Weekend Reads 10/13/18

'Tribalism' is tearing the country apart ... or the word is just misused

A member of a tribe is not just ideological. It’s a people who share a history -- say 10,000 years -- a geography, and a culture. Tribalism is not a word that should be reduced to fealty to the crown. Or the opposition.

Why does the word matter? Because it shrinks the idea of tribes as self-governing communities, nations to that of a self-selected group bound by interests.

Voters in key Senate races say Kavanaugh battle is a motivator for the 2018 midterms

Regardless of whether voters supported or opposed him, they said the Kavanaugh fight has energized them to go to the polls — though it could be that many of those people were already likely to vote in the first place. As CBS News points out, it could be the case that most of those people were already very likely to vote anyway, because a majority of them report having voted in a recent midterm.

The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job

Call it self-automation, or auto-automation. At a moment when the specter of mass automation haunts workers, rogue programmers demonstrate how the threat can become a godsend when taken into coders’ hands, with or without their employers’ knowledge. Since both FiletOFish1066 and Etherable posted anonymously and promptly disappeared, neither could be reached for comment. But their stories show that workplace automation can come in many forms and be led by people other than executives.

Here’s what it would take to stop climate change sooner

The report estimates that sea-level rise in the year 2100 would be around 10 centimeters lower in a 1.5°C world than a 2.0°C world. That may not sound like much in comparison to oft-discussed worst-case scenarios of more than a meter of sea level rise, but 10 million people live in areas that would be affected by those extra 10 centimeters.