First Derivative [64]
first Derivative [64]
July 17, 2018
A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora’s Box for DIY Guns
by Andy Greenberg (WIRED)
“Wilson and his team of lawyers focused their legal argument on a free speech claim: They pointed out that by forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable data, the State Department was not only violating his right to bear arms but his right to freely share information… He intends that database, and the inexorable evolution of homemade weapons it helps make possible, to serve as a kind of bulwark against all future gun control, demonstrating its futility by making access to weapons as ubiquitous as the internet.”
Congress Is Weak Because Its Members Want It to be Weak
by Yuval Levin (Commentary)
A good piece from Yuval Levin on tackling the structural forces behind our age of congressional neglect of constitutional responsibilities. I think his strongest point is that Congress is increasingly being occupied by people who see their offices as “platforms for a kind of moralistic performance art” and that this is exacerbated by hyper-transparency that undermines the kind of compromises of legislating that need to happen behind closed doors—TK
Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller’s Hacking Indictment
(Lawfare)
If you don’t have time to read the comprehensive Lawfare breakdown, David French covers the main points sufficiently here—TK
Not Quite the Big Picture
by Martha Bayles (TAI)
A good review of a book I just read about the economics of blockbuster Hollywood and a fair critique that outside of financials, the book adopts the “view of films as social and political texts which either reinforce the oppressive status quo or raise awareness against it” not as art. That’s a lot to ask for though and if you’re interested in economic structure behind why we get the movies we get, I recommend this book—TK
When Rio Tinto Met China’s Iron Hand
by Kit Chelsea, Franz Wild, and David Stringer (Bloomberg)
“one of the first and most devastating instances of China’s now-famous hackers spying on a Western corporation, and a cautionary tale about the country’s ability to influence global trade.”
The quantified heart
by Polina Aronson and Judith Duportail (Aeon)
I don’t love the idiom this article is written in but I think the developments the writers cover are real and worth considering. From reader M.S.—TK
After Kavanaugh, the Deluge
by Ross Douthat (NYT)
Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why
by Claire Cain Miller (NYT)
How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System
by Antonio García Martínez (WIRED)
with some additional thoughts from the writer—TK
We must not treat data like a natural resource
by Lisa Austin (Globe and Mail)
“Privacy language is important but it is also too narrow to capture the complexity of the non-commercial rights and social interests at stake in our new data dimension. First, the privacy interest that most often gets invoked is a narrow consumer interest of control over personal information that then is further narrowed to an issue of consent. But privacy has many facets, including public ones.”
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fD is a newsletter on what I think matters. I highlight signals, insights, and deep trends in ideas, technology, politics, economics, foreign affairs, culture, philosophy, and more. My goal is to give you content that will still matter beyond the present moment.
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