Links 23/10/15

Politics: 

The Intercept with a collection of leaked documents about the drone wars. 

A trail of evidence regarding the NSA's partnership with AT&T, which itself has an interesting history as a telecommunication monopolist. 

This graphic in the New York Times tries to untangle the complex alliances and enemies of the many fronts in the Syrian war. 

A timeline of Australia's national security changes since 9/11. 

Tech of the future: Affordable electric cars might come sooner than expected, the future of advances in battery manufacturing, and Oslo intends to turn its city centre car-free from 2019 - and this is an interesting if extreme look into the personal potential of collecting data, a weirdly disconnected way of being mindful. 

The effect of technology on the Black Lives Matter movement: 

You could look at it this way: The movement of the ’60s needed a big institutional structure to make things work—in part because of the limitations of the tech at the time. Now that kind of structure has come to seem vestigial. After Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, and the city became a lightning rod for activism, Mckesson says he had a kind of epiphany about movement-building: “We didn’t need institutions to do it,” he says. Social media could serve as a source of live, raw information. It could summon people to the streets and coordinate their movements in real time. And it could swiftly push back against spurious media narratives with the force of a few thousand retweets. 

Wired: Get Up, Stand Up. 

An interview with IMF chief Christine Lagarde. 

Oh, people don’t interrupt me when I speak. If they do, I am going to give all my comments looking at that person. [Another mock death stare.] It produces a freezing effect quite quickly. It’s rude. Either you are in the room or you are not in the room. I tell people, “Turn your thingie face down.” [Pretends to slam her phone face down on the table.] The only person able to use it is the head of communication. Sometimes people cheat and I see them. 

The Huffington Post: Lagarde-ian of the Galaxy.

About Justin Trudeau, Canada's new Prime Minister (and also a much needed history of the term "liberal" and its many contradictory meanings). 

Pop Culture: 

An excerpt from Carrie Brownstein's memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: "We want our parents to be the norm from which we deviate." and an interview in the New York Times Magazine.