SALLY FIELD: “Don’t you know you can’t fight city hall?”JAMES GARNER: “You can wrestle ’em.”
~ Harriet Frank, Jr., and Irving Ravetch, screenplay for Murphy’s Romance ...
“A new generation of young European writers is reinventing political literature—and people are listening. Some of the brightest new voices on the continent are making their names through overtly political books, showing that literature, even books of poetry, can still play a significant role in shaping public discourse.” On the Politics of Europe’s New Literary Superstars
“Theorists say the internet is making us dumber, but something magical happened when my students wasted time together. They became more creative with each other. They say we’re less social; I think people on the web are being social all the time. They say we’re not reading; I think we’re reading all the time, just online” No, We’re Not Actually ‘Wasting Time’ On The Internet
Kazal restaurant clan fights ex partner over ICAC case
NSW Nationals Senator John Williams says he will cross the floor to support a royal commission into the banks but believes his lower house colleagues will be discouraged from doing the same, especially if the government agrees to establish a new tribunal to hear customer complaints into so-called "bank bastardry" Fearless Williams
Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Stark New Evidence on How Money Shapes America’s Elections: Institute for New Economic Thinking website
Austria: A Case Study of How Offshoring Lowered Growth
“NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Dem Senate candidate and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland: Scalia’s death ‘happened at a good time.'” [Instapundit]
You could spread around a lot of blame for the current state of our two-tiered system of justice and lack of accountability, particularly as it relates to the financial sector. But if you wanted to find the most pathetic figure involved in that whole rigamarole, all roads lead to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller Tom Miller Pens Love Letter to Settlements with Financial Fraudsters
Remember — these pages and pages of redactions were probably done by some poor contract attorney trying to make a living [Gawker]
- PCWorld: “The hacker who claims to have breached the Democratic National Committee’s computers is now taking credit for hacking confidential files from a related campaign group. Guccifer 2.0 alleged on Friday that he also attacked the servers of the Democractic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). He posted some of the purported files on his blog, and is promising journalists “exclusive materials” if they contact him directly. Although Guccifer 2.0 claims to be a lone hacktivist, some security experts believe he’s actually a persona created by Russian government hackers who want to influence the U.S. presidential election…A separate hacktivist website called DCLeaks has also been posting files stolen from U.S. politicians, but Russian hackers and Guccifer 2.0 may actually be behind the site, according to ThreatConnect.”
- Washington Post – Alleged Russian links to DNC hack gives U.S. a taste of Kremlin meddling – It would be an unusually blunt challenge to the U.S. political system, but one familiar to Europe, where officials and analysts see Russian fingerprints on many initiatives designed to split Western unity and encourage acceptance of Kremlin policies.
- Politico – Dems flooded with vulgar, suspicious messages following online data dump
“The average global economic assessment of national economies
surveyed in 25 countries is up two points with 40% of global citizens
rating their national economies as ‘good’.”
This Company Has Built a Profile on Every American Adult
* A Skull and Bones society for top NYC law firms? Professor Rick Swedloff discusses a secretive group whose membership includes some of Biglaw’s biggest names. [SSRN]
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
~Albert Einstein
Tax Crime and Priest's Absolutions
The confessional is a special place in any Catholic Church, but in Marcella Hackbardt’s series “True Confessionals,” it takes on a distinct significance. Centered in their frames and largely shown in churches empty of people, Hackbardt’s confessionals strike viewers not as merely one feature among many in the architecture of faith, but as a theatrical space that services some fundamental human need—one that possibly transcends any particular religious dogma. As Hackbardt sees them, they’re “a powerful metaphor for self-perception and the examination of conscience.” Marcella Hackbardt photographs italian confessionals
Behavioural Insights – the road to ‘better’ policies?
The Governance Post, 1/8/16. There are many ways to apply behavioural insights. People do not realise that sometimes...
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
~The Economist, December 4, 2003”
A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity ScienceDirect
And by the way, are you perfecting your "crap detection" skills each month with the First Draft News Quiz? Here's the latest
Scientists turn urine into beer
Census back online
A forensics roundup from Radley
“When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversationwith Reason’s Nick Gillespie]
Landlord installs Faraday cage to block phone signals because social media is ruining British pubs Telegraph
“After adjusting for other factors, they found that compared with watching TV less than two and a half hours a day, watching for two and a half to five hours increased the risk for a fatal clot by 70 percent, and watching more than five hours increased the risk by 250 percent. For each extra two hours of watching, the risk of death rose 40 percent. The effect was independent of physical exercise.” The New York Times
My Grand Obsession with the Mad Master: Most of the people who are willing to be interviewed are not worth interviewing. The uninterviewed are the ones you really want - the recluses, the crackpots who disappeared from public view decades ago and retain an aura of inaccessibility, perverseness, danger even. Forget Hello! Think Goodbye.
Dark Ages royal palace discovered in Cornwall – in area closely linked to the legend of King Arthur Independent 
When I become self-critical I always ask myself, Who are you to be perfect? ;-) Ever seen a photo doing the rounds on Twitter and wondered whether it was real? Miscaptioned, poorly attributed or outright doctored photos often appear on social media, especially during crises (like Hurricane Sandy in 2012 or the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015). A reverse image search can help you find out if a photo has been used elsewhere and spot inconsistencies.
The photo below, for example, which circulated in July on Twitter and several media outlets, allegedly portrayed the scene at Munich's Olympia mall where a deranged shooter killed several shoppers. Even though many media outlets published it, the photo wasn't what it claimed to be. Try dragging the photo into a Google image search or uploading it to TinEye to see if you spot anything suspicious. For more help, check out this video tutorial on Google News Lab.
Send your answers here. We'll share the best ones and the solution next week.
News release: “Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit (August 1, 2016) against cable television and Internet giant Comcast Corporation in King County Superior Court, alleging the company’s own documents reveal a pattern of illegally deceiving their customers to pad their bottom line by tens of millions of dollars.
PSOS VIEWS June 2016. Is the Behavioural Lens Out of Focus? How to make behaviour work in CPG, financial services, technology and retail
“In this paper we examine some of the many lenses available to look at behaviour and decision-making in particular and how they create different perspectives on behaviour, sometimes at odds with each other. However from the overlay of these lenses emerges a view of decision making articulated around three major forces (maximisation, emotion and effort)
The Unsexy Truth About Millennials: They’re Poor: If you’re wondering why millennials don’t have much sex, and don’t buy cars, forget social theorizing: the harsh truth lies in their near-empty wallets
Del Quentin Wilber and Kevin Rector, August 9, 2016: “Baltimore police routinely violated the constitutional rights of residents by conducting unlawful stops and using excessive force, according to the findings of a long-anticipated Justice Department probe to be released Wednesday.
- See also this 2015 document – Justice Department Opens Pattern or Practice Investigation into the Baltimore Police Department
- New York Times – Justice Dept. Slams Baltimore Police Over Racial Bias – Read the Report
- And the text of the newly released 163 page DOJ report – INVESTIGATION OF THE BALTIMORE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION. August 10, 2016: