To set my mood •••
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Donald Trump claims he only licensed his name for real estate projects developed by others. But an investigation of a dozen Trump deals shows deep family involvement in projects that often involved deceptive practices.
Donald Trump claims he only licensed his name for real estate projects developed by others. But an investigation of a dozen Trump deals shows deep family involvement in projects that often involved deceptive practices.
Since Donald Trump’s fortunes came surging back with the success of “The Apprentice” 14 years ago, his deals have often been scrutinized for the large number of his partners who have ventured to the very edges of the law, and sometimes beyond. Those associates have included accused money launderers, alleged funders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a felon who slashed someone in the face with a broken margarita glass.
Trump and his company have typically countered by saying they were merely licensing his name on these real estate projects in exchange for a fee. They weren’t the developers or in any way responsible. But an eight-month investigation by ProPublica and WNYC reveals that the post-millennium Trump business model is different from what has been previously reported. The Trumps were typically way more than mere licensors or bystanders in their often-troubled deals. They were deeply involved in these projects. They helped mislead investors and buyers — and they profited handsomely from it.
Patterns of deceptive practices occurred in a dozen deals across the globe, as the business expanded into international projects, and the Trumps often participated. One common pattern, visible in more than half of those transactions, was a tendency to misstate key sales numbers.
In interviews and press conferences, Ivanka Trump gave false sales figures for projects in Mexico’s Baja California; Panama City, Panama; Toronto and New York’s SoHo neighborhood. These statements weren’t just the legendary Trump hype; they misled potential buyers about the viability of the developments. …
The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?
Sorting people by ‘merit’ will do nothing to fix inequality.
Michael Young was an inconvenient child. His father, an Australian, was a musician and music critic, and his mother, who grew up in Ireland, was a painter of a bohemian bent. They were hard-up, distractible and frequently on the outs with each other. Michael, born in 1915 in Manchester, soon found that neither had much time for him. Once when his parents had seemingly forgotten his birthday, he imagined that he was in for a big end-of-day surprise. But no, they really had forgotten his birthday, which was no surprise at all. He overheard his parents talk about putting him up for adoption and, by his own account, never fully shed his fear of abandonment.
Everything changed for him when, at the age of 14, he was sent to an experimental boarding school at Dartington Hall in Devon. It was the creation of the great progressive philanthropists Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, and it sought to change society by changing souls. There it was as if he had been put up for adoption, because the Elmhirsts treated him as a son, encouraging and supporting him for the rest of their lives. Suddenly he was a member of the transnational elite: dining with President Roosevelt, listening in on a conversation between Leonard and Henry Ford.
Young, who has been called the greatest practical sociologist of the past century, pioneered the modern scientific exploration of the social lives of the English working class. He did not just aim to study class, though; he aimed to ameliorate the damage he believed it could do. The Dartington ideal was about the cultivation of personality and aptitudes whatever form they took, and the British class structure plainly impeded this ideal. What would supplant the old, caste-like system of social hierarchy? For many today, the answer is “meritocracy” – a term that Young himself coined 60 years ago. Meritocracy represents a vision in which power and privilege would be allocated by individual merit, not by social origins.
Inspired by the meritocratic ideal, many people these days are committed to a view of how the hierarchies of money and status in our world should be organised. We think that jobs should go not to people who have connections or pedigree, but to those best qualified for them, regardless of their background. Occasionally, we will allow for exceptions – for positive discrimination, say, to help undo the effects of previous discrimination. But such exceptions are provisional: when the bigotries of sex, race, class and caste are gone, the exceptions will cease to be warranted. We have rejected the old class society. In moving toward the meritocratic ideal, we have imagined that we have retired the old encrustations of inherited hierarchies. As Young knew, that is not the real story. …
A simple acronym sums up what’s wrong with social media
BUMMER
Do you dare delete Facebook?
Do you ever scroll through your social media feeds and feel gross? If so, you’re not alone. It’s a common response. And yet we go back, day after day, over and over and over, endlessly scrolling, like addicts hooked on a drug that we once loved but now kind of hate and cannot or will not even try to escape.
Technologist and philosopher Jaron Lanier, a virtual reality pioneer and early internet evangelist who isn’t on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, contends that you should just quit social media. Go cold turkey. In his latest book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier argues that engaging on the internet makes us feel bad because systems are designed to manipulate us by measuring our interests, anticipating our desires, modifying our behavior, and creating opportunities for advertisers.
He’s developed a simple acronym to sum up the sinister purpose of tech companies that brought us the platforms we’re hooked on and their effect on us—BUMMER. It stands for Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into Empires for Rent.
According to Lanier, social media platforms need us to keep coming back, so they’ve designed tools that accumulate data about us, then give us more of what moves us most to create wealth for the platforms. BUMMER platforms are more than just a bummer from Lanier’s perspective—they’re eroding health and happiness and political and social discourse, curbing our free will, and turning us into, well, “assholes.” …
4 Huge Improvements to Everyday Life (We’ll Never Adopt)
In 1995, Pizza Hut founder John Pizzahut had the idea of jamming rancid string cheese logs into the edges of a pizza, and thus was stuffed crust pizza born. Despite being humanity’s single greatest achievement (sorry, written language!) and a major advance in the field of pizzaology, it still hasn’t been adopted as the standard 23 years later. This is because we humans have a bad habit of not adopting something better if we’re used to the older, shittier version.
Of course, finding more places to hide a substance that legally qualifies as cheese isn’t the only example. There are things we do every day that have huge impact on our lives which have objectively superior versions that will never, ever see widespread adoption in the United States, if for no other reason than that making the change sounds like too much damn work. For example …
4. Ranked Choice Voting Fixes Democracy (Or At Least Improves It A Bit)
Let us assume for a moment that you are an American who does not vote in federal elections because “both parties are the same.” First of all, congratulations! You did it! You found a way to feel smugly superior to all those voting plebs, with their “convictions” and “exercising their civic duty,” by doing nothing whatsoever. That said, there is legitimate criticism to be made of the American winner-takes-all voting system.
Any system that only offers two choices is already halfway to having no choices. If you’re a progressive, you know that supporting a progressive third-party candidate you agree with could just split the vote and put a Republican in office. This encourages you to fall in line with whatever boring centrist the Democrats give you, and discourages those third-party candidates from even running in the first place.
This is where ranked choice voting comes in. It’s a system where instead of casting a vote for a single candidate, voters rank several choices from first to last. If one candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, they win. Congratulations, President Vermin Supreme! If no candidate gets a majority of first-choice votes, then the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. Sorry, Senate candidate Ted Nugent, looks like the seat’s going to Kid Rock. Votes for the eliminated candidate are redistributed to voters’ second choice, then third, then fourth, and so on, until a candidate has a majority.
That means our hypothetical voter up there could feel secure putting their preferred candidate first and then the Democrat second, knowing that if the former gets eliminated, their vote just rolls over to the latter.
While this may not be a perfect system, it’s certainly a better system than what we’ve got. No more being forced to choose between the political equivalent of a sharp stick in the eye and an acid enema. Instead, you could just rank the political equivalent of a basket of handjobs first and put the sharp stick in the eye further down the list. …
How one family used an obituary to lay out the reality of opioid addiction
After Madelyn Ellen Linsenmeir died on 7 October, Kate O’Neill penned a now-viral obituary on her sister’s addiction battle as ‘an authentic authoring of her life’
Madelyn Linsenmeir with father Mark Linsenmeir.
Kate O’Neill never thought she would be writing her own sister’s obituary. But as the family made preparations for the memorial this month, the task fell to O’Neill. Sitting down at a kitchen table, she wrote the story of how Madelyn Ellen Linsenmeir battled drug addiction.
Linsenmeir, from Burlington, Vermont, was only 30 when she died on 7 October, leaving behind a three-year-old son and a family who wants to honor her by relaying the realities of drug addiction.
“It is impossible to capture a person in an obituary, and especially someone whose adult life was largely defined by drug addiction,” the obituary, which has since gone viral, reads. “To some, Maddie was just a junkie – when they saw her addiction they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them. Because Maddie was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient.”
Linsenmeir tried OxyContin for the first time at a high school party when she was 16. By 18, she was using heroin.
Living in and out of rehab, losing custody of her son, and ultimately dying in a hospital while in police custody, Linsenmeir’s story is a raw one, felt and known by millions of Americans who struggle with addiction amid America’s opioid crisis.
Interviews with family, friends and Linsenmeir’s recovery program mentor also paint a picture of a woman beloved for her kindness, perseverance and honesty. …
After terminal cancer diagnosis, Little Free Library founder feels like ‘most successful person I know’
Editor’s note: Todd Bol died Thursday morning, shortly after this story was published. It was read to him before he passed away.
Todd Bol built the first Little Free Library on his Hudson, Wis., deck with wood from his old garage door and love for his mother, who had recently died. Nine years and some 75,000 libraries-on-a-stick later, Bol is sick with pancreatic cancer and considering his own legacy.
That legacy, inspired by loss and luck and a knack for problem-solving, is wide: Little Free Libraries, a common sight in Minnesota, have popped up in 88 countries across the world.
Bol, 62, was in the Philippines when he realized something was wrong. In early October, he received the diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. After a single round of chemotherapy, more bad news: peritoneal cancer. Between those diagnoses and before moving into hospice care, Bol spoke for hours this month in his Hudson home about the power of the dollhouse-sized libraries and the people, whom his nonprofit dubs “stewards,” who care for them.
“If I may be so bold, I’m the most successful person I know,” Bol said, with a sideways smile, “because I stimulate 54 million books to be read and neighbors to talk to each other. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the very definition of success.
“If people get along and work together and share books, I’ll take that over Billionaire Bob’s money,” he continued.
“I wouldn’t switch my existence for Jeff Bezos or any of it.” …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
The Army is getting ready to bring driverless trucks into war.
Next fall, its “Leader-Follower” technology will allow convoys of autonomous vehicles to follow one driven by a human. It’s a direct response to the improvised explosive devices that caused nearly half the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military has been trying to bring robots into wars since the 1950s — the first was a bulky roving platform. More recently, robots have defused bombs.
The same basic idea is always at play: “remoting the lethality,” or creating a bigger, safer distance between American soldiers and the enemy they are trying to kill.
Much of the research and development of these technologies has been done at TARDEC, the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, in Warren, Michigan. Typically human-driven trucks are outfitted with sensors and cameras through a TARDEC-created applique kit.
They’re not exactly robots, just regular military trucks that have been made a lot smarter. The technology is expected to be ready for field use in September 2019.
Bernard Theisen is a Project Manager who has worked at TARDEC for 17 years. Part of the job of his lab is to translate soldiers’ wish lists into field-ready technology.
“I think the number one request we get from soldiers and Marines is, ‘When are we going to get a gun on this?’” Theisen says. “Everybody wants to be able to put a weapon on the robot to get out there to be able to fight.”
The short answer is not yet. But it’s not necessarily because they don’t want to.
VICE News Tonight went to to TARDEC to learn more about the lab’s current projects and find out how far away the U.S. Army is from even smarter, and deadlier, robots.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Roy Wood Jr. highlights notable black athletes whose protests you may not know about.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Donald Trump tweeted reasons why female voters are going to side with him in the midterms, despite polls indicating that 63% of women prefer Democrats compared to the 33% for Republicans.
Scientists aren’t sure what to make of the eerie noise coming from an Antarctic ice shelf. Stephen has some theories.
After the Nebraska Tourism Commission unveiled its new tourism pitch, ‘Honestly, it’s not for everyone,’ Stephen imagines other painfully honest state slogans.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Gavin Newsom, S.E. Cupp, Chelsea Handler and more reflect on 25 years of Bill Maher on the air, and the unique opportunity to hear arguments from all sides of the issues on the show.
THANKS to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher for making this program available on YouTube.
まるバス発車しまーす。I’m leaving the whole bus departure.
FINALLY . . .
Birding Blind: Open Your Ears to the Amazing World of Bird Sounds
For the visually impaired, learning to bird by ear can be a fun challenge that also makes nature more accessible. Here, one birder shares his story.
An illustration of a man listening to the song of a Louisiana Waterthrush.
During my last few years of high school, while living in rural Roxbury, Connecticut, I did not have what most people would consider a typical social life. I’ve been legally blind since early childhood, and as a teenager, I felt lonely and isolated. There was no way to hop in a car and visit friends or crash parties like other kids my age, and there were no buses or cabs around. Admittedly, I was also a bit shy and self-conscious of a birth defect affecting my face—not exactly popularity assets. So, it was just me, my mother, our two dogs . . . and the birds.
Before my mother and I moved to Roxbury, we lived with my father in Fairfield, Connecticut, just outside of Bridgeport. Despite being in a more developed area, my parents raised me to have a great appreciation for the beauty and mystery of nature. They didn’t always know the names of the plants and animals around us, but I used my imagination while creeping around the hedgerows and ornamental trees lining the yards. Our house was on a tiny plot of land, and I was always jealous of the wealthier kids that lived on sprawling properties with woods and probably all sorts of fantastical creatures.
But once in Roxbury, with its abundant woodlands and rolling fields, a whole new world opened up to me. Perhaps it is a coping strategy, but I’ve always felt the need to be an expert on everything around me, especially if it had to do with the plants, animals, and geography I couldn’t see. Books I read, such as Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, with its impressive descriptions of the diverse American wilderness, reinforced my curiosity. So, in this lush new environment and with nothing but time, I soon became fascinated with the calls and songs of the local birds. Little did I know that my fascination would quickly become a passion that would completely change how I experience the outdoors.
My mom knew enough about birds to teach me the difference between the common call of Blue Jays versus that of American Crows, so there was a start. I also had Microsoft’s Encarta on CD-ROM—this was around the year 2000, after all—which contained some articles on bird varieties, including clips of the species’ songs. Suddenly I knew the ubiquitous song and call of the Black-capped Chickadee, as well as that of the Western Meadowlark. I wanted not only to find them myself, but to learn whatever else I might be hearing. When my mother gave me The Birds of North America CD-ROM, which contained profiles and song clips of nearly every bird in the U.S., I was captivated by the extraordinary diversity of life, color, and music around me and in the various landscapes across the country.
My learning began to payoff, too. In April 2001, on a warm spring morning, I volunteered to help cut and clear invasive plants from a local nature preserve. The violets and trout lilies were just beginning to bloom, and trees were a couple of weeks from leafing out. A short way into the quiet forest I heard a loud, high-pitched, clearly whistled song coming from the shady gorge to my left. I knew the call right away: a Louisiana Waterthrush—not exactly the most common of birds, and my first migrant. If I wasn’t already hooked, the confirmation that this birding-by-ear experiment was working made me an instant birder for life. …
DEGREE OF WONDERMENT: I bet most people living in an urban setting would be shocked to find out they could hear a hawk or falcon in their local park.
Ed. Most of the people I know are aware I’ve become an avid bicyclist over the last year-and-a-half. This has allowed me to ride the trails all around the city where I live.
There’s one particular trail that runs through a protected wildlife wetland area that I get to by riding a path alongside a busy highway. Not exactly a pleasant place to ride a bicycle. The noise from the traffic drowns out my music.
One morning I observed a prairie falcon swoop down and catch a prairie dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah… circle of life and all that shit.
Unfortunatly, the falcon’s breakfast entree wasn’t meant to be. The prairie dog fell to the ground, landing on the path just as I rode by.
It was dead.
As I rode by over the coming weeks and months, it started with the smell, the putrification, the little birds and other critters picking at the remains, the wind blowing the fur away and summer thunderstorms washing the sidewalk every so often.
I’ve been wanting to write this for some time.
Over the course of this past summer, I watched that little prairie dog completely disintegrate, leaving only a stain shaped like its body permanently embedded in the sidewalk.
This made me ponder how completely insignificant life can be if one doesn’t strive to always be moving forward. Always be observing, discovering and learning new things.
We’re here for a while, doing what we do…
… And, in the end, everything ends up an anonymous stain upon the Earth.
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?