• The Ship of State: A Conversation with Dave Eggers Good interview by Tom Lutz of Dave Eggars about his new book, The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment. It’s a satire about Trump, if you believe such a thing is possible. And I’ve pre-ordered a copy. (It’s out on December 5.)
• The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change A fascinating, honest, thoughtful, essay on whether Carbon Capture might be a feasible (and affordable) way of mitigating climate change by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
• Is Elon Musk preparing for the failure of the state? Interesting macro-interpretation of the projects in which he has major investments. Note also that the new Tesla pickup truck is bulletproof.

• Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights The Amnesty Report.
• After Uber arrives, heavy drinking increases Surprise, surprise.
• The global population pyramid: how global demography has changed and what we can expect for the 21st century
• On the sentience of animals “You know the story: you cast your vote against animal sentience and you feel it’s reasonable to do so, but then you have to go home and undress in front of the cat.” Lovely essay by Daisy Hildyard in the London Review of Books.

THANKS to Mark, the reader who spotted the typo in the second link. Now fixed.

• John Cassidy’s New Yorker report on the testimony of Fiona Hill to the Trump impeachment inquiry
• Amazon will pay $0 in US taxes on $11,200,000,000 in profit for 2018 Yep, you read that correctly.
• What Can Americans Learn from Germany’s Reckoning with the Holocaust? Well, they could start with coming to terms with slavery and its legacy.
• On being a newbie in America Nice meditation by Dave Winer, who’s recently moved to Woodstock from NYC.

• Think twice before plugging your phone into a public charging socket It’s such a wicked world: people exploiting desperate smartphone owners who are running low on battery. But there is a fix — a “USB condom”.
• How Turkish coffee destroyed an empire Basically by getting men out of the house to places where they could debate and scheme.
• Australian Law should treat social media companies as publishers says Attorney-General So much for Section 230 then.

• Dealing With Bias in Artificial Intelligence Three women with extensive experience in A.I. speak on the topic and how to confront it.
• History as a giant data set: how analysing the past could help save the future Fascinating long read about the theory that human history goes in cycles.
• The Royal Mint has melted down a million Brexit commemorative coins created for October 31, 2019 One of the lesser consequences of Brexit madness.
• The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity intriguing metaphor: disinformation is to our media ecosystem as fossil fuels are to the environment.

• For the Eurostar Tribe, Brexit Could Make Brussels Feel Even Farther Away
• The secret to enjoying a long winter. Lovely blog post by Jason Kottke.
• Hook, Line and Sinker: Do Tinder Matches and Meet Ups Lead to One-Night Stands? Looks like clickbait, but is actually a full-on academic article, complete with statistics — “means, SDS, and median numbers of matches, meet ups, one-night stands, and meetings with an interest for long-term committed relationship”, zzz. Since I’m not a Tinder user, all of this is purely theoretical.
• The cognitive impact of air pollution Alarming survey by Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe and surely one of the most cerebral of tech founders around.

• How to report a tech conference A masterclass in insightful summarising by Steven Sinofsky
• In 2029, AI Will Make Prejudice Much Worse Credibly dystopian?
• Why we must all reduce our moral certainties If we want to live in a democracy, we have to reach compromises that make most people feel secure. Interesting essay on openDemocracy.
• Against Economics David Graeber’s long review in the New York Review of Books of Robert Skidelsky’s new book, Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics

• Peter Theil’s lecture: “The End of the Computer Age” After seemingly endless introductions, he starts at about 10.5 minutes in.
• Go to Zero Excellent podcast episode on Deepmind’s Go-playing machine.
• Bundling and Unbundling Insightful essay by Drew Austin on what the Internet does.
• Cli-Fi: How climate fiction is helping people understand the planet’s uncertain future

• Motorola brings its Razr clamshell phone back from the dead At $1400 maybe they should have left it rest in peace.
• Facebook has shut down 5.4 billion fake accounts this year Given that there are only 4.536B users worldwide this suggests that there is something wrong with Facebook’s account-creation process.
• AI ethics is all about power Yep.
• How the Climate Crisis Is Killing Us, in 9 Alarming Charts Charts from The Lancet republished by Wired. No good news here.

• IBM: Our Mac-Using Employees Outperform Windows Users in Every Way Well, well. Seems that one IT support person can support 5,400 Mac users, while the company needed one per 242 PC users. Only 5 percent of Mac users called the help desk for assistance, compared with 40 percent of PC users.
• The Internet dream became a nightmare. What will become of it now? Opening piece for a New York Times Magazine series for recovering utopians.
• What is an aircraft carrier? Answer: a $13bn floating target.
• The California wildfires Vivid LRB diary piece by Meehan Crist about living with (and perhaps dying from) climate change.