Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse Betting should be legal, but pro leagues and major networks are undermining the value of sports in a bid to get in on the action. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/fault-lines/online-gambling-is-changing-sports-for-the-worse The legalizations of vices can be followed by gleeful oversaturation, and that period of chaos and moral…

The Crime Rings Stealing Everything from Purses to Power Tools In Los Angeles, a task force of detectives is battling organized retail theft, in which boosted goods often end up for sale online—or commingled on store shelves with legitimate items. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/25/the-crime-rings-stealing-everything-from-purses-to-power-tools “A misdemeanor is a misdemeanor, a theft is a theft.…

There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There’s 764 A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse. via WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/ “Their main aim is to traumatize you,” says Anna, a young woman groomed and victimized…

A Bullshit Genius On a friendly stroll somewhere in Colorado in the summer of 2004, Steve Jobs asked Walter Isaacson if he would consider writing his biography. via The Drift: https://www.thedriftmag.com/a-bullshit-genius/ But within the context of Isaacson’s nine books, Musk is not an anomaly. In method and thesis, it is perfectly in line with a…

Watch It Burn Two scammers, a web of betrayal, and Europe’s fraud of the century. via The Atavist Magazine: http://magazine.atavist.com/watch-it-burn-france-europe-carbon-fraud-scam-vat-betrayal/ Unlike VAT fraud with mobile phones, no empty vans were required. The carbon market rendered even the pretense of real-world trade unnecessary because its product was an absence, an unemitted ton of gas. All someone…

How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find Its Targets—and Vladimir Putin Meet the guy who taught US intelligence agencies how to make the most of the ad tech ecosystem, “the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man.” via WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/ They realized they could track world leaders through Locomotive, too. After acquiring…

How the Media Industry Keeps Losing the Future Roger Fidler tried his best, but the excellent business of journalism is gone for good. Can the idea of “news” survive in a digital world? Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/technology/news-media-industry-dying.html “Soon after the printing press emerged in the 15th century, the scriptoriums for copying manuscripts in monasteries rapidly began shutting…

What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath “Just because I don’t care about you doesn’t mean I want to cause you more pain,” says Patric Gagne, author of a new memoir about her sociopathy. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/25/magazine/patric-gagne-interview.html Are you able to describe how you’ve built a sense of morality? Just because I don’t care about someone…

An American Education: Notes from UATX revolution in education! A resuscitation of the university mission! To happen in, of all places, not the pompous old northeast or the debauched West Coast, not New York or California but the countr… via The New Inquiry: https://thenewinquiry.com/an-american-education-notes-from-uatx/ In the ensuing Q&A, however, at least one person in the…

Tom Stevenson · Rubble from Bone: Israel’s War Israeli tactics have little in common with standard counterinsurgency doctrine or rules of engagement. The war on Gaza… via London Review of Books: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n03/tom-stevenson/rubble-from-bone What strategic bombing does to a city is to produce, by military means, something similar to the massive urban destruction of last year’s…

Greg Abbott’s Anti-Migrant Standoff at the Border The governor of Texas has triggered a constitutional crisis about who controls entry from Mexico, and some supporters are there for the spectacle. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/greg-abbotts-standoff-at-eagle-pass She returned to Colorado when she learned her house was being foreclosed on. But the news of the border convoy…

The Great Washington Meltdown of 2024 Has Begun In the Senate, the House, and the White House, leaders are weak—at a time when leading is needed. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-great-washington-meltdown-of-2024-has-begun The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, was even more blunt as he took the extraordinary step of publicly bashing the G.O.P. members who…

Fentanyl, the portrait of a mass murderer It’s the big threat. A cheap, white powder — 50 times more powerful than heroin — which kills more than 70,000 people each year in the United States and countless others across the rest of the Western Hemisphere. EL PAÍS, in a long-term investigation that spanned two continents…

Can the Internet Be Governed? Amid worries about what Big Tech is doing to our privacy, politics, and psyches, many stakeholders—from activists to technocrats—are calling for a new rule book. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/can-the-internet-be-governed The proposal, part of a bigger push for what Xi Jinping has called a more “sovereign” Internet, was supported by…

“Do I Have to Come Here Injured or Dead?” Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga was one of the first mothers separated from her children at the border by the Trump Administration. The cruelty she suffered in the United States was matched only by what she was forced to flee in Honduras. via The New…