My Year in Books

Notes from NY Times (December 2019)

The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 7983-7985 | Added on Sunday, December 15, 2019 10:17:55 AM

But frailty also brings greater urgency to the discussions surgeons have with patients and families, who need to understand not only surgical risks, but what their lives may be like after surgery.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 2332-2333 | Added on Sunday, December 15, 2019 11:22:16 AM

Retirement wealth has accumulated almost exclusively among higher-income households, while middle- and lower-income households have only held steady or lost ground, Federal Reserve data shows.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 2397-2399 | Added on Sunday, December 15, 2019 11:25:22 AM

Despite this improvement, median weekly earnings of full-time workers age 55 to 64 have not risen appreciably during the recovery, standing at $872 during the third quarter of 2019, compared with $861 in the third quarter of 2008, adjusted for inflation, according to Census Bureau data.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 4139-4142 | Added on Sunday, December 15, 2019 2:12:19 PM

As Gregory Zuckerman notes in “The Man Who Solved the Market,” even Warren Buffett’s track record — 20.5 percent annualized returns since 1965 — doesn’t approach Simons’s average of 39 percent gains over a three-decade span. And that’s after his company has taken a 5 percent management fee and 44 percent of the profits.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 6967-6970 | Added on Sunday, December 15, 2019 2:39:17 PM

Though the president will almost certainly be impeached for extorting Ukraine to aid his re-election, he is equally certain to be acquitted in the Senate, a tacit confirmation that he is, indeed, above the law. His attorney general is a shameless partisan enforcer. Professional civil servants are purged, replaced by apparatchiks. The courts are filling up with young, hard-right ideologues. One recently confirmed judge, 40-year-old Steven Menashi, has written approvingly of ethnonationalism.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 9658-9662 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 10:11:31 AM

Not surprisingly, this decade has been marked by the intense hostility of the young toward truisms that once governed our thinking. As they saw it, the liberal international order didn’t uphold the peace — it bled us dry. Capitalism didn’t make the country rich — it made the rich richer. Silicon Valley didn’t innovate technology — it mined our data. The Church didn’t save souls — it raped children. The cops didn’t serve and protect — they profiled and killed. The media didn’t tell the news — they spun it.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 9664-9667 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 10:12:43 AM

This was the decade when algorithms meant to cater to our tastes succeeded mainly in narrowing those tastes; when the creation of online communities led to our Balkanization into online tribes and the dissemination of disinformation and hate; when digital connection deepened our personal isolation, vulnerability and suggestibility; and when the ubiquity of portable screens with infinite data meant there was always something more interesting to do than interact with the person before us.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 7728-7728 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 10:48:07 AM

Will voters affirm shameless corruption and lawlessness, or will they reject Trump’s open attempt to subvert the Constitution?

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 8171-8172 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 11:05:21 AM

In 1950, a typical share of stock in United States public markets was held for eight years. Since 2006, the average share of stock has been held for less than a year.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 8174-8175 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 11:05:41 AM

A 2006 study conducted by economists at Duke University found that 78 percent of executives at public companies said that they would sacrifice long-term economic value for a short-term lift in share price.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 3033-3034 | Added on Sunday, December 22, 2019 11:17:03 AM

Over the past 15 years, more than one in five papers in the United States has shuttered, and the number of journalists working for newspapers has been cut in half,

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 4672-4674 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 10:40:43 AM

Or again, the election of Trump probably wasn’t the moment of authoritarianism descending — but it was an important moment of exposure, which revealed things about race relations and class resentments and the rot in the Republican Party and the incompetence of our political class that inclined everybody to a darker view of the American situation than before.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 4705-4706 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 11:11:56 AM

Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27 percent of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4 percent.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 4714-4715 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 11:12:31 AM

As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world’s population now.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 4745-4746 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 11:14:28 AM

When I was born in 1959, a majority of the world’s population had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. By the time I die, illiteracy and extreme poverty may be almost eliminated — and it’s difficult to imagine a greater triumph for humanity on our watch.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 5378-5379 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 11:21:41 AM

Geographic and psycho-sociological patterns now overshadow events in driving political loyalties and national electoral outcomes. Demography is destiny.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 1925-1926 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 1:29:21 PM

They show that stocks outperform bonds over extended periods, but that stocks are far more volatile than bonds. Holding both stocks and bonds makes sense because they tend to buffer one another.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 1936-1936 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 1:29:57 PM

“When you have some money to invest, put it into low-cost, diversified index funds,”

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 1940-1941 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 1:30:13 PM

If you are a conservative, older investor, as he is, he said, you might consider a portfolio with 25 percent stocks and 75 percent bonds.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 8-12 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 2:09:11 PM

Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 46-47 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 2:11:10 PM

At the E.P.A., for instance, staffing has fallen to its lowest levels in at least a decade.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 66-67 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 2:11:46 PM

This year, for instance, the National Park Service’s principal climate change scientist, Patrick Gonzalez, received a “cease and desist” letter from supervisors after testifying to Congress about the risks that global

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 66-67 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 2:11:56 PM

This year, for instance, the National Park Service’s principal climate change scientist, Patrick Gonzalez, received a “cease and desist” letter from supervisors after testifying to Congress about the risks that global warming posed to national parks.

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The New York Times - Daily Edition for Kindle (The New York Times Company)

- Your Highlight on Location 156-158 | Added on Sunday, December 29, 2019 2:13:11 PM

The loss of experienced scientists can erase years or decades of “institutional memory,” said Robert J. Kavlock, a toxicologist who retired in October 2017 after working at the E.P.A. for 40 years,

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