Friday’s Reading List

By Taylor Marvin

Kilian Eng, Caotico Album Artwork, 2012. Via cinabrio.tumblr.com.

What I read this week:

UCSD student left in DEA cell for five days without food, water.

Botching the Bomb: “Despite regular warnings that proliferation is spinning out of control, the fact is that since the 1970s, there has been a persistent slowdown in the pace of technical progress on nuclear weapons projects and an equally dramatic decline in their ultimate success rate.”

The rust belt of France (via The Browser).

Meet the children of the Chinese workers assembling Apple products.

Letters from Abbottabad.

Why cancel the C-27J and not the F-35?

Wages of the Sinai: “The reason for Israel’s mobilization is not only because the IDF does not believe that the Egyptian armed forces are up to the task of cleaning up the mess in the Sinai, but the Egyptian military happens to share that view… Israeli leaders have clearly determined that if the next rocket to land on Eilat kills someone, they are going to have to deal with the problem themselves.”

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 4 Notes Essay.

Taiwan and the F-16.

“It’s a dismal prospect, all right, and in the future the collapse of the eurozone — if it happens — will probably become a textbook example of the difficulty of collective action, right along with climate change and the League of Nations.”

Prospect alum Sarah Alaoui has a new podcast show out. Check it out.

Felix Salmon’s writing about the art market is always interesting.

SpaceX heads to the ISS.

Feist and Ben Gibbard – Train Song.