Friday morning coffee reads

Interesting articles to peruse with your morning joe.

1. Why mansions are artificially cheap and how you’re paying for them.
2. What may be the U.S.’s first drone-linked aircraft crash is being investigated. Investigators are also looking into a report that a drone struck a helicopter in Kauai. A frightening close encounter of a drone and a passenger jet in Las Vegas. A drone crashes into Apple’s new headquarters. Close encounters have led to requests for tighter regulations.
3. Daniel Radcliffe as an angel administrator? TV premises are getting too weird.
4. How to test your favorite conspiracy theory. “I notice also that UFO claims have plummeted since the advent of mobile phones with cameras (‘Oh, did you get a photo of them?’).”
5. Missouri Legislature should not repeal post-Ferguson reforms. Related to this, the U.S. Fifth Circuit ruled last week that “A system where a ‘wealthy arrestee is less likely to plead guilty, more likely to receive a shorter sentence or be acquitted, and less likely to bear the social costs of incarceration’ is unconstitutional.” Here is an editorial on this case from The New York Times in 2017. (Hattip: The Volokh Conspiracy)
6. Norwegian Olympians have won the most medals. And they’re joking around.
7. Craft beer is the strangest, happiest economic story in America.
8. Can you spot the billionaire? Income inequality in America is irrelevant, from 2004. And related from 2016, most ordinary Americans in 2016 are richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. More at: America in 1915: Long hours, crowded houses, death by trolley.
9. Japanese company draws up plans for world’s tallest wooden skyscraper.
10. In photography:  Klaus Pichler finds whimsical pairings behind the scenes at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna.
11. The worst roommate ever.
12. What does it mean, exactly, for something to be “trending”?