The Economist (October 21)
“Populism’s wave has yet to crest.” Yet the gestures Trump is making “to his angry base” are unlikely to bring relief. “The demise of NAFTA will disproportionately hurt the blue-collar workers who back Mr Trump. Getting tough on immigrants will do nothing to improve economic conditions.” Instead, “mainstream parties must offer voters who feel left behind a better vision of the future, one that takes greater account of the geographical reality behind the politics of anger.”
Tags: Anger, Blue collar, Gestures, Immigrants, Mainstream, Nafta, Populism, Trump, Vision, Voters
Gizmodo (October 19)
A “stunning AI breakthrough” has moved “us one step closer to the singularity.” Over the past year, the world marveled as AlphaGo has defeated Go masters at a game that has more possible combinations than the known universe has atoms. That now seems like child’s play. An improved version AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) took “just three days to train itself from scratch and acquire literally thousands of years of human Go knowledge simply by playing itself.” After three days of preparation, AGZ beat AlphaGo in each of 100 games. The technological singularity is “inching ever closer.”
Tags: AI, AlphaGo Zero, Breakthrough, Go, Knowledge, Singularity, Stunning
New York Times (October 19)
It is “hard to see how the American people can ever be confident that Mr. Trump, who has spent a lifetime as a money-obsessed deal maker, is acting in the nation’s best interest, and not his own.”
Tags: Best interest, Confident, Deal maker, Money obsessed, Trump, U.S.
Bloomberg (October 18)
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is only 33, which explains a lot. Exile isn’t a realistic option. “Kim needs strategies for hanging on to power for 50 years or more. That’s a tall order, but it helps us understand that his apparently crazy tactics are probably driven by some very reasonable calculations, albeit selfish and evil ones.”
Tags: Crazy, Evil, Exile, Kim, North Korea, Reasonable, Selfish, Tactics
Institutional Investor (October 17)
Due to strained resources, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is less likely to investigate insider trading that occurs further afield from its field offices. Traders seem to know this. “A 100-kilometer increase in distance between a firm and the nearest SEC office resulted in a 16.5 percent jump in illegal trades at that firm. Meanwhile, firms within 100 kilometers of the SEC were less likely to engage in these types of trades.”
Tags: Distance, Firm, Illegal trades, Insider trading, Investigate, Resources, SEC, Traders
The Guardian (October 17)
“If Brazil’s recent decline could be plotted in the falling popularity of its presidents, Michel Temer represents the bottom of the curve.” Overall, his popularity now sits at 3%, but “among under 24-year-olds, Temer’s approval hit zero.” Brazil’s president “has been charged with corruption, racketeering and obstruction of justice.” He may conceivably “escape impeachment, but the ongoing political crisis undermines democracy and opens the door to authoritarian hardliners.”
Tags: Approval, Brazil, Corruption, Crisis, Democracy, Impeachment, Obstruction of justice, Popularity, Racketeering, Temer, Zero
Philly.com (October 15)
“The predictably ever-worsening scandal surrounding the Hollywood sexual predator Harvey Weinstein” was not a surprise. In the business, his indiscretions were an open secret. “Another open secret–one that’s more widely known and of even more consequence than Weinstein and his prey” is that “Donald Trump is clearly not fit–temperamentally, intellectually, or, it seems increasingly clear, psychologically–to continue serving as president of the United States…. It’s all but guaranteed there will come a day for Trump, exactly like the moment we’re experiencing this weekend with Harvey Weinstein, with a flood of people suddenly going public with their behind-closed-doors Trump stories that things were even worse than anyone imagined.”
Tags: Hollywood, Open secret, Predictable, Scandal, Sexual predator, Trump, Unfit, Weinstein
The Atlantic (October Issue)
“Donald Trump is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors.” Will he destroy the institution? That remains to be seen. “We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress…. Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes.”
Tags: Brazen, Frankenstein, Ill-informed, Institution, Mendacious, Presidency, Self-destructive, Trump
The Economist (October 14)
“The world’s most powerful man” is now clearly Xi Jinping who possesses decidedly “more clout than Donald Trump.” As the U.S. abandons global leadership, Xi’s arrival on the world stage has been welcomed by many. But Xi is not a benign force. “The world should be wary” and “not expect Mr Xi to change China, or the world, for the better.”
Washington Post (October 12)
“When future auto historians look back, they may pinpoint 2017 as the year electric vehicles went from a promising progressive fad to an industry-wide inevitability.”
Tags: 2017, Cars, Electric vehicles, Fad, Future, Inevitability
