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But it wasn’t always this way. Both the towers and their architect, Minoru Yamasaki, were criticized upon their completion, with racist and misogynist language dogging their Japanese American designer. The Twin Towers, which at first seemed a career-making commission, ultimately sabotaged Yamasaki’s career and confidence, their long double shadow putting everything he designed after 1973 in the shade.

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If President Donald Trump is re-elected in November, or somehow manages to retain power without the benefit of election, Cotton’s hysterics will be completely forgotten. No harm, no foul. But if Trump is defeated, the battle for the 2024 nomination will begin immediately, and Cotton will have a message that resonates across the plains and valleys of racial and cultural resentment that define the Republican base: “Who lost Washington?”

Tom Cotton Op-Ed on Sending Troops Is First Salvo in 2024 Race

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Manufacturing jobs in the United States have declined considerably over the past several decades, even as manufacturing output – the value of goods and products manufactured in the U.S. – has grown strongly.

U.S. manufacturing producing more with fewer workers | Pew Research Center

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On the deepest dive ever made by a human inside a submarine, a Texas investor found something he could have found in the gutter of nearly any street in the world: trash.

Trash found littering ocean floor in deepest-ever sub dive

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They found the repetition of a single word caused a significant shift in subjects’ brain activity, even more so than when they were in a resting state but uttered no mantra. Notably, the researchers found that the area of the brain most impacted by the activity of repeating a mantra is the Default Mode Network, which is associated with predicting and planning, internal evaluation, mind wandering, and rumination. Basically, repetitive utterances induce a state of psychological calm because they seem to chill out the part of your mind that’s especially self-involved.

To get better at life, try this modern mantra

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It’s not your house that will be your life’s biggest-ever investment, but yourself. The amount of money and value of time you spend on maintaining your body and educating yourself is by far the single biggest expense you will have in life, bar none. Are you treating yourself as the (multi) million dollar asset that you are? If you prefer, see yourself as a wet computer that would cost millions to construct from scratch.

44 things I know because I am now 44 | Swen Lorenz

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Growing up, the only way I saw coffee being made.

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So the population problem in the U.S. is highly location-specific. Instead of keeping immigrants out of the country, the government should focus on sending them to places where the population is stagnant or declining and the economy needs shoring up. The Economic Innovation Group, a think tank, suggests using place-based visas to send skilled immigrants to declining regions. But even low-skilled laborers can bring new life to declining  towns across rural America.

Trump Says U.S. Is Full, but Demographic Decline Is Real Threat

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Republicans push tax cuts that widen deficits. Democrats push unfunded programs. Only the Fed is worried.

Democrats and Republicans Embrace Deficits as Fiscal Norms Bend

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The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox Corp., however, will remain its own thing and be as Fox News-y as ever. On Tuesday morning, as news of the finalized acquisition was made public, former House Speaker Paul Ryan was appointed to the Fox Corp. board as one of its new members

Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox is finally complete

🤢

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Futurists love anything that promotes urban density. For one thing, city living is wildly more energy efficient; America’s love affair with suburbs is a major reason Americans consume twice as much energy as Western Europeans on a per-capita basis. Pack all 300 million Americans into high-rises and subway cars and suddenly, meeting the Paris accord targets is no challenge at all.

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The tradition lives on. Many contemporary AI systems do not so much mimic human thinking as they do the less imaginative minds of bureaucratic institutions; our machine-learning techniques are often programmed to achieve superhuman scale, speed and accuracy at the expense of human-level originality, ambition or morals.

AI thinks like a corporation—and that’s worrying

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Of course, recently we’ve seen resurgent nationalism in Turkey, the US, Britain, Hungary and many other places. This might challenge the ‘end of the nation-state’ thesis, this nationalism is a sort of reversion to the mean. But could it, instead, be the febrile twitching that presages rigor mortis?

Nation State At the Crossroads

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A nihilist is someone who dedicates himself to not giving a shit, who thinks all meanings are shit, and who yearns with all his heart for the “aesthetic pleasure” of seeing the shit hit the fan. Arguing with a nihilist is like intimidating a suicide bomber: The usual threats and enticement have no effect. I suspect that is part of the appeal for both: the facile transcendence of placing oneself beyond all powers of persuasion. A nihilist is above you and your persnickety arguments in the same way that Trump fancies himself above the law.

The Empty Core of the Trump Mystique

The New Republic

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The main factors undermining the prospects for US prosperity are mostly the result of its own political decisions. Unsustainable fiscal deficits, questionable trade policy, a high level of inequality, crumbling infrastructure, underperforming schools, and unaffordable health care are the result of domestic choices. Whether or not Americans come to grips with those issues has little to do with China or India.

The Future of Economic Convergence by Simon Johnson - Project Syndicate

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For what comes next, however, Mr Trump needs a strategy, not just tactics. A starting point must be to promote America’s values. Mr Trump acts as if he believes that might is right. He shows a cynical disdain for the values America enshrined in global institutions after the second world war. If he follows that course America will be diminished as an idea and as a moral and political force. When America competes with China as a guardian of a rules-based order, it starts from a position of strength. But any Western democracy that enters a ruthless race to the bottom with China will—and should—lose.

Chinese Engagement

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In this paragraph, you will be nodding at least twice per sentence. You are already thinking about sharing the think piece on Twitter because it will make you look smart to people you want to impress. For the people you don’t want to impress, you will share it on Facebook to infuriate them. The think piece describes this phenomenon as social signaling, which you already knew.

This is a think piece

“You are definitely smart and well-informed.”