- We Calculated the Potential Pitfalls of Electric Cars, in 5 Charts (Wired) "So, as we charge our batteries for a new way of driving, here are the questions we should be asking. 1. How many gas cars can we take off the road? If demand for personal cars stays constant, we can use current sales figures to estimate how many electric cars we will need. 2. Bring on the batteries. So all those new EVs will rely on our current best technology, lithium-ion batteries. 3. What kind of power is charging those cars? If you live in a state that generates electricity from coal your electric car probably won't be much kinder to the environment than a gas gulper that gets more than 35 miles per gallon of gasoline. 4. What are the batteries made of? Even if we switch the entire global energy supply to renewables, we're going to have to mine a lot more cobalt, lithium, and other raw ingredients to create all those batteries..."
- Owning An Electric Car Is Twice As Cheap As Owning A Gas Vehicle (Fast Company) "Drivers in Hawaii pay the most for gasoline ($1,509 a year), followed by Alaska ($1,434), California ($1,407), Washington ($1,338), and Oregon ($1,274). Motorists in Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina pay the least–all about $1,000 a year to cover the average driving distance. EVs are cheapest to run in Louisiana ($367), followed by Washington ($372), Arkansas ($382), Idaho ($390), and Tennessee ($398). Hawaii ($1,106), Alaska ($833), Connecticut ($804), New Hampshire ($751), and Rhode Island ($737) have the highest electricity costs.
- What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World (NYT) "But this electric-car future is still missing some pieces. Some crucial raw materials are scarce. There are not enough places to recharge. Battery-powered cars still cost thousands of dollars more than many gasoline vehicles. The cost of building motors and components will have to continue to decrease. Price of an electric car powertrain: $16,000. Price of a conventional car powertrain: $6,000. Electric cars will go mainstream when the cost of the powertrain — the motor and other guts that make the vehicle move — is the same as owning cars that burn gasoline or diesel. There must be a steady, affordable supply of the resources required to make batteries. Carmakers are racing to secure the essential ingredients in batteries like cobalt, lithium and graphite. More charging stations will need to be built, and they’ll need to charge faster. Even when people can buy an electric car for the same price or less than a gasoline model, they face another problem: where to plug it in. And they won’t want to wait all day for the car to recharge."
BUSINESS:
- The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought (Bloomberg) "As usual with Kalanick, the discussion grew contentious. Jones and his deputies argued that Uber’s riders and drivers viewed the company as made up of a bunch of greedy, self-centered jerks. On a question asking respondents what they thought of specific business leaders, he [Kalanick] ranked dead last among tech CEOs and only slightly above the CEOs of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. Employee morale was falling along with the CEO’s reputation."
- The MoviePass deal: For less than $120 a year, you can see 365 movies. Here’s the catch (WaPo) "During its first six years as a company, MoviePass relied on the idea that most of its 20,000 subscribers wouldn’t use the service. But when Mitch Lowe, a Netflix co-founder, took over MoviePass as CEO in June 2016, he opted to flip this revenue model on its head. Instead of hoping subscribers skip out on the movies, Lowe wants MoviePass customers to visit the theater as often as possible. Because the more movies its subscribers see, the more data the company rakes in. And that’s where the real dough is."
- Richest 1% Took Home 82% of Wealth Last Year, Oxfam Says (Fortune) "Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing..."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Why is Nickelback known to be a bad band? (Quora)
HEALTH:
- This Flu Map Shows How the Biggest Influenza Outbreak in Years Spread Across the U.S. (Time) "The U.S. is experiencing such an active flu season that the CDC held a special briefing on the topic last week, explaining that there’s an uptick in both confirmed cases of the disease and hospitalizations related to it this year. The flu is so widespread, in fact, that the agency has declared it an epidemic, and urged those who have not been vaccinated to seek out the flu shot."
- Can This Biochemist Bypass Organ Donors? (Ozy) "In collaboration with the University of Pretoria, Dzobo is leading efforts to develop a patch made with stem cells that could repair damaged tissue."
MORE SMOKE (The Stormy Daniels Edition):
- The case for taking the Trump-Stormy Daniels saga seriously (WaPo) "But the saga involving Stormy Daniels and Trump is getting more and more difficult to dismiss as tabloid trash with each passing day, and there's a serious case to be made that it's actually been under-covered. That doesn't mean it's true or even that there has been any genuine wrongdoing — just that it's worth asking some very serious questions. First came a series of reports from the Journal about the payment made by Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. It most recently reported Thursday that Cohen created an LLC in Delaware — where LLCs don't have to disclose their managers — and used pseudonyms to facilitate the payment to Daniels. By Friday, the magazine InTouch published what it said was a previously unpublished 2011 interview with Daniels in which she describes having sex with Trump in 2006... What's perhaps most notable about the interview is how many of the details deal with things that weren't and aren't widely known about Trump. So if the story isn't based on actual interactions with Trump, then it's pretty clear Daniels did some real research to make it seem plausible."
- Stormy Daniels' Explosive Full Interview on Donald Trump Affair: "I Can Describe His Junk Perfectly" (InTouch Weekly) "'I had to use the bathroom and I went to the restroom, which was in the bedroom. When I came out, he was sitting on the bed and he was like, 'Come here.' And I was like, 'Ugh, here we go.'" and Porn star Stormy Daniels detailed alleged affair with Trump in 2011 interview (WaPo) "Daniels told Lippe-McGraw she was going public about the alleged affair years after it ended because she was disturbed by comments Trump had made criticizing people in the pornography business, the transcript says."
- Trump’s love of tabloid gossip complicates his denial of affair allegations with Stormy Daniels (WaPo) "'I’ve always said, ‘Why didn't the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards?’ Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016. He was referring to the Enquirer’s revelation that John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina and 2008 presidential candidate, had an affair and fathered a child with a campaign aide. Trump told a crowd in Ohio that the National Enquirer 'should be very respected,' as a way of defending his decision, in an earlier interview, to cite an unsubstantiated article about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). In short, the president loves tabloid gossip, which makes it harder for him to just brush it off now, when he is the subject of it."
and this...
- Jared Kushner’s firm tied to “suspicious transactions” at German bank, according to explosive new report (Mother Jones) "Manager Magazin, a respected German business magazine, reported in its latest print edition, which hit German newsstands on Friday, that Paul Achleitner, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s board, had the bank conduct an internal investigation and the results were troubling. Those results have been turned over to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority—Germany’s bank regulatory agency, which is commonly known as BaFin. The article also claims that the investigation into Kushner and his family business is not over, and that internal technical issues are complicating the search, adding that 'Achleitner simply doesn’t have a view of the whole picture.' Deutsche Bank did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s personal attorney."
and this...
- ‘Defiance Disorder’: Another new book describes chaos in Trump’s White House (WaPo) "The White House...has just barely stopped reeling from author Michael Wolff’s account of life in Trump’s West Wing...and now another life-in-the-White-House book is about to drop, this one from [Howard] Kurtz [who hosts Fox News’s 'Media Buzz']. Like the books that came before it, and almost certainly like the ones still to come, Kurtz’s book, 'Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth,' offers a portrait of a White House riven by chaos, with aides scrambling to respond to the president’s impulses and writing policy to fit his tweets..."
NEWS:
- Younger Rs want Trump alternative (Axios) "One year since President Trump's inauguration, a majority of Republicans under age 45 want an alternative in 2020, according to an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll: Most Republicans under 25 want the president to face a primary challenge."
- Is the Public Well-Informed Enough to Be Trusted With Democracy? (Ozy) "The answer is complicated... This is usually where people wax poetic about how the lack of school funding and civics teaching has made people too dumb to vote in their best interests. The other side of the equation is that government must be understandable. Laws remain complicated in part because bureaucrats have a vested interest in finding ever more technocratic solutions that justify their work. Another problem: The wealthy hold more power than ever before, which allows them to wield undue influence. So maybe we shouldn’t be asking whether we can trust the public with democracy. Maybe we need to ask whether we can trust the elites with it."
- Owning An Electric Car Is Twice As Cheap As Owning A Gas Vehicle (Fast Company) "Drivers in Hawaii pay the most for gasoline ($1,509 a year), followed by Alaska ($1,434), California ($1,407), Washington ($1,338), and Oregon ($1,274). Motorists in Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and South Carolina pay the least–all about $1,000 a year to cover the average driving distance. EVs are cheapest to run in Louisiana ($367), followed by Washington ($372), Arkansas ($382), Idaho ($390), and Tennessee ($398). Hawaii ($1,106), Alaska ($833), Connecticut ($804), New Hampshire ($751), and Rhode Island ($737) have the highest electricity costs.
- What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World (NYT) "But this electric-car future is still missing some pieces. Some crucial raw materials are scarce. There are not enough places to recharge. Battery-powered cars still cost thousands of dollars more than many gasoline vehicles. The cost of building motors and components will have to continue to decrease. Price of an electric car powertrain: $16,000. Price of a conventional car powertrain: $6,000. Electric cars will go mainstream when the cost of the powertrain — the motor and other guts that make the vehicle move — is the same as owning cars that burn gasoline or diesel. There must be a steady, affordable supply of the resources required to make batteries. Carmakers are racing to secure the essential ingredients in batteries like cobalt, lithium and graphite. More charging stations will need to be built, and they’ll need to charge faster. Even when people can buy an electric car for the same price or less than a gasoline model, they face another problem: where to plug it in. And they won’t want to wait all day for the car to recharge."
BUSINESS:
- The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought (Bloomberg) "As usual with Kalanick, the discussion grew contentious. Jones and his deputies argued that Uber’s riders and drivers viewed the company as made up of a bunch of greedy, self-centered jerks. On a question asking respondents what they thought of specific business leaders, he [Kalanick] ranked dead last among tech CEOs and only slightly above the CEOs of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. Employee morale was falling along with the CEO’s reputation."
- The MoviePass deal: For less than $120 a year, you can see 365 movies. Here’s the catch (WaPo) "During its first six years as a company, MoviePass relied on the idea that most of its 20,000 subscribers wouldn’t use the service. But when Mitch Lowe, a Netflix co-founder, took over MoviePass as CEO in June 2016, he opted to flip this revenue model on its head. Instead of hoping subscribers skip out on the movies, Lowe wants MoviePass customers to visit the theater as often as possible. Because the more movies its subscribers see, the more data the company rakes in. And that’s where the real dough is."
- Richest 1% Took Home 82% of Wealth Last Year, Oxfam Says (Fortune) "Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing..."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Why is Nickelback known to be a bad band? (Quora)
- This Flu Map Shows How the Biggest Influenza Outbreak in Years Spread Across the U.S. (Time) "The U.S. is experiencing such an active flu season that the CDC held a special briefing on the topic last week, explaining that there’s an uptick in both confirmed cases of the disease and hospitalizations related to it this year. The flu is so widespread, in fact, that the agency has declared it an epidemic, and urged those who have not been vaccinated to seek out the flu shot."
- Can This Biochemist Bypass Organ Donors? (Ozy) "In collaboration with the University of Pretoria, Dzobo is leading efforts to develop a patch made with stem cells that could repair damaged tissue."
MORE SMOKE (The Stormy Daniels Edition):
- The case for taking the Trump-Stormy Daniels saga seriously (WaPo) "But the saga involving Stormy Daniels and Trump is getting more and more difficult to dismiss as tabloid trash with each passing day, and there's a serious case to be made that it's actually been under-covered. That doesn't mean it's true or even that there has been any genuine wrongdoing — just that it's worth asking some very serious questions. First came a series of reports from the Journal about the payment made by Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. It most recently reported Thursday that Cohen created an LLC in Delaware — where LLCs don't have to disclose their managers — and used pseudonyms to facilitate the payment to Daniels. By Friday, the magazine InTouch published what it said was a previously unpublished 2011 interview with Daniels in which she describes having sex with Trump in 2006... What's perhaps most notable about the interview is how many of the details deal with things that weren't and aren't widely known about Trump. So if the story isn't based on actual interactions with Trump, then it's pretty clear Daniels did some real research to make it seem plausible."
- Stormy Daniels' Explosive Full Interview on Donald Trump Affair: "I Can Describe His Junk Perfectly" (InTouch Weekly) "'I had to use the bathroom and I went to the restroom, which was in the bedroom. When I came out, he was sitting on the bed and he was like, 'Come here.' And I was like, 'Ugh, here we go.'" and Porn star Stormy Daniels detailed alleged affair with Trump in 2011 interview (WaPo) "Daniels told Lippe-McGraw she was going public about the alleged affair years after it ended because she was disturbed by comments Trump had made criticizing people in the pornography business, the transcript says."
- Trump’s love of tabloid gossip complicates his denial of affair allegations with Stormy Daniels (WaPo) "'I’ve always said, ‘Why didn't the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards?’ Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016. He was referring to the Enquirer’s revelation that John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina and 2008 presidential candidate, had an affair and fathered a child with a campaign aide. Trump told a crowd in Ohio that the National Enquirer 'should be very respected,' as a way of defending his decision, in an earlier interview, to cite an unsubstantiated article about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). In short, the president loves tabloid gossip, which makes it harder for him to just brush it off now, when he is the subject of it."
and this...
- Jared Kushner’s firm tied to “suspicious transactions” at German bank, according to explosive new report (Mother Jones) "Manager Magazin, a respected German business magazine, reported in its latest print edition, which hit German newsstands on Friday, that Paul Achleitner, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s board, had the bank conduct an internal investigation and the results were troubling. Those results have been turned over to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority—Germany’s bank regulatory agency, which is commonly known as BaFin. The article also claims that the investigation into Kushner and his family business is not over, and that internal technical issues are complicating the search, adding that 'Achleitner simply doesn’t have a view of the whole picture.' Deutsche Bank did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s personal attorney."
and this...
- ‘Defiance Disorder’: Another new book describes chaos in Trump’s White House (WaPo) "The White House...has just barely stopped reeling from author Michael Wolff’s account of life in Trump’s West Wing...and now another life-in-the-White-House book is about to drop, this one from [Howard] Kurtz [who hosts Fox News’s 'Media Buzz']. Like the books that came before it, and almost certainly like the ones still to come, Kurtz’s book, 'Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth,' offers a portrait of a White House riven by chaos, with aides scrambling to respond to the president’s impulses and writing policy to fit his tweets..."
NEWS:
- Younger Rs want Trump alternative (Axios) "One year since President Trump's inauguration, a majority of Republicans under age 45 want an alternative in 2020, according to an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll: Most Republicans under 25 want the president to face a primary challenge."
- Is the Public Well-Informed Enough to Be Trusted With Democracy? (Ozy) "The answer is complicated... This is usually where people wax poetic about how the lack of school funding and civics teaching has made people too dumb to vote in their best interests. The other side of the equation is that government must be understandable. Laws remain complicated in part because bureaucrats have a vested interest in finding ever more technocratic solutions that justify their work. Another problem: The wealthy hold more power than ever before, which allows them to wield undue influence. So maybe we shouldn’t be asking whether we can trust the public with democracy. Maybe we need to ask whether we can trust the elites with it."
- A year of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda has radically changed the U.S. role in the world (WaPo) "The overall impact of the policy, say diplomats, politicians and analysts interviewed around the world, has been a clear retrenchment of U.S. power — and an opportunity for U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia. The American role in the world has been diminishing for years as other countries have expanded their economies, militaries and ambitions. Foreign-policy players, however, say they see something different now: a disorderly U.S. transformation from a global leader working with partners to try to shape the world to an inwardly focused superpower that defines its international role more narrowly. A Gallup survey of attitudes in 134 countries that was released Thursday showed a dramatic drop in support for U.S. leadership in the world, from a median of nearly half of people approving under President Barack Obama to fewer than a third doing so under Trump. Across the globe, U.S. adversaries are rushing to fill the America-size void left as Washington breaks from its closest allies on trade and other international pacts. They also seek to take advantage of the confusion caused by what allies and foes alike have called an ill-defined and sometimes chaotic U.S. foreign policy, broadcast by Trump’s tweets. Many diplomats and policymakers say they think Washington will remain the preeminent global power but with greatly dimmed ambitions — even after Trump’s tenure in the White House."
- Military Shifts Focus to Threats by Russia and China, Not Terrorism (NYT) "The new strategy echoes — on paper, if not in tone — a national security blueprint offered last month in which President Trump described rising threats to the United States from an emboldened Russia and China, as well as from what was described as rogue governments like North Korea and Iran. Unlike Mr. Trump, who said Russia and China 'seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth' without mentioning Russian interference in the 2016 election, Mr. Mattis appeared to take direct aim at Russia. 'To those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day,' he said."
- I wasn’t a Trump supporter. I am now. (WaPo) "Like most people, I don’t particularly like Trump’s rhetorical style, juvenile insults and intemperate disposition... At the same time, having followed his career for decades, I am not surprised that he wakes up each morning as Donald Trump. Ironically, the very lack of conservative bona fides that worried me two years ago means he’s less beholden to a conservative establishment that had grown alienated from the people it is supposed to serve and from the principles it ostensibly exists to promote."
- SpaceX, Boeing face delays and technical challenges as they work to restore human spaceflight for NASA (WaPo) "If SpaceX and Boeing, the companies NASA has hired to fly its astronauts to space, can’t meet NASA’s rigorous requirements for human spaceflight by late next year, the space agency would have to continue to rely on the Russians, who charge more than $80 million a seat to launch Americans to orbit. Failing that, NASA would face the ignominious prospect that the United States would not be able to access the space station, on which it has spent billions of dollars to build and maintain. Heading into 2018, the program is at a critical juncture, as NASA will have to sign off on some key decisions about whether it thinks Boeing and SpaceX’s spacecraft will be able to meet the agency’s rigorous safety standards."
TECHNOLOGY:
- What If Children Should Be Spending More Time With Screens? (WSJ-Paywall) "The American Academy of Pediatrics once recommended parents simply limit children’s time on screens. The new guidance distinguishes between 'passive' screen time, such as viewing videos, and 'active' time. Curbing passive exposure could be the new version of limiting screen time. Instead of enforcing time-based rules, parents should help children determine what they want to do—create art, marvel at the universe—and make those interests a daily part of screen life."
- Inside Amazon Go, a Store of the Future (NYT) "...the technology that is...inside, mostly tucked away out of sight, enables a shopping experience like no other. There are no cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through...gates, without pausing to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account automatically gets charged for what they take out the door. Every time customers grab an item off a shelf, Amazon says the product is automatically put into the shopping cart of their online account. If customers put the item back on the shelf, Amazon removes it from their virtual basket. There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. For now, Amazon says its technology simply changes the role of employees — the same way it describes the impact of automation on its warehouse workers."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Crazy Bald Eagle Video (NatGeo on Instagram) "A leisurely drive through downtown Unalaska, a small city in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, is an easy way to spot a few of America’s national bird... or a few hundred. The population of bald eagles has exploded over the past few decades in many cities in Alaska as eagles increasingly find easy meals from human food waste and leftover fish from the thriving commercial fishing industry."
- The Nice Guy Booty Call mindset is the right way to fix bad casual sex (Quartz) "But how do we fix the day-to-day power dynamics and the overall creepiness women endure while dating and in the bedroom? Turns out, in a sea of assholes if you’re simply a nice and attentive person, you’re a catch!"
TODAY'S SONG:
- Your Name (Tundran)
- Military Shifts Focus to Threats by Russia and China, Not Terrorism (NYT) "The new strategy echoes — on paper, if not in tone — a national security blueprint offered last month in which President Trump described rising threats to the United States from an emboldened Russia and China, as well as from what was described as rogue governments like North Korea and Iran. Unlike Mr. Trump, who said Russia and China 'seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth' without mentioning Russian interference in the 2016 election, Mr. Mattis appeared to take direct aim at Russia. 'To those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day,' he said."
- I wasn’t a Trump supporter. I am now. (WaPo) "Like most people, I don’t particularly like Trump’s rhetorical style, juvenile insults and intemperate disposition... At the same time, having followed his career for decades, I am not surprised that he wakes up each morning as Donald Trump. Ironically, the very lack of conservative bona fides that worried me two years ago means he’s less beholden to a conservative establishment that had grown alienated from the people it is supposed to serve and from the principles it ostensibly exists to promote."
- SpaceX, Boeing face delays and technical challenges as they work to restore human spaceflight for NASA (WaPo) "If SpaceX and Boeing, the companies NASA has hired to fly its astronauts to space, can’t meet NASA’s rigorous requirements for human spaceflight by late next year, the space agency would have to continue to rely on the Russians, who charge more than $80 million a seat to launch Americans to orbit. Failing that, NASA would face the ignominious prospect that the United States would not be able to access the space station, on which it has spent billions of dollars to build and maintain. Heading into 2018, the program is at a critical juncture, as NASA will have to sign off on some key decisions about whether it thinks Boeing and SpaceX’s spacecraft will be able to meet the agency’s rigorous safety standards."
TECHNOLOGY:
- What If Children Should Be Spending More Time With Screens? (WSJ-Paywall) "The American Academy of Pediatrics once recommended parents simply limit children’s time on screens. The new guidance distinguishes between 'passive' screen time, such as viewing videos, and 'active' time. Curbing passive exposure could be the new version of limiting screen time. Instead of enforcing time-based rules, parents should help children determine what they want to do—create art, marvel at the universe—and make those interests a daily part of screen life."
- Inside Amazon Go, a Store of the Future (NYT) "...the technology that is...inside, mostly tucked away out of sight, enables a shopping experience like no other. There are no cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through...gates, without pausing to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account automatically gets charged for what they take out the door. Every time customers grab an item off a shelf, Amazon says the product is automatically put into the shopping cart of their online account. If customers put the item back on the shelf, Amazon removes it from their virtual basket. There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. For now, Amazon says its technology simply changes the role of employees — the same way it describes the impact of automation on its warehouse workers."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Crazy Bald Eagle Video (NatGeo on Instagram) "A leisurely drive through downtown Unalaska, a small city in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, is an easy way to spot a few of America’s national bird... or a few hundred. The population of bald eagles has exploded over the past few decades in many cities in Alaska as eagles increasingly find easy meals from human food waste and leftover fish from the thriving commercial fishing industry."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Your Name (Tundran)
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