Journal 143 — a cobalt heist, SimCity’s unreleased edition, digitalpolitik, a cold case with mob connections, & the man who resurrected Donald Trump
Donald Trump meets Bill Clinton in 2004, a few years before The Apprentice helped rebrand his image.
This week — a cobalt heist in Rotterdam, SimCity’s unreleased NES edition rediscovered, the new digitalpolitik, and a cold case with mob connections.
If you only read one thing — The New Yorker on the man who resurrected Donald Trump is worth the time.
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How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success | The New Yorker | Life
A profile of the producer of The Apprentice, a former solider in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment, and veteran of the self-coined “dramality” genre. The piece posits the theory (convincingly) that Mark Burnett created a false myth that paved Donald Trump’s path to the Presidency.
An affair. The mob. A murder. | The Washington Post | Crime
This examination of a cold case murder of a US Defence Department official quickly unravels threads that lead to mob connections and Rudolph Giuliani’s fight against organised crime.
Grand Theft Cobalt: Rotterdam | Bloomberg Businessweek | Crime
Thieves with a keen eye for the commodities markets managed to make off with over 100 tons of cobalt, a material that is an essential component of many high spec electronic devices (smartphones, electric cars) and that has a problematic supply chain.
The War-Torn Web | Foreign Policy | Society
It’s likely that a year hasn’t gone by since the internet was invented without someone saying it was fundamentally broken, changing, or out of control. This primer of the “digitalpolitik” philosophies in today’s world is nevertheless illuminating in documenting and categorising how different nations are approaching managing the internet, for good and for ill.
Recovering Nintendo’s Lost SimCity for the NES | The Video Game History Foundation | Entertainment
This deep dive into the making of the unreleased SimCity Nintendo edition, the result of a collaboration between Nintendo’s star designer and the maker of SimCity, offers insights into the creative process, game design and the video game industry.
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