The Fall of the House of Saud - The Atlantic

The Fall of the House of Saud - The Atlantic: "Abdullah first had them zero in on expropriations. The practice had become so widespread among the lesser princes that it was completely alienating Saudi Arabia's traditional merchant class and fledgling middle class. A prince might walk into a restaurant, see that it was doing well, and write out a check to buy the place, usually well below market price. There was nothing the owner could do. He knew that if he resisted, he'd end up in jail on trumped-up charges."



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The Market Fairy will not solve the problems of Uber and Lyft | Ian Welsh

The Market Fairy will not solve the problems of Uber and Lyft | Ian Welsh: "These business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives.  They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

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Radiooooo.com - The Musical Time Machine

Radiooooo.com - The Musical Time Machine:



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Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong. | Brookings Institution

Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong. | Brookings Institution: "Most criticisms of the intervention, even with the benefit of hindsight, fall short. It is certainly true that the intervention didn’t produce something resembling a stable democracy. This, however, was never the goal. The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre.

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I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones | Voices | The Independent

I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones | Voices | The Independent:

I have travelled half way across the world because I want to resolve this dispute the way you teach: by using the law and the courts, not guns and explosives.

Ask me any question you wish, but judge me fairly – and please stop terrorizing my wife and children. And take me off that Kill List.

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Internet mapping turned a remote farm into a digital hell | Fusion

Internet mapping turned a remote farm into a digital hell | Fusion: "One important lesson of my sleuthing is that IP addresses, which get used as digital evidence in criminal trials and to secure search warrants, are not always reliable. Like Social Security numbers, they were a numerical system built for one purpose that are now used for something completely different. Social Security numbers were designed to keep track of a person’s earnings over their lifetime, but are now the security token used to lock down their entire identity. IP addresses were meant to allow computers to talk to each other, but have been repurposed to reveal details about the person behind that computer. The words “security” and “address” in their titles promise more than they can deliver.

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The American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership - William Deresiewicz

The American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership - William Deresiewicz: "How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude? I started by noting that solitude and leadership would seem to be contradictory things. But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

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Why I refuse to send people to jail for failure to pay fines - The Washington Post

Why I refuse to send people to jail for failure to pay fines - The Washington Post: "I used to prosecute felonies as an assistant district attorney in Brazos County. During that time, I worked for a year in the intake division. This drove home a lesson that my boss, the district attorney, had been trying to instill in me: Every case file is an individual whose rights are as important and sacred as mine or those of my family. The decision to charge or dismiss demands empathy and vigilance. Misdemeanor criminal cases provide an opportunity for a much happier outcome than most felonies because there is a genuine chance for a defendant to learn from a mistake and never set foot in a courtroom again — and keeping someone out of jail is a good way to ensure that happens. In these cases, it should be possible for defendants to resolve their cases without losing their liberty.

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Are Most Body Cavity Searches Even Constitutional? - The Atlantic

Are Most Body Cavity Searches Even Constitutional? - The Atlantic: "Americans routinely turn away from systematic violations of civil rights when they are perpetrated in the guise of fighting the war on drugs."



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Frontiers | Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases | Educational Psychology

Frontiers | Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases | Educational Psychology: "The goal of this article is to promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science by curbing terminological misinformation and confusion. To this end, we present a provisional list of 50 commonly used terms in psychology, psychiatry, and allied fields that should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats."



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The talk-radio godfather of Trumpamania: What Michael Savage can tell us about America’s white working class - Salon.com

The talk-radio godfather of Trumpamania: What Michael Savage can tell us about America’s white working class - Salon.com: "I have been a longtime listener to Savage because I think that, as a journalist, you risk being blindsided if you ignore someone to whom millions of your fellow Americans are tuning in. I saw the rise of Trump coming several months ago precisely because I know how deep the support runs in so much of America for Savage’s nativist mantra, that the very survival of the nation is threatened by the erosion of our “borders, language, and culture.”

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To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army - The New York Times

To Beat Go Champion, Google’s Program Needed a Human Army - The New York Times: "“It was a regrettable game, but I enjoyed it,” Mr. Lee said during the award ceremony. (Regret, enjoy — these words do not compute.) He added that the contest “clearly showed my weaknesses, but not the weakness of humanity.”

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On Fifth Try, Mission Accomplished for SpaceX Booster Rocket - The New York Times

On Fifth Try, Mission Accomplished for SpaceX Booster Rocket - The New York Times: "For SpaceX, the fifth time was the charm in the impressive feat of landing a rocket on a boat.

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Inside the Unorthodox Donald Trump Campaign -- NYMag

Inside the Unorthodox Donald Trump Campaign -- NYMag: "Furthermore, he’ll take few over many. Trump’s campaign employs a core team of about a dozen people; his campaign lists 94 people on the payroll nationwide, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing (Hillary Clinton has 765). Trump has no pollsters, media coaches, or speechwriters. He ­focus-groups nothing. He buys few ads, and when he does, he likes to write them himself. He also writes his own tweets, his main vehicle for communicating with his supporters. And it was his idea to adopt Ronald Reagan’s slogan “Make America Great Again!”

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Red Teams — Starting Up Security — Medium

Red Teams — Starting Up Security — Medium: "High immersion, staged intrusions will exercise incident response capability in a way that further improves all facets of a security program. It’s possible to stage incidents that live somewhere between reality and drill. These exercises occur on our terms as Red Team designers, but are responded to as a real incident by a security response team (defenders).
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Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management — The Year of the Looking Glass — Medium

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management — The Year of the Looking Glass — Medium: "Unfortunately at many places, you’re roadblocked in advancing your career unless you become a manager. This sadly incentivizes the wrong outcomes, in which people who don’t love dealing with people become bad managers, and both they and their team suffers. "



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4a4a comments on Ken Jennings from Jeopardy! here, wearing out my welcome. AMA!

4a4a comments on Ken Jennings from Jeopardy! here, wearing out my welcome. AMA!: "legacy of that today is that Mormon congregations and communities are still incredibly tightly knit. There's no professional clergy, so everybody pitches in. If somebody's out of work or in the hospital or whatever, people mobilize. Small-town America stuff, the kind you thought didn't exist anymore."



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The Baptist-on-Baptist fight within Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ debate | Political Insider blog

The Baptist-on-Baptist fight within Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ debate | Political Insider blog: "“I find it somewhat ironic that today some in the religious community feel it necessary to ask government to confer upon them certain rights and protections,” Deal said. “If indeed our religious liberty is conferred by God and not by man-made government, we should heed the ‘hands off’ admonition of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

When it comes to religion, even when legislatures try to do good, Deal said, “the inclusions and omissions” in the laws they draft can lead to trouble. “That is too great a risk to take,” he said.

If you were raised anything other than Southern Baptist, there’s a good chance you didn’t hear that dog whistle. Others did."



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Trump’s Mess Has Become His Message - WSJ

Trump’s Mess Has Become His Message - WSJ:

It’s been going on for four or five weeks, and you can take your pick as to the tipping point. Maybe it was when he threatened to “spill the beans” on another candidate’s wife, or when he retweeted the jeering pictures of her and his own wife. Maybe it was his inability to clearly, promptly denounce the KKK; maybe it was when he hinted at riots if he’s cheated out of the nomination. Maybe it was Corey Lewandowski’s alleged battery of reporter Michelle Fields. Maybe it was when Mr. Trump referred in debate to his genitals, a true national first.

It has all added up into a large blob of sheer dumb grossness. He is now seriously misjudging the room. The room is still America.

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I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump – STIR Journal

I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump – STIR Journal: "And then we got down one day to the point — that was the second or third day — to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

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