- How to make sense of Trump v Trumpism (Economist) "This White House tourney is usually presented as a clash of partisan ideology or as a human melodrama. Some complaints from the Kushner camp certainly ring with dynastic alarm. The ultimate argument against Mr. Bannon, one unnamed source told the Washington Post, is that his hardline, fire-up-the-faithful brand of politics 'isn’t making ‘Dad’ look good'. For their part, Bannonites inside government and their cheerleaders in the conservative media like to paint Mr. Kushner as a closet liberal, undercutting Mr. Trump’s historic populist victory. But to cast these fights as a clash between left and right, or even as palace intrigues, is to miss the whole story. The semi-public combat between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner rests on an argument about something much larger: namely, the purpose of Mr. Trump’s presidency itself. However, Mr. Kushner differs in at least one important way from Mr. Bannon. He acts as if the last election was a victory for a man called Trump, not a movement called Trumpism. Shortly after the election Mr. Kushner told Forbes magazine that his father-in-law transcends party labels, with policies offering 'a blend of what works, and eliminating what doesn’t work.'"
- Trump just made some very strange comments about Stephen Bannon (WaPo) "'I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,' Trump said. “'I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve. I’m my own strategist, and it wasn't like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.' 'Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will,' Trump said."
- Is Stephen Bannon getting pushed out? The latest signs point to Yes (WaPo) "The strains of Bannon’s nationalism that have turned up in actual policy are mainly the nativist ones. And whatever happens to Bannon, there’s no indication that those strains won’t continue to shape Trump’s agenda. If Bannon does get pushed out, Sessions remains in the perfect position to carry out Trumpism’s worst impulses in the areas of immigration and criminal justice."
- One Lesson of Trump's Reversals: It's All About Access (Atlantic) "Trump’s tendency to take up the position of the last person he spoke with on a given issue has been widely noted. Xi’s claim that North Korea is an intractable problem is a widely held one, and North Korea bedeviled Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton, too, but it’s disconcerting that a foreign leader could so quickly dazzle Trump. The combination of little knowledge and practically no ideological commitments also makes the ongoing battle between factions in Trump’s White House much higher stakes than they might otherwise be. The conflict between various Trump aides—notably, strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and senior adviser Jared Kushner—could matter much more, because the stakes are not simply their own advancement and the ability to nudge the president slightly in one direction or another. Bannon, who is reportedly on the outs at the moment, offers a starkly different worldview, including his espousal of white nationalism and fondness for Putin, than does Kushner, who seems to resemble a corporate Democrat in many ways, or Priebus, a mainstream Republican. With a president this untutored on the issues, today’s West Wing intrigue threatens to be tomorrow’s major U.S. policy shift."
- Inside Bannon’s struggle: From ‘shadow president’ to Trump’s marked man (WaPo) "Trump also is increasingly embracing more mainstream policy positions championed by daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and their allies, including ascendant National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, instead of Bannon’s brand of combative nationalism."
BUSINESS:
- Imagining the Retail Store of the Future (NYT) "'The holy grail now for retailers is creating digital empathy. No one can really guess what the future will look like. But those who are using technology and data to create bespoke shopping experiences that recognize every person is different, and with different needs, are more likely to come out on top.'" and What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017? (Atlantic) "Here are three explanations for the recent demise of America’s storefronts. 1. People are simply buying more stuff online than they used to. Even more remarkable, according to several reports, half of all U.S. households are now Amazon Prime subscribers. 2. America built way too many malls. The number of malls in the U.S. grew more than twice as fast as the population between 1970 and 2015... 3. Americans are shifting their spending from materialism to meals out with friends."
- Trump just made some very strange comments about Stephen Bannon (WaPo) "'I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,' Trump said. “'I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve. I’m my own strategist, and it wasn't like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.' 'Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will,' Trump said."
- Is Stephen Bannon getting pushed out? The latest signs point to Yes (WaPo) "The strains of Bannon’s nationalism that have turned up in actual policy are mainly the nativist ones. And whatever happens to Bannon, there’s no indication that those strains won’t continue to shape Trump’s agenda. If Bannon does get pushed out, Sessions remains in the perfect position to carry out Trumpism’s worst impulses in the areas of immigration and criminal justice."
- One Lesson of Trump's Reversals: It's All About Access (Atlantic) "Trump’s tendency to take up the position of the last person he spoke with on a given issue has been widely noted. Xi’s claim that North Korea is an intractable problem is a widely held one, and North Korea bedeviled Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton, too, but it’s disconcerting that a foreign leader could so quickly dazzle Trump. The combination of little knowledge and practically no ideological commitments also makes the ongoing battle between factions in Trump’s White House much higher stakes than they might otherwise be. The conflict between various Trump aides—notably, strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and senior adviser Jared Kushner—could matter much more, because the stakes are not simply their own advancement and the ability to nudge the president slightly in one direction or another. Bannon, who is reportedly on the outs at the moment, offers a starkly different worldview, including his espousal of white nationalism and fondness for Putin, than does Kushner, who seems to resemble a corporate Democrat in many ways, or Priebus, a mainstream Republican. With a president this untutored on the issues, today’s West Wing intrigue threatens to be tomorrow’s major U.S. policy shift."
- Inside Bannon’s struggle: From ‘shadow president’ to Trump’s marked man (WaPo) "Trump also is increasingly embracing more mainstream policy positions championed by daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and their allies, including ascendant National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, instead of Bannon’s brand of combative nationalism."
BUSINESS:
- Imagining the Retail Store of the Future (NYT) "'The holy grail now for retailers is creating digital empathy. No one can really guess what the future will look like. But those who are using technology and data to create bespoke shopping experiences that recognize every person is different, and with different needs, are more likely to come out on top.'" and What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017? (Atlantic) "Here are three explanations for the recent demise of America’s storefronts. 1. People are simply buying more stuff online than they used to. Even more remarkable, according to several reports, half of all U.S. households are now Amazon Prime subscribers. 2. America built way too many malls. The number of malls in the U.S. grew more than twice as fast as the population between 1970 and 2015... 3. Americans are shifting their spending from materialism to meals out with friends."
- How to Earn Free Money Online! (Seriously) (Ozy) "He earns the money by renting his spare computer space to a network of strangers... Those with a computer science degree call it 'distributed computing'... ...most of the world’s two billion personal computers aren’t maxed out, leaving as much as one trillion gigabytes of computer space sitting idle (the entirety of Google is estimated to be 10 to 15 billion gigabytes). And, as Uber drivers or Airbnb hosts will tell you, crowd-based networks can mean a nice side income for people with cars or spare rooms — or spare space on their hard drives."
- Small-Town America Could Hold the Next Silicon Valley. He's Out to Find It (Ozy) "Village Capital’s target sectors — including agriculture, fintech, energy, education and health care — tackle Baird’s two hot topics: income inequality and resource sustainability."
HEALTH:
- The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters (New Yorker) "If returns to experience are in decline, if wisdom no longer pays off, then that might help suggest why a group of mostly older people who are not, as a group, disadvantaged might become convinced that the country has taken a turn for the worse. It suggests why their grievances should so idealize the past, and why all the talk about coal miners and factories, jobs in which unions have codified returns to experience into the salary structure, might become such a fixation."
NEWS:
- United 3411 and the Flight from Reason (National Review) "And so here we are, a series of events that seems to compress our loss of manners, kindness, and honesty into a single viral story. Imagine if just one — just one — of the individuals in this entire chain of affairs had stopped obsessing over their rights and power and instead had asked themselves, 'If I was in their shoes, how would I like to be treated?' I’m reminded of a popular quote of unknown provenance, 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.”
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- In the battle over Obamacare’s future, Trump just blinked. Bigly (WaPo) "The Trump administration has now quietly announced that it will refrain from taking an important step that could have pushed the ACA’s individual markets toward collapse. Specifically, The Post and the New York Times report that the administration will keep on paying so-called 'cost-sharing reductions' to insurance companies to cover their reimbursement of out-of-pocket costs for about 7 million lower-income customers. ...the administration has sent a signal to insurers that they should not exit the exchanges, at least for now. ...in pure political terms, this amounts to a concession of weakness."
- Trump has a strange new plan to threaten Democrats. It’s a sick joke (WaPo) "Trump’s new threat is that he will cut off so-called cost-sharing reductions, which subsidize insurance that offers lower out-of-pocket costs to 7 million lower-income Americans. For all the details, see this piece by Jonathan Cohn; the short version is that, if Trump does this, premiums could skyrocket and insurers could flee the individual markets, causing them to melt down and ultimately pushing millions off coverage. As Cohn notes, Trump is basically 'threatening to torpedo insurance for millions of Americans unless Democrats agree to negotiate with him.'"
POLITICS:
- The GOP’s Kansas Victory and the Very Favorable Electoral Map in 2018 (National Review) "To make a long story short: This was not the electoral disaster the Democrats and media were looking for. Which is not to say the GOP is not facing some headwinds going into 2018. On the other hand: There’s the map. And the map is pretty great for the GOP. The media and Democrats will attempt to scare the GOP into fearing electoral devastation with each Trump misstep or weak result in a special election. But the party should ignore the naysayers — even with political headwinds, a highly favorable map means they are in a very strong position heading into 2018, as long as the party keeps faith with its voters."
- Republicans undertake unexpected rescue mission in deep red Kansas (WaPo) "...in the final days before Tuesday’s special election, Republicans reacted to weak polling and turnout data by rushing resources to southern Kansas. A GOP super PAC rolled out robo-calls over the weekend from Vice President Pence, and on Monday from President Trump, in support of candidate Ron Estes. 'Ron Estes needs your vote and needs it badly,' Trump said on the call. 'Ron is going to be helping us, big league.' On Monday, Republicans also dispatched Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) for a fly-in, where he urged Kansans to vote 'if you’re fed up with the stagnation under the Obama economy.'"
READ THIS:
- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (Walter Isaacson) "...an overview of the history of computer science and the Digital Revolution."
SPORTS:
- With Rigor and Mystique, Nebraska Builds a Bowling Dynasty (NYT) "Straub, 66, has shepherded the Lady Cornhuskers to 10 national titles across the club and N.C.A.A. levels, including two in the last four years. They are the only program to earn a berth in the N.C.A.A. championship in all 14 seasons it has been held, and are the top seed in the eight-team competition that begins Thursday in Baton Rouge, La."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Ever Heard of the Startup Deis? Well, Microsoft Certainly Did (Wired) "...Deis will continue to help coders and businesses erect online applications using Kubernetes, a sweeping open-source software tool originally developed at Google. Kubernetes is a way of carefully parcelling computing tasks across a vast array of machines. It was inspired by Borg, a system that served the same purpose inside Google, driving everything from Google Search to Gmail to Google Maps. In essence, Kubernetes provides a much more efficient way of running apps on a grand scale. It’s the kind of thing that can serve apps to million of customers, though it’s not something those consumers ever see."
- Google’s Dueling Neural Networks Spar to Get Smarter, No Humans Required (Wired) "In 2014, while still a PhD student at the University of Montreal, Goodfellow dreamed up an AI technique called 'generative adversarial networks,' or GANs, after a slightly drunken argument at a bar. But however beer-soaked its origins, it’s a wonderfully elegant idea: One AI works to create, say, realistic images, while a second AI analyzes the results and tries to determine whether the images are real or fake. Because the second AI is working so hard to identify images as fake, the first learns to mimic the real in ways it couldn’t on its own. In the process, these two neural networks can push AI toward a day when computers declare independence from their human teachers."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Dessert That Turns You Into a Smoke-Breathing Dragon (Ozy)
TODAY'S SONG:
- Lying to You (Goldroom)
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