Everywhere I look, I see signs that the US has swung the steering wheel hard to the right, and is bumping and swerving into a deep, dark, forest. One with a big sign that reads “Danger, Keep Out” but has “MAGA” written on it in blood-red spraypaint.
Dawn Sturgess died over the weekend. She appears to have been killed with novichok – the specialized Russian chemical warfare agent – so far, police aren’t saying anything about how she could have come into contact with it. [nyt] This is the same chemical agent that was used to nearly kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
You can be sure as water’s wet – if someone doesn’t tell cops “don’t intrude on people” (You know, like the constitution tried to…) they’re going to explore the grey zones around the people’s rights. And by “grey zones” that means “areas where they can pretend not to understand” or “it looks grey to me.”
The use of over-charging in criminal prosecutions is a big problem; this amounts to a victory on a battlefield that should not have even happened.
I used to joke that I could wallpaper my bathroom with stock options. Back in the 90s, it seemed like every company was giving them away and everyone was either getting rich on options or wallpapering their bathroom, or both.
Back in the late 90s, when I was still hanging around with venture capitalists and investment bankers, I remember one telling me, “most of the time, if you can find asymmetric knowledge, you can monetize it.
If you use the same trick over and over, it becomes routine and eventually the people you’re trying to trick begin to play against your game, instead of falling for it.
If you study the actual workings of the justice system over the course of our history, it becomes clear that it favors the rich over the poor, the white over the black, the orthodox over the radical.
Reporting “truth” is a trickier problem than we might think. [stderr] Our interpretations are subtly, or unsubtly, adjusted by the reporters’ selection of words.
Warning: War, Death, Sam Harris
Here’s the part that horrifies me: when I hear “wedding party hit by air-strike” I assume that it’s notable because it’s a wedding party, and that what we’re seeing is just probability in action.