Gongol.com Archives: May 2018
May 9, 2018
Tell us more about those payments, Mr. Cohen
The President's personal attorney got some interesting project work from a variety of sources upon Trump's accession to the Presidency -- including payments from a high-profile Russian money man
Keep a close eye on the "Belt and Road"
China's massive global infrastructure initiative isn't an unalloyed good, even for the countries getting the investments
Chicago architects convert a 55,000-square-foot ex-Kmart store into an attractive college-prep school for $10 million
Soldier grows her own replacement ear
Built from rib cartilage, doctors carved out the replacement ear and implanted it inside her arm so it could grow. The doctors called the surgery (to transplant it onto her head) a success -- the ear will work, and it will even have nerve function.
Artificial intelligence gets attention from Congress
Sen. Joni Ernst has proposed a bill to create a "National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence", to serve in an advisory role to the President and Congress on competitiveness, risks, and developments in artificial intelligence, both domestically and internationally
Professional reading lists -- and their limits
An intriguing dive into the nature of professional reading lists -- commonly issued by military leaders, though not found quite nearly often enough elsewhere. Aside from raw personal experience, nothing shapes a person more than the books they read. We'd be better off as a society if there were more open discussion (and debate) about which books ought to be read. Sen. Ben Sasse has made the case for families to create their own reading lists, and that's a worthy suggestion as well.
"Chinese buyers are canceling orders for US soybeans"
It doesn't take actual tariffs to create trade disruptions. The threat alone has been enough to create real-world consequences.
"The genius-bias is a strong one."
An interesting challenge to the way people (specifically men, in this article) credited with works of genius sometimes end up getting a free pass to behave awfully. We should probably grapple with that problem.
Someone needs to atone for the eggplant emoji
Considering the near-simultaneous explosion in misspelled apps (Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit), the mainstreaming of emojis, and the rise of text-speak, future historians are going to wonder how an entire civilization became voluntarily illiterate all at once. The flexibility of English is one of the main reasons it's become the world's lingua franca, and its adaptability probably encourages creative thinking among fluent English speakers. But text-speak is still crap.
Severe weather patterns far quieter than normal
The National Weather Service office in Des Moines notes that on a year-to-date basis, we're at about half the number of severe storm (severe thunderstorm or tornado) watches issued nationwide, as compared to most years. Maybe even less than half.
