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"There is no one left. None but all of us." Quote of the Day [Click]

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Another issue is that uncertainty is a tough sell in a competitive news environment. “The favorite is indeed favored, just not by as much as everyone thinks once you look at the data more carefully, so bet on the favorite at even money but the underdog against the point spread” isn’t that complicated a story, but it can be a difficult message to get across on TV in the midst of an election campaign when everyone has the attention span of a sugar-high 4-year-old. It can be even harder on social media, where platforms like Facebook reward simplistic coverage that confirms people’s biases.

Nate Silver

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Probably the most important problem with 2016 coverage was confirmation bias — coupled with what you might call good old-fashioned liberal media bias. Journalists just didn’t believe that someone like Trump could become president, running a populist and at times also nationalist, racist and misogynistic campaign in a country that had twice elected Obama and whose demographics supposedly favored Democrats. So they cherry-picked their way through the data to support their belief, ignoring evidence — such as Clinton’s poor standing in the Midwest — that didn’t fit the narrative.

Nate Silver, “The Media has a Probability Problem”

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The standard American myth of meritocracy misinterprets personal narratives like mine. The accumulated social capital of American institutions—stable transfer of power, rule of law, and entrepreneurship—certainly create economic miracles every day. But these institutions are far more suited to exponentially growing capital where it already exists, rather than creating new capital where society needs it. Stories such as mine are treated as the archetype, and we falsely believe they are the path to escape velocity for an entire segment of the population. In doing so, they leave that population behind. I am the face of the self-made rags-to-riches success story, and I’m here to say that story is a myth.

‘The Grim Biology of Being Poor’ via Nautilus

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It seems that the Trump administration is less a government than a small clique of bloggers and tweeters who are incommunicado with the people who actually help them get things done. Things will get really hairy when the world's problems are incoming.

David Brooks

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The Islamic State? Homeland security? Iraq? Syria? Afghanistan? Libya? Russia? China? North Korea? Gitmo? Nuclear proliferation? NATO? Looming budget battles? Nowhere to be found in the reality TV-like first 48 hours.

The Situation Report, via Foreign Policy

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Certainly man thrives best (or has at least) in a state of semi-anarchy. Then he has been strong, inventive, reliant, moving. But cage him with rules, feed him and make him healthy and I think he will die as surely as a caged wolf dies.

John Steinbeck

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The economists are the idiots savants of our time

‘Economists versus the economy’ via Project Syndicate

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‘Obama adds to his environmental legacy’ via Washington Post

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As with Inbox Zero, so with work in general: the more efficient you get at ploughing through your tasks, the faster new tasks seem to arrive. (“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” as the British historian C Northcote Parkinson realised way back in 1955, when he coined what would come to be known as Parkinson’s law.)

‘Why time management is ruining our lives’ via The Guardian

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The allure of the doctrine of time management is that, one day, everything might finally be under control. Yet work in the modern economy is notable for its limitlessness. And if the stream of incoming emails is endless, Inbox Zero can never bring liberation: you’re still Sisyphus, rolling his boulder up that hill for all eternity – you’re just rolling it slightly faster.

‘Why time management is ruining our lives’ via The Guardian

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The correlation between fandom and the percentage of people who voted for Mr. Trump was higher for “Duck Dynasty” than it was for any other show

‘50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide’ per New York Times

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A surge in suicides and other “deaths of despair” among high school-educated white men had reached such an alarming level that middle-aged whites collectively had become the only demographic group in America in decades to see rising mortality. By their calculations, between 1999 and 2013 as many as 490,000 extra lives were lost as a result of the shift.

‘Nobel economist Angus Deaton on a year of political earthquakes’ via Financial Times

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Our findings suggest a material disconnect between pay and fundamental value generation for, and returns to, capital providers

Weijia Li and Steven Young,  Link between executive pay and performance ‘negligible’ via Financial Times

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To build China into a space power in all respects, with the capabilities to make innovations independently, to make scientific discovery and research at the cutting edge, to promote strong and sustained economic and social development, to effectively and reliably guarantee national security, to exercise sound and efficient governance, and to carry out mutually beneficial international exchanges and cooperation; to have an advanced and open space science and technology industry, stable and reliable space infrastructure, pioneering and innovative professionals, and a rich and profound space spirit; to provide strong support for the realization of the Chinese Dream of the renewal of the Chinese nation, and make positive contributions to human civilization and progress.

‘China’s Space Activities in 2016′,  The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China

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Amazon has a patent for “anticipatory package shipping” technology, which is just what it sounds like: When some Prime subscriber buys more deodorant, Amazon already has the box standing by, ready to label and ship. “It’s just one giant math exercise,” Deutsche Bank wrote, adding that Amazon has “hundreds of Ph.D. mathematicians” who spend their days optimizing logistics.

‘Will Amazon Kill FedEx?’ via Bloomberg

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The company is the fifth-most valuable in the world: Its market capitalization is about $366 billion, which is roughly equal to the combined worth of Walmart, FedEx, and Boeing.

‘Will Amazon Kill FedEx?’ via Bloomberg

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There is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide.

Michael Moore, ‘5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win’