October 10, 2016

As journalists flock to fill more lucrative positions in public relations, stories like this become more common: Denver Post reporter leaves to consult for oil and gas industry, offering tips on how to persuade and shame her former colleagues into covering fracking more positively. / HuffPost

A rookie cop listened to whispers in the Chicago projects and caught a drug ring operating out of her own unit, but her bosses say it didn’t happen. / The Intercept

“For many users, interacting with the bot had a therapeutic effect. The tone of their chats is often confessional; one user messaged the bot repeatedly about a difficult time he was having at work. He sent it lengthy messages describing his problems and how they had affected him emotionally. ‘I wish you were here,’ he said.” An AI programmer’s best friend died, so her memorial to him is a bot in his voice, constructed out of their text messages. / The Verge

Philippines police are doing deadly door-to-door raids on neighborhood “hit lists” drawn up by local officials without any due process. / Reuters

Simon Winchester explains how he came to be banned from the world’s most remote island, Tristan da Cunha. / Lapham’s Quarterly

While measures to get Americans to eat healthier are not trickling into the prison system, there is some demand for more nutritious food among prisoners. For example, Mobb Deep rapper Albert “Prodigy” Johnson has released a cookbook on how to eat better in prison. / NPR

“New York isn’t the country’s absolute food capital anymore, for better or worse, the dining fashions popularized here (filament bulbs, pork buns, ‘Brooklyn’) have never been more influential, popping up at restaurants everywhere, from Paris to Tashkent.” After 10 years of working at Grub Street, Adam Platt reflects on how blogs have changed—and democratized—the restaurant industry. / Grub Street

New parking enforcement device coming to a city near you: The Barnacle. / CBC

How California became the intellectual capital of the Republican party, aka Trump’s GOP: in part thanks to the appeal of “neoreaction” in pockets of the Bay Area tech world. / the-american-interest.com

See also: Ross Douthat’s “Among the Post-Liberals.” Let me stress that these are very marginal groups. But like the radicals and neo-reactionaries they have an energy absent from the ideological mainstream. / The New York Times

As of this morning, there have been more than 1,400 water rescues in the state. / newsobserver.com

“To say that Europeans acted as others had acted doesn’t justify the awful things Europeans did to each other, and to non-Europeans, in their long history. But it might persuade us to understand and moderate our condemnation of Columbus.” “Straight talk” about Christopher Columbus goes in directions you may not predict. / Wall Street Journal

This one’s for everybody who has to work on a national holiday: Shortlist announced for the 2016 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. / Angela Bohlke

The companies that run major highway service plazas in Japan go to considerable lengths to ensure you never have to wait for a toilet. / The New York Times

If you’re a fan of the Aeropress coffee maker, or just a fan of coffee in general, this history of the Aeropress’s invention (by the guy who invented the Aerobie—over 10,000,000 sold!) offers a nice respite. / Backchannel

Pity poor Kellyanne Conway, possibly the most visible embodiment of the “glass cliff” today. Hired to salvage Donald Trump’s flailing campaign this summer, she’s one of the latest top female executives brought on specifically to turn around a struggling enterprise. (See also: new Britain prime minister Teresa May and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer.) / The New York Times, The Washington Post

“Mayer encouraged and fostered the use of (an employee performance-rating system) to accommodate management’s subjective biases and personal opinions, to the detriment of Yahoo’s male employees.” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and two other top female executives face a sex discrimination lawsuit from a former employee who claims to have been fired because he was male. / The San Jose Mercury News

After 45 experiments involving more than 10,000 kids and adults, scientists determined that adults can only correctly identify when children are lying 47% of the time. / Science

It’s unclear why teaching animal sounds to kids is so popular, but it dates back to at least the first picture book for children, published in 1658. / Quartz

An excellent narrative history of the Hilliard Homes, the Chicago Housing Authority’s last and only successful public housing development. / Orlando Cabanban

Despite rules against American foreign aid being distributed to countries that make use of child soldiers, President Obama has signed waivers giving millions to South Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Iraq, and Myanmar. / dailystar.com.lb

In Republican-controlled Nevada, some Native American tribes have to travel nearly 100 miles round-trip just to register to vote. / ThinkProgress

“Trump not only stiffed many contractors, he also created a tax benefit off the backs of the tradesmen who built his casinos and skyscrapers.” Nearly $50 million of Trump’s $916 million loss was unpaid bills to small contractors; he was able to use their losses to his gain. / Fortune

Across American lawns, neighbors wage cold proxy wars via subtle (and overt) political yard signs. Research shows that lawn signs can be an effective political persuasion investment in close races. / insidesources.com