This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Listening — xkcd:
  
• Current Genres of Fate: "Hardwired" — Paul North, 3 Quarks Daily: Obviously "hardwired" is a way we talk. Like movies though, the way we talk tells us the secrets we keep. Newspaper headlines are also "talk"—they can be equally revealing. Even when the answer is no, we are not hard-wired to do this or that, just raising the question points right at our worry: are we hard-wired for this or that? (Look at "Are We Hard-Wired for War?" (NYT 9/28/13)). It's funny: "hard-wired" or as it's sometimes written—as if it were a technical term—"hardwired," is most often used in the press these days to talk about human psychology. It is, though, a metaphor. To date, no psychologist has discovered any "wires" in us.
• Careful Car Care Made Care Free #3 - Hand signals — Phil Are Go!:
  
• Domain plans data-driven mortgage and insurance push for post-float growth — Paul Smith at the AFR, part of the media wing of property bubble rider Fairfax: Speaking on a panel on the smart use of data at The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Wednesday, Domain boss Antony Catalano flagged the potential for the company to dig deeper into the information it generates and tracks on house sellers or buyers in order to establish new mortgage and insurance businesses. […] "We have got so many data points that allow us to move out of being just a classified advertising business, into perhaps being a mortgage or insurance originator," Mr Catalano said. "Our business generates about $500 per property. If I can provide a bank with a loan ... there can be 10 times as much money in being a mortgage originator than there is in the advertising business."
• The Basic Income and Job Guarantees are Complementary, not Opposing Policies — Brad Voracek: Most people who support BIG worry that a JG would create “make-work”, quoting Keynes famous “bury bank notes and dig them back up” line. To them, just giving people the bank notes makes more sense. On the other hand, JG proponents worry about not having the social utility of work. People want to contribute to society, and they see work that needs to be done. Both policies seem hard to pass in todays political climate.