Links, 21 August 2017

Politics

• Trump Train travails:
  • Steve Bannon, Unrepentant
  • Steve Bannon believed in Trumpism. Donald Trump doesn’t. (we have arrived at a new equilibrium in which both the interior members of his staff, the actual federal bureaucracy, the US Congress, the US public, the global public, and global leaders all basically understand the president is fundamentally a bullshit artist and you just shouldn’t listen to what he says)
  • Why Bannon Lost and the Globalists Won and Inside the rise and fall of Steve Bannon
  • Steve Bannon’s Fantasy, Donald Trump’s Reality
  • So, Gary Cohn, What The Actual F***?
  • From Trump Aide to Single Mom
  • How the Trump Administration broke the State Department
  • When aides worry their president is unhinged
  • America is now a dangerous nation
• Charlottesville fallout:
  • Reckoning with the South:
    • Southern Comfort and What This Cruel War Was Over and Why There Are No Nazi Statues in Germany
    • The 1850s Response to the Racism of 2017 and ‘A Treacherous President Stood in the Way’
    • “Barack Obama is to blame”: 13 Alabama conservatives on Charlottesville
    • As Your Doctor, I Am Protesting the Removal of Your Tumor Because I Don’t Want to Erase Your Medical History
  • “Alt-Right”:
    • Trump Knows Exactly What He’s Doing
    • A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right (not peer-reviewed yet)
    • The Road to Radicalism in Charlottesville and A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof
    • The Far Right’s Day in Boston
    • The Women Behind the ‘Alt-Right’
    • Down the Breitbart Hole
    • Godwin (though valid point re Nietzsche): The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too.
  • Free Speech:
    • Cloudflare CEO on Terminating Service to Neo-Nazi Site: ‘The Daily Stormer Are Assholes’ and Why We Terminated Daily Stormer and PayPal escalates the tech industry’s war on white supremacy and When Should Companies Dump White Supremacist Customers?
    • The Chilling Effects of Openly Displayed Firearms
    • We Fight for the Users (in which the US DoJ tries to go after organisers of anti-Trump protests)
    • Facebook: You Are the Product and Europe’s tech ambition: To be the world’s digital policeman
• The argument about identity politics:
  • Mark Lilla Vs. Identity Politics
  • Debating the liberal case against identity politics
  • The Left’s Attack on Color-Blindness Goes Too Far
  • The Myth of the Alt-Left
  • Trumpism and the Philosophy of History
• A call for better reporting on North Korea: The American Media (also, Japan may be able to shoot down North Korean missiles but has no legal basis: experts) and let’s not forget: Born in the Gulag: Why a North Korean Boy Sent His Own Mother to Her Death
• China’s plans to rule the seas hit trouble in Pakistan and India-China border brawl: Superpowers throw stones at each other as tensions heighten
• America Needs to Stay in Afghanistan
• The debate about a Brexit transition is a phoney war and The government’s customs union plan is an absolute dog’s breakfast
• Is Hungary the EU’s first rogue state? Viktor Orban and the long march from freedom
• Libyan Camps for Refugees Are Not the Answer
• Would-Be Reformer Saakashvili Cast Out of Ukraine
• The 1980s American Soap Opera That Explains How Russia Feels About Everything and How Russia Treats Its Ukraine Veterans
• The Massacre That Ended the Arab Spring
• More about trouble brewing in East Africa: Guns, Grass, and Cattle

 

Economics & Finance

• Foreign-owned firms and productivity
• The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 (pdf) and Why Housing Has Outperformed Equities Over the Long Run
• The Rise of Market Power and the Decline of Labor’s Share
• How did the UK austerity mistake happen
• What Would a Better NAFTA Look Like?
• Occupational Licensing Reduces Racial and Gender Wage Gaps: Evidence from the Survey of Income and Program Participation
• America, Home of the Transactional Marriage
• Are national economic statistics “filtered”?
• Hopes for European ‘safe’ bonds lean on pre-crisis techniques
• The Finance Franchise (long pdf about the role the financial sector plays in society)
• Counterparty and Collateral Policies of Central Bank Lending Facilities
• The World Is Running Out of Sand
• The Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat (best gif)
• Bhutan growth soars amid hydropower building boom
• School Starting Age and Cognitive Development and Why Suburban Schools Are Inflating Kids’ Grades

 

Science & Tech

• The Origin Story of Animals Is a Song of Ice and Fire
• The Argument Against Terraforming Mars
• The Ethics Issue Blocking Organ Transplant Research
• We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance
• In the future, your body won’t be buried… you’ll dissolve
• Will We Ever Know What Dark Matter Is?
• Can Humans Understand Chimps? and Why Do Humans Talk to Animals If They Can’t Understand?
• Japanese researchers use wood to make cellulose nanofiber auto parts stronger and lighter than metal
• China’s Plan for World Domination in AI Isn’t So Crazy After All
• German Philosophy Has Finally Gone Viral. Will That Be Its Undoing?

 

Misc

• The Smiley Index: Ranking Countries, Companies & Jobs by ‘Smileyness’
• Barclays Puts in Sensors to See Which Bankers Are at Their Desks
• An investigation of the supply chain: Everything That’s Inside Your iPhone
• Rio after the Olympics: After The Flame
• Melbourne is not the world’s most liveable city, Canadian expert says
• How to get away with murder in small-town India
• In Taiwan, the miserable postpartum period is an increasingly lavish five-star experience
• Nobody Knows What Lies Beneath New York City
• Penang: Where Food Is a Religion
• Teeth in Colombia: Smiling their way to the top
• Young car thieves: Wrong Way
• To Come Up with a Good Idea, Start by Imagining the Worst Idea Possible
• I’ll get my goat: Kazakhstan’s ancient sport for modern times
• Revenge Against Robots
• Maybe If Millennials Spent Less Time Eating Brunch and More Time Ravaging the Planet, We Could End This Whole Thing Sooner