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Category: Miscellaneous

Friday links

  • The Weather Channel creates an amazingly effective storm surge visualization.
  • “Who are the uninsured?” Some of this is blindingly obvious (Duh, of course they’re under 65. Because Medicare.) Go deeper and it’s another sign of just how UNprivileged working-class males are these days. (H/T DB)
  • Charles Hugh Smith says the next financial crisis is coming right on schedule.
  • This is from Bob Woodward’s new book, so take it with however much salt seems appropriate. But it does ring true: Trump wanted to print enough money to erase the national debt. (Tip o’ hat to MJR)
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  • Midweek links

    David French of the National Review calls Amber Guyger’s murder of a man in his own home “the worst police shooting yet.” I don’t know about that, but it certainly has all the elements, including favoritism and the typical cover story. From Wired: How to move a million people out of a hurricane’s way. Good luck, mid-Atlantean readers! She made it through Hurricane Harvey — though not necessarily well. Now Sara Cress gives advice on how to prepare for a flood. (NPR broadcast; not sure whether transcript will be online by the time this posts, but she mentions things people…

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    Monday links

  • All those NFL team owners and not a single spine among them. As I’ve said before, this isn’t about free speech or racism; it’s about employees misusing their employers’ time to damage their employers’ bottom line. And now about employers letting it happen. (H/T Shel in comments)
  • Equally unsurprising; there’s dissension in the ACLU over supporting free speech and free association for the NRA.
  • “F*** that gator,” has replaced “Hold my beer” as the national shorthand for Darwin-level stupidity. Apparently that’s very unkind of us.
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  • Friday links

  • A rural town banded together to build a hospital. A larger hospital — and the government — stopped them.
  • Social media’s opaque response to evidence of bias.
  • Theranos, the multi-billion unicorn that billed itself as a revolutionary blood-testing company is closing its doors, valued at nearly nothing. (You want to read a really good book about how easy it is to fool lots of smart people? Check out Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou, the WJS reporter who exposed Theranos and its cultish leader, Elizabeth Holmes.)
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  • Starting to wear down + random links

    After a drizzly start on Saturday, the holiday weekend morphed into sheer perfection. I took advantage by trimming, caulking, painting, and planning the layout of gutters. Now I’m beat. I need to spend a day paying bills, catching up on email, cleaning house, and other non-building matters. But the weather gods say we have just three days of sunny skies before five days of rain. Back outside I go. Back up and down the ladder. Back into drippy paint and ooey glue and bending those nails that don’t want to be hammered into unlikely places. Back to the twisty physical…

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    Thursday links

  • For the first time in 45 years, a Texas cop is found guilty for a murder he committed in the line of duty. Now let’s see whether he serves the time any other cold-blooded killer would. Ummmm … nope.
  • It is not a violation of Twitter policy to wish someone would kill the children of NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch — even though it is a violation of Twitter policy to wish for the killing of anybody else.
  • The economy: “Winter is coming.”
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  • Monday links

  • I was waiting for somebody to say this. Although I don’t agree with it all, John McCain was one of the biggest authoritarians ever to infest Congress. He never met a freedom that he didn’t want to destroy. I’m sorry he died a terrible death, but I’m glad he’s no longer in the ruling class.
  • PC run amok. A NASCAR driver loses a sponsorship because of a dumb remark his father made 35 years ago.
  • Via Maggie’s Farm: Seven things I’d do if I wanted to keep poor people poor.
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