- Why International Leadership Is Slipping Through America’s Hands (Ozy) "As a European ambassador said to me recently: 'The power to inspire was the greatest asset of the U.S., and we fear it’s gone.' Why is this? It’s pretty simple, really. The world has seen even weak American presidents as embodying the values people associated with America. But the long trail of sloppy, inaccurate or false statements that culminated in President Trump’s labeling of his predecessor as a felon on March 4 signal to the world that they cannot trust what the American president says. Driven domestically by sophomoric ideas like 'deconstruction' of the 'deep state,' the administration has carelessly demeaned the judiciary, the intelligence community and a free media. This hits the rest of the world as worrisome nonsense, not leadership. Today, we are closing off to the world through talk of walls, travel bans, withdrawal from trade agreements and a massive spending cut (almost 30 percent) proposed for our State Department — the institution most directly responsible for engaging the rest of the world. If the administration undervalues the role of American leadership, there are others who will move into the vacuum regionally and globally. Russia, China and Iran come to mind. And the world they want will not be in any way compatible with the vision that has traditionally animated the United States."
NEWS:
- A Tweet to Kurt Eichenwald, a Strobe and a Seizure. Now, an Arrest (NYT) "When the journalist Kurt Eichenwald opened an animated image sent to him on Twitter last December, the message 'You deserve a seizure for your posts' appeared in capital letters along with a blinding strobe light. The unusual case has shown how online tools can be deployed as weapons capable of physical harm. Steven Lieberman, Mr. Eichenwald’s lawyer, has argued that the use of the strobe light in a GIF, or moving graphic, was akin to sending an explosive or poison in the mail."
- With Their Leaders at a Loss, Marine Veterans Fight Abusers (NYT) "While the Marine Corps commissions a task force and goes through a meticulous investigation, these veterans have been gathering intelligence and making counterstrikes online, tracking the illicit members as they try to hide and unmasking the anonymity that allows the groups to thrive."
- Money, Malice, Mercers: The Megadonors Who Want To Blow Up The System (Huffington Post) "In short, unlike other donors, the Mercers are not merely angling to influence the Republican establishment—they want to obliterate it. And so it seemed almost inevitable that their paths converged with Bannon’s when he took over Breitbart in 2012. The Mercers recognized Bannon as an ideological ally. In the end, Rebekah Mercer’s mistake was that she thought she could upend the system and then control the regime she had helped to bring to power. Helping to elect a president wasn’t enough: She wanted the machinery to shape his presidency. Instead, the chaos simply continued. An administration full of insurgents, it turns out, functions in a near-constant state of insurgency."
- How the GOP Crackup Happens (National Review) "...there is no significant Trumpist wing in Congress. And there was no off-the-shelf Trump legislation that Congress could begin on immediately. In the campaign, Trump identified a constituency and a message, but the agenda was often symbolic (Mexico will pay for the wall) or nebulous (negotiating better trade deals). The congressional priorities are Obamacare repeal and tax reform... It is true that Trump promised to deliver on both, but neither was part of his core message or won over marginal Trump voters. If the health bill falters in the House, though, it will be the most fraught moment of GOP tension since the release of the Access Hollywood tape. There’s almost no question that Trump would win any blame game. This would mean Trump would be a president not without a party necessarily, but without a Congress. It would make major legislative accomplishments impossible, although if Obamacare repeal and replace fails, that might be the reality regardless."
- Why is the Trump presidency such a rolling disaster? (WaPo) "Because he can never admit that he was wrong, Trump drags the issue out endlessly, just as he did with earlier iterations of this pattern, about the size of his inaugural crowd or the millions of phantom illegal votes that led to his popular vote loss (I’d encourage you to read the transcript of his Wednesday interview with Tucker Carlson and marvel at the fact that this man is actually president of the United States). That then makes life difficult for Republicans in Congress, who are put in the awkward position of either defending the latest bit of stupidity issuing from the Oval Office or being honest about how ridiculous it is, which they know would win them the president’s ire."
- U.S. makes formal apology to Britain after White House accuses GCHQ of wiretapping Trump Tower (Telegraph) "Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the U.S. National Security Adviser, have apologized over the claims. 'The apology came direct from them,' a source said.'"
- The New Party of No (NYT) "Schumer, as he saw it, was calling Trump’s bluff. 'Donald Trump ran as an anti-establishment populist — against both the Democratic and Republican establishments,' he told me. Whether or not he had meant it, the Democrats could try to hold him to it. On the several occasions that Trump called Schumer in the weeks after the election, Schumer argued that he could try to govern as a hard-right conservative, but 'America is not a hard-right country,' and there would be electoral consequences. Senate Democrats had tried for years to pass the kind of infrastructure bill Trump had suggested, Reid reminded his colleagues, only to run up against Republican opposition. 'If Trump wants to pursue policies that will help working people, Democrats will take a pragmatic approach,' he said. If the Indivisible Guide was a blueprint for a movement, it was an unusual one, bearing little resemblance to liberal or left-wing movements of the past. It called for no ideological remaking of the Democratic Party, no housecleaning of the establishment, no throwing-out of the bums — or at least not the Democratic ones. The document presented not just a strategy for standing up to Trump but also an argument for sidestepping the party’s most divisive internal conflicts."
- How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Helped the NSA Spy on the Whole World (The Intercept) "Palantir has never masked its ambitions, in particular the desire to sell its services to the U.S. government — the CIA itself was an early investor in the startup through In-Q-Tel, the agency’s venture capital branch. But Palantir refuses to discuss or even name its government clientele, despite landing 'at least $1.2 billion' in federal contracts since 2009, according to an August 2016 report in Politico. Palantir’s chief appeal is that it’s not designed to do any single thing in particular, but is flexible and powerful enough to accommodate the requirements of any organization that needs to process large amounts of both personal and abstract data."
SPORTS:
- The unregulated world of strength coaches and college football’s killing season (CBS Sports) "Since 2000, 32 NCAA football players have died -- six from traumatic deaths and 26 from non-traumatic deaths. That makes it about 4.5 times more likely a player dies while training for football in the offseason than from a traumatic injury playing football."
TECHNOLOGY:
- It Begins: Bots Are Learning to Chat in Their Own Language (Wired) "Basically, the bots navigate their world through extreme trial and error, carefully keeping track of what works and what doesn’t as they reach for a reward, like arriving at a landmark. If a particular action helps them achieve that reward, they know to keep doing it. In this same way, they learn to build their own language. Telling each other where to go helps them all get places more quickly. With early humans, language came from necessity. They learned to communicate because it helped them do other stuff, gave them an advantage over animals. These OpenAI researchers want to create the same dynamic for bots."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
NEWS:
- A Tweet to Kurt Eichenwald, a Strobe and a Seizure. Now, an Arrest (NYT) "When the journalist Kurt Eichenwald opened an animated image sent to him on Twitter last December, the message 'You deserve a seizure for your posts' appeared in capital letters along with a blinding strobe light. The unusual case has shown how online tools can be deployed as weapons capable of physical harm. Steven Lieberman, Mr. Eichenwald’s lawyer, has argued that the use of the strobe light in a GIF, or moving graphic, was akin to sending an explosive or poison in the mail."
- With Their Leaders at a Loss, Marine Veterans Fight Abusers (NYT) "While the Marine Corps commissions a task force and goes through a meticulous investigation, these veterans have been gathering intelligence and making counterstrikes online, tracking the illicit members as they try to hide and unmasking the anonymity that allows the groups to thrive."
- Money, Malice, Mercers: The Megadonors Who Want To Blow Up The System (Huffington Post) "In short, unlike other donors, the Mercers are not merely angling to influence the Republican establishment—they want to obliterate it. And so it seemed almost inevitable that their paths converged with Bannon’s when he took over Breitbart in 2012. The Mercers recognized Bannon as an ideological ally. In the end, Rebekah Mercer’s mistake was that she thought she could upend the system and then control the regime she had helped to bring to power. Helping to elect a president wasn’t enough: She wanted the machinery to shape his presidency. Instead, the chaos simply continued. An administration full of insurgents, it turns out, functions in a near-constant state of insurgency."
- How the GOP Crackup Happens (National Review) "...there is no significant Trumpist wing in Congress. And there was no off-the-shelf Trump legislation that Congress could begin on immediately. In the campaign, Trump identified a constituency and a message, but the agenda was often symbolic (Mexico will pay for the wall) or nebulous (negotiating better trade deals). The congressional priorities are Obamacare repeal and tax reform... It is true that Trump promised to deliver on both, but neither was part of his core message or won over marginal Trump voters. If the health bill falters in the House, though, it will be the most fraught moment of GOP tension since the release of the Access Hollywood tape. There’s almost no question that Trump would win any blame game. This would mean Trump would be a president not without a party necessarily, but without a Congress. It would make major legislative accomplishments impossible, although if Obamacare repeal and replace fails, that might be the reality regardless."
- Why is the Trump presidency such a rolling disaster? (WaPo) "Because he can never admit that he was wrong, Trump drags the issue out endlessly, just as he did with earlier iterations of this pattern, about the size of his inaugural crowd or the millions of phantom illegal votes that led to his popular vote loss (I’d encourage you to read the transcript of his Wednesday interview with Tucker Carlson and marvel at the fact that this man is actually president of the United States). That then makes life difficult for Republicans in Congress, who are put in the awkward position of either defending the latest bit of stupidity issuing from the Oval Office or being honest about how ridiculous it is, which they know would win them the president’s ire."
- U.S. makes formal apology to Britain after White House accuses GCHQ of wiretapping Trump Tower (Telegraph) "Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the U.S. National Security Adviser, have apologized over the claims. 'The apology came direct from them,' a source said.'"
- The New Party of No (NYT) "Schumer, as he saw it, was calling Trump’s bluff. 'Donald Trump ran as an anti-establishment populist — against both the Democratic and Republican establishments,' he told me. Whether or not he had meant it, the Democrats could try to hold him to it. On the several occasions that Trump called Schumer in the weeks after the election, Schumer argued that he could try to govern as a hard-right conservative, but 'America is not a hard-right country,' and there would be electoral consequences. Senate Democrats had tried for years to pass the kind of infrastructure bill Trump had suggested, Reid reminded his colleagues, only to run up against Republican opposition. 'If Trump wants to pursue policies that will help working people, Democrats will take a pragmatic approach,' he said. If the Indivisible Guide was a blueprint for a movement, it was an unusual one, bearing little resemblance to liberal or left-wing movements of the past. It called for no ideological remaking of the Democratic Party, no housecleaning of the establishment, no throwing-out of the bums — or at least not the Democratic ones. The document presented not just a strategy for standing up to Trump but also an argument for sidestepping the party’s most divisive internal conflicts."
- How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Helped the NSA Spy on the Whole World (The Intercept) "Palantir has never masked its ambitions, in particular the desire to sell its services to the U.S. government — the CIA itself was an early investor in the startup through In-Q-Tel, the agency’s venture capital branch. But Palantir refuses to discuss or even name its government clientele, despite landing 'at least $1.2 billion' in federal contracts since 2009, according to an August 2016 report in Politico. Palantir’s chief appeal is that it’s not designed to do any single thing in particular, but is flexible and powerful enough to accommodate the requirements of any organization that needs to process large amounts of both personal and abstract data."
SPORTS:
- The unregulated world of strength coaches and college football’s killing season (CBS Sports) "Since 2000, 32 NCAA football players have died -- six from traumatic deaths and 26 from non-traumatic deaths. That makes it about 4.5 times more likely a player dies while training for football in the offseason than from a traumatic injury playing football."
TECHNOLOGY:
- It Begins: Bots Are Learning to Chat in Their Own Language (Wired) "Basically, the bots navigate their world through extreme trial and error, carefully keeping track of what works and what doesn’t as they reach for a reward, like arriving at a landmark. If a particular action helps them achieve that reward, they know to keep doing it. In this same way, they learn to build their own language. Telling each other where to go helps them all get places more quickly. With early humans, language came from necessity. They learned to communicate because it helped them do other stuff, gave them an advantage over animals. These OpenAI researchers want to create the same dynamic for bots."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Wife of Wichita State coach asked to leave court area after game for shouting and cursing (Yahoo! Sports) "Lynn Marshall was asked to leave the Bankers Life Fieldhouse court area about 10 minutes after the final horn for cursing and shouting, according to a report from the Associated Press. She was reportedly followed away from the court by a police officer, then was taken back to a postgame news conference."
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