Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Billions hidden beyond reach: Trove of secret files details opaque financial universe where global elite shield riches from taxes, probes and accountability (Washington Post)
• Self-driving cars: The 21st-century trolley problem Autonomous tech could lead to deaths at the hands of robots. But is continuing to let humans drive even worse? (Vox) see also The Problem With Electric Trucks: Despite their potential to curb emissions, many of the most-hyped electric vehicles will exacerbate another safety crisis: traffic deaths. (Bloomberg)
• Covid cases in kids are soaring. In Tennessee, most remain unmasked and unvaccinated. August, for the first time in the pandemic, the rate of coronavirus infections among children topped those for adults ages 18 to 64 and seniors, driven by the highly contagious delta variant. (Washington Post)
• How AT&T fuels right-wing extremists One America News (OAN), a right-wing propaganda network that promotes unhinged conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, COVID, and other topics, relies almost exclusively on funding from AT&T. Court records first obtained by Reuters reveal that AT&T is responsible for 90% of OAN’s revenue.(Popular Information)
• ‘Stalkerware’ Apps Are Proliferating. Protect Yourself. These spyware apps record your conversations, location and everything you type, all while camouflaged as a calculator or calendar. (New York Times)
• Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of misinformation At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines. (AP) see also This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader After boosting unproven covid drugs and campaigning against vaccines, Steve Kirsch was abandoned by his team of scientific advisers—and left out of a job. (MIT Technology Review)
• Surprise! Postal service is about to get slower — and more expensive Increasing the time you have to wait to receive a letter isn’t an improvement in reliability or efficiency, but just the opposite. As for “consistency,” the service’s strategy is perfectly analogous to what airlines do when their on-time flight performance deteriorates: They increase the standard for “on time,” and presto! Every flight is on time again.(Los Angeles Times)
• What We Lost When Gannett Came to Town. We don’t often talk about how a paper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone. (The Atlantic)
• It’s Not Misinformation. It’s Amplified Propaganda. You don’t need fake accounts to spread ampliganda online. Real people will happily do it. (The Atlantic)
• They Investigate Police Killings. Their Record Is Wanting. After the murder of George Floyd, some states looked to independent agencies to examine deaths in police custody. But dozens of cases handled by the Texas Rangers show the approach has flaws. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital. He began his career as an engineer and team leader at AOL, Facebook, and Slack, but soon moved into Venture Capital. He earned the nickname “SPAC King” for numerous successful deals he has done, and today is a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors.
FBI: Killings soared nearly 30% in 2020, mostly committed with guns
Source: Washington Post
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