• Encryption Lava Lamps – San Francisco, California (Atlas Obscura) Cloud Flare uses a wall of lava lamps and a video camera to generate random numbers for its security services.
• David Brock’s rotten political empire (Washington Post) “I would be unfair if I said that David Brock represents everything wrong with politics. So let me say that David Brock represents almost everything wrong with politics.”
• Where modern macroeconomics went wrong (Oxford Review of Economic Policy)  Joseph Stiglitz opens up a can of whup ass on modern economics.
• Don’t pirate or we’ll mess with your Nest, warns East Coast ISP (Endgadget) The juxtaposition of the internet of things and the end of net neutrality is not pretty.  You probably want to avoid ISP Armstrong Zoom.
• The Political Gift Economy (emptywheel) Marcy Wheeler’s perspective on what I call back loaded bribery.
• ‘It Can’t Be True.’ Inside the Semiconductor Industry’s Meltdown (Bloomberg) The three “W”s of Meltdown and Spectre CPU bugs.
• The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they’re not willing to admit it (LA Times) Always wrong with no meaningful consequences.

I found this hysterically funny, Charlie found it disturbing: