• Rachel Maddow, the left’s powerhouse on cable, won’t let the Mueller probe go. (Washington Post) I am not the only one to notice.
• Stupid Patent Of The Month: Veripath Patents Following Privacy Laws (Techdirt) We really need to fix our broken IP system.
• Shining a light on presidential libraries — the unrenowned pay-to-play scandal (Opensecrets.org) Yet another form of back-loaded bribery.
• JAB Holdings: Reimann family, who own stake in Krispy Kreme and Panera Bread, admits Nazi past (Washington Post) The wages of sin, huh?
• BofA, Wells Fargo sour on blockchain (American Banker) Not surprising.  I’ve yet to see a meaningful real world application beyond crypto currencies, even among the Slashdot crowd.
• Trump’s Financial Statements Are So Full Of Lies That His Accountants Put a Warning Label on Them (Vanity Fair) But instead of covering this, we got phony pee tapes.
• Trump administration awards $1.7 million family planning grant to anti-abortion clinics (The Hill) Some policy consequences of Trump.
• The good old days? In many ways, yes (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) Note the source. “Less-educated Americans born in the 1960s fare much worse than those born 20 years earlier due to wage changes, shorter life expectancy, and higher medical costs.”

A mashup from just 1 Maddow show of all the Russia references:

• Google hit with €1.5bn fine from EU over advertising (BBC News) That whole “Don’t be evil,” thing?  So last week.
• Gillum to launch Florida voter-registration campaign to trip up Trump (Politico) Good for him.
• 3-month-10-year Treasury yield curve inverted for first time since ’07 (Business Insider) It’s supposed to be the harbinger of a recession.
• Dashcam video shows Tesla steering toward lane divider—again (Ars Technica) Self-driving cars is really hard, and made even harder by a deranged megalomaniac making unrealistic promises.
• NASA Gets Response From Spacecraft 13 Billion Miles Away (Science Vibe) While we mourn the Mars Rover, Voyager 1 is still kicking ass.
• Kaigun Kare: Japanese Navy Curry (DefenceTalk) I was aware that the Brits brought curry to Japan, but I did not know that it was used to prevent beriberi in the Japanese navy.  (It’s also very tasty)
• Volvo chief warns against ‘irresponsible’ self-driving roll-out (Financial Times) He thinks that it will be rolled out before it is ready.  Given that Silicon Valley is at the core of these efforts, rolling out a beta with the inevitable carnage, seems very likely.
• Iowa Fashion Week Begins (The Onion) America’s finest news source.
• Jordan Peterson Is a Poor Researcher Whose Own Sources Contradict His Claims (Medium) What a surprise. A right-wing icon is a fraud.
• It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD (Matt Taibbi) Not a fine moment for the media.

I remember when this was a joke video from Funny or Die.  Now it is real:

• Myspace apparently lost 12 years’ worth of music, and almost no one noticed (Ars Technica) It’s such a good idea to put your crown jewels in the cloud, huh?
• This medieval astrolabe is officially world’s oldest known such instrument (Ars Technica) Kewl.
• Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report (The Register) They are in the libraries used by the web sites.  I imagine that there are similar numbers for US sites.
• New Zealand’s Prime Minister Is Showing the World What Real Leadership Looks Like (Mother Jones) F%$# the NRA.
• Mergers, Merger Control, and Remedies (MIT Press) Money quote, “Mergers resulted in competitive harm, usually in the form of higher product prices but also with respect to various non-price outcomes.”
• Beto O’Rourke Is the Candidate For Vapid Morons (Paste) Pretty much.
• Medicare for All Attacks by Industry Group Seem Awfully Fishy (Splinter News) A good example of Astroturfing.
• Politician who opposes mandatory chickenpox vaccinations contracts chickenpox (The Independent) At least, there is symmetry.
• Democrats on the take: New DCCC Chair is a best friend of health insurers (Tarbell) Cheri Bustos, your latest corporate pimp in the Democratic Party establishment.

Perhaps the best analysis I’ve seen of Brexit, and it is (nominally) comedy.

Spoiler: it is a natural consequence of government not serving the public.

• David Mamet Pens Open Letter on Felicity Huffman and “Corrupt Joke” College Admissions (Hollywood Reporter) Because there cannot be any resolution without Mamet.
• The Gmail bug that’s been stealing $187M a year from Expedia (The HFT Guy) It turns out that Gmail hides people’s password reset emails, because Google produces sh%$ products.
• Tech giants’ free pass means they haven’t innovated in years (Sky News) Amazon, Google, and Facebook have not created a new product in years.  They just buy up firms that do.
• You Might Notice a Trend: Brief Thought on How to Label Rich Jerks (You Might Notice a Trend) In response to Howart Schultz’s vapors over being called a billionaire, Paul Wartenburg suggests, “Avarice Americans.”  I approve
• The False Promise of Mark Zuckerberg’s Come-to-Jesus Manifesto (Vanity Fair) Money quote, “Zuckerberg is seemingly oblivious to how people really feel about him. He is, without question, one of the least trusted tech executives alive today.”
• What Jesse taught Bernie about running for president (POLITICO) An interesting historical data point of when Sanders endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1988.
•  America’s Global Vigilantism (The American Conservative)  “It’s hard for America to act as the guarantor of a rules-based order that it consistently violates.”  (Drops mic.)

Kermit rapping, I Like Pig Butts:

• Lyft’s IPO disclosure shows it’s not close to profitability and has no good way to get there (Los Angeles Times) How is this not fraud?
• Martin Shkreli “Didn’t” Call The WSJ From Prison To Remind Everyone That He Is Still Doing Crimes (Dealbreaker) “We never doubted our choice, but today we were reminded why Martin Shkreli will always be the OG of this very specific game.”
• Fukushima: current state of the clean-up (Phys.org) The site will not be stabilized in my lifetime.
• Meet the most insidious #Resistance grifters | The Outline
• $80 billion has been spent on self-driving cars with nothing to show for it (TreeHugger) Even without considering some of the more extreme edge cases, driving is the single hardest thing that most people do.
• Picky Brits Won’t Eat US Chicken — Should You? (WhoWhatWhy) Chlorine washed chicken is not dangerous, but it allows filthy and dubious chickens to be sold. It’s a symptom, not the disease.
• This GoPro for Your Dick Is Ridiculous (Motherboard) And it is internet enabled, so Vladimir Putin will no doubt be hacking it. Sweet.

Yes, there is a promotional video for the penis cam: (Warning: [fake] Penis and base jumping)

• A Danger to the Republic: Neo-Nazis and other Militants Embedded in the U. S. Military (Padre Steve’s World) Thoughts on wannabee terrorist Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Hasson.  Not reassuring.
• The Harvard MBA Is Bad for You (Just Visiting) Money quote, “We need to abolish the Harvard M.B.A degree for the good of the people who pursue that path, as well as the world at large.”
• Parrots ‘hooked on opium’ wreak havoc on Indian farmers’ crops (The Independent) Epic hed.
• Why ‘ji32k7au4a83’ Is a Remarkably Common Password (Gizmodo) When transliterated from the Mandarin phrase, “My Password.”
• Queen publishes first Instagram post (BBC News) An image of Charles Babbage’s letter to Prince Albert, neat.

And the Award for Best Use of an Air Horn Goes To:

• Why Bernie Sanders Matters More Than People Think (Benjamin Studebaker) “He’s running not just to change the country, but to change the Democratic Party into the kind of party that can deliver for poor and working Americans.”
• A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. (Mark Twain) He was not a fan of zusammengesetzte Wörter.
• How an Investigation of Fake FCC Comments Snared a Prominent D.C. Media Firm (Gizmodo) “CQ Roll Call, a company that, while running an august newsroom in the nation’s capital, is also in the business of helping lobbyists construct digital ‘grassroots’ campaigns.”
• Right to Repair Legislation Is Officially Being Considered In Canada (Motherboard) I am sure that there is something in the new NAFTA that will prevent this.
• US Healthcare Disgrace: GoFundMe-Care Symptomatic of Extreme Inequality (WhoWhatWhy) Obamacare made a desert and called it peace.
• Cloud Loss Could Add 8 Degrees to Global Warming (Quanta Magazine) Every time that climate change models are updated, it just gets worse.

Why watch Megas XLR:

• EU adds Saudi Arabia to ‘dirty money’ blacklist | Saudi Arabia News (Al Jazeera) The EU has decided that the House of Saud, “Pose[s] a threat because of lax controls on terror financing and money laundering.”  Unimaginable only a year ago.  Way to go MBS.
• Rights of ‘gilets jaunes’ protesters in France, ‘disproportionately curtailed’, say UN independent experts (UN News) Macron’s complete disregard of basic human rights is a basic feature of the French imperial presidency.
• The Market for Privacy Lemons. Why “The Market” Can’t Solve The Privacy Problem Without Regulation. (Wetmachine) Telco expert and lawyer Harold Feld uses Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof’s seminal work, Market for Lemons, to show how the market cannot address privacy problems, because of the whole race to the bottom issue.
• Techie in need of a doorstop picks up ‘chunk of metal’ – only to find out it’s rather pricey (The Register) It was platinum.  Oops.
• Democracy and the Corrupt Seven (Eight) (Craig Murray) A well deserved take-down of the Blairite Labour Party Quislings.

Have a promotional video for the F-15X:

• The Russian Spy Who Wasn’t (The New Republic) Maria Butina.  Intersting read.
• War of the Classes: How I Became a Socialist (Jack London) Yes, that Jack London. 
• Blockchain and Trust (Schneier on Security) Schnier makes a very basic point:  That trust between people cannot be replaced by technology.
• Exposure to Glyphosate-Based Herbicides and Risk for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma: A Meta-Analysis and Supporting Evidence (ScienceDirect) Surprise, “Meta-analysis of human epidemiological studies suggests a compelling link between exposures to GBHs and increased risk for NHL.”
• EU adds Saudi Arabia to ‘dirty money’ blacklist (Al Jazeera) Yes, whacking Jamal Khashoggi seems such a good idea now, doesn’t it?
• Union: Los Angeles Times management wants ‘unfettered’ control over staffers’ book projects (Washington Post) The staff voted to unionize, and management proposes this crap.
• The case of the reviewer who said cite me or I won’t recommend acceptance of your work (Retraction Watch) Academic publishing is really rather corrupt.

Another Spider-Man Movie????

• Chris Christie’s Agonizing New Memoir (Rolling Stone) Matt Taibbi’s amusing essay on, “The inside story of the man who welcomed Donald Trump into the political mainstream and got nothing in return.”
• The government is using wrong data to make decisions about the internet (Recode) The FCC has consistently used, and presented, bad data in order to justify our dysfunctional for profit communications monopolies.
• President for the rich | The decline of Emmanuel Macron (Times Literary Supplement) I agree the characterizations, but that was clear from the start.  The question is, “How did he manage to put one over on the French public?”
• The company that promised a one-way ticket to Mars is bankrupt (The Verge) Not a surprise, Mars One Ventures was clearly a scam.
• Net Neutrality Oral Argument Highlights Problem For Pai: You Can’t Hide The Policy Implications Of Your Actions From Judges. (Wetmachine) Harold Feld, who was a part of the oral arguments in the net neutrality lawsuit, notes just how morally and legally vacuous FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s actions have been.
• NHTSA’s analysis of Tesla Autopilot safety was bad, but its coverup was worse. (The Drive) It turns out that the government analysis of Tesla’s Autopilot was flawed:  As opposed to a 40% reduction in crashes was actually a 2 fold increase in crashes.

An honest trailer for Star Trek: The Next Generation:

• The Kind Of Policy We Must Never Make Again (Current Affairs) Obama’s “Race to the Top” education cluster f%$#.
• Undercover Police Posing As Drug Buyers Arrested By Undercover Police Posing As Drug Dealer (Disclose.tv) I recall an episode of Night Court that turned out that way.
• Do Democrats Really Want Medicare for All? (NY Mag) Dems run on single payer, then walk it back after being elected.  I wonder why voters don’t believe when Democrats promise to make their lives better.
• America is falling out of love with billionaires, and it’s about time (Los Angeles Times)  Eat the rich.
• The Economic Costs and Benefits of Airbnb (Portside) Money quote, The economic costs Airbnb imposes likely outweigh the benefits.”
• McKinsey & Company: Capital’s Willing Executioners (Current Affairs) Their role in Perdue Pharma’s Oxycontin marketing.  Ethics, schmethics.
• Why are Democratic party thinktanks still not backing universal healthcare? (The Guardian) Because the folks paying their bills don’t want it.
• Call for retraction of 400 scientific papers amid fears organs came from Chinese prisoners (The Guardian) Pretty f%$#ing horrifying.
• DuckDuckGo Warns that Google Does Not Respect ‘Do Not Track’ Browser Setting (Search Engine Journal) Being evil.
• We may finally see Trump’s tax returns, and Republicans are panicking (Washington Post) Pass the popcorn.
• How monopolies are contributing to inequality in the United States (Business Insider) They neglected to consider the effects of legally sanctioned monopolies like copyright and patent, which is a big part of this.

 SpongeBob Singing “Sweet Victory”:

• Reality Check :: Facebook, Inc. (PlainSite) Evidence that not only is Facebook unethical toward its users, it’s selling false data to its customers (advertisers).
• Clinton not ruling out running in 2020: report (The Hill) Please, just make it stop.
• Tribalism Isn’t Our Democracy’s Problem. The GOP Is. (NY Mag) Tru dat.
• Facebook just hired a handful of its toughest privacy critics (Ars Technica) If you can’t address the criticism, buy the critics.
• China releases footage of ‘Guam killer’ DF-26 ballistic missile in ‘clear message to the US’ (South China Morning Post) I’ve generally heard it called a, “Carrier Killer,” with a maneuverable reentry vehicle that can hit moving targets.
• OxyContin Maker Explored Expansion Into “Attractive”… (ProPublica) Purdue Pharma needs to be dismantled, and the Sackler Family needs to be have every penny of theirs seized.

I want to see someone selling beer in a Klein Bottle:

• Who is more dangerous: El Chapo or Carlos Slim? (The Guardian) I’ll pick the corrupt billionaire as being more dangerous. ……… Clear enough?
• “When You Get That Wealthy, You Start to Buy Your Own Bullsh%$”: The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg (Vanity Fair) The nature of wealth and power.
• Army’s long-awaited Iraq war study finds Iran was the only winner in a conflict that holds many lessons for future wars (Army Times) In related news, the sky is blue.
• Basecamp CEO Jason Fried says venture capital funding destroys startups (Recode) Venture capital is all about pump and dump.
• Greenland is approaching the threshold of an irreversible melt (Business Insider) We are f%$#ed.
• There Was Heavy Tech Lobbying On Article 13… From The Company Hoping To Sell Everyone The Filters (Techdirt) As always, “Cui bono.”
• Biden and Beto’s Aid to GOP Candidates Is Disqualifying (New York Magazine) They both effectively endorsed Republican Congressional candidates this cycle.

A horse in a hospital:

• The Bulwark Site From Weekly Standard Staffers Shows Neocons Are Back (Rolling Stone) And Pierre Omidyar, publisher of The Intercept, is the one wot’s funding them.
• New CalPERS Board Member Has Serious Concerns About Private Equity Plan (Chief Investment Officer) Jason Perez defeated CalPERS President Priva Mathur in the last election, and Mr. Perez is wondering why the board is hell-bent on investing in an expensive private equity scheme.
• Worse than you thought: inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy doesn’t want you to read (Navy Times) That collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a freighter in the Pacific was a direct result of systemic problems with at least the 7^th fleet, and possibly the whole of the Pacific Command.
• Elsevier journal editors resign, start rival open-access journal (Inside Higher Ed) Elsevier are the most repulsive people in academe, which says a lot.
• War Whores Scramble To Say Syria Attack Means Troops Must Remain (Caitlin Johnstone) Yeah, pretty much.
• Group aligned with Ocasio-Cortez prepares to take out Democrats (Politico) Justice Democrats, who got AOC to run in the first place.  Good.  Let the faux Democrats make their own party.

The marvelously profane Simon Pie on Brexit:

• Who are you calling chicken? T. rex’s closest living relative found on the farm (The Guardian) The chicken. Does this make Tyrannosaurus Rex Kosher?
• Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? | Outside Online (Outside) It turns out that vitamin D supplements are not the panacea that we thought, it may be the sun.
• Anthony Scaramucci Joins Cast of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ (Rolling Stone) Just f%$#ing kill me.
• Indonesian officials say crashed Lion Air jet’s cockpit voice recorder found (Reuters) Hopefully, this will answer a few questions.

Big Brother, Schmig Brother, Facebook Edition:

• The fascinating design history of the periodic table of elements (Quartz) An interesting bit of science history.
• Dear Lobsters: There Is A Better Way (Current Affairs) How to deal with fans of  nutjob Jordan Peterson.
• Towns And Cities Keep Ditching Comcast To Build Their Own Broadband Networks (Techdirt) Comcast sucks, this is arguably the most bipartisan sentiment in the nation.
• The lies Comcast allegedly told customers to hide full cost of service (Ars Technica) And this is why everyone hates Comcast.
• Tim Cook to Investors: People Bought Fewer New iPhones Because They Repaired Their Old Ones (Motherboard) We need right to repair legislation now.
• This Is Everything That Is Wrong With Mainstream Feminism (Caitlin Johnstone) Money quote, “What is wrong with mainstream feminism is exemplified perfectly in a mass media parade celebrating the rise of women to the top of the most depraved industry on earth.”
• My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to Be Honest (YES! Magazine) Read what Lori Lakin Hutcherson wants.

Amazing remix of the AOC dance:

I took that video of AOC dancing and turned it into an ad for Medicare For All with a catchy theme song. pic.twitter.com/PLO1WkgEID

— Jonathan Mann (@songadaymann) January 3, 2019

• Breaking: Santa delivering presents to only vaccinated children (Science Poast) Satire folks, it’s satire.
• Amazon accidentally sent 1,700 Alexa recordings to the wrong person, including audio from in the shower (Business Insider) Do you REALLY want them listening to everything you say?
• Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie (Stephen Fallows) Answering life’s burning questions.
• Rethinking collective action and U.S. labor laws in a monopsonist economy (Equitable Growth) Break them the up, with malice.
• New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics (The Nation) Click-bait or propaganda?
• As a grocery chain is dismantled, investors recover their money. Worker pensions are short millions. (Washington Post) This is a feature, not a bug, and so long as vulture firms, and derivatives are not held to accountable in bankruptcy proceedings, this will continue.

The game is $25, so I am not buying, but I love the trailer from Cyanide and Happiness:

• How Britain stole $45 trillion from India (Al Jazeera) The wages of colonialism.
• How Putin’s Russia Weaponizes X (Moon of Alabama) A list of the many times that this cliche has been invoked.
• Boffins don’t give a sh!t, slap Trump’s face on a turd in science journal (The Register) A brown anti-Trump Easter egg.
• This Isn’t News. This Is War Crimes Apologia. (Medium) Caitlin Johnstone unleashes a well deserved can of whup ass on Michelle Obama’s deplorable embrace of war criminal George W. Bush.
• Facebook’s Illusion of Control over Location-Related Ad Targeting (Medium) Zuckerberg’s technological horror lies when they say that you can turn off their tracking of you.
• The Real Story of the Pentagon’s $21 Trillion Con Game (WhoWhatWhy) Cui bono?
• Big Pharma Fights Proposal to Keep It From Looting Medicare (Counterpunch) The headline says it all.
• Christmas dragons: Diana Rowland’s yard display is inappropriate, a neighbor wrote. So she put up more. (Washington Post) A woman put up dragons as Christmas decorations.  An anonymous neighbor complained that they were demonic, so said woman put up more dragons.  Kind of like, “Turtles all the way down.”

I’m surprised that anyone found this in the article, it is tiny:

This way is easier: pic.twitter.com/OASlEtgyBE

— Jaime de Juan-Sanz (@JaimedeJuan) December 13, 2018

• Fundamental Baptist church pastors cover up sex abuse, rape (McClatchy) In God we tryst.
• Study ‘Proves’ Parachutes Don’t Save People Who Fall Out of Airplanes (Live Science) This actually appeared in a peer reviewed journal. Ethics prevented them from fling people out of a plane in flight, so they did the study with the plane on the ground, which they noted in the 4^th paragraph. It’s a bit of meta about how not to write for a scientific journal.
• ‘The Pentagon Has Steadfastly Stonewalled Against Making Its Budget Auditable’ (FAIR) A feature, not a bug.
• The police officer who arrested a president (Washington Post) It was U.Ss Grant, for taking his carriage to dangerous speeds on city streets. This may actually be a legal precedent about arrest of indictment of a sitting president.
• The UK’s Reform of Limited Partnership Law: Dead on Arrival (I) (naked capitalism) The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in the UK is doing its best to allow money laundering to continue.
• Climate change: The massive CO2 emitter you may not know about (BBC) Cement, the stuff that is mixed with sand and gravel to make concrete.
• A Bad World for Migrants (and I Don’t Even Mean Human Ones) (Common Dreams) Migratory birds are in a world of hurt.

‘Bohemian Chanukah’, a riff on Queen:

• How Alaska fixed its earthquake-shattered roads in just days (The Verge) Short version, spending money to prepare in advance.
• The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House (New York Times) Somehow, they avoid even alluding to potential graft.
• Trump and China: Going With Patent Holders Against Workers (Counterpunch) Dean baker says what I have been saying. (More accurately, I have been saying what he has been saying for a very long time.)
• Massachusetts federal court rules you have the right to secretly record cops. (Slate) About f%$#ing time. Massachusetts cops have been trying to criminalize transparency for decades.
• The Arctic Ocean has lost 95 percent of its oldest ice — a startling sign of what’s to come (Washington Post) We are screwed.
• How Did This Sushi Restaurant CEO Help Destroy Somalian Pirates? (grape Japan) He got them jobs catching tuna for his restaurants.

This is inspired:

I replaced the Amazon can you feel it commercial music with the theme from Winter Soldier pic.twitter.com/rXMcDGoWcJ

— Omar Najam (@OmarNajam) November 24, 2018