TOP OF THE NEWS:
- How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’ (NYT) "But since 2005, Freedom House’s index has shown a decline in global freedom each year. Is that a statistical anomaly, a result of a few random events in a relatively short period of time? Or does it indicate a meaningful pattern? Mr. Mounk and Mr. Foa developed a three-factor formula to answer that question. Mr. Mounk thinks of it as an early-warning system, and it works something like a medical test: a way to detect that a democracy is ill before it develops full-blown symptoms. The first factor was public support: How important do citizens think it is for their country to remain democratic? The second was public openness to nondemocratic forms of government, such as military rule. And the third factor was whether 'antisystem parties and movements' — political parties and other major players whose core message is that the current system is illegitimate — were gaining support. According to the Mounk-Foa early-warning system, signs of democratic deconsolidation in the United States and many other liberal democracies are now similar to those in Venezuela before its crisis. Of course, this is just one paper. And the researchers’ approach, like all data-driven social science, has limitations. 'Look, this stuff is already going on in other places,' Mr. Mounk added. 'If there’s one task that we have as journalists, as academics, as thinkers, it’s to drive the stakes of this home for people.'"
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Steps to take to ensure a satisfying retirement (WaPo) "What exactly makes the difference between a happy retirement and an unhappy retirement? Those who are happiest have a vision of what their retirement will look like, says John Gajkowski, of Money Managers Financial Group in Oak Brook, Ill.: 'They have given it a lot of thought. When they quit work on Friday, on Monday they are not walking into a giant abyss.'"
CYBER SECURITY:
- SF’s Transit Hack Could’ve Been Way Worse—And Cities Need to Get Ready (Wired) "The city and its residents got off lightly, even if Muni did lose a few days of revenue. Attacks like this could happen anywhere and wreak far more havoc. And they almost certainly will, because the American public transit systems that make daily life possible for millions are an easy target." and San Francisco’s light-rail system was held hostage by hackers (WaPo)
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Don Henley says the Eagles are done. It was always Glenn Frey’s band. (WaPo) "'It would just seem like greed or something,' says Henley. 'It would seem like a desperate thing.'"
NEWS:
- Trump takes heat for wanting to outlaw flag burning -- but Clinton wanted the same in 2005 (Fox) "In 2005, Clinton co-sponsored the Flag Protection Act which, while it did not call for the stripping of citizenship, made flag burning with the intent to incite violence or disturb the peace punishable by a year in jail and a $100,000 fine. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Clinton and then-Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, never made it out of the Judiciary Committee, but was floated as a compromise to a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban flag burning. Clinton was criticized for her stance then, although the criticisms leveled at her targeted Clinton's perceived political slipperiness, rather than her representing a threat to constitutional liberty. A New York Times piece accused the senator of being 'in pander mode.'"
- Another Arab awakening is looming, warns a UN report (Economist) "A new UN report shows how few lessons have been learnt since the Arab spring. Regimes in the region ruthlessly suppress dissent, but are less attentive to its causes. The Arab world, home to just 5% of the world’s population, accounts for about half its terrorism and refugees. The Arab youth population is growing, but unemployment and poverty are growing faster."
- Trump’s Challenge to American Democracy (New Yorker) "Everything about him suggests that when he enters the White House he will continue gleefully transgressing democratic norms, berating his opponents, throwing out blatant falsehoods, and seeking to exploit his position for personal gain. That’s what he does. If anything, the isolation and pressures of the Oval Office might further warp his ego and exaggerate his dictatorial tendencies. Surrounded by yes-men, he could well be tempted to try to expand his powers, especially when things go wrong, as they inevitably do at some point in any Presidency. The real danger, as Colgan and others have pointed out, is that we will witness a gradual uprooting of the system’s foundations. Broadly speaking, this is what we have witnessed in Russia and Turkey during the past fifteen years. When Putin was elected, in 2000, following a decade of chaos, he claimed a mandate to restore order. It was only over time that he concentrated power in his hands, harassed and imprisoned his opponents, and cracked down on many forms of dissent. Using a rationalization for repressive measures that dates back at least to the French Revolution, the Russian President cited national-security imperatives, such as the need to confront Chechen terrorism."
- Protecting Journalism from Donald Trump (New Yorker) "It nonetheless warrants remembering that there is nothing normal about what we are witnessing. In the past two weeks, the President-elect has settled a fraud lawsuit over Trump University and assailed the cast of 'Hamilton' on Twitter, while the neo-Nazi National Policy Institute held a gathering in Washington, D.C., at which some of its attendees offered the Nazi salute in praise of Trump. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has issued a statement reminding Americans that the Holocaust “did not begin with killing; it began with words. Two years ago, any one of these events would have been seen as extraordinary. In the current crush of the absurd, they come dangerously close to blending into the background in the way that police sirens can become ambient noise in New York City. Last month, Sandra Mims Rowe, the board chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists, released a statement declaring Trump an unprecedented threat to freedom of the press. This was not only on account of his own behavior toward the media—ridiculing a disabled reporter, denying press credentials to outlets that have been critical of him, threatening to sue the Times—but also for its ripple effect. There’s a reason authoritarians typically begin by assailing the press." and Sean Hannity: People Don’t Need ‘Fake News’ Corporate Media Anymore; Landscape Shifting to Breitbart, Drudge, Talk Radio (Breitbart) "'Things have changed dramatically, with Breitbart, and Drudge, and cable news, and talk radio, and social media – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. People are getting information very differently than they did,' Hannity reflected." and Exclusive — Under the Hood: How Donald Trump Has Cut Around Corporate Media to Reach Millions Directly Online (Breitbart) "It [social media] offered Americans a window into who Trump really is, and allowed him to essentially bypass the failing and corrupted corporate media—most of whom essentially proved themselves with their actions to essentially be trying to tank the Trump campaign.
POLITICS:
- Combative, Populist Steve Bannon Found His Man in Donald Trump (NYT) "Mr. Bannon told a colleague in multiple conversations during the presidential campaign that he knew Mr. Trump was an 'imperfect vessel' for the revolution he had in mind. But the upstart candidate and the media entrepreneur bonded anyway. As a filmmaker, Mr. Bannon, 63, has cited both the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and the left-wing documentarian Michael Moore as models. Interviews with two dozen people who know him well, however, portray a man not easily labeled, capable of surprising both friends and enemies, with unshakable self-confidence and striking intensity."
- How Bernie Sanders Will Stick It to Trump (Ozy)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Donald Trump’s tech troubles (Economist) "Silicon Valley cheered the election of Barack Obama in 2008. But the Republican party’s ties with the tech industry are getting tetchier. In 2000, 36 of the 100 counties with the most tech workers voted Republican. In 2016 just 19 did. This century, employment in high-tech industries has grown by over 35% in Democratic-leaning counties. But in Republican-leaning counties, it fell by 37%"
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Pooping in deep space has NASA stumped. The ‘Space Poop Challenge’ is your way to help. (WaPo) "How NASA solves this problem in part depends upon you. The agency tapped crowdfunding platform HeroX to source a system that can collect up to 75 grams of fecal matter and 1 liter of urine per day, for six days. It must be hands-free, operate in microgravity and prevent leaking precious oxygen. The reward is up to a $30,000 bounty, plus the knowledge that the fruits of your mind may one day gird an astronaut’s loins."
- The World’s Best Drummers Make Some Noise (Wired)
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Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
A SINGLE CHART EVERYBODY NEEDS TO LOOK AT BEFORE TRUMP'S BIG FIGHT OVER BRINGING BACK AMERICAN JOBS
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- A single chart everybody needs to look at before Trump’s big fight over bringing back American jobs (WaPo) "But keeping this promise will be difficult, as Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently argued. That’s because American workers may be struggling, but American factories are not. U.S. factories now manufacture twice as much as they did in 1984, with one-third fewer workers, according to the Federal Reserve.
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Jack Bogle: “We’re in the Middle of a Revolution” (Bloomberg) "People are going to be using more index funds in 2025 than they are today. This is an underlying, fundamental trend—not one built on opinion, but on the relentless rules of humble arithmetic. Actively managed funds have been losing to index funds, in terms of cash flow, for eight consecutive years now. And it’s cascading now. Investors love it; Wall Street hates it. Mutual fund managers don’t like it either. Money is leaving them and coming to us every single day. We’re now doing a billion dollars a day. This is just totally beyond anything else in the industry’s history. 'The math is the math, and I think the mathematics are inarguable.'"
- Trump, and Great Business Ideas for America (NYT) "Professor Khurana warned that expecting these people to perform acts of genius was asking for trouble. The charismatic outsider tends to become authoritarian, alienating others in the company. The executive’s desperate efforts to live up to their promise may sometimes result in wild gambles. There are grounds for concern that President Trump could be this kind of outsider chief executive."
- Cashing in on Cryptocurrency in Hong Kong (Wired) "Users sign up for a free BitMEX account online, deposit Bitcoins — for which they’ve traded — and then bet on the value of currencies or financial derivatives that are based on real stocks, bonds and other financial products."
- One Money Question to Rule Them All: How Much Is Enough? (NYT)
HEALTH:
- Is “Screen Time” Dangerous for Children? (New Yorker) "Many parents worry that 'screen time' will impair children’s development, but recent research suggests that most of the common fears about children and screens are unfounded. The new guidelines emphasize that what matters is content and context, what children watch and with whom."
NEWS:
- Obama administration expands elite military unit’s powers to hunt foreign fighters globally (WaPo) "When finalized, it will elevate JSOC from being a highly-valued strike tool used by regional military commands to leading a new multiagency intelligence and action force. The new JSOC task force will report to the Pentagon through the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, according to U.S. military officials, creating a hybrid command system that can circumvent regional commanders for the sake of speed."
- An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP? (WaPo) "If Trump wasn’t ready to put his business life behind him, he should not have run for president. And if Republicans — after all of their ethical sermons about Clinton — do not now demand that the incoming president unequivocally cut all of his and his family’s ties to his companies, they will be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful and partisan double standard."
- Trump the president-elect: So far, acting a lot like Trump the candidate (LA Times) "On policy, Trump repeatedly has softened or de-emphasized key components of his campaign pitch. A video released 13 days after the election did not mention three of the biggest applause generators at his campaign rallies — his promises to build a wall on the border with Mexico, to tear up the NAFTA trade agreement and to repeal Obamacare."
- The Real Concerns of the Trump Transition (New Yorker)
- The Disruptive Career of Michael Flynn, Trump’s National-Security Adviser (New Yorker)
POLITICS:
- Trump’s populism is about to face a rude awakening (WaPo) "Trump might have to decide between giving up on his populism, and giving up on getting anything done. Whichever he chooses, though, there's a good chance that wages will continue to go up and up as the labor market gets closer and closer to full employment. The irony is that they might not rise as much, at least not for the "forgotten men" and women who pushed Trump into the White House, as they otherwise would have."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Help Wanted: People on Autism Spectrum to Solve Cybersecurity Crisis (Wired)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Being Kim Jong Un: A Chinese impersonator has little luck with the opposite sex (WaPo)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- A single chart everybody needs to look at before Trump’s big fight over bringing back American jobs (WaPo) "But keeping this promise will be difficult, as Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently argued. That’s because American workers may be struggling, but American factories are not. U.S. factories now manufacture twice as much as they did in 1984, with one-third fewer workers, according to the Federal Reserve.
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Jack Bogle: “We’re in the Middle of a Revolution” (Bloomberg) "People are going to be using more index funds in 2025 than they are today. This is an underlying, fundamental trend—not one built on opinion, but on the relentless rules of humble arithmetic. Actively managed funds have been losing to index funds, in terms of cash flow, for eight consecutive years now. And it’s cascading now. Investors love it; Wall Street hates it. Mutual fund managers don’t like it either. Money is leaving them and coming to us every single day. We’re now doing a billion dollars a day. This is just totally beyond anything else in the industry’s history. 'The math is the math, and I think the mathematics are inarguable.'"
- Trump, and Great Business Ideas for America (NYT) "Professor Khurana warned that expecting these people to perform acts of genius was asking for trouble. The charismatic outsider tends to become authoritarian, alienating others in the company. The executive’s desperate efforts to live up to their promise may sometimes result in wild gambles. There are grounds for concern that President Trump could be this kind of outsider chief executive."
- Cashing in on Cryptocurrency in Hong Kong (Wired) "Users sign up for a free BitMEX account online, deposit Bitcoins — for which they’ve traded — and then bet on the value of currencies or financial derivatives that are based on real stocks, bonds and other financial products."
- One Money Question to Rule Them All: How Much Is Enough? (NYT)
HEALTH:
- Is “Screen Time” Dangerous for Children? (New Yorker) "Many parents worry that 'screen time' will impair children’s development, but recent research suggests that most of the common fears about children and screens are unfounded. The new guidelines emphasize that what matters is content and context, what children watch and with whom."
NEWS:
- Obama administration expands elite military unit’s powers to hunt foreign fighters globally (WaPo) "When finalized, it will elevate JSOC from being a highly-valued strike tool used by regional military commands to leading a new multiagency intelligence and action force. The new JSOC task force will report to the Pentagon through the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, according to U.S. military officials, creating a hybrid command system that can circumvent regional commanders for the sake of speed."
- An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP? (WaPo) "If Trump wasn’t ready to put his business life behind him, he should not have run for president. And if Republicans — after all of their ethical sermons about Clinton — do not now demand that the incoming president unequivocally cut all of his and his family’s ties to his companies, they will be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful and partisan double standard."
- Trump the president-elect: So far, acting a lot like Trump the candidate (LA Times) "On policy, Trump repeatedly has softened or de-emphasized key components of his campaign pitch. A video released 13 days after the election did not mention three of the biggest applause generators at his campaign rallies — his promises to build a wall on the border with Mexico, to tear up the NAFTA trade agreement and to repeal Obamacare."
- The Real Concerns of the Trump Transition (New Yorker)
- The Disruptive Career of Michael Flynn, Trump’s National-Security Adviser (New Yorker)
POLITICS:
- Trump’s populism is about to face a rude awakening (WaPo) "Trump might have to decide between giving up on his populism, and giving up on getting anything done. Whichever he chooses, though, there's a good chance that wages will continue to go up and up as the labor market gets closer and closer to full employment. The irony is that they might not rise as much, at least not for the "forgotten men" and women who pushed Trump into the White House, as they otherwise would have."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Help Wanted: People on Autism Spectrum to Solve Cybersecurity Crisis (Wired)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Being Kim Jong Un: A Chinese impersonator has little luck with the opposite sex (WaPo)
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Monday, November 28, 2016
DON'T BLAME FACEBOOK. IT'S THE EDUCATION, STUPID
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Don't Blame Facebook. It's the Education, Stupid (Ozy) "Yes, Donald Trump’s support was confined almost exclusively to whites, who, despite the media’s infatuation with America’s coming majority minority, still make up 70 percent of the electorate. But among this supermajority, the most accurate predictor of Trump support was educational achievement. Among college-educated whites (36 percent of voters) Trump eked out a four-point margin. But whites with no college (34 percent of voters) preferred Trump by a whopping 39 percent. The reason undereducated whites flocked to Trump is simple and stark. From 1989 to 2012, on a net basis, every single job created in the U.S. required a postsecondary education. While employment for those with some college grew by 42 percent and for those with a bachelor’s degree by 82 percent, for those with a high school diploma or less, employment fell by 14 percent.The only solution is more and better public education for America’s poor, from pre-K through precalculus and on to college."
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Mandatory Saving for Retirement Gets a Thumbs Up From Millennials (Fortune) "Nearly seven in 10 young adults say they believe individuals should be required to save in retirement accounts, according to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management. On average, millennials first enrolled in a retirement savings plan at age 23, while Gen X signed up at age 27 and boomers, at 31. This early start shows that millennials appreciate the extent to which they must provide retirement security for themselves. It also reflects the move to auto enrollment by many companies that offer 401(k) plans."
- 5 marketing trends to watch for in 2017 (VentureBeat) "Live streaming hasn’t fully taken off yet, but expect it to boom in 2017. Get ready for more direct use of augmented reality within apps, both immersive experiences and tangentially related ones. But in 2017, we’re expecting chatbots to improve significantly and to be used in new ways. Immersive viewing experiences could really break ground in 2017."
HEALTH:
- Trump spurs fears, hopes among Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "On few matters is the political divide as pure as it is on health care. Early this fall, nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said in a survey for Harvard University and Politico that they thought the government has a major role in improving the health system, and 80 percent said the ACA is working well. Among Republicans, only about a quarter said the government has a major role, while an equal share said the government has none. Nearly 90 percent said the ACA is working poorly."
- A Battle to Change Medicare Is Brewing, Whether Trump Wants It or Not (NYT) "Supporters say this approach (premium support) could save money by stimulating greater price competition among insurers, who would offer plans with lower premiums to attract customers. Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — 'coupon care for seniors.' The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums."
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Castro's Cuba: Bay Of Pigs As A 'Fascinating And Important' Failed Endeavor (NPR) "But then John Kennedy made the problem much worse because he realized a good way to defeat Richard Nixon was to beat the Eisenhower administration over the head with Fidel Castro. How could they allow this communist dictator to come to power a mere 90 miles away from American shores? And then - he wins. And then he's handed this plan by the CIA, which he knew a little bit about, but he didn't know the details. And they're telling him, Mr. President, you need to pull the trigger on this right now. And he had gotten himself into a situation that he didn't really know how to get out of. He didn't really want to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he had painted himself into a corner. I mean it, shows so many themes in American history. One is how fear is used in politics and how that sometimes can come back to bite the person who is using it - the candidate who is using it."
- Fake News Surge Pins D.C. Pizzeria As Home To Child-Trafficking (NPR) "Basically, the sort of reality-based community thought this was this insane sort of joke or a made-up fiction. But within many of these conspiratorial online communities, they were at least taking this seriously. What's wild additionally is that it seems as if it's almost like a game to them, like a video game. And the players are actually real, and the tools that are used are based in social media."
NEWS:
- MORE FOR THE IRS? Trump's plan would mean tax hike for some married couples, middle class, analysis finds (Fox) "President-elect Donald Trump's proposals would modestly cut income taxes for most middle-class Americans. But for nearly 8 million families -- including a majority of single-parent households -- the opposite would occur: They'd pay more. Most married couples with three or more children would also pay higher taxes, an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found. And while middle-class families as a whole would receive tax cuts of about 2 percent, they'd be dwarfed by the windfalls averaging 13.5 percent for America's richest 1 percent. 'The largest tax reductions are for the middle class,' said Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter,' released last month. The tax hikes that would hit single parents and large families would result from Trump's plan to eliminate the personal exemption and the head-of-household filing status. 'If you're a low- or moderate-income single parent, you're going to get hurt,' said Bob Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. All independent analyses show most of the benefit of Trump's plan flowing to the wealthiest Americans. Nearly half of Trump's tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of earners, the Tax Policy Center found. Less than a quarter of the cuts would benefit the bottom 80 percent."
- Finger Pointed at Russians in Alleged Coup Plot in Montenegro (NYT) "The man, Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist from neighboring Serbia, has become a key informant — and a suspect — in a sprawling investigation into an alleged plot orchestrated by two Russians to seize Montenegro’s Parliament building last month, kill the prime minister and install a new government hostile to NATO. With a few thousand soldiers, a handful of tanks and only 600,000 residents, Montenegro — whose application to join NATO was accepted in May and now awaits ratification — is hardly a military powerhouse. But it controls the only stretch of coastline where warships can dock between Gibraltar and eastern Turkey not already in the hands of the alliance." and Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say (WaPo) "Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of Web sites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House."
- How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them? (WaPo) "Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it."
- This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview (WaPo) "Hiding behind the 'well, there's no law that says I can't do this' is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office."
- Michigan Common Core Supporters Praise Trump’s Education Chief Pick Betsy DeVos (Breitbart) "DeVos serves as a board member of Common Core champion Jeb Bush’s foundation. Bush also praised Trump’s decision to nominate her for the top education official in the country. Trump vowed to eliminate Common Core while on the campaign trail, referring to it as a 'disaster.' He also said he would work to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education."
- Retired Marine generals recommended each other to Trump as Pentagon chief (WaPo)
- Hopes for a female president dashed, women take running for office into their own hands (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- Conway unloads on Romney (Politico) "'I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,' Conway said. Appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state would be viewed by many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump as a major betrayal, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday."
- No, Conservatism Should Not Embrace Populism (National Review) "There is obvious incompatibility between conservatism’s “don’t just do something, stand there” nature and populism’s demands for action that is forceful even if rash. That’s populism: Doing what you know is wrong, heedless of harmful consequences — some unintended, others easily foreseeable — because the masses will perceive it as empathy. Trump did not win because of populism. His final vote tally will be roughly equal to the 62 million George W. Bush garnered in 2004. Let’s bear in mind the Census Bureau’s estimate that our population has grown by 30 million since then. Even with Trump’s marginal improvement over the hauls of Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 (about 61 and 60 million, respectively), the GOP has flat-lined, at least in presidential elections, in which voter participation is at its heaviest."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tech Was Supposed to Crash in 2016. It Got Real Instead (Wired)
- The race to build the fastest supercomputer just sped up (WaPo)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- These Kick-Ass Beats From Korea's Countryside Will Get You Rocking (Ozy)
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BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- Mandatory Saving for Retirement Gets a Thumbs Up From Millennials (Fortune) "Nearly seven in 10 young adults say they believe individuals should be required to save in retirement accounts, according to a survey from Natixis Global Asset Management. On average, millennials first enrolled in a retirement savings plan at age 23, while Gen X signed up at age 27 and boomers, at 31. This early start shows that millennials appreciate the extent to which they must provide retirement security for themselves. It also reflects the move to auto enrollment by many companies that offer 401(k) plans."
- 5 marketing trends to watch for in 2017 (VentureBeat) "Live streaming hasn’t fully taken off yet, but expect it to boom in 2017. Get ready for more direct use of augmented reality within apps, both immersive experiences and tangentially related ones. But in 2017, we’re expecting chatbots to improve significantly and to be used in new ways. Immersive viewing experiences could really break ground in 2017."
HEALTH:
- Trump spurs fears, hopes among Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "On few matters is the political divide as pure as it is on health care. Early this fall, nearly 9 in 10 Democrats said in a survey for Harvard University and Politico that they thought the government has a major role in improving the health system, and 80 percent said the ACA is working well. Among Republicans, only about a quarter said the government has a major role, while an equal share said the government has none. Nearly 90 percent said the ACA is working poorly."
- A Battle to Change Medicare Is Brewing, Whether Trump Wants It or Not (NYT) "Supporters say this approach (premium support) could save money by stimulating greater price competition among insurers, who would offer plans with lower premiums to attract customers. Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — 'coupon care for seniors.' The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums."
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Castro's Cuba: Bay Of Pigs As A 'Fascinating And Important' Failed Endeavor (NPR) "But then John Kennedy made the problem much worse because he realized a good way to defeat Richard Nixon was to beat the Eisenhower administration over the head with Fidel Castro. How could they allow this communist dictator to come to power a mere 90 miles away from American shores? And then - he wins. And then he's handed this plan by the CIA, which he knew a little bit about, but he didn't know the details. And they're telling him, Mr. President, you need to pull the trigger on this right now. And he had gotten himself into a situation that he didn't really know how to get out of. He didn't really want to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he had painted himself into a corner. I mean it, shows so many themes in American history. One is how fear is used in politics and how that sometimes can come back to bite the person who is using it - the candidate who is using it."
- Fake News Surge Pins D.C. Pizzeria As Home To Child-Trafficking (NPR) "Basically, the sort of reality-based community thought this was this insane sort of joke or a made-up fiction. But within many of these conspiratorial online communities, they were at least taking this seriously. What's wild additionally is that it seems as if it's almost like a game to them, like a video game. And the players are actually real, and the tools that are used are based in social media."
NEWS:
- MORE FOR THE IRS? Trump's plan would mean tax hike for some married couples, middle class, analysis finds (Fox) "President-elect Donald Trump's proposals would modestly cut income taxes for most middle-class Americans. But for nearly 8 million families -- including a majority of single-parent households -- the opposite would occur: They'd pay more. Most married couples with three or more children would also pay higher taxes, an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found. And while middle-class families as a whole would receive tax cuts of about 2 percent, they'd be dwarfed by the windfalls averaging 13.5 percent for America's richest 1 percent. 'The largest tax reductions are for the middle class,' said Trump's 'Contract With the American Voter,' released last month. The tax hikes that would hit single parents and large families would result from Trump's plan to eliminate the personal exemption and the head-of-household filing status. 'If you're a low- or moderate-income single parent, you're going to get hurt,' said Bob Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. All independent analyses show most of the benefit of Trump's plan flowing to the wealthiest Americans. Nearly half of Trump's tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of earners, the Tax Policy Center found. Less than a quarter of the cuts would benefit the bottom 80 percent."
- Finger Pointed at Russians in Alleged Coup Plot in Montenegro (NYT) "The man, Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist from neighboring Serbia, has become a key informant — and a suspect — in a sprawling investigation into an alleged plot orchestrated by two Russians to seize Montenegro’s Parliament building last month, kill the prime minister and install a new government hostile to NATO. With a few thousand soldiers, a handful of tanks and only 600,000 residents, Montenegro — whose application to join NATO was accepted in May and now awaits ratification — is hardly a military powerhouse. But it controls the only stretch of coastline where warships can dock between Gibraltar and eastern Turkey not already in the hands of the alliance." and Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say (WaPo) "Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of Web sites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House."
- How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them? (WaPo) "Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it."
- This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview (WaPo) "Hiding behind the 'well, there's no law that says I can't do this' is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office."
- Michigan Common Core Supporters Praise Trump’s Education Chief Pick Betsy DeVos (Breitbart) "DeVos serves as a board member of Common Core champion Jeb Bush’s foundation. Bush also praised Trump’s decision to nominate her for the top education official in the country. Trump vowed to eliminate Common Core while on the campaign trail, referring to it as a 'disaster.' He also said he would work to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education."
- Retired Marine generals recommended each other to Trump as Pentagon chief (WaPo)
- Hopes for a female president dashed, women take running for office into their own hands (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- Conway unloads on Romney (Politico) "'I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,' Conway said. Appointing Mitt Romney as secretary of state would be viewed by many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump as a major betrayal, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday."
- No, Conservatism Should Not Embrace Populism (National Review) "There is obvious incompatibility between conservatism’s “don’t just do something, stand there” nature and populism’s demands for action that is forceful even if rash. That’s populism: Doing what you know is wrong, heedless of harmful consequences — some unintended, others easily foreseeable — because the masses will perceive it as empathy. Trump did not win because of populism. His final vote tally will be roughly equal to the 62 million George W. Bush garnered in 2004. Let’s bear in mind the Census Bureau’s estimate that our population has grown by 30 million since then. Even with Trump’s marginal improvement over the hauls of Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 (about 61 and 60 million, respectively), the GOP has flat-lined, at least in presidential elections, in which voter participation is at its heaviest."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tech Was Supposed to Crash in 2016. It Got Real Instead (Wired)
- The race to build the fastest supercomputer just sped up (WaPo)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- These Kick-Ass Beats From Korea's Countryside Will Get You Rocking (Ozy)
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Thursday, November 24, 2016
WE TRACKED DOWN A FAKE-NEWS CREATOR IN THE SUBURBS. HERE'S WHAT WE LEARNED
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned (NPR) "During the run-up to the presidential election — fake news really took off. 'Well this isn't just a Trump supporter problem. This is a right wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lame-stream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat. We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.'"
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- You may be higher up the global wealth pyramid than you think (Economist) "But most Americans are much better off. Over 40% belong to the top tenth of the global wealth distribution (and over 18m belong to the global 1%). If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400 you could count yourself a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against. Some of those railing against the global elite probably do not know they belong to it."
- Frequent Flier Miles Are Dead. Now It’s All About Credit Cards (Wired) "Since 2015, American, United, and Delta Airlines have each changed the basis of their rewards programs from miles flown to money handed over. You get points based on what you pay, not how far you go. They’ve made it harder for passengers to reach the elite statuses that come with perks like seat upgrades."
- What Rate of Return Can You Expect from Your Portfolio? (Kiplinger) "If you're happy with the return expectations using only indexes and benchmarks to guide you, a passive indexing approach may suit your needs just fine. You will minimize one component of portfolio drag—expenses, as most index funds and exchange-traded funds will have overall expense ratios of 0.5% or less."
HEALTH:
- Many LASIK patients may wind up with glare, halos or other visual symptoms, study suggests (WaPo)
- How Surgeons Stay Focused for Hours (WSJ)
LISTEN TO THIS:
- How Uncertainty In The Korean Peninsula Could Be A 'Recipe for Disaster' (NPR) "One of the dangers is North Korea's growing nuclear arsenal, estimated at anywhere between 10 to 16 warheads and an unclear number of bombs. Pyongyang twice this year tested nuclear devices and has launched missiles dozens of times. It is the only nation in the world to have tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century. 'When it comes to changing Pyongyang's behavior, it's tough,' President Barack Obama said in September, acknowledging the fruitlessness so far of efforts to stop or slow North Korea during his time in office."
NEWS:
- How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House (Forbes) "No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign–notably, its secret data operation–like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost. 'Jared understood the online world in a way the traditional media folks didn’t. He managed to assemble a presidential campaign on a shoestring using new technology and won. That’s a big deal,' says Schmidt, the Google billionaire."
- How Trump naming Mattis as Pentagon chief would break with 65 years of U.S. history (WaPo) "Mattis’s candidacy to be secretary of defense has thus far received positive responses from current and former U.S. officials ranging from Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) to Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon undersecretary who was considered a front-runner to run the Defense Department in a Democratic administration. It also has been greeted with support from many rank-and-file troops and veterans. But both chambers of Congress must pass new legislation in order for Mattis to serve in the role, and the Senate must confirm him." and What Trump may not know about the generals he’s eyeing for top positions (WaPo) and Inside Trump’s freewheeling vetting operation (Politico) and Questioning Donald Trump (NYT) "We would applaud any sensible change of position, however arrived at. Mr. Trump’s apparent flexibility, combined with his lack of depth on policy, might be grounds to hope he will steer a wiser course than the one plotted by his campaign. But so far he is surrounding himself with officials eager to enact only the most extreme positions. His flexibility would be their springboard. And in one area, Mr. Trump remained quite inflexible: He made clear he has no intention of selling his businesses and stepping decisively away from corrupting his presidency with an exponentially enhanced version of the self-dealing he accused Hillary Clinton of engaging in."
SCIENCE:
- This rocket engine breaks a law of physics. But a NASA test says it works anyway. (WaPo) "Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield."
SPORTS:
- ESPN Subscriber Loss Hurts Disney Income, Sports Giant Continues Rapid Decline (Breitbart) "Other Disney TV properties have also taken hits, but ESPN’s subscription face-plant, highlighted by the earth-shattering loss of 621,000 subscribers in October, has Disney most concerned, considering that ESPN accounts for a huge portion Disney’s operating income."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The Flaming Glory of Deep-Fried Turkeys Gone Wrong (Ozy)
- TIME’s 100 Most Influential Images of All Time (Time)
- Vatican debuts confession finder app predictably nicknamed 'Sindr' (SFGate)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- You may be higher up the global wealth pyramid than you think (Economist) "But most Americans are much better off. Over 40% belong to the top tenth of the global wealth distribution (and over 18m belong to the global 1%). If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400 you could count yourself a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against. Some of those railing against the global elite probably do not know they belong to it."
- Frequent Flier Miles Are Dead. Now It’s All About Credit Cards (Wired) "Since 2015, American, United, and Delta Airlines have each changed the basis of their rewards programs from miles flown to money handed over. You get points based on what you pay, not how far you go. They’ve made it harder for passengers to reach the elite statuses that come with perks like seat upgrades."
- What Rate of Return Can You Expect from Your Portfolio? (Kiplinger) "If you're happy with the return expectations using only indexes and benchmarks to guide you, a passive indexing approach may suit your needs just fine. You will minimize one component of portfolio drag—expenses, as most index funds and exchange-traded funds will have overall expense ratios of 0.5% or less."
HEALTH:
- Many LASIK patients may wind up with glare, halos or other visual symptoms, study suggests (WaPo)
- How Surgeons Stay Focused for Hours (WSJ)
LISTEN TO THIS:
- How Uncertainty In The Korean Peninsula Could Be A 'Recipe for Disaster' (NPR) "One of the dangers is North Korea's growing nuclear arsenal, estimated at anywhere between 10 to 16 warheads and an unclear number of bombs. Pyongyang twice this year tested nuclear devices and has launched missiles dozens of times. It is the only nation in the world to have tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century. 'When it comes to changing Pyongyang's behavior, it's tough,' President Barack Obama said in September, acknowledging the fruitlessness so far of efforts to stop or slow North Korea during his time in office."
NEWS:
- How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House (Forbes) "No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign–notably, its secret data operation–like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost. 'Jared understood the online world in a way the traditional media folks didn’t. He managed to assemble a presidential campaign on a shoestring using new technology and won. That’s a big deal,' says Schmidt, the Google billionaire."
- How Trump naming Mattis as Pentagon chief would break with 65 years of U.S. history (WaPo) "Mattis’s candidacy to be secretary of defense has thus far received positive responses from current and former U.S. officials ranging from Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) to Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon undersecretary who was considered a front-runner to run the Defense Department in a Democratic administration. It also has been greeted with support from many rank-and-file troops and veterans. But both chambers of Congress must pass new legislation in order for Mattis to serve in the role, and the Senate must confirm him." and What Trump may not know about the generals he’s eyeing for top positions (WaPo) and Inside Trump’s freewheeling vetting operation (Politico) and Questioning Donald Trump (NYT) "We would applaud any sensible change of position, however arrived at. Mr. Trump’s apparent flexibility, combined with his lack of depth on policy, might be grounds to hope he will steer a wiser course than the one plotted by his campaign. But so far he is surrounding himself with officials eager to enact only the most extreme positions. His flexibility would be their springboard. And in one area, Mr. Trump remained quite inflexible: He made clear he has no intention of selling his businesses and stepping decisively away from corrupting his presidency with an exponentially enhanced version of the self-dealing he accused Hillary Clinton of engaging in."
SCIENCE:
- This rocket engine breaks a law of physics. But a NASA test says it works anyway. (WaPo) "Its thrust seems to come from the impact of photons on the walls of the copper cavity. That would be like moving a car forward by just banging against the windshield."
SPORTS:
- ESPN Subscriber Loss Hurts Disney Income, Sports Giant Continues Rapid Decline (Breitbart) "Other Disney TV properties have also taken hits, but ESPN’s subscription face-plant, highlighted by the earth-shattering loss of 621,000 subscribers in October, has Disney most concerned, considering that ESPN accounts for a huge portion Disney’s operating income."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The Flaming Glory of Deep-Fried Turkeys Gone Wrong (Ozy)
- TIME’s 100 Most Influential Images of All Time (Time)
- Vatican debuts confession finder app predictably nicknamed 'Sindr' (SFGate)
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
DONALD TRUMP PERSONALLY BLASTS THE PRESS
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Donald Trump Personally Blasts the Press (New Yorker) "This is where we are. The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is. This is who he is, and this is who will be running the executive branch of the United States government for four years. Participants said that Trump did not seem entirely rational about his criticism of the media, nor did he appear any more informed about policy than he had been during the campaign. When one participant pointed out that all Presidents and Presidential candidates believe they get bad press, Trump said, 'Not Obama!'" and Trump meeting with media a ‘f---ing firing squad’ (The Hill) and Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump (NYT) "The new president will be a man who constantly accuses the media of getting things wrong but routinely misrepresents and twists facts himself."
- Donald Trump Personally Blasts the Press (New Yorker) "This is where we are. The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is. This is who he is, and this is who will be running the executive branch of the United States government for four years. Participants said that Trump did not seem entirely rational about his criticism of the media, nor did he appear any more informed about policy than he had been during the campaign. When one participant pointed out that all Presidents and Presidential candidates believe they get bad press, Trump said, 'Not Obama!'" and Trump meeting with media a ‘f---ing firing squad’ (The Hill) and Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump (NYT) "The new president will be a man who constantly accuses the media of getting things wrong but routinely misrepresents and twists facts himself."
- Most Students Don’t Know When News Is Fake, Stanford Study Finds (WSJ) "Some 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story on a website, according to a Stanford University study of 7,804 students from middle school through college. Many students judged the credibility of newsy tweets based on how much detail they contained or whether a large photo was attached, rather than on the source."
BUSINESS:
BUSINESS:
- Facebook wants to enter China so bad it’s reportedly building censorship tools (Quartz)
- Patagonia Is Donating All Its Black Friday Sales to Charity (Mashable)
NEWS:
- With a Meeting, Trump Renewed a British Wind Farm Fight (NYT) "The president-elect was also asked about a meeting with a British politician, Nigel Farage, shortly after the election. According to a person present at that meeting, Mr. Trump encouraged Mr. Farage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the view from one of his Scottish golf courses. 'I might have brought it up,' he [Trump] said during his lunch at The Times."
- Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election (WaPo) "According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year. 'This is a picture of a very polarized and increasingly concentrated economy,' said Mark Muro, the policy director at the Brookings metro program, 'with the Democratic base aligning more to that more concentrated modern economy, but a lot of votes and anger to be had in the rest of the country.'"
- Democratic presidential electors revolt against Trump (Politico) "The 538 members who comprise the Electoral College are slated to gather in their respective state capitals on Dec. 19 to cast the formal vote for president. Trump won the popular vote in states making up 290 electoral votes — and he’s leading narrowly in Michigan, which carries another 16 electoral votes. If all of them vote for Trump, he’ll win 306 electoral votes, easily exceeding the 270-vote majority he needs to become president. That's why the magic number is 37 Republican defections." and Could Libs Really Flip the Electoral College? (Rush Limbaugh) "Yeah. Look, I think your concern is real. I have more concern about this than the experts that I just talked about. Everyone I've talked to says, 'Naw, naw nothing there. They can't. It's impossible. No matter what kind of pressure's brought to bear, death threats, it's impossible.' I don't believe it. I'm not gonna believe this 'til it happens."
- Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency (New Yorker)
SPORTS:
- Thirty years after Mike Tyson became champion, unfulfilled promise is the lasting memory (WaPo) "But Mike Tyson the fighter? In retrospect, the whole added up to less than the sum of its parts."
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- Patagonia Is Donating All Its Black Friday Sales to Charity (Mashable)
NEWS:
- With a Meeting, Trump Renewed a British Wind Farm Fight (NYT) "The president-elect was also asked about a meeting with a British politician, Nigel Farage, shortly after the election. According to a person present at that meeting, Mr. Trump encouraged Mr. Farage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the view from one of his Scottish golf courses. 'I might have brought it up,' he [Trump] said during his lunch at The Times."
- Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election (WaPo) "According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year. 'This is a picture of a very polarized and increasingly concentrated economy,' said Mark Muro, the policy director at the Brookings metro program, 'with the Democratic base aligning more to that more concentrated modern economy, but a lot of votes and anger to be had in the rest of the country.'"
- Democratic presidential electors revolt against Trump (Politico) "The 538 members who comprise the Electoral College are slated to gather in their respective state capitals on Dec. 19 to cast the formal vote for president. Trump won the popular vote in states making up 290 electoral votes — and he’s leading narrowly in Michigan, which carries another 16 electoral votes. If all of them vote for Trump, he’ll win 306 electoral votes, easily exceeding the 270-vote majority he needs to become president. That's why the magic number is 37 Republican defections." and Could Libs Really Flip the Electoral College? (Rush Limbaugh) "Yeah. Look, I think your concern is real. I have more concern about this than the experts that I just talked about. Everyone I've talked to says, 'Naw, naw nothing there. They can't. It's impossible. No matter what kind of pressure's brought to bear, death threats, it's impossible.' I don't believe it. I'm not gonna believe this 'til it happens."
- Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency (New Yorker)
SPORTS:
- Thirty years after Mike Tyson became champion, unfulfilled promise is the lasting memory (WaPo) "But Mike Tyson the fighter? In retrospect, the whole added up to less than the sum of its parts."
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Tuesday, November 22, 2016
LUGENPRESSE!
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Meet the new think tank in town: 'Alt-right' comes to Washington to influence Trump (LA Times) "'An awakening among everyone has occurred with this Trump election,' Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist think tank, said during opening remarks. 'We’re not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.' Trump has said he 'disavowed' support from white supremacists, but many in the alt-right believe his tough talk on immigrants and Muslims shows that their efforts to preserve a white majority in the United States are ready for a wider audience. As the up-and-coming intellectual voice of the movement, Spencer is credited with popularizing the term 'alt-right.' Twitter banned his account and those of other leaders last week in a clampdown on hate speech." and White Nationalists Celebrate ‘an Awakening’ After Donald Trump’s Victory (NYT) "Intellectual leaders of the movement argue that they are merely trying to realize their desire for a white 'ethno-state' where they can be left alone. Mr. Trump, with his divisive language about immigrants and Muslims, has given them hope that these dreams can come true. Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, Mr. Forney said he expected people openly associated with the white nationalist movement to run as candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. The rise of populism and the decline of political correctness, he said, present a rare opportunity. 'In the long run, people like Bannon and Trump will be open to the clarity of our ideas,' said Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance." and Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory’ (NYT) "The ties between the alt-right movement and the Trump team are difficult to define, even by members of the alt-right. Mr. Bannon was the chief executive of Breitbart, an online news organization that has fed the lie that Mr. Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. As recently as last year, Breitbart published an op-ed article urging that 'every tree, every rooftop, every picket fence, every telegraph pole in the South should be festooned with the Confederate battle flag.' Mr. Bannon told Mother Jones this year that Breitbart was now 'the platform for the alt-right.' But in an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bannon said that the alt-right was only 'a tiny part' of the viewpoint represented on Breitbart."
BUSINESS:
- Speed Trading Spreads Around the Globe (Ozy) "Today, close to 80 percent of trading is electronic, nearly all of it occurs in data centers (not on trading floors), and firms can execute multiple millions of buy and sell orders in nanoseconds, picking off profits across dozens of electronic markets at nearly the speed of light."
NEWS:
- Trump: Farage Would do ‘Great Job’ As UK Ambassador to USA (Breitbart) "He would do a great job! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 Writing at 9:22pm on Monday night, the President-elect said: 'Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!'"
- Meet the new think tank in town: 'Alt-right' comes to Washington to influence Trump (LA Times) "'An awakening among everyone has occurred with this Trump election,' Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist think tank, said during opening remarks. 'We’re not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.' Trump has said he 'disavowed' support from white supremacists, but many in the alt-right believe his tough talk on immigrants and Muslims shows that their efforts to preserve a white majority in the United States are ready for a wider audience. As the up-and-coming intellectual voice of the movement, Spencer is credited with popularizing the term 'alt-right.' Twitter banned his account and those of other leaders last week in a clampdown on hate speech." and White Nationalists Celebrate ‘an Awakening’ After Donald Trump’s Victory (NYT) "Intellectual leaders of the movement argue that they are merely trying to realize their desire for a white 'ethno-state' where they can be left alone. Mr. Trump, with his divisive language about immigrants and Muslims, has given them hope that these dreams can come true. Emboldened by Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, Mr. Forney said he expected people openly associated with the white nationalist movement to run as candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. The rise of populism and the decline of political correctness, he said, present a rare opportunity. 'In the long run, people like Bannon and Trump will be open to the clarity of our ideas,' said Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance." and Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory’ (NYT) "The ties between the alt-right movement and the Trump team are difficult to define, even by members of the alt-right. Mr. Bannon was the chief executive of Breitbart, an online news organization that has fed the lie that Mr. Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. As recently as last year, Breitbart published an op-ed article urging that 'every tree, every rooftop, every picket fence, every telegraph pole in the South should be festooned with the Confederate battle flag.' Mr. Bannon told Mother Jones this year that Breitbart was now 'the platform for the alt-right.' But in an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bannon said that the alt-right was only 'a tiny part' of the viewpoint represented on Breitbart."
BUSINESS:
- Speed Trading Spreads Around the Globe (Ozy) "Today, close to 80 percent of trading is electronic, nearly all of it occurs in data centers (not on trading floors), and firms can execute multiple millions of buy and sell orders in nanoseconds, picking off profits across dozens of electronic markets at nearly the speed of light."
NEWS:
- Trump: Farage Would do ‘Great Job’ As UK Ambassador to USA (Breitbart) "He would do a great job! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 Writing at 9:22pm on Monday night, the President-elect said: 'Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!'"
- BET Founder After Trump Meeting: Black Americans Should Give the President-elect a Shot (Breitbart) "The most important thing that came out of the meeting, he and I agreed, and if you recall in the election, he asked what do African-Americans have to lose, and I said President-elect Trump, the real question is what do they have to gain by your presidency?"
- How Hard (or Easy) It Will Be for Trump to Fulfill His 100-Day Plan (NYT)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Are Remaking Themselves Around AI (Wired)
- Michigan legislature approves fully autonomous vehicle tests (ReadWriteWeb)
WATCH THIS:
- A Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump (YouTube)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- German Cities Are Solving The Age-Old Public Toilet Problem (FastCompany) "The Germans have figured out a cheap way to provide the public with bathrooms. Instead of building out a network of public toilets, which is slow and expensive, city governments are paying local businesses to open up their restrooms to the public."
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- How Hard (or Easy) It Will Be for Trump to Fulfill His 100-Day Plan (NYT)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Are Remaking Themselves Around AI (Wired)
- Michigan legislature approves fully autonomous vehicle tests (ReadWriteWeb)
WATCH THIS:
- A Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump (YouTube)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- German Cities Are Solving The Age-Old Public Toilet Problem (FastCompany) "The Germans have figured out a cheap way to provide the public with bathrooms. Instead of building out a network of public toilets, which is slow and expensive, city governments are paying local businesses to open up their restrooms to the public."
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Monday, November 21, 2016
YOUR FILTER BUBBLE IS DESTROYING DEMOCRACY
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Your Filter Bubble is Destroying Democracy (Wired) "The global village that was once the internet was has been replaced by digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day. From your Facebook feed to your Google Search, as your experience online grows increasingly personalized, the internet’s islands keep getting more segregated and sound proofed. Without realizing it, we develop tunnel vision. Our digital social existence has turned into a huge echo chamber, where we mostly discuss similar views with like-minded peers and miserably fail to penetrate other social bubbles that are often misled by fear and xenophobia. The social bubbles that Facebook and Google have designed for us are shaping the reality of your America."
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- How Finance Gutted Manufacturing (Boston Review) "In the radical downsizing of American manufacturing, changes in corporate structures since the 1980s have been a powerful driver, though not one that is generally recognized. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, about 5.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared. The most frequent explanations for this decline are productivity gains and increased trade with low-wage economies. Both of these factors have been important, but they explain far less of the picture than is usually claimed. To better understand the decline of American manufacturing, we need to go back well before the last decade to see how changes in corporate structures made it more difficult to scale up innovation through production to market.
- Intel’s Strategy for AI Chips is Smart But Still Lags Nvidia, Analysts Say (Fortune) "'While only 0.1% of all servers are dedicated to AI, the AI market will grow 12x in the next four years,' he wrote on Friday, making it a 'positive' for all three players." and Intel Looks to a New Chip to Power the Coming Age of AI (Wired)
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Glenn Beck: We're Being 'Conned' By Both Polarizing Parties (NPR)
NEWS:
- All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why? (Economist) "The new nationalism owes a lot to cultural factors, too. Many Westerners, particularly older ones, liked their countries as they were and never asked for the immigration that turned Europe more Muslim and America less white and Protestant. They object to their discomfort being dismissed as racism."
- How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Struggle Tore Apart the Middle East (NYT) "The history of their rivalry tracks — and helps to explain — the Middle East’s disintegration, particularly the Sunni-Shiite sectarianism both powers have found useful to cultivate. It is a story in which the United States has been a supporting but constant player, most recently by backing the Saudi war in Yemen, which kills hundreds of civilians. These dynamics, scholars warn, point toward a future of civil wars, divided societies and unstable governments."
- Priebus: Citizens of certain countries will be barred (Politico) "For countries where trouble might be festering, he said: 'We’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from that country, or region, until a better vetting system is put in place.'" and Reince Priebus calls questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest “ridiculous” (Vox) "But in TV interviews on Sunday morning, both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and future Chief of Staff Reince Priebus shrugged the matter off, saying, essentially, that Americans should just trust them."
- Trump Snubs D.C. as Millions Cheer (National Review) "If Donald Trump’s choice of domicile is an insult to Washington, that isn’t an accident: Donald Trump’s election as president of these United States was an insult to Washington, intended as such by the disaffected Republicans and gobsmacked rage-monkeys who lined up behind him. And that’s all to the good: God knows Washington deserves the insult."
- Report: Outgoing President Shuts Down Border Aerial Surveillance Program (Breitbart)
SPORTS:
- What’s the Matter With College Basketball? (NYT) "The doomsayers will tell you that the sport has become too slow and mechanical and low scoring, thanks to coaching that banishes improvisation and enforces deliberate, often-excruciating-to-watch play. "
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence (Harvard Business Review) "Machine intelligence is, in its essence, a prediction technology, so the economic shift will center around a drop in the cost of prediction. Interpreting the rise of machine intelligence as a drop in the cost of prediction doesn’t offer an answer to every specific question of how the technology will play out. But it yields two key implications: 1) an expanded role of prediction as an input to more goods and services, and 2) a change in the value of other inputs, driven by the extent to which they are complements to or substitutes for prediction."
- These 6 new technology rules will govern our future (WaPo) "The only refuge will be in fields that are creative in some way, such as marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy and advanced technical fields. New jobs we cannot imagine today will emerge, but they will not replace all the lost jobs. We must be ready for a world of perennially high unemployment rates."
- Why South Korea Just Turned Down a Request from Google (Fortune) "South Korea, whose 1950-53 war with North Korea ended without a peace treaty, argues that if it allowed such data to leave the country, the locations of military facilities and other sensitive sites could be revealed."
- Police are using software to predict crime. Is it a ‘holy grail’ or biased against minorities? (WaPo) "'Predictive policing' represents a paradigm shift that is sweeping police departments across the country. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly trying to forecast where and when crime will occur, or who might be a perpetrator or a victim, using software that relies on algorithms, the same math Amazon uses to recommend books."
- The Next Generation of Ransomware Might Leak Your Data, Not Destroy It (FastCompany)
- Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- One swab from the surface of your smartphone can tell scientists all about your lifestyle (WaPo) "The method draws on an understanding that the outermost layer of human skin carries chemical components drastically affected by the body’s inner chemistry and external, environmental factors."
- Enjoy draft beer anywhere with this portable tap (Mashable)
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- Your Filter Bubble is Destroying Democracy (Wired) "The global village that was once the internet was has been replaced by digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day. From your Facebook feed to your Google Search, as your experience online grows increasingly personalized, the internet’s islands keep getting more segregated and sound proofed. Without realizing it, we develop tunnel vision. Our digital social existence has turned into a huge echo chamber, where we mostly discuss similar views with like-minded peers and miserably fail to penetrate other social bubbles that are often misled by fear and xenophobia. The social bubbles that Facebook and Google have designed for us are shaping the reality of your America."
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- How Finance Gutted Manufacturing (Boston Review) "In the radical downsizing of American manufacturing, changes in corporate structures since the 1980s have been a powerful driver, though not one that is generally recognized. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, about 5.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared. The most frequent explanations for this decline are productivity gains and increased trade with low-wage economies. Both of these factors have been important, but they explain far less of the picture than is usually claimed. To better understand the decline of American manufacturing, we need to go back well before the last decade to see how changes in corporate structures made it more difficult to scale up innovation through production to market.
- Intel’s Strategy for AI Chips is Smart But Still Lags Nvidia, Analysts Say (Fortune) "'While only 0.1% of all servers are dedicated to AI, the AI market will grow 12x in the next four years,' he wrote on Friday, making it a 'positive' for all three players." and Intel Looks to a New Chip to Power the Coming Age of AI (Wired)
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Glenn Beck: We're Being 'Conned' By Both Polarizing Parties (NPR)
NEWS:
- All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why? (Economist) "The new nationalism owes a lot to cultural factors, too. Many Westerners, particularly older ones, liked their countries as they were and never asked for the immigration that turned Europe more Muslim and America less white and Protestant. They object to their discomfort being dismissed as racism."
- How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Struggle Tore Apart the Middle East (NYT) "The history of their rivalry tracks — and helps to explain — the Middle East’s disintegration, particularly the Sunni-Shiite sectarianism both powers have found useful to cultivate. It is a story in which the United States has been a supporting but constant player, most recently by backing the Saudi war in Yemen, which kills hundreds of civilians. These dynamics, scholars warn, point toward a future of civil wars, divided societies and unstable governments."
- Priebus: Citizens of certain countries will be barred (Politico) "For countries where trouble might be festering, he said: 'We’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from that country, or region, until a better vetting system is put in place.'" and Reince Priebus calls questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest “ridiculous” (Vox) "But in TV interviews on Sunday morning, both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and future Chief of Staff Reince Priebus shrugged the matter off, saying, essentially, that Americans should just trust them."
- Report: Outgoing President Shuts Down Border Aerial Surveillance Program (Breitbart)
SPORTS:
- What’s the Matter With College Basketball? (NYT) "The doomsayers will tell you that the sport has become too slow and mechanical and low scoring, thanks to coaching that banishes improvisation and enforces deliberate, often-excruciating-to-watch play. "
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence (Harvard Business Review) "Machine intelligence is, in its essence, a prediction technology, so the economic shift will center around a drop in the cost of prediction. Interpreting the rise of machine intelligence as a drop in the cost of prediction doesn’t offer an answer to every specific question of how the technology will play out. But it yields two key implications: 1) an expanded role of prediction as an input to more goods and services, and 2) a change in the value of other inputs, driven by the extent to which they are complements to or substitutes for prediction."
- These 6 new technology rules will govern our future (WaPo) "The only refuge will be in fields that are creative in some way, such as marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy and advanced technical fields. New jobs we cannot imagine today will emerge, but they will not replace all the lost jobs. We must be ready for a world of perennially high unemployment rates."
- Why South Korea Just Turned Down a Request from Google (Fortune) "South Korea, whose 1950-53 war with North Korea ended without a peace treaty, argues that if it allowed such data to leave the country, the locations of military facilities and other sensitive sites could be revealed."
- Police are using software to predict crime. Is it a ‘holy grail’ or biased against minorities? (WaPo) "'Predictive policing' represents a paradigm shift that is sweeping police departments across the country. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly trying to forecast where and when crime will occur, or who might be a perpetrator or a victim, using software that relies on algorithms, the same math Amazon uses to recommend books."
- The Next Generation of Ransomware Might Leak Your Data, Not Destroy It (FastCompany)
- Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- One swab from the surface of your smartphone can tell scientists all about your lifestyle (WaPo) "The method draws on an understanding that the outermost layer of human skin carries chemical components drastically affected by the body’s inner chemistry and external, environmental factors."
- Enjoy draft beer anywhere with this portable tap (Mashable)
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Friday, November 18, 2016
DO FACTS MATTER ANY MORE?
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Trump understands what many miss: people don’t make decisions based on facts (Vox) "But Trump was actually just trading on something psychologists and political scientists have known for years: that people don’t necessarily make decisions based on facts. Instead, we are often guided by our emotions and deeply held biases. Humans are also very adept at ignoring facts so that we can continue to see the world in a way that conforms to our preconceived notions. And simply stating factual information that contradicts those deeply held beliefs is often not enough to combat the spread of misinformation." and Donald Trump didn’t ‘hoodwink’ his voters, says professor who has spent nearly a decade researching them (WaPo)
BUSINESS:
- Republicans are suddenly realizing the economy is actually in good shape (Vox) "One of the great paradoxes of the 2016 presidential election is that whatever you make of the generation-long course of the American economy, it was the best year of the 21st century in basic pocketbook terms by almost any measure. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that wages are growing at their fastest pace in eight years. Nobody noticed in the heat of the October campaign, but data released last month also showed that American wages reached an all-time high point. A little less than a year from now, we are due for a census report that will show that median household income is at an all-time high."
- Saving money isn’t the only thing you need to do to prepare for retirement (Quartz) "Researchers found that older people more than made up for their diminished fluid intelligence if they had gained experience and expertise in financial matters (that is, subject-specific crystallized intelligence). The riskiest thing you can do is not to pay attention to financial matters until late in life. Long before you retire, then, it is not enough simply to save; it’s important to gain financial literacy as well."
HEALTH:
- Landmark report by Surgeon General calls drug crisis ‘a moral test for America’ (WaPo) "Regardless of persistent beliefs, addiction is a brain disease, not a moral failing, Murthy said. Part of the reason for the report is to change attitudes about addiction and the stigma that users feel, he explained. 'I’m calling for a culture change in how we think about addiction,' he said. 'Unless we eradicate the negative [stereotypes] . . . we won’t create an environment where people feel comfortable coming forward and asking for help.'"
NEWS:
- Anti-Trump demonstrators say nationwide protests are ‘just a taste of things to come’ (WaPo) "Instead of voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, dozens of protesters in cities from Philadelphia to Portland, Ore., said in interviews this week that they had cast ballots for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, wrote in Sen. Bernie Sanders or, in some cases, failed to vote at all. The NBC affiliate in Portland found that of more than 100 protesters arrested there last week, more than half did not vote in the state. So rather than protesting Clinton’s loss, people have cited more varied reasons for joining the protests. In addition to voicing opposition to Trump, they say they are expressing anger with the entire political system and their desire to force dramatic change on a host of social and economic fronts."
- Trump understands what many miss: people don’t make decisions based on facts (Vox) "But Trump was actually just trading on something psychologists and political scientists have known for years: that people don’t necessarily make decisions based on facts. Instead, we are often guided by our emotions and deeply held biases. Humans are also very adept at ignoring facts so that we can continue to see the world in a way that conforms to our preconceived notions. And simply stating factual information that contradicts those deeply held beliefs is often not enough to combat the spread of misinformation." and Donald Trump didn’t ‘hoodwink’ his voters, says professor who has spent nearly a decade researching them (WaPo)
BUSINESS:
- Republicans are suddenly realizing the economy is actually in good shape (Vox) "One of the great paradoxes of the 2016 presidential election is that whatever you make of the generation-long course of the American economy, it was the best year of the 21st century in basic pocketbook terms by almost any measure. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that wages are growing at their fastest pace in eight years. Nobody noticed in the heat of the October campaign, but data released last month also showed that American wages reached an all-time high point. A little less than a year from now, we are due for a census report that will show that median household income is at an all-time high."
- Saving money isn’t the only thing you need to do to prepare for retirement (Quartz) "Researchers found that older people more than made up for their diminished fluid intelligence if they had gained experience and expertise in financial matters (that is, subject-specific crystallized intelligence). The riskiest thing you can do is not to pay attention to financial matters until late in life. Long before you retire, then, it is not enough simply to save; it’s important to gain financial literacy as well."
HEALTH:
- Landmark report by Surgeon General calls drug crisis ‘a moral test for America’ (WaPo) "Regardless of persistent beliefs, addiction is a brain disease, not a moral failing, Murthy said. Part of the reason for the report is to change attitudes about addiction and the stigma that users feel, he explained. 'I’m calling for a culture change in how we think about addiction,' he said. 'Unless we eradicate the negative [stereotypes] . . . we won’t create an environment where people feel comfortable coming forward and asking for help.'"
NEWS:
- Anti-Trump demonstrators say nationwide protests are ‘just a taste of things to come’ (WaPo) "Instead of voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, dozens of protesters in cities from Philadelphia to Portland, Ore., said in interviews this week that they had cast ballots for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, wrote in Sen. Bernie Sanders or, in some cases, failed to vote at all. The NBC affiliate in Portland found that of more than 100 protesters arrested there last week, more than half did not vote in the state. So rather than protesting Clinton’s loss, people have cited more varied reasons for joining the protests. In addition to voicing opposition to Trump, they say they are expressing anger with the entire political system and their desire to force dramatic change on a host of social and economic fronts."
- ‘Political correctness’ has become a codeword for hate (WaPo) and Opinion Journal: Voters Reject the PC Police (WSJ)
- Republican lawmakers are scrambling to find an alternative to Obamacare (Economist)
- Republican lawmakers are scrambling to find an alternative to Obamacare (Economist)
- Networks Slam Stephen K. Bannon, Ignore Democrat Keith Ellison’s Radicalism (Breitbart)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power (NYT) "They [social media sites] have undone traditional political advantages like fund-raising and access to advertising. And they are destabilizing and replacing old-line institutions and established ways of doing things, including political parties, transnational organizations and longstanding, unspoken social prohibitions against blatant expressions of racism and xenophobia."
- Female Programmers Make Nearly 30% Less Than Their Male Counterparts (Fortune) "One potential explanation for the wide disparity in pay in these particular fields is that they are dominated by men. 'Fields where the proportion [of employees] is tilted towards men see wider gaps,' Chamberlain says. 'The process of pay setting and promotion tends to be more biased.' In 1984, 37% of computer science majors in the U.S. were women. Today, that figure is just 18%. If things continue at the current rate, women will hold only one in five computing jobs in the U.S. by 2025, according to research by Accenture and Girls Who Code."
- Protecting Your Digital Life in 7 Easy Steps (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- 5 Most Absurd Ways the Left Has Responded to the 2016 Election (Breitbart)
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TECHNOLOGY:
- Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power (NYT) "They [social media sites] have undone traditional political advantages like fund-raising and access to advertising. And they are destabilizing and replacing old-line institutions and established ways of doing things, including political parties, transnational organizations and longstanding, unspoken social prohibitions against blatant expressions of racism and xenophobia."
- Female Programmers Make Nearly 30% Less Than Their Male Counterparts (Fortune) "One potential explanation for the wide disparity in pay in these particular fields is that they are dominated by men. 'Fields where the proportion [of employees] is tilted towards men see wider gaps,' Chamberlain says. 'The process of pay setting and promotion tends to be more biased.' In 1984, 37% of computer science majors in the U.S. were women. Today, that figure is just 18%. If things continue at the current rate, women will hold only one in five computing jobs in the U.S. by 2025, according to research by Accenture and Girls Who Code."
- Protecting Your Digital Life in 7 Easy Steps (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- 5 Most Absurd Ways the Left Has Responded to the 2016 Election (Breitbart)
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Thursday, November 17, 2016
THOSE JOBS AIN'T COMING BACK
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Why Trump — or any other politician — can't do much to bring back manual labor jobs (LA Times) "But it will be almost impossible for Trump to fulfill his promise to bring back most of the assembly line gigs lost to globalization, economists say. The U.S. has moved toward advanced manufacturing, which employs highly educated people, and plants that once required manual labor are now manned by robots that work faster than people and cost less. U.S. factories are producing more than ever, with far fewer employees."
- Trump Campaign’s Easy Answers Confront Hard Reality (NYT) "For decades, political analysts on the left have been perplexed by working-class Americans who give their vote to a Republican Party whose motivating principle revolves around delivering tax cuts to the rich. This time around, however, they delivered their vote to a Republican who promised to directly address their plight. Under either situation, the frustrated working-class voters who cast their vote for Mr. Trump are likely to remain as frustrated as ever: stuck with insufficient education in a world of low growth and diminishing opportunity. Maybe they will figure out that most of the industrial jobs they lost are gone for good, that protectionism can’t bring them back, and that the main driver of their plight is technological change."
BUSINESS:
- Ever Wanted to Back a Start-Up? Indiegogo Opens the Door to Small Investors (NYT) "Indiegogo is the first major crowdfunding site to use a new securities rule that took effect six months ago, allowing ordinary investors to risk up to a few thousands dollars a year backing private companies."
- GE Wants To Be The Next Artificial Intelligence Powerhouse (FastCompany) and General Electric Just Signed Its Largest Power Plant Software Deal Yet (Fortune)
HEALTH:
- Drug combo reversed plaque buildup in heart patients’ arteries (WaPo)
NEWS:
- Trump faces growing tension with key Republicans over national security issues (WaPo) "'After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming 'you LOST!' Will be ugly,’' tweeted Cohen, who served from 2007 to 2009 as counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He was a driving force behind an open letter last spring — eventually signed by 122 Republican national security leaders — who opposed Trump’s candidacy."
- Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally (FP) Trump owes his victory to the uninformed. But it’s not just Trump. Political scientists have been studying what voters know and how they think for well over 65 years. The results are frightening. Voters generally know who the president is but not much else. They don’t know which party controls Congress, what Congress has done recently, whether the economy is getting better or worse (or by how much). Trump’s victory is the victory of the uninformed. But, to be fair, Clinton’s victory would also have been. Democracy is the rule of the people, but the people are in many ways unfit to rule."
- Obama in a state of denial about Trump, as Democrats work through the stages of grief (WaPo)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Google’s New PhotoScan App Gives You a Quick and Easy Way to Digitize Your Old Photographs (Wired) "The new PhotoScan is a standalone app for both Android and iOS, and scanning a picture is a clever combination of manual shooting and computational photography. Once you take an initial photo of… a photo, the app recognizes the four corners of the frame and displays circular overlays on each corner of the scanned image. You then point your phone camera at each circle, create a robust scan of the image, and PhotoScan gets to work from there."
- We Don't Always Know What AI Is Thinking—And That Can Be Scary (FastCompany) "Artificial intelligence is making decisions by reviewing people's medical tests in hospitals, credit histories in banking, job applications in some HR systems, even criminal risk factors in the justice system. Yet it's not always clear how the computers are thinking."
- The Next Big Front in the Battle of the Clouds Is AI Chips. And Microsoft Just Scored a Win (Wired)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- McDonald’s Is Making a Change to Its Big Mac Recipe for the First Time Ever (Fortune) "The Big Mac was first introduced in 1967 and, for the first time in those 50 years since, McDonald’s is changing up the recipe by adding Sriracha. Don’t worry—the old Big Mac isn’t going anywhere."
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- Trump Campaign’s Easy Answers Confront Hard Reality (NYT) "For decades, political analysts on the left have been perplexed by working-class Americans who give their vote to a Republican Party whose motivating principle revolves around delivering tax cuts to the rich. This time around, however, they delivered their vote to a Republican who promised to directly address their plight. Under either situation, the frustrated working-class voters who cast their vote for Mr. Trump are likely to remain as frustrated as ever: stuck with insufficient education in a world of low growth and diminishing opportunity. Maybe they will figure out that most of the industrial jobs they lost are gone for good, that protectionism can’t bring them back, and that the main driver of their plight is technological change."
BUSINESS:
- Ever Wanted to Back a Start-Up? Indiegogo Opens the Door to Small Investors (NYT) "Indiegogo is the first major crowdfunding site to use a new securities rule that took effect six months ago, allowing ordinary investors to risk up to a few thousands dollars a year backing private companies."
- GE Wants To Be The Next Artificial Intelligence Powerhouse (FastCompany) and General Electric Just Signed Its Largest Power Plant Software Deal Yet (Fortune)
HEALTH:
- Drug combo reversed plaque buildup in heart patients’ arteries (WaPo)
NEWS:
- Trump faces growing tension with key Republicans over national security issues (WaPo) "'After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming 'you LOST!' Will be ugly,’' tweeted Cohen, who served from 2007 to 2009 as counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He was a driving force behind an open letter last spring — eventually signed by 122 Republican national security leaders — who opposed Trump’s candidacy."
- Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally (FP) Trump owes his victory to the uninformed. But it’s not just Trump. Political scientists have been studying what voters know and how they think for well over 65 years. The results are frightening. Voters generally know who the president is but not much else. They don’t know which party controls Congress, what Congress has done recently, whether the economy is getting better or worse (or by how much). Trump’s victory is the victory of the uninformed. But, to be fair, Clinton’s victory would also have been. Democracy is the rule of the people, but the people are in many ways unfit to rule."
- Obama in a state of denial about Trump, as Democrats work through the stages of grief (WaPo)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Google’s New PhotoScan App Gives You a Quick and Easy Way to Digitize Your Old Photographs (Wired) "The new PhotoScan is a standalone app for both Android and iOS, and scanning a picture is a clever combination of manual shooting and computational photography. Once you take an initial photo of… a photo, the app recognizes the four corners of the frame and displays circular overlays on each corner of the scanned image. You then point your phone camera at each circle, create a robust scan of the image, and PhotoScan gets to work from there."
- We Don't Always Know What AI Is Thinking—And That Can Be Scary (FastCompany) "Artificial intelligence is making decisions by reviewing people's medical tests in hospitals, credit histories in banking, job applications in some HR systems, even criminal risk factors in the justice system. Yet it's not always clear how the computers are thinking."
- The Next Big Front in the Battle of the Clouds Is AI Chips. And Microsoft Just Scored a Win (Wired)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- McDonald’s Is Making a Change to Its Big Mac Recipe for the First Time Ever (Fortune) "The Big Mac was first introduced in 1967 and, for the first time in those 50 years since, McDonald’s is changing up the recipe by adding Sriracha. Don’t worry—the old Big Mac isn’t going anywhere."
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Wednesday, November 16, 2016
PAUL RYAN IS DETERMINED TO GUT MEDICARE. THIS TIME HE MAY SUCCEED
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Paul Ryan is determined to gut Medicare. This time he might succeed (LA Times) "Medicare faces fiscal problems, but it’s not going broke, and according to both the Medicare trustees and the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act has in fact alleviated those problems rather than caused them. The trustees reported in 2010 that passage of Obamacare had postponed the projected exhaustion date of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years — to 2029 from 2017. Projections of Medicare spending growth have consistently come down, year after year, at least in part due to changes in the program imposed through Obamacare. The program’s fiscal situation would be “substantially improved,” the trustees said, because the ACA instituted new cost controls and provided new tax revenues for the program. Both those features would disappear if the GOP repeals the ACA, as is its intention."
BUSINESS:
- With SEC head’s resignation, field clears for Trump to cut back regulations (WaPo) "After the 2008 severe economic downturn, lawmakers and regulators across the government undertook the largest wave of reforms aimed at safeguarding American consumers since the Great Depression. The efforts were intended to curtail predatory lending, enhance transparency within the industry and level the playing field for ordinary households dealing with complex financial products. Consumer advocates said that rolling back regulatory safeguards enacted since the financial crisis would undermine Trump’s appeal to the working-class voters who helped sweep him into the Oval Office."
- The Next Generation of Hedge Fund Stars: Data-Crunching Computers (NYT)
- TPP’s Death Won’t Help the American Middle Class (The Atlantic)
HEALTH:
- A Cold and Flu Risk That’s a Real Eye-Opener (NYT)
NEWS:
- Donald Trump’s Far-Flung Holdings Raise Potential for Conflicts of Interest (NYT) "Mr. Trump has said he will eliminate ethical concerns by turning the management of his company over to his children, an arrangement he has referred to as a blind trust. But ethics lawyers — both Republicans and Democrats — say it is far from blind because he would have knowledge of the assets in the trust and be in contact with the people running it, making it unlike a conventional blind trust controlled entirely by an independent party. Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, said on CNN’s 'State of the Union' on Sunday that excluding Mr. Trump’s family from a role in his businesses 'would basically put his children out of work.' The public, Mr. Giuliani said, needs to trust Mr. Trump." and The ethics rules that apply — and don’t apply — to Trump’s children (WaPo) and Why Aren’t Donald Trump’s Epic Conflicts of Interest Illegal? (Fortune)
- Donald Trump's Dark Playbook (The Atlantic) "But in the days after his shocking election, those following his transition have noticed a theme: Trump’s advertisement for populism may ultimately disguise a policy of surprisingly old-fashioned elite enrichment.
- Trump’s Proposals Won’t Help The White Working Class — Or The Urban Poor (FiveThirtyEight) "Trump, if he sticks to his campaign pledges (a big “if”), will probably do little either to help the working class or to hurt the elites, at least economically. What’s more, this simple dichotomy completely leaves out the people who stand to lose the most, based on what little we know about Trump’s plans: poor and low-income families in urban and suburban areas. But there’s a reason that investors are optimistic about a Trump presidency. Taken at face value, his policies contain plenty of good news for investors: tax cuts for the wealthy, lower corporate tax rates and much less regulation of banks, energy companies and other big businesses."
- Pulling Democrats Back to ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’ (NYT) "While the country has moved steadily to the left on such social issues as same-sex marriage and gender equity, it is increasingly apparent that Democrats cannot win in much of the country without a more coherent and overriding economic message."
- GOP Lawmakers Work Behind Closed Doors to Stop Donald Trump’s Mandate (Breitbart) "Republican Congressional leaders and members of the House Freedom Caucus are trying to distort Donald Trump’s 'America First' mandate on trade and immigration to comply with the globalist agenda demanded by the party's major donors, according to GOP staffers who are familiar with the discussions that occur in the closed-door meetings."
- Rand Paul: Bolton ‘Totally Unfit’ for Secretary of State — Giuliani ‘Very Similar’ (Breitbart)
- Trump is a disaster, but talk of a “whitelash” is misguided — and counterproductive (Vox)
- Stop protesting democracy. Saying #notmypresident is the same as saying #notmyconstitution. (WaPo)
SPORTS:
- Unanimous No. 1 Alabama Perpetuates a Standard of Excellence (NYT) "The Crimson Tide’s four national titles in the past seven seasons are matched only by Notre Dame’s run in a strikingly different climate in the 1940s. Since Coach Nick Saban took over for the 2007 season, his team is 115-18 (counting five wins earned on the field but erased from the record books because of N.C.A.A. violations); knock off that first year, and it is 108-12. This is not just about football anymore. The Alabama dynasty represents a coach and a program realizing their potential to just about the fullest degree imaginable."
Technology:
- How Facebook Is Transforming Disaster Response (Wired) "In its next move Facebook is going to open the valve a little further. Safety Check product lead Katherine Woo says the company aims to fold the service into what it’s calling a crisis hub: a live, centralized repository for information and media about any given disaster, where people can not only check on the safety of individuals but also coordinate ways of responding in the physical world, follow news and chatter, and perhaps monitor all the live video pouring in from the scene. 'All this happens on Facebook anyway,' Woo says. But soon it will be powerfully organized by the company’s algorithms into a single stream, automatically generated almost as soon as people start talking about a crisis."
- Why Mobile Data Use Is Booming (Fortune) "While video currently accounts for about half of all data traffic, it will soak up 75% of all traffic in 2022."
- WhatsApp is adding FaceTime-style video calls (Re/code)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A hostage negotiator’s simple strategy for defusing tensions with your partisan friends and family (Quartz) "Shutting someone’s opinion down does not create the space for change. You have to control your amygdala, the control center of the brain—when it is hijacked, it makes you do and say the things you regret. Kohlrieser explains it this way: it’s when the limbic system, including emotions, take over cognitive function, i.e. reason."
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- Paul Ryan is determined to gut Medicare. This time he might succeed (LA Times) "Medicare faces fiscal problems, but it’s not going broke, and according to both the Medicare trustees and the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act has in fact alleviated those problems rather than caused them. The trustees reported in 2010 that passage of Obamacare had postponed the projected exhaustion date of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years — to 2029 from 2017. Projections of Medicare spending growth have consistently come down, year after year, at least in part due to changes in the program imposed through Obamacare. The program’s fiscal situation would be “substantially improved,” the trustees said, because the ACA instituted new cost controls and provided new tax revenues for the program. Both those features would disappear if the GOP repeals the ACA, as is its intention."
BUSINESS:
- With SEC head’s resignation, field clears for Trump to cut back regulations (WaPo) "After the 2008 severe economic downturn, lawmakers and regulators across the government undertook the largest wave of reforms aimed at safeguarding American consumers since the Great Depression. The efforts were intended to curtail predatory lending, enhance transparency within the industry and level the playing field for ordinary households dealing with complex financial products. Consumer advocates said that rolling back regulatory safeguards enacted since the financial crisis would undermine Trump’s appeal to the working-class voters who helped sweep him into the Oval Office."
- The Next Generation of Hedge Fund Stars: Data-Crunching Computers (NYT)
- TPP’s Death Won’t Help the American Middle Class (The Atlantic)
HEALTH:
- A Cold and Flu Risk That’s a Real Eye-Opener (NYT)
NEWS:
- Donald Trump’s Far-Flung Holdings Raise Potential for Conflicts of Interest (NYT) "Mr. Trump has said he will eliminate ethical concerns by turning the management of his company over to his children, an arrangement he has referred to as a blind trust. But ethics lawyers — both Republicans and Democrats — say it is far from blind because he would have knowledge of the assets in the trust and be in contact with the people running it, making it unlike a conventional blind trust controlled entirely by an independent party. Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, said on CNN’s 'State of the Union' on Sunday that excluding Mr. Trump’s family from a role in his businesses 'would basically put his children out of work.' The public, Mr. Giuliani said, needs to trust Mr. Trump." and The ethics rules that apply — and don’t apply — to Trump’s children (WaPo) and Why Aren’t Donald Trump’s Epic Conflicts of Interest Illegal? (Fortune)
- Donald Trump's Dark Playbook (The Atlantic) "But in the days after his shocking election, those following his transition have noticed a theme: Trump’s advertisement for populism may ultimately disguise a policy of surprisingly old-fashioned elite enrichment.
- Trump’s Proposals Won’t Help The White Working Class — Or The Urban Poor (FiveThirtyEight) "Trump, if he sticks to his campaign pledges (a big “if”), will probably do little either to help the working class or to hurt the elites, at least economically. What’s more, this simple dichotomy completely leaves out the people who stand to lose the most, based on what little we know about Trump’s plans: poor and low-income families in urban and suburban areas. But there’s a reason that investors are optimistic about a Trump presidency. Taken at face value, his policies contain plenty of good news for investors: tax cuts for the wealthy, lower corporate tax rates and much less regulation of banks, energy companies and other big businesses."
- Pulling Democrats Back to ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’ (NYT) "While the country has moved steadily to the left on such social issues as same-sex marriage and gender equity, it is increasingly apparent that Democrats cannot win in much of the country without a more coherent and overriding economic message."
- GOP Lawmakers Work Behind Closed Doors to Stop Donald Trump’s Mandate (Breitbart) "Republican Congressional leaders and members of the House Freedom Caucus are trying to distort Donald Trump’s 'America First' mandate on trade and immigration to comply with the globalist agenda demanded by the party's major donors, according to GOP staffers who are familiar with the discussions that occur in the closed-door meetings."
- Rand Paul: Bolton ‘Totally Unfit’ for Secretary of State — Giuliani ‘Very Similar’ (Breitbart)
- Trump is a disaster, but talk of a “whitelash” is misguided — and counterproductive (Vox)
- Stop protesting democracy. Saying #notmypresident is the same as saying #notmyconstitution. (WaPo)
SPORTS:
- Unanimous No. 1 Alabama Perpetuates a Standard of Excellence (NYT) "The Crimson Tide’s four national titles in the past seven seasons are matched only by Notre Dame’s run in a strikingly different climate in the 1940s. Since Coach Nick Saban took over for the 2007 season, his team is 115-18 (counting five wins earned on the field but erased from the record books because of N.C.A.A. violations); knock off that first year, and it is 108-12. This is not just about football anymore. The Alabama dynasty represents a coach and a program realizing their potential to just about the fullest degree imaginable."
Technology:
- How Facebook Is Transforming Disaster Response (Wired) "In its next move Facebook is going to open the valve a little further. Safety Check product lead Katherine Woo says the company aims to fold the service into what it’s calling a crisis hub: a live, centralized repository for information and media about any given disaster, where people can not only check on the safety of individuals but also coordinate ways of responding in the physical world, follow news and chatter, and perhaps monitor all the live video pouring in from the scene. 'All this happens on Facebook anyway,' Woo says. But soon it will be powerfully organized by the company’s algorithms into a single stream, automatically generated almost as soon as people start talking about a crisis."
- Why Mobile Data Use Is Booming (Fortune) "While video currently accounts for about half of all data traffic, it will soak up 75% of all traffic in 2022."
- WhatsApp is adding FaceTime-style video calls (Re/code)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A hostage negotiator’s simple strategy for defusing tensions with your partisan friends and family (Quartz) "Shutting someone’s opinion down does not create the space for change. You have to control your amygdala, the control center of the brain—when it is hijacked, it makes you do and say the things you regret. Kohlrieser explains it this way: it’s when the limbic system, including emotions, take over cognitive function, i.e. reason."
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
STEVE BANNON AND THE ALT-RIGHT: A PRIMER
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Steve Bannon and the alt-right: a primer (CBS News) "The Muslims are coming, and so are the Mexicans. Blacks are out of control in the cities. The feminists are trying to upset gender norms, which is why you can’t get a date. Smart as you are, young white man, you can’t get rich, because of globalists, who 'just happen' to be Jews. This is increasingly the governing ideology of Breitbart, one reflected in its headlines and stories, although it hasn’t gone quite full-bore on the anti-Semitism quite yet. And it is the ideology that’s been encouraged by Steve Bannon. This is not to say either Trump or Bannon are racist. And I don’t know how many Trump supporters have any clue who or what the 'alt-right' is, though I’d suspect the answer is not many. But for anyone wondering what Bannon sees as a winning message, or what directions he’ll push Trump in, it’s worth considering how he’s spent so much of the last year trying to mainstream the alt-right." and Breitbart headlines show how Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees the world (Quartz) "Under Bannon, a self-proclaimed 'Leninist' who once said he wants to 'destroy the state,' it has published incendiary and sometimes factually incorrect articles and opinion columns targeting women, immigrants, minorities, gays, and overweight people." and Here Are Some Of The Incendiary Stories Published By Trump's Chief Strategist (BuzzFeed)
- Trump allies defend Steve Bannon (Politico) "'The guy I know is a guy that isn’t any of those things,' Priebus said on NBC’s 'Today,' noting that Bannon’s byline had not appeared on any of those articles even though he was overseeing the website at the time. 'The guy I know is a guy sitting in an office all day yesterday, talking about hiring and in the last few months, this is a guy who has exhibited none of those qualities. Here’s a guy who’s Harvard Business School, he was a 10-year naval officer, London School of Economics, I believe. He is a guy who is very, very smart, very temperate.'" and Gingrich: 'Baloney' to blame Bannon for all of Breitbart's content (Politico) "In fact, Gingrich said during a Monday morning interview on Fox News’s 'Fox & Friends,' the controversy stirred up by Bannon’s appointment to such a high-level White House position should be proof to Donald Trump’s supporters that the combative former Breitbart executive is the perfect man for the job. Gingrich said Bannon should not be held accountable for the stories published by Breitbart under his leadership."
BUSINESS:
- A Global Investor, Concerned by World Politics (NYT) "The biggest opportunities are going to be — and it sounds a little too obvious — in two areas. One, you have a part of the world that used to not be part of the economy but has become part of it, as a contributor and an actor and a consumer. All the so-called emerging countries — these are huge opportunities. The other is technology. Technology destroys jobs, but it creates new ones. But it also compresses costs. That’s a big political and social issue."
- Reason And Rationality: The Psychological Keys To Investing Success (Forbes) "The key determinants of investing and trading success are not one's feelings of confidence, but the objective realities of the marketplace."
- How T. Boone Pickens Sits Tight in the Riskiest of Businesses (NYT) "Gathering information, holding firm even if the market is going against you, these are things that the rest of us can do if we put our minds to it. But it’s the size of the risk Mr. Pickens takes — the willingness to bet it all if he thinks he’s right — that most investors will never be able to do. Risk has been a part of Mr. Pickens’s business life for so long, it barely causes him to blink."
HEALTH:
- Genetic Heart Disease Risk Eased by Healthy Habits, Study Finds (NYT) "The investigators found that genes can double the risk of heart disease, but a good lifestyle cuts it in half. Just as important, they found, a terrible lifestyle erases about half of the benefits of good genetics."
- Researchers have found a surprisingly powerful effect of sleeping more (WaPo)
NEWS:
- Breitbart’s Pollak Takes on Three CNN Talking Heads: ‘Most Offensive Thing Bannon Has Done Is Win the White House’ (Breitbart) "'[I] think that when you do this, this is what the media do, this is what the establishment does — they throw out a bunch of innuendo to try to smear someone,' [Breitbart senior editor-at-large and in-house counsel Joel] Pollak said. “The most offensive thing Steve Bannon ever did was win the White House with Donald Trump. And if it was up to these people, it would be Hillary Clinton picking the Supreme Court and cosigning our democracy to decline. And Steve Bannon deserves the praise of these folks, not their condemnation.”
- I Know Steve Bannon–He’s Not a Racist Crackpot Like Rev. Wright or a Terrorist Bomber Like Bill Ayers (Breitbart) "I [Jim Hoft] know Steve Bannon and he is not a racist, sexist, Jew-hater, or homophobe. Out of the tens of thousands of posts on Breitbart.com, the left cherry-picked 5-10 questionable posts to attack Steve Bannon."
- The cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Republicans (WaPo) "It's not uncommon for the party in the White House to have some disagreements with its own members in Congress. But if you take Trump's campaign promises at his word, Republicans have fundamental disagreements with their incoming president on his proposals to spend billions on infrastructure, deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally and institute more protectionist trade policies." and Democrats look to exploit Trump divisions with GOP Congress (Politico) "Their thinking: Exploit the inevitable divisions between Trump and the increasingly conservative GOP leadership over tax policy, infrastructure spending and possibly social issues. And Senate Democrats hope to use the filibuster — the only real leverage they have to stymie Trump and congressional Republicans — sparingly."
- Exclusive–Rep. Mark Meadows: House Republicans Very Fortunate to Have Bannon, Priebus in Trump White House (Breitbart) "'Steve Bannon is not only a very capable individual, but he’s someone who’s quietly been able to understand what the American people want and has been consistent in his message about that,' said Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.), who led the fight in 2015 to unseat Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio)."
- What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class (HBR) "For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap. One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich."
- On Choosing Trump and Being Bad (New Yorker) "Even if a welfare program like the Trade Readjustment Allowance were amped up, it’s not likely that this population would become meek and grateful. They’re aware that the socioeconomic élite—lawyers, financiers, and consultants—profited mightily from the economic changes by which they were dispossessed over the past couple of decades, and I suspect that they don’t want to be the objects of such people’s charity. They want their dignity back. They want to be what they once were: workers, an independent source of economic value, ambivalently regarded by and even somewhat menacing to the upper class. As I wrote on my personal blog in May, they’d rather, if there’s no other choice, be 'bad.'"
- Donald Trump’s Great Bait and Switch (New Yorker) "To sum up, this is the prospect we are facing. A populist but semi-engaged President who is less interested in governing than in soaking up adulation at big rallies. Meanwhile, his cronies and members of the permanent establishment make many of the actual decisions, which will largely benefit the already rich, including the ruling family. Debt mushrooms as El Presidente approves prestige construction projects but not the taxes needed to pay for them. And skilled propagandists, like Bannon, whip up nationalist fervor to keep the masses diverted from what is really going on.
- 5 takeaways on Trump's first 5 days (Politico) "So what do we know? He’s basically the same brash invader who sacked the establishment citadel on Election Day — but seems a lot more flexible than the sloganeering populist who vowed, in an oath of iron and blood, to build that wall, trash Obamacare and overcome the 'rigged system.'"
- When One Party Held All Branches of Government ... and Still Stalled (Ozy)
- “60 Minutes” with Donald Trump (New Yorker)
SPORTS:
- Strobe-light training: From Michael Jordan to Kawhi Leonard (ESPN) "Jordan used them a handful of times. It was a tool in the program, not the entire program. But Jordan noticed the lights helped in other ways. The game seemed to slow down. He picked up on visual cues he wasn't seeing before. For reasons he couldn't quite explain, it was making him better, even beyond tolerating photographer's flashes."
- Can anyone in the NFL keep the Patriots from winning another Super Bowl? (WaPo)
TECHNOLOGY:
- A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number (NYT) "In fact, investigators find that a cellphone number is often even more useful than a Social Security number because it is tied to so many databases and is connected to a device you almost always have with you, said Austin Berglas, a former F.B.I. agent who is senior managing director of K2 Intelligence, a private investigator."
- IBM Is Using Tiny Tubes to Grow the Chips of the Future (Wired)
WATCH THIS:
- Dave Chappelle Stand-Up Monologue (SNL)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Supermoon 2016 (The Atlantic)
- How the West Coast Could Dump Trump (Ozy) FreeCascadia.org
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- Steve Bannon and the alt-right: a primer (CBS News) "The Muslims are coming, and so are the Mexicans. Blacks are out of control in the cities. The feminists are trying to upset gender norms, which is why you can’t get a date. Smart as you are, young white man, you can’t get rich, because of globalists, who 'just happen' to be Jews. This is increasingly the governing ideology of Breitbart, one reflected in its headlines and stories, although it hasn’t gone quite full-bore on the anti-Semitism quite yet. And it is the ideology that’s been encouraged by Steve Bannon. This is not to say either Trump or Bannon are racist. And I don’t know how many Trump supporters have any clue who or what the 'alt-right' is, though I’d suspect the answer is not many. But for anyone wondering what Bannon sees as a winning message, or what directions he’ll push Trump in, it’s worth considering how he’s spent so much of the last year trying to mainstream the alt-right." and Breitbart headlines show how Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees the world (Quartz) "Under Bannon, a self-proclaimed 'Leninist' who once said he wants to 'destroy the state,' it has published incendiary and sometimes factually incorrect articles and opinion columns targeting women, immigrants, minorities, gays, and overweight people." and Here Are Some Of The Incendiary Stories Published By Trump's Chief Strategist (BuzzFeed)
- Trump allies defend Steve Bannon (Politico) "'The guy I know is a guy that isn’t any of those things,' Priebus said on NBC’s 'Today,' noting that Bannon’s byline had not appeared on any of those articles even though he was overseeing the website at the time. 'The guy I know is a guy sitting in an office all day yesterday, talking about hiring and in the last few months, this is a guy who has exhibited none of those qualities. Here’s a guy who’s Harvard Business School, he was a 10-year naval officer, London School of Economics, I believe. He is a guy who is very, very smart, very temperate.'" and Gingrich: 'Baloney' to blame Bannon for all of Breitbart's content (Politico) "In fact, Gingrich said during a Monday morning interview on Fox News’s 'Fox & Friends,' the controversy stirred up by Bannon’s appointment to such a high-level White House position should be proof to Donald Trump’s supporters that the combative former Breitbart executive is the perfect man for the job. Gingrich said Bannon should not be held accountable for the stories published by Breitbart under his leadership."
BUSINESS:
- A Global Investor, Concerned by World Politics (NYT) "The biggest opportunities are going to be — and it sounds a little too obvious — in two areas. One, you have a part of the world that used to not be part of the economy but has become part of it, as a contributor and an actor and a consumer. All the so-called emerging countries — these are huge opportunities. The other is technology. Technology destroys jobs, but it creates new ones. But it also compresses costs. That’s a big political and social issue."
- Reason And Rationality: The Psychological Keys To Investing Success (Forbes) "The key determinants of investing and trading success are not one's feelings of confidence, but the objective realities of the marketplace."
- How T. Boone Pickens Sits Tight in the Riskiest of Businesses (NYT) "Gathering information, holding firm even if the market is going against you, these are things that the rest of us can do if we put our minds to it. But it’s the size of the risk Mr. Pickens takes — the willingness to bet it all if he thinks he’s right — that most investors will never be able to do. Risk has been a part of Mr. Pickens’s business life for so long, it barely causes him to blink."
HEALTH:
- Genetic Heart Disease Risk Eased by Healthy Habits, Study Finds (NYT) "The investigators found that genes can double the risk of heart disease, but a good lifestyle cuts it in half. Just as important, they found, a terrible lifestyle erases about half of the benefits of good genetics."
- Researchers have found a surprisingly powerful effect of sleeping more (WaPo)
NEWS:
- Breitbart’s Pollak Takes on Three CNN Talking Heads: ‘Most Offensive Thing Bannon Has Done Is Win the White House’ (Breitbart) "'[I] think that when you do this, this is what the media do, this is what the establishment does — they throw out a bunch of innuendo to try to smear someone,' [Breitbart senior editor-at-large and in-house counsel Joel] Pollak said. “The most offensive thing Steve Bannon ever did was win the White House with Donald Trump. And if it was up to these people, it would be Hillary Clinton picking the Supreme Court and cosigning our democracy to decline. And Steve Bannon deserves the praise of these folks, not their condemnation.”
- I Know Steve Bannon–He’s Not a Racist Crackpot Like Rev. Wright or a Terrorist Bomber Like Bill Ayers (Breitbart) "I [Jim Hoft] know Steve Bannon and he is not a racist, sexist, Jew-hater, or homophobe. Out of the tens of thousands of posts on Breitbart.com, the left cherry-picked 5-10 questionable posts to attack Steve Bannon."
- The cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Republicans (WaPo) "It's not uncommon for the party in the White House to have some disagreements with its own members in Congress. But if you take Trump's campaign promises at his word, Republicans have fundamental disagreements with their incoming president on his proposals to spend billions on infrastructure, deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally and institute more protectionist trade policies." and Democrats look to exploit Trump divisions with GOP Congress (Politico) "Their thinking: Exploit the inevitable divisions between Trump and the increasingly conservative GOP leadership over tax policy, infrastructure spending and possibly social issues. And Senate Democrats hope to use the filibuster — the only real leverage they have to stymie Trump and congressional Republicans — sparingly."
- Exclusive–Rep. Mark Meadows: House Republicans Very Fortunate to Have Bannon, Priebus in Trump White House (Breitbart) "'Steve Bannon is not only a very capable individual, but he’s someone who’s quietly been able to understand what the American people want and has been consistent in his message about that,' said Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.), who led the fight in 2015 to unseat Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio)."
- What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class (HBR) "For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap. One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich."
- On Choosing Trump and Being Bad (New Yorker) "Even if a welfare program like the Trade Readjustment Allowance were amped up, it’s not likely that this population would become meek and grateful. They’re aware that the socioeconomic élite—lawyers, financiers, and consultants—profited mightily from the economic changes by which they were dispossessed over the past couple of decades, and I suspect that they don’t want to be the objects of such people’s charity. They want their dignity back. They want to be what they once were: workers, an independent source of economic value, ambivalently regarded by and even somewhat menacing to the upper class. As I wrote on my personal blog in May, they’d rather, if there’s no other choice, be 'bad.'"
- Donald Trump’s Great Bait and Switch (New Yorker) "To sum up, this is the prospect we are facing. A populist but semi-engaged President who is less interested in governing than in soaking up adulation at big rallies. Meanwhile, his cronies and members of the permanent establishment make many of the actual decisions, which will largely benefit the already rich, including the ruling family. Debt mushrooms as El Presidente approves prestige construction projects but not the taxes needed to pay for them. And skilled propagandists, like Bannon, whip up nationalist fervor to keep the masses diverted from what is really going on.
- 5 takeaways on Trump's first 5 days (Politico) "So what do we know? He’s basically the same brash invader who sacked the establishment citadel on Election Day — but seems a lot more flexible than the sloganeering populist who vowed, in an oath of iron and blood, to build that wall, trash Obamacare and overcome the 'rigged system.'"
- When One Party Held All Branches of Government ... and Still Stalled (Ozy)
- “60 Minutes” with Donald Trump (New Yorker)
SPORTS:
- Strobe-light training: From Michael Jordan to Kawhi Leonard (ESPN) "Jordan used them a handful of times. It was a tool in the program, not the entire program. But Jordan noticed the lights helped in other ways. The game seemed to slow down. He picked up on visual cues he wasn't seeing before. For reasons he couldn't quite explain, it was making him better, even beyond tolerating photographer's flashes."
- Can anyone in the NFL keep the Patriots from winning another Super Bowl? (WaPo)
TECHNOLOGY:
- A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number (NYT) "In fact, investigators find that a cellphone number is often even more useful than a Social Security number because it is tied to so many databases and is connected to a device you almost always have with you, said Austin Berglas, a former F.B.I. agent who is senior managing director of K2 Intelligence, a private investigator."
- IBM Is Using Tiny Tubes to Grow the Chips of the Future (Wired)
WATCH THIS:
- Dave Chappelle Stand-Up Monologue (SNL)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Supermoon 2016 (The Atlantic)
- How the West Coast Could Dump Trump (Ozy) FreeCascadia.org
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