- Trump White House Weighing Plans for Private Spies to Counter “Deep State” Enemies (Intercept) and U.S. official: Erik Prince proposed private spy network to Trump administration (CNN) "'This idea is going nowhere,' the official said and stressed neither the agency nor the director of the CIA is or was ever considering the proposal. National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton told CNN that 'the White House does not and would not support such a proposal' and that, 'I can find no evidence that this ever came to the attention of anyone at the NSC or (White House) at all.'"
BUSINESS:
- UK has 48 hours to agree potential Brexit deal or talks cannot progress (Guardian) "If the UK fails to agree to a joint position with the European commission by Friday, the member states informed Barnier that they would not have time to take it back to their capitals for scrutiny ahead of next week’s critical European council meeting. A failure to move talks on in December would mean that the terms of a transition period could potentially only be discussed after the next European council summit of leaders in March, by which key businesses in the UK will have had to make decisions over their location and investments in the country."
- How the Bot Stole Christmas: Toys Like Fingerlings Are Snapped Up and Resold (NYT) "...online shopping makes it even tougher to purchase coveted items because of software that snaps them up as soon as they are offered for sale. The moment an item is in stock, the software runs through the checkout process at a speed that is 'completely inhuman...'"
CULTURE/LIFE:
BUSINESS:
- UK has 48 hours to agree potential Brexit deal or talks cannot progress (Guardian) "If the UK fails to agree to a joint position with the European commission by Friday, the member states informed Barnier that they would not have time to take it back to their capitals for scrutiny ahead of next week’s critical European council meeting. A failure to move talks on in December would mean that the terms of a transition period could potentially only be discussed after the next European council summit of leaders in March, by which key businesses in the UK will have had to make decisions over their location and investments in the country."
- How the Bot Stole Christmas: Toys Like Fingerlings Are Snapped Up and Resold (NYT) "...online shopping makes it even tougher to purchase coveted items because of software that snaps them up as soon as they are offered for sale. The moment an item is in stock, the software runs through the checkout process at a speed that is 'completely inhuman...'"
CULTURE/LIFE:
- A history of the final dying days of the power suit (WaPo) "What exactly does the business suit mean today? For many men, it is formality and propriety. ...in the world of men’s tailoring...the suit no longer represents power. The power suit is dead."
- How to Get Your Mind to Read (NYT) "Don’t blame the internet, or smartphones, or fake news for Americans’ poor reading. Blame ignorance. Turning the tide will require profound changes in how reading is taught, in standardized testing and in school curriculums. Underlying all these changes must be a better understanding of how the mind comprehends what it reads."
NEWS:
- Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway (NYT) "Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: 'Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement block that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.' Trump also could have said...that he’d decided 'to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem' — as part of any final status agreement. Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. Think of the leverage we lost."
- Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea Sends Donald Trump’s Lawyers Scrambling (New Yorker) "Trump is not generally known for his magnanimous impulses toward former associates, so the question of why he wanted the F.B.I. to ease up on Flynn became a matter of intense debate. We may now know the reason. ...as is so often the case when the President cries 'fake news,' the truth soon emerges. Flynn’s encounter with Kislyak gets at central questions about the 2016 Presidential campaign and election: why were Trump and Russia doing one another’s bidding, and what promises were made between the candidate and that country in the event that he won? Flynn has now committed himself to answering those questions. At least two officials in Trump’s inner circle have now lied to investigators about their dealings with Russia; four have been charged with felonies. Flynn’s guilty plea and promise to coöperate bring the investigation into the Oval Office for the first time. The Mueller investigation appears to consist, roughly, of three areas of inquiry. The first focusses on illegal lobbying by people affiliated with the Trump campaign; the second relates to the hacking of e-mail accounts associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee; and the third involves possible obstruction of justice by Trump and others after he was inaugurated."
- Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing (NYT) "Not surprisingly, children who excelled in math were far more likely to become inventors. But being a math standout wasn’t enough. Only the top students who also came from high-income families had a decent chance to become an inventor. The gap between rich and poor is just one of the worrisome findings. Middle-class students have innovation rates closer to that of the poor than the affluent... Women, African-Americans, Latinos, southerners, and low- and middle-income children are far less likely to grow up to become patent holders and inventors. Our society appears to be missing out on most potential inventors from these groups. And these groups together comprise most of the American population."
- Inside the New American Way of War (Time) "Over the past 16 years, Special Operations have become the new American way of war. Once mainly used to supplement the work of conventional troops, the elite units are now the go-to option for policymakers looking to manage a complicated world. Obama cut the number of conventional troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000 over his eight years in office. But Special Operations forces never went home... The expansion has continued under Trump."
- What If Our Current State of Affairs Is Actually ‘Normal’? (NYT) "Whatever the cause, there is something about the mere concept of 'normal' that has become faintly hilarious. This might explain the sense of comic plaintiveness that has accumulated around the word 'normal.' Every indignant handclap on Twitter seems to be calling out for the adult in the room. But the only adult available here is the American public, which has turned out to be a lot more comfortable with abnormality than previously imagined."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Page Not Found: A Brief History of the 404 Error (Wired) "Not long after it appeared, the error code began to enjoy, or endure, its share of lore. In the early 2000s, the idea bubbled up that the 404 came from, well, room 404... Error codes were a necessity but not a center-stage concern. Client errors fell into the 400 range, making '404' a relatively arbitrary assignation for 'not found.' The sort of creativity that goes into 404 response pages is fairly useless. The mythology is probably due to the irrationality, denial of evidence, and preference for the fairy tale over reality that is quite common in the human species... Whatever the appeal, the 404 is firmly cemented in the mainstream."
- Australia Powers Up the World’s Biggest Battery — Courtesy of Elon Musk (NYT) "The battery is the size of an American football field. It is capable of powering 30,000 homes... The high-capacity Tesla battery does not create energy, it just stores it. The state already invests in wind and solar energy. The battery would give it a bank of saved energy, which could ease pressure during periods of high demand and help better manage the electrical grid."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Email Is Broken. Can Anyone Fix It? (Wired) "There are 3.7 billion users worldwide who collectively send 269 billion emails every day... Email is bigger than Facebook. Hell, it's bigger than the internet. Email's been part of our computing lives for more than four decades; it's the most reliable, most universal communication method yet devised online. The problem isn't email. It's our relationship to email that's broken. Lots of people building email products believe...that the future of email isn't really about communication. Rather, email's job is to be a repository for all possible information about you. ...like it or not, you're stuck with it."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- That perfect Christmas tree will be harder to find, pricier this year (USAToday) "The problem is a matter of bad timing. When the economy started tanking due to the Great Recession starting in 2008, Christmas tree sales dropped. Growers didn't cut down as many trees as they normally would as demand slackened. That left less room in the groves to plant seedlings. Since a Christmas tree takes about a decade to hit a height of seven to eight feet -- the size that families most prefer to grace their living rooms -- growers now don't have as many to cut and ship around the country as they have in past years..."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Love on the Weekend (John Mayer)
- How to Get Your Mind to Read (NYT) "Don’t blame the internet, or smartphones, or fake news for Americans’ poor reading. Blame ignorance. Turning the tide will require profound changes in how reading is taught, in standardized testing and in school curriculums. Underlying all these changes must be a better understanding of how the mind comprehends what it reads."
NEWS:
- Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway (NYT) "Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: 'Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement block that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.' Trump also could have said...that he’d decided 'to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem' — as part of any final status agreement. Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. Think of the leverage we lost."
- Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea Sends Donald Trump’s Lawyers Scrambling (New Yorker) "Trump is not generally known for his magnanimous impulses toward former associates, so the question of why he wanted the F.B.I. to ease up on Flynn became a matter of intense debate. We may now know the reason. ...as is so often the case when the President cries 'fake news,' the truth soon emerges. Flynn’s encounter with Kislyak gets at central questions about the 2016 Presidential campaign and election: why were Trump and Russia doing one another’s bidding, and what promises were made between the candidate and that country in the event that he won? Flynn has now committed himself to answering those questions. At least two officials in Trump’s inner circle have now lied to investigators about their dealings with Russia; four have been charged with felonies. Flynn’s guilty plea and promise to coöperate bring the investigation into the Oval Office for the first time. The Mueller investigation appears to consist, roughly, of three areas of inquiry. The first focusses on illegal lobbying by people affiliated with the Trump campaign; the second relates to the hacking of e-mail accounts associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee; and the third involves possible obstruction of justice by Trump and others after he was inaugurated."
- Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing (NYT) "Not surprisingly, children who excelled in math were far more likely to become inventors. But being a math standout wasn’t enough. Only the top students who also came from high-income families had a decent chance to become an inventor. The gap between rich and poor is just one of the worrisome findings. Middle-class students have innovation rates closer to that of the poor than the affluent... Women, African-Americans, Latinos, southerners, and low- and middle-income children are far less likely to grow up to become patent holders and inventors. Our society appears to be missing out on most potential inventors from these groups. And these groups together comprise most of the American population."
- Inside the New American Way of War (Time) "Over the past 16 years, Special Operations have become the new American way of war. Once mainly used to supplement the work of conventional troops, the elite units are now the go-to option for policymakers looking to manage a complicated world. Obama cut the number of conventional troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000 over his eight years in office. But Special Operations forces never went home... The expansion has continued under Trump."
- What If Our Current State of Affairs Is Actually ‘Normal’? (NYT) "Whatever the cause, there is something about the mere concept of 'normal' that has become faintly hilarious. This might explain the sense of comic plaintiveness that has accumulated around the word 'normal.' Every indignant handclap on Twitter seems to be calling out for the adult in the room. But the only adult available here is the American public, which has turned out to be a lot more comfortable with abnormality than previously imagined."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Page Not Found: A Brief History of the 404 Error (Wired) "Not long after it appeared, the error code began to enjoy, or endure, its share of lore. In the early 2000s, the idea bubbled up that the 404 came from, well, room 404... Error codes were a necessity but not a center-stage concern. Client errors fell into the 400 range, making '404' a relatively arbitrary assignation for 'not found.' The sort of creativity that goes into 404 response pages is fairly useless. The mythology is probably due to the irrationality, denial of evidence, and preference for the fairy tale over reality that is quite common in the human species... Whatever the appeal, the 404 is firmly cemented in the mainstream."
- Australia Powers Up the World’s Biggest Battery — Courtesy of Elon Musk (NYT) "The battery is the size of an American football field. It is capable of powering 30,000 homes... The high-capacity Tesla battery does not create energy, it just stores it. The state already invests in wind and solar energy. The battery would give it a bank of saved energy, which could ease pressure during periods of high demand and help better manage the electrical grid."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Email Is Broken. Can Anyone Fix It? (Wired) "There are 3.7 billion users worldwide who collectively send 269 billion emails every day... Email is bigger than Facebook. Hell, it's bigger than the internet. Email's been part of our computing lives for more than four decades; it's the most reliable, most universal communication method yet devised online. The problem isn't email. It's our relationship to email that's broken. Lots of people building email products believe...that the future of email isn't really about communication. Rather, email's job is to be a repository for all possible information about you. ...like it or not, you're stuck with it."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- That perfect Christmas tree will be harder to find, pricier this year (USAToday) "The problem is a matter of bad timing. When the economy started tanking due to the Great Recession starting in 2008, Christmas tree sales dropped. Growers didn't cut down as many trees as they normally would as demand slackened. That left less room in the groves to plant seedlings. Since a Christmas tree takes about a decade to hit a height of seven to eight feet -- the size that families most prefer to grace their living rooms -- growers now don't have as many to cut and ship around the country as they have in past years..."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Love on the Weekend (John Mayer)
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