This week’s highlights: The Perils of Free Speech, private aircraft, and what makes Britain British.

Fifteen on Friday – 09/15/17 – Issue 253

Food for Thought:

1. BI – A study of 36,000 students just backed Bill Gates’ favorite style of education
2. Vulture – In Conversation: John Cleese.  The comedy legend on Monty Python’s legacy, political correctness, and the funniest joke he ever told.
3. AP – Attacked in bed, safe a few feet away: Cuba mystery deepens – Credit JC – AP has learned that so-called health attacks in Havana indicate some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling U.S. officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up.
4. Economist – Arguments over free speech on campus are not left v right.  As Reed College in Oregon shows, left v left clashes can be equally vitriolic
5. BecMin – “Does It Spark Joy?” Is the Wrong Decluttering Question

Business/Economics:

1. NYT – As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles
2. ChemarkCap – Airkrafts.  It’s not about cutting all costs in business, it’s about dramatically reducing the non-strategic costs, so you can powerfully invest in the strategic ones.
3. Kitces – Predicting Wealth Building Behavior 
4. FastCo – This T-Shirt Sewing Robot Could Radically Shift The Apparel Industry.  In a soon-to-open Arkansas factory, 21 production lines manned by the Sewbot will be capable of making 1.2 million T-shirts a year–and the ripple effects will soon be felt in garment factories in the developing world
5. GI – Avoiding the Family Business Wealth Evaporation Trap

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. TechCrunch – Why the iPhone X is the new iPhone you’ll want now
2. Economist – To understand Britain, read its spy novels.  The nature of the establishment, the agonies of decline, the complicated tug of patriotism: spy novels explore what makes Britain British
3. QZ – The college lecture is dying. Good riddance.
4. USN – Ford Self-Driving Test Van ‘Talks’ to Pedestrians Via Light Signals
5. AOM – A Man’s Guide to Dressing Sharp and Casual in His 50s