• What caused the Black Death and could it strike again? (Aeon Essays) The short version is that it was a mutation of the marmot variant, which has an affinity for human lungs, and did not tend to show symptoms for a few days after the infected were shedding bacteria.
• Unemployment Insurance Extension During Great Recession Did Not Destroy Jobs (Institute for New Economic Thinking) Best guess is that it probably resulted in an increase in jobs, because people spent those unemployment insurance benefits.
• ‘Batman’ is saving the day in Cumbria by scaring off ‘killer clowns’ (The Independent) We live in interesting times, like the Chinese curse.
• I am a Terrible Doctor; and I’m Proud of it (Musings of a Dinosaur) A doctor notes that the various incentives and ratings that insurers attempt to assign to doctors have nothing to do with quality of care.
• The white flight of Derek Black (The Washington Post) As Yves smith notes, this is a striking value of the value of a liberal arts education: It reformed a notorious white nationalist.
• F%$# You Startup World (Medium) Over at the SP BBS, CZ noted that, “Silly Valley seems to be just one big frat house of the well connected and inbred offspring of rich, these days.” I argued that this could describe most of the United States of America.
• Uber and the gig economy look a lot like the pre-industrial economy (Quartz) I prefer the term “Sharecropping.”
• Why an older Google contract programmer left Google (Business Insider) He had no interest in their white board interview bullsh%$.

Monty Python