2034: a novel of the next world war – (ackerman, stavridis) the audible version of this got me across the better part of south dakota. i can only listen to fiction via audiobook and this did the trick. it’s a solid ride through the coarse concepts of potential american decline in military dominance. or put less jingoistically, an interesting conception of what the rise of china and india means in a multipolar world order....

writing to learn (william zinnser) this is not really what i was expecting it to be and it was surprisingly engaging. broadly, this is an argument for using writing as a mechanism for learning vs. learning to the test or via standard educational practices. he highlights institutions that have incorporated writing deeply into their programs. i have a natural bias towards organizations that have a culture of writing and this is perhaps the one thing that’s intrigued me about amazon work culture from what i’ve heard from friends....

links, etc Turning Everyday Gadgets into Bombs is a Bad Idea « bunnie’s blog a great rundown the costs associated with a supply chain attack directed at embedding an explosive in a rechargable battery. this is well within the economic range of someone in the upper-middle class.

links, etc Trump’s Slow-Burn Authoritarianism there’s a lot of media attention on the notion of violent authoritarianism, the expected cronyism of a trump term, etc. this is the first time that i’ve seen someone sit down and really discuss the slow-burn authoritarianism. we saw glimmers of this when the sharpies were busted out to talk about hurricane path projections, etc. but the impacts to scientific research, the impacts to the ability to regulate based on science get hollowed out....

somehow i got pointed at this thing and, like a fool, i couldn’t look away … prompt: He was successful, attractive and charming but he’d learnt that people of that age always had secrets. … and go! … this was most certainly the case for chaz. chaz was brought up in the boomer generation and while he’d been fortunate enough to accumulate a small amount of personal wealth, there were clearly some “unaccounted for” expenditures....