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Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children. Pfizer has a vaccine. Last year, the company made more than $6 billion of revenue from that vaccine. This year, they offered to donate a supply of the vaccine to Doctors Without Borders. But the organization rejected the donation. The Atlantic's James Hamblin asks the key question: "How has this system come to such a head that humanitarian doctors would refuse a million vaccines on principle?"
+ Jason Cone, US Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders: Why we rejected Pfizer's offer of pneumonia vaccines.
This content is appropriate for people of all ages. And that's the point. The days of targeting media and products at people based on their age are over. I don't aim my writing at a certain age group, demographic, or gender. I'm targeting those who share a common curiosity about current events and a passion for keeping up with what's fascinating. My 16-year-old nephew can relate. So can my mom. (And I even have some pretty enthusiastic readers from outside my family.) Someone finally came up with a word to describe these cross-generational, interested and interesting folks who share a common level of hipness. Meet the Perennials. Because age ain't nothing but a number. (And thanks to the Internet, we know a lot more about you than your age anyway...)
I worry about the normalization of the willy-nilly dissemination of leaked information and the way that data can be used to frame public opinion and potentially destroy a person. So I was happy to see the way Larry Lessig responded when he was presented with highly negative emails that were written about him, and then shared via WikiLeaks: "I'm a big believer in leaks for the public interest. That's why I support Snowden, and why I believe the President should pardon him. But I can't for the life of me see the public good in a leak like this -- at least one that reveals no crime or violation of any important public policy. We all deserve privacy. The burdens of public service are insane enough without the perpetual threat that every thought shared with a friend becomes Twitter fodder."
+ Marco Rubio made a related point: "As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge it. Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us."
+ WaPo: Ecuador cut off Internet access for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (Dear Julian, your internet provider will be out to fix the problem between 2:00 and 4:00pm on November 9th...)
Do you suffer from Electoral Dysfunction? Do you have trouble properly reacting to legitimate voting results? When participating in debates, does it take you longer than expected to really get going and become your true self? Are you finding it increasingly difficult to maintain your winning polling results? In the stress of the moment, are you unable to perform due to a loss of control, and do you then lash out at those who seem more prepared to get nasty? Well, a Dose of Reality might be just the thing you need. Call your doctor if you experience dry-mouth, a sudden decrease in the amount of oxygen you're getting in through your nose, or if your time between Tweets exceeds four hours... While there was a lot of policy talk, just about all the headlines following the third debate are focused on Donald Trump's refusal to say he'd accept the results of an election he has repeatedly argued is rigged. When pressed by moderator Chris Wallace, he explained: "I’ll keep you in suspense." The suspense is killing U.S. (And it probably killed his chances to get to the Oval Office.)
+ The Morning After Pile: On Thursday, Trump changed his tune a bit: "I would accept a clear election result, but I would also reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result."
+ Here's my incisive and entertaining take on the third and final debate: Trump’s Towering Inferno.
We've all been there. You hear the pitter patter of your kids unexpectedly approaching and you urgently reach for the remote to change the channel to after-hours Cinemax, a Game of Thrones brothel scene, the final shootout in Taxi Driver, Ving Rhames bound and ball-gagged in Pulp Fiction... anything to avoid being walked in on while you're watching coverage of the election, or worse, a heavy-breathing scene from one of the presidential debates. But sooner or later you get caught. And you're forced to have one of those dreaded parent-child conversations. "Remember when we talked about the birds and bees? Well, tonight we're gonna talk about the election..." It could be worse. You could be tasked with teaching a social studies class in 2016. From WaPo: Teachers struggle with a presidential campaign full of vitriol, adult themes. The geography teachers have it the best. The most uncomfortable election-related question they get is, "Which way is Canada?"
"As the judge in the Stanford rape case learned, along with the judge in the 'affluenza' drunken driving case, the whole world is watching them. A crowd, an angry crowd, can form in a matter of days of people outraged by what they consider a lenient sentence for a heinous crime." We've entered an era when online tools make it easier to know how judges are performing and to build movements that call for their ouster. Is it OK for the public to regularly attempt to impeach judges? Before you answer, consider the judge who just handed out a 60-day sentence to a father found guilty of repeatedly raping his 12-year-old daughter.
"The emails that induce you to buy right away, the apps and games that rivet your attention, the online forms that nudge you towards one decision over another: all are designed to hack the human brain and capitalise on its instincts, quirks and flaws. The techniques they use are often crude and blatantly manipulative, but they are getting steadily more refined, and, as they do so, less noticeable." And even the people who designed these behavioral systems are worried about the way they're being used. Meet the scientists who make apps addictive.
After we got rid of one air conditioner pollutant that was bad for the ozone layer, we replaced it with another that was hugely dangerous when it comes to climate change. Now those greenhouse gases are being phased out, and the world just took another huge step forward on fighting climate change.
+ "For the first time ever, the army of spinning white turbines that has sprouted across the lush countryside generated enough electricity to power all of Scotland." How Scotland's terrible weather is a boon for renewable energy.
+ CityLab: The British Town That Will Run Almost Entirely on Food Waste.
+ OK, enough with the good environmental news. Here's The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert on the melting of Greenland: The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis. The floodgates may already be open.
"When [someone] suddenly strikes it rich, the impact is profound on every part of their life. It can become a painful psychological experience for some people." From BBC: Loneliness often follows sudden wealth. (That said, this state probably beats broke loneliness...)
A quick question: If the algorithms are so powerful that they know everything about you, then why do you keep getting junk mail even after you die?
+ "It's not difficult to slap a character on a food and get kids to love it. But these days, anybody who tries to sell anything to kids also has to appeal to the parents. This is a way for Disney to prove to Mom and Dad: ‘See? We care about the health of your kids.’" From the LA Times: If your kids don't want broccoli, maybe they'll want Disney broccoli. (My kids would be a lot more likely to eat Musical.ly broccoli.)
+ GQ attempts to answer a couple questions that definitely pop into my head every now any then. Do you really need to worry about your electrolytes? And what the hell are electrolytes?
+ John Tesar Eats the Most Absurd Fried Foods in Texas.
+ Firefighters rescued a man who "was stuck in his chimney for four hours after he said he locked his keys in the house and was attempting to go back inside." (I'm guessing he was just trying to avoid more election news.)
This is a weekly best-of version of the NextDraft newsletter. For daily updates and to get the NextDraft app, go here. (Original story reprinted with permission from NextDraft.)
