IS IT TIME TO BREAK UP GOOGLE (AND AMAZON AND FACEBOOK)?

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Is It Time to Break Up Google? (NYT) "Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies. Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?"

BUSINESS/ECONOMY:

- U.S. Can Afford Trump's Radical Tax Cut (Bloomberg) "Most versions of the plan, if executed properly on the details, would most likely boost economic output and create new jobs. The simplest way to think of an unfunded corporate tax cut is that the federal government has to borrow more money, say at rates in the range of 1 percent to 2 percent, while corporations have more money to invest. Estimates vary for the rate of return on private capital, but 5 percent to 10 percent is one plausible estimate. So in essence, society is borrowing money at 1 to 2 percent and may be receiving 5 to 10 percent in return. That is a net gain, not an economic cost."

- ESPN and the cable TV crisis (Axios) "ESPN's dilemma is a reflection of what many in the cable industry are facing today in higher production costs, dwindling subscribers and stagnant ad revenues. By nearly every measure, signs point to thinning margins for the cable industry, and an eventual newspaper-like revenue collapse as viewers migrate their attention to streaming and social media."

HEALTH:

- Long-term birth control is the most reliable. So why do so few young women use it? (WaPo) "One reason is lingering myths about their safety in young women. Older versions of IUDs were thought to be too large for some young women, but that’s no longer a concern... Another reason more young women don’t use IUDs or implants is access, particularly on campus. Cost can be a barrier, as well. Even if you’re paying some of the cost, IUDs are the most cost-effective birth control method, Brandi says. The non-hormonal IUD Paragard is good for 10 years and cost-wise beats paying $20 per month for birth control pills."

- Why flavored waters are bad for your teeth (WaPo) "The problem is that these drinks’ flavor essences, mostly citric and other fruit acids, cause significant tooth erosion... When you add carbonation to flavored water, you get a one-two punch of acidity."

NEWS:

- The Drumbeats Don’t Add Up to Imminent War With North Korea (NYT) "The drumbeat of bellicose threats and military muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the danger of a clash between the United States and North Korea, senior Trump administration officials and experts who have followed the Korean crisis for decades said."

- Judge: Mostly white Southern city may secede from school district despite racial motive (WaPo) "For years, Gardendale, a bedroom community of Birmingham, has been pushing to form its own small school system. That would mean leaving the school system of surrounding Jefferson County, where black students outnumber whites. The Justice Department, which had opposed the separation, declined to comment on the ruling."

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:

- Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal (Vox) "A bit of background is helpful here. Obamacare requires all members of Congress and their staff to purchase coverage on the individual market, just like Obamacare enrollees. The politics of that plank were simple enough, meant to demonstrate that if the coverage in this law were good enough for Americans than it should be good enough for their representations in Washington. Fast-forward to this new amendment, which would allow states to waive out of key Obamacare protections like the ban on pre-existing conditions or the requirement to cover things like maternity care and mental health services. If Congressional aides lived in a state that decided to waive these protections, the aides who were sick could be vulnerable to higher premiums than the aides that are healthy. Their benefits package could get skimpier as Obamacare’s essential health benefits requirement may no longer apply either. This apparently does not sound appealing because the Republican amendment includes the members of Congress and their staff as a protected group who cannot be affected by this amendment."

SPORTS:

- Meditation, Mindfulness and the Rise of Baseball Shrinks (Ozy) "Today, at least half of major league teams have a full-time mental skills coach on staff, and some, like the Cubs, have implemented comprehensive mental programs at every level of the organization. Baseball is changing — and the new path to success is the six inches between the ears. These days, lodged between morning batting practice and fielding drills, weight training and cryogenic chamber recovery therapy, several meals and, of course, the actual games, players across baseball pencil in time to mentally reset."

TRUMPTELL:

- Trump’s lies are working brilliantly. This new poll proves it. (WaPo) "With the White House visibly agitated by the possibility of brutally negative coverage of President Trump’s tenure thus far, he has insisted that the press is misrepresenting his record, while also vastly inflating it himself — thus preparing his voters to dismiss everything they are being told about his historic lack of accomplishments. ...enormous majorities of his voters believe the news media regularly publishes false stories. Even bigger majorities of them believe the news media’s falsehoods are a bigger problem than Trump’s falsehoods are, while only small fractions think Trump tells falsehoods or that his lies are the greater problem."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- A Dying Man's Lost Recipe Made His Daughter a Multimillionaire (Bloomberg) "...he left behind something that would change her life: a recipe for fried meat on a stick. The university dropout who once worked as an office lady now sets strategy for the $82 million Kushikatsu Tanaka Co."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Doomsday (Ryan Adams)

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"VOODOO ECONOMICS". WHAT'S OLD IS NEW...

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- An economic theory from the ‘70s comes to life once again (Boston Globe) "More than 40 years after those scribblings, President Donald Trump is reviving the so-called Laffer curve... What the first President George Bush once called “voodoo economics” is back, as Trump’s advisers argue that deep cuts in corporate taxes will ultimately pay for themselves with an explosion of new business and job creation. Mnuchin argues that an ambitious tax cut would unleash businesses that now feel constrained by one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. While a corporate tax rate cut of the dimension Trump envisions would reduce tax revenues by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, Mnuchin noted that an increase in economic growth of a little more than 1 percentage point would generate close to the same amount. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group focused on reducing deficits, said that Trump’s tax plan was more likely to increase growth by 0.2 percentage points than by the higher estimates Mnuchin forecast."

BUSINESS/ECONOMY:

- Why Is Trump Risking a Trade War With Canada? (Atlantic) "Canada is now pursuing closer trade relationships with China and other Asian markets. Ironically, the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated under Obama would have opened up the Canadian dairy market to American exports, but Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement. Although the lumber and dairy disputes are not new, Trump’s very public excoriation of Ottawa is unusual."

- Why the FCC’s Plans to Gut Net Neutrality Just Might Fail (Wired) "...Pai made clear that he would seek to reverse an FCC decision to classify broadband internet access providers as 'Title II' common carriers, putting them in the same category as traditional telephone companies. The re-classification gave the FCC authority to impose net neutrality requirements on both wireless and home broadband providers, preventing them from, for example, charging specific sites or companies fees for sending traffic over their networks or slowing down competitors’ streaming video offerings. 'Going forward, we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression meant to micromanage Ma Bell,' Pai said. Based both on his speech today and previous remarks, it appears that Pai will make the case that Title II reclassification led to a substantial decline in broadband infrastructure investment."

CLIMATE CHANGE:

- Conservatives Need an Energy Vision (National Review) "For conservatives seeking a major victory, a great place to start would be to fix the mess of energy subsidies and regulations that have accumulated over the past eight years. In the years since Barack Obama took office, there were $548 billion in energy and environment regulations finalized, and the projected budget currently estimates at least $250 billion in federal energy subsidies. Attempts to eliminate these regulations and subsidies have been hampered by conservatives’ lack of an overarching vision for energy policy."

- Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal (NYT) "More than 373,000 Americans worked part or full time in solar energy, and just over 260,000 of them – or about 70 percent – spent a majority of their time on solar projects. The coal industry, which has shed jobs since 2012, primarily due to competition from cheap natural gas, employed just over 160,000 workers nationwide. About 54,000 coal jobs were in mining."

FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION:

- Small flying “cars” come a bit closer to reality (Economist) "Uber does not want to build these aircraft or landing pads itself, just as it does not own its own cars. Instead, it plans to collaborate with other companies."

- Why Amazon’s use of self-driving technology would be a game changer (WaPo) "Amazon has become something of a pioneer in home delivery, in part by setting the standard for how quickly purchases arrive on your doorstep. The company has begun using aerial drones in an effort to deliver goods more quickly, completing its first successful flight to a customer in the United Kingdom in December. Like self-driving vehicles, drones will need to overcome regulatory hurdles before they’re widely deployed."

HEALTH:

- Lifting Lighter Weights Can Be Just as Effective as Heavy Ones (NYT) "Instead, the key to getting stronger for these men, Dr. Phillips and his colleagues decided, was to grow tired. The volunteers in both groups had to attain almost total muscular fatigue in order to increase their muscles’ size and strength."

NEWS:

- Obama's $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in (Vox) "Obama has already raised millions for his library and presidential foundation. He, more than any of his former subordinates, can safely say no, that Harry Truman was right and this is an unseemly thing for a former president to be doing, and that it was a mistake of American society to normalize that form of conduct from his immediate few predecessors."

- Donald Trump’s Unintelligible Presidency (New Yorker) "Trump’s powers are mysterious even to Trump; the Presidency is just a detail."

- Mattis and Trump: The odd couple that works (WaPo) "...Mattis has bonded with Trump’s other key foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. This is a strong, self-confident group; there’s little of the infighting that characterizes Trump’s domestic advisers. What Mattis and the other former commanders bring to Trump’s national-security table, perhaps paradoxically, is a wariness of overly hasty military commitments. In the debate about stopping North Korea’s nuclear program, for example, Pentagon planners understand that the thriving metropolis of Seoul could become a gruesome, Stalingrad-like battlespace in an ill-planned conflict."

- We Can Defang the North Korean Threat (National Review) "Trump also understands what has been obvious to many of us for years: The path to Pyongyang goes through Beijing. Trump’s strategy of putting pressure on China’s President Xi Jinping to sever support for Kim is smart, and it seems to be yielding some results. In February, Beijing curtailed coal exports to North Korea. More significant, a Chinese official has told the Nikkei news agency that China will move to cut off oil supplies to North Korea if the North tries another nuclear test."

READ THIS:

- Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (Thomas L. Friedman) "We all sense it―something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once―and it is dizzying."

SOCIALIZED MEDECINE:

- Even in Trump’s base, his path forward on health care is awfully unpopular (WaPo) "New polling from The Washington Post and our partners at ABC News as well as a survey from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal makes clear that Trump’s base still wants Obamacare to be tossed out — but that it mostly opposes the most viable path toward doing so."

- Public pans Republicans’ latest approach to replacing Affordable Care Act (WaPo) "The new survey suggests significant political risk to Trump in trying to undermine the law, with a mere 13 percent saying he should try to make it fail as soon as possible. By contrast, nearly 8 in 10 (79 percent) say he should try to make the ACA work as well as possible, including roughly 6 in 10 Republicans and 8 in 10 independents."

SPORTS:

- Doctor at center of USA Gymnastics scandal left warning signs at Michigan State (WaPo) "In lawsuits, victims have alleged making verbal complaints about Nassar to Michigan State officials as far back as the late 1990s. In 2014, both Michigan State police and the university’s Title IX office cleared Nassar of wrongdoing after an assault complaint."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Why Your Next Wi-Fi Setup Should Be a Mesh Network (NYT) "A mesh network could solve most, if not all, of your Wi-Fi problems. It’s basically a system of multiple Wi-Fi stations that work together to blanket every corner of your home with a strong wireless data connection. Unlike stand-alone routers that lose signal the farther you move away from them, mesh stations piggyback on one another to create a continuous wireless link throughout your home, minimizing the possibility of dead zones."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- What ‘personal space’ looks like around the world (WaPo)

TODAY'S SONG:

- Collateral Damage (LEVV)

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WEDNESDAY ART: racetrack

A WIDE RANGING TECHNOLOGY KIND OF DAY

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- The 10-Year Quest to Make Your Phone Do Everything (Wired) "The point is to remove the borders between our gadgets, to make them all work together. To turn every screen, keyboard, and surface into exactly the gadget you need, for exactly as long as you need it. So far, every attempt has ended somewhere between obscurity and outright failure. But there’s a different, more fundamental question still unanswered: Is this a good idea? The vision is this: As soon as you hit the power button on your computer, the front-facing camera could turn on, use computer vision to identify you, and then instantly pick up where you left off on your phone. When you ask your Echo for a wine recommendation, it would know exactly what you like, and which recipes you looked up on your iPad earlier. When you put on an augmented-reality headset, it could instantly personalize your avatar, adjust the lenses, and startElite Dangerous up from where you just died on your Xbox. Something has to bring all those services together, to make everything accessible everywhere. To make it so you don’t need any gadgets, because there are gadgets everywhere. All you need to do is log in."

- The U.S. Missile Defense Tech That’ll Protect South Korea—And Tick Off China (Wired) "A THAAD has four main elements: a radar unit that surveils and tracks objects in the protected area and airspace, a truck-mounted launcher that fires interceptors and can be reloaded quickly, interceptors themselves (eight to a launcher), and a digital controller that runs the launcher and coordinates communication and data flow between the THAAD and other command centers. 'THAADs are tailored to those medium-range threats that North Korea has in spades—North Korea regularly demonstrates that kind of capability,' says Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'THAADs are exactly the kind of thing that you would want for a regional area.'"

- The Race To Build An AI Chip For Everything Just Got Real (Wired) "Companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft can still run their neural networks on standard computer chips, known as CPUs. But since CPUs are designed as all-purpose processors, this is terribly inefficient. Neural networks can run faster and consume less power when paired with chips specifically designed to handle the massive array of mathematical calculations these AI systems require. In other words, the market for AI chips is potentially enormous. That’s why so many companies are jumping into the mix."

- No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes On the Flying Car (NYT) "More than a dozen start-ups backed by deep-pocketed industry figures like Larry Page...along with big aerospace firms like Airbus, the ride-hailing company Uber and even the government of Dubai — are taking on the dream of the flying car. There are challenges, no doubt, with both the technology and government regulations. Perhaps the biggest hurdle will be convincing the public that the whole idea isn’t crazy."

BUSINESS:

- Uber’s C.E.O. Plays With Fire (NYT) "In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered. He has flouted transportation and safety regulations, bucked against entrenched competitors and capitalized on legal loopholes and gray areas to gain a business advantage. In the process, Mr. Kalanick has helped create a new transportation industry, with Uber spreading to more than 70 countries and gaining a valuation of nearly $70 billion."

NEWS:

- A Hundred Days of Trump (New Yorker) "His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite. On Inauguration Day, at the Capitol, Trump no longer affected any awe of the task before him or respect for his predecessors [during his inauguration address]. As George W. Bush was leaving the grandstand, according to New York, he was heard to say, 'That was some weird shit."

- ‘Everyone tunes in’: Inside Trump’s obsession with cable TV (WaPo) "The president...uses details gleaned from cable news as a starting point for policy discussions or a request for more information... Sometimes, at night, he hate-watches cable shows critical of him, while chatting on the phone with friends, said someone familiar with the president’s routine — a quirk a senior official jokingly called 'multi-teching.' ...now a running joke in television green rooms that if a trade association or special-interest group wants to reach the president, the smartest use of their money is to buy morning television ad time or book a representative on air. Either way, Trump’s viewing habits have seeped into the ether of both the White House and the nation’s capital. During the Republicans’ failed health-care push last month, Trump invited a small group of conservative activists to meet with him in the Oval Office. When the meeting was over, said someone with knowledge of the gathering, the president made a plea to the participants: 'I know you have already said it’s a bad deal, but Kellyanne is going to walk you out to the microphones and I’d love it if you could say it’s great,' Trump said. The group never did embrace the health-care proposal. But speaking briefly to reporters that evening, the attendees were polite and took pains not to criticize Trump himself."

- Two-thirds of Americans think that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the country (WaPo) "While the political opposition generally views Trump or either party as about equally out of touch — with about 80 to 90 percent saying so — the Democratic Party is viewed as far more out of touch by Democrats than Trump or the GOP are by Republicans."

- A scholar asks, ‘Can democracy survive the Internet?’ (WaPo) "...the campaign of 2016 highlighted the degree to which elections are now carried out on terrain far different from when television and traditional print organizations were the dominant media. Candidate Trump understood the new landscape far better than did Hillary Clinton... ...the Internet reacted to the Trump campaign 'like an ecosystem welcoming a new and foreign species. His candidacy triggered new strategies and promoted established Internet forces. Some of these (such as the ‘alt-right’) were moved by ideological affinity, while others sought to profit financially or to further a geopolitical agenda.'"

- It’s Time to Crush Campus Censorship (National Review) "...campus radicals will let you speak only when they deem your speech is worthy. And if they don’t? Then, the mob isn’t a mob, it’s a collection of idealists 'keeping watch over the soul of our republic.' Enough. If we can’t count on courts or colleges to protect free speech, then it’s time for Congress to step up. All it would take is a law holding that if a court of final jurisdiction finds that a public university has violated the constitutional rights of a student or faculty member, then the university will pay liquidated damages to the plaintiff in the amount of no less than $5 million. It will also forfeit 25 percent of its federal funding in that current fiscal year. If a university is a repeat offender at any point in the five years following, it will forfeit 100 percent of its federal funding in that fiscal year." and How To Restore Free Speech on Campus (Weekly Standard) "George P. Shultz...told me 'if you don't get rioted at Berkeley today, your reputation is ruined.' I spoke at Berkeley on April 20—which turns out, unbeknown to me, to be famous as '420.' For reasons that are hotly disputed, 420 is now code for marijuana. It wasn't that, as Secretary Shultz was warning me, the commies had forgotten the great battles of the Reagan years, or—God forbid—no longer recognized my name. It wasn't that foreign policy is now considered boring, and they only break up meetings when provocateurs like Ann Coulter show up. No, it was that they were Too Stoned to Riot! This is the solution."

- Census Bureau Report: Young American Men Are Falling Behind (Weekly Standard) "'Since 1975, young men have swelled the ranks at the bottom of the income distribution. Some 41 percent of all men aged 25 to 34 have incomes less than $30,000 today [in 2015 dollars], up from 25 percent in 1975,' the report stated."

- How to lose friends and 'exfoliate' people — Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is caught between 2 worlds, and his friends are cutting ties (Business Insider) "Those who know Kushner say he never intended to go into politics. His heavy involvement, these sources told Business Insider, spiraled from the fact that Trump ran a nontraditional campaign with few experienced advisers, often relying on people close to him like Kushner for guidance."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- CNY bowler sets world record by rolling 300 game in 86.9 seconds (Syracuse.com) "Ketola, of Preble, is believed to have recorded the world's fastest 300 game at the 10-lane 281 Bowl in Cortland on April 5 by rolling 12 strikes in 1 minute, 26.9 seconds. The 23-year-old two-handed bowler raced from one lane to the next and registered strikes using a different ball on each lane -- striking twice on lanes 1 and 2 -- to score 12 in a row for a perfect game in approximately the same time it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Mr. Roboto (Styx)

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THE PERSISTENCE OF TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- The Persistence of Trump Derangement Syndrome (New Yorker) "We’re told by many wise and well-meaning people that it is a huge and even fatal mistake for liberals (and for constitutional conservatives) to respond negatively to every Trump initiative, every Trump policy, and every Trump idea. The problem is that it refuses to see, or to entirely register, the actual nature of Trump and his actions. Our problem is not Trump Derangement Syndrome; our problem is Deranged Trump Self-Delusion. This is the habit of willfully substituting, as a motive for Trump’s latest action, a conventional political or geostrategic ambition, rather than recognizing the action as the daily spasm of narcissistic gratification and episodic vanity that it truly is. The bombing of Syria, for instance, was not a sudden lurch either in the direction of liberal interventionism...nor was it a sudden reassertion of a neo-con version of American power... It was a detached gesture, unconnected to anything resembling a sequence of other actions, much less an ideology. ...it is self-deluding to think that Trump’s action was meant to be in any way remedial. It was purely ritual, and the ritual acted out was the interminable Trumpist ritual of lashing out at those who fail to submit, the ritual act of someone whose inner accounting is conducted exclusively in terms of wounds given, worship received, and winnings displayed. Similarly, the current revival of a repeal-and-replace plan for Obamacare is clearly empty of all value, in its promoter’s mind, save that of publicity. Instead, it was...a way of mouthing words that might placate a crowd or assert his own magical powers. Doubtless there will soon be revisionist trends in the assessment of Trump, with journalists insisting that beneath the flailing and lying there is something resembling a plan—that one can connect the dot, and see a real picture. Don’t buy it."

BUSINESS:

- Angela Merkel reportedly had to explain the 'fundamentals' of EU trade to Trump 11 times (Business Insider) "Merkel reportedly told her cabinet members that Trump had 'very basic misunderstandings' on the 'fundamentals' of the EU and trade."

ENTERTAINMENT:

- Inside the Trump Marriage: Melania’s Burden (Vanity Fair) "As Donald’s celebrity ballooned with The Apprentice, Melania was asked to tolerate even more. His public interchanges with Howard Stern, which provided a kind of Greek chorus to their relationship, went from lewdly objectifying to grotesque. He agreed with Stern that his daughter Ivanka was 'a piece of ass.' He joked that if Melania were in a horrible, mangling car crash he’d still love her as long as the breasts remained intact. When asked by Stern whether he’d be up for 'banging 24-year-olds,' Trump eagerly assented. It got worse. In October, the 'grab them by the pussy' tape was leaked—Trump’s bragging to Billy Bush of Access Hollywood about touching women’s private parts, recorded during the first year of his marriage to Melania. Donald dismissed his words as 'locker-room talk,' but then one woman after another came out of the woodwork to claim that these weren’t just words. But Donald boasted that he had never apologized to Melania, because there was nothing to apologize for. At campaign rallies, he made his case by saying that some of the accusers weren’t hot enough for him to hit on."

NEWS:

- O’Reilly, Ailes, and the Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture (National Review) "Time and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them, seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful Left. Time and again the defense has proved unsustainable as the sheer weight of the facts buries the accused. The cost has been a loss of integrity and, crucially, a loss of emphasis on ideas and, more important, ideals."

- Trump Unleashes the Generals. They Don’t Always See the Big Picture. (NYT) "When Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the military’s top commander in the Pacific, ordered the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson 'to sail north' from Singapore this month, he was oblivious to the larger — and incorrect — impression that he was rushing a naval strike force to confront an increasingly belligerent North Korea. Four days later, when Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. dropped the most powerful conventional weapon in the American arsenal on Islamic State fighters in a tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan, he not only seized headlines around the world but also unintentionally signaled to dictators in Syria and North Korea that they might be the next target of what the Pentagon called the 'mother of all bombs.' Instead of simply achieving tactical objectives, the timing of their actions surprised their bosses at the Pentagon, upset edgy allies and caught the White House flat-footed. Taken together, the episodes illustrate how even the military’s most seasoned four-star field commanders can fail to consider the broader political or strategic ramifications of their operational decisions, and it prompted some current and former senior officials to suggest that President Trump’s decision to unshackle the military from Obama-era constraints to intensify the fight against terrorists risked even more miscues ahead."

- The North Korea-Trump Nightmare (NYT) "The only option left, I think, is to apply relentless pressure together with China, while pushing for a deal in which North Korea would verifiably freeze its nuclear and missile programs without actually giving up its nukes, in exchange for sanctions relief. This is a lousy option, possibly unattainable, and it isn’t a solution so much as a postponement of one. But all the alternatives are worse."

- Millennials differ from other generations in almost every regard. Here's the data (USA Today) "The report looks at changes in social, economic and demographic trends among young American adults... It found they increasingly live at home and delay starting a family. The report also found young women are pulling ahead in employment and wages..."

SCIENCE:

- At the Bottom of the Sea, Glass Spheres Prepare to Hunt for Mysterious Neutrinos (Wired) "It works like this: Back on land, you wrap rope onto a spherical frame like a ball of yarn. Then, you fasten the glass orbs to the rope and carefully place them onto racks built into a frame. Then you load the entire frame onto a ship, and 25 miles off the southern coast of France, you lower the frame into the ocean with a winch. After the sphere has sank to the level you want, you fire an acoustic signal at it, and the ropes unwind. 'It’s like a yo-yo,' Circella says. The orbs fall from the frame in a vertical line, and the frame floats back to the surface of the water."

SPORTS:

- Daniel Murphy’s Keen Eye Bolsters a Nationals Pillar (NYT) "The team sits in first place in the National League East, and Zimmerman, the franchise pillar, is benefiting — at least to some degree — from Murphy’s example. He hit .347 last season and led the N.L. in on-base-plus-slugging percentage, at .985, validating his concerted effort to launch more balls into the sky. Zimmerman knows how to hit for power. But Murphy, an expert in the analytics of his craft, studied data last winter that indicated why Zimmerman was not being rewarded for his hard hits. He was hitting far too many ground balls, the numbers showed, and needed to raise his launch angle."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Palantir’s Relationship With The Intelligence Community Has Been Worse Than You’d Think (BuzzFeed) "As of summer 2015, the Central Intelligence Agency, a signature client, was 'recalcitrant' and didn’t 'like us,' while Palantir’s relationship with the National Security Agency had ended, Palantir CEO Alex Karp told staff in an internal video that was obtained by BuzzFeed News. The private remarks, made during a staff meeting, are at odds with a carefully crafted public image that has helped Palantir secure a $20 billion valuation and win business from a long list of corporations, nonprofits, and governments around the world." and Video Shows Palantir CEO Ridiculing Trump And Slamming His Immigration Rhetoric (BuzzFeed) "Karp’s comments in 2015 reveal an ideological divide between the Palantir CEO and the man who is now his most important customer. Among other projects, Palantir is currently working on software for the government’s immigration enforcers that observers say could be used to help carry out Trump’s deportation goals."

TRAVEL:

- Letter of Recommendation: Michigan (NYT) "My first gift to my future wife, a month after we’d started dating, was a Petoskey necklace. She looked at it as if I’d just handed her a macaroni bracelet. 'Are you being serious?' she asked. I was embarrassed by the rejection, but mostly confused. I’d spent my life believing that Michigan contains everything that a person could reasonably want or need. It has rock jewelry, perfect views of the aurora borealis, Mackinac Island fudge, winning college football teams, no toll roads, more than 120 lighthouses and endless beachfront property, stretched across a longer coastline than any state’s save for Alaska’s. We’re also the only state with hand-based cartography. You can hold up an open palm, point to exactly where you live in Michigan — as long as you live on the Lower Peninsula — and be immediately understood."

- Which Travel Search Site Is Best? It Depends on Your Goals (NYT) "Does it matter which site you use, or are they all basically the same? Let’s just say I was surprised by how mistaken I was."

WATCH THIS:

- Abstract: The Art of Design (Netflix) "Step inside the minds of the most innovative designers in a variety of disciplines and learn how design impacts every aspect of life."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Why people in couples do more housework than singletons (Economist) "The extra burden is greatest for women in partnerships, who do on average five more hours of housework per week than single women. Men in couples do just half an hour more. So why do those in couples spend more time on them, and why is the difference bigger for women? Looking at routine housework, they found that almost half the difference for women is driven by the fact that the sort to join a couple does more housework in the first place. But it is different for men. The kind of man who spurns routine housework is more likely to couple up."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Light Me Up (Ingrid Michaelson)

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UBER TIP?

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- New York may require Uber to provide an option to leave a tip (Economist) "If tipping serves any purpose, it is to reward exceptional service. But what counts as going beyond the call of duty for a cabbie? Turning up on time? Not getting lost? Managing to avoid ploughing into the back of a bus? These are basic criteria of competence. But any driver who fulfills them (and many that don't) will be affronted unless given an extra 20% on top of the stated fare. That is because tipping, particularly in America, has very little to do with the level of service. Instead, it is an unwarranted de facto surcharge. Despite what the smartphone will claim at the end of a ride, it will not be 'optional'. The system of gratuities works through social pressure. It is likely that tipping the Uber driver would soon become normalised."

- New York City Plans to Force Uber to Add Tipping Option (Blomberg) "The drivers guild has made tipping a priority in recent months and pushed the New York City regulator to take action. The group said the rule could mean $300 million of additional income for Uber drivers in New York each year if passengers tip at the same rate as in yellow cabs."

BUSINESS/INVESTING:

- America has a retirement problem, not a saving problem (Economist) "The median family of retirement age has $12,000 in savings. That is a terrifying figure for a country where Social Security, the state pension, pays out a maximum of roughly $2500 a month, and pensions for both public and private employees are underfunded. For the median, wage-earning family, the best way to encourage saving is not to lower capital gains taxes or estate taxes, but to give the family access to a retirement plan that delays taxation until retirement."

CLIMATE CHANGE:

- Top Trump advisers at odds over Paris climate deal (WaPo) "If the administration does stick with the Paris agreement, Trump energy policy rollbacks and, most importantly, the presumed demise of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan would force a less ambitious emissions goal, according to analysts of the United States’ greenhouse gas trajectory. Whether or not the Trump administration decides to stay in the Paris agreement, many in the international community are assuming that the U.S. government’s leading role on climate action is over for the foreseeable future."

LIVING:

- #Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement (New Yorker) "Vanlife is an aesthetic and a mentality and, people kept telling me, a 'movement.' S. Lucas Valdes, the owner of the California-based company GoWesty, a prominent seller of Volkswagen-van parts, compared vanlife today to surfing a couple of decades ago. 'So many people identify with the culture, the attire, the mind-set of surfers, but probably only about ten per cent of them surf,' he said. The generation that’s fuelling the trend has significantly more student debt and lower rates of homeownership than previous cohorts. The rise of contract and temporary labor has further eroded young people’s financial stability. And so, like staycations and minimalism, vanlife is an attempt to aestheticize and romanticize the precariousness of contemporary life."

NEWS:

- Is America Really Ready for a Second Korean War? (National Review) "There may come a time when the terrible aspects of the North Korean regime become so pronounced that we choose to risk that fragile stability. It may even be possible to mitigate those aspects — perhaps by shooting down North Korean missiles or employing other targeted strikes — without actually inviting the cataclysm. But it’s vital that we conduct our public debate with eyes wide open, fully aware of the immense risks present on the peninsula. For more than 60 years, America has been strong, and South Korea exists and thrives today in large part because of that strength. Maintaining the status quo isn’t weak, and it very well may be prudent."

- Bad Reviews For Trump's Korea Policy (Weekly Standard) "And yet, the Trump approach is receiving plaudits precisely where it matters most: in South Korea."

- The Administration Gives the Iran Deal a New Lease on Life (Weekly Standard) "...Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a letter to House speaker Paul Ryan, said...Iran has been 'compliant through April 18th with its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action'—that is, the Iran nuclear deal. Tillerson noted that Iran's continued sponsorship of terrorism is reason for concern and that an 'interagency review' of the sanctions relief provided by the deal is needed."

- Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove (NYT) "The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments. Using his website, USAFacts.org, a person could look up just about anything: How much revenue do airports take in and spend? What percentage of overall tax revenue is paid by corporations? Mr. Ballmer is hoping that the website is just the beginning. He hopes to open it up so that individuals and companies can build on top of it and pull out customized reports."

READ THIS:

- Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen) "Bruce Springsteen tells the story of his life with the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs."

SCIENCE:

- The Shocking Lack of Science Behind Lethal Injections (Wired) "No matter how you feel about the fact that the criminal justice system sometimes kills people, even innocent people, you have to also feel something about the fact that the criminal justice system isn’t very goodat killing people. An Oklahoma medical examiner named Jay Chapman pitched the three-drug protocol in 1977—without a single study or piece of scientific evidence. The thing is, when you’re being executed with a three-drug protocol, you really want to be knocked out. That second drug, the paralytic, is probably extraordinarily painful the whole time you’re suffocating... The potassium chloride injection burns like fire. And even with a barbiturate on board, people might feel all of that every time."

TECHNOLOGY:

- Sneaky Exploit Allows Phishing Attacks From Sites That Look Secure (Wired) "Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer protect against this attack. A Chrome fix arrives in Version 59 this week, but Firefox developer Mozilla continues weighing whether to release a patch. The organization did not return a request for comment."

- Facebook Messenger’s Plot to Be the Only App You Ever Need "Messenger, like all good messaging apps, has become incredibly sticky—which explains Facebook wants to cram every imaginable feature, idea, and experiment into it. ...the team sees messaging as a platform fit for growth, and believes that the place where you chat with friends can be a gateway to something more like an online version of your entire social life."

TRUMPTELL:

- The Continuing Fallout from Trump and Nunes’s Fake Scandal (New Yorker) "It is now clear that the scandal was not Rice’s normal review of the intelligence reports but the coördinated effort between the Trump Administration and Nunes to sift through classified information and computer logs that recorded Rice’s unmasking requests, and then leak a highly misleading characterization of those documents, all in an apparent effort to turn Rice, a longtime target of Republicans, into the face of alleged spying against Trump. It was a series of lies to manufacture a fake scandal. Last week, CNN was the first to report that both Democrats and Republicans who reviewed the Nunes material at the N.S.A. said that the documents provided 'no evidence that Obama Administration officials did anything unusual or illegal.' The bigger scandal is the coördinated effort to use the American intelligence services to manufacture an excuse for Trump’s original tweet."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- How shoelaces come undone (Economist) "Walking involves two mechanical processes, both of which might be expected to exert forces on a shoelace bow. One is the forward and back movement of the leg. The other is the impact of the shoe itself hitting the ground. Preliminary experiments carried out by Mr. Daily-Diamond, Ms. Gregg and Dr. O’Reilly showed that neither of these alone is enough to persuade a bow to unravel. Both are needed."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Waves (Susto)

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WEDNESDAY ART: hard butterfly

LOUDER THAN BOMBS

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Bombing for Show (Weekly Standard) "On the one hand, the fact that the Trump administration was willing to reverse the president's long-touted intention to cede Syria to Assad and Russia, regardless of the consequences, has undeniably provoked a reassessment of U.S. intentions. Was it a one-off strike for the television cameras? Or does it portend greater U.S. involvement? The uncertainty itself can be unsettling to adversaries. On the other hand, nothing about the strike exceeded standard expectations of the United States' war-fighting capabilities. If anything, the Shayrat strike confirmed the unfair, but widely held, conventional wisdom that the United States is only willing to fight from a safe distance. More troubling is how the Shayrat strike might bolster, rather than undermine, the governing myth that has been essential to the Assad regime's political legitimacy for nearly half a century. Assad's governing myth is based on resilience, not invulnerability. He and his family can weather anything; even an attack by the most powerful military on earth. And by launching his squadrons from Shayrat Airbase the very next day, Assad himself sent an unmistakable message."

- A ‘Cuban Missile Crisis in Slow Motion’ in North Korea (NYT) "While there are dangers in drawing a historical analogy...one parallel shines through. When national ambitions, personal ego and deadly weapons are all in the mix, the opportunities for miscalculation are many."

- Trump’s administration doesn’t understand the meaning of power (WaPo) "...a useful, kinetic statement has been made. The United States will no longer be constrained by President Barack Obama’s infinitely varied excuses for inaction. Nor, apparently, will the nation follow President Trump’s incoherent campaign pledge to disengage itself into preeminence, to somehow retreat into greatness. The problem with the Trump administration’s foreign policy — as represented in its proposed budget — is that it does not fully understand our threats or the meaning of power."

BUSINESS:

- Want Real Choice in Broadband? Make These 3 Things Happen (Wired) "Republicans argue that the government should stay out of regulating the internet. Ideally, if your internet service provider slipped permission to use your browsing history for ad targeting into its fine print or decided to charge you more to access Netflix than Hulu, you’d just switch to a different provider that offered better terms. But that’s not an option most people in the U.S. have. According to an FCC report released last year, only a little more than one-third of the population had more than one internet provider that offered speeds of 25 Mbps or more... For rural America, the situation was even more dire. Fewer than half of rural residents had access to a single 25 Mbps provider."

HEALTH:

- How CRISPR can fight antibiotic-resistant infections (Technology Review) "The way it works is that bacteria store memories of viral DNA in their own genomes as 'clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats'—or CRISPRs. They use this memory, plus a DNA-slicing enzyme (the best known is called Cas9) to recognize and chop up the genes of invading bacteriophage."

- Treating Brain Disorders With Sound (Ozy) "Patients wear a helmet-like device and lie in an MRI scanner that relays real-time images of the brain to clinicians. Much like a magnifying glass focuses sunlight to singe a leaf, a 'lens' concentrates ultrasound beams to destroy abnormally functioning neurons deep inside the brain..."

NEWS:

- Racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism (WaPo) "Trump was said to be unusually appealing to low-income voters... True or false? While the wealthy are usually most likely to vote for the Republican, they didn’t this time; and while the poor are usually less likely to vote for the Republican, they were unusually supportive of Trump. And the degree to which the wealthy disdained the 2016 Republican candidate was without recent historical precedent. Authoritarians or not? Trump’s voters appear a little less authoritarian than recent white Republican voters. Did racism affect the voting? Racial attitudes made a bigger difference in electing Trump than authoritarianism."

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:

- Does Trump want to be the president who broke health care? (WaPo) "More desperate than clever, Mr. Trump’s talk of annihilating Obamacare, for which he would be justly blamed, is unlikely to coerce Democrats into supporting anything like the House Republican repeal-and-replace plan he backed, which failed to attract enough GOP support to pass the House. The indecency of Mr. Trump taking millions of Americans’ health care hostage is compounded by his suggestion that repeal-and-replace is about freeing budgetary space for Republicans to tinker with the tax code rather than about fixing health care. Even posing his threat, meanwhile, is astonishingly reckless."

- Sorry, Republicans, but most people support single-payer health care (WaPo) "As a country, we’ve long since acquiesced to the idea that Uncle Sam should give insurance to the elderly, veterans, people with disabilities, poor adults, poor kids, pregnant women and the lower middle class. Many Americans are asking: Why not the rest of us, too? A recent survey from the Economist/YouGov found that a majority of Americans support 'expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.' Similarly, a poll from Morning Consult/Politico showed that a plurality of voters support 'a single payer health care system, where all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan.'"

SPORTS:

- Baseball’s Data Revolution Is Elevating Defensive Dynamos (NYT) "There’s a newfound appreciation for players who do their best work with their gloves, not their bats."

TECHNOLOGY:

- A Chip Revolution Will Bring Better VR Sooner Than You Think (Wired) "These changes have already pushed through the massive data centers that underpin the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. Because their sweeping online services can no longer handle all tasks on CPUs alone, these companies are moving major processing loads onto GPUs, programmable chips called FPGAs, and even custom-built chips... Neural networks and other forms of AI are often the driving forces behind this shift."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Why You Shouldn’t Walk on Escalators (NYT) "It may sound counterintuitive, but researchers said it is more efficient if nobody walks on the escalator. ...walking up the escalator took 26 seconds compared with standing, which took 40 seconds. However, the 'time in system' — or how long it took to stand in line to reach an escalator then ride it — dropped sharply when everyone stood... When 40 percent of the people walked, the average time for standers was 138 seconds and 46 seconds for walkers, according to their calculations. When everyone stood, the average time fell to 59 seconds. For walkers, that meant losing 13 seconds but for standers, it was a 79-second improvement."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Panic (The Smiths)

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COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Don’t Despair: Big Ideas Can Still Change The World (Wired) "When reality clashes with our deepest convictions, we’d rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview. Not only that, we become even more rigid in our beliefs than before. ...it’s when our political, ideological, or religious ideas are at stake that we get the most stubborn. Researchers at Yale University have shown that educated people are more unshakable in their convictions than anybody. Intelligent people are highly practiced in finding arguments, experts, and studies that underpin their preexisting beliefs, and the Internet has made it easier than ever to be consumers of our own opinions, with another piece of evidence always just a mouse­click away. Smart people, concludes the journalist Ezra Klein, don’t use their intellect to obtain the correct answer; they use it to obtain what they want to be the answer."

- What Google and Facebook must do about one of their biggest problems (WaPo) "The platforms that have come to dominate our experience of the Internet, Google and Facebook, are for-profit companies, not democratic institutions. As they become the face of journalism and public information, they must be held accountable for their effects. It [social media platforms] has created echo chambers in which people with similar views reinforce their ignorance and bias. The bigger issue is that we need to develop political literacy in our educational and social systems. This entails viewing no piece of information, whether presented on social media or through a traditional news outlet as infallible, but instead learning to scrutinize that story’s framing, the agenda it serves, and the integrity and transparency of its sources. In other words, as a society, we need to up our own game."

ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT:

- The New Art Mediums (Ozy) "Today,eye-popping technology is redefining this oldest of human endeavors in strange, new ways. Artistic works are created by people weaving through laser beams or from data gathered on air pollution. The main concern, though, is that the artist may lose the fundamentals — line, texture, color, shape, form..."

BUSINESS:

- Will the Sharing Economy End Capitalism as We Know It? (Ozy) "'Crowd-based capitalism' will usurp the corporation now at the center of the economy. But problems arise when casual side hustles turn into full-time gigs. We have 'painstakingly' built a system of worker protections, minimum wages, regulations and pension schemes that 'transformed full-time employment from something that was pretty reprehensible 100 years ago to something that looks pretty good in many countries today,' says Sundararajan."

- Tech companies are pushing the FCC to preserve its net neutrality rules (WaPo) "In a meeting with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday, the Internet Association — which represents companies such as Google, Amazon and Netflix — said it maintains 'vigorous support' for the agency's net neutrality policy, which moved to regulate broadband companies, such as Comcast and Charter, like their predecessors in the legacy telephone business. Those rules ban the blocking or slowing of websites, and also prohibited Internet service providers from charging websites special fees for displaying them on consumers' devices. Democrats are unwilling to come to the negotiating table unless they receive assurances that the bill would allow the FCC to continue writing rules for Internet providers in the future. Republican opposition to the net neutrality rules revolves around this issue; conservatives fear that the agency could use its powers to directly regulate the price of broadband or suppress investment in high-speed networks, analysts have said."

CLIMATE CHANGE:

- Scott Pruitt Faces Anger From Right Over E.P.A. Finding He Won’t Fight (NYT) "His actions and statements have galvanized protests from environmentalists and others on the left. ...now a growing chorus of critics on the other end of the political spectrum say Mr. Pruitt has not gone far enough — in particular, they are angry that the E.P.A. chief has refused to challenge a landmark agency determination known as the 'endangerment finding' that provides the legal basis for Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan and other global warming policies. The 2009 legal finding is at the heart of a debate within the Trump administration over how to permanently reverse Mr. Obama’s climate change rules. The finding concludes that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and welfare by warming the planet, which led to a legal requirement that the E.P.A. regulate smokestacks and tailpipes that spew planet-warming pollution. Mr. Pruitt has told the White House and Congress that he will not try to reverse the finding, saying that such a move would almost certainly be overturned by the courts. Legal experts outside the Trump White House say that while Mr. Pruitt may face political fire on his right flank for the move, it is nonetheless pragmatic legally, since the finding has already been challenged and upheld by federal courts."

- Some Other Scientific Theories the GOP Should Debate (Wired) "Scientists have known since the 1890s that carbon dioxide traps heat, and have been accumulating evidence since the 1950s that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could cause the entire planet to warm. This is physics and chemistry applied planetwide, and as such, there’s room for debate. But if Congress were truly interested in resolving these disputes, you might expect that they would advocate for more funding to climate and Earth science (rather than do the exact opposite). After all, it’s the one science that’s solely focused on Earth’s capacity to sustain life. But maybe it’s a stretch to hope that even that could earn bipartisan support."

MEDIA:

- Hiring Anti-Trump Conservative Is Part Of New York Times' Effort To Expand Opinion (Huff Post) "...tradition of hiring conservative op-ed writers such as the late William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter; and Bill Kristol, the founding editor of The Weekly Standard. The paper’s current right-leaning columnists, David Brooks and Ross Douthat, are seen as representing a high-brow strain of conservatism, hailing from elite schools and magazines like The Weekly Standard and The Atlantic, respectively. And they share their more liberal colleagues’ rejection of the bomb-throwers in the talk-radio world and unsavory aspects of Trumpian conservatism."

NEWS:

- Must Supporters Let Trump Be Trump? (National Review) "The problem is that Trumpism is real, but it’s not an ideology. It’s a state of mind. Or, to be more accurate, it’s a constantly changing state of mind. Trump himself admits as much, saying that he won’t be bound by ideology or doctrine, preferring 'flexibility' not just on means, but on ends. When conservatives said 'Let Reagan be Reagan,' they were referring to a core philosophy that Reagan had developed over decades of study and political combat. When people said 'Let Trump be Trump,' they meant let Trump’s id run free. The former was about staying true to an ideology, the latter about giving free rein to a glandular style that refused to be locked into a doctrine or even notions of consistency. That’s why saying 'Let Trump be Trump' is almost literally the opposite of saying 'Let Reagan be Reagan.'"

- The Coming Incompetence Crisis (NYT) "So far, we’ve lived in a golden age of malfunction. Every major Trump initiative has been blocked or has collapsed, relationships with Congress are disastrous, the president’s approval ratings are at cataclysmic lows."

- When Jared Wins (National Review) "Trump’s jaw-dropping public distancing from Bannon is the latest twist in a struggle that is astonishing even by the standards of a White House... No one can know for sure how this ends. Perhaps it’s all papered over, or maybe Bannon keeps his head down to fight another day. But it’s hard to see how Kushner doesn’t prevail in one form or other..."

- The Inside Story of the Kushner-Bannon Civil War (Vanity Fair) "You’ll hear White House veterans say that working in the West Wing is like being on a submarine, sealed off from the rest of the world. What sustains you...are the stated principles of the president and the dedication of the people working with him to pursue that vision. But now, in full view of the country and the world, we are watching what happens when a president is elected on the basis of an incoherent and crowd-sourced agenda, one that pandered to white nationalists and stoked economic anxiety. Trump’s West Wing is beginning to resemble the family real-estate business Trump grew up in... What seems clear is that each member of the staff operates with the knowledge that there will always be someone who seems about to fall next, and that that person may well be him or her. ...Trump’s management style has long been to pit top aides against one another, and almost any senior aide can just wander into the Oval Office. What is unusual about this presidency is that Trump himself is not a stable center of gravity and may be incapable of becoming one. He knows little, believes in little, and shows signs of regretting what has happened to him. Governing requires saying no to one’s strongest supporters and yes to one’s fiercest opponents. To have that presence of mind requires a clear and unified vision from the president."

- For Trump, a Steep Learning Curve Leads to Policy Reversals (NYT) "For any new occupant of the White House, the early months are like a graduate seminar in policy crammed into every half-hour meeting. What made sense on the campaign trail may have little bearing on reality in the Oval Office, and the education of a president can be rocky even for former governors or senators. For Mr. Trump, the first president in American history never to have served in government or the military, the learning curve is especially steep."

- If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists? (Harvard Business Review) "One study suggests that despite being perceived as arrogant, narcissistic individuals radiate 'an image of a prototypically effective leader.' Narcissistic leaders know how to draw attention toward themselves. They enjoy the visibility. It takes time for people to see that these early signals of competence are not later realized, and that a leader’s narcissism reduces the exchange of information among team members and often negatively affects group performance. The problem is that we select negative charismatic leaders much more frequently than in the limited situations where the risk they represent might pay off. Despite their grandiose view of themselves, low empathy, dominant orientation toward others, and strong sense of entitlement, their charisma proves irresistible. Followers of superheroes are enthralled by their showmanship: through their sheer magnetism, narcissistic leaders transform their environments into a competitive game in which their followers also become more self-centered, giving rise to organizational narcissism, as one study shows."

SCIENCE:

- This device pulls drinking water straight out of the air — and it runs entirely on the sun’s energy (WaPo) "According to a description of the new design, published Thursday in the journal Science, a single tissue box-sized device can harvest up to..about three quarts of water in one day at low humidity — that’s a bit more than the half gallon of water experts recommend a person drink over the course of a day. The new design is essentially a form of dewing... The key is a special type of compound known as a metal organic framework, or MOF, a crystalline material involving metal ions linked with organic molecules. The MOF has a porous structure that makes it ideal for holding water, similar to a sponge."

SPORTS:

- The Cocaine Kings of the Pittsburgh Pirates (Narrative) "Nothing said opening day like the sound of Pirates organist Vince Lascheid banging out a few notes of 'Let’s Go Bucs,' the smell of hot dogs wafting through the stadium, or the prospect of an eight ball of cocaine to take it all up a notch."

- The gentrification of college hoops (The Undefeated) "...most athletic scholarships are going to middle-class kids with college-educated parents, not to kids from poor families who need a scholarship to get anywhere close to a university campus. But here’s the stark, myth-busting truth: Fewer than 1 in 5 students playing Division 1 hoops, and 1 in 7 in all Division 1 sports, come from families in which neither parent went to college. And their numbers are declining. Educators call such students 'first gens,' or members of the first generation of their family to attend college. First gens are typically from poor and working-class families that have difficulty paying for college without scholarships. Indeed, the data suggests that athletes awarded scholarships in big-time college sports are more likely to come from advantaged backgrounds than the wider student body." and LaVar Ball: UCLA was too slow to win title with 'three white guys' "'Realistically you can't win no championship with three white guys because the foot speed is too slow,' LaVar Ball told the Southern California News Group, presumably talking about Bruins starters TJ Leaf, Bryce Alford and Thomas Welsh."

- Emmett Ashford, first black umpire in the majors, makes his debut (The Undefeated) "'Ashford did not become the first [African-American] umpire in the major leagues merely because he was fast on his feet,' wrote New York Times columnist George Vecsey. 'He survived the near-race wars of the minor leagues because he could talk better and think faster than the lugs in uniform and the louts in the grandstand. He overwhelmed people with his endurance and his charm.'"

TECNOLOGY:

- New Tools Needed to Track Technology’s Impact on Jobs, Panel Says (NYT) "The panel’s recommendations include the development of an A.I. index, analogous to the Consumer Price Index, to track the pace and spread of artificial intelligence technology. That technical assessment, they said, could then be combined with detailed data on skills and tasks involved in various occupations to guide education and job-training programs."

- How Driverless Cars Will Take Over America's Heartland (Ozy) "Similar to crafting an engine, building self-driving cars and the infrastructure to support them will mean piecing together multiple parts — and each DOT site is designed to test a specific component. In an era that glorifies disruption, few technological advances have the potential to be as radically transformative as AVs — and change is coming at racecar velocity."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Hey Hey, My My: Aging Rock Fans Still Hold Their Lighters High (NYT) "Concerts aimed at old guys are big business."

TODAY'S SONG:

- Vaporize (Amos Lee)

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