First Derivative [10]
Probably the strongest newsletter so far. The first three are Tier 1. This week: a mix of genetics, demographics, tech, finance, social media, politics, film.
How DNA Editing Could Change Life on Earth
Early on an unusually blustery day in June, Kevin Esvelt climbed aboard a ferry at Woods Hole, bound for Nantucket Island. Esvelt, an assistant professor of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was on his way to…
CRISPR. If you don't know what that means, read this article—TK
The U.S. and Europe are in a time of great political change. Policies haven't changed that much yet, but the set of ideas that drive movements and activism and the public discussion have altered radically in the last few years. In the U.S., which…
Great read on ethnic homogeneity, trust, and conflict from one of my favorite bloggers/writers—TK
Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle
Vox's David Roberts writes about Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology. It's got a long and complicated argument which I can't really do justice to here, but the thesis seems to be that the US Right is defecting against the country's…
Another great post from SlateStarCodex. 'As conservatives left for their ghettos, the neutral gatekeeper institutions leaned further and further left, causing more and more conservatives to leave.'—TK
How Echo Look could feed Amazon's big data fueled fashion ambitions
This week Amazon took the wraps off a new incarnation of its Alexa voice assistant, giving the AI an eye so it can see as well as speak and hear. The Echo Look also contains a depth sensor that's being used, in the first instance, to create a bokeh…
When the Echo first came out, I doubted that it would catch on. I was wrong. I feel the same way about the Echo Look but that lesson makes me find the ambitious strategy outlined in this article to be not just possible, but likely.—TK
Kumail Nanjiani's Culture-Clash Comedy
In 2009, on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” the comedian Kumail Nanjiani walked onstage, wearing a boxy black suit and a cordless mike, to do a standup set. The band played a few bars of “Born in the U.S.A.,” an…
Why did Trump win? New research by Democrats offers a worrisome answer
As the Democratic Party rebuilds itself for the 2018 and 2020 elections, Democratic strategists have been preoccupied with a pressing question: Why did so many voters who backed Barack Obama in 2012 switch to Donald Trump four years later, and what…
nice, brief post-mortem—TK
'I'm an ex-Facebook exec: don't believe what they tell you about ads'
For two years I was charged with turning Facebook data into money, by any legal means. If you browse the internet or buy items in physical stores, and then see ads related to those purchases on Facebook, blame me. I helped create the first versions…
Q&A With KKR's Henry Kravis: 'Always Worry About What You Might Lose on the Downside'
Private equity holds trillions of dollars in assets, controls brand-name companies, and invests on behalf of pensions, endowments, and government funds around the world. Back in 1976, it barely existed. That's when Henry Kravis, his cousin George…
Between 1935 and 1975, Will and Ariel Durant published a series of volumes that together were known as “The Story of Civilization.” They basically told human history (mostly Western history) as an accumulation of great ideas and…
Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds. His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what…
if you can get around the WSJ paywall, what's going on in Venezuela (and Yemen) is tragic and undercovered—TK