Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
THE FUTURE OF RETAIL IS...
TOP OF THE NEWS:
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- The Retail Apocalypse Is Fueled by No-Name Clothes (Bloomberg) "Searching for generic product categories on Amazon turns up plenty of private-label options. Simultaneously, Amazon has introduced a bevy of private labels with names such as Peak Velocity in categories that include shirts and sportswear, where fit and function—plus the convenience of free shipping—are often more important than the latest fashions. That helps explain why almost 40 cents of every dollar spent online on clothing and footwear in the U.S. will go to Amazon this year..."
- The Future Of Retail In The Age Of Amazon (FastCompany) "Amazon dominates e-commerce and has gobbled up 5% of total U.S. retail sales. Some expect that the company will own half the online market within the next five years, a period during which, Credit Suisse predicts, a quarter of all malls will close. By the end of this year, more than 8,600 stores will have shuttered in 2017, the worst year on record."
- 5 ways the future of retail is already here (WaPo) "1. Prices that change by the hour. 2. Digital mirrors to help you visualize new outfits, lipstick or sunglasses. 3. Robotic shopping carts … or no carts at all. 4. Technology to help you find better-fitting shoes and coordinating outfits. 5. Robots that restock shelves and guide you to what you need."
- Meet the Retail Worker of the Future: Cool, Charismatic, and Better Paid (Time) "For physical retailers, it’s not enough to have things anymore, experts say. Now you need an experience—a convenience, activity, or ambiance—to rope people in."
BUSINESS:
- New Hedge-Fund Tax Dodge Triggers Wild Rush Back Into Delaware (Bloomberg) "Since late 2017, hedge fund managers have created numerous shell companies in the First State... Tax attorneys say hedge funds are setting up thousands of LLCs, most of which are difficult to identify. President Donald Trump turned carried interest into a rallying cry during his populist presidential campaign, declaring that 'hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.' Critics from billionaire Warren Buffett on down essentially agree, saying carried interest is a fee-for-service and should be taxed at the individual rate that today tops out at 37 percent. But money managers are eligible to pay a rate of about 20 percent, having successfully argued for years that carried interest, or their portion of investment returns, is a capital gain."
- The ‘Goldilocks Market’ Is Over: Lessons From the Stock Selloff (Bloomberg) "Investors Were Complacent. This Time Is Never Different. It’s Not a Rout, 1987 Was a Rout. Factor in Leverage."
LIFE:
- On Campus: You Up? College in the Age of Tinder (NYT) "It may not be on any syllabus, but college has always been a time for young people to learn about relationships and sex. But as the internet increasingly influences the ways we interact, it also transforms how students date and find partners. We asked students at nine colleges and universities how technology affects the campus dating scene."
NEWS:
- White House reels as FBI director contradicts official claims about alleged abuser (WaPo) "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau had completed a background report on then-staff secretary Rob Porter last July and closed out the case entirely last month. Wray’s account is at odds with White House claims that the investigation required for Porter’s security clearance was 'ongoing' until he left his job last week, after his two ex-wives publicly alleged physical and emotional abuse."
- Why the Knives Are Out for John Kelly (National Review) "I think the most interesting thing about all of this is not that there are long knives out to get Kelly, but who is wielding them. Corey Lewandowski, that renowned pillar of decency and decorum to the fairer sex, is pissing from a great height on Kelly. So is Anthony Scaramucci, another poster boy for political rectitude. There are reports that Ivanka Trump is a leader of the Get-Kelly Brigade as well, which would suggest that Jared is in on the act too."
- Bob Corker might un-retire — which could mean chaos for Tennessee’s Senate race (Vox) "Corker is reportedly 'listening' to some Republican colleagues encouraging him to run for reelection...amid concern that the party’s leading candidate, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, could lose the Tennessee Senate seat to a Democrat in the 2018 midterms."
- Gowdy: Oversight panel launched Porter investigation 'last night' (Politico) "Gowdy was asked on CNN’s 'New Day' if his committee would launch an investigation into Porter’s employment at the White House and at what point the administration was made aware of the allegations against him. 'We did last night,' he responded."
- Veterans Affairs chief Shulkin, staff misled ethics officials about European trip, report finds (WaPo) "Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin’s chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for the secretary’s wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer... 'Although the [inspector general’s office] cannot determine the value VA gained from the Secretary and his delegation’s three and a half days of meetings in Copenhagen and London at a cost of at least $122,334, the investigation revealed serious derelictions by VA personnel'..."
- A Whirlwind Envelops the White House, and the Revolving Door Spins (NYT) "More than a year into his administration, President Trump is presiding over a staff in turmoil, one with a 34 percent turnover rate, higher than any White House in decades. He has struggled to fill openings, unwilling to hire Republicans he considers disloyal and unable to entice Republicans who consider him unstable. Those who do come to work for him often do not last long, burning out from a volatile, sometimes cutthroat environment exacerbated by tweets and subpoenas. Some administration officials privately spend much of their time trying to figure out how to leave without looking disloyal or provoking an easily angered president. Those who leave tell friends and associates horror stories that do not help with recruitment."
SCIENCE:
- A potentially powerful new antibiotic is discovered in dirt (WaPo) "Superbugs have evolved resistance to dozens of drugs in doctors' arsenals, leading to infections that are increasingly difficult to treat. Global deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections are predicted to hit 10 million a year by 2050. So in labs around the world, scientists are racing against time to cultivate new microbe-destroying molecules — but most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. ...microbiologist Sean Brady thinks it's time to shift tactics. Instead of growing antibiotics in a petri dish, he hopes to find them in the ground. That idea is beginning to pay off: ...he and his colleagues report the discovery of a new class of antibiotic extracted from unknown microorganisms living in the soil. This class, which they call malacidins, kills several superbugs — including the dreaded methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — without engendering resistance."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Facebook Funded Most of the Experts Who Vetted Messenger Kids (Wired) "Equally notable are the experts Facebook did not consult. Although Facebook says it spent 18 months developing the app, Common Sense Media and Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, two large nonprofits in the field, say they weren’t informed about it until weeks or days before the app’s debut."
- Here are all the reasons you might need to use a VPN (Mashable) "Right now there's definite cause for concern. Last March, the Senate voted to permit internet providers to sell customers' browsing history without their knowledge or approval. Then in November, the FCC scrapped Obama-era net neutrality regulations, giving ISPs even broader control over the data traveling over their networks."
TRUMPTEL:
- Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Says He Paid Stormy Daniels Out of His Own Pocket (NYT) "In the most detailed explanation of the 2016 payment made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, Mr. Cohen, who worked as a counsel to the Trump Organization for more than a decade, said he was not reimbursed for the payment."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- How the US Military Helped Invent Cheetos (Wired) "The army placed its first order for processed cheese–which at the beginning, came in only one flavor: white—during World War I, buying twenty‑five million quarter‑pound tins from Kraft. This single act probably established Kraft’s century‑long (and still going strong) food industry hegemony. By the time World War II rolled around, the military was a raving cheeseaholic, consuming the dairy product by itself, on sandwiches, or as sauces for vegetables, potatoes, and pasta."
TODAY'S SONG:
- My Funny Valentine (Frank Sinatra)
- The Future Of Retail In The Age Of Amazon (FastCompany) "Amazon dominates e-commerce and has gobbled up 5% of total U.S. retail sales. Some expect that the company will own half the online market within the next five years, a period during which, Credit Suisse predicts, a quarter of all malls will close. By the end of this year, more than 8,600 stores will have shuttered in 2017, the worst year on record."
- 5 ways the future of retail is already here (WaPo) "1. Prices that change by the hour. 2. Digital mirrors to help you visualize new outfits, lipstick or sunglasses. 3. Robotic shopping carts … or no carts at all. 4. Technology to help you find better-fitting shoes and coordinating outfits. 5. Robots that restock shelves and guide you to what you need."
- Meet the Retail Worker of the Future: Cool, Charismatic, and Better Paid (Time) "For physical retailers, it’s not enough to have things anymore, experts say. Now you need an experience—a convenience, activity, or ambiance—to rope people in."
BUSINESS:
- New Hedge-Fund Tax Dodge Triggers Wild Rush Back Into Delaware (Bloomberg) "Since late 2017, hedge fund managers have created numerous shell companies in the First State... Tax attorneys say hedge funds are setting up thousands of LLCs, most of which are difficult to identify. President Donald Trump turned carried interest into a rallying cry during his populist presidential campaign, declaring that 'hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.' Critics from billionaire Warren Buffett on down essentially agree, saying carried interest is a fee-for-service and should be taxed at the individual rate that today tops out at 37 percent. But money managers are eligible to pay a rate of about 20 percent, having successfully argued for years that carried interest, or their portion of investment returns, is a capital gain."
- The ‘Goldilocks Market’ Is Over: Lessons From the Stock Selloff (Bloomberg) "Investors Were Complacent. This Time Is Never Different. It’s Not a Rout, 1987 Was a Rout. Factor in Leverage."
LIFE:
- On Campus: You Up? College in the Age of Tinder (NYT) "It may not be on any syllabus, but college has always been a time for young people to learn about relationships and sex. But as the internet increasingly influences the ways we interact, it also transforms how students date and find partners. We asked students at nine colleges and universities how technology affects the campus dating scene."
NEWS:
- White House reels as FBI director contradicts official claims about alleged abuser (WaPo) "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau had completed a background report on then-staff secretary Rob Porter last July and closed out the case entirely last month. Wray’s account is at odds with White House claims that the investigation required for Porter’s security clearance was 'ongoing' until he left his job last week, after his two ex-wives publicly alleged physical and emotional abuse."
- Why the Knives Are Out for John Kelly (National Review) "I think the most interesting thing about all of this is not that there are long knives out to get Kelly, but who is wielding them. Corey Lewandowski, that renowned pillar of decency and decorum to the fairer sex, is pissing from a great height on Kelly. So is Anthony Scaramucci, another poster boy for political rectitude. There are reports that Ivanka Trump is a leader of the Get-Kelly Brigade as well, which would suggest that Jared is in on the act too."
- Bob Corker might un-retire — which could mean chaos for Tennessee’s Senate race (Vox) "Corker is reportedly 'listening' to some Republican colleagues encouraging him to run for reelection...amid concern that the party’s leading candidate, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, could lose the Tennessee Senate seat to a Democrat in the 2018 midterms."
- Gowdy: Oversight panel launched Porter investigation 'last night' (Politico) "Gowdy was asked on CNN’s 'New Day' if his committee would launch an investigation into Porter’s employment at the White House and at what point the administration was made aware of the allegations against him. 'We did last night,' he responded."
- Veterans Affairs chief Shulkin, staff misled ethics officials about European trip, report finds (WaPo) "Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin’s chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for the secretary’s wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer... 'Although the [inspector general’s office] cannot determine the value VA gained from the Secretary and his delegation’s three and a half days of meetings in Copenhagen and London at a cost of at least $122,334, the investigation revealed serious derelictions by VA personnel'..."
- A Whirlwind Envelops the White House, and the Revolving Door Spins (NYT) "More than a year into his administration, President Trump is presiding over a staff in turmoil, one with a 34 percent turnover rate, higher than any White House in decades. He has struggled to fill openings, unwilling to hire Republicans he considers disloyal and unable to entice Republicans who consider him unstable. Those who do come to work for him often do not last long, burning out from a volatile, sometimes cutthroat environment exacerbated by tweets and subpoenas. Some administration officials privately spend much of their time trying to figure out how to leave without looking disloyal or provoking an easily angered president. Those who leave tell friends and associates horror stories that do not help with recruitment."
SCIENCE:
- A potentially powerful new antibiotic is discovered in dirt (WaPo) "Superbugs have evolved resistance to dozens of drugs in doctors' arsenals, leading to infections that are increasingly difficult to treat. Global deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections are predicted to hit 10 million a year by 2050. So in labs around the world, scientists are racing against time to cultivate new microbe-destroying molecules — but most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. ...microbiologist Sean Brady thinks it's time to shift tactics. Instead of growing antibiotics in a petri dish, he hopes to find them in the ground. That idea is beginning to pay off: ...he and his colleagues report the discovery of a new class of antibiotic extracted from unknown microorganisms living in the soil. This class, which they call malacidins, kills several superbugs — including the dreaded methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — without engendering resistance."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Facebook Funded Most of the Experts Who Vetted Messenger Kids (Wired) "Equally notable are the experts Facebook did not consult. Although Facebook says it spent 18 months developing the app, Common Sense Media and Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, two large nonprofits in the field, say they weren’t informed about it until weeks or days before the app’s debut."
- Here are all the reasons you might need to use a VPN (Mashable) "Right now there's definite cause for concern. Last March, the Senate voted to permit internet providers to sell customers' browsing history without their knowledge or approval. Then in November, the FCC scrapped Obama-era net neutrality regulations, giving ISPs even broader control over the data traveling over their networks."
TRUMPTEL:
- Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Says He Paid Stormy Daniels Out of His Own Pocket (NYT) "In the most detailed explanation of the 2016 payment made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, Mr. Cohen, who worked as a counsel to the Trump Organization for more than a decade, said he was not reimbursed for the payment."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- How the US Military Helped Invent Cheetos (Wired) "The army placed its first order for processed cheese–which at the beginning, came in only one flavor: white—during World War I, buying twenty‑five million quarter‑pound tins from Kraft. This single act probably established Kraft’s century‑long (and still going strong) food industry hegemony. By the time World War II rolled around, the military was a raving cheeseaholic, consuming the dairy product by itself, on sandwiches, or as sauces for vegetables, potatoes, and pasta."
TODAY'S SONG:
- My Funny Valentine (Frank Sinatra)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
ANATOMY OF AN INFOPOCALYPSE
TOP OF THE NEWS:
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse. (BuzzFeed) "...Aviv Ovadya realized there was something fundamentally wrong with the internet... The web and the information ecosystem that had developed around it was wildly unhealthy, Ovadya argued. The incentives that governed its biggest platforms were calibrated to reward information that was often misleading and polarizing, or both. Today Ovadya and a cohort of loosely affiliated researchers and academics are anxiously looking ahead — toward a future that is alarmingly dystopian. But it’s what he sees coming next that will really scare the shit out of you. That future, according to Ovadya, will arrive with a slew of slick, easy-to-use, and eventually seamless technological tools for manipulating perception and falsifying reality, for which terms have already been coined — 'reality apathy,' 'automated laser phishing,' and 'human puppets.' Technologies that can be used to enhance and distort what is real are evolving faster than our ability to understand and control or mitigate it. Ovadya’s premonitions are particularly terrifying given the ease with which our democracy has already been manipulated by the most rudimentary, blunt-force misinformation techniques."
- Inside Facebook's Two Years of Hell (Wired) "...the ensuing battle over Trending Topics did more than just dominate a few news cycles. In ways that are only fully visible now, it set the stage for the most tumultuous two years of Facebook’s existence—triggering a chain of events that would distract and confuse the company while larger disasters began to engulf it. ...most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege. Of a series of external threats, defensive internal calculations, and false starts that delayed Facebook’s reckoning with its impact on global affairs and its users’ minds. And—in the tale’s final chapters—of the company’s earnest attempt to redeem itself. It appears that Facebook did not...carefully think through the implications of becoming the dominant force in the news industry. The most important consequence of the Trending Topics controversy...was that Facebook became wary of doing anything that might look like stifling conservative news. While Facebook grappled internally with what it was becoming...Donald Trump’s presidential campaign staff faced no such confusion. Facebook was the way to run the most effective direct-marketing political operation in history. Trump’s candidacy also proved to be a wonderful tool for a new class of scammers pumping out massively viral and entirely fake stories. It’s not easy to recognize that the machine you’ve built to bring people together is being used to tear them apart... As 2017 wore on...the company began to realize it had been attacked by a foreign influence operation. So what is it: publisher or platform? Facebook seems to have finally recognized that it is quite clearly both."
- Why Your Brain Clings To False Beliefs (Even When It Knows Better) (FastCompany) "...our default is to believe that what we hear and read is true. The bigger risk is in failing to update our beliefs when new information arises... ...we still form beliefs without vetting most of them, and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- Context Matters. The Stock Market Drop Is Less Scary Than It Seems (NYT) "There is an important idea to keep in mind at a time like this: Take the long view.The last 18 months have been one of the least volatile periods for the stock market in modern times. But 2017 was weird. There were five such days in 2016, six in 2015 and four in 2014. In 2011, there were 21 trading days in which the S.&P. fell by more than 2 percent, nearly two per month."
HEALTH:
- The Flu is Killing Up to 4,000 Americans a Week (Fortune) "Deaths from influenza and pneumonia, which are closely tied to each other in the winter months, were responsible for 1 of every 10 deaths last week, and that’s likely to rise... There were 40,414 deaths in the U.S. during the third week of 2018, the most recent data available, and 4,064 were from pneumonia or influenza, according to the CDC data."
- The flu and airports: Here’s how to stay healthy in these disgusting germ havens (FastCompany) "A recent study by insurancequotes.com tested 18 surfaces inside airplanes and terminals at three major U.S. airports, and there was one item that was more disgusting than any other: self-help ticketing kiosks. ...other places to avoid in the airport include drinking fountain buttons and the locks on the bathroom stalls. In general, though, bathrooms were cleaner than many other places in the airport, probably because they’re regularly swabbed down. Still, wash your hands when you’re done in there."
MORE #METOO:
- The White House Response to Rob Porter’s Resignation Is Sickening (National Review) "The domestic-violence accusations against Rob Porter are credible and despicable... These weren’t just random, baseless accusations, as some detractors would have you believe. President Trump thinks 'you have to remember that' Porter denies the allegations, but I think you’d be better off remembering that there is a mountain of actual evidence supporting their claims. These women did not just flippantly accuse Porter. Not only did one produce a photo, and another produce an order of protection (note: they don’t just hand out orders of protection for no reason!), but both of these women also detailed their abuse to the FBI."
- A Reckoning with Women Awaits Trump (New Yorker) "Sooner or later, Trump’s satraps and lieutenants, present and former, come to betray a vivid sense of just how imperilled and imperilling this Presidency is. 'You watch. The time has come,' he [Steve Bannon] said. 'Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch. This is a definitional moment in the culture. It’ll never be the same going forward... The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history.'"
NEWS:
- Former Senior FBI Official Is Leading BuzzFeed’s Effort to Verify Trump Dossier (Foreign Policy) "For the last six months, a team led by a former top FBI and White House cybersecurity official has been traveling the globe on a secret mission to verify parts of the Trump dossier... Their client: BuzzFeed, the news organization that first published the dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, which is now being sued over its explosive allegations. With the special counsel probe under wraps, the BuzzFeed court case could represent the first public airing of an investigation into the veracity of some of the dossier’s claims."
- The Dumb Controversy over the Schiff Memo (National Review) "Aware that they are firing blanks, committee Democrats evidently threaded the Schiff memo with some highly classified information. In essence, they are willing to play high-stakes poker with intelligence secrets, including sources and methods for gathering national-defense information, in order to induce Republicans to demand that the memo be suppressed. Then, of course, they bank on the Democrat-friendly media to shift the narrative from the vapidity of the Schiff memo’s contentions to the suggestion that Republicans must have something to hide."
- I Read the Grassley Memo, and I’m Still Not Outraged at the FBI (National Review) Editorial comment: This is the finest analysis of this issue I have read to date. "I’m with Trey Gowdy on the most consequential issue. Nothing revealed so far should impact the Mueller investigation. As he said very clearly, 'There is a Russia investigation without a dossier.' He’s right. He’s clearly articulated at least some of the reasons why — the dossier had nothing to do with George Papadopoulos, nothing to do with Donald Jr.’s meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, and nothing to do with obstruction of justice. But the list could go on. The dossier had nothing to do with with the existence of an apparent Russian effort to help Donald Trump. It had nothing to do with Trump’s decisions to surround himself with advisers like Papadopoulos, Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — people who each proved to have problematic ties to the Kremlin or Kremlin allies."
- Trump’s favorite general: Can Mattis check an impulsive president and still retain his trust? (WaPo) "These days, Mattis’s influence radiates across the government. In places such as Afghanistan and Somalia, he has been a force for stability, resisting the president’s instincts to withdraw. In Iran and North Korea, he has curbed Trump’s desire for a show of military strength. In his first year in the Pentagon, Mattis has been one of the least visible and most consequential members of Trump’s foreign policy team. In Situation Room meetings, he has established himself as a commanding voice, reining in discussions before they devolve into chaos. State Department ambassadors say they have spent more face-to-face time with him than they have their own boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson."
- The only certainty in Trump's budget: Oceans of red ink (Politico) "After Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s, deficits exploded in the same range as Trump’s now, when calculated as a percentage of the economy, or gross domestic product. But Reagan’s famous 'riverboat' gamble came when the total national debt was a fraction of what it is today. Trump is pushing the envelope when debt is already near 80 percent of GDP, leaving far less room to maneuver if the economy turns downward.Budget director Mick Mulvaney has all but conceded that next year’s deficit will top $1 trillion, a tipping point Republicans loudly denounced when it happened under Obama. Down the road, Mulvaney sees the picture improving by the end of the decade. But his chances of success rest very much on two planks: robust economic growth and persuading Republicans in Congress to backtrack on recent deals to raise domestic spending."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Facebook lost around 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year. 2018 won’t be much better. (Re/code) "Facebook has been losing its 'cool' factor for years, and young people have more options than ever for staying in touch with friends and family. Facebook’s service also serves as a digital record keeper — but many young people don’t seem to care about saving their life online, at least not publicly. That explains why Snapchat and Instagram, which offer popular features for sharing photos and videos that disappear, are growing in popularity among this demographic. Take the numbers with a grain of salt — eMarketer is an outside research firm so it doesn’t have the full picture that, say, Facebook has. But the fact that eMarketer is predicting declines across the board is a bad sign for Facebook regardless. Young people offer a good barometer for what is popular, but more importantly for Facebook, losing out on the next generation of internet users in the U.S. is troubling for the company’s long-term dominance."
- Sorry, Bedtime Readers: iPads Keep You Awake Even With Night Shift On (FastCompany) "A new study by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State shows that Night Shift’s effect on melatonin is negligible, although the color change could have a psychological effect."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- This might be the last Olympics without AI judges (Quartz) "Japanese company Fujitsu is developing software that uses data from 3D sensors to analyze gymnastics events like the pommel horse and floor routines... While it’s possible these measurements could take some bias out of the scoring process, experts warned...that increased reliance on technology could introduce new risks of digital tampering with algorithms."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- This Prolific Nerd Is Shaping the Future of Wikipedia (Ozzy) "Time magazine recently named Pruitt one of the 25 most influential people on the internet... ...Pruitt...[is] by far the most prolific English language Wikipedian — as the site’s editors are known — with more than 2.2 million edits pixeled into history (the next closest has completed a mere 1.8 million edits). ...Pruitt has created 30,000 articles on his own... On average, Pruitt says he spends three hours per day on Wikipedia..."
- 14 worms pulled from woman's eye after rare infection (USAToday) "Two other types of Thelazia eye worm infections had been seen in people before, but never this kind, according to Richard Bradbury of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Walls (Wingtip ft Delacey)
- Inside Facebook's Two Years of Hell (Wired) "...the ensuing battle over Trending Topics did more than just dominate a few news cycles. In ways that are only fully visible now, it set the stage for the most tumultuous two years of Facebook’s existence—triggering a chain of events that would distract and confuse the company while larger disasters began to engulf it. ...most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege. Of a series of external threats, defensive internal calculations, and false starts that delayed Facebook’s reckoning with its impact on global affairs and its users’ minds. And—in the tale’s final chapters—of the company’s earnest attempt to redeem itself. It appears that Facebook did not...carefully think through the implications of becoming the dominant force in the news industry. The most important consequence of the Trending Topics controversy...was that Facebook became wary of doing anything that might look like stifling conservative news. While Facebook grappled internally with what it was becoming...Donald Trump’s presidential campaign staff faced no such confusion. Facebook was the way to run the most effective direct-marketing political operation in history. Trump’s candidacy also proved to be a wonderful tool for a new class of scammers pumping out massively viral and entirely fake stories. It’s not easy to recognize that the machine you’ve built to bring people together is being used to tear them apart... As 2017 wore on...the company began to realize it had been attacked by a foreign influence operation. So what is it: publisher or platform? Facebook seems to have finally recognized that it is quite clearly both."
- Why Your Brain Clings To False Beliefs (Even When It Knows Better) (FastCompany) "...our default is to believe that what we hear and read is true. The bigger risk is in failing to update our beliefs when new information arises... ...we still form beliefs without vetting most of them, and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- Context Matters. The Stock Market Drop Is Less Scary Than It Seems (NYT) "There is an important idea to keep in mind at a time like this: Take the long view.The last 18 months have been one of the least volatile periods for the stock market in modern times. But 2017 was weird. There were five such days in 2016, six in 2015 and four in 2014. In 2011, there were 21 trading days in which the S.&P. fell by more than 2 percent, nearly two per month."
HEALTH:
- The Flu is Killing Up to 4,000 Americans a Week (Fortune) "Deaths from influenza and pneumonia, which are closely tied to each other in the winter months, were responsible for 1 of every 10 deaths last week, and that’s likely to rise... There were 40,414 deaths in the U.S. during the third week of 2018, the most recent data available, and 4,064 were from pneumonia or influenza, according to the CDC data."
- The flu and airports: Here’s how to stay healthy in these disgusting germ havens (FastCompany) "A recent study by insurancequotes.com tested 18 surfaces inside airplanes and terminals at three major U.S. airports, and there was one item that was more disgusting than any other: self-help ticketing kiosks. ...other places to avoid in the airport include drinking fountain buttons and the locks on the bathroom stalls. In general, though, bathrooms were cleaner than many other places in the airport, probably because they’re regularly swabbed down. Still, wash your hands when you’re done in there."
MORE #METOO:
- The White House Response to Rob Porter’s Resignation Is Sickening (National Review) "The domestic-violence accusations against Rob Porter are credible and despicable... These weren’t just random, baseless accusations, as some detractors would have you believe. President Trump thinks 'you have to remember that' Porter denies the allegations, but I think you’d be better off remembering that there is a mountain of actual evidence supporting their claims. These women did not just flippantly accuse Porter. Not only did one produce a photo, and another produce an order of protection (note: they don’t just hand out orders of protection for no reason!), but both of these women also detailed their abuse to the FBI."
- A Reckoning with Women Awaits Trump (New Yorker) "Sooner or later, Trump’s satraps and lieutenants, present and former, come to betray a vivid sense of just how imperilled and imperilling this Presidency is. 'You watch. The time has come,' he [Steve Bannon] said. 'Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch. This is a definitional moment in the culture. It’ll never be the same going forward... The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history.'"
NEWS:
- Former Senior FBI Official Is Leading BuzzFeed’s Effort to Verify Trump Dossier (Foreign Policy) "For the last six months, a team led by a former top FBI and White House cybersecurity official has been traveling the globe on a secret mission to verify parts of the Trump dossier... Their client: BuzzFeed, the news organization that first published the dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, which is now being sued over its explosive allegations. With the special counsel probe under wraps, the BuzzFeed court case could represent the first public airing of an investigation into the veracity of some of the dossier’s claims."
- The Dumb Controversy over the Schiff Memo (National Review) "Aware that they are firing blanks, committee Democrats evidently threaded the Schiff memo with some highly classified information. In essence, they are willing to play high-stakes poker with intelligence secrets, including sources and methods for gathering national-defense information, in order to induce Republicans to demand that the memo be suppressed. Then, of course, they bank on the Democrat-friendly media to shift the narrative from the vapidity of the Schiff memo’s contentions to the suggestion that Republicans must have something to hide."
- I Read the Grassley Memo, and I’m Still Not Outraged at the FBI (National Review) Editorial comment: This is the finest analysis of this issue I have read to date. "I’m with Trey Gowdy on the most consequential issue. Nothing revealed so far should impact the Mueller investigation. As he said very clearly, 'There is a Russia investigation without a dossier.' He’s right. He’s clearly articulated at least some of the reasons why — the dossier had nothing to do with George Papadopoulos, nothing to do with Donald Jr.’s meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, and nothing to do with obstruction of justice. But the list could go on. The dossier had nothing to do with with the existence of an apparent Russian effort to help Donald Trump. It had nothing to do with Trump’s decisions to surround himself with advisers like Papadopoulos, Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — people who each proved to have problematic ties to the Kremlin or Kremlin allies."
- Trump’s favorite general: Can Mattis check an impulsive president and still retain his trust? (WaPo) "These days, Mattis’s influence radiates across the government. In places such as Afghanistan and Somalia, he has been a force for stability, resisting the president’s instincts to withdraw. In Iran and North Korea, he has curbed Trump’s desire for a show of military strength. In his first year in the Pentagon, Mattis has been one of the least visible and most consequential members of Trump’s foreign policy team. In Situation Room meetings, he has established himself as a commanding voice, reining in discussions before they devolve into chaos. State Department ambassadors say they have spent more face-to-face time with him than they have their own boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson."
- The only certainty in Trump's budget: Oceans of red ink (Politico) "After Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s, deficits exploded in the same range as Trump’s now, when calculated as a percentage of the economy, or gross domestic product. But Reagan’s famous 'riverboat' gamble came when the total national debt was a fraction of what it is today. Trump is pushing the envelope when debt is already near 80 percent of GDP, leaving far less room to maneuver if the economy turns downward.Budget director Mick Mulvaney has all but conceded that next year’s deficit will top $1 trillion, a tipping point Republicans loudly denounced when it happened under Obama. Down the road, Mulvaney sees the picture improving by the end of the decade. But his chances of success rest very much on two planks: robust economic growth and persuading Republicans in Congress to backtrack on recent deals to raise domestic spending."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Facebook lost around 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year. 2018 won’t be much better. (Re/code) "Facebook has been losing its 'cool' factor for years, and young people have more options than ever for staying in touch with friends and family. Facebook’s service also serves as a digital record keeper — but many young people don’t seem to care about saving their life online, at least not publicly. That explains why Snapchat and Instagram, which offer popular features for sharing photos and videos that disappear, are growing in popularity among this demographic. Take the numbers with a grain of salt — eMarketer is an outside research firm so it doesn’t have the full picture that, say, Facebook has. But the fact that eMarketer is predicting declines across the board is a bad sign for Facebook regardless. Young people offer a good barometer for what is popular, but more importantly for Facebook, losing out on the next generation of internet users in the U.S. is troubling for the company’s long-term dominance."
- Sorry, Bedtime Readers: iPads Keep You Awake Even With Night Shift On (FastCompany) "A new study by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State shows that Night Shift’s effect on melatonin is negligible, although the color change could have a psychological effect."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- This might be the last Olympics without AI judges (Quartz) "Japanese company Fujitsu is developing software that uses data from 3D sensors to analyze gymnastics events like the pommel horse and floor routines... While it’s possible these measurements could take some bias out of the scoring process, experts warned...that increased reliance on technology could introduce new risks of digital tampering with algorithms."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- This Prolific Nerd Is Shaping the Future of Wikipedia (Ozzy) "Time magazine recently named Pruitt one of the 25 most influential people on the internet... ...Pruitt...[is] by far the most prolific English language Wikipedian — as the site’s editors are known — with more than 2.2 million edits pixeled into history (the next closest has completed a mere 1.8 million edits). ...Pruitt has created 30,000 articles on his own... On average, Pruitt says he spends three hours per day on Wikipedia..."
- 14 worms pulled from woman's eye after rare infection (USAToday) "Two other types of Thelazia eye worm infections had been seen in people before, but never this kind, according to Richard Bradbury of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Walls (Wingtip ft Delacey)
Monday, February 12, 2018
#METOO
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- As domestic abuse claims roil the White House, Trump says lives are being ruined ‘by a mere allegation’ (WaPo) "Trump's message also appeared to be a response to the larger national reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse of power, which has seen victims, mostly women, come forward to accuse dozens of prominent men in business, politics, entertainment and other realms. Trump has said almost nothing previously about the 'me too' movement, which has led to a reexamination of power dynamics and expectations for men and women in the workplace."
- Trump, Saying ‘Mere Allegation’ Ruins Lives, Appears to Doubt #MeToo Movement (NYT) "Mr. Trump’s tweet also echoed his response last year to allegations that Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Alabama, had molested underage girls. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Moore, who lost the campaign to the Democrat, Doug Jones."
- G.O.P. Squirms as Trump Veers Off Script With Abuse Remarks (NYT) "Republican congressional leaders and strategists have pleaded with lawmakers and candidates to stay focused on economic growth and December’s tax cuts, a message they hope will be their salvation before the elections in November. Then the president jumped into the controversy roiling over a former top aide accused by two former wives of abuse, defending him and offering no denunciation even for the idea of assaulting women. And the president went even further on Saturday, appearing to ignore victims of sexual abuse and seeming to raise doubts about the broader #MeToo movement. The president’s seeming indifference to those claims of abuse infuriated Republicans, who were already confronting a surge of activism from Democratic women driven to protest, raise money and run for office because of their fervent opposition to Mr. Trump."
- Before There Was #MeToo, There Was Mary Cunningham (NYT) "She decided to turn down Wall Street and move to Southfield, Mich., where Bendix was based. She started as Mr. Agee’s executive assistant and was soon promoted to vice president of strategic planning, a position that made Ms. Cunningham one of the highest-ranking female executives in the country. Ms. Cunningham, one of the first women ever to hold a leadership role at a Fortune 100 company, became the subject of a media frenzy in the early 1980s amid speculation and innuendo that she had slept her way to the top of Bendix Corporation, the auto parts manufacturer that Mr. Agee then helmed. (In a later article about that scandal, Forbes referred to Ms. Cunningham as 'undeniably appealing.') Ms. Cunningham has always said the two didn’t have a romantic relationship until years later, after she left Bendix. For his part, Mr. Agee said he had promoted the bright Harvard M.B.A. solely on her abilities."
- How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Changing Our Lives — and Our Politics (NY Mag) "But the real reason to panic may be that the contemporary relationship market is producing two things in great abundance: highly educated single women and less-educated, low-status single men. This trend is not caused by cheap sex — the real culprit is more likely women’s relative rise and men’s failure to adjust to the new economy — but has been exacerbated by cheap sex’s devaluation of marriage and fertility."
- How Silicon Valley Came to Be a Land of ‘Bros’ (NYT) "In 'Brotopia,' which hits book stores on Feb. 6, the secret sex parties are just a symptom of a much deeper problem that Silicon Valley’s tech industry has with its treatment of women. Ms. Chang’s examination of that issue coincides with the #MeToo moment and the broader debate about gender equality that it has sparked."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- One Cause of Market Turbulence: Computer-Driven Index Funds (NYT) "After propelling the market to historic highs, passive investment strategies — which follow a simple set of rules and are carried out by sophisticated computer programs, not humans — are among the factors fueling the market’s recent plunge. Indexing giants like BlackRock and Vanguard now own vast swaths of the market and are the largest shareholders in just about all the major companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index."
- Warren Buffett's playbook for a stock market correction (USAToday) "Corrections are normal and unpredictable. Nobody -- not analysts, the media, or even Buffett himself -- can tell you with accuracy when one will occur. Don't get upset or afraid when the market drops. Instead, recognize what is really happening from a long-term perspective -- the stock market is going 'on sale.' Whatever you do, don't panic and sell your stocks. When you see others panicking and headlines that say the market is in a tailspin, that's the time to look for bargains. Always try to keep some cash on hand, so you're able to take advantage of the bargains offered by market corrections."
- The Era of Fiscal Austerity Is Over. Here’s What Big Deficits Mean for the Economy. (NYT) "The trillion dollar question is how it will affect the economy. In the short run, expect some of the strongest economic growth the country has experienced in years, and some subtle but real benefits from a higher supply of Treasury bonds in a world that is thirsty for them. In the medium run, there is now more risk of surging inflation and higher interest rates — fears that were behind a steep stock market sell-off in the last two weeks. In the long run, the United States risks two grave problems. It may find itself with less flexibility to combat the next recession or unexpected crisis. And higher interest payments could prove a burden on the federal Treasury and on economic growth. This is particularly true given that the ballooning debt comes at a time when the economy is already strong and the costs of paying retirement benefits for baby boomers is starting to mount. It’s hard to overstate how abrupt the shift has been."
- A 100-Year Curse on GOP Presidents Might Explain Why Stocks Are Tumbling (Time) "'Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt has experienced a recession in his first two years in office,' says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for the research firm CFRA. Since stocks are a forward-looking gauge of the health of the economy — the market has historically begun to slide 7 1/2 months before the onset of a recession — this crash could be Wall Street’s way of saying it expects a recession later this year, Donald Trump’s second year in office. Right now, few economists think a recession is lurking, as jobs are being created at a healthy clip, wages are starting to lift, and economic activity seems to be accelerating, not slowing down."
NEWS:
- Rob Porter Is a National Security Scandal, Too (Politico) "As staff secretary, Porter held one of the most important, and under-appreciated, positions at the White House. The staff secretary normally is responsible for managing all information that flows to the president – usually including the secrets known only to a small handful of people – principally, President Trump and Chiefs of Staff Priebus and Kelly, and National Security Advisers Michael Flynn and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. News reports indicate that Porter was granted an 'interim security clearance.' If an employee receives an interim security clearance, he or she is allowed by law to serve in positions designated 'National Security/ Non-Critical Sensitive' or 'National Security/Critical Sensitive.' They cannot, however, be given a 'Special Sensitive' job, which requires a different level of clearance: Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information – also known as TS/SCI or TS/CodeWord. What does that mean? The staff secretary is the person who manages the paper flow to the Oval Office. It is hard to imagine that person does not have TS/SCI level clearance, as that would require the NSC staff to navigate around the staff secretary, rather than thru him/her."
- Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings (WaPo) "Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred 'style of learning,' according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m. Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the 'homework' that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable. The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon" and Dan Coats’s over-the-top defense of Trump’s intelligence briefings (WaPo)
- As domestic abuse claims roil the White House, Trump says lives are being ruined ‘by a mere allegation’ (WaPo) "Trump's message also appeared to be a response to the larger national reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse of power, which has seen victims, mostly women, come forward to accuse dozens of prominent men in business, politics, entertainment and other realms. Trump has said almost nothing previously about the 'me too' movement, which has led to a reexamination of power dynamics and expectations for men and women in the workplace."
- Trump, Saying ‘Mere Allegation’ Ruins Lives, Appears to Doubt #MeToo Movement (NYT) "Mr. Trump’s tweet also echoed his response last year to allegations that Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Alabama, had molested underage girls. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Moore, who lost the campaign to the Democrat, Doug Jones."
- G.O.P. Squirms as Trump Veers Off Script With Abuse Remarks (NYT) "Republican congressional leaders and strategists have pleaded with lawmakers and candidates to stay focused on economic growth and December’s tax cuts, a message they hope will be their salvation before the elections in November. Then the president jumped into the controversy roiling over a former top aide accused by two former wives of abuse, defending him and offering no denunciation even for the idea of assaulting women. And the president went even further on Saturday, appearing to ignore victims of sexual abuse and seeming to raise doubts about the broader #MeToo movement. The president’s seeming indifference to those claims of abuse infuriated Republicans, who were already confronting a surge of activism from Democratic women driven to protest, raise money and run for office because of their fervent opposition to Mr. Trump."
- Before There Was #MeToo, There Was Mary Cunningham (NYT) "She decided to turn down Wall Street and move to Southfield, Mich., where Bendix was based. She started as Mr. Agee’s executive assistant and was soon promoted to vice president of strategic planning, a position that made Ms. Cunningham one of the highest-ranking female executives in the country. Ms. Cunningham, one of the first women ever to hold a leadership role at a Fortune 100 company, became the subject of a media frenzy in the early 1980s amid speculation and innuendo that she had slept her way to the top of Bendix Corporation, the auto parts manufacturer that Mr. Agee then helmed. (In a later article about that scandal, Forbes referred to Ms. Cunningham as 'undeniably appealing.') Ms. Cunningham has always said the two didn’t have a romantic relationship until years later, after she left Bendix. For his part, Mr. Agee said he had promoted the bright Harvard M.B.A. solely on her abilities."
- How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Changing Our Lives — and Our Politics (NY Mag) "But the real reason to panic may be that the contemporary relationship market is producing two things in great abundance: highly educated single women and less-educated, low-status single men. This trend is not caused by cheap sex — the real culprit is more likely women’s relative rise and men’s failure to adjust to the new economy — but has been exacerbated by cheap sex’s devaluation of marriage and fertility."
- How Silicon Valley Came to Be a Land of ‘Bros’ (NYT) "In 'Brotopia,' which hits book stores on Feb. 6, the secret sex parties are just a symptom of a much deeper problem that Silicon Valley’s tech industry has with its treatment of women. Ms. Chang’s examination of that issue coincides with the #MeToo moment and the broader debate about gender equality that it has sparked."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- One Cause of Market Turbulence: Computer-Driven Index Funds (NYT) "After propelling the market to historic highs, passive investment strategies — which follow a simple set of rules and are carried out by sophisticated computer programs, not humans — are among the factors fueling the market’s recent plunge. Indexing giants like BlackRock and Vanguard now own vast swaths of the market and are the largest shareholders in just about all the major companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index."
- Warren Buffett's playbook for a stock market correction (USAToday) "Corrections are normal and unpredictable. Nobody -- not analysts, the media, or even Buffett himself -- can tell you with accuracy when one will occur. Don't get upset or afraid when the market drops. Instead, recognize what is really happening from a long-term perspective -- the stock market is going 'on sale.' Whatever you do, don't panic and sell your stocks. When you see others panicking and headlines that say the market is in a tailspin, that's the time to look for bargains. Always try to keep some cash on hand, so you're able to take advantage of the bargains offered by market corrections."
- The Era of Fiscal Austerity Is Over. Here’s What Big Deficits Mean for the Economy. (NYT) "The trillion dollar question is how it will affect the economy. In the short run, expect some of the strongest economic growth the country has experienced in years, and some subtle but real benefits from a higher supply of Treasury bonds in a world that is thirsty for them. In the medium run, there is now more risk of surging inflation and higher interest rates — fears that were behind a steep stock market sell-off in the last two weeks. In the long run, the United States risks two grave problems. It may find itself with less flexibility to combat the next recession or unexpected crisis. And higher interest payments could prove a burden on the federal Treasury and on economic growth. This is particularly true given that the ballooning debt comes at a time when the economy is already strong and the costs of paying retirement benefits for baby boomers is starting to mount. It’s hard to overstate how abrupt the shift has been."
- A 100-Year Curse on GOP Presidents Might Explain Why Stocks Are Tumbling (Time) "'Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt has experienced a recession in his first two years in office,' says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for the research firm CFRA. Since stocks are a forward-looking gauge of the health of the economy — the market has historically begun to slide 7 1/2 months before the onset of a recession — this crash could be Wall Street’s way of saying it expects a recession later this year, Donald Trump’s second year in office. Right now, few economists think a recession is lurking, as jobs are being created at a healthy clip, wages are starting to lift, and economic activity seems to be accelerating, not slowing down."
NEWS:
- Rob Porter Is a National Security Scandal, Too (Politico) "As staff secretary, Porter held one of the most important, and under-appreciated, positions at the White House. The staff secretary normally is responsible for managing all information that flows to the president – usually including the secrets known only to a small handful of people – principally, President Trump and Chiefs of Staff Priebus and Kelly, and National Security Advisers Michael Flynn and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. News reports indicate that Porter was granted an 'interim security clearance.' If an employee receives an interim security clearance, he or she is allowed by law to serve in positions designated 'National Security/ Non-Critical Sensitive' or 'National Security/Critical Sensitive.' They cannot, however, be given a 'Special Sensitive' job, which requires a different level of clearance: Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information – also known as TS/SCI or TS/CodeWord. What does that mean? The staff secretary is the person who manages the paper flow to the Oval Office. It is hard to imagine that person does not have TS/SCI level clearance, as that would require the NSC staff to navigate around the staff secretary, rather than thru him/her."
- Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings (WaPo) "Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred 'style of learning,' according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m. Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the 'homework' that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable. The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon" and Dan Coats’s over-the-top defense of Trump’s intelligence briefings (WaPo)
- U.S. Spies, Seeking to Retrieve Cyberweapons, Paid Russian Peddling Trump Secrets (NYT) "After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump... Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian... But instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data."
- As Britain Stumbles Over ‘Brexit,’ Support Grows for 2nd Vote (NYT) "Since a majority of Britons voted narrowly to leave the bloc more than 18 months ago, most politicians have treated a withdrawal, known as Brexit, as inviolable. Even amid signs of a slowing economy, few saw signs of a shift in public opinion. Until now. As the political stalemate drags on, and with business leaders issuing ever more urgent alarms about the threats to the economy, growing public doubts are beginning to register in some opinion polls. And opponents of Brexit are quietly cultivating what they see as that rising sentiment in their campaign to soften, if not reverse, the whole process."
- Fox News Removes a Top Executive’s Column on Olympic Team Diversity (NYT) "The column suggested, sarcastically, that the United States Olympic Committee adopt a new motto: 'Darker, Gayer, Different.' Its headline, 'In Olympics, let’s focus on the winner of the race — not the race of the winner,' prefaced a critique of American Olympic officials who had praised the diversity of the squad headed to this month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea."
- As DeVos Approves Education Plans, She Finds Skeptics in G.O.P. Governors (NYT) "The majority of states now have the green light from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to begin implementing a sweeping federal education law passed in 2015 to replace the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law. The law required every state education department to submit a plan. Ms. DeVos has approved 35 plans... Of those 35, six are from states where the governor refused to sign on... Three others that did not get a governor’s endorsement... Of the nine disputed plans, seven are opposed by Republican governors."
SCIENCE:
- Is Cape Town Thirsty Enough to Drink Seawater? (Wired) "If current projections hold, the South African city of 4 million will run out of water on May 11, known as Day Zero. The irony is that a whole sea of water laps at the shores of the coastal city. But if you wanted to drink it, you’d have to build an expensive, energy-intensive desalination facility. Cape Town is indeed rushing to bring such projects online, at least on a temporary basis, and in so doing is exposing a dire reality: Pockets of humanity around the world may have to rely on the sea to survive drought in the very near future. Because it’s likely that climate change is exacerbating this drought."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Kentucky Rushes to Remake Medicaid as Other States Prepare to Follow (NYT) "...Kentucky is rushing to roll out its first-in-the-nation plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job... Such restrictions are central to Republican efforts to profoundly change Medicaid... The ballooning deficits created by the budget deal that President Trump signed into law Friday and the recent tax bill are likely to add urgency to the party’s attempts to wring savings from entitlement programs."
SPORTS:
- Why baseball owners won’t pay up for free agents (WaPo) "The real explanation is that teams are intelligently aligning their behavior with changing information. Baseball, like the American economy generally in this era of high-quantity, high-velocity information, is more efficient at pricing assets and allocating resources than it was until recently. This intensified dynamic has winners and losers, but many more of the former than the latter. And to oppose this churning, in the national pastime or the nation itself, is to oppose the application of informed intelligence."
- Microsoft is trying to kill passwords. It can’t happen soon enough. (WaPo) "... the company said the next test version of its stripped-down Windows 10 S operating system will strip out passwords... But killing the password altogether will take more work and time — and the problem may get worse before it gets better. Yet while there is widespread agreement that passwords are awful, they linger like roaches in the corners of our digital lives. Alternatives such as fingerprint scans, retinal scans, voice recognition and other technologies can be hard for companies — particularly non-tech companies — to implement well."
- Welcome to the Post-Text Future (NYT) "If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London (New Yorker) "Every large city in the world has fatbergs. They are horrible lumps of fat and grease, often knitted together with wet wipes, condoms, and other bits of plastic junk."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Do What You Do (Junior J & Bright Sparks)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- Fox News Removes a Top Executive’s Column on Olympic Team Diversity (NYT) "The column suggested, sarcastically, that the United States Olympic Committee adopt a new motto: 'Darker, Gayer, Different.' Its headline, 'In Olympics, let’s focus on the winner of the race — not the race of the winner,' prefaced a critique of American Olympic officials who had praised the diversity of the squad headed to this month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea."
- As DeVos Approves Education Plans, She Finds Skeptics in G.O.P. Governors (NYT) "The majority of states now have the green light from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to begin implementing a sweeping federal education law passed in 2015 to replace the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law. The law required every state education department to submit a plan. Ms. DeVos has approved 35 plans... Of those 35, six are from states where the governor refused to sign on... Three others that did not get a governor’s endorsement... Of the nine disputed plans, seven are opposed by Republican governors."
SCIENCE:
- Is Cape Town Thirsty Enough to Drink Seawater? (Wired) "If current projections hold, the South African city of 4 million will run out of water on May 11, known as Day Zero. The irony is that a whole sea of water laps at the shores of the coastal city. But if you wanted to drink it, you’d have to build an expensive, energy-intensive desalination facility. Cape Town is indeed rushing to bring such projects online, at least on a temporary basis, and in so doing is exposing a dire reality: Pockets of humanity around the world may have to rely on the sea to survive drought in the very near future. Because it’s likely that climate change is exacerbating this drought."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Kentucky Rushes to Remake Medicaid as Other States Prepare to Follow (NYT) "...Kentucky is rushing to roll out its first-in-the-nation plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job... Such restrictions are central to Republican efforts to profoundly change Medicaid... The ballooning deficits created by the budget deal that President Trump signed into law Friday and the recent tax bill are likely to add urgency to the party’s attempts to wring savings from entitlement programs."
SPORTS:
- Why baseball owners won’t pay up for free agents (WaPo) "The real explanation is that teams are intelligently aligning their behavior with changing information. Baseball, like the American economy generally in this era of high-quantity, high-velocity information, is more efficient at pricing assets and allocating resources than it was until recently. This intensified dynamic has winners and losers, but many more of the former than the latter. And to oppose this churning, in the national pastime or the nation itself, is to oppose the application of informed intelligence."
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Physics of SpaceX's Wicked Double Booster Landing (Wired) "You might think the coolest part of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test was the Tesla with a spaceman riding inside, flying out into space. Yeah, sure, that part was cool. But for me, the best part was this footage of the Heavy's two side boosters returning to the launch pad."
- The Physics of SpaceX's Wicked Double Booster Landing (Wired) "You might think the coolest part of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test was the Tesla with a spaceman riding inside, flying out into space. Yeah, sure, that part was cool. But for me, the best part was this footage of the Heavy's two side boosters returning to the launch pad."
Booster Landing
Booster Landing (w/ Sonic Boom)
- Welcome to the Post-Text Future (NYT) "If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London (New Yorker) "Every large city in the world has fatbergs. They are horrible lumps of fat and grease, often knitted together with wet wipes, condoms, and other bits of plastic junk."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Do What You Do (Junior J & Bright Sparks)
Friday, February 9, 2018
THE PORTER DEBACLE
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Top Trump Aides Are Said to Have Long Known About Abuse Accusations (NYT) "It was unclear whether they [senior White House officials) knew the extent of the women’s allegations, though one former senior American official said that White House officials had been aware in August that the issue was preventing Mr. Porter from obtaining the security clearance he was seeking. Mr. Porter would...have been required to disclose the accusations on the standard form, known as the SF-86, that government employees are required to complete to serve in a national security position. The form asks about specific arrests, charges, convictions and protective orders currently in effect, then makes an open-ended request for the applicant to disclose any “public record civil court action” in which they have been involved in the past 10 years. If the F.B.I. becomes aware that someone has lied on the form or omitted responsive information, it can be disqualifying."
- Top White House officials knew of abuse allegations against top aide for months (WaPo) "White House Counsel Donald McGahn knew one year ago that staff secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives were prepared to make damaging accusations about him but allowed him to serve as an influential gatekeeper and aide to President Trump without investigating the accusations, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly learned this fall about the allegations of spousal abuse and that they were delaying Porter’s security clearance amid an ongoing FBI investigation. But Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president. White House spokesman Raj Shah said the White House was allowing the issue to play out through the security-clearance review process, arguing that it was the appropriate place for the allegations and Porter’s denials to be assessed."
- The White House’s Rob Porter debacle is a sign of incompetence or hubris — or both (WaPo) "It would be one thing for the White House to keep its powder dry as Porter faced allegations — to say what Kelly said at the end of his Wednesday statement: That 'every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation.' But the White House decided to, instead, provide Porter a ringing endorsement. It opted to provide the kind of statements you would expect if they were convinced of Porter's innocence. ...whether this was emotion or calculation, it is remarkable just how wrong the White House got this one. Reports indicate that Porter never received a full security clearance, despite his high-ranking role as staff secretary — a gatekeeper serving closely alongside Kelly. The reason, according to The Intercept, is that both ex-wives told the FBI during background interviews that he was abusive."
- John Kelly’s credibility is at risk after defending aide accused of domestic violence (WaPo) "Kelly’s luster has slowly eroded during his roughly six months as Trump’s top staffer — and some White House aides worry it may be acutely painful considering he takes personal pride in his honor as a lifelong public servant. But the cruel irony for Kelly may be that the very credibility that makes him a singular asset in this White House has become irreparably damaged by his work in it. Some senior aides acknowledge this administration has a serious credibility problem, in part because of the president’s erratic nature and propensity to utter falsehoods."
- Unwelcome Attention for John Kelly, the Man Enlisted to Bring Calm (NYT) "For now, it is Mr. Kelly who is in trouble. The president has little tolerance for aides who attract negative media attention that spills onto him, and in recent days Mr. Kelly has drawn a string of unwelcome headlines. He roiled negotiations over immigration legislation by declaring that some immigrants were “too lazy” to apply for legal status. And he initially defended a deputy accused by two ex-wives of physically abusing them."
- The Anti-Porter Conspiracy (National Review) "I’m having trouble understanding why Rob Porter had to resign his job as White House staff secretary (the person who manages the paper flow in the West Wing). Yes, yes, he was credibly accused of domestic abuse by two ex-wives. One produced a photo of her black eye and bruised cheek, the other had phoned 911 when he allegedly punched through the glass of her front door (they were separated) in an effort to break into her house. She obtained a protective order against him. Well, come on, nobody’s perfect."
LIFE:
- Sheryl Sandberg’s Accidental Revolution (Wired) "As Facebook’s chief operator, Sandberg holds one of the most iconic jobs in tech. In the nine years since she joined Facebook, Sandberg launched an ad business that has led the company to be worth $408 billion, helped take the company public, wrote a best-selling book on women in the workforce, and helmed a movement by the same name: Lean In. Sandberg’s whole self was always a bit more polished than everyone else’s. She was a paragon of efficiency. Then she lost her husband. 'All I wanted to do was survive,' she remembers. Just like that, Sandberg, the woman who’d written the book on confidence, had none."
- When You’re a ‘Digital Nomad,’ the World Is Your Office (NYT) "More than a mere chain of upscale hostels, Roam signals the crystallization of a moment long in the making. Roam aims to make dislocation easy and glamorous, transforming digital nomadism into a mainstream, off-the-rack proposition. With the rise of smartphones, roaming data plans and cheaper air travel, this strategy has proved popular. Nomad hubs have been cropping up anywhere a low cost of living intersects with a high quality of life, most often in Southeast Asia..."
- Our personalities are shaped by the climate we grew up in, new study says (WaPo) "Specifically, people who grew up in regions with average temperatures close to 72 degrees tend to be more agreeable, conscientiousness, emotionally stable, extroverted and open. These personality traits are what psychologists refer to as 'the big five.'"
NEWS:
- Ben Carson, or the tale of the disappearing Cabinet secretary (WaPo) "He [Carson], like the president, came to power by promising that an outsider would have the 'common sense' it takes to cure what ails us. In his new role, Carson still sees himself as a warrior against impending doom, but he’s battling contradictions on the side. He wants to be a good steward for an agency he calls the 'philanthropic' arm of the government, even if he doesn’t think of the government as a philanthropy."
TECHNOLOGY:
- How Cloud Computing Is Changing Management (HBR) "Likely outcomes of the move to cloud include changing how products are designed; closer collaboration between the corporate IT department and other business units, including sales, finance and forecasting; and more customer interaction, even to a point of jointly developing products with their consumers. In particular, new ways of writing and deploying software will encourage new types of faster-acting organizational designs. And the best way to anticipate how these changes will occur is to hear from companies already aggressively implementing them."
- “It’s not a drug, but it may as well be”: Expert opinions on whether kids are addicted to tech (Quartz) "Lustig studies what happens to our brains when they’re addicted, be it to sugar or heroin. He’s found that the brain responds to technology much in the same way it responds to other addictive substances."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- Team U.S.A Has Chosen Its Winter Olympics Flag Bearer (Time) "Olympic veteran and bronze medalist Erin Hamlin has been named the flag bearer for Team USA at the...Olympics opening ceremony on Friday... Hamlin was chosen to be the U.S. flag bearer after a vote by her teammates. and Shani Davis says U.S. flagbearer decision done 'dishonorably' off a coin toss (Chicago Tribune) "Hamlin and Davis were among eight nominees for the flagbearer role, and athletes from each of the eight winter sports federations — bobsled and skeleton, ski and snowboarding, figure skating, curling, biathlon, hockey, speedskating and luge — represented those nominees in a balloting that took place Wednesday night."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- ‘Haunted by tweets every single day’: Omarosa dishes to another ‘Big Brother’ contestant about her White House days (WaPo) "'There's a lot of people that want to stab me in the back, kind of similar to the White House,' Manigualt Newman during her first day in the house. 'The one thing that I learned from politics is you have to watch your back, and sometimes you have to watch your front, too.'"
- 2018’s new emoji will end the neglect of redheads (The Verge) "The 157 new emoji will join the 2,666 already in existence when the Unicode 11.0 standard is released in June. The emoji standard is rather like an alphabet, and the way each icon looks on your iPhone depends on how Apple interprets and represents it. Similarly, it’s up to Google to decide how emoji should look on its Android devices, and many Android phone makers also choose to design custom emoji of their own."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Voices Carry (Til Tuesday)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- Top White House officials knew of abuse allegations against top aide for months (WaPo) "White House Counsel Donald McGahn knew one year ago that staff secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives were prepared to make damaging accusations about him but allowed him to serve as an influential gatekeeper and aide to President Trump without investigating the accusations, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly learned this fall about the allegations of spousal abuse and that they were delaying Porter’s security clearance amid an ongoing FBI investigation. But Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president. White House spokesman Raj Shah said the White House was allowing the issue to play out through the security-clearance review process, arguing that it was the appropriate place for the allegations and Porter’s denials to be assessed."
- The White House’s Rob Porter debacle is a sign of incompetence or hubris — or both (WaPo) "It would be one thing for the White House to keep its powder dry as Porter faced allegations — to say what Kelly said at the end of his Wednesday statement: That 'every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation.' But the White House decided to, instead, provide Porter a ringing endorsement. It opted to provide the kind of statements you would expect if they were convinced of Porter's innocence. ...whether this was emotion or calculation, it is remarkable just how wrong the White House got this one. Reports indicate that Porter never received a full security clearance, despite his high-ranking role as staff secretary — a gatekeeper serving closely alongside Kelly. The reason, according to The Intercept, is that both ex-wives told the FBI during background interviews that he was abusive."
- John Kelly’s credibility is at risk after defending aide accused of domestic violence (WaPo) "Kelly’s luster has slowly eroded during his roughly six months as Trump’s top staffer — and some White House aides worry it may be acutely painful considering he takes personal pride in his honor as a lifelong public servant. But the cruel irony for Kelly may be that the very credibility that makes him a singular asset in this White House has become irreparably damaged by his work in it. Some senior aides acknowledge this administration has a serious credibility problem, in part because of the president’s erratic nature and propensity to utter falsehoods."
- Unwelcome Attention for John Kelly, the Man Enlisted to Bring Calm (NYT) "For now, it is Mr. Kelly who is in trouble. The president has little tolerance for aides who attract negative media attention that spills onto him, and in recent days Mr. Kelly has drawn a string of unwelcome headlines. He roiled negotiations over immigration legislation by declaring that some immigrants were “too lazy” to apply for legal status. And he initially defended a deputy accused by two ex-wives of physically abusing them."
- The Anti-Porter Conspiracy (National Review) "I’m having trouble understanding why Rob Porter had to resign his job as White House staff secretary (the person who manages the paper flow in the West Wing). Yes, yes, he was credibly accused of domestic abuse by two ex-wives. One produced a photo of her black eye and bruised cheek, the other had phoned 911 when he allegedly punched through the glass of her front door (they were separated) in an effort to break into her house. She obtained a protective order against him. Well, come on, nobody’s perfect."
LIFE:
- Sheryl Sandberg’s Accidental Revolution (Wired) "As Facebook’s chief operator, Sandberg holds one of the most iconic jobs in tech. In the nine years since she joined Facebook, Sandberg launched an ad business that has led the company to be worth $408 billion, helped take the company public, wrote a best-selling book on women in the workforce, and helmed a movement by the same name: Lean In. Sandberg’s whole self was always a bit more polished than everyone else’s. She was a paragon of efficiency. Then she lost her husband. 'All I wanted to do was survive,' she remembers. Just like that, Sandberg, the woman who’d written the book on confidence, had none."
- When You’re a ‘Digital Nomad,’ the World Is Your Office (NYT) "More than a mere chain of upscale hostels, Roam signals the crystallization of a moment long in the making. Roam aims to make dislocation easy and glamorous, transforming digital nomadism into a mainstream, off-the-rack proposition. With the rise of smartphones, roaming data plans and cheaper air travel, this strategy has proved popular. Nomad hubs have been cropping up anywhere a low cost of living intersects with a high quality of life, most often in Southeast Asia..."
- Our personalities are shaped by the climate we grew up in, new study says (WaPo) "Specifically, people who grew up in regions with average temperatures close to 72 degrees tend to be more agreeable, conscientiousness, emotionally stable, extroverted and open. These personality traits are what psychologists refer to as 'the big five.'"
NEWS:
- Ben Carson, or the tale of the disappearing Cabinet secretary (WaPo) "He [Carson], like the president, came to power by promising that an outsider would have the 'common sense' it takes to cure what ails us. In his new role, Carson still sees himself as a warrior against impending doom, but he’s battling contradictions on the side. He wants to be a good steward for an agency he calls the 'philanthropic' arm of the government, even if he doesn’t think of the government as a philanthropy."
TECHNOLOGY:
- How Cloud Computing Is Changing Management (HBR) "Likely outcomes of the move to cloud include changing how products are designed; closer collaboration between the corporate IT department and other business units, including sales, finance and forecasting; and more customer interaction, even to a point of jointly developing products with their consumers. In particular, new ways of writing and deploying software will encourage new types of faster-acting organizational designs. And the best way to anticipate how these changes will occur is to hear from companies already aggressively implementing them."
- “It’s not a drug, but it may as well be”: Expert opinions on whether kids are addicted to tech (Quartz) "Lustig studies what happens to our brains when they’re addicted, be it to sugar or heroin. He’s found that the brain responds to technology much in the same way it responds to other addictive substances."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- Team U.S.A Has Chosen Its Winter Olympics Flag Bearer (Time) "Olympic veteran and bronze medalist Erin Hamlin has been named the flag bearer for Team USA at the...Olympics opening ceremony on Friday... Hamlin was chosen to be the U.S. flag bearer after a vote by her teammates. and Shani Davis says U.S. flagbearer decision done 'dishonorably' off a coin toss (Chicago Tribune) "Hamlin and Davis were among eight nominees for the flagbearer role, and athletes from each of the eight winter sports federations — bobsled and skeleton, ski and snowboarding, figure skating, curling, biathlon, hockey, speedskating and luge — represented those nominees in a balloting that took place Wednesday night."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- ‘Haunted by tweets every single day’: Omarosa dishes to another ‘Big Brother’ contestant about her White House days (WaPo) "'There's a lot of people that want to stab me in the back, kind of similar to the White House,' Manigualt Newman during her first day in the house. 'The one thing that I learned from politics is you have to watch your back, and sometimes you have to watch your front, too.'"
- 2018’s new emoji will end the neglect of redheads (The Verge) "The 157 new emoji will join the 2,666 already in existence when the Unicode 11.0 standard is released in June. The emoji standard is rather like an alphabet, and the way each icon looks on your iPhone depends on how Apple interprets and represents it. Similarly, it’s up to Google to decide how emoji should look on its Android devices, and many Android phone makers also choose to design custom emoji of their own."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Voices Carry (Til Tuesday)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
Thursday, February 8, 2018
GIGGING THE GIG ECONOMY
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Is the Gig Economy Working? (New Yorker) "Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain. Normally, every efficiency has a winner and a loser. A service like Uber benefits the rider, who’s saving on the taxi fare she might otherwise pay, but makes drivers’ earnings less stable. Airbnb has made travel more affordable for people who wince at the bill of a decent hotel, yet it also means that tourism spending doesn’t make its way directly to the usual armies of full-time employees: housekeepers, bellhops, cooks. Instead of simply driving wealth down, it seemed, the gigging model was helping divert traditional service-worker earnings into more privileged pockets—causing what Schor calls a 'crowding out' of people dependent on such work. That distillation-coil effect, drawing wealth slowly upward, is largely invisible. On the ground, the atmosphere grows so steamy with transaction that it often seems to rain much needed cash."
- A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy (NYT) "On Tuesday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan... He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for massage. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it. While Uber has sold...'disruption' as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. For decades there had been no more than approximately 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York... In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber."
- 'Pay What You Want' Isn't What You Want (Wired) "I’d rather these companies pay their workers more. It’s maddening to be expected to subsidize their race-to-the-bottom price wars with my cash and conscience. ...no good can come of turning a basic transaction into a 'pay what you want' situation. Especially when it lets gig-economy tycoons offer some employees—ahem, contractors—less than a living wage."
- Despite Trump’s attempts to kill it, Obamacare is still pretty popular (Fast Company) "According to a new tally from the Associated Press, about 11.8 million have signed up for coverage this year. That’s 3% less than last year."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Photo Algorithms ID White Men Fine—Black Women, Not So Much (Wired) "The skewed accuracy appears to be due to underrepresentation of darker skin tones in the training data used to create the face-analysis algorithms. The disparity is the latest example in a growing collection of bloopers from AI systems that seem to have picked up societal biases around certain groups."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The Sticky, Untold Story of Cinnabon (Seattle Met) "Jerilyn Brusseau grew up making cinnamon rolls with her grandmother... ...she originally feared her grandmother’s cinnamon rolls would seem too ordinary... However those 'ordinary' fragrant pinwheels of dough and dark, sticky filling built a fan base that stretched down to Seattle. Cinnabon still calls Jerilyn for the occasional TV appearance; she’s become the confection’s wholesome origin story and even has an official nickname, Cinnamom. In all these years, she hasn’t grown weary of her association with cinnamon rolls: 'Never, they have so much magic in them.'"
TODAY'S SONG:
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy (NYT) "On Tuesday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan... He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for massage. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it. While Uber has sold...'disruption' as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. For decades there had been no more than approximately 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York... In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber."
- 'Pay What You Want' Isn't What You Want (Wired) "I’d rather these companies pay their workers more. It’s maddening to be expected to subsidize their race-to-the-bottom price wars with my cash and conscience. ...no good can come of turning a basic transaction into a 'pay what you want' situation. Especially when it lets gig-economy tycoons offer some employees—ahem, contractors—less than a living wage."
and
- Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs? (NYT) "So am I paranoid? Or not paranoid enough? A much-quoted 2013 study by the University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science — surely the most sober of institutions — estimated that 47 percent of current jobs, including insurance underwriter, sports referee and loan officer, are at risk of falling victim to automation, perhaps within a decade or two. Just this week, the McKinsey Global Institute released a report that found that a third of American workers may have to switch jobs in the next dozen or so years because of A.I. But is it really that dire?"
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- An End to Airline Red Tape—Or Consumer Protection? (WSJ-Paywall) "If the airlines get what they want, the government would weaken the tarmac delay rule—which imposes hefty fines for stranding passengers on planes for long periods—and eliminate a requirement that they show the full price of a ticket when people shop. Airlines also asked the DOT to scrap the 24-hour grace period for a full refund when buying a ticket and eliminate a rule that requires them to honor tickets sold for 'mistake fares,' among other changes."
- The Economy Is Fine: 7 Reasons Investors Shouldn't Panic (Kiplinger) "U.S. GDP Growth Is Accelerating. The Entire Global Economy Is Expanding. The Tax Overhaul Will Goose the Economy Even More. Business Spending Is Poised to Jump. Home Building Has a Good Year Ahead. Wages Are Rising. Consumer Spending Continues to Rise."
- Athleisure has overtaken athletics in the sneaker industry (Quartz) "...performance sneakers are struggling in a way the industry has possibly never seen. As sneakers have grown into the everyday footwear of choice—even in the office—for millions of Americans, performance shoes have been pushed aside by styles that co-opt their looks and comfort but shed their athletic intent."
NEWS:
- Against the Spending Bill (National Review) "A two-year spending deal means Republicans probably won’t go to the trouble of passing a formal budget for 2019. That would mean no chance for a so-called reconciliation process that could allow them to enact meaningful legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate."
- The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco (Foreign Policy) "But why the focus on San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained, and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from the San Francisco consulate. According to multiple former intelligence officials, while these 'strange activities' were not limited to San Francisco or its environs, they originated far more frequently from the San Francisco consulate than any other Russian diplomatic facility in the United States, including the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. As one former intelligence source put it, suspected Russian spies were 'doing peculiar things in places they shouldn’t be.' ...the San Francisco consulate served a unique role in Russian intelligence-gathering operations in the United States, as an important, and perhaps unrivaled, hub for its technical collection efforts here. ...U.S. officials have been keenly aware that, because of the consulate’s proximity to Silicon Valley, educational institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, and the large number of nearby defense contractors and researchers — including two Energy Department-affiliated nuclear weapons laboratories — Russia has used San Francisco as a focal point for espionage activity."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs? (NYT) "So am I paranoid? Or not paranoid enough? A much-quoted 2013 study by the University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science — surely the most sober of institutions — estimated that 47 percent of current jobs, including insurance underwriter, sports referee and loan officer, are at risk of falling victim to automation, perhaps within a decade or two. Just this week, the McKinsey Global Institute released a report that found that a third of American workers may have to switch jobs in the next dozen or so years because of A.I. But is it really that dire?"
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- An End to Airline Red Tape—Or Consumer Protection? (WSJ-Paywall) "If the airlines get what they want, the government would weaken the tarmac delay rule—which imposes hefty fines for stranding passengers on planes for long periods—and eliminate a requirement that they show the full price of a ticket when people shop. Airlines also asked the DOT to scrap the 24-hour grace period for a full refund when buying a ticket and eliminate a rule that requires them to honor tickets sold for 'mistake fares,' among other changes."
- The Economy Is Fine: 7 Reasons Investors Shouldn't Panic (Kiplinger) "U.S. GDP Growth Is Accelerating. The Entire Global Economy Is Expanding. The Tax Overhaul Will Goose the Economy Even More. Business Spending Is Poised to Jump. Home Building Has a Good Year Ahead. Wages Are Rising. Consumer Spending Continues to Rise."
- Athleisure has overtaken athletics in the sneaker industry (Quartz) "...performance sneakers are struggling in a way the industry has possibly never seen. As sneakers have grown into the everyday footwear of choice—even in the office—for millions of Americans, performance shoes have been pushed aside by styles that co-opt their looks and comfort but shed their athletic intent."
NEWS:
- Against the Spending Bill (National Review) "A two-year spending deal means Republicans probably won’t go to the trouble of passing a formal budget for 2019. That would mean no chance for a so-called reconciliation process that could allow them to enact meaningful legislation with only 50 votes in the Senate."
- The Secret History of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco (Foreign Policy) "But why the focus on San Francisco? Why not close one of Russia’s other three consulates, in New York, Seattle, or Houston? The answer, I discovered, appears to revolve around an intensive, sustained, and mystifying pattern of espionage emanating from the San Francisco consulate. According to multiple former intelligence officials, while these 'strange activities' were not limited to San Francisco or its environs, they originated far more frequently from the San Francisco consulate than any other Russian diplomatic facility in the United States, including the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. As one former intelligence source put it, suspected Russian spies were 'doing peculiar things in places they shouldn’t be.' ...the San Francisco consulate served a unique role in Russian intelligence-gathering operations in the United States, as an important, and perhaps unrivaled, hub for its technical collection efforts here. ...U.S. officials have been keenly aware that, because of the consulate’s proximity to Silicon Valley, educational institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, and the large number of nearby defense contractors and researchers — including two Energy Department-affiliated nuclear weapons laboratories — Russia has used San Francisco as a focal point for espionage activity."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Despite Trump’s attempts to kill it, Obamacare is still pretty popular (Fast Company) "According to a new tally from the Associated Press, about 11.8 million have signed up for coverage this year. That’s 3% less than last year."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Photo Algorithms ID White Men Fine—Black Women, Not So Much (Wired) "The skewed accuracy appears to be due to underrepresentation of darker skin tones in the training data used to create the face-analysis algorithms. The disparity is the latest example in a growing collection of bloopers from AI systems that seem to have picked up societal biases around certain groups."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The Sticky, Untold Story of Cinnabon (Seattle Met) "Jerilyn Brusseau grew up making cinnamon rolls with her grandmother... ...she originally feared her grandmother’s cinnamon rolls would seem too ordinary... However those 'ordinary' fragrant pinwheels of dough and dark, sticky filling built a fan base that stretched down to Seattle. Cinnabon still calls Jerilyn for the occasional TV appearance; she’s become the confection’s wholesome origin story and even has an official nickname, Cinnamom. In all these years, she hasn’t grown weary of her association with cinnamon rolls: 'Never, they have so much magic in them.'"
TODAY'S SONG:
- Blue In Green (Miles Davis)
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
THE S&% EDITION
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn (NYT) "Even as smartphones have made it easier for teenagers to watch porn, sex education in the United States — where abstinence-based sex education remains the norm — is meager. ...the boys started to gather their backpacks to head to a class known as Porn Literacy. The course, with the official title The Truth About Pornography: A Pornography-Literacy Curriculum for High School Students Designed to Reduce Sexual and Dating Violence, is a recent addition to Start Strong, a peer-leadership program for teenagers headquartered in Boston’s South End and funded by the city’s public-health agency. During most of the year, the teenagers learn about healthy relationships, dating violence and L.G.B.T. issues, often through group discussions, role-playing and other exercises."
- How the internet changed the market for sex (Quartz) "Most sex workers are willing adults who work independently. Since moving online, illegal sex work has become safer, easier, and more profitable. Is that a good thing? There are now more women selling sex, more overall encounters, and—unlike in many other industries disrupted by the web—higher wages for workers. ...the overall rise in the price for sex reflects higher costs, like health care and rent in the urban areas where most sex workers work. But it also seems to indicate higher price markups, which is surprising. You might assume that an online marketplace that generates more competition and transparency would result in lower markups—like what Amazon is doing to the retail industry. After all, why would someone pay a sex worker $700 an hour when they can get a similar service for $200?"
- The Sex Toy Shops That Switched On a Feminist Revolution (NYT) "Jumping off of the Masters and Johnson bombshell that women who didn’t climax during intercourse could have multiple orgasms with a vibrator, Koedt called for replacing Freud’s fantasy of 'mature' orgasm with women’s lived truth: It was all about the clitoris. That assertion single-handedly, as it were, made female self-love a political act, and claimed orgasm as a serious step to women’s overall emancipation. It also threatened many men, who feared obsolescence, or at the very least, loss of primacy."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- Ignore the stock market rollercoaster, the sell-off in bonds is what matters (Quartz) "The rise in bond yields sparked a panic among equity traders that wiped off trillions of dollars in value from global stock markets in recent days. As the thinking goes, higher interest rates will lead to tighter financial conditions, constricting the flow of capital, reducing the demand for equities. Higher bond yields also dampen demand for stocks because the comparative dividend yield is less attractive, meaning that investors can get decent relative returns from safer government bonds."
HEALTH:
- How Cancer Immunotherapy Is Getting Even Better (Time) "CAR T cell therapy trains the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells in the blood; scientists take people’s own immune cells (T cells) and genetically engineer them to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The immune system can then attack cancer cells in the same way it does bacteria and viruses, and the therapy can lead to remissions from blood cancers of up to 80%."
MORE SMOKE:
- Bob Mueller’s Investigation Is Larger—and Further Along—Than You Think (Wired) "What are the known knowns of the Mueller investigation, and where might it be heading? We speak about the 'Mueller probe' as a single entity, but it’s important to understand that there are no fewer than five (known) separate investigations under the broad umbrella of the special counsel’s office—some threads of these investigations may overlap or intersect, some may be completely free-standing, and some potential targets may be part of multiple threads. 1. Preexisting Business Deals and Money Laundering. 2. Russian Information Operations. 3. Active Cyber Intrusions. 4. Russian Campaign Contacts. 5. Obstruction of Justice. All of these pieces of public evidence, the 'known knowns,' point to one conclusion: Bob Mueller has a busy few weeks ahead of him—and the sturm und drang of the last week will likely only intensify as more of the investigation comes into public view."
NEWS:
- The Nunes Memo Attacks the Legitimacy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Time) "The FISA Court is a special, powerful tribunal of federal district judges, appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. It is authorized by Congress to allow federal law enforcement officials to surveil U.S. citizens suspected of spying for, or otherwise assisting, hostile foreign powers. The fundamental question raised by the Nunes Memo is not political; it is factual. Did DOJ and FBI officials mislead the FISA Court by withholding material information that would likely have affected the surveillance authorization for Carter Page? The answer to this question lies within the factual record that the FISA Court has either: (1) already gathered; or (2) can readily obtain through standard judicial inquiry. Courts are in the business of making such factual determinations: it’s their bread and butter. And we stake our entire judicial system on the assumption that federal judges do not exercise political bias when they adjudicate facts. Stated differently, the apprehension that factual findings may have political consequences should not be a judicial concern."
- The FISA-Gate Boomerangs (National Review) "Some things still do not add up about the so-called Steele dossier, FISA warrants, the Nunes memo, and the hysterical Democratic reaction to it. Both Watergate and Iran-Contra were multiyear affairs. FISA-gate may last longer, given that the media this time around are not a watchdog, but an enabler, of government misconduct. We are at the very beginning of the exposure of wronging by Obama-era DOJ and FBI officials — and their superiors — and have not begun to learn exactly why and how American citizens were improperly monitored, and by whom. In one of the strangest moments in the history of American journalism, Washington reporters and agencies, known for their loud interests in protecting civil liberties, are either silent or working to suppress news of these scandals, and they may well soon rue their own complacency."
- Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller? (NY Mag) "If there’s a conspiracy, he suspects, it’s one against the president; where others see collusion, he sees 'McCarthyism.' In his eyes, the Russia-Trump story is a shiny red herring — one that distracts from the failures, corruption, and malice of the very Establishment so invested in promoting it. All this has led to one of the less-anticipated developments of the Donald Trump presidency: Glenn Greenwald, Fox News darling. For his sins, Greenwald has been embraced by opportunistic #MAGA partisans seeking to discredit the Trump-Russia story."
- At Yale, we conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals. The results say a lot about our political divisions (WaPo) "... over a decade now of research in political psychology consistently shows that how physically threatened or fearful a person feels is a key factor — although clearly not the only one — in whether he or she holds conservative or liberal attitudes. Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do."
READ THIS:
- The Frackers (Gregory Zuckerman) "Far from the limelight, Aubrey McClendon, Harold Hamm, Mark Papa, and other wildcatters were determined to tap massive deposits of oil and gas that Exxon, Chevron, and other giants had dismissed as a waste of time. By experimenting with hydraulic fracturing through extremely dense shale—a process now known as fracking—the wildcatters started a revolution. In just a few years, they solved America’s dependence on imported energy, triggered a global environmental controversy—and made and lost astonishing fortunes."
TECHNOLOGY:
- This simple solution to smartphone addiction is now used in over 600 U.S. schools (WaPo) "People entering a school, courtroom, concert, medical facility, wedding, or other event are asked to slip their phones into the pouches when they enter. Once locked, they stay with their owners until people are ready to leave the premises and the devices are released from their tiny prisons. The pouches can be rented for a single event or on extended leases. They are now used in over 600 U.S. schools. The effects are immediate: at first, people seem agitated and unsure what to do with their hands. But then they adjust. 'In line at the concession stand you’ll overhear people talking about the artist and the show, and then about the fact that they’re having this conversation because they don’t have phones,' Dugoni said. 'You’ll see people fully engaged with each other talking, and the feel of it is radically different.'"
- Ford wants to patent a driverless police car that ambushes lawbreakers using artificial intelligence (WaPo) "Imagine a police car that issues tickets without even pulling you over. But Ford noted in a statement that even if the patent is approved, it does not ensure that a product will be produced."
- Inside the Race to Hack the Human Brain (Wired) "All of these ambitious plans face the same obstacle, however: The brain has 86 billion neurons, and nobody understands how they all work. Scientists have made impressive progress uncovering, and even manipulating, the neural circuitry behind simple brain functions, but things such as imagination or creativity—and memory—are so complex that all the neuroscientists in the world may never solve them."
- Watch the live feed from SpaceX’s Roadster-driving Starman in space (TechCrunch) "The live stream switches between cameras, including one mounted on the hood, one behind the astronaut’s shoulder and one facing back down to Earth. It’s quite the view, and it’s amazing."
TRUMPTEL:
- Trump’s ‘marching orders’ to the Pentagon: Plan a grand military parade (WaPo) "Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it."
- Why the ‘Cult of Trump’ Has Taken Hold (National Review) "There has been a sea change on the right with Trump at the helm. To anyone who hasn’t lived and breathed in conservative circles, this change is both shocking and hard to comprehend. Three distinct factors go a long way to explain it. First, never before in modern American history have we had a president so transparently demanding not just loyalty but praise from his subordinates and political allies. The other two factors say more about the rest of us than they do about Trump. One is the tribal belief that the other party is an existential enemy that will do anything. And so we must be just as ruthless. Which brings me to the third factor. Yes, there is a cult of Trump. But that’s because we have a cult of the presidency in this country. It infects not just our understanding of the office, but of the person holding it."
- A Year of Achievement (National Review) "As President Trump finished his first full year in office, he could look back at an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president — much less by one who arrived in office as a private-sector billionaire without either prior political office or military service. Never Trump Republicans acknowledge that Trump has realized much of what they once only dreamed of — from tax reform and deregulation to a government about-face on climate change, the ending of the Obamacare individual mandate, and expansion of energy production."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom (NYT) "Not just any broom, but one that they thought could be essential to the sport of curling, which relies on the best broom handling out there as teams strategically cajole a polished granite rock across a sheet of ice.They wound up calling it the SmartBroom, and in a sport that can come across as vaguely primordial, their piece of 21st-century gadgetry could play a role in determining who wins gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Axe-Throwing Bars: Why Mixing Weapons And Beer Is Surprisingly Good Business (Fast Company) "Nestled alongside trendy eateries in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, you’ll find Kick Axe, a 7,000-square-foot venue filled with 10 axe-throwing ranges ... The point is to hurl axes at bullseye targets within the confines of a cozy lodge setting. A fee of $35 buys you 75 minutes."
- Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read (Atlantic) "For many, the experience of consuming culture is like filling up a bathtub, soaking in it, and then watching the water run down the drain. The 'forgetting curve,' as it’s called, is steepest during the first 24 hours after you learn something. Exactly how much you forget, percentage-wise, varies, but unless you review the material, much of it slips down the drain after the first day, with more to follow in the days after, leaving you with a fraction of what you took in."
- U.S. Postal Service to unveil Mister Rogers stamp next month (AP) "'The Forever stamp will be unveiled ... in the same Pittsburgh public television station where 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' was produced. The stamp features Fred Rogers and the royal puppet King Friday XIII."
TODAY'S SONG:
- I Want Your Sex (George Michael)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn (NYT) "Even as smartphones have made it easier for teenagers to watch porn, sex education in the United States — where abstinence-based sex education remains the norm — is meager. ...the boys started to gather their backpacks to head to a class known as Porn Literacy. The course, with the official title The Truth About Pornography: A Pornography-Literacy Curriculum for High School Students Designed to Reduce Sexual and Dating Violence, is a recent addition to Start Strong, a peer-leadership program for teenagers headquartered in Boston’s South End and funded by the city’s public-health agency. During most of the year, the teenagers learn about healthy relationships, dating violence and L.G.B.T. issues, often through group discussions, role-playing and other exercises."
- How the internet changed the market for sex (Quartz) "Most sex workers are willing adults who work independently. Since moving online, illegal sex work has become safer, easier, and more profitable. Is that a good thing? There are now more women selling sex, more overall encounters, and—unlike in many other industries disrupted by the web—higher wages for workers. ...the overall rise in the price for sex reflects higher costs, like health care and rent in the urban areas where most sex workers work. But it also seems to indicate higher price markups, which is surprising. You might assume that an online marketplace that generates more competition and transparency would result in lower markups—like what Amazon is doing to the retail industry. After all, why would someone pay a sex worker $700 an hour when they can get a similar service for $200?"
- The Sex Toy Shops That Switched On a Feminist Revolution (NYT) "Jumping off of the Masters and Johnson bombshell that women who didn’t climax during intercourse could have multiple orgasms with a vibrator, Koedt called for replacing Freud’s fantasy of 'mature' orgasm with women’s lived truth: It was all about the clitoris. That assertion single-handedly, as it were, made female self-love a political act, and claimed orgasm as a serious step to women’s overall emancipation. It also threatened many men, who feared obsolescence, or at the very least, loss of primacy."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- Ignore the stock market rollercoaster, the sell-off in bonds is what matters (Quartz) "The rise in bond yields sparked a panic among equity traders that wiped off trillions of dollars in value from global stock markets in recent days. As the thinking goes, higher interest rates will lead to tighter financial conditions, constricting the flow of capital, reducing the demand for equities. Higher bond yields also dampen demand for stocks because the comparative dividend yield is less attractive, meaning that investors can get decent relative returns from safer government bonds."
HEALTH:
- How Cancer Immunotherapy Is Getting Even Better (Time) "CAR T cell therapy trains the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells in the blood; scientists take people’s own immune cells (T cells) and genetically engineer them to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The immune system can then attack cancer cells in the same way it does bacteria and viruses, and the therapy can lead to remissions from blood cancers of up to 80%."
MORE SMOKE:
- Bob Mueller’s Investigation Is Larger—and Further Along—Than You Think (Wired) "What are the known knowns of the Mueller investigation, and where might it be heading? We speak about the 'Mueller probe' as a single entity, but it’s important to understand that there are no fewer than five (known) separate investigations under the broad umbrella of the special counsel’s office—some threads of these investigations may overlap or intersect, some may be completely free-standing, and some potential targets may be part of multiple threads. 1. Preexisting Business Deals and Money Laundering. 2. Russian Information Operations. 3. Active Cyber Intrusions. 4. Russian Campaign Contacts. 5. Obstruction of Justice. All of these pieces of public evidence, the 'known knowns,' point to one conclusion: Bob Mueller has a busy few weeks ahead of him—and the sturm und drang of the last week will likely only intensify as more of the investigation comes into public view."
NEWS:
- The Nunes Memo Attacks the Legitimacy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Time) "The FISA Court is a special, powerful tribunal of federal district judges, appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States. It is authorized by Congress to allow federal law enforcement officials to surveil U.S. citizens suspected of spying for, or otherwise assisting, hostile foreign powers. The fundamental question raised by the Nunes Memo is not political; it is factual. Did DOJ and FBI officials mislead the FISA Court by withholding material information that would likely have affected the surveillance authorization for Carter Page? The answer to this question lies within the factual record that the FISA Court has either: (1) already gathered; or (2) can readily obtain through standard judicial inquiry. Courts are in the business of making such factual determinations: it’s their bread and butter. And we stake our entire judicial system on the assumption that federal judges do not exercise political bias when they adjudicate facts. Stated differently, the apprehension that factual findings may have political consequences should not be a judicial concern."
- The FISA-Gate Boomerangs (National Review) "Some things still do not add up about the so-called Steele dossier, FISA warrants, the Nunes memo, and the hysterical Democratic reaction to it. Both Watergate and Iran-Contra were multiyear affairs. FISA-gate may last longer, given that the media this time around are not a watchdog, but an enabler, of government misconduct. We are at the very beginning of the exposure of wronging by Obama-era DOJ and FBI officials — and their superiors — and have not begun to learn exactly why and how American citizens were improperly monitored, and by whom. In one of the strangest moments in the history of American journalism, Washington reporters and agencies, known for their loud interests in protecting civil liberties, are either silent or working to suppress news of these scandals, and they may well soon rue their own complacency."
- Does Glenn Greenwald Know More Than Robert Mueller? (NY Mag) "If there’s a conspiracy, he suspects, it’s one against the president; where others see collusion, he sees 'McCarthyism.' In his eyes, the Russia-Trump story is a shiny red herring — one that distracts from the failures, corruption, and malice of the very Establishment so invested in promoting it. All this has led to one of the less-anticipated developments of the Donald Trump presidency: Glenn Greenwald, Fox News darling. For his sins, Greenwald has been embraced by opportunistic #MAGA partisans seeking to discredit the Trump-Russia story."
- At Yale, we conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals. The results say a lot about our political divisions (WaPo) "... over a decade now of research in political psychology consistently shows that how physically threatened or fearful a person feels is a key factor — although clearly not the only one — in whether he or she holds conservative or liberal attitudes. Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do."
READ THIS:
- The Frackers (Gregory Zuckerman) "Far from the limelight, Aubrey McClendon, Harold Hamm, Mark Papa, and other wildcatters were determined to tap massive deposits of oil and gas that Exxon, Chevron, and other giants had dismissed as a waste of time. By experimenting with hydraulic fracturing through extremely dense shale—a process now known as fracking—the wildcatters started a revolution. In just a few years, they solved America’s dependence on imported energy, triggered a global environmental controversy—and made and lost astonishing fortunes."
TECHNOLOGY:
- This simple solution to smartphone addiction is now used in over 600 U.S. schools (WaPo) "People entering a school, courtroom, concert, medical facility, wedding, or other event are asked to slip their phones into the pouches when they enter. Once locked, they stay with their owners until people are ready to leave the premises and the devices are released from their tiny prisons. The pouches can be rented for a single event or on extended leases. They are now used in over 600 U.S. schools. The effects are immediate: at first, people seem agitated and unsure what to do with their hands. But then they adjust. 'In line at the concession stand you’ll overhear people talking about the artist and the show, and then about the fact that they’re having this conversation because they don’t have phones,' Dugoni said. 'You’ll see people fully engaged with each other talking, and the feel of it is radically different.'"
- Ford wants to patent a driverless police car that ambushes lawbreakers using artificial intelligence (WaPo) "Imagine a police car that issues tickets without even pulling you over. But Ford noted in a statement that even if the patent is approved, it does not ensure that a product will be produced."
- Inside the Race to Hack the Human Brain (Wired) "All of these ambitious plans face the same obstacle, however: The brain has 86 billion neurons, and nobody understands how they all work. Scientists have made impressive progress uncovering, and even manipulating, the neural circuitry behind simple brain functions, but things such as imagination or creativity—and memory—are so complex that all the neuroscientists in the world may never solve them."
- Watch the live feed from SpaceX’s Roadster-driving Starman in space (TechCrunch) "The live stream switches between cameras, including one mounted on the hood, one behind the astronaut’s shoulder and one facing back down to Earth. It’s quite the view, and it’s amazing."
- Trump’s ‘marching orders’ to the Pentagon: Plan a grand military parade (WaPo) "Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it."
- Why the ‘Cult of Trump’ Has Taken Hold (National Review) "There has been a sea change on the right with Trump at the helm. To anyone who hasn’t lived and breathed in conservative circles, this change is both shocking and hard to comprehend. Three distinct factors go a long way to explain it. First, never before in modern American history have we had a president so transparently demanding not just loyalty but praise from his subordinates and political allies. The other two factors say more about the rest of us than they do about Trump. One is the tribal belief that the other party is an existential enemy that will do anything. And so we must be just as ruthless. Which brings me to the third factor. Yes, there is a cult of Trump. But that’s because we have a cult of the presidency in this country. It infects not just our understanding of the office, but of the person holding it."
- A Year of Achievement (National Review) "As President Trump finished his first full year in office, he could look back at an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president — much less by one who arrived in office as a private-sector billionaire without either prior political office or military service. Never Trump Republicans acknowledge that Trump has realized much of what they once only dreamed of — from tax reform and deregulation to a government about-face on climate change, the ending of the Obamacare individual mandate, and expansion of energy production."
WINTER OLYMPICS:
- Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom (NYT) "Not just any broom, but one that they thought could be essential to the sport of curling, which relies on the best broom handling out there as teams strategically cajole a polished granite rock across a sheet of ice.They wound up calling it the SmartBroom, and in a sport that can come across as vaguely primordial, their piece of 21st-century gadgetry could play a role in determining who wins gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Axe-Throwing Bars: Why Mixing Weapons And Beer Is Surprisingly Good Business (Fast Company) "Nestled alongside trendy eateries in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, you’ll find Kick Axe, a 7,000-square-foot venue filled with 10 axe-throwing ranges ... The point is to hurl axes at bullseye targets within the confines of a cozy lodge setting. A fee of $35 buys you 75 minutes."
- Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read (Atlantic) "For many, the experience of consuming culture is like filling up a bathtub, soaking in it, and then watching the water run down the drain. The 'forgetting curve,' as it’s called, is steepest during the first 24 hours after you learn something. Exactly how much you forget, percentage-wise, varies, but unless you review the material, much of it slips down the drain after the first day, with more to follow in the days after, leaving you with a fraction of what you took in."
- U.S. Postal Service to unveil Mister Rogers stamp next month (AP) "'The Forever stamp will be unveiled ... in the same Pittsburgh public television station where 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood' was produced. The stamp features Fred Rogers and the royal puppet King Friday XIII."
- I Want Your Sex (George Michael)
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