I saw a piece of ribbon snagged on a hedge,
But no other sign of life. And then I heard
What seemed the crack of a rifle
Instead, it is a falling branch. The poem concludes:
I was scared by the plain bitterness of what I had seen.
All this happened about ten years ago,
And it hasn’t troubled me since, but at last, today,
I remembered that hill; it lies just to the left
Of the road north of Poughkeepsie; and as a boy
I stood before it for hours in wintertime.
The Intelligence Paradox: AI May Make Markets Less Rational Wall Street Journal
In the Shadow of Silicon Valley Rebecca Solnit, London Review of Books. Well worth a read.
10 success stories of government action in the United States Brookings Institution. In a bitter irony, the lessons of #2 (“Anti-smoking campaigns”) and #3 (“Air pollution reduction”) aren’t being applied to aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2; not for this pandemic, at least.
How a Mennonite farmer became a drug lord LA Times
we’ve found it folks: mcmansion heavenMcMansion Hell
Shock of the old: nine monstrous mascots to suck out your soul Guardian I just ran across this mascot the other day. Michelin’s Bibendum gave Gibson’s Cayce Pollard panic attacks, but I bet she never saw King Cake Baby
Law’s Detrimental Reliance on Intermediaries(PDF) Carla Reyes, George Washington University Law Review
Germany is — once again — the sick man of Europe Thomas Fazi
Persistent drought Catalonia declares a water emergency Tagesschau via machine translation
Segun Aremu: Nigerian traditional monarch shot dead and wife kidnapped BBC
