Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 103

Here's an excerpt from a magazine article I recently read, "Prophet of Prosperity," in the November/December 2017 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette:

Back across the Atlantic, another man was thinking along the same lines. Joseph Wharton was a savvy Quaker who had parlayed his early training in chemistry into an industrial empire stretching from fertilizer and zinc oxide works to Bethlehem Steel. He believed that the development of American industry required jettisoning the free-trade theories that had lately taken root in England—and that justified American dependence on British manufacturing on the basis of Ricardian notions about economic efficiency and comparative advantage.

“The prestige universities like Harvard and Yale were all pro-trade,” says economic historian Michael Hudson, a research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “They were affiliated with the trading interests. And there really wasn’t any manufacturing industry, apart from Pennsylvania, to push its own interests.”

So Wharton, perceiving what he dubbed an “intellectual hiatus in the business life of the nation,” endowed an entirely new kind of college at the University of Pennsylvania. The Wharton School of Finance and Economy would train a rising elite in “business management and civil government.” He envisioned a new class of virtuous administrators with explicitly civic-minded values. Whether they chose to “serve the community … in offices of trust” or manage private enterprises according to “sound financial morality,” they would focus on solving “the social problems incident to our civilization.”

Aside from those generalities, the industrialist had a specific pedagogical demand: that the “fungus” of free trade economics be stamped out in the classrooms of the new school. “No apologetic or merely defensive style of instruction must be tolerated upon this point,” he admonished the trustees in 1881, “but the right and duty of national self-protection must be firmly asserted and demonstrated.”

“Essentially,” says Hudson, “the Wharton School was the think tank for American industrialization. … [Its founder] was saying: Look, if we’re going to industrialize, we need a whole theory of how to get a trade policy and a government infrastructure policy to support industry.”

 

Respect Context

Picking up on a post from earlier this week, let me continue on this thread of "context is everything."

Consider the topics of gentrification in particular, or social justice more broadly.  We can speak, even eloquently and thoughtfully and precisely, from a place of contemplating the current dynamics of economics and criminal justice and human behavior and race, and yet ring hollow to many in the conversation.  How can that be?  It can be so if we do not pay some respect to the historical context in which such issues have emerged.  If we have not acknowledged the injustice and the violence that preceded and created our current times, and the state-sponsored complicity of it all, then for many we have missed the thing right in front of our eyes, and our interpretations and interventions are of no good.  Past motives and actions may not baked into present ones.  But to ignore them is to have no validity in the eyes of many to be able to speak to present ones.

I think about this a lot as a Christian, and not just because it is my hope that I can speak to issues of gentrification and social justice in a way that is eloquent and thoughtful and precise and also that is respectful of the injustice and violence that preceded and created our current times.  But I think about this a lot too because I think about what is an effective Christian witness in today's society.  And I worry that much of what passes for Christian witness in today's society is ineffective, because it comes across as intolerant, tone-deaf, and privileged, and I am particularly pointing a finger at myself and others who are well-educated and affluent Christians.

Sounds harsh, no?  But think about it.  When we describe the Christian life, how often do we speak of a closed community within which we have adopted a set of norms that work for us but provide no grace or goodness to others?  Would our prayers offer any point of connection to people different from us, or are they the sickly sweet petitions of someone who has never faced any real kind of adversity or oppression or want or pain?  Do we even have any real intersection with "the world out there"?  We describe "the world" as dark and lost and needy and dead, and we conceptually understand that it is not "out there" but all around us; and yet when do we actually connect with it, dine with it, really talk and touch with it?

The terrible irony is that it isn't actually that much of a stretch to provide that sort of context in our Christian witness.  After all, we follow and represent a God who is "well acquainted with sorrows," who wept over a lost city, who lost His only son, who endured betrayal and injustice and violence and abandonment.  And, many of us, even those who live in upper middle class comfort, are not strangers to sorrow.  We have lost loved ones, made terrible mistakes that have visited ruin on ourselves and others, and struggled with unspeakably dark emotional issues.

And yet in much of modern day Christianity in affluent communities, our outwardly lived life is one of near-perfection, our only "flaw" being how hard we are on ourselves for striving for such near-perfection.  Do our Christian circles accommodate people who are falling apart, whose marriages are fraying, whose prayer requests are the ones that cause people to step back and say "whoa"?  Again, the terrible irony is that our pride keeps us from living in this way, and from creating Christian communities that are this welcoming, and yet it is this very sense of deep imperfection and resulting desperation that is the best and most context-laden witness to the world around us.

When those who do not believe in Jesus see us parade around like some well-choreographed country club, there is disinterest or even disdain.  But when we are our true selves before each other and before our God, and when we speak of a God who was mocked and whipped and railroaded through a dubious trial to suffer an outrageous and publicly humiliating execution, then we may hold some relevance to their real pains and their real issues.  Let's hope for that kind of Christian witness today, the one that is true to the context of the God we worship and the flawed and broken condition in which we worship Him.

Taking the Bible Seriously

For anyone who has any intersection with the Christian faith (and of course even many who do), the Bible holds some level of authority.  And yet much of what passes for our giving the Bible room in our lives is halfhearted at best and incoherent at worst.  People are obviously free to make their own decisions about what is important and what they consider to carry moral weight.  But it is striking to me that on matters of such eternal gravity - the purpose of our lives, the existence or non-existence of absolute truth, the destination of our souls - many of us are shockingly inconsistent and careless.  Consider the following, fairly common ways people relate to the Bible:

"It's a collection of stories that represent the wisdoms of a particular faith tradition."  This is a popular viewpoint, and one that at first blush seems pretty shallow but actually has some legitimacy to it.  For if you are an atheist or an agnostic, then on the one hand you ascribe little spiritual weight to the good book, but on the other hand you understand that it has held up over time as a touchstone of moral truths and life lessons and therefore it's worth something. 

"Some of it still holds up, but the rest of it has passed its expiration."  The ol' pick-and-choose approach, in which religious texts (the Bible and others) are a big buffet from which we can graze on things we like and hold our noses at things we don't. 

"La la la la la la la." (Said while holding fingers in ears.)   The Bible has some weird, controversial, and unpopular things in it.  Some of us respond by trying not to think too hard about those passages. 

"It is the absolute truth, and I and everyone else needs to live by it - no exceptions."  This often has the effect of being dogmatic and unyielding, which if we're talking about absolute truth then there's some legitimacy to that.  But it also often has the effect of coming from and leading to a spirit of self-righteous blindness, which is sadly ironic and not at all honoring to God. 

So what do I think is a consistent, coherent, and God-honoring approach to the Bible?  Well, for starters I covered this ground last year in this post.  I'll only restate that context is everything when it comes to any historical account, and this is most certainly true of the Bible.  We may still disagree about interpretation even after we've taken a deep dive into the social, political, and linguistic context of key texts.  But if, instead of diving deep, we've lazily and shallowly jumped to conclusions about what the Bible says without considering the entirety of the book and the context in which different parts of it were written, then we haven't done justice to it, irrespective of whether our conclusion is to scornfully dismiss it or strictly adhere to it.

I of course believe that it matters what conclusions we draw from the Bible.  But I believe it also matters, irrespective of what conclusions we draw, how seriously and consistently we are digesting the book.  Wherever you have landed or will land, I hope you'll give that consideration.

Lazy Linking, 200th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

200.1 Whoa: Cold War nuclear testing might've caused more deaths in US than Hiroshima/Nagasaki bit.ly/2BN1MNi @margrev

200.2 Surprise: computers are better than humans at complicated chess positions bc they're not afraid to study them bit.ly/2yOeewH @chessbase

200.3 Brutally honest assessment of K-12 education in US, incl the role of racism in driving inequitable outcomes theatln.tc/2AIA5Ie @theatlantic

200.4 Study says different nutrition outcomes btwn rich/poor is from demand not supply (i.e. no such thing as food deserts?) bit.ly/2BtkLjk @nberpubs

200.5 Catholic univs struggle to reconcile mission/faith/doctrine and modernity/funding/protest bit.ly/2BWxhHw @cityjournal

Recommended Reads, 28th in a Quarterly Series

Stuff I'd recommend from my past three months' reading consumption:

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 (Ellis). Love this period of history and Ellis' insightful treatment of it.

Settle for More (Kelly).  Fascinating to learn more about where Megyn Kelly came from and what makes her tick.

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (Sanders).  Bernie's life and agenda are all here.

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Carroll).  Super deep at times, super dense at others.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Stephens-Davidowitz).  Data don't lie...but they do tell tales stranger than fiction.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Gay).  A searing account of abuse and the devastation it leaves behind.

 

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 102

Here are two excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults," by Frances Jensen:



And yet the brain of an adolescent is nothing short of a paradox. It has an overabundance of gray matter (the neurons that form the basic building blocks of the brain) and an undersupply of white matter (the connective wiring that helps information flow efficiently from one part of the brain to the other)—which is why the teenage brain is almost like a brand-new Ferrari: it’s primed and pumped, but it hasn’t been road tested yet. In other words, it’s all revved up but doesn’t quite know where to go.

So here’s the paradox: Adolescence is a stage of development in which teens have superb cognitive abilities and high rates of learning and memory because they are still riding on the heightened synaptic plasticity of childhood. These abilities give them a distinct advantage over adults, but because they are so primed to learn, they are also exceedingly vulnerable to learning the wrong things. How does this happen? It all goes back to the brain’s craving for rewards, and the fact that anything that is learned, good or bad, that stimulates the production of dopamine is construed by the brain as a reward. This means a little bit of stimulation to a teenage brain whose synapses are firing all over the place leads to a craving for more stimulation that can, in certain situations, result in a kind of overlearning. The more commonly known name for this overlearning is addiction.

The Future is Bright

A recent study by McKinsey looked at the automatability of different jobs in different industries, and the NPR headline that emerged from such an analysis was stark: "Automation Could Displace 800 Million Workers Worldwide By 2030, Study Says."  But here's another, counterpoint headline to add to the discussion: "Why Futurist Ray Kurzweil Isn't Worried About Technology Stealing Your Job."  Here's the money quote:

We have already eliminated all jobs several times in human history. How many jobs circa 1900 exist today? If I were a prescient futurist in 1900, I would say, “Okay, 38% of you work on farms; 25% of you work in factories. That’s two-thirds of the population. I predict that by the year 2015, that will be 2% on farms and 9% in factories.” And everybody would go, “Oh, my God, we’re going to be out of work.” I would say, “Well, don’t worry, for every job we eliminate, we’re going to create more jobs at the top of the skill ladder.” And people would say, “What new jobs?” And I’d say, “Well, I don’t know. We haven’t invented them yet.”

That continues to be the case, and it creates a difficult political issue because you can look at people driving cars and trucks, and you can be pretty confident those jobs will go away. And you can’t describe the new jobs, because they’re in industries and concepts that don’t exist yet.
 
Kurweil's expertise is in tech and not poli sci.  But he makes an insightful connection to politics in pointing out the asymmetry between the jobs that will be lost (which are real, knowable things that are currently held by people) and the jobs that will be gained (which, who knows what they will be and who will hold them).  Which means that politicians will be more nervous about the lost jobs (and the voters who had them) than about the gained jobs (which we can't yet perceive what they'll be and how they'll be distributed).

I don't think it's a controversial statement that we are better off now than 100+ years ago, when two-thirds of jobs were in back-breaking agricultural or manufacturing sectors.  Machines have made our lives immeasurably better and easier.  Transporting people from 1900 to the present day, they'd wouldn't believe their eyes when they observed the technology, comforts, wealth, and health that we take for granted.  And while these multiple generations of automation-driven disruption have created winners and losers, I would argue that despite rampant inequity we are in many ways far better off in terms of equity than we were in our agricultural and manufacturing eras, in which it was impossible to succeed if you were not born into land or capital and in which terrible working conditions were disproportionately borne by the less well-off.

As we look into an uncertain future, it is natural to worry about job loss, and more broadly about growing inequity.  We have our work cut out for ourselves to stay competitive and to prepare our children and grandchildren to be competitive.  And we need to roll up our sleeves on the issue of inequity, to see to it that people who are particularly vulnerable to economic disruption are reaping the benefit of progress and not getting left behind.  But, by and large, by looking at the long game as Kurweil has, we can see that accelerating rates of innovation and automation are welcome trends that hold great promise for society.  We may lose 800 million jobs to robots.  But we will gain many more, and much more, in return.

2017 Books I've Read

Here are my ratings for the books I read in 2017.  In case you've forgotten, the scale goes like this: 1 - pass, 2 - some good some bad, 3 - recommended, 4 - can't stop raving about it, 5 - fundamentally 

changed my life.

PS Before I move on to the list, I would be remiss if I did not repeat an ongoing request to any and all to suggest book titles I might like.  In reviewing my reads, consider also if I am missing any major types of books or authors; I would welcome using my reading time to shore up any holes in absorbing different perspectives and stories.

 

1 Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Kristof) 4

Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father (Culver) 4

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Grant) 4

Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Cuddy) 4

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business (Duhigg) 3

Between the World and Me (Coates) 3

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (Prose) 3

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Rovelli) 3

Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World (Man) 3

10 Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (Johnson) 4

The Legends Club: Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry (Feinstein) 3

Fearless (Lucado) 3

The Hiding Place (ten Boom) 3

The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms (LaPorte) 2

The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (Naipaul) 2

In Other Words (Lahiri) 4

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (Brown) 2

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer (Hitchens) 3

You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (Michaels) 3

20 Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Eagleman) 4

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind (Stone) 3

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (Sagan) 3

The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business (Van Overtveldt) 3

The Road to Character (Brooks) 4

Langston Hughes Collection 3

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Lewis) 3

Now, Discover Your Strengths (Buckingham) 3

The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island (Bryson) 3

The Gospel According to Jesus (MacArthur) 4

30 The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia (Dash) 3

The Power of Myth (Campbell) 2

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (Fox) 3

Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up (Kondo) 2

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time (Huffington) 3

Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager (Bissinger) 3

Crazy Is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags (Rottenberg) 2

Every Day I Fight: Making a Difference, Kicking Cancer's Ass  (Scott) 3

Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Blow) 4

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past (Klosterman) 4

40 Men We Reaped: A Memoir (Ward) 4

What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs (Warren) 3

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (Packer) 2

Good Morning, Beautiful Business: The Unexpected Journey of an Activist Entrepreneur and Local-Economy Pioneer (Wicks) 3

1776 (McCullough) 3

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (Roach) 3

Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy‎ (Love) 3

Shaken: Discovering Your True Identity in the Midst of Life's Storms‎ (Tebow) 3

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens (Olson) 3

The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 (Ellis) 3

50 Settle for More (Kelly) 3

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (Sanders) 3

American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History  (Kyle) 3

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Carroll) 3

The Last Lecture (Pausch) 3

God Help the Child (Morrison) 3

A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century (Buckley) 3

The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (Sasse) 3

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Stephens-Davidowitz) 4

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Gay) 4

60 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory (Doughty) 3

Black Boy (Wright) 4

Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying And Caring (Nouwen) 2

If Beale Street Could Talk (Baldwin) 3

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (Cowen) 2

Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie) 3

The Blood of Emmett Till (Tyson) 4

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World (Wohlleben) 3


The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults (Jensen) 4

New Year's Resolutions

Since 2011, I’ve posted my New Year’s resolutions at the end of each year.  It’s a good way to do a year-end check-up and see how I did and what I need to recommit to into the New Year.  So without further ado:

1. Body - run 500 miles, swim 50 miles, lift 120 times, bike 500 miles, eat better.

The older I get and the more responsibilities I take on, the more important self-care becomes.  I am reasonably happy with my habit-forming on exercise, diet, and sleep.  (I'm turning a blind eye to my increasingly sweet tooth.  Hey, I eat salad and fruit, too!)  My workout tallies for 1/1/17-12/1/17: ran 556 mi, swam 51 mi, lifted 120 times, biked 495 miles .  Grade: B.

2. Civic – join one or two more boards.

Love how civically minded Philly is and therefore what great people and issues I get to intersect with on my boards.  This year, I joined the boards of Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, and the advisory boards of Biblical Theological Seminary, Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations, PHL Diversity.  Grade: B.

3. Friends and family – shrink the time between contacts (varies by person).

I should be there for others, and I should practice vulnerability in reaching out to others when I need help.  Goodness knows the need was there, all around.  I have high standards when it comes to keeping in touch with loved ones, and so despite the fact that I ought to and do have realistic expectations about what is possible at this stage in my life, I know I can do better.  Grade: C.

4. House – 2-3 more projects.

Started to get the house ready for a 4^th child and then had that fall apart.   Still reeling from that on many levels.  Grade: C.

5. Kids – 1 on 1 times each month.

Less quantity of time but good quality of time.  Family trips, Jada to DC and Aaron to Hershey, and Asher just about every free waking hour all added up to some special times.  I love my kids and I love the time I get to spend with them. Grade: B.

6. Marriage – at least one date night per month.

This was the year of the adults-only getaway: Miami (twice), Richmond, and Wilmington, plus a staycation in downtown Philly.  Not many normal dates but the kids-free overnighters were a lot of fun.  Grade: B.

7. Mind – read 50 books, learn Chinese.

Reading is so rejuvenating to me so I went to this well a lot this year.  Got to almost 70 books, which I’ll post titles and ratings for tomorrow.  Got through my Mandarin lessons a couple times through, and am slowly progressing albeit still very primitive. Grade: B.

8. Self – three hours per week of uninterrupted me time, three personal day getaways.

A lot of this was addressed in “Body” above, but self-care is more than that, and on that front I did so-so.  No such thing as large swaths of free time, so you pick your spots when you can.  Grade: C

9. Spiritual – 100 Bible memory verses, one extra hour per week of praying.

The memory verses are a good morning discipline along with reading through the Bible and praying.  I am glad to reinforce this habit and hope to convey its importance to my kids.  Grade: B

10. Work – ten quality reports.

Of the many things I love about my job, the work I get to do and the people I get to do it for is way up there.  Lots of great projects here in the region, plus interesting gigs in LA, Atlanta, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.  Grade: B

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 101

Here's an excerpt from an article I recently read, "The Christian Right Has A New Strategy On Gay Marriage," at FiveThirtyEight:

The case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, represents a pivotal new legal strategy for the Christian conservative movement grounded in religious liberty claims rather than arguments that the law should reflect their values. But it’s also a sign that the Christian right — which once professed to speak for America’s “moral majority” — is tacitly conceding a loss in its long-standing battle over gay rights. While religious conservatives have consistently cast themselves as at odds with dominant liberal, secular forces, this case indicates that they are beginning to adapt to life as a true cultural minority.

“Christian conservatives used to try to promote traditional morality for everyone, but now there seems to be a recognition that they just aren’t going to win over the culture,” said Andrew R. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. “So they’re going to the courts to argue that they’re vulnerable like other minorities and they need protections from the broader culture.”

2018 Predictions Guaranteed or Your Money Back

It’s time to gaze into the ol’ crystal ball, say crazy stuff, and hope that no one checks after the fact.

But first, these were my predictions from a year ago:

1. Trump walks back all the trade protectionist talk, much to the chagrin of his core followers.  The new base he cultivates: truck drivers angry about autonomous vehicles.  Alas, we are still all #MAGA, all the time.

2.Major online security breach leads to huge uptick in high-end credit cards with multiple verification steps, and huge chill in the market for virtual home assistants (e.g. Google Home).  Hello, Equifax! (Laughs and then cries.)

3. Concussion-related complications for two high-profile QBs - one active, one retired - are the final prod for major rules changes to protect players.  Alas, lots of big names, but no rule changes…but maybe better equipment is on the way?

4. The song of the summer will be an out-of-nowhere mashup of socially conscious hip hop and good ol' boy country.  The song of the summer was probably either “Despacito” or “I’m the One,” so…an out-of-nowhere mashup of bubble gum hip hop and Hispanic/Palestinian?

5. A robust year for the global economy and world stock markets, but signs of a pullback at the very end.  Yes and…maybe?

Eh, not bad.  Some forecasts for 2018:

1. Facebook has a “Wells Fargo” moment (i.e. millions of fake accounts, and not for fake news’ sake but to game ad rates), and we all have a collective “wait, we should probably read the fine print” moment with our social media accounts.

2. Donald Trump?  I can't predict next week, let alone next year.

3. We “hack” sleep to the point that how we went to bed in 2017 will seem so archaic.

4. Another “song of the summer” that isn’t in the English language; but this time it’s not Spanish or even Korean (sorry, BTS fans), but rather some sort of Euro/Caribbean creole.

5. It's the Year of the Native American, as low-level outcry about historical treatment and present woes boil over into a national discussion and reshape our approach towards Thanksgiving.

6. Definitive proof is found that the author of the book of Hebrews in the Christian Bible was Priscilla and Aquila (but mostly Priscilla).

7a. A championship parade down South Broad Street.

7b. A certain online retailer commits to the City of Brotherly Love for their 2^nd headquarters.

Lazy Linking, 199th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

199.1 Rats from different parts of NYC are genetically distinguishable theatln.tc/2Bmlrm6 @theatlantic

199.2 Solving housing affordability in Silicon Valley is hard, but it can’t not involve adding more homes nyti.ms/2i777Gv @nytimes

199.3 Cities/states w/o climate change prep’ll be dinged by credit rating agencies (ie higher borrowing costs) read.bi/2Ap0Kqm @businessinsider

199.4 The future will be weird, Part 1: feed spiders graphene & they’ll spin super-strong webs bit.ly/2yNLB2K @mothernaturenet

199.5 The future will be weird, Part 2: pets are learning how to talk bit.ly/2no5oBW @degenrolf