10 Items from the week & more | 15 Sep 24
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 Hello Reader,
Below are 10 items from the week, along with a few others that didn’t make the top 10 cut.
1. Americans Are Falling Behind on Their Bills. Wall Street Is Alarmed. (WSJ)
Signs that Americans are struggling to keep up with their bills are setting off alarms on Wall Street. Shares of consumer-lending companies slid this past week after executives raised warnings about lower-income borrowers who are struggling to make payments. Dour remarks from banking executives at the Barclays banking conference rattled investors, who were already on edge about the health of the U.S. economy. On top of soaring prices for groceries and just about everything else, people have been dealing with higher interest rates on their credit cards. The average rate as of May was 21.51%, according to Fed data, up from around 15% in 2019. That helps explain why some are finding it harder to keep up with payments, particularly those who don’t earn so much. Around 9.1% of credit-card balances turned delinquent over the past year, the highest rate in over a decade, according to an August report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
2 Bill Gates’ retirement goals aren’t for everyone… (Sherwood News)
At 68, Bill Gates is co-chair of one of the largest charitable foundations in the world; an advisor at Microsoft, the tech giant he co-founded almost 50 years ago; and (soon, at least,) the host of a new five-part Netflix documentary series. To him, stepping away from full-time work “sounds awful”. In a recent interview with CNBC, the billionaire said that he aims to follow in the footsteps of his 94-year-old friend Warren Buffett and delay retirement — “at least 10 years… hopefully it’ll be more like 20 or 30”. Unsurprisingly, the majority of workers in the US don’t feel the same way. In fact, many Americans are looking to stop working earlier.
3. Argentines Rush to Deposit Cash Savings as Part of Milei Policy (Bloomberg)
Argentines are taking their dollar savings out from under the mattress and depositing them into banks in a vote of confidence for President Javier Milei as well as his tax amnesty program. In a sign of optimism for Milei, dollar deposits have surged 40% to $19.8 billion since he took office Dec. 10, marking the highest levels since late 2019, according to central bank data. While Argentines are paid in pesos, savings accounts at banks are often denominated in US dollars. The flow of greenbacks back into the financial system comes as a welcome development for a country that over the years has suffered currency crises due to the lack of foreign reserves in the financial system. It also inches Milei closer to one of his top campaign promises to dollarize the economy, a reality that still looks distant for now in South America’s second-biggest economy.
NOTE: I watch Argentina with curious expectation. What Milei is doing there is considered radical, but it may be exactly what that country needs to get back to where it needs to be, economically speaking. More broadly, this is what I love about having different countries. It allows for experimentation and learning from others. Which is one reason we should never want one world government. Multiple countries, just like multiple states within the US, allow for differentiation of approaches to managing humanity, diversification of risk, and dispersion of power. Meanwhile, in Venezuela…
Christmas Starts in October, Venezuela’s Autocrat Declares (NYT)
Facing widespread domestic and international criticism over his claim that he won a July presidential vote, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is trying to turn the nation’s attention toward the one thing almost every Venezuelan loves: Christmas. The holiday season will begin on Oct. 1 this year, he announced Monday on his television show “More with Maduro,” telling a friendly audience that he was moving up the start of the holiday by way of a national decree.
4. The Taliban publish vice laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public (AP)
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws approved by the supreme leader in efforts to combat vice and promote virtue.
5. Ukraine Invasion Update (Critical Threats)
This page collects the Critical Threats Project (CTP) and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) updates on the invasion of Ukraine.
NOTE: Website has great info and graphics.
6. Nation With Lowest Birthrate Is Rocked by Soaring Sales of Dog Strollers (WSJ)
In many advanced economies, including the U.S., adults treat their pets like pampered children, with fancy birthday parties, decked-out doggy mansions, private-plane travel and rides in dog strollers. But pet parents have South Korean officials howling. The country is confronting a national fertility rate of 0.72—or a mere third of the level needed to maintain the population. At a youth roundtable last year, Kim Moon-soo, the country’s now labor minister, scolded the fresh-faced attendees: “What I worry about is young people not loving each other,” Kim said. “Instead, they love their dogs and carry them around, they don’t get married, and they don’t have children.” In a recent local poll, one in two South Korean women aged 20 to 49 said they had no intention of having children, seeing it as inessential and citing financial constraints. While pet-friendly venues proliferate across the country, restaurants and cafes declare “No-kid zones,” pointing to disruptive behavior.
7. Polaris Dawn Astronauts Return to Earth After First Private Spacewalk (NYT)
After conducting the first-ever commercial spacewalk and traveling farther from Earth than anyone in more than half a century, the astronauts of the Polaris Dawn mission returned to Earth safely early Sunday. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Fla., shortly after 3:30 a.m., carrying Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, and his crew of three private astronauts, according to a SpaceX livestream. The ambitious space mission, a collaboration between Mr. Isaacman and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, spent five days in orbit, achieved several milestones in private spaceflight and was further evidence that space travel and spacewalks are no longer the exclusive domain of professional astronauts working at government agencies like NASA.
NOTE: Here’s a video of spacewalk. As a side note, did you know an astronaut almost drown in space? Check this out:
8. ‘Manipulation, Crying.’ The Weekend Hobby These Adults Love. (WSJ)
Homegrown renditions of ‘Survivor’ draw ordinary people into the woods for torches, tribal councils and physical tests. Some say it is the best thing they’ve ever done.
9. Dragons and Sharks on a Beach Near You: The Story of the Great Lego Spill (NYT)
In 1997, nearly five million Lego pieces — including 33,427 black dragons — were packed in a shipping container when a rogue wave hit the Tokio Express, a cargo ship hauling the toys and other goods. The ship, which had been traveling to New York from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, nearly capsized, and it lost all 62 of its shipping containers — an event known as the Great Lego Spill. The pieces are still showing up — on England’s coast, in Ireland, Belgium, France and possibly at the beach near you. In a whimsical twist, many of the pieces were nautically themed. It was arguably the single largest toy-related environmental disaster that we know of, experts say, and people are still finding pieces 27 years later. “Only another 51,799 to find,” Ms. Williams wrote on the Lego Lost at Sea account.
NOTE: The event and its aftermath are documented on social media on the Lego Lost at Sea Facebook page, and Instagram, and X. Ms Williams just published a book on the topic as well: Adrift: The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea.
10. Phones, attention spans, boredom, and reading.
NOTE: I lied. I’m actually including more than 10 things in the top 10 (five here in the last one)…but these following items all center on one subject: digital media and attention spans.
The Lost Art of Waiting (FP)
Americans are more impatient than ever—and it’s affecting everything from our waistlines to our relationships. The fact is, the experience of waiting forces a negotiation between our present and future selves. Our present self wants immediately to devour that Cinnabon pastry we smell wafting through the airport. Our future self may need us to resist it, to maintain a healthy weight. And when people see their time as a valuable, fleeting resource, they become less likely to patiently pursue long-term goals. Hence why, perhaps, researchers have linked the increase in Americans’ impatience to the rise in both obesity and debt, as well as the decline in savings, and the increase in gambling. We, as a society, are losing our ability to delay gratification, to patiently plan ahead. We value the new and the now, which is having a disturbing impact on—among other things—the realm of public discourse. In the media, we have come to prefer reaction to deliberation. We respect expertise less, because it takes time to develop and mature. In a culture used to immediate, brief responses, considered responses are often drowned out by a chorus of louder, less-informed voices. Being human means coping with those in-between moments, when we must do what is uneasy or uncomfortable, from tolerating a boring meeting, to bearing witness to another’s illness, to simply being stuck on a bus. But all these experiences present opportunities, as well as challenges—to daydream, to anticipate pleasure, to listen to a loved one, or confront our own selves.
Your phone is why you don't feel sexy (Catherine Shannon)
Scrolling on our phones is killing us. This is a statement of fact that needs no citation (besides, research isn’t really my thing). The massive suck of our phones and the never-ending, algorithmically-driven internet has been covered at greater length by better-informed writers. We all know our phones are destroying our attention spans, our dopamine reward systems, our relationships. We know they’re numbing our feelings and experiences. That’s all I’ll say about the general badness of phones and the internet. But I want to talk about a very specific kind of badness: our phones are also killing our ability to feel sexy.
NOTE: An interesting twist on the concerns with technology that actually goes deeper than you might think based on the article title.
Scrolling YouTube videos is making us more bored - and the antidote will surprise you (ZDNet)
Cognitive psychologists have noted -- in numerous studies over the past decade -- that individuals engage in social media, and other digital media, to escape boredom. However, the same studies reveal that consuming such media can amplify boredom in individuals rather than alleviate it. That ironic result may be a product of constantly "switching" between different content online, the relentless pursuit of the next piece of media to alleviate present boredom. That's the finding of a new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, a scholarly publication of the American Psychology Association. The study relates that hundreds of online volunteers reported feeling more bored after jumping from one YouTube video to another over a 10-minute period. The authors conclude that switching is leading to disengagement, which heightens boredom. "When participants engaged in digital switching, they were unable to fully immerse themselves in the current content and make meaning of it." Still, the authors assert a couple of takeaways. The study reinforces what prior research shows, namely, "People are getting increasingly bored these days," they write. That is something that "could lead to downstream negative behavior and mental health consequences." They also suggest that allowing oneself to be immersed in a particular task or experience, such as watching a movie all the way through, could be an antidote. As Tam and Inzlicht put it, "In this digital age, where watching videos is a major source of entertainment, our research indicates that enjoyment likely comes from immersing oneself in the videos rather than swiping through them."
Where Did All the Book Readers Go? (Honest-Broker)
Beth McMurtrie, senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, often talks to professors and students about the reading crisis—and she shares scary stories of a generation that does most of its reading on Instagram, TikTok, and texting apps. The result is “a lack of reading endurance—anything over five pages was too much for them.” According to one survey, up to 80% of students simply won’t do the assigned readings. And when they do read, it happens slowly and with poor comprehension. Even more alarming, this trend is happening everywhere—Ivy League colleges which supposedly attract the best students in the world, are not exempt. Cornell rejects more than 92% of applicants, but its students struggle to read anything longer than a few paragraphs. When you ask teachers why this is happening, they offer many reasons—but one keeps recurring. Ten years into his teaching career, Adam Kotsko faced a marked decline in student reading ability, and saw the obvious culprit: “The ubiquitous smartphone.” That’s where all the readers went. They’re scrolling and swiping, instead of turning pages. And the more we learn about smartphones, the more ominous the situation seems. Smartphone use is linked to: shorter attention spans, poorer grades, lower levels of student comprehension, less sleep, depression, anxiety, neuroticism, suicidal tendencies
Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Something’s happening with college students in reading. Or maybe it’s better to say something’s not happening. College professors are used to assigning work that doesn’t get done that comes with the territory. But many now say that their students are coming to campus woefully unprepared. The class of Gen Z, born in the iPhone age is struggling to read and comprehend long passages. They may be distracted by a barrage of social media. Some of them, professors will tell you, don’t see the point of learning at all. Why is this happening? What does it say about what college is for? And is there anything we can do about it? My colleague Beth McMurtrie, a senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, has been wrestling with these issues. Today, we’ll talk about her reporting, which centers on a striking question: is this the end of reading?
NOTE: Great interview
& more…
More items that crossed my desk
North America
Father of US school shooting suspect charged with murder (BBC)
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing four people at a high school in the US state of Georgia has been arrested and charged with murder. Colin Gray, 54, is facing four charges of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight of cruelty to children. Officials said on Thursday evening the charges were directly connected to his son's actions and "allowing him to possess a weapon". The son, Colt Gray, is accused of killing two teachers and two students in Wednesday's shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta. He is due in court on Friday charged - as an adult - with four counts of murder.
Shootings soar in one of North America’s safest cities. The culprit: Tow-truck gangs (WSJ🔒)
Towing cars has become a deadly business in Canada’s largest city. Rival gangs control parts of the tow-truck industry here, using the heavy-duty vehicles to transport drugs, extort car-crash victims with high fees, and fake automobile accidents to defraud insurance. They once resolved their territorial differences with their fists, but now a wave of gun smuggling from the U.S. has turned their fights into a lethal blood sport. This year through late August, Toronto shootings are up 50% compared with the same period last year and homicides are up 20%—a surge caused in part by “the tow-truck violence,” said Inspector Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service’s guns-and-gangs unit. In all, about one in seven of Toronto’s shootings and dischargings of firearms this year have been related to the towing industry, police said. Toronto remains among the safest cities in the world, according to The Economist, which publishes an annual index on the topic. The city’s 306 shooting incidents from January to late August were far below the 1,553 recorded in Chicago or the 594 in New York City.
Liberal San Francisco is deporting migrants to fight fentanyl crisis (Bloomberg🔒)
San Francisco has long celebrated its progressive values and immigration sanctuary policies. A deadly fentanyl crisis is testing its commitment to those ideals. Open-air drug markets dot a downtown already struggling to recover from the pandemic. A record number of people died from overdoses last year. Faced with a deepening emergency, city leaders have quietly embraced a controversial tactic to combat the epidemic: deportation. The crackdown in a liberal bastion shows just how deeply fentanyl has entrenched itself in San Francisco and exacerbated some of the tech hub’s most vexing problems, from homelessness to downtown revival.
Latin America
Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge’s decision to block X nationwide (AP)
A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website. The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users, and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest. De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court review that provision.
Mexican legislature passes judicial overhaul that has rattled investors (WSJ🔒)
Mexico’s legislature approved a contentious overhaul of the country’s judicial system, a reform that has rattled investors and drawn strong criticism in the U.S. The judicial shake-up is among a raft of constitutional changes being pushed through congress by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in his last month in office, taking advantage of the supermajority won by the ruling Morena party in the June 2 general election. Under the overhaul, the country’s more than 1,700 federal judges and Supreme Court justices will be replaced through elections to be held in 2025 and 2027.
Europe
Violent drug gangs bring mayhem to Western Europe (WSJ🔒)
Organized crime used to be considered a remote threat in much of Western Europe, but ruthless violence by criminal gangs is now rattling the peace in some of the world’s safest societies. Sweden now has Europe’s highest gun-homicide rate, and the military is helping police fight street gangs. In Denmark, residents of the commune Christiania shut their famed open-air cannabis market after violent gangs took over. In Belgium, armed security forces have started guarding customs trucks carrying seized cocaine to prevent criminals from stealing it back. The EU now considers organized crime a threat to European societies on par with terrorism. Europol attributes the violence to a globalization of the drug trade, a surge in coca cultivation in Colombia and a fragmentation of the supply chain. Gangs have established a firmer foothold in large European ports, including Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium.
East Asia
China stops foreign adoptions, ending a complicated chapter (NYT🔒)
For three decades, China sent tens of thousands of young children overseas for adoption as it enforced a strict one-child policy that forced many families to abandon their babies. Now the government will no longer allow most foreign adoptions, a move that it said was in line with global trends. In recent years, Chinese officials have sought to promote domestic adoptions. International adoptions peaked and began to slow in the mid-2000s, as China’s economy boomed and the government allocated more money to support orphans. Fewer children have been put up for adoption, too, a reflection of slowing birthrates and more support for children with disabilities. By 2018, the number of children registered for adoption had fallen to around 15,000, from about 44,000 in 2009, official statistics show. There were 343,000 orphans in China in 2019, according to Chinese officials
China’s first retirement age hike since 1978 triggers discontent (Bloomberg🔒)
China will raise the retirement age for the first time since 1978, a move that could stem a decline in the labor force but risk angering workers already wrestling with a slowing economy. Top lawmakers endorsed a plan to delay retirement for employees by as long as five years, Xinhua News Agency reported Friday. Men will retire at 63 instead of 60. Women will retire at 55 instead of 50 for ordinary workers, and 58 instead of 55 for those in management positions. The change will take place over 15 years starting January, and will allow more people to work longer. This could boost productivity to address the challenges of an aging population, although it risks adding to public discontent with the economy growing at the worst pace in five quarters.
For many leaving China, it's Japan — not the US — that's the bigger draw (VOA)
One by one, the students, lawyers and others filed into a classroom in a central Tokyo university for a lecture by a Chinese journalist on Taiwan and democracy — taboo topics that can't be discussed publicly back home in China. "Taiwan's modern-day democracy took struggle and bloodshed, there's no question about that," said Jia Jia, a columnist and guest lecturer at the University of Tokyo who was briefly detained in China eight years ago on suspicion of penning a call for China's top leader to resign. He is one of tens of thousands of intellectuals, investors and other Chinese who have relocated to Japan in recent years, part of a larger exodus of people from China. Their backgrounds vary widely, and they're leaving for all sorts of reasons. Some are very poor, others are very rich. Some leave for economic reasons, as opportunities dry up with the end of China's boom. Some flee for personal reasons, as even limited freedoms are eroded. Jia initially intended to move to the U.S., not Japan. But after experiencing the coronavirus outbreak in China, he was anxious to leave and his American visa application was stuck in processing. So he chose Japan instead. "In the United States, illegal immigration is particularly controversial. When I went to Japan, I was a little surprised. I found that their immigration policy is actually more relaxed than I thought," Jia told The Associated Press. "I found that Japan is better than the U.S."
Defense
Air Force elevates AFSOUTH as new ‘service component command’ (Air & Space Forces)
As Maj. Gen. David A. Mineau accepted the guidon for Air Forces Southern on Sept. 11, it was Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin handing it over, not the commander of Air Combat Command. That’s because Air Forces Southern is no longer under ACC, but has been redesignated AFSOUTH and elevated to a “service component command,” reporting directly to CSAF. AFSOUTH now has “the same access, the same decision-making processes, and the same meetings” asU.S. Air Forces in Europe, Pacific Air Forces, and Air Mobility Command, Allvin said during the ceremony. The change is part of the Air Force’s “re-optimization” for great power competition, in which Allvin is seeking to redefine USAF’s traditional conception of major commands. His new constructs designates each MajCom as either an “institutional command,” responsible for organizing, training, and equipping fgorces, or “service component commands” responsible for presenting forces to unified combatant commands. In doing so, he has also rethought how Numbered Air Forces fit into this broader picture. AFSOUTH was formally 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern) and reported to ACC.
Economy
Annual US consumer inflation fell to 2.5% in August, a 3-year low (AP)
It was good news-bad news on US inflation Wednesday. The good news is overall inflation continued along its downward path toward the Federal Reserve’s desired threshold of 2%. The bad news is, when you strip out traditionally volatile items like food and gas (though critical to consumers), inflation went up thanks largely to housing and travel. From that angle, things are looking a little worse for American consumers—and Wall Street, too, since investor fever dreams of a half-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve later this month were likely dashed.
America must free itself from the tyranny of the penny (NYT🔒)
Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them, so that cash transactions that necessitate pennies (i.e., any concluding with a sum whose final digit is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be settled. Because these replacement pennies will themselves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pennies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pennies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pennies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint. Five years ago, Mint officials conceded that if even a modest portion of these dormant pennies were suddenly to return to circulation, the resulting flow-back would be “logistically unmanageable.” There would be so unbelievably many pennies that there most likely would not be enough room to contain them inside government vaults. Moving them from place to place would be time-consuming, cumbersome and costly. (Just $100 worth of pennies weighs a touch over 55 pounds.) With each new penny minted, this problem becomes slightly more of a problem. Why, in 2024, does our nation still spew out pennies like a two-liter in eternal agitation, gushing undrinkable fizz? The people I asked (government officials, numismatists, economists, scientists, scrap-metal industrialists, souvenir-elongated-penny machinists, historians, businesspeople, poverty researchers, Canadians) assigned blame widely: to an uninterested Congress; to highly interested lobbyists; to the sentimental; to people bad at math; to a populace willing to provide, in perpetuity, free private storage for pointless copper-plated tokens. (This last group encompasses every person currently possessed of at least one penny.) But the truth about why Americans are doomed to trudge eternally through a blood-scented bog of pennies-as-currency may be simultaneously the most dispiriting and encouraging reason imaginable: We may have forgotten that we don’t have to. The necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot. Eleven years ago, President Barack Obama called the penny “a good metaphor for some of the larger problems” of the U.S. government. “It’s very hard to get rid of things that don’t work,” Obama said, adding that eliminating the penny is something a president (for example: Barack Obama, 11 years ago) would “need legislation” for.
NOTE: Fascinating read.
Business
Apple, Google lose multibillion dollar court fights with EU (Bloomberg🔒)
Apple Inc. lost its court fight over a €13 billion ($14.4 billion) Irish tax bill and Google lost its challenge over a €2.4 billion fine for abusing its market power, in a double boost to the European Union’s crackdown on Big Tech. The EU’s Court of Justice in Luxembourg backed a landmark 2016 decision that Ireland broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage. In another victory for the EU’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, the same court ruled that Google illegally leveraged its search-engine dominance to give a higher ranking to its own product listings.
Sunbelt manufacturing boom lures property investors (WSJ🔒) 📊
The U.S. is experiencing a manufacturing revival. More property investors are eager to capitalize on it. American and overseas companies have committed nearly half a trillion dollars to build new factories for electric vehicles, semiconductors and other products in the U.S., according to real estate analytics firm Green Street. Investors are planning to acquire or build warehouses, hotels, office buildings and apartments near coming factories across the Sunbelt and Rust Belt, where most of these so-called onshoring projects are under way. They are wagering that as new manufacturing hubs come online and create jobs they will produce a “multiplier effect,” with growing employment increasing demand for homes, shopping and more.
Boeing factory workers go on strike after rejecting contract offer (VOA)
Aircraft assembly workers walked off the job early Friday at Boeing factories near Seattle after union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike and reject a tentative contract that would have increased wages by 25% over four years. The strike started at 12:01 a.m. PDT, less than three hours after the local branch of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced 94.6% of voting workers rejected the proposed contract and 96% approved the work stoppage, easily surpassing a two-thirds requirement. The labor action involves 33,000 Boeing machinists, most of them in Washington state, and is expected to shut down production of the company's best-selling airline planes. The strike will not affect commercial flights but represents another setback for the aerospace giant, whose reputation and finances have been battered by manufacturing problems and multiple federal investigations this year.
‘It’s like they just rolled out of bed’: Employers boost business etiquette training (Worklife)
Ideas around what constitutes socially acceptable behavior at work have shifted widely following the pandemic and in new hybrid arrangements. Despite some changing norms, particularly those driven by Gen Z, knowing how to conduct oneself professionally and interact with others respectfully will always be important in workplaces, said Pamela Eyring, president and owner of the Protocol School of Washington. Major government agencies, corporations like Boeing and Mastercard and academic institutions have sent staff to the Protocol School to get training on business etiquette, communication skills, building relationships and ultimately properly conducting themselves in professional situations. About half of employers said they were offering business etiquette training last year amid the return to offices, and about 20% said they planned to offer it this year, according to a survey from Resume Builder including over 1,500 respondents.
This security company has been flooded with job applicants from North Korea (Forbes🔒)
Last year, employees at Cinder, a tech startup that provides content moderation software and is led by former intelligence officials, began to notice strange anomalies in the thousands of job applications it received. While many of the resumes were impressive, touting roles at Facebook and Google, the people who submitted them often had no internet presence beyond professional networking sites. Sometimes their profiles appeared to match those of other people. During interviews, a number of them spoke poor English. When a Cinder employee grilling one applicant recognized a Korean accent, the company began to worry it might be the target of a North Korean scheme. During one virtual interview “with a suspected North Korean applicant, I said that we come from the CIA and work on nation state investigations,” Cinder’s engineering head Declan Cummings told Forbes. “He dropped from the call immediately.” The company recently said in a blog post that it believed as many as 80% of its applicants from some job websites were North Korean. Cinder is one of thousands of companies that have been inundated by remote IT workers assisting North Korea, a country designated by the U.S. as providing support for acts of international terrorism. The threat accelerated alongside the rise of remote work in 2020, but a string of recent arrests and disclosures by companies like Cinder have brought new attention to the issue.
The U.S. corn crop is great. Farmers’ finances, not so much (WSJ🔒) 📊
The U.S. farm belt is headed for a bumper crop. Few farmers are celebrating, though. Grain prices, under pressure since the Covid commodity boom crested, have fallen further in 2024. Rainfall has been ample across farm country for the first time in years, staving off the drought that has plagued the central U.S. and putting Midwestern corn and soybean harvests on track to set records. That is intensifying what was already shaping up as a dismal year financially on the farm. Budgets drawn up in the spring are no longer viable. Persistently high costs for farm essentials such as seeds and fertilizer are gobbling up revenue. It is a return to leaner prepandemic times for many farmers. Prices for corn and soybeans were rangebound in the second half of the 2010s, weighing on farm returns. The record-high prices in 2021 and 2022 gave farmers a boost, but momentum has once again turned against them. Now, some farmers are being forced to consider actions they would rather avoid. That can mean using less fungicide and fertilizer—and accepting more issues with pests and lower crop yields—or delaying capital investments that would boost productivity and profits over time.
Energy
US oil dominance hinges on quiet corner of New Mexico (Bloomberg🔒) 📊
About 100 miles east of UFO-capital Roswell, a dusty corner of New Mexico with more cattle than people is quietly buttressing the US’s world oil dominance. After pumping less crude in the years leading up to the pandemic than top counties in neighboring Texas, New Mexico’s Lea County has been rapidly gaining ground. Output there has expanded faster than in any other US county, last year becoming the first to ever produce more than 1 million barrels per day, according to energy research firm Enverus. Neighboring Eddy County will hit the million-barrel-a-day milestone by September next year, predicts energy analytics firm Novi Labs. In fact, data show the two New Mexico counties accounted for 17% of all onshore oil output in the contiguous US last year, and before the next decade, they’re expected to pump more oil than the next five biggest counties combined.
Personal Finance
U.S. incomes climbed last year, Census Bureau says (WSJ🔒) 📊
Household incomes rose last year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began, reflecting the effects of easing inflation and a strong job market. The new data from the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday signaled an improvement in 2023 after inflation that spiked to a 40-year-high the prior year swallowed up household income gains.
Artificial Intelligence
The threat to OpenAI is growing (WSJ🔒)
Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft are in talks to invest in OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, at precisely the moment when it’s become apparent that the company will face tougher competition than ever in the burgeoning artificial-intelligence market. Much of that new competition is coming from startups that promise to undercut OpenAI’s services with ones that could be cheaper to use, and also better at certain narrow tasks. At least one tech giant sees promise in the new crop of AI startups. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook’s parent, Meta Platforms, is positioning his company as a champion for the little guys, letting outside developers use Meta’s cutting-edge AI model, Llama, free of charge. Google has also released an open-source AI that’s not nearly as capable as Meta’s.
The AI spending spree, in charts (WSJ🔒) 📊
Generative artificial intelligence has sparked one of the biggest spending booms in modern American history, as companies and investors bet hundreds of billions of dollars that the technology will revolutionize the global economy and one day lead to massive profits. The question is when, and even whether, all those investments will pay off. Apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have attracted hundreds of millions of users, but relatively few people are paying for premium versions and businesses are still experimenting with how generative AI can increase their productivity. Nonetheless, the biggest tech companies are putting record amounts of money into capital spending, primarily for the hardware needed to develop and run AI models.
Life
Disconnected: the growing class divide in American civic life (American Survey Center) 📊
The class divide in American social capital has grown over the past few decades. Americans with fewer years of formal education participate less often in community life, are less civically active, have fewer close friends, and have less social support than those with four-year college degrees. In the recent past, three institutions—marriage, religious organizations, and labor unions—provided crucial ballast that enabled Americans without degrees to develop robust social ties and extensive systems of personal support despite facing more acute financial challenges. Today, Americans without a college education are less likely to be married, join a labor union, and participate regularly at a church or place of worship. Past research has shown that while membership in all three institutions has declined overall, it has declined much more steeply among Americans with lower levels of educational attainment. What’s more, research has found that Americans with college degrees tend to live in communities with richer commercial and public amenities and to have the resources to use them, giving them more social and civic alternatives. Increasingly, the ability to cultivate strong social support is a privilege reserved for the college-educated, rather than an ordinary feature of American life.
Education
Your kid’s classroom now has better decor than your living room (WSJ🔒) 📊
Teachers have long poured energy into enhancing their learning spaces. But now, some are crafting spaces that could grace Architectural Digest. The makeovers are particularly prevalent among Gen-Z teachers. A wave of young people who are used to sharing their lives on social media have entered the field. They are curating classrooms that dazzle on TikTok, complete with cubbies and bespoke furniture, and that aim to create a soothing vibe for students (and the teachers). Keeping up with hot classroom decor isn’t easy in the penny-pinching profession. Many teachers already dip into their own wallets to buy school supplies.
Health
Parkinson’s may begin in the gut, study says, adding to growing evidence (WP🔒)
A new study adds to a growing body of evidence that Parkinson’s disease, long believed to have its origins in the brain, may begin in the gut. Gastrointestinal problems are common in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, to the point where a condition known as “institutional colon” was once thought to afflict those who lived in mental health institutions. In Parkinson’s disease, the entire gastrointestinal tract is affected, causing complications such as constipation, drooling, trouble swallowing and delayed emptying of the stomach. These symptoms often appear up to two decades before motor symptoms such as rigidity or tremor. Globally, the number of people with Parkinson’s disease has doubled in the past 25 years, with some experts referring to this exponential surge as a “Parkinson pandemic.” Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological disorder worldwide, even surpassing Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study, which pooled health outcomes data from 195 countries. Much of the increase is because of an aging population, but the rise in incidence persists after adjusting for age-related factors. Only about 10 percent of cases can be traced to genetics, with the vast majority labeled as “sporadic” — without a known cause. Solving the mystery of why some people develop Parkinson’s and others don’t could lead to options for early detection, treatment, and hopefully one day, prevention.
Americans clicked ads to get free cash. Their health insurance changed instead. (WSJ🔒)
Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans were unknowingly signed up for government-subsidized health insurance, often lured by social-media ads falsely promising cash for daily expenses, according to insurance agents, court documents and federal officials. Insurance agents help people find plans and figure out whether they qualify for government subsidies for their premiums. Insurers pay agents commissions for each person they sign up to a plan. To grab more commissions, some agents used misleading ads to draw business and some switched customers’ plans repeatedly without their consent, according to rival agents and a civil lawsuit filed in April seeking class-action status.
Food & Drink
I tried a $1,000 trash can for two months—and I get it (WSJ🔒)
For two months I’ve been living with a new machine that takes my family’s food scraps and pulverizes them into something that looks like coffee grounds and smells like dog treats. The Mill Food Recycler has processed 74 pounds of organic waste coming from my kitchen into a 14-lb. bag of dust. We now take out less trash, and what we do haul to the curb gets ignored by the raccoons (and occasional bear) that prowl my New Jersey suburb. The $999 Mill is even stylish, designed by some of the people who made the Nest thermostat. Oh, I didn’t mention it costs a thousand dollars? For the sticker-shocked, there’s a $30-a-month rental plan with a buyout option, and Mill Industries co-founder Harry Tannenbaum says the price should eventually go down. Gadgets like the Mill offer one way to get a better handle on food waste, which is still a real problem. It’s the single largest component in landfills, making up about a quarter of all municipal waste, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration have set a goal to reduce food waste by half by 2030. That entails our being smarter about buying only food we’ll actually eat, freezing leftovers—and putting less food in the garbage. The Mill seemed like an easy, if pricey, way for me to do my part.
Nature
Fall foliage prediction map (Smoky Mountains) 📊
The 2024 Fall Foliage Map is the ultimate visual planning guide to the annual progressive changing of the leaves. While no tool can be 100% accurate, this tool is meant to help travelers better time their trips to have the best opportunity of catching peak color each year.
Travel
Railroads love ‘monster’ trains. Texans don’t. (WSJ🔒) 📊
Freight trains are getting longer—some of them 3 miles or more—and that is making life unpleasant in places like Pleasantville, Texas. The Houston neighborhood sits in the shadow of sprawling rail yards run by Union Pacific, where employees assemble trains that can pull hundreds of railcars that regularly cut off local roads for residents. Railroaders call them monster trains. Union Pacific and its rivals are making trains longer because they generate higher profits, allowing the companies to haul goods with fewer locomotives and fewer crew. There are no federal limits on train length. Federal regulators are looking into the effects of long trains and considering possible restrictions. More than a dozen states, including Texas, have introduced bills to limit train length to 1.6 miles, but states can’t enforce them because they are barred from interfering with interstate commerce. At Union Pacific, which gets the most complaints for blocked crossings, according to federal records, trains can reach around 20,000 feet, or 3.8 miles. Last quarter, its average train length was 9,544 feet, or 1.8 miles, up from 1.3 miles in 2018.
Sports
The No. 1 breaker in the world is … Raygun? (NYT🔒)
The breaker known as Raygun did terribly at the Olympics, losing all three of her head-to-head battles, each by scores of 18-0. Her unusual routines also made her an unexpected face of the Paris Games and earned her mockery worldwide. But she did receive one accolade this week. Somehow, improbably, B-girl Raygun — yes, the same Raygun who hopped like a kangaroo in her Olympic routines — is now the No. 1 ranked women’s breaker in the world. Raygun is the nom de break of Dr. Rachael Gunn, a 37-year-old professor from Australia. While other Olympic breakers spun dazzlingly on their heads and backs in this year’s Games, Raygun thrashed about on her side, reached for her toes, and hopped around in a salute to the kangaroos of her native country. Fans around the world, many being exposed to breaking competition for the first time as the sport made its Olympic debut, were baffled, amused, and in some cases outraged. Raygun’s total score of 0 points put her in last place among the 16 breakers in the main Olympic competition. So, in the latest world rankings, how could Raygun be in the No. 1 spot? After receiving a barrage of questions, the World DanceSport Federation, which oversees the sport internationally, released a statement Tuesday explaining the seeming incongruity.
For Fun
You don’t need to be a billionaire to ride in her rocket car (WSJ🔒) 📊
When my father was growing up, he used to go to Cleveland’s Euclid Beach amusement park. He had his first date there, and so did many of his friends. There was a ride with space rocket swings called the Rocket Ships. When the park closed in 1969, it was the end of an era. One day, in the 1970s, my dad was driving in Cleveland and saw one of the old rockets from that amusement park ride in the backyard of a house. He parked out front and sat there, remembering the glory days. A guy came out and said, “Hey, can I help you?” My dad asked about the rocket, and the guy said, “You want it? You can have it.” Ron Heitman’s mind was amazing. He could make a car out of anything. I have a car he built out of a bathtub. He decided to build the Rocket Car, a street-legal vehicle he could use to drive his family around. My dad mated the original rocket with a subframe from an Oldsmobile Toronado and a modified Oldsmobile “Rocket 455” engine—so it all fit together. Inspired by a school science project my brother Eric was doing, my dad used chains and gears from heavy equipment in the steering mechanism.
Have a great weekend!
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.