- The alarming response to Russian meddling in American democracy (Economist) "These latest revelations have probably not changed any minds at all. Republicans who hate Mrs Clinton are still delighted that she was defeated. Democrats who loathe and fear Mr Trump have one more reason to dislike him. Outside Washington, red-blooded Americans who mostly rather dislike President Vladimir Putin, according to polls, seem to be shrugging off the latest allegations. And that is what is, or should be, so unsettling. Russian interference in elections across the Western world is like a nasty virus, attacking the body politic. Normally, America is protected by powerful, bipartisan immune responses against such a menace. It also boasts some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence and cyber-defences, and when spooks tell the Republicans and Democrats who lead Congress and sit on the House and Senate intelligence committees of hostile acts by a foreign power, love of country generates a unified response. That immune response is not kicking in this time."
- McConnell announces Senate probe of suspected Russian election interference: ‘The Russians are not our friends’ (WaPo) "McConnell’s calls for a nonpartisan approach to any investigation of Russia echoed comments by incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who pledged on Monday that any inquiry would focus on 'just the facts.'" and McCain, Graham Join Democrats, Demand Probe into Claims of Russian Hacking (Breitbart) and Russia’s alleged intervention in the U.S. election is exposing the Republican Party’s fault lines (Quartz)
- 10 Ways the CIA 'Russian Hacking' Story is Left-Wing 'Fake News' (Breitbart) "No, Russia is not the friend that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several years pretending it was. But the idea that Russian hackers coronated Trump is only the latest left-wing opiate — after white supremacists and 'fake news' — designed to dull the pain of electoral defeat, and postpone the reckoning that must occur if Democrats are to pose a significant threat as an opposition party at any time in the near future."
- Bolton suggests Russian election hacks were ‘false flag’ by Obama administration (WaPo) "The term 'false flag,' popular among conspiracy theorists, is typically used to describe a covert attempt by the government to advance an agenda by making it seem like its activities are being carried out by another entity. During his Fox News appearance, Bolton said there should be 'very grave consequences' if further investigation showed that Russia did try to influence the presidential election, but he questioned whether a sophisticated foreign intelligence service would leave 'cyber fingerprints' after hacking."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Too Many Favorite Shows? Take Them In at High Speed (NYT) "Nicholas Quah, who writes Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts, said in an email that it was unclear how widespread speed listening was, but that anecdotally, it appeared to be 'an established behavior' among high-volume listeners. He said he saw no harm in it."
- Netflix, Amazon, and HBO combined for 70% of the best TV show Golden Globe nominations (Business Insider)
BUSINESS:
- 7,500 Faceless Coders Paid in Bitcoin Built a Hedge Fund’s Brain (Wired) "Under the banner of a startup called Numerai, Craib and his team have built technology that masks the fund’s trading data before sharing it with a vast community of anonymous data scientists. Using a method similar to homomorphic encryption, this tech works to ensure that the scientists can’t see the details of the company’s proprietary trades, but also organizes the data so that these scientists can build machine learning models that analyze it and, in theory, learn better ways of trading financial securities. Each week, one hundred scientists earn bitcoin, with the company paying out over $150,000 in the digital currency so far. If the fund reaches a billion dollars under management, Craib says, it would pay out over $1 million each month to its data scientists."
- A Retirement Plan With Less Golf but More Satisfaction (NYT)
NEWS:
- What is the President’s Daily Brief? "The President’s Daily Brief is a compilation of high-level intelligence findings that is put together overnight by a team working out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a few miles from the CIA’s offices in Virginia. It is tailored to meet each president’s preferences. While there is certainly some degree of repetition in the daily brief, those who have read it regularly say that its value is often found in seeing how assessments change over time, and in being able to ask about the evidence on which those changing evaluations were based. And of course, they contain updated information as new threats emerge around the world." (Boston Globe) and Trump Ignoring U.S. Intelligence Creates Risks Beyond Russian Hacking (Wired) "They worry that it threatens to politicize the intelligence community’s work, pushing it toward conclusions that will please the president rather than inform him. and "Trump used to criticize Obama for not having daily intel meetings (NY Daily News) "In September 2012 — while in the middle of tweeting his 'birther' conspiracy about Obama’s upbringing — Trump shared a Washington Post column saying the President had missed more than half of his in-person daily briefings during his first White House term. 'Priorities--while fundraising and campaigning on our dime, Obama has skipped over 50% of his intel briefings,' Trump wrote with the link. Trump was at it again two years later, tweeting twice about Obama’s intelligence habits. 'Fact--Obama does not read his intelligence briefings nor does he get briefed in person by the CIA or DOD. Too busy I guess!' he wrote Sept. 30, 2014. Six days later, he followed up: 'Obama has missed 58% of his intelligence briefings. But our president does make 100% of his fundraisers.'" and Intel world struggles to crack the code of an untrusting Trump (Politico)
- 10 Ways the CIA 'Russian Hacking' Story is Left-Wing 'Fake News' (Breitbart) "No, Russia is not the friend that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several years pretending it was. But the idea that Russian hackers coronated Trump is only the latest left-wing opiate — after white supremacists and 'fake news' — designed to dull the pain of electoral defeat, and postpone the reckoning that must occur if Democrats are to pose a significant threat as an opposition party at any time in the near future."
- Bolton suggests Russian election hacks were ‘false flag’ by Obama administration (WaPo) "The term 'false flag,' popular among conspiracy theorists, is typically used to describe a covert attempt by the government to advance an agenda by making it seem like its activities are being carried out by another entity. During his Fox News appearance, Bolton said there should be 'very grave consequences' if further investigation showed that Russia did try to influence the presidential election, but he questioned whether a sophisticated foreign intelligence service would leave 'cyber fingerprints' after hacking."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Too Many Favorite Shows? Take Them In at High Speed (NYT) "Nicholas Quah, who writes Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts, said in an email that it was unclear how widespread speed listening was, but that anecdotally, it appeared to be 'an established behavior' among high-volume listeners. He said he saw no harm in it."
- Netflix, Amazon, and HBO combined for 70% of the best TV show Golden Globe nominations (Business Insider)
BUSINESS:
- 7,500 Faceless Coders Paid in Bitcoin Built a Hedge Fund’s Brain (Wired) "Under the banner of a startup called Numerai, Craib and his team have built technology that masks the fund’s trading data before sharing it with a vast community of anonymous data scientists. Using a method similar to homomorphic encryption, this tech works to ensure that the scientists can’t see the details of the company’s proprietary trades, but also organizes the data so that these scientists can build machine learning models that analyze it and, in theory, learn better ways of trading financial securities. Each week, one hundred scientists earn bitcoin, with the company paying out over $150,000 in the digital currency so far. If the fund reaches a billion dollars under management, Craib says, it would pay out over $1 million each month to its data scientists."
- A Retirement Plan With Less Golf but More Satisfaction (NYT)
NEWS:
- What is the President’s Daily Brief? "The President’s Daily Brief is a compilation of high-level intelligence findings that is put together overnight by a team working out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a few miles from the CIA’s offices in Virginia. It is tailored to meet each president’s preferences. While there is certainly some degree of repetition in the daily brief, those who have read it regularly say that its value is often found in seeing how assessments change over time, and in being able to ask about the evidence on which those changing evaluations were based. And of course, they contain updated information as new threats emerge around the world." (Boston Globe) and Trump Ignoring U.S. Intelligence Creates Risks Beyond Russian Hacking (Wired) "They worry that it threatens to politicize the intelligence community’s work, pushing it toward conclusions that will please the president rather than inform him. and "Trump used to criticize Obama for not having daily intel meetings (NY Daily News) "In September 2012 — while in the middle of tweeting his 'birther' conspiracy about Obama’s upbringing — Trump shared a Washington Post column saying the President had missed more than half of his in-person daily briefings during his first White House term. 'Priorities--while fundraising and campaigning on our dime, Obama has skipped over 50% of his intel briefings,' Trump wrote with the link. Trump was at it again two years later, tweeting twice about Obama’s intelligence habits. 'Fact--Obama does not read his intelligence briefings nor does he get briefed in person by the CIA or DOD. Too busy I guess!' he wrote Sept. 30, 2014. Six days later, he followed up: 'Obama has missed 58% of his intelligence briefings. But our president does make 100% of his fundraisers.'" and Intel world struggles to crack the code of an untrusting Trump (Politico)
- Trump risks war by turning the One China question into a bargaining chip (WaPo) "While the U.S. position is driven by a variety of political interests, China’s position is driven by a desire for national unity that China’s leadership has defined as existential and nonnegotiable. This means that the U.S. approach flouts essential elements of the Chinese position. Moreover, not only is Washington maintaining a relationship that contravenes China’s One China policy, but it has apparently put itself in a position of setting the conditions for the resolution of the conflict. The reason this has not led to overt hostilities is because all sides have behaved with restraint to maintain a very fragile peace. They know full well how sensitive these differences are."
- The obscure constitutional provision that could be trouble for Trump (LA Times) "The word emolument was used often in the 18th century to refer to the compensation or profit that would go with holding an office. Beyond that, the precise meaning of the ban remains in question because, unlike other parts of the Constitution, it has not been interpreted in the courts. But as long as Trump and his family retain ownership in business enterprises that involve foreign governments, state-owned entities or foreign government officials, the Constitution’s ban on 'emoluments' is likely to hang over his presidency."
- Three Things We’ve Learned About How Trump Will Govern (FiveThirtyEight)
POLITICS:
- Escape Your Echo Chamber And Understand What Really Makes Trump Supporters Tick (FastCompany) "Among Clearer Thinking's 138 variables, the biggest predictor of whether someone would vote for Trump was their official party affiliation. But the second biggest predictor of support for Trump was whether they believe there is too much political correctness in this country. But what exactly does this mean? Clearer Thinking's analysis found that Trump and Clinton supporters have very different relationships to language itself. Clinton supporters said they believe in political correctness because it stops people from hurting other people and is merely another way to ensure that our discourse has a common decency. Trump supporters, on the other hand, believe that political correctness makes people afraid of speaking their minds and prevents properly addressing important problems in society, including government corruption and crime in black communities."
SCIENCE:
- Trump's transition: sceptics guide every agency dealing with climate change (The Guardian) "The heads of Donald Trump’s transition teams for Nasa, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy, as well as his nominees to lead the EPA and the Department of the Interior, all question the science of human-caused climate change, in a signal of the president-elect’s determination to embark upon an aggressively pro-fossil fuels agenda."
SPORTS:
- Nike’s Trying to Build a Sub-Two-Hour Marathoner, and We’re Along for the Run. (Wired) "The easiest way to express the difference between potential and performance in the marathon is through two numbers. The first is 1:57:58, which Michael Joyner, a polymathic anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, calculated in 1991 to be the physiological limit for a man in the marathon, the best time possible for a perfect athlete in perfect conditions. The second number is Kimetto’s world record, 2:02:57. In the five-minute gap between those two numbers lie all the things that slow runners down. Meanwhile, the backstage team of scientists, engineers, physicians and trainers are working to address every single factor that might slow the runners down. They’re looking at the aerodynamic properties of running apparel; pacing strategies of world-class runners as well as what they eat and how they train; the look, size, and feel of racing shoes; even the environment and shape of the track. Everything that could potentially impact a marathoner’s performance is being rethought and re-engineered with the ultimate goal of killing time and making history."
- How Quarterbacks Made the NFL More Athletic Than Ever Before (Ozy) "There was a time when transitioning from quarterback to another position was unheard of. Today, former QBs dot depth charts of teams all over the NFL."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Day With Hostage Negotiators (Ozy)
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