The most interesting story of the day. The Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s

Coming soon to a country near you? Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society

Just in case you are not keeping up. Impeachment: the allegations against US President Donald Trump

Truth: Advocates argue their single-payer Medicare for all health care system will overall cost us all a lot less. They are right that their systems can be a lot less expensive by expanding Medicare to everyone––primarily because government payment rates are so much smaller.But here’s the hitch––paying Medicare rates on behalf of all patients would literally bankrupt the system we have.

A different view: Sunspots are continuing to become few-and-far between of late. And while it’s really anyone’s guess what next year will bring, the likelihood of 2020 surpassing 2019’s spotless days total is very high, as the sun looms inevitably-closer to its next Grand Solar Minimum.

That China is a threat is a pretty standard line. But not many people are paying attention to its problems. Beijing’s newfound assertiveness looks at first glance like the mark of growing power and ambition. But in fact it is nothing of the sort. China’s actions reflect profound unease among the country’s leaders, as they contend with their country’s first sustained economic slowdown in a generation and can discern no end in sight. China’s economic conditions have steadily worsened since the 2008 financial crisis. The country’s growth rate has fallen by half and is likely to plunge further in the years ahead, as debt, foreign protectionism, resource depletion, and rapid aging take their toll.

Best break down on the quantum supremacy dispute between IBM and Google that I have seen yet. Quantum supremacy: the gloves are off

Increased copyright protection is almost always a bad idea. No one yet has shown that it benefits society as a whole and even most proponents don’t even try to make that case. The CASE Act’s goal is to make it simple and fast for copyright holders to get paid for infringement claims. The method it employs is to create a quasi-judicial body in the Copyright Office called the “Copyright Claims Board,” which would be able to award damages as high as $30,000 per proceeding, while also strictly limiting the ability of parties to appeal the decisions. $30,000 judgments issued by people who are not judges but rather officers of the Copyright Office, who see copyright holders—not the general public—as their customers, are not “small claims”. These are judgments that could ruin the lives of regular people; people who are engaging in the things we all do when we’re online: sharing memes, sharing videos, and downloading images.

I would put more focus on the idea that increasingly the State’s only commonly accepted justification for existing rests on ever increasing material befits. It is a short jump from there to think that if I am doing poorly, the state is no longer legitimate. Protesters Are United by Something Other Than Politics

More amusing and sly then the headline suggests. I think it strongly overstates its case though and in general it does not seem like it is written by someone who is deeply familiar with the past: How single men and women are making politics more extreme