GIVING THANKS: Easily Overlooked Signs of a Gradually Improving Country.

IT’S ALWAYS THEIR SEASON FOR GIVING: Male Dolphins Are Total Gift-Bearing Players When Courting Females.

PRO TIP:

At the very least, it’s better advice than Newsweek is offering up for you today.

SO BAD… THEY’RE STILL JUST BAD: 7 Turkey Films for Turkey Day.

HISTORY: The First Thanksgiving Was Nothing Like What You Were Taught.

Among the most compelling historical accounts of that world comes from Charles Mann’s intriguing 2005 book, “1491,” a revisionist history of the pre-Columbian Americas that renders our storybook conception of the first Thanksgiving obsolete and, by comparison, rather boring. The truth is, the Pilgrims were able to survive and establish their colony because they were drawn into the political machinations of Massasoit, a shrewd and calculating Indian leader who was trying to figure out how to save his people from apocalypse.

The Indians Drew The Pilgrims Into a Political Alliance
Massasoit was the sachem, or political and military leader, of the Wampanoag confederation, a loose combination of villages in southeastern Massachusetts. About five years before the Pilgrims arrived, Massasoit’s people had been decimated by diseases brought by earlier European traders. Entire villages had been depopulated—including a Patuxet village that the newly arrived Pilgrims settled into and named New Plymouth.

As Mann explains, Massasoit was in a bind. The epidemic that had hit the Wampanoag hadn’t touched their longtime enemies to the west, the Narragansett. Massasoit feared his weakened people would be overrun, so he decided to gamble and let the Pilgrims stay. European traders had been visiting New England for at least a century, but Indian leaders always forbid them from establishing permanent settlements. The relationship was strictly transactional. Far from seeing the Europeans as superior, writes Mann, the Indians had good reason to take advantage of these strange newcomers.

Fascinating stuff — read the whole thing.

DOUBLE-TAKE: Statue Sexual Assault? Australian Catholic School Covers Saint After Scandalous Reveal.

TONE-DEAF: CNN reporter Dylan Byers ripped for lamenting ‘drain of talent’ in scandal-ridden media, Hollywood.

“Beyond the pain/humiliation women have endured (which is of course the paramount issue), it’s worth taking stock of the incredible drain of talent from media/entertainment taking place right now,” Mr. Byers wrote in a now-deleted tweet Tuesday evening.

“Never has so much talent left the industry all at once,” he said.

A talent for what, exactly?

HMM: What if there were another way for advertisers to reach their audience while keeping users data anonymous and encrypted, and even rewarding them for their attention?

The good news was that the general public started becoming more aware of Facebook’s attitude towards privacy.

The bad news is that the situation is worse than it’s ever been. Advertisers need ways to reach their audience, and these “free” social media platforms are a path to do just that.

But, what if there were another way for advertisers to reach their audience while keeping users data anonymous and encrypted, and even rewarding them for their attention?

When I heard that a company was addressing the advertising and privacy issue with a new cryptocurrency, naturally it caught my attention.

Charlie Silver, a seasoned and successful entrepreneur, created Algebraix with the intention of making cryptocurrency go mainstream.

I spoke with Charlie to learn more about his company and their plans to break into the crowded advertising market.

Algebraix is an up-and-comer in the current tech scene and is looking to make waves, in what they believe, will become an entirely new field of advertising.

How the Algebraix platform works is simple. Users sign up to receive cryptocurrency that can be spent within the Algebraix blockchain network or traded for other cryptocurrencies, or converted to paper money through other online exchange services, as a reward for consuming digital media such as movie trailers and TV commercials.

While not perfect, it does seem like an improvement over the current system in which users trade every single detail of their lives in exchange for being served up ads on a “free” social network.

GIVE THEM AN INCH…: Vegan Activists Bully Butcher Shop Into Placing Animal Rights Sign in Window.

T-DAY NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Thanksgiving Traditions to Bless Your Children and Teach Them Valuable Life Lessons.

WELL, IT DOES GROW LIKE A WEED: The price of cannabis is falling, suggesting a supply glut.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT THIS KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENED: Democrat Congressman Bob Brady Accused of Rigging Pennsylvania Election.

JACK DUNPHY: Is the LAPD Manipulating Crime Numbers to Make City Seem Safer Than It Really Is?

WELL, GOOD: Pelosi calls for investigation into sexual allegations against Conyers.

NEWS I CAN CERTAINLY USE: Type of alcohol determines whether you become merry or maudlin.

HO-HO-HO: 500 German Police Arrest Six Syrian ISIS Fighters Suspected of Christmas Market Terror Plot.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Turkey’s Erdogan takes on financial markets again. And may lose, again.

Erdogan triggered a slump in lira assets this week by reviving his long-standing criticism of conventional central banking, namely, that policy makers should cut interest rates — rather than raise them — to stem soaring inflation.

That approach didn’t work in January 2014 when the central bank eventually had to more than double borrowing costs to stem a flight of foreign cash. As the lira plunges toward a record-low of four to the dollar, traders say he’ll be pushed into a corner again if he wants to avoid alienating the very investors he needs to sustain his economy.

“Nobody genuinely believes that high interest rates cause inflation, this is populist rhetoric from Erdogan. I’d be very surprised if he himself believes it,” said Paul McNamara, a London-based fund manager at GAM UK, which sold all its Turkish holdings months ago. “The lira is going to keep falling until we see tighter money.”

As James Carville quipped 25 years ago, upon discovering the limits even the White House faced going up again free markets, “I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela pumps below OPEC target.

The South American country’s oil output hit a 28-year low in October as state-owned oil giant PDVSA struggled to find the funds to drill wells, maintain oilfields and keep pipelines and ports working.

Venezuela’s oil production, which has been falling by about 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) a month since last year, is on track to fall by at least 250,000 bpd in 2017, according to numbers reported to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as US sanctions and a lack of capital hobble operations.

Some OPEC members expect the fall to accelerate in 2018, reaching at least 300,000 bpd, OPEC sources said. At a recent internal OPEC meeting, Venezuelan officials were asked to give a clearer picture of the country’s declining output.

“A lot of questions have been raised by Saudis and others to the Venezuelans to present a real picture on the production status and decline,” one of the sources said.

I had been assured that socialism leads to plenty.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Pre-Thanksgiving News Round-Up and Much, Much More.

THEY DID NOT HAVE RELATIONS WITH THAT JEWISH NATION: Saudi FM denies kingdom has relations with Israel.

HONESTY, EVENTUALLY: Uber concealed cyberattack that exposed 57 million people’s data.

Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information of about 7 million drivers were accessed as well, including some 600,000 U.S. driver’s license numbers. No Social Security numbers, credit card details, trip location info or other data were taken, Uber said.

At the time of the incident, Uber was negotiating with U.S. regulators investigating separate claims of privacy violations. Uber now says it had a legal obligation to report the hack to regulators and to drivers whose license numbers were taken. Instead, the company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet. Uber said it believes the information was never used but declined to disclose the identities of the attackers.

How do we know the hackers deleted Uber’s stolen data?

SHINE IT BRIGHTER: Conyers Settlement Shines Light on How Congress Handles Sexual Harassment.

Mr. Conyers on Tuesday said he settled the complaint to avoid litigation. He added he would cooperate with any further investigation in the House. News of the settlement and that it was related to a sexual-harassment claim surfaced Monday.

“I expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me, and continue to do so,” he said in a statement.

Tuesday afternoon, the House Ethics Committee announced it had “begun an investigation and will gather additional information regarding these allegations.” The committee keeps its investigations confidential and said it won’t make further public statements “pending completion of its initial review.”

The revelation adds to the sexual-misconduct claims that have been aired in recent months against powerful men in politics as well as in media and entertainment.

PLUS:

That’s a lot of swamp to drain.

PRIVACY: Is the Government Waging an Out-of-Sight Fight With Apple on Encryption?

The upshot is that, even as the FBI battles with Apple in public over iPhone encyprtion, other agencies like the NSA may be forcing Apple to break its encryption in secret through Section 702 orders. Even though Section 702 orders are notionally aimed at foreigners, there are numerous loopholes that can sweep in Americans.

The over-arching issue raised by EmptyWheel is not whether citizens should have the right to deploy unbreakable encryption (there are good arguments on each side), but instead that the government may be settling the debate in secret. The issue of encryption is too important to be stuffed into secret court proceedings. Let’s hope the Justice Department finds a way to debate this in the open.

I don’t trust Jeff Sessions enough to have that hope.

SPENGLER: Angela Merkel’s Feet of Clay.

A great deal of the present problem is the result of Merkel’s incompetence. Nearly 300,000 Bulgarians and Romanians entered Britain in 2015 right after their countries joined the European Community. That explains a great deal of the Brexit vote. The Germans suffer from a massive labor shortage, especially in the construction industry, and the Eastern Europeans might have helped. The Germans would not have objected to European immigrants who can assimilate into their society as much as they do to Muslims who cannot. The European Community’s blanket policy of free migration among its members makes it extremely difficult to manage immigration even when it might be beneficial rather than burdensome.

Now Germany is split between ordinary citizens who want to hold on to some notion of German-ness, even if they are not quite sure what that means, and those who want to liquidate German culture as a remedy for war guilt. A natural conservative majority exists in theory, but does not exist in practice because no German party can articulate a coherent, let alone an acceptable, message of German particularism.

Read the whole thing.

JUST IN TIME FOR BLACK FRIDAY: 13 Fabulous Gifts for Under $20 — That People Will Actually Like.

I can vouch for the mini screwdriver set, which slips nicely into the back of a desk drawer awaiting emergency computer repairs.