The Generals Are Coming

As an email newsletter we do our best to maximize the use of our inboxes. Here are 9 email rules from Google’s chairman. The generals in Trump’s administration probably wouldn’t disagree with any of those rules and would likely throw in a few more tips on how to write emails with military precision.

A General Replaces a General as National Security Adviser: President Trump selected Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, known for being both a scholar and a warrior, as his new National Security Adviser. McMaster is a decorated veteran of both Iraq wars, and the author of Dereliction of Duty, a study on civil-military relations (or the lack thereof), during the LBJ administration. McMaster came heavily recommended by members of the Republican party and defense experts, including Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

McMaster continues Trump’s predilection for choosing former generals as members of his Cabinet. This preference could be the result of Trump’s admiration for career military officers or his unwillingness to select officials who joined the “never Trump” camp, or a combination of the two. McMaster is not viewed as an ideologue, and his selection has been applauded by politicians and defense professionals from both parties. Over the next four years, we will observe just how much these generals influence Trump. So far they appear to have had a moderating effect, from Trump backpedalling on torture after meeting with Mattis to Mattis disagreeing with Trump that the media is the enemy.

The World’s Youngest Nation is Starving: Established as a country in 2011, South Sudan is facing starvation and famine in two of its counties. According to the United Nations and government officials, 100,000 people are at risk of starvation, 1 million are on the brink of famine, and 5.5 million (almost half the population) could face major food shortages by this summer. The country descended into civil war in late 2013. The war has crippled agricultural production, a key component of the economy. A UN spokesman in the capital of Juba said the problem has been building for years. “It has not been sudden,” he said. “Food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition has been getting steadily worse since the conflict started three years ago.“

Collective Action Theory Explains Air Pollution in China: Do you like those arcade claw machine games where you try to pick up a toy? Well in China, this is a full time job where the claw is the size of a house, and the person gets to grab at lots of trash. Trash is a major problem in China with 520,000 tons of garbage accumulating each day. Wealthy cities in China can afford to pay for cleaner trash-burning technologies, but in smaller Chinese cities, the incineration of trash is done on the cheap and mostly unregulated. The improper burning of trash is releasing unknown amounts of carcinogenic materials and metals into the air. Getting rid of garbage is big business in China, and trash disposal companies lobby effectively to keep their industry unregulated, despite increasing protests from citizens.

Pedophilia is Never Acceptable, Even for Online Trolls: Yesterday, a conservative advocacy group posted clips of Milo Yiannopoulos in which he seemed to defend the sexual abuse of children. The videos caused Simon & Schuster to cancel their book deal with the online provocateur. Known for popularizing the “alt-right,”  Yiannopoulos worked at Breitbart, where Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, was his boss. Bannon has been one of Yiannopoulos’ staunchest supporters.

It’s been a bad few days for trolls. Last week Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, lost his Disney and YouTube endorsements after posting a video where he paid people to hold “Death to all Jews” signs. Forbes estimated that at $15 million, he was the highest earning YouTube star of 2016.

The Oldest President in the World Says Give Trump a Chance: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe turns 93 today and has now been in power for 37 years. Throughout his tenure as president, he’s been accused of human rights violations, rigging elections, plunging his country into never-ending economic crises, and being a vocal critic of the US. But he’s reversed his anti-US song and dance routine and now says that he’s giving Trump a chance. Mugabe hopes Trump will reverse US sanctions imposed on his country.

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More Reads:

• Gentlemen Republicans prefer blondes (The Guardian)
• A New Yorker article from 2006 that helped solidify H.R. McMaster’s reputation
• An updated deep dive on John McCain: the man, the war hero, the legend, and now Trump nemesis (New York Magazine)
• A list of online skills (Swift, Tableau, MySQL, AngularJS, R development, Node.js) that will help you land a job. If the above doesn’t sound like machines talking then you probably already dig the topic of machine learning (Bloomberg)