HOW MUCH TIME WILL THE AVERAGE PERSON SPEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THEIR LIFE?

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- How Much Time Will the Average Person Spend on Social Media During Their Life? (Adweek) "The average person will spend more than five years of their lives on social media, according to a study by influencer marketing agency Mediakix."

BUSINESS/ECONOMY:

- Amazon, the world’s most remarkable firm, is just getting started (Economist) "The former bookseller accounts for more than half of every new dollar spent online in America. It is the world’s leading provider of cloud computing. This year Amazon will probably spend twice as much on television as HBO... Shareholders are right to believe in Amazon’s potential. But success will bring it into conflict with an even stronger beast: government. ...if it makes as much money as investors hope, a rough calculation suggests its earnings could be worth the equivalent of 25% of the combined profits of listed Western retail and media firms."

- Wall Street’s New Trick to Dodge Trump-Induced Stock Swings (Wired) "The new tool at least attempts to help fund managers understand how businesses are processing it all. Trump Tracker automatically scans Securities and Exchange Commission filings like the annual Form 10-K for mentions of Trump. According to Sentieo’s findings, President Trump is mentioned in filings about six times more often than President Obama was at the same time during his presidency. Those mentions have risen even more sharply since election day. The industry Trump Tracker shows is most concerned about his presidency? Health care."

- The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death (New Yorker) "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear."

- Blockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works (Harvard Business Review) "The key point is that the artists themselves will finally be feasting at the center of their own ecosystem, not starving at the edges of many others."

ENVIRONMENT:

- There’s Nothing Conservative about a Carbon Tax (National Review) "What is new, however, is that some Republicans are attempting to pass off a carbon tax as a conservative policy. There is nothing free-market about their massive new tax hike, no matter how they dress it up.
Simply calling something 'conservative' or 'free-market' doesn’t make it so. The Climate Leadership Council’s carbon tax is an affront to the principles that conservatives have championed for decades. Most important, a carbon tax would destroy American jobs, encourage more wasteful spending from Washington, and burden consumers with higher energy costs. You’d be hard pressed to find a more damaging policy for American families."

HEALTH:

- Economic shocks are more likely to be lethal in America (Economist) "By 2013 middle-aged white Americans were dying at twice the rate of similarly aged Swedes of all races. Suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse were to blame. White middle-age mortality continued to rise in 2014 and 2015, contributing to a fall in life expectancy among the population as a whole. The trend transcends geography. It is found in almost every state, and in both cities and rural areas. The problem seems to be getting worse over time. The fundamental cause is still a familiar tale of economic malaise: trade and technological progress have snuffed out opportunities for the low-skilled, especially in manufacturing. Life is unlikely to become more secure for the low-skilled. In fact, policy may soon make it more perilous." and New research identifies a ‘sea of despair’ among white, working-class Americans (WaPo) "Education level is significant: People with a college degree report better health and happiness than those with only some college, who in turn are doing much better than those who never went. ...less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a 'cumulative disadvantage' over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide."

LONG READS:

- Basing Life on What You Can Afford (NYT)

NEWS:

- After Backing Trump, Michigan Considers Its First Muslim Governor (Ozy) "Michigan went for Trump by a 10,000-person margin in November, seemingly in part due to his campaign promise to institute a Muslim travel ban as a way of heading off (perceived) external threats. According to exit polls, almost a fifth of Michiganders thought terrorism was the most important issue facing the country — only the economy was selected more — with Trump beating Hillary on the issue by a 55 to 42 percent margin. Now, could white voters rally behind a Muslim candidate?"

- Senate Intel Chair: 'No Idea' About Nunes Claims (Weekly Standard) "'I'm going to let him stand on whatever he said and what he's got. I have no idea what it is,' North Carolina senator Richard Burr told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday in a Capitol hallway interview."

- If we're going to rule out negotiations with North Korea, we have to be ready for war (LA Times) "The United States has no real capability to shoot down ICBMs, but we never have. We have been defenseless against this threat for six decades. For all those years, we have relied on deterrence and the promise of devastating retaliation. The logic is that the capability of our conventional and nuclear weapons deters our enemies and provides for the nation’s security. If the U.S. is going to abandon this logic now, it should be done with great care, and with the full understanding that we are risking war."

- Tillerson calls for more allied support in fight against Islamic State (LA Times) "Tillerson said the United States 'will work to establish interim zones of stability, through cease-fires, to allow refugees to return home,' using language that suggests creation of no-fly zones to protect refugees in northern Syria."

- Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important (WaPo) "...if AP’s reporting is true in its entirety, the man who ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had worked secretly to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In order to answer those questions we need an independent commission with subpoena power... If we ever get that commission, this could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics. So why aren’t more people thinking about it that way yet? The primary reason may be the fact that it’s so complicated and involves so many people, yet it lacks a single understandable explanation for what it’s really all about."

READ THIS:

- The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory (John Seabrook) "How do you make a song a global smash hit that is guaranteed to make $millions? Who are the hit-manufacturers that can create a tune that is so catchy, so wildly addictive, that it sticks in the minds of millions of listeners? And who are the powerful few that have the capacity to transform, say, a young Barbadian woman called Robyn Rihanna Fenty into the global megastar that is Rihanna? In The Song Machine, John Seabrook dissects the workings of this machine, travelling the world to reveal its hidden formulas, and interview its geniuses – ‘the hitmakers’ – at the centre of it all."

SPORTS:

- Inside the 'Tinderization' of today's NBA (ESPN) "Something strange happens when NBA teams play on the road these days, a trend line that baffles statheads. In the 1987-88 season, home teams won an astounding 67.9 percent of games, boasting an average win margin of 5.8 points, the highest on record. Then, in less than a decade, the home-court advantage gap was sliced in half. By 1996-97, home teams won only 57.5 percent of the time, by an average margin of only 2.6 points. And now, after hovering around 60 percent for most of the 2000s, home-court advantage is dropping again. This season, it sits at an all-time low of 57.4 percent. What's causing the drop? I spoke with dozens of players, coaches, team trainers and front-office execs, and most think the same thing is happening: NBA players are sleeping more and drinking less. And lifestyle judgments aside, the NBA road life is simply more efficient -- and less taxing -- when there aren't open hours spent trolling clubs."

TECHNOLOGY:

- The Clever ‘DoubleAgent’ Attack Turns Antivirus Into Malware (Wired) "Discovered by researchers at the Israeli cybersecurity defense firm Cybellum, the so-called 'DoubleAgent attack' takes advantage of the Microsoft Application Verifier, a tool used for strengthening security in third-party Windows applications, to inject customized code into programs. The approach could potentially manipulate any software target, but antivirus programs would be particularly appealing to an attacker since they have such extensive system privileges for scanning."

TRUMPTELL:

- President Trump’s cascade of false claims in Time’s interview on his falsehoods (WaPo) "President Trump had a remarkable interview with Time magazine about falsehoods, in which he repeated many false claims that have been repeatedly been debunked."

- Federal elections commissioner wants Trump to back up his allegations of voter fraud (LA Times) "In January, days after he entered the White House, Trump said that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes were cast in the November presidential election. The administration has produced no evidence to back up these claims. Nationwide, Republican and Democratic elections officials said that voter fraud is rare and that it did not affect their states' results. 'Facts matter, Mr. President,' Weintraub wrote. 'The American people deserve to see your evidence.'"

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- The number of books you’ll read before you die, charted (Quartz)

TODAY'S SONG:

- Free of Charge (The Band CAMINO)

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