James Shelley with perhaps the best piece of writing I've read post-election.
Consider what Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper Number 68. The Electors were supposed to stop a candidate with "Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" from becoming President.
James Shelley has a series on political correctness that's worth a read:
Political Correctness, Objectively Speaking
Political Correctness, the Proxy of Politics
Hate Speech and Jokes
The End of Political Correctness
At some point we will find ourselves forced to return to the elementary questions and first principles behind all this PC banter: what is the state for? what is the nature of liberty? what is my responsibility to you? what does it mean to be a neighbor? No matter which 'side' of the PC debate you are on, these seem like the truly critical questions.
Young Americans are so dissatisfied with their choices in this presidential election that nearly one in four told an opinion poll they would rather have a giant meteor destroy the Earth than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House.
#giantmeteor2016
[...] Now writers and artists are starting to use algorithms and AIs to do something that many people think should be impossible for a machine: entertain us.
This year's study showed similar results, indicating that not only are those who self-identify as evangelical confused about the basic tenets of their faith, but so are those who fit the National Association of Evangelicals's definition of evangelicals based on their stated beliefs.
Given that "a quarter of evangelicals believe that 'there is little value' in 'studying or reciting historical Christian creeds and confessions'", it seems obvious why many were unable to answer basic questions about their faith. I present The Creeds for your edification, evangelicals:
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, launched in the fall of 2014, is a longterm investigation of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its influences on people, their communities, and society. It considers the science, engineering, and deployment of AI-enabled computing systems.
The report details AI progress since circa 2000 and its potential implications for the next fifteen or so years in areas as diverse as transportation, personalized medicine and education, entertainment, and politics. There's not a ton of new background for the well-versed, or any particularly bold predictions or calls-to-action, but the overview of the recent history, the changing landscape, the potential future, and the outstanding legal and ethical challenges make for a thorough brief.
Motherboard is citing former NSA staffers who are convinced another insider smuggled the weapons out of an air-gapped system, while The Intercept has definitively tied the malware to the NSA. Pretty much a worst-case scenario for the agency.
I certainly may not like how the NSA knowingly chooses to target Americans' data, but I agree without reservation with their mandate for digital intelligence-gathering against foreign actors. I don't want their methods exposed nor their digital nuclear weapons available to those enemies. I respect Snowden's responsible disclosure; this is reprehensible.
While social media are sufficiently new, and coups sufficiently infrequent to assess this claim, there's another way to look at the link between coups and access to information. In a series of papers and an ongoing book project, we examine the relationship between political instability and government disclosures of credible economic information — the type of information members of the public might use both to evaluate the performance of the government and to gauge the level of discontent of their fellows.
Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms — a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.