https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/opinion/trump-autocrat-playbook.html

«In 2009, Turkey’s tax ministry imposed a $2.5 billion fine for alleged tax evasion on Dogan Yayin, a media conglomerate whose newspapers and television stations were critical of the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Under financial and political pressure, the company began unloading some assets and closing others. Last month, the billionaire Aydin Dogan sold his remaining media properties, including the influential Hurriyet newspaper and CNN Turk, to a group of Erdogan loyalists.

….

President Vladimir Putin of Russia turned the tax authorities on Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of an independent television network, NTV, which was considered bothersome. Gusinsky eventually signed NTV over to a government-controlled company. Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan authorities accused Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovisión, a TV station frequently critical of the government, of illegal profiteering. In 2013, Zuloaga sold Globovisión to allies of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro.

Now Donald Trump is going after Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/16/google-really-is-trying-build-censored-chinese-search-engine-its-ceo-confirms/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ffa1e8b554af

Hmmm.

I know Google has already abandoned “Don’t be evil” as a slogan, but… really? Is the choice really this or losing out to Bing or Baidu? Is Pichai merely following the orders of the stockholders? (That probably includes my 401(k).)

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1051839072291971073?s=17

Henry Blodget (@hblodget) Tweeted:
RT @paulkrugman:

«In case anyone forgets: Eddie Lampert, who ran Sears into the ground, is an Ayn Rand devotee who tried to apply Atlas Shrugged to corporate management»

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously

(Krugman is a Nobel-prize-winning economist, but I know every Ayn Rand devotee will find fault with Lampert’s execution, not the theory.)

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record-straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms?fbclid=IwAR2DRmm02uDInysqQuTzzrCzRDn1PoG8i38M9WP4aFPNmsAt727PU6ZA7Zo

«[A] modern fighter is not a Honda Accord. You don’t just hop in it and drive it around for months until you finally have to take it for a one-hour oil change when the light comes on. If anything, they are far more akin to high-end sports cars that require a lot of expensive TLC to keep operating. The F-22, in particular, is more analogous to an exotic supercar or even a high-end race car than anything else. It requires dozens of hours of maintenance for every single flight hour….»

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/how-statistics-doomed-washington-states-death-penalty/572968/

«The logic Powell applied to the death penalty is the same logic Philip Morris employed while he served on its board. Numbers on paper don’t prove a thing.

The death-penalty lawyer Anthony Amsterdam has called McCleskey “the Dred Scott decision of our time”—the moral equivalent of the 1857 opinion denying black Americans any chance of citizenship. After his retirement, Powell told his biographer that he would change his vote in McCleskey if he could.

But it was too late. The Supreme Court was committed to cigarette-maker logic.

Last week, the Washington Supreme Court, in a fairly pointed opinion, declared that, at least in its jurisdiction, numbers have real meaning. And to those who have eyes to see, numbers make clear the truth about death-sentencing: It is arbitrary and racist in its application.»

https://www.wsj.com/articles/young-women-arent-waiting-to-seek-political-power-1539522001

«The Federal Election Commission, acting on a petition from Ms. Grechen Shirley, issued a landmark ruling allowing candidates to use campaign funds to pay child-care expenses.

Maine’s state legislature for the first time set aside a room for nursing mothers. One pregnant candidate for state office made a campaign ad that showed her getting a sonogram.

As recently as 2013, only one woman in the class of House freshmen had children under 18, while 32 of the men did, says the Center for American Women and Politics.

“The norm is shifting,” said Erin Zwiener, a 33-year-old Democrat who had a baby in the middle of her campaign for the Texas legislature. “We are not willing to wait.”»

Paywall. I know.

(I got a cheaper subscription to the WSJ by getting their trial and then trying to cancel.)

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-house-and-senate-are-moving-in-opposite-directions/

«The Democrats’ map in the House is fairly robust, because they aren’t overly reliant on any one type of district. (This stands in contrast to the Senate, where most of the battlegrounds fit into a certain typology: red and rural). While House battlegrounds are somewhat whiter, more suburban and more educated than the country overall, there are quite a few exceptions — enough so that Democrats could underperform in certain types of districts but still have reasonably good chances to win the House. This differs from Hillary Clinton’s position in the Electoral College in 2016, in which underperformance among just one group of voters in one region — white working-class voters in the Midwest — was enough to cost her the election.»

(I stopped reading about here. The details on 538 usually support the summary.)

https://wreg.com/2018/10/12/man-run-over-by-lawn-mower-while-trying-to-kill-son-with-chainsaw/

Ok, this could happen anywhere, really, but….

Bristol. :side-eye:

https://twitter.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1010915727191072768?s=17

The very purest grade of bitter snark. Recommended.

Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) Tweeted:

don’t be fooled by the familiar avatar: @itsJeffTiedrich is a new account. the old one is dead and buried and is gone forever and you’ll need to follow me here in order to stay up to date with all my tweety goodness. [please retweet, thanks!]

https://twitter.com/brhodes/status/1050921796353048576?s=17

Huh. Now I know, I guess.

Armando (@armandodkos) Tweeted:
RT @brhodes: What an extraordinary coincidence that FP used to consistently run criticisms of Obama’s Middle East policy that were completely in line with the UAE view.

Avi Asher-Schapiro (@AASchapiro) Tweeted:
David Rothkopf, the former Editor & CEO of Foreign Policy, registered as a foreign agent for UAE, for $600,000/year. Contract is signed by Yousef Al Otaiba. h/t @ArifCRafiq https://t.co/x3NDVS2LqP https://twitter.com/AASchapiro/status/1050599529563615232?s=17