10 Items from the Week | 18 Aug 24
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 Hello Reader,
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how much you actually like and read my longer summaries), I didn’t have time to finish reading/summarizing all the articles from the past week, so here are 10 interesting items that stood out, along with some comments from me:
1. Jazz Band Covers Nirvana On The Spot (ft. Ulysses Owens Jr.)
NOTE: This video combines three things that I really like in life: drumming, jazz, and Nirvana. Having no real musical abilities myself, I am absolutely blown away by this. The final performance starts at 7:35, but I recommend watching the whole video to fully appreciate the skills of the band.
2. Leaked Documents Show Nvidia Scraping ‘A Human Lifetime’ of Videos Per Day to Train AI
Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats, emails, and documents obtained by 404 Media show. When asked about legal and ethical aspects of using copyrighted content to train an AI model, Nvidia defended its practice as being “in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law.”
NOTE: AI firms have already almost exhausted most of the internet’s data. So, you know, there’s not much left to scrape anyway. And therein lies to problem, AI is eating the web that enabled it.
3. New York’s Largest Hospital System Is Setting Its Sights on the Entertainment Business
Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care system, is betting that the entertainment business can bolster its bottom line, and drive health awareness in the process. Northwell says it is launching Northwell Studios, a new production company that is developing scripted and unscripted film and TV content that will leverage its facilities, doctors and patients (with their consent, of course).
NOTE: Great…just what we need—hospitals getting into the entertainment business.
4. Yankees’ Aaron Judge becomes quickest player to hit 300 career home runs
Now and then, New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone allows himself to soak up the reality of having one of the best vantage points in all of baseball, standing on the top step of the dugout as Aaron Judge approaches the batters’ box. “I try to remind myself what I’m getting to watch over there every day, with what he’s been able to do and just the player and the hitter that he’s become,” Boone said on Sunday. “It’s remarkable.” Boone watched from the visitors’ dugout on Wednesday as Judge hit his 300th career home run off Chicago White Sox reliever Chad Kuhl, on a 361-foot shot to left field in the eighth inning. Judge became the quickest player to reach 300 career home runs, doing so in 955 games and eclipsing Ralph Kiner’s mark of 1,087 games. He also did it in the fewest number of at-bats, achieving the task in 3,431. It took the previous record holder, Babe Ruth, 3,830 at-bats to get there.
NOTE: For reference, see the chart below on batter’s odds to get on base…or for more detailed odds based on exit velocity and launch angle, go here.
5. Americans Are Racking Up ‘Phantom Debt’ That Wall Street Can’t Track
Consumer spending in the world’s largest economy has been so resilient in the face of stubbornly high inflation that economists and traders have had to repeatedly rip up their forecasts for slowing growth and interest-rate cuts. Still, cracks are starting to form. First it was Americans falling behind on auto loans. Then credit-card delinquency rates reached the highest since at least 2012, with the share of debts 30, 60 and 90 days late all on the upswing. There are signs that consumers are struggling to afford their [Buy Now, Pay Later] debt, too. A recent survey conducted for Bloomberg News by Harris Poll found that 43% of those who owe money to [Buy Now, Pay Later] services said they were behind on payments, while 28% said they were delinquent on other debt because of spending on the platforms.
NOTE: Though I think we’re continuing to advance toward an economic “soft landing,” I’m afraid that there’s an underlying current of consumer debt that’s going to have a deeper impact on our economy.
6. Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List
NOTE: One of the books on Obama’s summer reading list is Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to do About it. This topic and book is the very thing I wrote about here. And in somewhat related news, see article below.
7. Early-Childhood Tablet Use and Outbursts of Anger
In this study, child tablet use at age 3.5 years was associated with more expressions of anger and frustration by the age of 4.5 years. Child proneness to anger/frustration at age 4.5 years was then associated with more use of tablets by age 5.5 years. These results suggest that early-childhood tablet use may contribute to a cycle that is deleterious for emotional regulation.
8. A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage
It was the kind of outlandish scheme that might bubble up in a bar around closing time. In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream. After all, the twin natural-gas pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe were providing billions to the Kremlin war machine. What better way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his aggression? Just over four months later, in the small hours of Sept. 26, Scandinavian seismologists picked up signals indicating an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, near the Danish island of Bornholm. They were caused by three powerful explosions and the largest-ever recorded release of natural gas, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark. One of the most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history, the operation worsened an energy crisis in Europe—an assault on critical infrastructure that could be considered an act of war under international law. Theories swirled about who was responsible. Was it the CIA? Could Putin himself have set the plan in motion? Now, for the first time, the outlines of the real story can be told. The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise.
NOTE: Fitting end for a rented-yacht-drunken-evening type of story.
9. Don’t Let Perfection Be the Enemy of Productivity
Perfectionism is often driven by striving for excellence, but it can be self-sabotaging. There are three big mistakes that tend to kill perfectionists’ productivity. 1. You’re reluctant to designate decisions as “unimportant.” 2. You feel morally obligated to overdeliver. 3. You get excessively annoyed when you aren’t 100% consistent with good habits.
NOTE: From 2020, but still applicable.
10. New Zealand Charity Accidentally Gives Away Meth Disguised as Candy
The police in New Zealand were trying on Wednesday to recover chunks of methamphetamine that a local charity accidentally gave out because they were disguised as candy. The fake candy distributed by the charity, Auckland City Mission, looked like individually wrapped, pineapple flavored boiled sweets from the Malaysian confectionary brand Rinda. They had been donated by a member of the public, according to Helen Robinson, the charity’s chief executive. They were actually small blocks of methamphetamine. Each weighed about three grams (0.1 ounce) and packed up to 300 doses of the drug, according to Ben Birks Ang, the deputy executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, which examined the methamphetamine. That is a potentially lethal quantity.
NOTE: Oops, hate when that happens.
Have a great week!
The Curator
Two resources to help you be a more discerning reader:
AllSides - https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
Media Bias Chart - https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.
