First Derivative [9]
“I do plan to bring back my father,” Ray Kurzweil says. He is standing in the anemic light of a storage unit, his frame dwarfed by towers of cardboard boxes and oblong plastic bins. He wears tinted eyeglasses. He is in his early…
A+. The kind of piece that I aim to put in this newsletter. Exploration of transhumanism, religion, Christian eschatology, and the Singularity.—TK
Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, visited Apple's headquarters in early 2015 to meet with Timothy D. Cook, who runs the iPhone maker. It was a session that Mr. Kalanick was dreading. For months, Mr. Kalanick had…
Another interesting episode in Uber's annus horribilis, character profile of CEO Travis Kalanick, but also a powerful demonstration of Apple's platform power—TK
‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn't'
His first date with his future wife was spent in a New Hampshire motel room drinking Wild Turkey into the wee hours with Hunter S. Thompson. He stood several feet away from Martin Luther King Jr. during the “I Have a Dream” speech. He…
Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven't seen in 700 years
The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I'm talking about the…
One of those pieces that describes what will happen when, not if. Drone applications, specifically in warfare—TK
Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria
You were going to get one-click access to the full text of nearly every book that's ever been published. Books still in print you'd have to pay for, but everything else—a collection slated to grow larger than the holdings at the Library of…
Long and legal. I'm not sure if this is equivalent but imagine the world now without Wikipedia. 'It was strange to me, the idea that somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25-million books and nobody is allowed to read them.'—TK
Justices Alarmed by Government's Hard-Line Stance in Citizenship Case
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. tried to test the limits of the government's position at a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday by confessing to a criminal offense. “Some time ago, outside the statute of limitations, I…
Seems like a pretty dangerous line of argument. Glad that SCOTUS doesn't seem receptive.—TK
The Latino Flight to Whiteness
This is a contribution to Prospect Debate: The Illusion of a Minority-Majority America. Will the United States have a majority of people of color by the year 2050, as both researchers and the popular press commonly assert? Richard Alba urges…
Interesting piece of counterevidence to the 'common knowledge' that increasing non-white populations will shift the demographics in favor of lib Dems. Delicious irony—TK
DoD warned Flynn against taking foreign money
The top Democrat on the House oversight committee announced the documents Thursday The news comes days after the same panel said Michael Flynn might have broken the law (CNN)Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was warned by the Defense…
The Russia-Trump story has been buried over by other news but it's still there. Don't expect to hear the last of this—TK
“Rational discourse has been rigged in favor of white, capitalist peoples for far too long … The idea that there is a single truth — ‘the Truth' — is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the…
One of the most sophisticated college op-eds I've ever read. It's jargony but measured, thoughtful, and I think correct—TK
Please, God, Stop Chelsea Clinton from Whatever She Is Doing
Amid investigations into Russian election interference, perhaps we ought to consider whether the Kremlin, to hurt Democrats, helped put Chelsea Clinton on the cover of Variety. Or maybe superstition explains it. Like tribesmen laying out a…
Co-sign. The press push and puff pieces are cloying and transparent—TK