Linkage

• America Has an Unhealthy Obsession With Credibility (Foreign Policy) Observes that the US state security and foreign policy apparatus have engaged in all sorts of stupidity because of concerns about our credibility.  It's really all just dick swinging.
• The battle for Ring Zero (Cory Doctorow) The war on general purpose computing.
• Running A Supervillain Organization: The Definitive Guide (Cracked) It sounds amazingly similar to the rules for a Silicon Valley startup.
• Traffic Fines Should Be Higher for Rich People (The Atlantic) Finland does this.
  
• The Anarchist-designed DIY Heaters Saving Lives of Unhoused People (Hyperallergic) A $8 made from a cloth wick, a flower pot, and some wire.
• Wasted Funds, Destroyed Property: How Sheriffs Undermined Their Successors After Losing Reelection (ProPublica) And outright theft.  Support your local police.
• It's hard to trust the press when journalists keep saving scoops for future books (The Present Age) Ruminations about the fact that Maggie Haberman sat on some stories about Trump wrongdoing so that they would be exclusive to her book.
• The Alaska Highway: A subarctic road to prevent invasion (BBC) It is ne of the engineering wonders of the world, and I drove (was driven) it when I was a young child.

Max Miller cooks a dish that illustrates the wide span of the Mongol empire at its peak: