Mitch Wagner

Karla Peterson:

It’s the usual love story. Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl drives a borrowed Cadillac Eldorado from Southern California to Colorado to break up boy’s wedding. And by the way, the boy is the girl’s therapist, which is perfectly fine because she loves him and she is sure that he loves her. Pretty sure, anyway.

OK, so Laura Preble’s new novel, “Anna Icognito,” is not your usual love story. Which is perfectly fine, because Anna is not your usual heroine.

Anna is a germaphobe who rarely leaves the house for fear of what horrors she might touch, inhale or inadvertently ingest.

Seems like a good book. Reminds me of the Bill Murray/Richard Dreyfus movie “What About Bob,” which I loved.

But hugging a germaphobe seems like a bad idea because germs.

You had one job, Iowa!

The drawbacks of electronic voting have been well known for more than 20 years. Republicans want a voting system that’s easily hacked, because Republicans can’t win honest elections. Democrats should know better.

My crystal ball says Iowa’s importance in the primary/caucus process is done. It’ll continue first chronologically but its position will be ceremonial. Maybe Bloomberg is right and the real action starts Super Tuesday. As I recall, in previous primaries the action pretty much ended then too.

Two people trying to protect a monarch butterfly sanctuary in Mexico from logging have been found dead in a week [Fox News]

IBM, Marriott and Mickey Mouse Take On Tech’s Favorite Law [David McCabe/NYTimes]

Section 230 protects Google, Facebook and other platforms from legal liability from content users post to them. The law has been a shield for abuse and harassment. But IBM, Marriott and Disney aren’t heroes here. Likely they just want to change the laws to protect themselves and other big business interests.

If You’re Over 50, Chances Are the Decision to Leave a Job Won’t be Yours [Peter Gosselin/ProPublica]

My prospects are looking good but that’s far from true for everyone. Most workers over 50 will be laid off, and for most it’s a financial blow they won’t recover from. It will take them a long time to find work and when they do it will be a fraction of their former pay.

Socially conservative mom says racy halftime entertainment drove distraught 13-year-old son to his bedroom [Mark Frauenfelder/Boing Boing]

At that age sometime I became distraught five times a day.

Corruption in America: How the US became the center of global kleptocracy - Casey Michel - Vox

When it comes to the US’s role as a massive laundromat for dirty money, the Trump administration is simply continuing a trend years in the making.

The US money laundering business has been decades in the making; the Obama administration gave it a big push forward.

Waze’s Cookie Monster voice is the only thing keeping me sane right now - Thom Dunn - Boing Boing

‪Remarkably, this is six years to the day after I started at LR. I opened my journaling app to make a note of the event, flipped through the “on this day” timeline and found my “first day at Light Reading” entry for Feb. 3 2014. ‬

Big news: I’ve left Light Reading after six years. It’s been a great ride but it’s time to move on. I’m looking into other options now and excited for the future.