- A Year Ago, They Marched. Now a Record Number of Women Are Running for Office (Time) "Progressive women described undergoing a metamorphosis. In 2016, they were ordinary voters. In 2017, they became activists, spurred by the bitter defeat of the first major female presidential candidate. Now, in 2018, these doctors and mothers and teachers and executives are jumping into the arena and bringing new energy to a Democratic Party sorely in need of fresh faces.”
BUSINESS:
- How to tame the tech titans (Economist) "Big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or 'platforms') for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users 'pay' for them by giving away their data."
HEALTH:
- The U.S. Fertility Rate Is Down, Yet More Women Are Mothers (NYT) "The increase [in births] has been especially steep among groups of women who hadn’t been having as many babies in the past: those with advanced degrees, and those who have never been married. Today, 55 percent of never-married women ages 40 to 44 have at least one child, up from 31 percent two decades ago."
- The Fasting Diet Improves Your Mood, Sex and Sleep (Time) "According to the...results, people who lost weight also gained a lot, too: brighter moods, improved quality of life, better sleep after a year on the diet and better sexual function after two years of fasting."
MORE SMOKE:
- The Russia scandal just got bigger. And Republicans are trying to prevent an accounting. (WaPo) "And today we learn, in this report from Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy, that they [Russians] may have funneled money through the NRA to aid the Trump campaign. All this raises an important question: Are we ever going to get to the bottom of this mess? The more complicated this scandal gets, the more obvious it is that we need to understand everything that happened, so we can make sure it never happens again."
NEWS:
- The scary ideology behind Trump’s immigration instincts (NYT) "...Trump isn’t just expressing what some conservatives view as 'politically incorrect' sentiments. He — and, importantly, members of his staff — is embracing what used to be a fringe theory held by the furthest of the far right — one that holds that white people are being systematically 'erased' by their inferiors, and thus require an influx of white babies and new white immigrants (and the exclusion of non-white immigrants) to survive. To some among these believers, white Americans, and white culture, are threatened by a slow-running 'genocide' via demographic replacement (indeed, Trump once retweeted someone with the handle 'WhiteGenocide,' which refers to this theory). This theory has adherents on the alt-right, across the conservative media, and even in Congress."
- Trump to Protect Medical Conscience (National Review) "We now live in a society in which people of good will possess radically divergent moral beliefs, including about the morality of services or procedures in the medical context. If we are going to keep from bursting apart, we will need comity and tolerance. The new HHS office is a positive step toward that end."
- Year Two May Be Tougher than Year One for Trump (National Review) "But Trump has not yet delivered on what the Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib correctly identifies as his signature issues in his 2015–16 campaign — immigration, trade, and infrastructure. And it’s far from certain how and whether he will do so."
- Pope Accuses Sex Abuse Victims in Chile of Slandering Bishop (NYT) "Pope Francis told reporters there was not a shred of evidence against Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, who victims of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, Chile’s most notorious priest, have accused of being complicit in his crimes."
- The Decline of Anti-Trumpism (NYT) "It’s almost as if there are two White Houses. There’s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss. The anti-Trump movement suffers from insularity. Most of the people who detest Trump don’t know anybody who works with him or supports him. And if they do have friends and family members who admire Trump, they’ve learned not to talk about this subject. So they get most of their information about Trumpism from others who also detest Trumpism, which is always a recipe for epistemic closure."
TRUMPTEL:
- ‘Vision, Chutzpah and Some Testosterone’ (NYT) "In the spirit of open debate, and in hopes of helping readers who agree with us better understand the views of those who don’t, we wanted to let Mr. Trump’s supporters make their best case for him as the first year of his presidency approaches its close."
- The Chaos President vs. His Iron-Fisted Chief of Staff (NYT) "By Wednesday night, Mr. Trump had become convinced by a string of allies and friends he had talked to on the phone that Mr. Kelly had undermined him, according to people familiar with the conversations. And by Thursday morning, after digesting accounts of Mr. Kelly’s comments on cable news, the president was riled up. Some view the relationship [between Trump and Kelley] as dysfunctional. For different reasons, both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Trump have an interest in preserving their relationship..."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Curve, the fintech that connects all your cards to a single card and app, gets full consumer launch (TechCrunch) "Once you’ve added your cards to Curve, you use the Curve app to switch which underlying debit or credit cards you wish the Curve MasterCard to spend from, and track and see a single and consolidated view of your spending regardless of which card was charged."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A man tried to board a flight wearing everything he packed. British Airways gave him the boot (WaPo) "There are many approaches to avoid paying a fee for excess luggage when traveling by air these days. ... in the case of one man flying out of Iceland last week, you could try boarding the plane donning, say, 10 shirts and eight pairs of pants."
- This Is The Scientific Way To Win Any Argument (And Not Make Enemies) (FastCompany) "...There’s usually no one argument that can suddenly get someone to see the light. Still, some fascinating research suggests that reframing your ideas can boost your opponent’s receptiveness to them. The type of frame a person may be using determines how they’ll perceive and respond to what you say and do. So how can you coax someone who’s stuck in a certain frame to try on another one–and to consider the validity of your argument? The answer is counterintuitive: You change their frame by reframing your own position. ...to win someone to your position, it’s best not to challenge their beliefs but to instead connect your own position to those beliefs (which, obviously, means empathizing with values you may not share–often the tricky part)."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Oceans Away (A R I Z O N A)
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