uprising

Madeline Ostrander The Nation
As American energy production booms, thousands face pipelines in their backyards. Pipelines carry flammable, toxic materials next to homes, and many experts say they’re poorly monitored by the government. Just 110 federal inspectors supervise the nation’s 2.5 million miles of existing pipelines. Oversight for new pipelines carrying oil and NGL—both classed as “hazardous liquids”—is even laxer, say critics.

The Fear Economy

Economist Paul Krugman The New York Times
There are many steps that we can take to end that state of affairs, but the most important is to put jobs back on the agenda.
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