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Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Hit Makers: Why MEdia Dragons Become Popular

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
~ Man of Steel aka Jozef Vissarionovich Stalin 

Exclusive Interview With Vladimir Putin Bloomberg

Estimates of executions under Lenin and Stalin suggest an average of more than 10,000 per week. We've never come to terms with the cause and consequence of those killings...In Big Brother Totalitarian and - Communism - We Trust 


Labor Senator Sam Dastyari quits over Chinese donations scandal

The controversy over China-linked political donations has widened with the revelation another Labor MP, Ernest Wong, pledged to support China's position, not Australia's, on the South China Sea. Mr Wong, a Labor member of the NSW Legislative Council who is close to Labor powerbrokers and Chinese-Australia political donors including Huang Xiangmo, has hit out against Australia's position on the South China Sea and said Australia should not interfere. On Thursday The Australian Financial Review reported that Labor Senator  Sam Dastyari  had pledged to respect China's position on the South China Sea at an election campaign press conference he held in June with a Chinese political donor who had previously paid his legal bills, according to Chinese media reports Wong Second labor MP aligns with  Communist Beijing over South China Sea 
New Labor MP Ernest Wong linked to Eddie Obeid

Exclusive: Sam Dastyaris accuser CoryBernardi has his own questionable fundraising body

Exclusive: Brandis gives job to donor lawyer

Islamic State aka IS issues chilling new threats against Australian iconic sites
Daniel J. Levitin, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age

Consider the headline: a bunch of words carefully crafted to grab your attention when you least expect it… and then entice you to spread it far and wide, sometimes in spectacular viral fashion. And that’s just for starters. Before you even get to all the news that’s fit to print, the headline is already way ahead of you, with succinct and surprising spoilers—that can only really be understood if you click. By the time you read a headline, you may already have become incensed by provocative questions, been amused by puns and wordplay or have had your faith restored in humanity by viral clickbait  The linguistics of clickbait









How Should We Read Investor Letters? New Yorker. John Lanchester is always worth reading–  both the journalism, and the novels

All social media dragon eyes, of both ‘tragics’ and casual observers, are on this virtual corner of the globe as "IoT is not a trend, it's a full-blown phenomenon at this point ..." Why agencies must work harder to prep for IOT security

Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular


 Four years ago Deliveroo was an idea: two guys willing to quit their jobs to make it happen and an insatiable hunger for great food  Innovative Roos

Goodbye, password. Banks opt to scan fingers and faces instead 

Cybersecurity: Why Steve Jobs Was Right … and Wrong?

Via MuckRock – Challenging authority, one public records request at a time by Beryl Lipton: “While teens across the United States prepare to return to their cliques and classes, MuckRock would like to introduce inquisitive minds and aspiring rebels to the paper path toward challenging your school, town, and local government. Encourage increased clarity in your academics, transparency in your community, and civic participation in your country: file a public records request….”

… Paul Davis On Crime: Something New Under The Sun: A Hemingway Biography That's Original


… Tolkien Influenced Rock More Than The Velvet Underground Did 



What stands between you and the act of writing? The insidious Imps of Inertia: Disenchanted Imp, Jaded Imp, Loneliness Imp, and Sloth Imp. Mark Edmundson explainsImpsImps 

Klaus Mann, dead at 42, wrote seven novels, six plays, four biographies, three autobiographies, hundreds of stories, essays, and reviews. None of it impressed his father, Thomas...Mann
owl_bird_eyes


Majority of mathematicians hail from just 24 scientific ‘families’ Nature. Some interesting 
methodological issues, though
Surprisingly Little Evidence for the Accepted Wisdom About Teeth NYT

Mangled ‘MH370 debris’ found off the coast of Mozambique suggests the jet EXPLODED and was not under control of the pilot when it crashed Daily Mailm

Here’s a breakdown of the speech that won the 2016 World Championship of Public Speaking Business Insider

… Is It Here to Stay? — Rock'n'Roll Considered | commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nothing stays popular forever, and by the ’90s, rock had in turn been supplanted by hip-hop as America’s top-selling pop-music genre. But the splintering of our common culture prevented hip-hop from developing into the new lingua franca. Instead, we now have many popular musics, none of which has anything remotely approaching the cultural dominance that was enjoyed by rock and roll for more than a quarter-century.

I was 14 when Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" was released. I routinely turned onBandstand when I came home from school (I watched it before Dick Clark became its host). So I think it fair to consider myself as having been present at the creation of rock music. And I certainly listened to enough of it. But I find, now that I am an old man, that it is the music I heard before rock came along — music that I heard when I was very young, the music of the '40s and early '50s — that I listen to more and more. Go figure.