~ Today’s Water Cooler ~
Monday, December 29, 2025
Biden Taps Lina Khan to Chair the FTC
Hours after the Senate confirmed her nomination to the FTC, Biden tapped noted Big Tech critic Lina Khan to chair the agency.
Store Drop-Off: Another Recycling Fail
WalMart’s misleading claims about recycling set back efforts to shift away from unnecessary plastic packaging and single-use plastics.
How the U.S. Lost National Healthcare
An excerpt from Kai Bird’s just released book about U.S. health care, The Outlier.
Rocky Mountain Forests Burning More Now Than Any Time in the Past 2,000 Years
Reducing the threats of increasing wildfires requires both combating climate change and learning to live in ways that help make our communities more resilient to our fire-prone future.
Is the Only Green Thing about Cannabis the Almighty Dollar?
Cannabis has an enormous carbon footprint when grown indoors, with a utopian proposal for growing it outdoors.
2:00PM Water Cooler 6/15/2021
~ Today’s Water Cooler ~
First UK Inquiry Into Greensill Scandal Calls for Extension to Lobbying Ban for Former Ministers and Civil Servants
The inquiry also recommends greater transparency and accountability from the government. Unfortunately, the trend is in the opposite direction.
Matt Stoller: A Society Designed to Incentivize Criminal Behavior at the Highest Level
Lambert Strether: Invigorating and insightful discussion (though I’d slip the mutual self-congratulation with the interviewer at the very end). Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, talks about the many ways in which the US economic system has become […]
Returning to the Office Will be Hard
New evidence from a survey of 2,500 employees in the UK shows a preference in favour of home working 2-3 days a week.
Private Inequity: NYT Examines How the Private Equity Industry Avoids Taxes
Comprehensive NYT story examines how the private equity industry games the tax system, while the hapless IRS stands on the sidelines.
2:00PM Water Cooler 6/14/2021
~ Today’s Water Cooler ~
