The Weekend Edition

A QUICK NOTE TO NEW READERS

We publish the Enterprise Morning Edition in English and Arabic from Sunday through Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and political news that will move markets each day. What you’re reading now is our Weekend Edition, which is light on news and heavy on stories to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). The Weekend Edition comes out each Friday at 9:00am CLT. We’re in beta and in English only right now.

As always, feedback is very welcome at editorial@enterprisemea.com. We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am with our usual roundup.

Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

SEE YOU TOMORROW?

RiseUp Summit 2015, the largest and most significant event for startups in Egypt of the year, gets underway tomorrow at the Greek Campus in downtown Cairo. A who’s who of both experienced startup types and wannabes as well as top regional and global investors and industry players will be on hand, and Enterprise will be hanging around scooping up stories and interviews.

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY?

Egyptian authorities released convicted Israeli spy Ouda Tarabin on Thursday in what appears to be an organized prisoner exchange. Reports surfaced in 2012 that a prisoner exchange was on the way, but the agreement never materialized, according to JPost. Tarabin has been in Egyptian prison for the last 15 years. The Israeli government announced that, at the same time, it released two Egyptians who were held in its prisons, Reuters reported. Prisoner’s dilemma: The aforementioned report from the Jerusalem Post quotes Israel’s former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel as saying that Israeli Bedouin Tarabin “didn’t deserve 15 years and probably was not a spy,” adding that a previous attempt to secure Tarabin’s release in 2012 in exchange for 67 Egyptian prisoners raised red flags on the Egyptian side. “In their mind, they thought because we were willing to release 67 prisoners for one guy that he must be a spy.”

Hope for Sinai’s tourism industry? The long road to a recovery in Sinai tourism may have just gotten underway as Russia’s TASS news agency reports that a Russian audit of Egyptian airport security and air safety procedures has wrapped up. The next step: A Russian delegation will travel to Egypt for talks on implementation of the report’s recommendations.

Geneva on terror alert as manhunt is underway: Geneva raised its alert level on Thursday saying it was on the lookout four unnamed individuals with suspected ties to terrorists. Reuters quotes Geneva-based daily Le Temps reporting that a friend of the wanted central figure in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam, was spotted in a van by Geneva police on Tuesday after a tip from French authorities, before the van was spotted crossing the border to France. Whether the spotting of Adbeslam’s associate is directly tied to the raised alert level is unknown, as authorities have not confirmed the report from Le Temps.

Ford Motor announced on Thursday it will invest USD 4.5 bn in electric vehicles, saying it will add 13 electric models to its lineup by 2020, with an aim of 40% of its nameplates to be electrified by the same year.

SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

An early Christmas present: The new season of Sarah Koenig’s record-breaking podcast Serial came out yesterday. The season follows U.S. Army Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured and held by the Taliban for nearly five years before being released in a prisoner swap — and who has since been accused of desertion. We haven’t been able to review the first episode because, like us, people across the world have been anxiously trying to download, it causing the servers to crash. The first episode begins with Bergdahl leaving his army post in Afghanistan: “In the middle of the night, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl grabs a notebook, snacks, water, some cash. Then he quietly slips off a remote U.S. Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan and into the dark, open desert. About 20 minutes later, it occurs to him: he’s in over his head.” If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to download the episode here. Or visit the podcast’s website. Publishing and advertising industry staple Digiday looks at how Serial whipped up hype for season two with old-school tactics including the plant of a story with the New York Times.

Speaking of Christmas: If you’ve spent time in New England or the eastern half of Canada in winter, it’s hard not to find yourself thinking of maple syrup and warm tipples when December sets in. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, our ethanolic beverage of choice tends more to Scotch and Irish whiskeys than it does to bourbon, but the American stuff will do. With that in mind, we present two great small-town commodity heists: From Atlas Obscura, How a small-town crime syndicate stole Kentucky’s bourbon. For the sweet, sticky stuff, start with In USD 18 mn Theft, Victim Was a Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel in the New York Times. And if you’d rather read the story as a comic, Modern Farmer has An Illustrated Account Of The Great Maple Syrup Heist. (To be a complete geek, try Ian Austen’s Canadian Maple Syrup ‘Rebels’ Clash With Law.)

Today is “Daesh trolling day”: Activist hacking collective Anonymous declared Friday, 11 December a “trolling day” against Daesh as part of its cyber campaign against the militant Islamist group. Anonymous is asking people to mock the terrorist organization saying “do not think you have to be part of Anonymous, anyone can do this and does not require special skills” asking people to take part of this on social media and in real life. Why are we trolling Daesh? Anonymous explains “you must first see how Isis works. They thrive off of fear they hope that by their actions they can silence all of us and get us to just lay low and hide in fear. But what many forget and even they do is that there are many more people in the world against them than for them… on December 11th we will show them that we are not afraid, we will not just hide in our fear, we are the majority and with our strength in numbers we can make a real difference. We will mock them for the idiots they are.”

The top five topics discussed on Facebook, according to its 2015 in review, include:

1. The U.S. presidential election
2. The Paris terror attacks
3. The war in Syria
4. Nepal earthquakes
5. Greece’s debt crisis

What you listened to in 2015: According to streaming music service Spotify’s 2015 wrap-up, Drake was the year’s top artist, Beauty Behind the Madness (by The Weekend) was the top album, and some EDM track or another was its top song.

Is there anything more ‘frontier’ than Myanmar? Myanmar raised USD 8 bn in FDI in 2014-15 after sanctions were lifted in 2013 — and announced this week that it will open its first stock exchange (the Yangon Stock Exchange, or YSE), where trading could start next year if a new companies act is passed as part of the ongoing transition to democracy. The Myanmar Times has more. (People of a certain age: Does this smell just a bit like Prague / the Czech Republic in the mid-to-late 1990s?)

It doesn’t matter how they got to IPO — what’s instructive is how they went from zero to USD 100 mn in sales: Australia’s Altassian — whose only software product we understand is the Slack forerunner Hipchat — saw its shares soar more than 32% in its debut yesterday, giving it a market value of just under USD 6 bn. Fortune has a the story and a nice IPO day interview with Scott Farquhar, the company’s founder and co-CEO. But more interesting is a more than five-year-old talk that Farquhar gave at the Business of Software conference on how Altassian from zero to USD 100 mn with no sales people — the Altassian 10 commandments for startups (watch: run time about 35 mins).

The guy behind the @GSElevator Twitter account is back with “The unofficial Goldman Sachs holiday gift guide for 2015” on Business Insider. (Or check out the 2013 and 2014 editions, if you prefer.)

Four-time NBA MVP LeBron James signed a “lifetime” contract with Nike that could be worth around USD 400-500 mn, Bloomberg said. While the terms of the deal were not made public, Matt Powell, an analyst at research firm NPD Group, said, “If you go by what James brings in through sales, versus what they’re paying him, Nike is probably losing money… But he’s the face of the brand, and he’s the most popular player in the league, so it makes sense.” James’ deal is being compared to Michael Jordan’s, which allows Nike to continue to release new Air Jordan shoes. Bloomberg notes that “such an open-ended deal is very rare. Soccer star David Beckham reportedly has a lifetime deal with Adidas, according to ESPN. Allen Iverson at one time signed with Reebok in what the Associated Press called a ‘lifetime deal,’ although those sometimes refer to a player’s career, not his mortality.”

Wait, and the international community complains about *our* elections? Heading into this weekend’s local council elections in Saudi Arabia, the Associated Press tells us: “Still, women face challenges on the campaign trail: Because of Saudi Arabia’s strict policy of segregation of the sexes, they cannot address male voters directly and have to speak from behind a partition — or have male relatives speak for them. In an effort to create a more level playing field, the General Election Committee banned both male and female candidates from showing their faces in promotional flyers, billboards or in social media. They’re also not allowed to appear on television.”

While you’re on the AP’s website, make sure to check out the news service’s fantastic investigation of how global brands hiring Chinese investigators to clamp down on counterfeits and fraud were conned by … counterfeits and frauds. “There were few signs of the deception that shaped her life. Officially, Flaming Lee hunted counterfeiters for Swiss power technology giant ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd. Unofficially, she herself sold counterfeit ABB circuit breakers for export — the very things ABB was paying her to track down.” Read: Who’s investigating fake Chinese goods? Fake investigators.

Has Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto been discovered? The biggest mystery surrounding the Bitcoin world is its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Both Wired and Gizmodo have separately reported they have near conclusive proof that an Australian man named Craig Steven Wright is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto’s alter ego.  Wired says an anonymous source close to Wright began leaking documents to Gwern Branwen, a pseudonymous, independent security researcher and dark web analyst. Branwen provided those documents to Wired, and they immediately led to several direct, publicly visible connections between Nakamoto and Wright. Gizmodo, on the other hand, says “according to a cache of documents provided to Gizmodo which were corroborated in interviews, Craig Steven Wright, an Australian businessman based in Sydney, and Dave Kleiman, an American computer forensics expert who died in 2013, were involved in the development of the digital currency.” Both articles are quite extensive, but Vox has a lighter round up of the facts, plus these simple slides that explain all you need to know about the cryptocurrency.

Tweet of the Day: Andreessen Horowitz mobile strategist Benedict Evans on Donald Trump’s “leaked campaign video.” (Spoiler: It’s satire.)

Ever wonder how we went from renewable energy as a lefty luxury to it becoming one of the great hopes for Egypt’s energy crisis — and very possibly a panacea for global warming? The Atlantic looks at “how solar and wind got so cheap, so fast,” outlining both conventional wisdom (investment in green energy by Germany, the U.S. and China drove the cost of the technology down) and alternative theories (competition among manufacturers) in a nice, fairly short piece that gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Tunisia’s Nidaa Tounes party is in decline, paving the way for others to curb Islamist Ennahda’s influence and channel popular disenchantment with both parties, Youssef Cherif writes for the Carnegie Endowment. Nidaa Tounes is being dragged down by internal conflict after Beji Caid Essebsi had to give up party leadership when he became president of Tunisia, creating a vacuum. Two main figures are seeking control of the party; the President’s son and the party’s VP, Hafedh Caid Essebsi, and the party’s Secretary General, Mohsen Marzouk. “Hafedh and his supporters want to postpone the congress and its elections, while Marzouk is pushing for elections. Marzouk condemns nepotism and claims he wants to promote democratic practices within the party… Hafedh’s official reason for postponing internal elections is to preserve party unity and order. Nidaa Tounes currently does not have strong structures to organize nationwide elections, and it is a mosaic of groups.” Nidaa Tounes is now looking “fragmented, fragile, and inefficient,” Cherif writes. With up to 32 MPs threatening to resign in support of Hafedh, the party could fall behind Ennahda in terms of seats depriving the president of some of the backing that elevated him to his position, and the party will be more reliant on Ennahda.

If you don’t know what “virtual reality video” is, you can experience it yourself right now and get up to speed in about five minutes — by visiting either North Korea or Syria. ABC News and Jaunt, a top producer of VR content, have added North Korea to their collaboration, with the always-awesome Bob Woodruff taking you “Inside North Korea VR.” The two companies began their collaboration with a similar experiment in storytelling focused on Syria. Both the North Korea and the Syria “experiences” are available when you download the app. The iOS app is here and the Android app is here. It won’t take five minutes, and it will change the way you think the next time your head of comms suggests you need to invest some money in a corporate documentary.

Bill Nye the Science Guy prefers Star Trek to Star Wars. Okay, maybe that’s not world-changing news, but for a certain type of geek? Well, it makes sense. It’s also a testament to how even very gifted storytellers can have lousy taste in film. (Watch at Rolling Stone, run time 1:16)

If you’re a drone fan and “on Instagram,” check out #whereidrone, the now trending “impromptu exhibition of aerial photography” started by the owner of the remarkable From Where I Drone blog. Yes, droning will probably get you arrested in Egypt (something else for which we can thank the Ikhwan), but if you’re even slightly curious, the site — with its buyer’s guide, photo and video tips, and gallery — is a fantastic starting point.

WATCH THIS

Making money in online games: With hundreds of millions of players around the world, the growth of in-game economies in multi-player games would surprise many outside the world of gaming. Even real-world economic theories can be applied to those virtual worlds, but the money is all real. In a game called EVE Online, there are giant spaceships that could be bought for around USD 10,000. Game designers are now resorting to economists to help figure out how to keep their in-game economies from growing too rapidly, eliminating scarcity. PBS shows how money could be made online, and also the dark side of online gaming. (Run time 07:18)

When is it okay to steal ideas? John Cleese of Monty Python says it’s when you’re a young performer and should be looking to model yourself after those who have gone before. In the first episode of a Big Think series titled The Serious Genius Behind Hilarious Comedy, Cleese says in the beginning, you should “Steal, or borrow, or as the artist would say [claim] ‘are influenced by.’” This isn’t to advocate plagiarism, but: “You say, ‘I’m going to write something completely new and original and very funny.’ You can’t do it. It’s like trying to fly a plane without having any lessons. You’ve got to start somewhere and the best way to start is by copying something that is really good.”

LISTEN TO THIS

NPR’s Planet Money takes apart one municipal budget from one month from one province controlled by Daesh in an episode titled Auditing ISIS. The episode reveals that Daesh’s expenditures last January in Deir-Al Zour, Syria, stood at USD 5.58 mn. About 44% of the budget goes to paying the salaries for fighters. Daesh members were the only people in town with money to spend, and were getting paid in USD. A former resident of the town says they bought everything from costly candies to expensive cars and only ate at the fanciest restaurants. On the flipside of the budget, money coming in from oil and gas measures at 27%, or USD 2.23 mn, of total revenues, while a very detailed account of “confiscation”, in details like “17 houses, 80 cars, 36 trucks, USD 480k in material sums, 180 dunams of land, 1,200 cases of cigarettes and 1,320 sheep and 50 cows,” makes up 44% of income. Confiscation includes antiquities, which are declared by looters who obtain permits, and are then taxed by the terror group. (Run time 21:37)

Whistleblowers are responsible for uncovering 42% of exposed corporate fraud, but most whistleblowers find their continued tenure at their employers to be “nasty, brutish, and short.” This is about to change, according to The Economist’s Matthew Valencia, who discusses whistleblowing with the newspaper’s business affairs editor Andrew Palmer. Regulators are now “actively seeking whistleblowers,” and the US has more than 40 federal whistleblower programmes offering numerous encouragements ranging from anonymity to bounties. The SEC is also going after companies that retaliated against whistleblowers to send a message that it won’t be tolerated. For the whistleblowers themselves, laws are being drawn across the world to give them legal protection and save their jobs. It is not all about the rewards for them, more than 90% of the whistleblowers sound the alarm internally first, and only report violations as they are ignored and frustration builds up. Corporations are better off spending more money on internal whistleblowing programs than on internal audits, Valencia and Palmer suggest. (Run time 11:46)

The creator of the HBO series Girls’ Lena Dunham’s podcast miniseries Women of the Hour concluded its mini-season this week. The previous week’s episode, however, was the favourite episode of the season for some of us here. It was more focused on women and work. “Women have been trained for so long and over so many generations to be amenable, humble, an absolute pleasure in both the bedroom and boardroom,” Dunham says. She portrays a number of women from different walks of life who were not afraid to be bossed up, tearing up stereotypic gender roles in society. You can listen to the episode here. (Run time 54:36)

SOMETHING THAT MADE US THINK

FROM THE ARCHIVES- Marc Andreessen’s guide to personal productivity: On top of Andreessen’s list is not keeping a schedule; “refuse to commit to meetings, appointments, or activities at any set time in any future day. As a result, you can always work on whatever is most important or most interesting, at any time.” You should only keep three lists: a To do list, a watch list, and a “later” list, but before going to bed, prepare a 3×5 index card with a short list of three to five things that you will do the next day – and do those things the next day. Even more controversial, Andreessen says you should indulge in some strategic procrastination: “You should never fight the tendency to procrastinate — instead, you should use it to your advantage in order to get other things done… While you’re procrastinating, just do lots of other stuff instead” and also, be “strategically incompetent” in things that are not important to you. And always, “no matter what time you get up, start the day with a real, sit-down breakfast.” H/t Marginal Revolution

Hollywood accounting- Darth Vader finds your lack of residual payments disturbing: Yes, we understand most of you have zero interest in Star Wars, but consider the following: The actor who physically portrayed Darth Vader, David Prowse, has never received any residual payments for his part in Return of the Jedi because Lucasfilm claims the movie has never turned a profit. “I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit,” the actor said, according to Slashfilm. How’s this for a return: Prowse has not received residuals despite the movie earning a box office of USD 572 mn worldwide upon its original release in 1983, made on a budget of USD 42.7 mn (upper-end estimate), with the special edition re-release in 1997 raking in another USD 353 mn worldwide. Overall, the Star Wars movie series is ranked the ninth top-grossing franchise of all time.

God, grant me the serenity to accept a lack of residual payments, the courage to ask for a percentage of the gross and not the net, and the wisdom to know the difference: “There is a big difference between having a share of the gross profit and having a share of the net profit. It is a huge difference in just one word. Sometimes, with net profit, with all the expenses and so on, it seems like you end up paying them,” Prowse is quoted as saying. This is known as Hollywood accounting, which TV Tropes explains is “how a production studio weasels out of paying royalties or anything else based on a percentage of profit: just overestimate your expenses, and bingo, there is no profit, or at least a lot less of it — at least on paper, even if the gross reaches into the bns. The ‘expenses’ are charged to a separate entity or aspect of the filmmaking process, such as marketing, even though both entities involved are owned by the same film studio. So the studio basically ‘charges’ itself ‘USD 100 mn’ in expenses, pays itself, and avoids having to claim that it made any gross profits… For this reason, the smart actors in Hollywood will insist on getting a percentage of ‘gross points’ in their contract, i.e. the money directly made before the studio profits are calculated.”

All of this of course is not to be confused with the plot of the musical and subsequent Mel Brooks film The Producers, where an accountant and musical producer realize they can defraud investors and make more money from a show that flops, over-selling shares in the musical and assuming that no one will audit the books of a show that fails.

Counterpoint: How integral was David Prowse to Darth Vader, really? For anyone who hasn’t seen this before, the voice of Darth Vader as it would have been portrayed by Prowse before getting James Earl Jones to dub his lines has to be seen and heard to be believed. Words fail to do it justice. (Watch, running time: 1:40)

HEALTH

We’re getting to that time of year when the warmth of bed calls — and cold of floors mitigate against your getting yourself to the gym for your morning workout. Need motivation other than avoiding packing on pounds like an about-to-hibernate bear? The New York Times reminds us that “sturdy legs could mean healthy brains,” saying that “muscular power, especially in the legs — which are the largest muscles in the body — is widely accepted as a marker of healthy aging. … [The study found that] those who had had the sturdiest legs a decade ago showed the least fall-off in thinking skills, even when the scientists controlled for such factors as fatty diets, high blood pressure and shaky blood-sugar control.” (Read)

ENTREPRENEURS

Rules for raising money for your startup: Ramy Adeeb, who in 2013 sold his start up snip.it to Yahoo after raising two successful funding rounds, shares with Wamda what he knows about raising money. The first rule is to avoid raising too soon: “Raising money is like pouring concrete: you shouldn’t do it until you know what house to build.” Once you start raising, be patient, it may take a while, so also make sure you are talking to the right people and not wasting your time with people who will not invest. When you are talking to the right investors, make sure you are presenting them with something relevant to their needs and give them a compelling story. After all that, if you are rejected, do not take it personally — “the one quality that unites successful entrepreneurs is perseverance,” Adeeb says.

Satire on raising money for your startup: “Press Release: Basecamp valuation tops USD 100 bn after bold VC investment,” by Jason Fried on Signal vs. Noise, newly relocated to Medium.

PERSONAL TECH

Siri is no longer a khawaga: Apple announced it released a version of its virtual personal assistant software, Siri, for Arabic speakers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported. Providing support in Arabic means people in those countries will be able to use Siri in their native tongue on their Apple devices. Want to use Siri in Arabic? Better practice your Emirati and Saudi dialects, because even though the functionality will be made available beyond the two countries, Arabic Siri will only come in its Khaleeji reincarnation, and it is not yet tailored to other dialects.

The power of default settings: Consider this: Internet Explorer, the horrible excuse of an internet browser (and its successor Microsoft Edge is not much improved), is actually the second most popular internet browser in the US. The inferior Apple Maps is more widely used than Google Maps on iPhones. This is because Microsoft never misses a chance to make IE the default browser on any of its devices, while Apple Maps is the default map app on iPhones. The problem with default settings is they extend into encryption and security, Natalie Shoemaker writes for Big Think. When Apple added DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track user queries as Google does, to the list of defaults, CEO Gabriel Weinberg says the company has grown 600%, attributing the growth to the inclusion of the option in the iOS 8 update and the Edward Snowden revelations. While 44% of users want privacy, but most don’t know how to obtain it. Computer security guru Bruce Schneier writes, “Encryption works best if it’s ubiquitous and automatic. The two forms of encryption you use most often — HTTPS URLs on your browser, and the handset-to-tower link for your cellphone calls — work so well because you don’t even know they’re there.”

TECH

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop concept is a step closer to becoming reality after Hyperloop Technologies announced it is testing its propulsion system in North Las Vegas next month. The concept of the Hyperloop system “uses extremely low air pressure within a tube to propel capsules containing people or cargo at triple-digit velocities.” Musk spelled out his ideas on the subject in a 57-page white paper (pdf) he presented in August 2013. Someone else please do it, though: Musk encouraged anyone with an interest to pursue the idea, since he’s “a busy guy.” Hyperloop Technologies’ idea is slightly different than Musk’s as it relies on keeping the capsule moving with occasional shoves. For next month’s test, the Hyperloop Technologies expects it would be able to get the vehicle to accelerate from zero to 336 mph in about two seconds, but the company’s CEO notes that it is “not the kind of Hyperloop you want to ride … We’re really just testing our ability to dump that much power into our coils that quickly.” A production-ready Hyperloop would be heavier and have a “much more reasonable acceleration time.”

…To support those taking a crack at the concept, SpaceX announced a hyperloop pod building competition back in June 2015 “geared towards university students and independent engineering teams, to design and build the best Hyperloop pod.” To that end, SpaceX is set to construct a one-mile test track near their Hawthorne, California Headquarters. Registration closed mid-September, and the competition is set to take place this coming summer.

Serious proposal, or ploy to derail California High Speed Rail project? Critics have asked whether the Hyperloop is a serious proposal or simply posed as an alternative (and an unrealistic one at that) to the proposed high speed rail project which aims to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2029 running at speeds of c.321 km per hour (200 mph), cutting the current 6-hour car ride down to 2 hours and 40 minutes. Musk even opens his Hyperloop concept paper by slamming the proposed high speed rail project: “When the California ‘high speed’ rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?” Some of California’s Democrats are now considering withdrawing support for the rail project. At a price tag of USD 68 bn, the California high-speed rail project would be the most costly public-works project in American history, as noted by a piece that also highlights the Hyperloop as an alternative.

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• Do we need devaluation, or just want it? (Enterprise)
• The CBE’s approach to bank regulation is doing the economy a “monstrous disservice” (Enterprise)
• The 2016 Pirelli Calendar (Pirelli)
• Egypt’s new parliament — posturing without politics (BBC)
• AAIB launches student loans in Egypt (Al Mal)

ON YOUR WAY OUT

Why do politicians have a penchant for BS? Because it works, Cass Sunstein writes. In a controlled setting, researchers have discovered that people rated random “pseudo-profound” BS statements, such as “intention and attention are mystery’s manifestation” as fairly profound. The worse your numeracy and verbal intelligence gets, the more susceptible you are to the baloney. Politicians’ BS tend to be more vague and less in the form pseudo-profundity but often works because of how it makes the listeners feel. “Pseudo-profound statements work when they make people feel that they are being given access to a deep secret: They produce a kind of awe, even reverence, and so it’s all the better if the meaning of those statements is unclear. When it is effective, political baloney makes people feel that they are listening to someone firm, confident and strong. The vagueness of the statement isn’t a problem; what matters is the favorable emotion that it produces,” Sunstein explains.

Uber is launching a “bus” service in Seattle that “allows riders to save money and time by waiting for their cab in a pre-arranged location, sharing it with strangers, and being dropped off at any point along a predetermined route.” The new service is called UberHop and hopes it will make ridesharing easier and more affordable, The Guardian says.

The next time you’re in Rome, you’ll want to set aside a couple of hours and go check out the “secret pagan basilica” that has “emerged from the shadows after 2,000 years,” as the Independent breathlessly puts it. “The subterranean basilica, which predates Christianity, was built by a rich Roman family who were devotees of a little-known cult called Neopythagoreanism. Originating in the first century BC, it was a school of mystical Hellenistic philosophy that preached asceticism and was based on the writings of Pythagoras and Plato.”

The questions that refugees ask once they make landfall on the Greek Island of Lesbos are some of the most unexpected, the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Tyler Jump writes. The first thing they usually ask is where they are. Connecting with family is a top priority, so the next thing is for them to ask about WiFi access. Food and water follow. Having their eyes set on the more-generous Germany and Sweden, they ask how they can get there.