Wretchard.com

British police warn vs intemperate Brexit debate. You might be talking about the end of Britain as an independent country, treason or betrayal. But always remember to be polite.

“I am thinking about disorder and people being responsible in the way they speak,” he said. “There’s a responsibility on those individuals that have a platform or voice to communicate in a way that is temperate and not in any way going to inflame people’s views.

Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said it was “incumbent” on anyone in a “position of responsibility” to express their views in a way that did not incite violent behaviour.

Telegraph

Forget Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has been leaking like a sieve beyond that well known incident.

a Mexican digital publisher called Cultura Colectiva, openly stored 540 million records, including comments, names, likes, and reactions to posts, in a publicly accessible database hosted by Amazon Web Services. …

Just yesterday Facebook was forced to stop asking users for their e-mail passwords to verify new accounts, after criticism that it’s poor practice to do so. And last month it turned out Facebook had been storing hundreds of millions of users’ passwords in plain text, another major security no-no.

Who knew that the economy would need people?

Were it not for immigrants, the labor crunch would be even more intense. In 2016, immigrants accounted for one in four construction workers, according to a study by Natalia Siniavskaia of the home builders’ association, up from about one in five in 2004. In some of the least-skilled jobs — like plastering, roofing and hanging drywall, for which workers rarely have more than a high school education — the share of immigrants hovers around half. New York Times

The world might actually run out of people.

That’s the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. “In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.”

Libya has been plunged into chaos since the ouster of the dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, with rival cities and militias competing for power. The bedlam has slashed the country’s oil production, drained much of its sovereign wealth, offered havens to Islamist militants and turned its long Mediterranean coast into a major point of departure for African and Middle Eastern migrants fleeing to Europe.

New York Times

Does Biden invade people’s personal space? The NYT writes:

We each reserve around us a zone of about 18 inches — “intimate space,” he called it — for close friends and family. “Personal space,” from 18 inches to about 4 feet, is open to acquaintances and colleagues. And “social space,” from 4 feet to 12 feet, is the appropriate orbit for strangers or new colleagues.

But what about zero inches?

The rival empires are no longer Britain and Russia but the US and China. The Indian Ocean is where America can blockade China’s energy supplies from the Middle East.

Three major powers — which together account for nearly half of the global economy — are vying for influence in the Indian Ocean arena. India, China, and the United States each view the region through their own geostrategic frameworks, ensuring intense jostling at best or conflict at worst.

War on the Rocks

Now – as in the Soviet Union – making a joke can be a dangerous, life-changing mistake.

Spectator

The Greens weren’t the first to call for the elimination of cattle to save the universe.

And if that doesn’t work try a third.

London Times

Or do they fear the irate Brexiteers?

Gut punch.

“First the bad news. It’s good news.”

“Oh hell! Is it bad good news or good bad news?”

Muller’s report is bad for ratings.

Does the collapse in ratings reflect a disenchantment with the MSM or is the malaise more generic. Institutional credibility is at an all time low. Perhaps people are not just sick of old media, they are simply sick of it all.

Cable news is now the friend of the old and lonely; for people who looking for something to hate or love. Rachel comforted but not for the reason she thought. For a while there was something to despise then even that was gone.

In 1943 the Nazis made a movie version depicting the Titanic disaster. The plot makes it clear why Nazi stood for “national socialism”.

A proclamation to the stockholders of the White Star Line declares the value of their stock is falling. The president of the Line, J. Bruce Ismay (E.F. Fürbringer), promises to reveal a secret during the maiden voyage of the line’s new RMS Titanic that will change that. He alone knows she can break the speed record and receive the Blue Riband, and he believes this will raise the stock’s value.^[3] Ismay and the board of the White Star Line plan to manipulate the stock by selling short their own stock in order to buy it back at a lower price just before the news about the ship’s record speed is revealed to the press.
On Titanic‘s maiden voyage in 1912,^[4] First Officer Peterson (Hans Nielsen), who is German, begs the ship’s rich, snobbish and sleazy owners to slow the ship down, but they refuse, and Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks. The passengers in First Class act like cowards, while Peterson, his recently impoverished Russian aristocrat ex-lover Sigrid Olinsky (Sybille Schmitz), and other German passengers in steerage behave bravely and with dignity. Peterson manages to rescue many passengers, convinces Sigrid to get into a lifeboat, and saves a young girl, who was left to die in her cabin by her uncaring capitalist parents. In the ship’s final death throes, Peterson leaps from the deck with the little girl still in his arms, and is pulled aboard Sigrid’s lifeboat, where the two are reunited; the occupants then watch in horror as Titanic plunges beneath the waves.
At the British Inquiry into the disaster, Peterson testifies against Ismay, condemning his actions, but Ismay is cleared of all charges and the blame is placed squarely on the deceased Captain Smith‘s shoulders. An epilogue states that “the deaths of 1,500 people remain un-atoned, and eternal condemnation of Britain’s endless quest for profit.”

What could go wrong?

Technology Review

Laws, like spells, are supposed to do something. But sometimes it is uttered for its own sake, in a self idolatrous fashion.

Reason

Countdown to crisis

Sometimes you have to be a little crazy to succeed in history. Moving 6 inches in either direction doesn’t get you out of the path of events.

Committee men can trim the ship of state but they are incapable of reacting to radical developments.

Failure of imagination is related to unknown unknowns and black swan theory. Brexit was a Black Swan.

No longer ruled out.

Hezbollah among Maduro’s allies

Paul Krugman explains why taxes are good for you.

The rescue and restructuring plan for Venezuela would involve getting dollars into the country, and the United States is working with banks in the region to help,

Reuters