This week, Sebastian Gorka, who couldn’t get security clearance to be a greeter at Walmart, left his White House position to spend more time with his family.

• Matt Bai thinks the media may prevent Trump from normalizing. Oy gevalt!

• John Dean tells Spiegel that Trump supporters crave authoritarianism.

• Jay Rosen analyzes the “ritualized warfare” of the Trump WH and the press.

• Henry Giroux discusses American authoritarianism and other recent nonfiction.

• Ezra Klein talks to Playboy about politics (of course), media, Virtual Reality, etc.

• Demis Hassibis and Garry Kasparov share optimism for machine intelligence.

• Facebook is approaching its Fake News issue as an engineering problem.

• Steven Levy asks Jack Dorsey about Twitter trolls, including the President.

• Laurie Penny on the selling of well-being ideologies in sick societies.

• Old Print Article: Rev. Billy Sunday preaches his last. (1935)

• A brief note from 1950 about germ warfare.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches: Michael Tolkin, Christof Koch, etc.