Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on the Senate floor yesterday that President Trump will be declaring a state of national emergency today as reported by the BBC. The announcement is expected to take place around 10AM Friday. In an unexpected move, President Trump will be utilizing his national emergency powers to construct his long-promised …

After evading police capture for years and years, El Chapo will now be living the rest of his life behind bars after being extradited to the U.S. in 2017. The conviction was officially made in court this week after a three-month trial, as reported by the New York Times. The drug lord has been notorious …

A new report released by the Pentagon warns of a potential security threat to American satellites. Chinese and Russian laser technology has the capacity to target and destroy U.S. satellites which are crucial to geolocation, the military, and other operations. The report titled Challenges to Security in Space examines the space technology capabilities of Russia, …

California governor Gavin Newsom has announced he will be pulling several hundred National Guard troops from the southern border. In an apparent rebuff to President Trump, the administration’s request that the state governor expand troop presence has been declined. In March, former California Gov. Jerry Brown said that troops “will not be enforcing federal immigration …

Remember when Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was a thing? Or, if you’re too young for that, what about MTV Cribs? Those shows gave you sneak peaks into the ridiculously lavish lifestyles of the super-wealthy––their mansions, car collections, private theaters, and indoor sports arenas. We used to be equally interested in people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and what they did with their fabulous wealth. We watched those shows because we wanted to be those people. That was the American dream––or at least one permutation of it. But what about now? 

Looking at the news, it seems that Americans might be falling out of love with billionaires. Elizabeth Warren has proposed a new tax that would affect the tiny fraction of a percentage of Americans who make more than $50,000,000. Bernie Sanders has unveiled a new estate tax that would similarly affect the very wealthy; for example, Jeff Bezos’s current estate tax of $53 billion would jump to $101 billion.

More junior congresspeople are proposing similar tax hikes. Ilhan Abdullahi Omar says “We could increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities. So 70 percent, 80 percent, we’ve had it as high as 90 percent.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has suggested a 70% tax for the very wealthy.  

Why are so many congresspeople suggesting these new laws? Unlike what Fox News says––that CEOs are under fire from “socialists,” a claim that that hilariously backfired––this isn’t the work of some rogue lawmakers. These lawmakers were elected by a growing number of people who want to see the super-rich taxed. So we should stop to ask why that might be. 

One possible cause is that Americans have given up on the “get super rich” variation of the American dream. It’s hard to say exactly when that happened, but 2008 is a pretty good place to start. During that recession, countless Americans lost their homes and massive amounts of wealth. Retirements were forestalled, sometimes permanently. It’s hard to have hope of being a billionaire when you watch your parents struggle to survive retirement. 

The tech boom after 2008 sparked hope for some. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat made billions of dollars, and some kids (and they were basically kids) got filthy rich. But the days of the unicorn company seem to be over. The Zuckerberg-style success story is over, and it probably won’t be seen again. 

But it was seen, and now we’ve watched these handful of people get so rich that they couldn’t spend all their money even if they wanted to. Or, like Bill Gates, they could give away over 99% of their wealth and still afford to give each of their children $10 million. Meanwhile, more Americans have to drive Uber or rent their spare rooms on AirBnB just to make a living. 

The lawmakers who want to hike taxes on the super rich are the result of the frustration that comes from a world without promise. That’s not to say there never will be the popular hope of becoming a billionaire again. But with tech no longer the cash cow that it seemed to be half a dozen years ago, there’s little hope for a lucky break. 

More about tech.

The term “serial killer” didn’t exist before the 1970s, and it didn’t become popularly used until 1981. Now, forty some years later, we’re obsessed with serial killers. Whether it’s the original Halloween (1978) movie or its reboot this last year, we apparently love feeling afraid of violent murders. We also love watching them, given the amount of blood and gore in those movies.

We also love the psychological aspect of serial killing. The BBC’s The Fall is an incredibly nuanced deep dive into the psychology of a serial killer. Netflix’s Mindhunter tells the story of the invention of criminal profiling and the “discovery” of serial killers. Netflix continues to cash in on our love of serial killers with the release of a new documentary series about a reporter’s interviews with Ted Bundy. That series revealed the true depth, and the true sickness, of our love with serial killers: viewers are calling Ted Bundy sexually attractive. Some may be joking, but there is always a little bit of truth behind a joke.

Kerri Rawson, daughter of the infamous “B.T.K.” serial killer, is also playing into our fascination with serial killers with the release of a book detailing her struggle with the realization that her father was a murderer.

Although serial killers aren’t a new historical phenomenon––think The Devil in the White City or Jack the Ripper––the spike in serial murders in the 1970s and 1980s changed American life. The streets were no longer safe; hitchhiking was inviting disaster. Those who lived through that period might find our strange draw towards serial killers disturbing.

We might compare the rise of serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s to the rise of mass shooters since Columbine. Just this week a man was apprehended after shooting his own family––apparently he did so as revenge for being kicked out of his home. He had been kicked out because he stole $200,000 to pay a cam-girl. Imagine movies and documentaries pouring out about mass shooters. Then imagine fictional TV shows put you in the mind of a mass shooter, shows you his (and they’re nearly always men) actions. Our reactions to such a TV show or movie would be horror, disgust, and anger. But to our children, or our children’s children, the dramatized version of the Columbine shooting, or the Las Vegas shooting, might be high entertainment. Imagine if someone two generations in the future called the Columbine shooter “hot” or “sexy.”

That’s probably going to happen. But why? What accounts for our obsession with such a dark subject?

There are as many answers to that question as there are readers of this piece, I would guess. But I want to suggest one possibility, one rooted in the historical emergence of serial killing in London and Chicago (the killings in those cities were about five years apart). Our love of violence stems, at least in part, from our choice to live in urban spaces and working in highly routinized jobs. Max Weber called that existence life in an “iron cage.” We all live, he says, a horribly trapped existence and we long to escape. What does an animal do when its cornered? It lashes out, violently.

More about TV.

Red Bull’s poll finds workplace productivity diminishes before a holiday. Just how lacking in productivity are we? From Red Bull via Visual.ly. Tons of excellent infographics in one place.

The racial breakdown of players in the MLB, NFL and NBA (vs. overall US demographics). Many would argue that baseball is no longer “America’s Pastime”, but notice how the composition of the average major league team corresponds almost perfectly to their proportions in American society. It truly is the game that looks like America the …

Chances are, your personality is similar to one of the sixteen types defined by Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers. Their test, often referred to as the Myers Briggs test, measures different personality traits to determine how you fit within the four-letter code system. What’s your personality type? From Visual.ly. Tons of excellent infographics in …

The love story of a bride and groom. Printed out and displayed at the entrance of the wedding venue, where all the guests were able to view it and get to know the bride and groom better. By Raj Kamal via Visual.ly. Tons of excellent infographics in one place.

Every alley and street is full of new sights and sounds. Here’s a little HDR Tip, if you wanna… it’s a little complex, but kind of handy. So, what I do is take a series of brackets at 100 ISO. That keeps everything nice and clean for processing. But, things like those red lanterns are …

New Zealand – from Trey Ratcliff. Which LOTR movie featured this mountain? I just shared a photo of where I was flying with a chopper yesterday across the central part of the south island of New Zealand, and I thought you’d like to see another image from the same area. This is the mountain you …