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Category: Government

Government evils — but I repeat myself

Saturday links

  • You may have heard about the Garadget flap, in which a petulant CEO “bricked” a complaining customer’s app. The key line from this article: “… when a device gets connected to the internet—whether it’s a cellphone, a thermostat, or a tea kettle—it’s no longer yours.”
  • And given the way the ‘Net is going, this might be good news to some of you old hands and privacy buffs: a 1986 BBS is back online.
  • This real-life heist has the makings of a movie. Except that Cary Grant’s dead and Sean Connery’s too old. Maybe one of the Ryans — Reynolds or Gosling — could handle the role of the suave criminal mastermind. Great mystery carried out in a rarified intellectual world.
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  • Midweek links

  • This year is the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson leading the U.S. into World War I. Jim Bovard notes the long chain of disasters that followed (and is following still). Did the war “make the world safe for democracy”?
  • What’s the best type of generator for you? Portable? Or stand-by type? The Family Handyman discusses the difference to help you choose. OTOH, you could always just convert your lawn mower into a generator. Or your bike. (H/T MJ)
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  • Weekend links

  • Sloppy science. It wastes billions, produces non-reproduceable results, and sometimes kills people.
  • Well. Elio Motors may not yet actually have a product to sell. But this is still a pretty cool map of where their registration holders are.
  • Am I following this correctly? The DoJ drops two kiddie-porn charges rather than having classified material brought out in court. Said classified material already being publicly available thanks to WikiLeaks.
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  • A Friday ramble

    It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Leave it to the Mises Institute to “celebrate” by reprinting a piece on the causes of the potato famine I’ve never understood the saying “the luck of the Irish.” The Irish have had total crap luck. Irish history has been one long chain of famines, massacres, attempted genocides, and cruel (religious, economic, and intellectual) suppressions at the hand of the “civilized” English. It’s kind of like saying “the luck of the Jewish.” (And as Aaron Zelman used to remind me, “Imagine being both Irish and Jewish.”) —– I know some people won’t like the current, more…

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    Midweek links

  • That’s the (entrepreneurial) spirit. You may have heard that Seattle had a major freeway mess the other day, with all lanes of I-5 closed for eight hours. But that didn’t stop the operators of one taco truck who were stuck in traffic along with everybody else.
  • Only four federal agencies to abolish? Surely we can do better than that!
  • Anyone who has stood in a grocery check-out line behind people paying with SNAP/EBT cards Continue readingMidweek links
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    Monday links

  • Even in our age of omni-surveillance and omni-suspicion this is weird and creepy. (H/T CB)
  • Is there room at the inn (in law schools, that is) for conservative and libertarian academics?
  • In the Internet age, even in that part of the Internet age when “self-identification” is the new holy grail, representing yourself to be something you are not can not only bite you, but go on biting and biting and biting you.
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  • Wednesday links

  • “It’s complicated.” HL Harris explains her love-hate relationship with firearms. Rape is a mind-changer.
  • Surprise, Surprise. Drugs are vanishing at V.A. hospitals. (And no doubt many other medical facilities, though you can bet fedgov hospitals will be the champs in this variety of corruption and sloppy record-keeping.)
  • How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helps the world’s worst spies keep tabs on us all.
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