Bogus science, finance, politics, and tech dominate this Groundhog Day edition of Sunday Morning Reading.
Here we go again. If it feels like Groundhog Day that’s because it is. Happens every year, but the things going on in this country feel very similar to, yet even more dangerous, than they did eight years ago. It’s a movie we don’t want to revisit, but are living through. Live through it we must. Enjoy today’s
Sunday Morning Reading while we try to avoid repeating the same mistakes, or at least dodging them.
With trade wars now needlessly underway most of the big news ahead this week will be in the financial markets.
John Lanchester has an excellent piece with excellent context about finance and what he calls “
its grotesquely outsize role in the way we live now” in
For Every Winner A Loser.
Meanwhile as the world focuses on trade wars, Elon Musk and who knows who else is rampaging through the federal government in ways that sound more than illegal.
Josh Marshall asks
Who Can Stop Elon’s ‘Team’ Wilding Its Way Through The Federal Government?
I don’t often link to Wall Street Journal pieces in this column unless they are about tech related topics. This one by
The Editorial Board is worth a read and definitely worth the headline:
The Dumbest Trade War In History. Seems like Murdoch and his scribes got what they wished for. Again.
On the tech front, running parallel to our political misfortunes is a river of thought on Artificial Intelligence, most of it negative these days, but also thoughtful.
Alex Kirshner interviews
Ed Zitron and came away with
One Of Big Tech’s Angriest Critics Explains The Problem.
Audrey Watters tackles the issue and says “
In this AI future, there is no accountability. There is no privacy. There is no public education. There is no democracy. AI is the antithesis of all of this.” I fear she’s correct. Check out
AI Foreclosure for her piece, but also the excellent collection of links on the subject she provides.
Whether it’s the science of tech or the science of finance, there’s science. We ignore it at our peril. But what happens if some of the science is bogus?
Frederick Joelving, Cyril Labbé, and
Guillaume Cabanac tell us that
Bogus Research Is Undermining Good Science, Slowing Lifesaving Research.
In this day and age going viral is the equivalent of getting that infamous 15 minutes of fame. Both are fleeting.
Joan Westenberg says
Trust Me. You Don’t Want To Go Viral.
NatashaMH writes about a woman finding meaning in memoirs in
Drowning In Sobriety.
And, as we enter Black History Month in the U.S., check out Deborah W. Parker’s piece on Belle da Costa Greene in
The Black Librarian Who Rewrote The Rules Of Power, Gender and Passing As White.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
During his state of the state address, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, himself a polarizing figure at times, spoke up about the dangers facing us in the U.S. I blow hot and cold on Pritzker as a politician and a governor of my state, but I give him credit for speaking his mind in an era where those who have like minds can’t seem to connect them to their tongues.
Below is the text of the speech that I think speaks for itself. I’m sure some will disagree. If you do, you’re part of the problem.
The political party that has been tying itself into knots supporting him and the political party that should be opposing him have both covered themselves in cowardice. The media that cherishes its hallowed 4th estate has found new and very poor ways to tell us we shouldn’t believe our eyes and ears. Men with power and money willingly submit like suckling pigs hoping they won’t get led to slaughter. Let’s not forget the deluded cult members and greedy bastards who think this guy is doing things that will help them.
Woe be unto them.
Woe be unto us all.
I’m not saying we should accept this. We shouldn’t. We should fight it with every ounce of strength we have. But let’s for goodness sake acknowledge what we’re fighting and quit the pretense. The man sees himself as a king and those who know better are way to content to play the game. Those that don’t, but cowardly won’t call bullshit loud and often enough, are essentially giving him the runway for all of the planes to continue to crashing among us.
To be honest, I think he’s somewhat oblivious in the world this decaying orange turd thinks he’s living in. He’s already on the throne and supported, willingly or no, by those who have any modicum of power in this country as they keep fluffing him while they wait for him to rape the next porn star that crosses his path. If it all one day comes crashing down he’ll be as surprised as anybody that he takes down with him.
Hans Christian Anderson could never have imagined his story quite like this. Perhaps we do need a child to lead us, because the adults in the room can’t seem to find their way out from under their own shadows.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at 
First up, John Gruber in Daring Fireball takes on the broad gulf in the Gulf of Mexico (America) debate in a well reasoned, often too nuanced post entitled 
Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg have put together one heckuva piece on the goings on in the Rupert Murdoch succession drama. It’s long, it’s full of gory details. It could have been a book. Of course most think it already was a streaming series. Check out ‘
It’s challenging to keep up with the pace of events and some ask why bother trying given that those we’ve relied on in the past have either turned coats or can’t keep up themselves. My answer is simple. I’d like to know more about the disease is causing me pain.
As is my habit, I follow a lot of sources. I’ve compiled and will continue to compile a list of those I find the most valuable. Some on this list cover news, some provide important context, and all are worth my while in my opinion. So, I’m sharing them here.
I’ll add to this list as I discover other sources worth recommending, so you might want to check back every now and then.
Mostly on a political front, Josh Marshall’s 
The documentary itself is excellent work. The six episodes splice together historical footage-some already famous, some new-with interviews from those who were actually there, on all sides of the conflict. We’ve seen similar story telling techniques in other historical documentaries. This time around we get to hear not just from Americans, but also from North Vietnamese and Viet Cong voices. These moments are certainly compelling, as are some of the stories of the journalists and other non-combatants involved.
Add to that what I’ll call the reunion factor. Each episode features a couple of individuals who served together to tell their stories, often with completely different views on the war and its aims. In the episode’s conclusion they are then reunited. It’s effective and at times emotional and effectively reveals the folly and tragedy of division.
As good as the series is at chronicling an inflection point in American and world history, what got me thinking was again witnessing scenes of anti-war protests. While I’ve seen many such scenes before, watching them through the prism of this contemporary moment of peril we’re trying to find our way through in the U.S left me curious and unsettled.
There’s no doubt that those anti-war protests had an impact on America culturally and politically. That tumultuous era created new alliances and divisions over root causes that we are still fighting over today. But as I watch those surging crowds of protesters, knowing how history often repeats and/or rhymes, I remind myself that was a different age. One without the organizing tools like social media and mobile communications that we have at our disposal now.
As I and many others anguish over the lack of leadership defying what is happening currently in Washington DC, I’m left wondering, given the tools we have at our disposal today, what it will take to effectively take advantage of those tools and galvanize, as was done then, to meet the challenges of today. Certainly the forces we’re now in contest with have bought and pillaged some of those services and learned how to use them more effectively than those in the reluctant opposition.
Perhaps we lost this round when most of us left Twitter to avoid the cesspool of Elon Musk’s making, instead of sticking around and forcing them to toss us off.
It took time in that era for anti-government pressure to come together and coalesce with enough momentum to bring change. And yes, it also took events like the murders of student protestors at Kent State, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, not to mention the too many casualties of war.
Let’s hope we don’t need the time, or that type of violence, for leaders to emerge and spark enough outrage to bring a stop to the evil we now face. I’m not talking about leaders emerging from conventional political party structures. I’m talking about from the ground up. The tools are there. It should be easier to organize and get the word out with less effort than it was during the age of the War in Vietnam.
Here’s also hoping we have the courage, conviction, and most importantly the desire to do what is necessary when the time comes.
Because it’s coming.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at 
Of course I’m referring to all of the insane stunts that are happening during these early days of the end of the American Experiment. Don’t blowback on the use of the word “stunts.” People get hurt doing stunt work all the time. Some have died. Both are going to happen at some point in our future.
But make no mistake, these “shock and awe” stunts are literally intended to do real harm while overwhelming any attempt to impede them. It’s designed to create chaos. Sadly, it’s working.
To say the Democrats are in disarray is to spit out a bad cliché like a rotten sunflower seed. To say whatever used to be the GOP has surrendered everything except their daughters to Trump is also old news. That last part might also be premature. To say the fourth estate is complicit misses the point completely. Ask yourself where the cameras were during all of Elon Musk’s frat boy takeovers this weekend. Perhaps if a plane had crashed into the Treasury building they would have been there. To say the oligarchs and tech bros are the real winners is watching a trailer for a comedy action thriller that leaves out the spoiler in which everybody dies in the end.
Josh Marshall has two good pieces about this that are worth reading 
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 