YOU HAVE TO WATCH NASA'S HIGH-TECH PUMPKINS IN ACTION

TOP OF THE NEWS (HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!):

- You Have to Watch NASA’s High-Tech Pumpkins in Action (Wired)

BUSINESS:

- Google and Facebook contribute zero economic value. That’s a big problem for trade. (WaPo) "To pick just one telling data point, according to the most recent report from Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker, 12 of the 20 most valuable Internet company in the world are U.S. based, with nearly all of the rest coming from China. Other than Apple, none of these companies even existed in 1995, yet they now have a combined market value close to $3 billion. The scale of that success may not make enough of an impression on U.S. policymakers, but our innovation surplus hasn't been lost on some of our largest trading partners, particularly the deeply troubled European Union."

- Twitter earnings: Three top take-aways for those who tweet (WaPo)

ENTERTAINMENT:

- Adam Curtis and the Secret History of Everything (NYT)

HEALTH:

- Future medical breakthroughs may come from an unexpected industry (WaPo) "The technology industry has entered the field of medicine and aims to eliminate disease itself. It may well succeed because of a convergence of exponentially advancing technologies, such as computing, artificial intelligence, sensors, and genomic sequencing. We’re going to see more medical advances in the next decade than happened in the past century."

- Soylent Says It Will Remake Two of Its Meal Replacers After Customers Became Ill (NYT)

NEWS:

- A Scandal Too Far? Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton, and a Test of Loyalty (NYT)

- No Kegs, No Liquor: College Crackdown Targets Drinking and Sexual Assault (NYT)

- Parallel universes, even among the young (WaPo)

- Is Trump Fit For an Intelligence Briefing? (Ozy)

SCIENCE:

- Molten Salt Reactors Could Soon Help Power Earth—And One Day Mars (Wired) "The basic idea is this: The first batch of molten salt is full of a thorium compound, which eventually decays into uranium as neutrons bombard the mixture. That uranium goes into the second batch of molten salt and circulates into the reactor’s graphite-filled core."

SPORTS:

- How Power Hitting Returned in the Post-Steroid Era (Ozy) "They were part of a power season that saw MLB players tag 5,610 home runs, which works out to 1.155 bombs per team per game. For fans raised in our modern long-ball era, that stat may not sound too impressive, but it’s actually second only to the year 2000 for the all-time highest per-game total."

- Unhittable? Aroldis Chapman and His 105-M.P.H. Fastball (NYT) "Of his 26 pitches in the regular season that reached at least 104 m.p.h., just one was a swinging strike. Eleven were balls, 10 were fouled off, two were called strikes, and two were put in play — one for a single by Pittsburgh’s Francisco Cervelli and the other for a groundout by Baltimore’s Ryan Flaherty, who said there was no way to prepare for a pitch that fast."

- No One Is Looking at This Headline (NYT) "It was a few minutes before midnight when Mr. Olympia, the top bodybuilder in the world, finished his workout at a nondescript gym in a tired strip mall. He lifted one of his 22-inch biceps and flipped the light switch, tapped the alarm panel and turned the key to lock the glass front door."

TRAVEL:

- The Golden Age of Havana Is Now (Outside Magazine) "Bad news: everybody but us is already there. Cuba’s 60,000 hotel rooms are booked solid by more than two million tourists each year, mostly Canadians and Europeans who spend their visits at wrist-band beach resorts that have precisely zero correlation to unspoiled anything."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Obama Brought Silicon Valley to Washington (NYT) "In many ways, Obama is America’s first truly digital president. His 2008 campaign relied heavily on social media to lift him out of obscurity. Those efforts were in part led by a founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, who believed in the Illinois senator’s campaign so much that he left the start-up to join Obama’s strategy team. After he was elected, he created a trifecta of executive positions in his administration modeled on corporate best practices: chief technology officer, chief data scientist, chief performance officer."

- We Built a Fake Web Toaster, and It Was Hacked in an Hour (The Atlantic) "I switched on the server at 1:12 p.m. Wednesday, fully expecting to wait days—or weeks—to see a hack attempt. Wrong! The first one came at 1:53 p.m. Matthew Prince, the cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare, said anyone hooking up a poorly secured IP device to the internet can expect to see that gizmo hacked within a week, if not much sooner. 'Assuming it’s publicly accessible, the chance [of being hacked] is probably 100 percent,' he said."

WATCH THIS:

- Red Obsession

- Tesla (PBS American Experience)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- This flashlight is strong enough to start a fire and cook breakfast (Mashable)

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BANKS BET ON THE NEXT BIG THING: FINANCIAL CHATBOTS

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Banks Bet on the Next Big Thing: Financial Chatbots (NYT) "The early versions of the financial chatbots generally do little more than answer basic queries about recent transactions and spending limits. But companies are aiming to build the chatbots into full-service automated financial assistants that can make payments and keep track of your budget for you."

BUSINESS:

BUSINESS:

- Climate change is going to move a huge amount of money and not enough people are paying attention (Business Insider) "'Curbing carbon emissions requires significant spending on green infrastructure and a reduction in fossil fuel subsidies. This creates large investment opportunities in areas that attract capital or industries at risk of disruption.'"

- The Art of Doing Nothing (A Wealth of Common Sense)

- Here’s how Yale’s endowment left its Ivy League rivals behind (Marketwatch)

LIVING:

- How successful people work less—and get more done (Quartz) "The study found that productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that there’s no point in working any more. That’s right, people who work as much as 70 hours (or more) per week actually get the same amount done as people who work 55 hours."

- I was addicted to being busy. Then I tried this surprisingly effective technique to slow myself down. (WaPo)

NEWS:

- Clinton eyes Biden for secretary of state (Politico) "Neither Clinton, nor her aides have yet told Biden. According to the source, they’re strategizing about how to make the approach to the vice president, who almost ran against her in the Democratic primaries but has since been campaigning for her at a breakneck pace all over the country in these final months."

- Bikram Choudhury is not the Donald Trump of yoga. He’s worse. (SF Gate)

SPORTS:

- Lions' Glover Quin lives on 30 percent of take-home pay, uses rest to invest in future (ESPN) "Quin saved 70 percent of his take-home pay each year and invested in well-known, publicly traded companies. He and his family lived on the remaining 30 percent, about $6,000 a month -- $72,000 per year -- the first three years of his career."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Twitter Has an Old Media Problem. Here’s a Solution. (NYT) "Put another away, if journalism is the first draft of history, Twitter is the first draft of journalism. So who better to rescue Twitter than Mr. Page, a founder of the company dedicated to organizing the world’s information? Twitter takes the first cut of doing that organizing, in real time."

- Why Google Fiber is no longer rolling out to new cities (NYT)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Google’s former happiness guru developed a three-second brain exercise for finding joy (Quartz) "Tan’s “thin slice” exercise contains a trigger, a routine, and a reward—the three parts necessary to build a habit. Usually these events are unremarkable: a bite of food, the sensation of stepping from a hot room to an air-conditioned room, the moment of connection in receiving a text from an old friend. Although they last two or three seconds, the moments add up, and the more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy, Tan argues."

- One airline is now letting you watch your checked suitcase travel in real time (Quartz) "It almost makes the $25 checked bag fee worth it."

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THE SECRET TO THE CUBS' SUCCESS IS BASEBALL'S NEXT BIG TREND

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- The Secret to the Cubs' Success Is Baseball's Next Big Trend (Ozy) "Instead, the backbone of the Cubbies is the most frequently overlooked baseball skill, the one that has undergone a league-wide renaissance because of the new National League champs: defense. As the game changes, defense is the biggest thing on the block, and notwithstanding this year’s home-run surge, offense has declined over the past six years. So far this decade, the league-wide batting average is roughly 10 points lower than the average in the previous decade. With runs becoming more valuable, teams are more invested than ever in defenders who can save one run every two or three weeks. So, how did the Cubs’ defense get so good? Their roster, which includes exactly one Gold Glove winner (right fielder Jason Heyward), doesn’t tell the whole story. Instead, Cubs general manager Theo Epstein has taken a holistic approach, focusing on youth, athleticism and, most importantly, versatility. Those qualities allow manager Joe Maddon to pinball players all over the field in myriad combinations of defensive lineups that don’t sacrifice hitting."

ENTERTAINMENT:

- Patton Oswalt: ‘I’ll Never Be at 100 Percent Again’ (NYT)

- Pizzas, Pony Rides and Dolphin Shows: Balms for North Korea’s Elite (NYT)

LIVING:

- Millennials increasingly can’t be bothered to go out to eat (WaPo)

NEWS:

- WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world (WaPo) "The emails show that while aides struggled to get past the public controversy, they also expressed exasperation at each other and, at times, at Clinton — both for her decision to use the server and for the way she handled questions about it. Several exchanges illustrate fears among some top advisers that Clinton and other aides were demonstrating the very traits that polls suggested made her vulnerable: a penchant for secrecy and a hesitancy to admit fault or error."

- The next U.S. president must look to these three American heroes (WaPo)

SCIENCE:

- An Ivy League professor says there are only three types of friendships we make (Quartz) "When striking up new connections, people are either 'tight-knitters,' 'compartmentalizers,' or 'samplers,' according to Dartmouth sociology professor Janice McCabe."

- Why you should stop obsessing about your kids’ screen time (WaPo)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Hobbyist hackers probably caused Friday’s Internet meltdown, researchers say (WaPo)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Inside Trump Tower, the Center of the Billionaire’s Universe (Bloomberg) "And Trump Tower still has Trump. His home at the top isn't like the others. One reason Trump's triplex is so vast, he has written, is a trip he took to Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi's condo nearby, where he stepped into a living room bigger than his own. Trump said he bought up a neighboring unit to expand."

- How the Molotov Cocktail Got Its Name (Ozy)

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OBAMACARE IS A POLICY TRIUMPH AND A POLITICAL FAILURE

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Obamacare Is a Policy Triumph and a Political Failure (NY Magazine) "Obamacare has made American health care both dramatically more affordable and humanitarian. Its various cost reforms have helped bring medical inflation to decades-low levels, and it has given access to basic medical care to 20 million Americans who lacked it before. And yet public opinion has never reflected these realities. The law’s advocates assumed that perception would eventually catch up with reality, but this has not happened, and there is little reason to believe it will anytime soon. And if there is a single overarching flaw in Obamacare, it is a failure to account for politics. It is completely routine for large social policy reforms to have technical changes afterward. What’s abnormal is the Republican boycott of any measure that might improve the law’s function. Technical fixes to Obamacare are conceptually easy and, given the law’s surprisingly low costs, very affordable."

LIVING:

- How Kids Learn Prejudice (NYT) "It is also important to consider that negative information is particularly compelling to children. For example, my colleagues and I have found that when children learn about people committing antisocial actions, they remember those actions in greater detail than they do with comparable positive actions. Talking about entire groups of people as being threatening or dangerous, as Mr. Trump has done, is precisely the kind of language that children are likely to internalize."

NEWS:

- Don’t forget: Hillary Clinton is blazing a momentous trail (WaPo) "Think, for a moment, about what a remarkable milestone that would be. Consider what it would say about the long and difficult struggle to make the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom and equality encompass all Americans. The first 43 presidents were all members of a privileged minority group — white males. The 44th is a black man, and the 45th may well be a white woman. That is a very big deal."

- Why the next president may have more power than usual (WaPo)

- Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong (WaPo)

SCIENCE:

- Renewables Now Exceed All Other Forms of New Power Generation (Gizmodo) "Renewables in the form of solar and wind now account for more installed capacity than any other form of electricity, including coal. That’s huge, especially in consideration of the ambitious climate targets reached in Paris last year. Incredibly, about half a million solar panels were installed each day around the world last year."

SPORTS:

- Heading a soccer ball causes instant brain changes, study finds (WaPo) "Even after just a single session of heading, memory-test performance was reduced by as much as 67 percent, though the alterations appeared to clear within 24 hours. The researchers caution against taking this temporary disruption as a sign of no long-term damage."

WATCH THIS:

- Fastball (Netflix)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Self-Driving Truck’s First Mission: A Beer Run (NYT) "The truck drove through Denver — alongside regular passenger car traffic — and navigated to its destination in Colorado Springs without incident. The delivery was indicative of Uber’s larger ambitions to become an enormous transportation network, one in which the company is responsible for moving anything, like people, hot meals or cases of beer, around the globe, at all hours and as efficiently as possible."

- Would You Stick a Needle in Your Scrotum to Smooth It Out? (Esquire) "a plastic surgery 'derived from a botulism toxin' that 'smooths and plumps the fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin of the scrotum.'"

- Inside the Machine That Will Turn Your Corpse Into Compost (Wired)

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WEDNESDAY ART: zig zag

AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVOLVES, SO DOES ITS CRIMINAL POTENTIAL

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- As Artificial Intelligence Evolves, So Does Its Criminal Potential (NYT) "'The thing people don’t get is that cybercrime is becoming automated and it is scaling exponentially,' said Marc Goodman, a law enforcement agency adviser and the author of 'Future Crimes.' He added, 'This is not about Matthew Broderick hacking from his basement,' a reference to the 1983 movie 'War Games.'"

BUSINESS/PERSONAL FINANCE:

- Inside Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Comeback (Fortune)

- Is Bill Ackman Toast? (Vanity Fair)

- I’m 29 and I never learned how money works. It’s time to fix that. (NYT)

- Donald Trump's brand takes a hit from sexual assault allegations and lewd video (LA Times)

CYBER SECURITY:

- The Batman of the Internet Hacks Russian Government Website, Demands Retribution (Gizmodo) The hacker’s vigilante mission was prompted by Friday’s massive DDoS attack that made it impossible for users to visit numerous websites like Twitter, Seamless and Spotify. He told CNN Money, 'I wanted to poke them in the eye and stop feeling like US is just taking it on the chin. Again. I’m not gonna sit around watching these f—-rs laughing at us.' It is The Jester who gets the last laugh."

- Inside the OPM Hack, the Cyberattack That Shocked the US Government (Wired)

SCIENCE:

- The power of prediction markets (Nature)

SPORTS:

- The building of Bill Belichick - No More Questions (ESPN)

- Inside Theo Epstein's master mind (ESPN)

- The Fastest Pitcher Who Never Was (Ozy)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Elegant Physics (and Some Down and Dirty Linux Tricks) Threaten Android Phones (Wired) "Once someone downloads the malicious app, DRAMMER can take over a phone within minutes–or even seconds—and runs without any indication. The victim can interact with the sham app, switch to other apps, and even put the phone in “sleep” mode and the attack continues running. If you’re feeling nervous, the researchers built a second app that you can use to check whether your Android phone’s memory chip is susceptible to bit flips."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Migrant Workers in Recreational Vehicles (NYT) "The work-camping community illuminates many trends shaping and being shaped by baby boomers, including the search for both money and meaning in life as they grow older. Work campers (often shortened to workampers) run the gamut from low-income retirees to the well-heeled. But they all seem to thrive on a mobile lifestyle that works for those who prize their independence but may strike many of their peers as rootless."

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HATING HILLARY

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Hating Hillary (Economist) "Around 55% of Americans have an unfavorable view of her; about the same number do not trust her. Yet, among those who know Mrs Clinton, even critics praise her integrity. She is a politician, therefore self-interested and cynical at times—yet driven, they say, by an overarching desire to improve America. More surprising, given the many scandals she has been involved in, including an ongoing furor over her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state, not many of those who have dealt with her seem to think her particularly shifty. Even some of her foes say the concern about her probity is overblown. 'People can go back decades and perhaps criticize some of the judgments that were made,' Michael Chertoff, who was the Republican lead counsel in one of the first probes into Mrs Clinton, the Senate Whitewater Committee, but has endorsed her, told Bloomberg. 'That is very, very insignificant compared to the fundamental issue of how to protect the country.'"

BUSINESS:

- A chart about leggings sales that should scare every old-school apparel chain (WaPo) "Indeed, this data only reflects how people are buying two specific garments. But leggings and jeans are particularly important garments: Industry insiders have been known to say that “bottoms” are key to building loyalty to a clothing chain. When a woman finds that pants from a certain store fit her, she’s hooked, and she’ll hit that store up for jackets, blouses, shoes and so on."

- Meet LeEco, the Giant Chinese Mega-Corporation That Wants to Sell You Absolutely Everything (Wired)

- AT&T Is Buying Time Warner Because the Future is Google (Wired)

ENTERTAINMENT:

- The Unholy Gospel of Sam Kinison (Ozy) "Kinison is buried in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under a gravestone that reads: 'In another time and place he would have been called prophet.'"

- The coming-of-age movie is reborn, with fresh stories and characters (LA Times)

HEALTH:

- We review Ambronite v5, the newest meal-in-a-pouch all the way from Finland (Wired)

FRIDAY CYBER ATTACK:

- A New Era of Internet Attacks Powered by Everyday Devices (NYT) "But hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of those security cameras and other devices have been infected with a fairly simple program that guessed at their factory-set passwords — often “admin” or “12345” or even, yes, “password” — and, once inside, turned them into an army of simple robots. Each one was commanded, at a coordinated time, to bombard a small company in Manchester, N.H., called Dyn DNS with messages that overloaded its circuits."

- Today's Brutal DDoS Attack Is the Beginning of a Bleak Future (Gizmodo) "Recently, we've entered into a new DDoS paradigm. As security blogger Brian Krebs notes, the newfound ability to highjack insecure internet of things devices and turn them into a massive DDoS army has contributed to an uptick in the size and scale of recent DDoS attacks"

- What’s Going On With the Internet Today? (The Atlantic)

NEWS:

- Philippines’ Duterte says ‘goodbye’ to Washington and hello to Beijing (WaPo)

- Duterte’s Flip-Flop Into Bed With China Is a Disaster for the United States (FP)

- A Game-Changing Year for Women — in More Ways Than You Think (Ozy)

SCIENCE:

- Your Neanderthal DNA might actually be doing you some good (WaPo) "The DNA that does remain has been blamed for increasing risk of depression, Type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, lupus, allergies, addiction and more."

SPORTS:

- The Spy Who Played Major League Baseball (Ozy)

TECHNOLOGY:

- How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History (Esquire)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Finally, a Nerf Dart That Goes Exactly Where You Want It To (Wired) "The real fun starts with the real-world testing. The team fired over 3,000 darts under controlled conditions, at targets 30 feet away, and used a wind tunnel to asses in-flight performance. The end result? A Nerf dart that fills out your arsenal for when you’re in a close-quarters situation and can’t risk a miss."

- Watch this gut-wrenching new short by Pixar animators (WaPo)

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THE ANTI-HELICOPTER PARENT'S PLEA: LET KIDS PLAY!

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- The Anti-Helicopter Parent’s Plea: Let Kids Play! (NYT) "That is, kids don’t play outside because other kids don’t play outside. Playing outside becomes like Betamax — it’s just obsolete. But in the case of a playborhood, the vicious circle transforms into a virtuous one: When there’s always another kid to play with, most kids want to play."

ENTERTAINMENT:

- The greatest role of Bill Murray’s life has been playing Bill Murray (WaPo)

HEALTH:

- More than half of U.S. kids don't get dental sealants, and the CDC wants schools to change that (LA Times) "Sealants can reduce the risk of cavities by 81% over two years and keep fighting cavities for up to nine years, according to the Community Preventive Services Task Force, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But the majority of school-age kids in the U.S. don’t get them, according to the CDC Vital Signs report released Tuesday."

- The Cure for Cancer Is Data—Mountains of Data (Wired)

LONG READS:

- Imagining A Cashless World (New Yorker)

NEWS:

- General Cartwright is paying the price for Hillary Clinton’s sins (WaPo) "Cartwright’s greatest mistake was not talking to reporters or lying about it; he failed to play the Washington game skillfully enough to avoid becoming a scapegoat for a system in which senior officials skirt the rules and then fall back on their political power to save them. One notable difference between Cartwright’s case and that of Clinton and Petraeus was the fact that Cartwright was the subject of a leak investigation. The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many leakers as all previous administrations combined."

- Fear of an imminent terrorist attack runs deep around the world (WaPo)

- Why the Knight Foundation president thinks we’re living through the biggest disruption since Gutenberg and the printing press (WaPo)

OPINION:

- I Fight for Your Right to Vote. But I Won’t Do It Myself. (NYT) "'I am in the pay of the United States government,' Gen. George S. Patton once put it. 'If I vote against the administration, I am voting against my commander in chief. If I vote for the administration in office I am being bought.'"

SCIENCE:

- The Solution to Antibiotic Resistance — More Antibiotics? (Ozy) "Expected global deaths from AMR (antimicrobial resistance, largely due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria) in 2050 are projected to overtake cancer."

SPORTS:

- Bill Belichick Throws In the Tablet (NYT)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Whoever Wins the White House, This Year’s Big Loser Is Email (NYT) "Why were all these people discussing so much over email in the first place? The answer, of course, is that email is as tempting as it is inescapable, for Mrs. Clinton as well as for the rest of us. More than 50 years after its birth, email exerts an uncanny hold on all of our internal affairs."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Leave it to a Canadian ad campaign to deliver the most inspiring message of this U.S. election (WaPo)

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BIG-DATA ALGORITHMS ARE MANIPULATING US ALL

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Big-Data Algorithms Are Manipulating Us All (Wired) "Information is power, and in the age of corporate surveillance, profiles on every active American consumer means that the system is slanted in favor of those with the data. This data helps build tailor-made profiles that can be used for or against someone in a given situation."

BUSINESS:

- Signs of Strain in the Stock and Bond Love Affair (NYT) "Until recently, bond and stock prices have generally moved in opposite directions when stocks falter. But something different happened in September, and it could render bonds a weaker tool for portfolio diversification."

- The U.S. Is Beating China On the Factory Floor. This Is Why. (Ozy) "What’s behind America’s new place at the front of the pack? It comes down to an ongoing economic boom that some analysts are calling “Manufacturing 4.0” or “Next Manufacturing.” Manufacturers are finding that the total cost of ownership (TCO) favors U.S.-based factory production, explains Harry Moser, founder and president of the Chicago-based Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit think tank that supports U.S.-based manufacturing."

ENTERTAINMENT:

- Why Steven Spielberg is joining forces with China's first Internet tycoon (LA Times)

SPORTS:

- Olympic swimmer is back from Rio with a silver medal — but no full-time job (WaPo) "But for the vast majority of the 47 American swimmers — and for that matter, the 550 athletes that made up Team USA — re-entry to American life was a far less celebrated affair. And plenty of them, like Jaeger, weighed the realities of economics, physiology and time commitment — and decided, even in the prime of their athletic lives, not to spend four more years training and sacrificing."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Google Pixel Review: Assessing the New Smartphone (NYT) and Google Pixel Is the Best Phone on the Planet (Wired)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- The Best and Worst Time to Procrastinate (Ozy) "But according to a study out of Indiana University, the most likely time to engage in self-handicapping behaviors such as drinking before final exams or staying up late before an important interview is when you’re at the top of your game — specifically, when you’re burning the midnight oil (if you’re a night owl) or rising early (if you’re a morning person). So, people are more likely to shortchange themselves during stressful tasks when they are most alert. In other words, you can’t win."

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WEDNESDAY ART: small to big. top to bottom

WHY WE NEED TO PLAN FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT JOBS

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Why we need to plan for a future without jobs (Vox) "When driverless trucks are manufactured at scale, which will happen far sooner than many realize (as soon as five years), America’s 3.5 million truck drivers will be dispensable. What is true of the freight industry will be true of many others. We will enter what the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson called 'an era of technological unemployment,' in which machines render human labor useless and inefficient."

BUSINESS:

- IBM Is Counting on Its Bet on Watson, and Paying Big Money for It (NYT) "IBM does not report financial results for Watson separately. But the securities research arm of the Swiss bank UBS estimates that Watson may generate $500 million in revenue this year and could grow rapidly in the years ahead, possibly hitting nearly $6 billion by 2020 and almost $17 billion by 2022."

- How Did Walmart Get Cleaner Stores and Higher Sales? It Paid Its People More (NYT)

ENTERTAINMENT:

- With Idols in Ranks, South Korean Army Steps to a K-Pop Beat (NYT) "In South Korea, where every able-bodied man 18 to 35 years old must complete a 21-month stint in the armed forces, the rules make no exceptions for pop idols, no matter how much their fans may miss them and how much income they stand to lose while enlisted. And in a nation where powerful talent agencies routinely recruit new singers and dancers to create pop groups, there is a constant stream of celebrities eligible for military duty."

HEALTH:

- Vacations Are Good for Workers and Their Employers. Why Don’t We Take Them? (Slate) "According to Project: Time Off, Americans leave 658 million vacation days on the table each year. In 2015, Americans took an average of 16.2 days of vacation each year, compared to the 20.3 days we used to take off before the year 2000."

LONG READS:

- War Goes Viral (The Atlantic)

NATIONAL SECURITY:

- The Growing Menace From North Korea (Ozy) "In the last few years, though, a series of events and developments has moved the isolated state up near the top of the U.S. 'nightmare list.' First, the North’s ability to project military power far beyond its borders has grown, dangerously. Second, its leader is not just implacably hostile to the United States — he is also much more volatile and unpredictable than his predecessors."

- ‘Band-Aid on a bullet wound’: What America’s new war looks like in Afghanistan’s most violent province (WaPo) "The future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan after a decade and a half of war has received little attention in the presidential campaign and debates. But the next administration will be bequeathed a strategy that is doing 'just enough to lose slowly,' said Douglas Ollivant, a senior national-security-studies fellow at the New America Foundation."

- Are the Russians really preparing for war? (WaPo)

- In Somalia, U.S. Escalates a Shadow War (NYT)

NEWS:

- How Mike Flynn Became America’s Angriest General (Politico)

- Is the Self-Driving Car Un-American? (NY Mag)

- Donald Trump and the G.O.P.: The Party of Lincoln, Reagan and, Perhaps, Extinction (NYT)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- How to Hack Your Hangover (Ozy)

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ARE WET WIPES WRECKING THE WORLD'S SEWERS

IF YOU READ NO FURTHER... :

- Are Wet Wipes Wrecking the World's Sewers? (The Atlantic) "But lawsuits are now popping up across the country over use of the word “flushable.” Sewerage authorities claim that flushable wet wipes don’t break apart, and, as a result, are destroying municipal sewer systems. The wipes cluster with congealed food fat to form large blockages known as fatberg—a portmanteau of fat and iceberg. Last year, a 10-ton lump was removed from the London sewer system at a cost of £400,000. Cases have also been reported in Newcastle, Sydney, San Francisco, Miami, New York City, Toronto, and Washington, D.C."

ART/CULTURE:

- A True-Crime Documentary About the Con That Shook the World of Wine (New Yorker) "'Sour Grapes,' by the documentary filmmakers Jerry Rothwell and Reuben Atlas, traces Kurniawan’s ascent to the inner sanctum of connoisseurship, then rehashes the detective work that led to his downfall and scandalized the world of wine collectors."

BUSINESS:

- Uber and other companies like it make up a surprisingly small share of the gig economy (WaPo) "The share of workers engaged in gig work has grown over time, though relatively modestly, from about 10 percent in 2005 to almost 16 percent in 2015, according to the report. Popular notions would say that this has to do with technological advancements. But the McKinsey report suggests differently. Among these gig workers, only 15 percent, a relatively small fraction, have earned income using a digital platform. 'Despite their extensive media coverage, digital 'on-demand' or 'sharing economy' platforms such as Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Upwork, Freelancer.com, Thumbtack, Airbnb, and the like facilitate only a small fraction of independent work today,' the report states."

NEWS:

- North Korea is scarier than ever (NYT) "There’s a sense here, among South Korean and American officials alike, that Kim Jong Un, the mercurial leader in Pyongyang, is racing through the warning lights to gain nuclear weapons and missile capabilities to attack his neighbors, and also the United States. The next U.S. president will have to decide what to do about it."

- The Submarine Disaster That Blew Up In Putin's Face (Ozy) "Sixteen years later, the best guess is that the Kursk was carrying the exact opposite of a high-tech weapon. It had been equipped with aging torpedoes fueled by HTP, or high-test peroxide, a substance banned by other major naval powers in the 1950s. If HTP leaks onto other parts of a torpedo’s highly volatile engine, it quickly expands in a chemical reaction that can cause a deadly explosion. That, according to a 2002 official government investigation, was what caused the first explosion on the Kursk, which sent it careening toward the ocean floor. The next explosion — the one that registered in Alaska — came when the sub hit the seafloor, triggering other torpedoes."

SCIENCE:

- Elon Musk is Treating Mars Like It's a Morre's Law Problem. It's Not (Wired) "One of the fundamental problems with a grand visionary projects such as shooting people to Mars is they do nothing to solve the underlying problem of physics, laws of thermodynamics, and the most grand, visionary aspect of all: How to pay for them. Musk ignores the fact that NASA and others have outlined similar roadmaps to Mars for more than 50 years."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Some Basic Security Tips for the Clinton Campaign (and Anyone Else) (Wired)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Xerox—Yeah, Xerox—Has Found a Way to Bust Carpool Lane Cheaters (Wired) "Joseph Averkamp collects stories about how people break the law. He keeps them in a Powerpoint presentation, dragging the grainy local news photos into the slides. There’s the guy who stuffed a pile of wooden boards into a hoodie. The Washington man who buckled up next to a cardboard cutout of Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man” mascot. Another one he could add, but hasn’t yet: The dude who stuck a yuge picture of Donald Trump’s face on the headrest of his passenger seat."

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BOB DYLAN WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

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- Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels." (NYT) and Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel (NYT) "Yes, Mr. Dylan is a brilliant lyricist. Yes, he has written a book of prose poetry and an autobiography. Yes, it is possible to analyze his lyrics as poetry. But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music. He is great because he is a great musician, and when the Nobel committee gives the literature prize to a musician, it misses the opportunity to honor a writer."

BUSINESS:

- Goldman’s Online Lender, Marcus, Opens (to Those With the Code) (NYT) "Marcus is the centerpiece of Goldman’s push into consumer banking, and the firm has put significant resources into designing and planning the site and the products it will offer. The venture is named for the man who founded Goldman Sachs in the 19th century, Marcus Goldman."

EDITORIAL:

- The closing argument against Donald Trump (WaPo)

NEWS:

- John Kasich: Refusing to ratify TPP risks America’s role as the world leader (WaPo) "Don’t be fooled by divisive talk in the presidential campaign that the TPP is only a debate about trade. At its very core, this agreement is about making sure the United States continues to strengthen its essential alliances and is willing to sustain its standing as the global leader — something we have done for more than half a century."

- When Europe’s Far Right Came for Me (NYT) "But if people hoped that these parties would take on Slovakia’s graft problem, they have been sorely disappointed. The opposition has failed to deliver on reform, and instead limited its activities to stunts and political theater, like the anti-corruption rally. These parties have capitalized on the widespread hatred of the social democrats to vilify the government and label anyone who doesn’t agree with them enemies. Ordinary People, along with the other right-wing parties, is introducing a vicious divisiveness to the country and animating an angry base. I was just one victim of this strategy." Sound familiar...?

- Reviled by G.O.P., WikiLeaks Embraced by Trump for Clinton Email Leaks (NYT) "The Trump campaign’s willingness to use WikiLeaks is an extraordinary turnabout after years of bipartisan criticism of the organization and its leader, Julian Assange, for past disclosures of American national security intelligence and other confidential information."

- Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors (WaPo)

- What the Death of Thailand’s King Means, and What’s Next (NYT)

SCIENCE:

- Why Does This Virus Have Spider DNA? (The Atlantic)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Everybody raise your hands and say “Wheeee!” (Bloomberg) "Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity are no longer experiments. Tesla and SolarCity are public companies. SpaceX, meanwhile, has become crucial not just to the U.S. space program but also to countries and companies around the world hoping to put up satellites for communications, entertainment, and national security. If his companies were to crater, it wouldn’t merely be an internet playboy blowing his millions on a whim. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost, billions in capital would be wiped out, and technological progress would be stunted."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Designers manipulate our internet behavior through the cunning use of color (Quartz)

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AMERICA IS TURNING INTO A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

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- America Is Turning Into a Confederacy of Dunces (FP) "As Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute notes in the Daily Beast: 'By the end of the 1990s, two thirds of high school seniors were unable to identify the 50-year period in which the Civil War was fought; half didn’t know in which half century World War I took place. More than half could not name the three branches of government. A majority had no idea what the Gettysburg address was all about. Fifty two percent chose Germany, Japan or Italy as ‘U.S. allies’ in World War II.' It gets worse: 'Several years ago Newsweek asked a sample of 1000 voters to take the same test that new immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship must pass. One third of the respondents couldn’t name the vice president and half didn’t know that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Only one third knew that the Constitution is considered the nation’s highest law.' If we don’t revitalize civics education, we will be entrusting our future to people who cannot name all three branches of government — a feat that only one-third of respondents in one recent survey could pull off. Such abysmal ignorance is no obstacle to training clients at a gym or performing myriad other jobs, but it is a deal-breaker in making informed decisions at the ballot box. The way we are going, one of these days a Bernie Sanders or, heaven help us, a Donald Trump will not just be a candidate for president. He will actually become president."

BUSINESS:

- Central Banks Consider Bitcoin’s Technology, if Not Bitcoin (NYT) "If the central banks succeed, it would be one of the greatest unexpected twists in new technology: An invention aimed at dethroning central banks and making it harder for money to be tracked instead ends up empowering those central banks and making money more easily traceable."

- South Koreans live in 'the Republic of Samsung,' where the Galaxy Note 7 crisis feels personal (LA Times) "Samsung accounts for 20% of the country’s gross domestic product, and its footprint is everywhere. South Koreans can grab a drink from their Samsung refrigerator while watching a Samsung television in their Samsung-made apartment, then use their Samsung credit card while out running errands."

- This might help explain why corporate boards are still an old boy’s club (WaPo) "Companies with the highest percentage of female directors have been shown to outperform on return on equity, return on sales and return on invested capital. They pay less to gobble up other firms. They have lower stock price volatility. And those with more women at the top have even been shown to have fewer governance controversies, such as bribery and fraud."

- Millennials aren't big spenders or risk takers, and that's going to reshape the economy (LA Times) "Instead of material wealth, millennials [adults under 35] show off through their travels, hobbies and even meals, which get photographed and posted on Facebook, Instagram and other social media."

HEALTH:

- W.H.O. Urges Tax on Sugary Drinks to Fight Obesity (NYT) "A tax on sugary beverages raising their price 20 percent would result in a proportionate reduction in their consumption, the agency said."

- The Obamacare problem that Democrats don’t want to talk about (Vox)

NEWS:

- Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive (Wired) "Here’s another thing I believe: We are far better equipped to take on the challenges we face than ever before. I know that might sound at odds with what we see and hear these days in the cacophony of cable news and social media. But the next time you’re bombarded with over-the-top claims about how our country is doomed or the world is coming apart at the seams, brush off the cynics and fearmongers. Because the truth is, if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now."

- Hillary Clinton, Paul Ryan and the relationship that could shape Washington (WaPo)

- Pentagon Confronts a New Threat From ISIS: Exploding Drones (NYT)

- Conundrum for Justices: Does a Design Patent Cover a Whole Smartphone? (NYT)

SCIENCE:

- How Obama brought capitalism to outer space (WaPo) "'It will become one of the great ironies in the history of exploration into space that someone many politicians called a socialist was a champion for the possibilities of capitalism in space,' said James Muncy, a space policy analyst at PoliSpace, a consulting firm. Obama 'stepped in and said we're going to try public private partnerships, and it is working.'"

SPORTS:

- NFL Ratings Just Fell Off a Cliff: Why? (The Atlantic) and The likely leading causes of the NFL’s significant TV ratings decline (WaPo)

TECHNOLOGY:

- We Must Remake Society in the Coming Age of AI: Obama (Wired) "In 2013, Oxford professors Carl Frey and Michael Osbourne predicted that machines could replace about 47 percent of people’s jobs over the next two decades. Their results were the sheet music for a chorus of pundits arguing that AI will decimate our society. The President takes a more optimistic view. 'Historically, we’ve absorbed new technologies, and people find that new jobs are created, they migrate, and our standards of living generally go up,' he says. But he also sees that today’s version of that technological evolution means some high-skilled workers will lose their jobs, and that low-wage, low-skill workers might end up with lower wages."

- Barack Obama Talks AI, Robo Cars, and the Future of the World (Wired)

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FOR MANY WOMEN, TRUMP'S 'LOCKER ROOM TALK' BRINGS MEMORY OF ABUSE

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- For Many Women, Trump’s ‘Locker Room Talk’ Brings Memories of Abuse (NYT) "Yet by Saturday morning, she [Kelly Oxford] was getting as many as 50 responses per minute: often-explicit, first-person accounts of molestation. A hashtag had materialized: '#notokay.' The Twitter posts continued to pour in through the weekend. And by Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Ms. Oxford’s Twitter page. A social media movement was born as multitudes of women came forward to share their stories. The result has been a kind of collective, nationwide purge of painful, often long-buried memories."

HEALTH:

- Let’s Talk a Millennial Into Getting a Flu Shot (NYT)

NEWS:

- ‘I’m the Last Thing Standing Between You and the Apocalypse’ (NYT)

SCIENCE:

- Why Obama may have picked the wrong planet (WaPo) "At about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system,' wrote Geoffrey Landis, a NASA scientist, in a 2003 paper."

TECHNOLOGY

- Twitter’s Woes Signal the End of the Social Wars (Wired) "There are many reasons the titans of tech would pass [on buying Twitter]. Twitter isn’t growing fast enough, it doesn’t make enough money, and it is overrun by trolls, morons, and bullies. And those are the big problems. But the fact no one seems to want one of the world’s most influential social platforms says something about how the landscape has changed."

- Workplace by Facebook, or a Party in the Office (The New Yorker) "Software’s emotional dimension is crucial: how it feels dictates how it’s used. (Architects hire environmental psychologists; tech companies hire user-experience researchers.) Microsoft Word is the quiet room at the university library; personal Gmail is a dirty kitchen, yesterday’s plates stacked next to the sink; Twitter is an overcrowded bar. Throughout the day, I’ll move from room to room, alternating between solitude and socializing, work and play."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Crikey, We Need Another Steve Irwin (Ozy) "The fact that a decade later most people struggle to name another wildlife communicator is a testament both to Irwin’s uniqueness and to the gap in science communication that he left behind. Wildlife science communication has declined. While space, engineering and physics are crucial fields, if we continue to sideline wildlife presentation and fail to foster a new crop of communicators, who will we have to effectively personalize conservation and tell us what’s at stake?"

- McDonald's downplays Ronald McDonald while 'creepy clown' sightings spread (AP)

- Why people go @*@&@(*&! in the office (WaPo)

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WEDNESDAY ART: red web

THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE IN SONG: WHO'S GONNA WORK IT OUT?

IF YOU READ (OR WATCH) NO FURTHER... :

-The Presidential Debate in Song: Who’s Gonna Work It Out? (NYT) "And sure, last night’s debate was strange. A first lady turned senator turned secretary of state versus a landlord turned reality TV host turned semiprofessional birther turned amateur horror movie lurker who creeps up behind you. Yeah, that’s pretty weird."

HEALTH:

- Is Mental Illness the HIV of the 21st Century? (Ozy)

LIFE:

- Why you should give your sons more chores than your daughters (WaPo) "Worldwide, girls spend about 50 percent more time on chores than their brothers, according to UNICEF."

NEWS:
- Behind Duterte’s Bluster, a Philippine Shift Away From the U.S. (NYT) "'I will be reconfiguring my foreign policy,' he said in a speech last week. And at some point, 'I will break up with America.' Often after Mr. Duterte makes an over-the-top pronouncement, an aide emerges to walk it back. But in this case, the retreat was slight."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Bill Gates on dangers of artificial intelligence: ‘I don’t understand why some people are not concerned’ (WaPo)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- When You Have to Go, Japanese Rest Stops Won’t Keep You Waiting (NYT) "Companies that run major highway service plazas in Japan go to considerable lengths to ensure you never will, as they compete for the coveted Japan Toilet Award from the transportation ministry."

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THE MAGIC OF THAT WIFFLE BALL SOUND

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- The Magic of That Wiffle Ball Sound (NYT) "If you could hit a Wiffle ball, you could hit anything. No other earthly object moves like a Wiffle ball. When thrown correctly, it seems to defy the laws of modern physics: It is like a knuckleball in a hurricane."

BUSINESS:

- Trying to Solve the L.E.D. Quandary (New Yorker) "That quandary, in short: companies are making a good thing—light-emitting-diode bulbs that conserve energy and last for years—but they can’t make money in the long run from products that rarely need replacing."

CULTURE:

- Letter of Complaint: Cards Against Humanity (NYT)

HEALTH:

- Why Are So Many Men Not Working? They’re in Pain (Bloomberg) "He even found some support for the theory that improvements in video games have made leisure more attractive as an alternative to work to this demographic."

- How Back Pain Took Over the World (The Atlantic)

NEWS:

- U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections (NYT) "'We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,' the statement said." and The open US accusation of hacking by Russia signals a war of nerves not seen since the Cold War (Quartz)

- North Korea is ‘racing towards the nuclear finish line’ (WaPo) "Kim Jong Un has ordered 49 missile tests in the almost five years since he took over, including 21 this year. He has also presided over three nuclear tests, two of them in 2016. By contrast, North Korea conducted 26 missile tests and two nuclear tests in the 18 years that Kim Jong Il was leader."

- Younger adults prefer to get their news in text, not video, according to new data from Pew Research (Nieman Lab) "The lack of unhindered enthusiasm among young people for watching news online is probably sobering for digital publishers, many of which are eyeing video as a way to escape their reliance on display advertising, which seems in irrevocable decline. 'So far, the growth around online video news seems to be largely driven by technology, platforms, and publishers rather than by strong consumer demand.'"

- A rare look inside Huma Abedin’s relationship with Hillary Clinton (WaPo)

TECHNOLOGY:

- This is what an A.I.-powered future looks like (VentureBeat) "The artificial intelligence industry is projected to grow to $70 billion by 2020 from just $8.2 billion in 2013 according to Bank of America." and The only difference between the next generation of smartphones will be their AI assistants (Quartz) and Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explains how AI will change the world (Vox) and All That New Google Hardware? It's a Trojan Horse for AI (Wired)

- Porn Sites Aren't Secure, But That May Be About to Change (Wired)

- Google Translate is getting really, really accurate (WaPo)

- Where Top Talent In The Tech Industry Will Likely Work Next (Fast Company)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Just One Out of Five Millennials Has Tasted a Big Mac (Fortune)

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THE EDITORIALISTS HAVE SPOKEN: WILL VOTERS LISTEN?

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- The Editorialists Have Spoken; Will Voters Listen? (NYT) "The Atlantic magazine has made only two presidential endorsements in its 159-year history: one for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and one for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. The third comes Wednesday afternoon, when the magazine posted an editorial endorsing Hillary Clinton for president and dismissing Donald J. Trump as 'the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.' For good measure, it calls him 'a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing and a liar.'"

EDITORIAL:

- A President Trump could destroy the world economy (WaPo)

HEALTH:

- What’s the Longest Humans Can Live? 115 Years, New Study Says (NYT) "The shift toward growth in ever-older populations started slowing in the 1980s; about a decade ago, it stalled. This might have occurred, Dr. Vijg and his colleagues said, because humans finally have hit an upper limit to their longevity. In 1968, the oldest age attained was 111. By the 1990s, that figure had increased to around 115. But then this trend stopped, too. With rare exceptions like Mrs. Calment, no one has lived beyond 115 years."

- As Drug Deaths Soar, a Silver Lining for Transplant Patients (NYT) "Because doctors can use multiple organs from each person, these 69 deceased drug users saved the lives of 202 other people, according to the organ bank. Nationwide, more than 790 deceased drug users have donated organs this year, accounting for about 12 percent of all donations. That is more than double the 340 drug users who donated in 2010, or about 4 percent of the total, the organ bank said."

- Intimacy for rent: Inside the business of paid cuddling (Quartz)

- A Letter to the Doctors and Nurses Who Cared for My Wife (NYT)

SCIENCE:

- The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, explained in 500 words (Vox)

SPORTS:

- High school teams in Washington are forfeiting rather than play school with NFL-sized talent (WaPo)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Facebook is talking to the White House about giving you ‘free’ Internet. Here’s why that may be controversial. (WaPo)

- Mossberg: How Google’s bold moves shake up the tech industry (Re/code)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Think Getting a Boot On Your Car Sucks? Get Ready for the Barnacle. (Wired)

- Honeycrisp was just the beginning: inside the quest to create the perfect apple (VoX)

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AMERICA'S 'QUIET CATASTROPHE': MILLIONS OF IDLE MEN

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- America’s ‘quiet catastrophe’: Millions of idle men (WaPo) "The “quiet catastrophe” is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs."

ENTERTAINMENT:

- The Real Message in Ang Lee’s Latest? ‘It’s Just Good to Look At’ (NYT) "What distinguishes it even from Mr. Lee’s idiosyncratic filmography is that he has made “Billy Lynn” in 3-D, and it will be shown — in theaters that can accommodate it — at 4K resolution and a rate of 120 frames per second, surpassing any previous major movie release."

BUSINESS/PERSONAL FINANCE:

- Trend Spotting: What Is Early Retirement? (Personal Capital) "These motivated folks strive for financial independence in order to have the flexibility to do what they want in life instead of exchanging time for money."

- Samsung in Cross Hairs of American Hedge Fund (NYT)

- MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up (NYT)

- Securing an Early Retirement: The Blogosphere’s 7 Best Lessons (Personal Capital)

NEWS:

- NSA contractor arrested for stealing top secret data (WaPo) and N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets (NYT) "Mr. Martin is suspected of taking the highly classified computer code developed by the agency to break into computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, some of it outdated."

- Security Council Backs António Guterres to Be Next U.N. Secretary General (NYT) "Trained as a theoretical physicist, Mr. Guterres is a veteran politician and a member of his country’s Socialist Party. His first major diplomatic test will be to rally Russia and whoever wins the presidency in the United States to address the carnage in Syria. He will also face a range of thorny conflicts elsewhere, from South Sudan to Yemen, and nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea."

- Is the 9/11 Bill a Political Disaster? A Saudi Expert Weighs in. (Ozy) "Obama made the most compelling argument against the bill in that this could have an adverse impact on the way in which the United States conducts its foreign policy — and more so than any other country, simply because the U.S. has more diplomatic missions and a wider military presence than any other country."

- Marijuana legalization is leading in every state where it’s on the ballot this November (WaPo)

- Xi Jinping May Delay Picking China’s Next Leader, Stoking Speculation (NYT)

SCIENCE:

- Jeff Bezos launches–and lands–his rocket for a fifth time, surprising even himself (WaPo) and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket Didn't Go Kaboom After Escape Pod Test (Wired)

TECHNOLOGY:

- Yahoo scanned all of its users’ incoming emails on behalf of U.S. intelligence officials (WaPo) and Yahoo Was Ordered to Search Email for Digital ‘Signature,’ Source Says (NYT)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- The mystery of why left-handers are so much rarer (BBC)

- Boutique Vinyl for the Musical Masses (Ozy)

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