This week, Donald Trump donned a military flight jacket and an admiral’s cap, recalling his years of brave service in bunkers.
- Nick Bilton wonders about the source of Trump’s totalitarian impulses.
- Foreign Policy asks if we’ll soon have a civil war. Keith Mines thinks it likely.
- Joseph Stiglitz details the insanity of a U.S. trade war with China.
- Cambridge Analytica may be getting undue credit for Trump + Brexit.
- Masha Gessen thinks we’re focusing too much on Russian hacking.
- Digital Age transparency is challenging every traditional institution.
- Andrew Ng says AI may soon “change pretty much every major industry.”
- Robotic soldiers might be deployed on the battlefield within a decade.
- Observing video could help machines acquire common sense as babies do.
- Some TV viewers are watched by their TVs. It’s consensual, but still creepy.
- Closed-loop systems can bring great benefits but also have a down side.
- Margaret Atwood conducted an AMA on A Handmaid’s Tale and more.
- George Saunders explains creative writing–and creativity more broadly.
- Tyler Cowen conducted an AMA on wealth redistribution, UBI, driverless, etc.
- In 1974, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola talked The Conversation.
- A brief note from 1934 about Italy’s Fascist Party denouncing handshakes.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches: Carl Bernstein, Jesse Ventura, etc.