On the slope the workers, puffing on cigarettes, looked away or stared at their feet.

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Restaurant patrons stared into space or at smartphones.

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Some stared at the ground or held each other.

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We could've stared south at Canada, or crossed the bridge to Belle Isle, the island playland larger than Central Park, with elements designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and Detroit favorite Albert Kahn.

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Employees will be judged not just by the quality or creativity or ingenuity or precision of their finished work, but will be electronically stared at -- smothered with second-by-second scrutiny -- as they do the work, wherever they are.

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We stopped alongside the Sonobe River, where Miyamoto, as a boy, had caught fish with his hands, and I descended the bank and stared at the riffles for a while until I realized, with a start, that there were six or seven giant carp in a pool right by my feet.

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