Scientific Fraud Has Become an Industry

For years, sleuths who study scientific fraud have been sounding the alarm about the sheer size and sophistication of the industry that churns out fake publications. Now, an extensive investigation finds evidence of a range of bad actors profiting from fraud. The study, based on an analysis of thousands of publications and their authors and editors, shows paper mills are just part of a complex, interconnected system that includes publishers, journals, and brokers.

The paper, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints an alarming picture. Northwestern University metascientist Reese Richardson and his colleagues identify networks of editors and authors colluding to publish shoddy or fraudulent papers, report that large organizations are placing batches of fake papers in journals, suggest brokers may serve as intermediaries between paper mills and intercepted journals, and find that the number of fake papers—though still relatively small—seems to be increasing at a rate far greater than the scientific literature generally.

The paper shows that misconduct “has become an industry,” says Anna Abalkina of the Free University of Berlin, who studies corruption in science and was not involved with the research. Richardson and colleagues hope their sweeping case will attract attention and spur change.

They began their analysis by pinpointing corrupt editors. They focused their investigation on PLOS ONE, because the megajournal allows easy access to bulk metadata and publishes the names of the editors who have handled the thousands of papers it publishes each year, making it possible to detect anomalies without behind-the-scenes information. The researchers identified all the papers from the journal that had been retracted or received comments on PubPeer—a website that allows researchers to critique published work—and then identified each paper’s editors.

All told, 33 editors stood out as more frequently handling work that was later retracted or criticized than would be expected by chance. “Some of these were immense outliers,” Richardson says. For instance, of the 79 papers that one editor had handled at PLOS ONE, 49 have been retracted. Flagged editors handled 1.3% of papers published in the journal by 2024, but nearly one-third of all retracted papers.

The team also spotted that these editors worked on certain authors’ papers at a suspiciously high rate. These authors were often editors at PLOS ONE themselves, and they often handled each other’s papers. It’s possible that some editors are being paid bribes, Richardson says, but “also possible that these are informal arrangements that are being made among colleagues.” The researchers detected similarly questionable editor behavior in 10 journals published by Hindawi, an open-access publisher that was shuttered because of rampant paper mill activity after Wiley acquired it. A spokesperson for Wiley told Science the publisher has made “significant investments to address research integrity issues.” (...)

Richardson and his colleagues found that the problem goes far beyond networks of unscrupulous editors and authors scratching each other’s backs. They identified what appear to be coordinated efforts to arrange the publication of batches of dubious papers in multiple journals.

The team looked at more than 2000 papers flagged on PubPeer for containing duplicated images and identified clusters of papers that all shared images. Those sets of papers were often published around the same time and in a limited selection of journals. Looking at patterns of duplicated images is an “absolutely innovative” method for investigating these networks, Abalkina says. “No one has done this before.”

In some cases, the authors suggest, a single paper mill that infiltrated multiple journals may be responsible. But they also believe some of these clusters reflect the work of “brokers” who act as go-betweens, taking papers produced by mills and placing them at compromised journals.

The team dug into the workings of the Academic Research and Development Association (ARDA), based in Chennai, India, which offers services including “thesis/article writing” as well as “journal publication” in a list of dozens of journals. On a web page listing “high impact journals” on offer, ARDA says it liaises with journals on behalf of researchers and “[ensures] they get published successfully in the High Impact Indexing Database journal of their choice.”

Over several years, ARDA’s list of journals has evolved, the team found, with new publications added to the list and others removed after being delisted by bibliometric databases because of fishy behavior. The journals often publish transparently “problematic” articles, Richardson says, and ARDA charges between $250 and $500 for publication, based on quotes offered to Richardson and his colleagues. The website asks authors to submit their own papers, suggesting ARDA itself is not a paper mill, but rather a go-between, Richardson says.

ARDA did not respond to a request for comment.

Organizations like these operate in broad daylight, under the guise of providing “editorial services,” says Lokman Meho, an information scientist at the American University of Beirut. Although their operations may be unethical—with stark consequences for science and scientists—they don’t care about trying to hide, he says, because “it is actually not illegal to run such businesses.”

The problems Richardson and his colleagues documented are growing fast. The team built a list of papers identified in 55 databases of likely paper mill products, looking at the number of suspicious papers published each year between 2016 and 2020. (They excluded the past few years of data because it takes time for fraudulent papers to be discovered and retracted.) They found that the number of suspected paper mill products doubled every 1.5 years—10 times faster than the rate of growth of the literature as a whole, although still a small proportion of papers overall. The number of retractions and papers flagged on PubPeer had also risen fast, doubling every 3.3 and 3.6 years, respectively, but not keeping pace with the increase in suspected fraudulent papers. “This means that the percentage of fraudulent science is growing,” Abalkina says. That poses particular risks to fields like medical science, where the fake papers sometimes make their way into systematic reviews and meta-analyses, potentially distorting our understanding of drugs and treatments, she says.

One contributor is the rapid growth of science, says Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, a science studies scholar at Leiden University. Paper mill products are often buried in low-impact journals and are written to get little attention, he says. In small scientific communities, it is harder to hide products like these, but as some fields get larger and more anonymous, such papers can escape detection more easily. And as the scientific workforce has burgeoned, institutions have increasingly turned to evaluating scientists based on how many publications they produce, leading some researchers to bolster their records with fake papers, he says. “Perverse incentives, inflated metrics, the ‘publish or perish’ culture, and systemic tolerance for weak scholarship” all allow paper mills to flourish, says Li Tang, an expert on Chinese research policy at Fudan University.

Young researchers may feel forced into paying for paper mill publications to compete with peers—a ratcheting effect that is already apparent, Richardson says. The number of papers published by medical residency applicants has soared in recent years, for instance, with some students claiming authorship of dozens of papers. He says it’s no coincidence that the paper mill industry targets residency applicants, especially foreign students on visas.

Docampo, Abalkina, and others say there’s little in the new paper that wasn’t already strongly suspected. But the dramatic confirmation that the study offers may shift the needle, they say. “We’re massively behind the curve on making visible and realizing the extent of the problem,” Kaltenbrunner says. “The sheer scale of it is the takeaway message here.”

by Cathleen O’Grady, Science | Read more:
Image: Davide Bonazzi/Salzmanart

Kami Maltz & Josh Turner

[ed. Don't think I've heard anyone channel Joni as well as Kami. Not an easy song. And Josh has come a long way since his earlier days. See for example: here and here.]

Arctic Beavers

Beavers are poised to invade and radically remake the Arctic.

In the summer of 2023, University of Alaska Fairbanks ecologist Ken Tape walked across the tundra on the outskirts of Nome, Alaska, to a site where a shallow stream just a few meters wide had flowed 2 years before. In its place he found an enormous pond, created by a dam made of branches bearing the distinctive marks of beaver incisors.

It was a vivid illustration of how beavers are transforming the Arctic. In Tape’s past work studying Arctic landscapes, such places changed little over decades. “It gives you a sense of timelessness,” he says. “With beavers, that couldn’t be further from the truth,” as the chunky rodents quickly replumb vast areas by building dams that can stretch hundreds of meters.

Soon, the land-altering power of beavers could be felt in a region currently beyond their reach: the farthest northern parts of the Alaskan Arctic. In a 30 July paper in Environmental Research Letters, Tape and James Speed of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology forecast that as a warming climate eases Arctic temperatures, beaver populations will march northward, sweeping across Alaska’s North Slope this century. Their arrival could bring dramatic change, the researchers say, upending ecosystems in places such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and accelerating the loss of permafrost that stores vast amounts of carbon. (...)

Tape has spent the past decade documenting this upheaval in parts of the Alaskan Arctic farther south and west, including the Seward Peninsula, where Nome is located. When he and colleagues scrutinized aerial photos of the region from the middle of the 20th century, they found no sign of the distinctive ponds beavers create to protect their mound-shaped lodges, accessible only underwater, and to cache branches for food in winter.

Today, satellite images show more than 11,000 beaver ponds dotting the Arctic tundra south of the Brooks Range, a wall of mountains running east to west that isolates the North Slope. The number there doubled from 2003 to 2017. (...)

Tape suspects warmer weather is critical because it means more unfrozen water in winter. A completely frozen pond can trap beavers in their lodges and make food caches inaccessible. Milder winters could preserve pockets of liquid water around springs or ponds. Melting permafrost also creates more groundwater-fed springs. And earlier spring thaws enable beavers to forage just as their food supplies dwindle.

“The ecological bottleneck for beavers is the end of winter,” Tape says. “Now imagine that comes 2 weeks earlier.”

Using computer models that forecast how a warming climate could expand the amount of Alaskan tundra suitable for beavers, the researchers found that the area dotted with ponds could nearly double by 2050, and more than triple by the end of the century, from 30,000 square kilometers to 99,000 square kilometers. In these scenarios, beavers would breach the Brooks Range and spread across the North Slope to the shores of the Beaufort Sea. (...)

This isn’t the first time beavers have occupied the Arctic, notes Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. There is fossil evidence of beavers in the Alaskan Arctic—though none has been found in the North Slope—dating to between 6000 and 10,000 years ago, when temperatures there were warmer and the landscape more forested. In fact, it’s thought that beavers might have evolved to build dams and cache food to adapt to one of the Arctic’s cooling phases millions of years ago. Still, Fairfax says the forecast that sensitive North Slope ecosystems “will probably be full of beavers is probably going to cause a lot of strong reactions.”

Residents of the Arctic have mixed feelings about their new neighbors. Ezra Adams, a member of the Native Village of Noatak, just south of the Brooks Range, says his father first saw a beaver there in the late 1990s, when Adams was 6 years old. Now, the animals have altered his family’s way of life. Their dams have reduced creeks where Adams once caught whitefish and salmon to a trickle. When out trapping or gathering firewood in the winter, he must beware of breaking through the ice on beaver ponds. Whereas his father once drank straight from lakes in the backcountry, Adams now brings treated water to avoid giardia in beaver feces. There are some upsides. Adams uses beaver meat to bait traps and beaver pelts for garments. “They provide a lot for our trapping,” Adams says. “But then for the general population it would be beneficial if there weren’t as many.”

Researchers, too, see both risks and benefits in beaver expansion. New ponds could become hot spots for songbirds and other wildlife. But they also hasten the thaw of permafrost, promoting the release of planetwarming carbon dioxide. A soon-to-be-published survey of 11 beaver pond systems in Arctic Alaska, for example, found that the water-covered area increased more than 600% once beavers arrived. Nearby ground thawed so much that researchers could plunge 1.2-meter-long rods used to test permafrost all the way to the tip.

Ponds could also create ample new habitat for microorganisms that convert carbon to methane, an even more potent warming gas, Griffin notes. “If we are going to start having expansion of wetlands because of beaver dams, how is that going to tip the balance between carbon and methane?” he wonders.

He might soon find out. Tape has already stumbled on one beaver pond on the northern slope of the Brooks Range. Although it disappeared a few years later, the pond showed beavers can cross the mountains. To spread even farther north, Tape notes, “they just have to swim downstream.”

by Warren Cornwall, Science |  Read more:

Image: Ken Tape

Border Patrol Wants Advanced AI to Spy on American Cities

The recent passage of Trump’s sprawling flagship legislation funnels tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security. While much of that funding will go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to bolster the administration’s arrest and deportation operations, a great deal is earmarked to purchase new technology and equipment for federal offices tasked with preventing immigrants from arriving in the first place: Customs and Border Protection, which administers the country’s border surveillance apparatus, and its subsidiary, the U.S. Border Patrol.

One page of the presentation, describing the wishlist of Border Patrol’s Law Enforcement Operations Division, says the agency needs “Advanced AI to identify and track suspicious activity in urban environment [sic],” citing the “challenges” posed by “Dense residential areas.” What’s considered “suspicious activity” is left unmentioned. (...)

The reference to AI-aided urban surveillance appears on a page dedicated to the operational needs of Border Patrol’s “Coastal AOR,” or area of responsibility, encompassing the entire southeast of the United States, from Kentucky to Florida. A page describing the “Southern AOR,” which includes all of inland Nevada and Oklahoma, similarly states the need for “Advanced intelligence to identify suspicious patterns” and “Long-range surveillance” because “city environments make it difficult to separate normal activity from suspicious activity.”

Although the Fourth Amendment provides protection against arbitrary police searches, federal law grants immigration agencies the power to conduct warrantless detentions and searches within 100 miles of the land borders with Canada, Mexico, or the coastline of the United States. This zone includes most of the largest cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, New York, as well as the entirety of Florida.

The document mentions no specific surveillance methods or “advanced AI” tools that might be used in urban environments. Across the Southwest, residents of towns like Nogales and Calexico are already subjected to monitoring from surveillance towers placed in their neighborhoods. A 2014 DHS border surveillance privacy impact assessment warned these towers “may capture information about individuals or activities that are beyond the scope of CBP’s authorities. Video cameras can capture individuals entering places or engaging in activities as they relate to their daily lives because the border includes populated areas,” for example, “video of an individual entering a doctor’s office, attending public rallies, social events or meetings, or associating with other individuals.”

Last year, the Government Accountability Office found the DHS tower surveillance program failed six out of six privacy policies designed to prevent such overreach. CBP is also already known to use “artificial intelligence” tools to ferret out “suspicious activity,” according to agency documents. A 2024 inventory of DHS AI applications includes the Rapid Tactical Operations Reconnaissance program, or RAPTOR, which “leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance border security through real-time surveillance and reconnaissance. The AI system processes data from radar, infrared sensors, and video surveillance to detect and track suspicious activities along U.S. borders.”

The document’s call for urban surveillance reflect the reality of Border Patrol, an agency empowered, despite its name, with broad legal authority to operate throughout the United States.

“Border Patrol’s escalating immigration raids and protest crackdowns show us the agency operates heavily in cities, not just remote deserts,” said Spencer Reynolds, a former attorney with the Department of Homeland Security who focused on intelligence matters. “Day by day, its activities appear less based on suspicion and more reliant on racial and ethnic profiling. References to operations in ‘dense residential areas’ are alarming in that they potentially signal planning for expanded operations or tracking in American neighborhoods.”

by Sam Biddle, The Intercept |  Read more:

Image: Jenny Kane/AP
[ed. See also, via The Intercept:]

***

~ Guess Who’s Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday it will offer student loan forgiveness and repayment options to new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits — along with a $50,000 signing bonus.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration works to limit the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for groups the president considers political enemies.

***

~ National Guard Ordered to Do ICE Paperwork at Immigration Facilities in 20 States

The Trump administration authorized the deployment of National Guard troops to immigration facilities in 20 states beginning early next month, further entwining the military in civil and law enforcement functions.

The move undermines long-standing prohibitions on the use of the armed forces in domestic operations, sidestepping the Posse Comitatus Act and accelerating the U.S. transition into a police state, experts said.

The National Guard will be deployed in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, among other states, according to a defense official who was not authorized to disclose the information. (...)

Guard members will assist ICE officials in “alien processing” – administrative work preceding detention — in 20 states while ICE leadership will “direct” troops assigned to the mission, which will begin in early August, according to a memo first revealed on Wednesday by the New York Times.

***

~ “Intense Culture of Fear”: Behind the Scenes as Trump Destroys the EPA From Within

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had taken “significant actions” to protect public health and the environment while working “to Power the Great American Comeback.” The agency said it was also working to fulfill Trump’s promises to revitalize the auto industry, “restore the rule of law,” and give decision-making power back to the states.

In practice, the agency has done the opposite, several EPA staffers told The Intercept. 

Under Zeldin’s leadership, the EPA announced a set of new core priorities that includes making the U.S. the artificial intelligence capital of the world and revitalizing the auto industry. (...)

“A lot of us are really confused about what our new mission is, when they’re coming out with these pillars of serving the auto industry and bringing back auto industry jobs,” Hagen said. “I don’t know how we fit into that.”

The EPA’s role is not to create jobs; it’s to regulate and protect people from pollution, she said.

“Our mission is not to promote AI or energy dominance,” she said. “That’s not our mission.” (...)

Last week, the agency said it is planning to dissolve the Office of Research and Development, which does life-saving research on toxicity and developing sampling protocols, and helped in emergencies after the East Palestine train derailment in Ohio and the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, more than 1,500 scientists will have to compete for 300 jobs, Hagen said.

“It’s essentially like lobotomizing our agency. If we don’t have the brain — the research behind protecting the environment — we can’t do that effectively, and I think that’s exactly what they want,” she said. “They’re doing all this under the guise of efficiency, but what they really are doing is dismantling this agency from doing its job.”

Loren Holmes, A fisherman picks salmon from his setnet at Pederson Point near Naknek, Alaska. (ADN)
via:

Elle and Toni

[ed. Repost. Hoping to learn some of Toni's excellent guitar fills today. Song was likely recorded at JBG studios, here:]

Sermon on the 'Mount'

“South Park” Skewers a Satire-Proof President

There’s a legal strategy known as the small-penis rule, wherein an author who writes a character based on a real person can potentially evade a libel suit by giving said character a small penis—the logic being that, in order to sue, a plaintiff would have to tacitly admit that the description of his manhood is accurate. This rule technically does not apply to the latest episode of “South Park,” in which the series’ creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, make absolutely no effort to anonymize President Donald Trump, but one wonders if the logic of embarrassment still holds. Trump is portrayed as a deeply insecure leader who literally gets into bed with Satan, his apparent lover. (“I’m not in the mood right now,” the Devil tells him. “Another random bitch commented on my Instagram that you’re on the Epstein list.”) Most notably, the Trump of “South Park” is endowed with a penis so small that Satan says he “can’t even see anything.” If the actual Trump were to retaliate, as he so often does, he’d be playing directly into Parker and Stone’s hands.

“South Park,” amazingly, is in its twenty-seventh season. It’s the second-longest-running animated show on U.S. television, behind “The Simpsons,” and easily the most offensive. Since its première, in 1997, the cartoon—which follows a group of profane elementary schoolers in the town of South Park, Colorado—has managed to piss off nearly every political group, pop-culture fandom, and religious denomination... To the extent that the show has any “beliefs,” it’s that all beliefs are asinine, whether they’re held by the left or the right. Environmental groups criticized the series, in 2006, for portraying Al Gore as a delusional figure obsessed with an imagined monster named ManBearPig. The show was banned in China, in 2019, for mocking Chinese censorship, and the creators famously received death threats after depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Although “South Park” has declined both in quality and in popularity over the years, it’s still valuable enough that Paramount recently paid $1.5 billion for exclusive streaming rights to the series, and for Parker and Stone to make another fifty episodes. The studio has long been in the process of merging with Skydance Media—a deal that was in a holding pattern for about a year, until Paramount agreed to pay sixteen million dollars to settle a lawsuit that Trump filed against its subsidiary CBS’s “60 Minutes.” A few days before the F.C.C. finally approved the merger, Stephen Colbert, the host of “The Late Show,” on CBS, called the settlement a “big fat bribe”—and then his show was cancelled, ostensibly for financial reasons. All of these are crucial plot points in the latest “South Park” episode, “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” which is now available on Paramount+.

The town of South Park has its fair share of Trump supporters, albeit increasingly disillusioned ones. (“I voted for him to get rid of all the woke stuff,” one man says, “but now that retarded faggot is just putting money in his own pockets.”) Some parents are especially upset when religion is introduced at the local elementary school—in the form of Jesus Christ himself physically showing up and milling around. When the parents call the President to complain, he says that he’s going to sue the town for five billion dollars, setting up an extended riff on Trump’s status as a serial litigant. (Throughout the episode, he also threatens to sue people who make reference to his unfortunate penis.) But Parker and Stone’s true focus is media cowardice, which becomes clear when a fictionalized “60 Minutes” runs a segment on the showdown between Trump and the town of South Park.

The anchors are visibly anxious. “Oh, shit,” one says, as the news broadcast begins. “The small town of South Park, Colorado, is protesting against the President. The townspeople claim that the President—who, who is a great man, great guy, we know is probably watching—and, uh, we’re just reporting on this town in Colorado that’s being sued by the President.”

His co-anchor cuts in: “To be clear, we don’t agree with them.”

“We think these protesters are total retards,” the first anchor adds.

The demonstration is interrupted by Jesus, who flies onto the scene, Superman-style. He hands everyone bread. “Just eat the bread, and listen,” he says, and so begins his Sermon on the ’Mount: “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to, because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount.” He explains that Trump “can do whatever he wants now that someone has backed down,” adding, “Do you really wanna end up like Colbert?” He tells the people that they need to shut up, or else “South Park is over.”

Donald Trump poses a real conundrum for comedians. He’s an endless wellspring of material, but what he says and does is inevitably more absurd—and often more compelling—than any satire could be. Parker and Stone realized this early on. They initially dealt with Trump by having one of the show’s recurring characters, a former schoolteacher named Mr. Garrison, act as a surrogate; he ascends to the Presidency by promising to build a wall, and gradually turns orange. But the showrunners quickly found that, as Parker put it, “what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with.” So they pivoted to the other defining issues of our time: Kanye West’s antisemitism, ChatGPT, the COVID-19 pandemic (in this case, caused by a character’s decision to have sex with a bat in China).

The Paramount drama has prompted “South Park” to go after Trump more directly than ever before, but the gags, which all too often come back to his anatomy, or his penchant for memes, aren’t exactly revelatory. The sharpest joke is a meta one: the last time we saw Satan in bed with someone was in the 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” which depicted an abusive relationship between Satan and Saddam Hussein. (Hussein was the abuser.) Rather than concoct a new playbook for Trump, Parker and Stone have returned to an old one.

Trump’s existential threat to comedy has another dimension, one that intensified after his reëlection, as figures like Shane Gillis and Tim Dillion gained mainstream appeal: it’s hard to make boundary-pushing statements when there are no longer any boundaries. This problem is especially pressing for Parker and Stone, and they confront it via the angst of South Park’s resident provocateur, Eric Cartman.

The episode opens with Cartman turning on a radio station, where he’s met with the sound of static. “Mom, something’s wrong with my favorite show,” he complains. “National Public Radio, where all the liberals bitch and whine about stuff.” His mother informs him that Trump has cancelled NPR. Cartman is devastated: “That was, like, the funniest shit ever.”

Later, Cartman confides in his friend Butters, who’s more of a snowflake type. “Woke is dead,” Cartman says, sadly. “You can just say ‘retarded’ now, nobody cares. Everyone hates the Jews. Everyone’s fine with using gay slurs.”

“That’s not good,” Butters replies.

“No, it’s terrible!” Cartman says. “ ’Cause now I don’t know . . . what I’m supposed to do.”

At first, it didn’t seem like “South Park” had an answer to this question; Cartman, unconvinced by Butters’s assurances that “woke” is “still out there, somewhere,” forces him into a suicide pact. The two of them sit inside a car, parked in a garage, with the engine running. The scene is foreboding—until it’s revealed that the car is electric. [ed. Lol!]

The townspeople, meanwhile, negotiate a settlement with the President, who agrees to a sum of $3.5 million. (“We’ll just have to cut some funding for our schools and hospitals and roads and that should be that,” one woman says.) But there’s one condition: as part of the settlement, the town also has to engage in “pro-Trump messaging”—an apparent reference to recent reports that Trump has demanded the same from CBS. What follows is genuine shock comedy, and a treatment of Trump that feels original. The town’s first P.S.A. is an A.I.-generated video of Trump—a live-action one, not a cartoon—trudging through a desert. He proceeds to take off his clothes, though he leaves his dress shoes and sock garters on. “When things heat up, who will deliver us from temptation?” a voice-over says. “No matter how hot it gets, he’s not afraid to fight for America.” Trump lies down in the sand, and his micropenis, which has googly eyes and a mouth, slowly becomes erect, before announcing, “I’m Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message.” The P.S.A. is labelled one of fifty, leaving open the possibility that, in the course of the forty-nine “South Park” episodes still to come, we’ll get forty-nine more.

Is this too much? Probably. Yet there’s an age-old tradition of political vulgarity, of which Trump himself is a practitioner—it’s the crux of his appeal.

by Tyler Foggatt, New Yorker | Read more:
Image:South Park Studios/YouTube

[ed. Classic.]

Let Them Eat Golf Balls

President Trump is using $10 million of our taxes to market his new golf course in Scotland.

The president traveled to Scotland on Friday for the grand opening of an 18-hole golf course in Aberdeen. He’s expected to stay for four days. His appearance will likely generate positive revenue and publicity for the course—money that will flow right back into the pockets of the Trump Organization.

HuffPost has estimated that the trip will likely cost at least $9.7 million dollars due to Air Force One operations, motorcades and helicopters, Secret Service overtime, and more. Trump has framed the international vacation as a “working trip,” and has instead emphasized his plan to meet in Aberdeen with U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer. But Aberdeen is not the capital of the United Kingdom, or even the capital of Scotland, making it clear this meeting was just randomly added in to use as an excuse for the golf course.

Trump has grown more and more comfortable completely blurring the lines of his private businesses and his public office. This trip will make his second-term golf tab at least $52 million in just six months, according to HuffPost. His first term was $152 million over four years.

by Malcolm Ferguson, Yahoo News | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Remember when indignant wingnuts used to turn ten shades of purple whenever Obama went golfing? Must have taken up the sport. See also: this and this. Bonus: Did Trump Cheat at Golf? See the Video For Yourself. (Yahoo News). Of course he did.]

*** Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office (updated): $68,600,000 - 49 out of 196 days (25.0% of the presidency spent golfing). [ed. ... and counting.]

 (via)

Trump Meets With Powell at Federal Reserve

... leading to one of the most surreal political moments in recent memory

[ed. Trump tries to jack up Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over supposed cost overuns with fed building rennovations - a clumsy attempt to intimidate over interest rate policy. Normally the theatrical possibilities of something like this would seem about zero. But no! Here we have two of the most powerful people in the world, hard hats precariously balanced on heads, standing in suits in a basement somewhere (presumably the fed's but who knows), arguing over details of a construction contract. Like they say, you can't make this stuff up.]

From Babylon to Wall Street – How Bankers Make You Poor

Michael Hudson has been expanding his historical window, from the ancient history of abolition of debt jubilees, which had prevented the rise of oligarchs, to the increased power over times of creditors, or in lay parlance, bankers. He’s added in the re-establishment of the influence of lenders in medieval times, thanks to the role of the Catholic Church in the Crusades and the accompanying rise of banking to provide war finance. This interview with Jonathan Brown reviews this trajectory, focusing on the way that debt burdens rise over time and amount to destructive rentierism.

Jonathan: You’ve often spoken about your aha [00:01:00] moments when delving into ancient economic history. I just wonder what have been some of your profound or unexpected discoveries about studying ancient civilizations like Sumer or Babylonia?

Michael Hudson: My, entire life, ever since I became an economist in, the 1960s was to realize that debt was the major problem that was going to be growing exponentially and stifling society. And it was clear that debt grew at compound interest faster than the economy was able to grow and pay the debts.

I spent, quite a few, decades warning about the fact that the global south could not pay the Dollarized debts, as indeed it didn’t in the 1970s. There was such a reaction to what I was saying, such a refusal by the economics profession to look at debt as being important, that I decided [00:02:00] to look at the whole history of how different societies had coped with debts.

And I began to write a history of debt, after I left the United Nations in 1979 after warning that there was going to be a, third world, Latin American debt crash in a few years, as indeed there was in 1982. I got all the way back to Greece and Rome, and then into the biblical, and came across the jubilee year. (...)

So I began to write up my ideas, shared them with a friend of mine, Alex Marshak, a professor at Harvard. He introduced me to the head of Harvard’s anthropology and archeology department. I was made a research fellow at the Peabody Museum by Carl Lambert Klowski. I realized that there was this wealth of Babylonian, Sumerian, and near [00:04:00] Eastern, academic records that economists had completely ignored.

And the reasons that our economists ignored it was that the way that society created its economic relationships were completely different from those that they ended up with after Greece and Rome. And so I realized that I can’t simply write this all up myself because I’m an economist, not an Assyriaologist.

So at Harvard we decided to organize a group of scholars who were specialists in Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Judaic and other Middle Eastern records and we decided to do three volumes.

by Jonathan Brown and Michael Hudson, Naked Capitalism |  Read more:

Image: via
[ed.  See also: The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It’s an Ominous Sign for the Economy (NYT). Thinkng of commissioning some new t-shirts: Cognitive Dissonance is Killing Me ©]

***

"For decades, earning a Ph.D. in economics has been a nearly foolproof path to a lucrative career. Even as bearers of advanced degrees in history, English or anthropology struggled to find gainful employment, the popularity of economics as an undergraduate major created plenty of tenure-track teaching positions, while government agencies snatched up Ph.D. economists in bulk. Those looking for even larger paychecks could turn to tech companies, Wall Street and consulting firms, which bid up the price of economists as if they were a bespoke cryptocurrency.

Last year, the average base salary for newly hired economics professors at major research universities was more than $150,000, according to the American Economic Association, and their compensation swelled to about $200,000 once bonuses and summer pay were included. As recently as the 2023-24 academic year, the employment rate for Ph.D. economists within a few months of graduation was 100 percent, said John Cawley, the chair of the association’s Committee on the Job Market, citing the group’s surveys. Job satisfaction topped 85 percent.

Those glory days seem to be ending. Universities and nonprofits have scaled back hiring amid declining state budgets and federal funding cuts. At the same time, the Trump administration has laid off government economists and frozen hiring for new ones. (...)

Tech companies also have grown stingier, and their need for high-level economists — once seemingly insatiable — has waned. Other firms have slowed hiring in response to the economic uncertainty introduced by President Trump’s tariffs and the possibility that artificial intelligence will replace their workers, even if those workers have a doctoral degree.

“The advent of A.I. is also impacting the market for high-skilled labor,” said Betsey Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan, in an email. “So the whole thing is kind of a mess.”

Of course, if it were only some egghead economists scrambling to find work, that might be not be terribly consequential. But the same forces bedeviling economists are crimping employment for other highly trained scientists and social scientists, as well as for many recent college graduates, whose jobless rate has been unusually high for an otherwise strong economy.

The drop in government payrolls and federal funding for universities and nonprofits alone is a major problem, since they support two to three times as many jobs for college graduates as for those without degrees. In some cases, workers with Ph.D.s are displacing others with master’s or bachelor’s degrees.

Then there is the potential impact on the country’s future. Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist who is president of the National Academy of Sciences, said a sharp drop in the number of research jobs in the hard sciences and social sciences would send Ph.D.s abroad. Their flight will deprive the government of the brainpower it needs to perform basic functions and leave U.S. firms less innovative and competitive.

“U.S. industry is incredibly dependent on the training that is done in colleges and universities,” Dr. McNutt said. “When the top people go elsewhere, we’ll be left with the B team in America.”

~ The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It’s an Ominous Sign for the Economy. Norm Scheiber

Silence on SNAP

Poverty and hunger will rise as a result of the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to the US federal “food stamps” program, according to experts. Low-income workers who rely on the aid are braced for dire consequences.

Katie Giede, a single mother and waitress in Conyers, Georgia, is one of the 42 million Americans who use the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap). Even with the maximum benefit permitted, she struggles to afford food for her and her child.

She makes $3 an hour plus tips at the fast-food chain Waffle House, where she has worked for 11 years. The company deducts meals from workers’ pay check per shift, regardless of whether they eat one or not.

“Our pay is already so little that we’re struggling with everything,” Giede told the Guardian. “Single mothers like myself are reliant upon the benefits like Snap and Medicaid. So when you go and you cut that as well, now you have mothers out here that are not only worried at night because they already can’t afford housing or a vehicle, but we’re also worried what is our kid is going to eat? Because we no longer have help.”

Giede said she received $450 a month for her and her child. She said working too many hours or receiving too much income was a constant concern, due to eligibility cut-offs.

According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, at the end of 2024, even the maximum Snap benefit would not cover the cost of a modestly priced meal in 99% of all counties in the US.

“I dread that trip to the grocery store every week, because you have to sit down and you really have to budget,” said Giede. “Every time you go, you’re having to make the choice between something that’s healthy or something that’s cheaper, just so you can get enough to last all week.

“There are so many people in this country that rely on these benefits, and with these cuts, half of the people that are surviving right now off of this are going to lose their benefits. That’s not even just people not eating a little bit. They’re already not eating enough, so we’re going to lose lives over this. It’s those of us at the bottom that are really feeling it.”

Waffle House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” set the stage for significant cuts to Snap by shifting higher administrative costs to each state, expanding work reporting requirements and imposing restrictions on non-citizen eligibility.

Many lower-wage workers have grown more reliant on Snap in recent years. US food prices rose by 23.6% between 2020 and 2024, according to official data. While inflation has since moderated, grocery costs remain high.

As a result of the latest Snap changes, states will be responsible for 75% of administrative costs of handling the program from 2027, up from 50% cost-sharing with the federal government, which is likely to strain state budgets.

From 2028, for the first time states will be forced to pick up some of the multibillion-dollar bill for Snap benefits. The state of New York, for example, faces a budget impact of about $1.2bn, according to the Food Research and Action Center (Frac), a non-profit advocacy group.

While such shifting costs have raised fears that states will cut back Snap support, expanded work requirements have sparked concern that few people will be eligible. Analysis by the Urban Institute found about 22.3 million US families are set to lose some or all of their Snap benefits.

“This is a very targeted, well-thought-out plan of dismantling the Snap program that federal policy makers won’t take responsibility for, because it is the states, it is the governors who will have to cut resources for Snap, who will have to cut the program in order to say we can’t operate this because of what’s happening at the federal level,” said Gina Plata-Nino, Snap deputy director at the Frac.

“Snap is a very important ecosystem at the local level, at the state level and the federal level, because billions of dollars go into states, and this federal money supports local economies,” she added. “All of these proposals threaten this very delicate balance.”

The White House deferred comment to the office of management and budget, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

States across the US are braced for stark consequences. “We’re going to have worse hunger and ultimately, worse poverty,” said Seth DiStefano, policy outreach director at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “There are entire regions of West Virginia where there aren’t 20 hours a week [expanded Snap work requirement] of anything to apply for. What do you tell those families?

“We’re talking families with kids now that are going to be subjected to these harsh work reporting requirements. We’re talking folks in their 60s, literally in communities where there are no jobs, none, and ripping away the one outlet to their basic needs that’s available to them.”

Among the employers with the most workers reliant on Snap is Walmart, the largest private employer in the US, as much of its workforce receives only part-time hours.

Christina Gahagan, 66, has worked at Walmart for a decade in western New York at several stores. She is currently based at a store in Geneseo, New York.

“I would say at least 50% of the people in my store rely on food stamps to make ends meet for their families,” said Gahagan. “They’re always trying to figure out where the best deals are, coupon clipping at lunch and reading circulars to see who’s got the best deal on whatever, just to make their money stretch.” (...)

“Walmart is the largest employer in the US. We rival Amazon almost dollar for dollar in what we do. You would think a company like that could shell out a little bit more money per hour for associates in the store across the board, so that there aren’t people who are having to depend so heavily on public assistance.”

Walmart did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

by Michael Sainato, The Guardian | Read more:
Image:Richard Levine/Alamy
[ed. No one wants to comment on a new bureaucracy to process and administer oversight requirements? Jobs! Remember who did this the next time you vote.]

via:

[ed. absolutely..]

Brigitte Yoshiko Pruchnow, Greek Salad, 2024
via:

Design Your Own Rug!

For my wedding anniversary, I designed and had hand-woven in Afghanistan a rug for my microbiologist wife. The rug mixes traditional Afghanistan designs with some scientific elements including Bunsen burners, test tubes, bacterial petri dishes and other elements.

I started with several AI designs, such as that shown below, to give the weavers an idea of what I was looking for. Some of the AI elements were muddled and very complex and so we developed a blueprint over a few iterations. The blueprint was very accurate to the actual rug.

I am very pleased with the final product. The wool is of high quality, deep and luxurious, and the design is exactly what I intended. My wife loves the rug and will hang it at her office. The price was very reasonable, under $1000. I also like that I employed weavers in a small village in Northern Afghanistan. The whole process took about 6 months.

You can develop your own custom rug from Afghanu Rugs. Tell them Alex sent you. Of course, they also have many beautiful traditional designs. You can even order my design should you so desire!

by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution | Read more:
Images: the author

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future

I didn’t write a letter last year. Rather, I wrote seven, all of which is new material.

They make up my book BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. It’s driven by a few simple ideas. That Americans and Chinese are fundamentally alike: restless, eager for shortcuts, ultimately driving most of the world’s big changes. That their rivalry should not be reasoned through with worn-out terms from the past century like socialist, democratic, or neoliberal. And that both countries are tangles of imperfection, regularly delivering — in the name of competition — self-beatings that go beyond the wildest dreams of the other.

The simplest idea I present is that China is an engineering state, which brings a sledgehammer to problems both physical and social, in contrast with America’s lawyerly society, which brings a gavel to block almost everything, good and bad.

Breakneck begins with a bike ride I took from Guiyang to Chongqing in 2021. China’s fourth-poorest province, I was delighted to find, has much better infrastructure than California or New York, both wealthier by orders of magnitude. Five days of grueling climbs on stunning green mountains gave me glimpses of what socialism with Chinese characteristics really looks like. But there is more to the engineering state than tall bridges. The heart of the book concerns how badly Beijing goes off track when it engages in social engineering. My handy formulation of the Communist Party is that it is a Leninist Technocracy with Grand Opera Characteristics — practical until it collapses into the preposterous.

The idea of the lawyerly society became obvious when I returned to the U.S. in 2023. The Paul Tsai China Center (as I say in my acknowledgments) was the best possible place to write this book, not only because it’s so supportive, but also because it set me inside the Yale Law School. Elite law schools, now and in the past, fashion the easiest path for the ambitions to step into the top ranks of the American government. The dominance of lawyers in the American elite has helped transmute the United States into a litigious vetocracy. I believe that America cannot remain a great power if it is so committed to a system that works well mostly for the wealthy and well-connected.

The engineering state versus the lawyerly society is not a grand theory to explain absolutely everything about the U.S. and China. Rather, the book is rooted in my own experiences of living in China from 2017 to 2023. I offer this framework to make sense of the recent past and think about what might come next.

It helps to explain a number of things. For example, the trade war and the tech showdown. The U.S. has relied on legalisms — levying tariffs and designing an ever more exquisite sanctions regime — while China has focused on creating the future by physically building better cars, more beautiful cities, and bigger power plants. Though China has constructed roads and bridges abroad, it struggles to inspire global cultural appeal, because engineers aren’t smooth talkers and tend to censor whatever they can’t understand. The Chinese state is sometimes too rational, proceeding down a path that feels perfectly logical, until the country’s largest city is suddenly in a state of lockdown for months.

Breakneck will be published on August 26. I hope you’ll order this book. You can also send me an email if you would like a review copy for your publication or Substack, or to book me for speaking.

***

It’s a bit boring to write only a book announcement. This is also a space for me to reflect on the bookwriting process.

The hard part of bookwriting is the beginning, the middle, and the end. Each stage demands unrelated skills. The opening phases involve engaging an agent, beating ideas into the shape of a proposal (which typically stretch over 50 pages), and approaching a publisher. The long middle is the writing. The end is the mishmash of tasks related to revision, production, and promotion. Fortunately I had a superb agent and a faithful editor to navigate the first and third stages. Overall the process was more fun than I expected, such that I now actively encourage friends to pursue their own book ideas.

Writing is necessarily a solitary task. My usual process is to putter around until late evening, until I finally cannot bear to avoid the page any longer, at which point I spend a lot of time picking out appropriate music, and finally get to the task. I knew that could no longer be a sane approach for a lengthier writing project (not that it ever was). Every day I repeated my mantra to be a cool, calm, collected Canadian, through which I achieved a modest degree of discipline. I met my deadline.

I became a better writer over the course of the book. Breakneck, as I said, is seven annual letters. I thought I understood this format, but I still saw myself improving, such that the final chapter was much easier to write than the first. I felt my prose loosening and my confidence rising as I moved from chapter to chapter. Bookwriting is a bit like climbing a mountain: best not to look up too much at the beginning and feel daunted by the task ahead. When I had completed two-thirds of the book, I started feeling elated about how much I’ve written, which propelled me towards the end.

Writing is thinking. As I worked on my final chapter, I found myself reflecting on my Yunnan heritage. Yunnan is, in my estimation, China’s freest province: far away amid southwestern mountains, it has mostly escaped sustained attention from the imperial center, which would be attracted to greater wealth or restive minority issues. My parents both have deep Yunnan roots. They would have been in China’s middle class, only the concept did not really exist when they emigrated to Canada when I was seven. I’m glad to have had an upbringing in this economic backwater, which is undeveloped in part because it’s inflected by a bit of the suspicion of the state that is common to mountain peoples everywhere. Growing up in the periphery endowed me with greater skepticism of the state glories that Beijing chooses to celebrate and greater reluctance to participate in the competitive culture common in Shanghai or Shenzhen.

I wrote this book partly to sort out my own thoughts about China. It really was staggering to write about how many miles of roadways, how many new nuclear power plants, how much steel China has produced over the past four decades. China is a good operating model of abundance. I state clearly in the book that America doesn’t have to become China to build infrastructure; it would be sufficient to reach the construction cost levels of France, Japan, or Spain. Still, the U.S. should still study some aspects of China’s method: how do they build it? What are the tradeoffs? How do we learn? China has gotten a lot of things right with mass transit, plentiful housing, and functional cities.

The problem is that China’s leadership just can’t stop at physical engineering. Sooner or later, they treat the population as if it were another building material, to be moulded or torn apart as the circumstances demand. That’s why America shouldn’t look to China as the model. My favorite chapter concerned the one-child policy. I had been completely unprepared to study the brutality of its enforcement, which was only possible through mass sterilizations and forced abortions. At its peak in the 1980s, the one-child policy morphed into a campaign of rural terror meted out against female bodies, namely the mother and the cruelly discarded daughter.

Nearly all the letters are focused on China. The final one is about the United States. I concluded my book by writing about what my parents gained and lost with their emigration. They lost the chance to build wealth as part of China’s luckiest generation: urban residents born after 1960 who were able to acquire property or build businesses after the 2000s. But they would not trade that for their gain of living in the suburbs of Philly, which I find boring, but their friends find enviable. I also reflected on America’s own legacy as an engineering state, focused on two engineers: Robert Moses and Hyman Rickover. Too many parts of America feel like the well-preserved ruins of a once-great civilization. Americans should take a clearer look at the industrial achievements that are usually ignored and frequently scorned. (...)

I cooked a lot of fish as I wrote, in the Cantonese style: steaming a whole bronzino or a filet of sea trout for ten minutes, then drizzled with ginger, spring onion, soy sauce, and sizzling olive oil. My wife and I also planned a few writing retreats, in which we would park ourselves in new places to focus on food, exercise, and writing. After six years of intensively eating Chinese cuisines, I was also pleased to move into new culinary worlds. (...)

When I last visited Shanghai, at the end of 2024, I was surprised to feel that the average person might be eating worse than before. The trend of consumption downgrading has been real. Smart restaurants are no longer difficult to book. Sichuan and Hunan restaurants are taking over. A lot of the restaurant foods are prepared in centralized commissaries. Many more places focus more on deliveries than the sit-down experience. And there seems to be a trend of chain restaurants from third-tier cities moving to first-tier cities, offering slightly worse food at much cheaper prices.

The worst part is the influencer culture. China’s influencer culture is much more intense than America’s. It’s easy to see, in public spaces, how many people are glued to their phones. Anywhere charming, whether a café or a mountaintop, is full of people intently taking photos. It’s common to see Chinese couples or groups of friends barely interacting with each other over a meal, leaning over their phones. I remember having coffee once at the Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai, where a group of girls sat near me photographing each other over cakes for over an hour. Influencer culture has pushed restaurants to make dishes better photographed than tasted.

It doesn’t mean that China will fall behind America in food. No way. China retains a commanding lead, and it has so much vitality in smaller cities and the countryside. But I wonder whether China will maintain its culinary peaks, or if they will be corroded by consumer-driven homogenization and the priority of convenience over tastiness. On present trendlines, America is learning to get better, while China is slightly worse.

by Dan Wang |  Read more:

Image: Breakneck

[ed. I've been a fan of Dan's annual China summaries since discovering them back in 2021 (see here, here and here). When 2025 rolled around and none appeared I wrote and asked if he was still planning something. That's when he told me about this book. Definitely plan to get it when it's released.]

27 Notes On Growing Old(er)

1.) Will Storr, author and fellow Substacker, recently wrote about his “midlife identity crisis”. I was struck, while reading it, at how rare it is for people - men in particular - to admit that growing older can be tough. In the second half of life, we’re all expected to say how much happier we are than in our insecure twenties, how we wouldn’t swap places with our younger self, oh no, not even if you paid us. Hmm. Sometimes I feel that way, but not always. Some days, ageing feels like a curse, only lightly mitigated by the knowledge that the curse is universal.

2.) Let me summarise the science of how ageing affects physical and mental capability: all the lines on the graph point down. We can slow this multi-dimensional descent but not stop it. The miracle is that most of us are not driven mad by this knowledge. We ought to congratulate ourselves on the depth of our resilience, on our heroic fortitude in the face of adversity - while quietly acknowledging that we rely on a modicum of self-deception to get by.

3.) The American poet George Oppen said my favourite thing about growing old: “What a strange thing to happen to a little boy.” I love how this evokes the subjectivity of a bewildered child trapped inside an aged body; a boy staring at his wizened hands and wondering what on earth is going on.

4.) One of the weirdest things about the midlife ageing process, as those of you who have passed 40 will know, is that it is discontinuous. It doesn’t happen at a gradual and consistent rate, allowing you time to adjust. After lulling you into a false sense of security, it rushes forward, catching you unawares. It’s like finding yourself dropped into a different world. You may ask yourself, how did I get here?

5.) The physicist Michael Nielsen tells us that the Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam perceived his life as sharply divided into two halves: “In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group. In the second half, he was always the oldest. There was no transitional period.” There was no transitional period.

6.) I think people who had a lot of success early in their careers (not an affliction from which I suffered) feel this more acutely than most. When you’re always the youngest guy in the room, it’s natural to build a whole identity around your precocity. Then suddenly - and it is sudden - you’re not the youngest anymore. You’re one of those anonymous older guys. So now who the hell even are you?

7.) In your twenties, you say “about three years ago” of memories you can only hazily locate on the timeline. Then at some point you suddenly hear yourself say “ about twenty years ago”. And you hear yourself saying it again and again. About things that feel like three years ago.

8.) The short story I think about most is The Swimmer, by John Cheever (later a film). It’s a golden Sunday afternoon in upstate New York in the 1960s. The well-to-do residents of Westchester are out in their gardens sipping cocktails. Neddy, a fit man in early middle age, decides to swim home from the party he’s at by way of his neighbours’ pools, just for a laugh. As he progresses from one pool to another, being made drinks as he goes, the weather and the mood start to get colder and darker. He finds himself being treated with inexplicable hostility and pity by once-friendly neighbours. Bewildered, he finally arrives at his own house, only to find it empty and abandoned. We sense that in the time it took Neddy to swim through a few pools in a mildly drunken haze, whole years, even decades, have passed. We also sense that Neddy is ruined in some way - that he has ruined himself. I’m not ruined, not yet, but Neddy’s bewilderment speaks to me. I only set off a few minutes ago. The sun was still high in the sky.

9.) One reason that the experience of growing old can feel jagged and abrupt is that there is a disconnect between how old we feel and how old we are. You often hear people say “inside I still feel young”. It’s tempting to dismiss that as meaningless happy talk but actually it’s often true, and it’s one of the strangest things about growing older. Neuroscientists use the term “proprioception” to describe a person’s intuitive sense of their own body in space - the position of their arms, the movement of their legs. If it deteriorates, you can’t control your actions without conscious effort. I think there’s a kind of proprioception for age, which for some mysterious evolutionary reason gets switched off around age 40. When you’re 18, you feel 18, when you’re 35 you feel 35, and when you’re 53 you feel…35. You’re constantly having to arbitrate between your felt age and your real age, reminding yourself that you’re not actually that person anymore, making a special effort to act appropriately (maybe you shouldn’t actually go skiing, or drink six pints, certainly not both). If you’re a young person, and you’re talking to an older person, it’s as well to remember that they may well believe, at some level, that they’re the same age as you. Many such conversations are asymmetrical: the young person always aware of the age gap, the older person not so much. [ed. this is kind of interesting]

10.) There hasn’t been enough scientific investigation of ‘felt age’ but there is some. This study finds that people over the age of 70 have, on average, a 13 year gap between their felt age and their real age. So a 73-year-old typically feels about 60. But the study also finds that this gap closes with age, as your body insists, ever-more loudly, on the harsh truth. I should imagine there is a lot of variation here. On announcing his retirement from Berkshire Hathaway, at the age of 94, Warren Buffett told an interviewer he had never felt old until he passed 90. Then, all of a sudden, he did.

11.) Wisdom is meant to be the great compensation for growing older. Though your your knees sound like they’re unlocking a safe when you bend down, and you can’t straighten up without an “oof”, you can at least revel in the depth of your insights into the human condition. Well, yes and no. It is true that we accumulate knowledge (and if we try really hard, more of it than we forget). It’s true that we get a feel for the repeated patterns that constitute so much of human experience, and a clearer sight of the possible mistakes arrayed before us at any point in time (whether or not we make them anyway being another question). But there are countering forces too. The world changes faster than we’re ready for, which borks our pattern-detecting software. We’re endlessly self-deluding; we smooth the random accidents of life into stories that put us in control of our own destiny (this is what The Road Not Taken is really about). We’re also lazier, more set in our ways, more dogmatic, less prone to question our assumptions. If we’re not careful, our ‘wisdom’ makes us stupid. Most cognitive decline is self-inflicted.

12.) In a quasi-scientific study of “wisdom at the end of life”, researchers interviewed people who knew they were dying, mostly old people. These interviews elicited such crystalline insights as, “I think you would have more wisdom if you have empathy and compassion.” Right. “Wisdom means seeing life on life’s terms.” Deep.

13.) People who know they’re approaching the last stop aren’t wiser than the rest of us, they’re just even more self-deluded than we are. I recently listened to an interview with the entrepreneur/self-help guru Alex Hormozi. I liked what he said about those “deathbed regrets” which get spun into cute homilies - I wish I’d stopped to smell the roses, I wish I’d seen more of my children, and so on: “The human condition is that we want it all, and we're not willing to make trades…‘deathbed regrets’ typically have the bias of wanting the other path - the path they could have taken - without considering the cost of that path. So they say "Hey I was really successful and I did all these things, but you know, I would give it all up today to have my family.’ It's like, well yeah, but you didn't, because you actually chose the path that you're on, and you weren't willing to do that. What you are saying right now is that you want it all. Sure. So does everyone.”

14.) Age is just a number, so they say, but numbers are pretty important. This one gives you a rough idea of where you are on the journey between birth and death. You might want to make a note of it is all I’m saying.

15.) Should you act your age? Yes if it means making elegant and creative adaptations to it. No, if it means performing it: striving too hard to convey authority, or worse, behaving like somebody who has given up on life. (...)

16.) There’s an interview with Mick Jagger from when he was 58, in which he’s way more patient than he might have been, while a Dutch interviewer suggests he’s too old to be a rock singer. Jagger is 81 now and still selling out stadiums. Jagger, McCartney and others from their generation have endured decades of being sneered at for not “acting their age”. Few people do that anymore. By stubbornly persisting, they’ve changed our ideas of what that phrase means.

17.) Jagger and McCartney hardly ever engage in age-based self-deprecation. They tend not to make those slightly nervous “I’m just an old geezer” jokes, of the kind that the rest of us start making from the moment we pass 30. I think that might have something to do with the almost ridiculously good time they’re having in their eighties. They play the double game to perfection: simultaneously aware of age and oblivious to it.

18.) There is comedy to savour in it, too, albeit comedy with that British sitcom feeling of being trapped in a losing game, laughter the consolation prize.

19.) What a strange thing to happen to a little boy or girl! Rembrandt’s late self-portraits capture so much about how it feels. That look on his face: pissed-off, amused, baffled, defiant. Here’s my face. Not pretty is it? But it’s the only one I’ve got.

by Ian  Leslie, Ruffian |  Read more:

Image: Rembrandt, various stages of life. The Collector.

[ed. Some good points but also 1.) feeling like anyone giving aging advice who's younger than you probably hasn't experienced the whole story yet (up to and including dying); 2.) living every day knowing a bomb could go off at any time, and likely will...eventually; 3.) dealing with the accumulated loss of loved ones and the shared histories that make up life - who we are, what it all meant, and inexorably drifting further out, away from everything that used to define us.] 

‘Quishing’ Scams Dupe Millions

QR codes were once a quirky novelty that prompted a fun scan with the phone. Early on, you might have seen a QR code on a museum exhibit and scanned it to learn more about the eating habits of the woolly mammoth or military strategies of Genghis Khan. During the pandemic, QR codes became the default restaurant menu. However, as QR codes became a mainstay in more urgent aspects of American life, from boarding passes to parking payments, hackers have exploited their ubiquity.

“As with many technological advances that start with good intentions, QR codes have increasingly become targets for malicious use. Because they are everywhere — from gas pumps and yard signs to television commercials — they’re simultaneously useful and dangerous,” said Dustin Brewer, senior director of proactive cybersecurity services at BlueVoyant.

Brewer says that attackers exploit these seemingly harmless symbols to trick people into visiting malicious websites or unknowingly share private information, a scam that has become known as “quishing.”

The increasing prevalence of QR code scams prompted a warning from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year about unwanted or unexpected packages showing up with a QR code that when scanned “could take you to a phishing website that steals your personal information, like credit card numbers or usernames and passwords. It could also download malware onto your phone and give hackers access to your device.”

State and local advisories this summer have reached across the U.S., with the New York Department of Transportation and Hawaii Electric warning customers about avoiding QR code scams.

The appeal to cybercriminals lies in the relative ease with which the scam operates: slap a fake QR code sticker on a parking meter or a utility bill payment warning and rely on urgency to do the rest.

“The crooks are relying on you being in a hurry and you needing to do something,” said Gaurav Sharma, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester.

On the rise as traditional phishing fails

Sharma expects QR scams to increase as the use of QR codes spreads. Another reason QR codes have increased in popularity with scammers is that more safeguards have been put into place to tamp down on traditional email phishing campaigns. A study this year from cybersecurity platform KeepNet Labs found that 26 percent of all malicious links are now sent via QR code. According to cybersecurity company, NordVPN, 73% of Americans scan QR codes without verification, and more than 26 million have already been directed to malicious sites.

“The cat and mouse game of security will continue and that people will figure out solutions and the crooks will either figure out a way around or look at other places where the grass is greener,” Sharma said.

Sharma is working to develop a “smart” QR code called a SDMQR (Self-Authenticating Dual-Modulated QR) that has built-in security to prevent scams. But first, he needs buy-in from Google and Microsoft, the companies that build the cameras and control the camera infrastructure. Companies putting their logos into QR codes isn’t a fix because it can cause a false sense of security, and that criminals can usually simply copy the logos, he said.

Some Americans are wary of the increasing reliance on QR codes. [ed. Me!]

“I’m in my 60s and don’t like using QR codes,” said Denise Joyal of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “I definitely worry about security issues. I really don’t like it when one is forced to use a QR code to participate in a promotion with no other way to connect. I don’t use them for entertainment-type information.”

Institutions are also trying to fortify their QR codes against intrusion.

Natalie Piggush, spokeswoman for the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which welcomes over one million visitors a year, said their IT staff began upgrading their QR codes a couple of years ago to protect against what has become an increasingly significant threat.

“At the museum, we use stylized QR codes with our logo and colors as opposed to the standard monochrome codes. We also detail what users can expect to see when scanning one of our QR codes, and we regularly inspect our existing QR codes for tampering or for out-of-place codes,” Piggush said.

Museums are usually less vulnerable than places like train stations or parking lots because scammers are looking to collect cash from people expecting to pay for something. A patron at a museum is less likely to expect to pay, although Sharma said even in those settings, fake QR codes can be deployed to install malware on someone’s phone. (...)

Low investment, high return hacking tactic

A QR code is more dangerous than a traditional phishing email because users typically can’t read or verify the encoded web address. Even though QR codes normally include human-readable text, attackers can modify this text to deceive users into trusting the link and the website it directs to. The best defense against them is to not scan unwanted or unexpected QR codes and look for ones that display the URL address when you scan it.

Brewer says cybercriminals have also been leveraging QR codes to infiltrate critical networks.

“There are also credible reports that nation-state intelligence agencies have used QR codes to compromise messaging accounts of military personnel, sometimes using software like Signal that is also open to consumers,” Brewer said. Nation-state attackers have even used QR codes to distribute remote access trojans (RATs) — a type of malware designed to operate without a device owner’s consent or knowledge — enabling hackers to gain full access to targeted devices and networks.

Still, one of the most dangerous aspects of QR codes is how they are part of the fabric of everyday life, a cyberthreat hiding in plain sight.

“What’s especially concerning is that legitimate flyers, posters, billboards, or official documents can be easily compromised. Attackers can simply print their own QR code and paste it physically or digitally over a genuine one, making it nearly impossible for the average user to detect the deception,” Brewer said.

by Kevin Williams, CNBC |  Read more:
Image: Fongfong2 | Istock | Getty Images
[ed. Not surprised at all. I've avoided using them from the start.]

Yoann Bourgeois: Stair Dance

Yoann Bourgeois: ‘I want to return to the spirit of childhood' (The Guardian)

Image: YouTube

[ed. Don't miss this one - delightful dance art.]

Ichiro Suzuki Inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame

 

[ed. Couldn't happen to a classier guy. Never heard him speak a word of English before except through an interpreter. Funny, too.]

Why Jolly Ranchers Are Banned in the UK but Not the US

On June 11, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued an alert declaring several candies manufactured by The Hershey Company “unsafe to eat.” Four products from the flagship Jolly Rancher brand—Hard Candy, “Misfits” Gummies, Hard Candy Fruity 2 in 1, and Berry Gummies—contain mineral oil hydrocarbons, banned from food in the UK.

The offending substances are mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) and mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH). Both are derived from crude oil and are often used in confectionery to reduce stickiness and enhance the candy’s shine. “Consuming mineral oil regularly and over time could pose a risk to your health,” says Tina Potter, head of incidents at the FSA. “If you’ve eaten them, there is no need for concern, but don’t eat any more.”

Nevertheless, the FSA has branded the consumption of these sweets a “toxicological concern.” MOSH have been found to accumulate in the tissue of certain species of lab rat, causing adverse effects in the liver. But MOAH are more concerning—the UK’s FSA, alongside the European Union, considers some of these compounds to be genotoxic carcinogens—substances that can cause cancer by altering cells’ genetic material. (...)

Enforcement will likely take time. But in the US, MOAH remain permitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The key takeaway from all of this is [that] mineral oil is allowed and deemed safe for use in food in the US,” says Todd Scott, senior manager of communications at The Hershey Company. “Mineral oil is not an ingredient in the recipe. We use it as a processing aid to keep the candy from sticking to the mold.”

MOAH are just one of a number of chemical compounds banned by the UK and EU that are deemed safe for Americans. Much of the discrepancy lies in the FDA’s “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole. In the US, any new food additive is subject to premarket review and approval by the FDA—unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.

These assessments, however, are often completed in private labs and sometimes even by the manufacturer of the chemicals themselves—and manufacturers aren’t required by law to submit their GRAS determination or supporting data to the FDA. The assessments don’t require third-party experts, either. In a 2023 study of 403 GRAS notices filed by the FDA between 2015 and 2020, an average of 30 percent relied on the opinion of a manufacturer’s in-house employee.

Adopted in 1958, the GRAS exemption was intended to cover the use of commonplace ingredients, explains Jensen Jose, regulatory counsel for the nonprofit watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, DC. “It was so you wouldn’t require a new piece of legislation every time you added salt to a sandwich.”

However, as the food industry’s appetite for additives grew over the following decades, the GRAS rule came to cover a widening array of ingredients—with the manufacturers of these additives left effectively to govern themselves. “The hope is that they conduct scientific studies of their own,” says Jennifer Pomeranz, a public health lawyer and associate professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “But legally speaking, no one’s checking.” In theory, Pomeranz says, “a company can add a new ingredient and not even list its chemical compound on the packet.”

The result is that a host of additives, recognized as safe under FDA regulations, are banned by other governments over safety fears. “Compounds are added to food for shelf life, aesthetics, and convenience,” says Lindsay Malone, a registered dietitian nutritionist and instructor in the Department of Nutrition at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. “Even down to how easily food comes out of the plastic container.”

Compounds that carry health risks line the shelves of US grocery stores, consumed by Americans every day. Take butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), for example, a preservative that has been linked to hormone disruption. It’s often found in cereals, dried snacks, and packaged cake mixes. Meanwhile a packet of chewing gum, potato chips, or processed meat may include butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a probable carcinogen. Both are exempt from FDA regulations through the GRAS loophole.

In isolation, compounds like BHT, BHA, and MOAH aren’t necessarily dangerous. Public health advocates are more concerned about their cumulative effect—a lifetime of eating common, addictive, harmful compounds. 

by Alex Christian, Wired |  Read more:

Image: Washington Post/Getty

[ed. Clear as mud. I like JRs, and the stated risks seem fairly low. It's almost impossible to find hard candies anymore (check out your local shelves). Everything's soft, gummy, chewy, or sour. Ack.]