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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Steve decided to give up blogging ...

6 correct numbers in a lottery might be it. Chances were around 1 : 600.000.
But maybe I think about luck and chances the wrong way. Could you say for example that the chance of you being the exact person you are is around 1 to 9 billion (=people on earth)?
~ Bathroom Quote

Alternatively, with the same cash outlay, you could consign them to the remunerative banality of sponsored content, which might pose the greatest threat, in the end, to young journalists. Do the math: Why pay for a journalism conference when you could attend “Food, from Farm to Table,” hosted by the National Press Foundation and funded by Monsanto? From there, it’s just a skip and a jump over to VanWinkle.com... Surreal Bathroom Quote 

And everything that seemed possible at twenty-four, twenty-five, is now just such a joke, such a ridiculous fiction, every birthday an atrocity.
    -Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Today is my 60th birthday. It’s also the end of my blogging here on the Business Law Prof Blog.
Steve's decided to give up blogging. I understand and respect his reasons, but I will still miss his clarity and perception 

Lindt Sydney Siege

The entire Capitol complex, and the White House, was also was put on lockdown following the shooting Washington Seige: Lockdown following shooting


Assistant Minister minister Angus Taylor discussed Free Enterprise Foundation with key fundraiser

Once again the brilliant Ross Douthat on Who Is Ted Cruz?

“I think that comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death.”
~ Umberto Eco (interviewed in the Paris Review, Summer 2008)

An Amazing Collection of Over 550 Coffee Lids and an Exploration of the Challenges Designers Faced When Making Them Laughing Squid

In 1972, Joseph Brodsky, expelled from the Soviet Union, arrived in America. He'd become exactly what he didn't want to be: a dissident like Jozef Imrich 

To sum up, to explain, to glimpse the darkness, to leave the world with words: The morbid appeal of the suicide note as literary gender 

Eleven books of short stories, eight of poetry, four children’s books, five nonfiction: How did Kay Boyle find time for husbands, children, and lovers too?

P.T. Barnum’s twenty tips for making money ...

America’s obsession with social media is undermining the democratic processQuartz (resilc). This is ridiculous. 1. Confirmation bias long predated social media. 2. Social media simply allowed for more, better hot-button targeting that Karl Rove perfected in the days of snail mail. 3. What pisses the elites and punditocracy is they can’t lean against this sort of thing when they feel they need to through broadcast/broad reach media. Maybe they should have thought about that before they got rid of free-to-air TV

ONE thing that some of the most successful people in business, art, and politics all have in common? They have a regular morning routine Four health mistakes you might be making each morning 

How a simple SIM card makes farmers more efficient—and possibly saves lives ars technica

The Forgotten Shale Boom Towns Oil Price. That was fast. Destroying the Rust Belt took a lot longer
eagles and chicks links
Recently, I landed the tech-journalism equivalent of a Thomas Pynchon interview: I got someone from Twitter to answer my call. Notorious for keeping its communications department locked up tight, Twitter is not only the psychic bellwether and newswire for the media industry, but also a stingy interview-granter, especially now that it’s floundering with poor profits, executive turnover, and a toxic culture. I’ve tried to get them on the record before. No one has replied. 
This time, though, a senior executive from one of Twitter’s key divisions seemed happy—eager, even—to talk with me, and for as long as I wanted. You might even say he prattled. I was a little stunned: I’d been writing about tech matters for years as a freelance journalist, and this was far more access than I was used to receiving. What was different? I was calling as a reporter—but not exactly. I was writing a story for The Atlantic—but not for the news division. Instead, I was working for a moneymaking wing of The Atlantic called Re:think, and I was writing sponsored content - Journalism is in perpetual crisis. But a savior has emerged. It's called sponsored content, and it's surreal 

“It’s Not the Zika Virus” — Doctors Expose Monsanto Linked Pesticide as Cause of Birth Defects Tree Thought Project 

This was a guiding principle of her life: power, via sharing. Control, via opening up. You tell the story, so the story doesn’t tell you. Banana-peel logic informs another Ephronism, the one that gives its name to the documentary about Ephron’s life that is currently airing on HBO: “Everything is copy.” The line comes from Ephron’s mother, who—like pretty much everyone else in her family, including both of her parents, all three of her sisters, all three of her husbands, and one of her two sons—was also a professional writer. And it’s a fitting motto for Ephron, who, on top of everything else she accomplished, anticipated the searing, first-person confessional that would become one of the defining modes of Internet writing Nora Ephron prophet of privacy

Capitalism’s Capital LRB. Robert Moses



Never know who’ll benefit: supersedeas appeal bond limits, sought by tort reformers, may now save Gawker from ruin [WLF, earlier] Plus a Florida appellate court ruling on newsworthiness, and other reasons the scurrilous media outlet is hoping for better luck on appeal if it can get past the bond hurdle [Politico New York]

Culture shapes language, and language shapes culture. Moral change is therefore partly driven by semantic change. Charles Taylor explains kulture 

What Americans Don’t Get About Nordic Countries The Atlantic 

Google Self-Driving Car Will Be Ready Soon for Some, in Decades for Others IEEE Spectrum. Bezzle, bezzle, who’s got the bezzle….

Amazon Leans on Government in Its Quest to Be a Delivery Powerhouse NYT

How Corporations Will Use Artificial Empathy to Sell Us More Shit Motherboard

What is the real reason we sleep? BB

Computer use could help predict early-stage Alzheimer’s The Stack

A shockingly small amount of US adults meet the science-backed criteria for a healthy lifestyle Science Alert. Now I am going to quibble. Their “150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity” is simplistic. If you do really intense activity, like interval sprints (and full on, 30 seconds at your max, 2.5-3 minute rest interval), 20 minutes of that is more beneficial than longer periods of jogging, for instance 

Palantir, Credit Suisse venture targets rogue traders Financial Times  Palantir and Credit Suisse join forces to target rogue traders ...