- 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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