Daily Pnut is conducting a Midterm Elections Survey on which party will have the majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The survey asks how people feel about the Republican party and how optimistic they feel about the future of the United States and the World. The survey should take no more than 3 minutes to complete and we’ll release the survey results on Wednesday. Please forward the survey to your friends and family!

“Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.”

“Home’s where you go when you run out of homes.”

– John le Carré

Occupy Nature: The latest research by scientists studying biodiversity, from the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Wild Conservation Society (WCS), is now published in the journal Nature. It is a global map of the few intact ecosystems remaining on Earth that are devoid of heavy industrial activity. “Two years ago we did the first analysis of wilderness on land,” lead author James Watson said. “In this new analysis we’ve created a global map and intersected it with national borders to ask: who is responsible?” 70 percent of the world’s remaining untouched wilderness areas is found in only five countries: Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada. The researchers say it will take commitment and cooperation within an “international policy framework” to protect it.

This month Egypt is hosting the Convention on Biological Diversity, with the goal of producing a plan for the protection of biodiversity beyond 2020. “It’s achievable to have a target of 100%,” Watson said. “All nations need to do is stop industry from going into those places.” The five countries responsible for most of the world’s remaining wilderness have to provide leadership; these areas could be protected through legislation or by offering incentives to businesses that do not erode nature. The UN’s biodiversity chief Cristiana Pașca Palmer says people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that are vital for global food production, clean water and carbon sequestration. Palmer has a dire warning for humanity: unless the world comes up with a new deal for nature in the next two years, we could be the first species to document our own extinction.

Additional read: “Can Beer Be Saved From Climate Change?: Most of the crops that go into making beer will not survive extreme weather caused by global warming.”

Consulting for a Criminal: Three American consulting firms, Booz Allen Hamilton, McKinsey & Company, and Boston Consulting Group, have made hundreds of millions of dollars for their work in Saudi Arabia. The companies have completed hundreds of projects and continue working hundreds more while helping to shape Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision and consolidation of power. The companies remain closely tied to the kingdom while claiming distance from any of the crown prince’s more brutal activities, such as assassinating journalists, imprisoning dissidents, and starving Yemenis. (NYT) At many prestigious MBA programs it is the dream and goal of many students to work at those capitalism without a conscious consulting companies. And practically all of these schools make it mandatory to take an ethics course. I don’t recall my ethics course at Stanford asking if it was okay to work for someone like MBS.

Additional Read: “Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Saudi Arabia still has many questions to answer about Jamal Khashoggi’s killing” (WaPo)

Excuses, Executions, Excuses: Nigerian soldiers who used their automatic weapons last weekend against peacefully protesting Shia Muslims, killing more than 40 of them, were just defending themselves as President Trump suggested November 1 in a speech on immigration. The army tweeted a video of Trump saying if migrants seeking asylum were to throw rocks and stones, the soldiers were to consider it as they were holding rifles, and fight back. Trump said later he didn’t mean to kill, just arrest, the protesters. The tweet was later taken down. (NPR)

It’s Like The Purge, But Less Interesting: At 8 am on November 1 every year, the Finnish tax administration releases the personal tax information of its citizens. It says this public ritual of comparison is just to comply with government transparency laws. While some complain this is an invasion of privacy, most say it’s helped the country resist the trend toward growing inequality that has crept across of the rest of Europe. (NYT)

The Bourne Crackdown: Google “how do you hack the cia”: In 2008 John Reidy was a defense contractor stationed in Iran whose job was to identify, contact and manage human sources for the CIA. Reidy figured out that something was wrong with the secret internet-based communication system the CIA was using to communicate with its sources, and the flaws extended globally to wherever sources were located. He immediately reported to the CIA that he believed an entire class of agents, using some iteration of the online system, was in danger. A “massive intelligence failure” was imminent, he warned.

The official response Reidy received was his removal from his subcontract with the Virginia company that works on government information technology products and support. Reidy contacted the CIA inspector general and congressional investigators; they were not receptive, but because whistleblower protections are complicated for federal contractors, he remained employed. Then in 2010, Reidy learned that the “nightmare scenario” he had warned about two years earlier involving the CIA’s secret communications platform, had actually occurred; by 2011 he was fired.

Intelligence officials had believed their communication system used for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide was impenetrable. In fact, the system was elementary; Iranians had figured out how to hack it by 2009 using basic information they found on Google. One report claims the system was compromised in China even earlier than in Tehran. Most extraordinary was that early warnings made to CIA officials, the inspector general and congressional oversight committees went unheeded. Reidy was cast out as a troublemaker, and weaknesses in the system were left unrepaired while the damage to assets mounted. The tipping point came in 2011-2012 when more than two dozen sources died in China. A national security analyst with the Government Accountability Project said: “This is one of the most catastrophic failures since September 11. And the CIA punished the person who brought the problem to light.”

Additional read: “In a court filing, Edward Snowden says a report critical to an NSA lawsuit is authentic” (TechCrunch)

Do you often find yourself struggling to learn something new? Obviously there are the usual methods to help you remember new information– studying, repetition, constant focus, etc. But according to a new study, there is an incredibly strong correlation between memory, sleep, and (drum roll please) exercise. The study suggests that exercising intensely for as little as 15 minutes after learning something new will increase retention rates. One of the authors of the study, professor Marc Roig from McGill University stated, “Very little research looks at the relationship between exercise, sleep and memory formation, though there is clearly a connection between the three,” Read more about this study here.

Hate Rises To The Top: The New York Times takes an in-depth look at how US law enforcement has failed to see the rising threat of the alt-right, a sometimes violent fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist positions. It’s a virulent movement that has thrived over the past two decades in an atmosphere of willful indifference, and law enforcement doesn’t know how to stop it. (NYT)

Playing The Blues On The Sax: As Democrats search for their identity in the Trump era, one thing has become clear: former Arkansas governor and US president Bill Clinton isn’t part of it. Once such a ubiquitous presence and popular political draw that he was nicknamed the party’s “explainer-in-chief,” Clinton has appeared at only a handful of private fundraisers benefiting midterm candidates. (NYT)

– “Gunman In Yoga Studio Attack Had A Criminal History, Posted Racist And Sexist Videos” (NPR) Pnut’s publisher was born and raised in Tallahassee. The capital of Florida combines politics, colleges (FSU and FAMU), and is definitely part of the south. In middle school I was asked if I was white or black. And you would not have thought that the Confederates had not lost the Civil War given the number of Confederate flags. It’s the only capital the Union did not capture. The Tallahassee I remember (1982-2000) was hot and humid with public schools and public libraries that were solid to fantastic. A city with unfortunately some to a good number of racists, and yet home, and so remembered fondly. I thank my public school teachers (Gilchrist, Augusta Raa, and Leon High) for helping me fall in love with books. And thank you for dealing with my immaturity.

– “The Sex Ed Crisis: In classrooms across the country, critical facts about sex are being withheld or distorted in shocking ways. Here, Cosmopolitan investigates how much this is harming women—and catches you up on what you didn’t learn in high school.” (Cosmo)

– “Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market: About 500,000 young men are missing, and it isn’t clear why” (Bloomberg)

– “Here’s What Hiring Managers Actually Care About” (Lifehacker)

– “Twilight of the Racist Uncles: How Facebook is melting the minds of our elders” (The Baffler) This piece reminds us of this article we shared a couple weeks ago: “Older People Are Worse Than Young People at Telling Fact From Opinion: Given five facts, only 17 percent of people over 65 were able to identify them all as factual statements.” (Atlantic)

– “Father of Web says tech giants may have to be split up: Tim Berners-Lee, a London-born computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said he was disappointed with the current state of the internet, following scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media to spread hate.” (Reuters)

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