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What the JBS cyberattack means for your meat supply - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by mattrenz16 on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • JBS USA, the country's top beef producer and its second largest producer of pork, suffered a cyberattack this weekend, prompting reported shutdowns at company plants in the United States and globally.
  • Does fallout from the attack mean a tighter meat supply ahead, and as a result, higher prices? That depends on how quickly the issue is resolved, according to experts.
  • "Retailers and beef processors are coming from a long weekend and need to catch up with orders and make sure to fill the meat case. If they suddenly get a call saying that product may not deliver tomorrow or this week, it will create very significant challenges," Steiner explained.
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  • Steve Meyer, an economist with commodity firm Kerns and Associates, agreed that a one or two day disruption could cause wholesale meat prices to jump. But if the problem is resolved within a few days, he said, restaurants and grocery stores are unlikely to pass those costs onto consumers.
  • "Then you're probably going to have some buyers, whoever depends on JBS for their supplies, that probably could be short product," he said. In that case, for consumers, it would depend on where their local grocery store sources its meat. "If they buy it from JBS then you might see some shortages. If they don't buy it from JBS, you might not see anything at all."
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Suez Canal Blocked After Giant Container Ship Gets Stuck - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...suez-canal-blocked-ship.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • By Wednesday morning, more than 100 ships were stuck at each end of the 120-mile canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and carries roughly 10 percent of worldwide shipping traffic. Only the Panama Canal looms as large in the global passage of goods.
  • And if the ship is not freed within a few days, it would add one more burden to a global shipping industry already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, creating delays, shortages of goods and higher prices for consumers.
  • The ship’s size has magnified every challenge. Though a gust of wind may seem an improbable David to the ship’s Goliath, the containers stacked at least nine-high atop the deck would have acted like a giant sail, Capt. Konrad said, giving Tuesday’s high winds more surface area to push against.As container ships have grown in scale, culminating in a new generation of ultra-large ships that includes the 1,312-foot-long Ever Given, the Suez Canal and global ports have struggled to keep pace. Parts of the canal were widened several years ago, though not enough to eliminate the tension for pilots charged with navigating it. Crew sizes have not increased to match the vessels, said Capt. Konrad, and technology for piloting through narrow channels has not improved.
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  • But if the ship’s extraction takes longer, it could pose a substantial risk for an already-overwhelmed industry. Global trade has been disrupted as locked-down American consumers ordered vast quantities of factory goods from Asia, yielding a monthslong shortage of shipping containers, the metal boxes that carry parts and finished products around the globe.The blockage of the Suez Canal will affect the movement of things like exercise bikes and printers built in Chinese factories destined for American households, and soybeans grown on American farms and shipped to food processors in Southeast Asia.
  • ut first comes the technical quagmire of freeing the Ever Given. Pictures from the canal showed the container-laden ship sitting sideways at such an angle that the name of the company that operates it, Evergreen, was clearly visible from the ship behind it.“Ship in front of us ran aground while going through the canal and is now stuck sideways,” an Instagram user who gave her name as Julianne Cona, a ship’s engineer onboard another vessel, posted alongside a photo of the stricken ship on Tuesday evening. “Looks like we might be here for a little bit…”
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The December Numbers Were Awful, but the Economy Has a Clear Path to Health - The New Y... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-report-economy-analysis.html economy health US economics pandemic
shared by zoegainer on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • It is fair to say that the loss of 140,000 jobs in December indicates a backsliding of the economic recovery that took place in the summer and fall.
  • The December numbers point to a jobs crisis that is contained to sectors dealing with the direct effects of pandemic-related shutdowns. Unlike the data from the spring of 2020, the latest numbers are not consistent with the sort of broad-based absence of demand in the economy that caused the recovery from the last few recessions to be so long and so slow.
  • If enough Americans are vaccinated, they will probably feel comfortable in returning to normal patterns of leisure activity
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  • Other sectors less directly affected by public health concerns — industries that were at recessionary levels just a few months ago — kept improving. They are not necessarily back to pre-pandemic levels, but on track to get there before much longer.
  • The list of sectors fitting that basic pattern — still at levels consistent with a recession but clawing their way back steadily — is long,
  • But as corporate executives make their capital spending plans and as consumers make their spending decisions, surging stocks do tend to have a positive effect. That would imply that the positive effects of new market highs over recent weeks should start to show up as public health concerns recede.
  • The December employment numbers cover a period before Congress reached a compromise pandemic aid package worth $900 billion. Among other things, the bill includes enhanced unemployment benefits that will help the hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs disappeared in December, as well as $600 checks that should strengthen consumer spending in the months ahead
  • Moreover, the Democratic victories in Georgia this week and the resulting Senate majority make it more likely that those checks will grow to $2,000 per person
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Can Conservative Media Still Return to Business as Usual? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...turn-to-business-as-usual.html Republicans Conservatives
shared by xaviermcelderry on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • On a Friday in late December, people who tuned in to “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Fox Business encountered something they had most likely never seen before: a subdued, uncertain Lou Dobbs. “There are a lot of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,”
  • This was a major departure from the norm. In the weeks after the November election, Dobbs had spent most of his prime-time hour on a farrago of conspiracy theories about how Donald Trump had actually defeated Joe Biden. Among his favorites was one involving Smartmatic, which — according to Dobbs and various guests — was founded by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who died in 2013, and sat at the center of a plot to rig the election.
  • But such clarifications evidently made little impression on the believers who, a few weeks later, stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the election results, leaving conservative media with a question even more vexing and consequential than how to respond to the threat of a libel lawsuit: How far could it really follow its audience?
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  • After the elections, those on the supply side of the conservative media equation — especially Fox, a huge corporate entity with significantly more to lose than its smaller rivals — believed their greatest challenge was how, exactly, to serve the audience’s demands without running afoul of libel law.
  • The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear.
  • But the even more outlandish Obama-era claims tended to get significantly less airtime on Fox. It was Donald Trump, during his guest appearances on “Fox & Friends” and other Fox shows, who banged the drum of birtherism; the network’s own stars largely steered clear. When conspiracy theorists claimed online that Obama planned to use a military training operation to declare martial law in Texas, Fox covered the kerfuffle mostly to dismiss or even mock it. The network understood that it could spend all day pushing scandals, even tendentious ones, but there were still some things better left to wilder precincts.
  • Now that Fox is preparing for a Biden administration, the same muscle memory is kicking in. The business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James have given rise to myriad Fox reports about a “Biden crime family,” and the network has become preoccupied with Biden’s age, with a “medical contributor” appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show to talk about atrial fibrillation and cognitive decline.
  • Indeed, since Trump’s defeat, many conservative-news consumers have abandoned the comparably more staid precincts of Fox for OANN and Newsmax; in the month after the election, Newsmax viewership rose 497 percent between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., while Fox suffered a 38 percent decline. The demand among conservative-news consumers for the unhinged is obviously high.
  • For the past four years, Trump has not only met that demand; he has steadily increased it. Now, with his claims of a landslide electoral win, he has crossed a line that conservative media is asked to cross, too, lest it be left behind. It’s one thing for conservatives to believe Biden is corrupt or hopelessly senile, but to believe that his election is patently fraudulent goes far beyond the outer edges of even toxic partisanship
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China's Economy Powers Ahead While the Rest of the World Reels - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...of-the-world-reels-11610552422 economy china
shared by mariedhorne on 19 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The upshot is a world more reliant on China for growth than ever before. For 2020, China’s economy is expected to account for 16.8% of global gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, according to forecasts by Moody’s Analytics. That’s up from 14.2% in 2016, before the U.S. and China entered a trade war. The U.S. is expected to make up 22.2%, virtually unchanged from 22.3% in 2016.
  • The gains are a testament to China’s success in containing Covid-19 and getting its businesses humming again. The country’s stimulus programs, which were smaller as a portion of the overall economy than in the U.S., focused on restoring factory production and keeping small businesses from going bust, with relatively little direct support for consumers.
  • A November survey by HSBC Holdings PLC of more than 1,100 global corporations found that 75%, including 70% of U.S. companies, expect to increase their supply-chain footprint in China over the next two years
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  • In Australia, nearly 42% of the country’s goods exports went to mainland China in October, near the all-time monthly high from earlier in the year, before slipping to 37% in November, according to Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
  • The U.S. is also grappling with extreme political stress. This year, it is expected to grow around 3%-4%, but its economy likely won’t get back to its 2019 size until the second half of the year, according to some economists’ forecasts.
  • Orion’s operating profits in China jumped 28% in the first three quarters of last year compared with the same period a year earlier, thanks to the introduction of new products into the market, including glutinous rice cake-inspired Choco Pies. China sales accounted for 48.2% of Orion’s overall revenue in 2019, compared with 38.7% in 2010.
  • By early April, more than 97% of China’s larger enterprises had reopened, according to Zhang Weihua, an official with China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
  • Consumer spending in China bounced back by the fall. China’s personal luxury-goods market is expected to have grown 7.6% in 2020, even as the global market contracted 20%, according to research firm Euromonitor International.
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Inflation Expectations in Europe Rise to Highest in Over a Year - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...vel-in-over-a-year-11610556582 coronavirus
shared by mariedhorne on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The closely watched 5-year 5-year forward inflation swap rate for the euro area rose above 1.35% Tuesday, the highest in over a year. It continued to hover near that level Wednesday. The metric shows an average expectation for price increases over five years.
  • Forecasts for higher prices are playing out in the bond market. Germany’s 10-year break-even rate, or the difference in yield between its benchmark bond and a price level-linked bond, climbed above 1% for the first time since February.
  • The headline inflation rate stood at minus 0.3% in November, at which level it is expected to remain December.
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  • The European Central Bank targets annual inflation of just below 2%, but has missed the mark for most of the past decade. It cut some of its projections at its last monetary policy meeting in December.
  • Another ECB official, Philip Lane, recently echoed the views of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who shifted to average inflation targeting in August, meaning inflation in the U.S. can rise above 2% without moves to immediately rein it back in
  • The U.S. 10-year rate has been above 2% since the start of 2021. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose above 1% on Jan. 6 for the first time since March.
  • On Wednesday, the Labor Department said the consumer-price index rose 1.4% in the year ended December, the smallest increase since 2015 due to the economic downturn.
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Reach Out and Elect Someone-Postman.pdf - 0 views

diigo.com/0kw206 Postman media politics amusing text language censorship television print tyranny power freedom
shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Politics, he tells him, is the greatest spectator sport in America. In I 966, Ronald Reagan used a different metaphor. "Politics," he said, "is just like show business."
  • I~ politic~ were like a sporting event, there would be several virtues to attach to its name: clarity, honesty, excellence.
  • The television commercial has been the chief instrument in(. • creating the modem methods of presenting political ideas.
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  • In America, the fundamental metaphor for political discourse is the television commercial.
  • An \ American who has reached the age of forty will have seen well h ver one million television commercials in his or her lifeti~e, nd has close to another million to go before the first Social ecurity check arrives.
  • the practice of capitalism has its contradictions. I Cartels and monopolies, for example, undermine the theo,ry
  • evision commercials make hash of it. To take the simplest example: To be rationally considered, any claim-commercial ! or otherwise-~ust be made in language. More precisely, it i' must take the fomi of a proposition, for that is· the universe of II discourse from which such words as "true" apd "false" come. If that universe of discourse is discarded, then 'the application of/ empirical tests, logical analysis or any of the othtr instrum¢nts \ of reason are impotent.
  • Today, on television commercials, propositions are as. scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply_not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama-a mythology, if you will-of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamb_urgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune.
  • t has accomplished this in two ways. The first_ is by requiring its form'AQ) to be used in political ca~p~igns.
  • the commercial insists ~n . , an unprecedented brevity of expression.
  • One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.
  • What the advertiser needs to know is not what l is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product .. research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.
  • pear so to anyone hearing or reading it. But the commercial disdains exposition, for that takes tinie and invites argument. It is a very bad commercial indeed that engages the viewer in wondering about the validity of th~ point_ being made.
  • More9ver, commercials have the advantage of vivid visual symbols through which we may easily learn the lessons being taught. Among those lessons are that shor:t and simple messages are preferable to long and complex ones; that drama is to be preferred over exposition; that being sold solutions is better than being confronted with 1 questions about ·problems.
  • ninous form of pubhc commumcauon m our society, it was I inevitable that Americans would ac~ommo~~te themselves ,~o tl:le philosophy of television commercials. By accommodate, I mean that we accept them as a normal and plausible form of discourse. By "philosophy," I mean that the television commerl cial has embedded in it certain assumptions about the nature of communication that run counter to those of other media, espe( dally the printed word.
  • Such beli~fs would naturally have implications for our orientation to political discourse; that is to say, we may begin to accept as normal certain assumptions about the political domain that either derive from or are amplified by the tekvision commercial.
  • For example, a person who has seen one million television commercials might well believe that all political problems have fast solutions through simple measures-or ought to. Or that complex language is not to be trusted, and that all problems lend themselves to theatrical expression. Or that argument is in bad taste, and leads only to an intolerable uncertainty.
  • But what virtues attach to politics if Ronald Reagan is right? show business is not entirely ·without an idea of excellence, but its main business is to please the crowd, and its principal instrument is artifice. If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.
  • Such a: person may also come to believe that it is not necessary to draw any line between politics and other forms of social life. Just as a television commercial will use an athlete, an act<;>r, a musician, a novelist, a scientist or a countess to s~eak for the virtues (?f a product in no way within their domain of expertise, television also frees politicians from the limited field of their own expertise.
  • The commercial asks us to believe that all problems am solvable, that they are solvable fast, and that they are solvable fast through the interventions of technology, techniques and chemistry.
  • his is, of course, a preposterous theory about the roots of discontent, and would ap-
  • Although it may go ,too far to say that the politician-ascelebrity has, by itself, made political partie~ irrelevant, there is certainly a conspicuous correlation between the rise of the former and the decline of the latter.
  • The point is that television does not reveal whol the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by "better"
  • such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in ) executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, ._and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with "image."
  • This is the lesson of all great television commercials: TheD provide a slogan, a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image of themselves.
  • But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare 41d deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience.
  • In the shift from party politics to television ·politics, the same goal is sought. We are not permitted to know who is best at being President or Governor or Sena~or, but whose image is best in touching and soothing the deep reaches of our discontent.
  • The historian Carl Schorske has, in my opinion, circled closer to the truth by noting that the modem mind has grown indifferent to history because history has become useless to it; in other words, it is not obstinacy or ignorance but a sense of irrelevance that leads to the diminution of history.
  • It follows from this that hjggr¥_can play no significant role in image politics. For history is of value only to someone who takes seriously the notion that there are patterns in the past which may provide the present with nourishing traditions.
  • "The past is a world," Thomas Carlyle said, "and not a void of [ grey haze." But he wrote this at a time when the book was the principal medium of serious public discourse.
  • Terence Moran, I be~ lieve, lands on the target in saying that with media whose structure is biased toward furnishing images and fragments, we are deprived of access to an historical perspective. In the absence of continuity and context, he says, "bits of information cannot be integrated into an intelligent and consistent whole."·
  • A book is all history. Everything about it takes one back in time-from the way it is produced to its linear mode of exposition to the fact that the past tense is its most comfortable form of address. As no other medium before or since, the book promotes a sense of a coherent and usable past. In a conversation of books, history, as Carlyle understood it, is not only a world but a living world. It is
  • We do opt refuse to remember; neither do we find it exactly useless to remember. Rather, we are being rendered unfit to remember. For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, .it requires a contextual basis-a theory, a vision, a metaphorsomething within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned.
  • But televisio. n is a ~peed-of-light me~um, a present-centered \ medium, lts grammar, so to say, penruts no access to the past. Everything presented in moving pictures is experienced as happening "now," which is why we must be told in language that a ideotape we are seeing was made months before.
  • The politics of image and instantaneous news provides no such context, is, in fact, hampered by attempts to provide any. A mirror records only what you are wearing today. It is silent about yesterday. With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
  • "History," Henry Ford said, "is_bunk." Henry Ford was a typographic optimist. "History," the Electric Plug replies, "doesn't exist."
  • profound cultural proolem until the maturing of the Age of ·l Print. Whatever dangers th~re may be in a word that is written, such a word is a hundred times more dangerous when stamped by a press.
  • We ought also to look to Huxley, not Orwell, to understand the threat that television and other forms of imagery pose to the foundation of liberal democracy-namely, to freedom of information.
  • To paraphrase J David Riesman only slightly, in a world of printing, information is the gunpowder of the mind; hence come the censors in their austere robes to dampen the explosion.
  • Thus, Orwell envisioned that ( 1) government c:ontrol over (2) printed matter posed a serious threat for Western: democracies. He was wrong on both counts. (He was, of course, right on both counts insofar as Russia, China and other pre-electronic cultures are concerned.)
  • The Bill of Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might_ be superseded by another sort of problen:i altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America.
  • I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he wrote:
  • in fact, information and ideas did not become a
  • Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation. You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care to watch .... 6
  • The fight against censorship is a nineteenth-century issue, which was largely won in the twentieth.
  • What we are confronted with now is the problem posed by the economic and symbolic structure of television. Those who run television do not limit our a.ccess to information but in fact. widen it. Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian., It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form ~ that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment.
  • Tyrants of all varieties' have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusement.s as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses·would ignore that which does not amuse.
  • iri the Age of Television, our information environment is completely different from what it was in 1783; that we have less to fear from government restraints than from television glut;
  • That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on censorship. Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment-and cares.
  • hat, in fact, we have ~o way of protecting ourselves from information disseminated by corporate America; and that, therefore, the battles for liberty must be fought on different terrains from where they once were.
  • How delighted would be all the kings, czars and fuhrers of the past (and commissars of. the present) to know that censorship is not a necessity when ~II political discourse takes the form of a jest.
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How Silicon Valley breeds boredom, loneliness and vanity - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...eeds-boredom-loneliness-vanity boredom loneliness vanity character solitude humility crisis
shared by Javier E on 29 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Well before smartphones, new inventions shaped our culture and our emotions, and changed how we feel about vanity, loneliness and boredom. Today, Silicon Valley is the latest to exploit these feelings in an effort to keep us harnessed to our screens.
  • For centuries, moralists preached that pride and vanity were deadly sins. Humans shouldn’t boast or think too much of themselves because they were fallible. Likewise, Americans were taught to regard their accomplishments as hollow and fleeting because life was short.
  • popular technologies of the 19th century challenged these mores and helped inculcate new ones.
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  • these technologies helped to alter attitudes about self-presentation and self-promotion. They trained Americans to focus on themselves, perfect their images and present themselves to others in words and pictures.
  • The spread of mass-produced mirrors in the late 19th century had a similar effect, enabling rich and poor alike to study their images, and try to perfect them.
  • After photography was introduced to the United States in 1839, it took off quickly, and Americans flocked to photographers’ studios.
  • technology companies promised consumers that if they purchased telephones, radios and phonographs, they need never feel lonesome again.
  • By the 1930s, editorialists were declaring that “Vanity is Sanity,” for well-adjusted individuals should care about their image and try to look their best. Lack of interest in one’s appearance signaled psychological problems
  • Whereas vanity had once been a sin, it now became a requirement for social success.
  • Our 19th-century forebears were resigned to the fact that they would sometimes be alone
  • Being lonely wasn’t pleasurable, but it wasn’t surprising or particularly worrisome, either. And like Henry David Thoreau, many even celebrated it, recasting it as solitude
  • Over the course of the 20th century, however, Americans gradually pathologized the experience of being alone
  • they increased the pressure on Americans to publicly celebrate their appearances and accomplishments.
  • In the 1940s, the word “loner” emerged as a pejorative description
  • the term solitude fell out of favor while the word loneliness came into wider use, reflecting a growing consensus that there was something wrong and even shameful about being alone
  • We are also obsessed with our phones because so many of us regard loneliness and boredom as pathologies with potentially negative consequences for our health
  • Before the mid-19th century Americans never experienced boredom, for the word didn't exist in English
  • , after the word boredom was coined, it spread, and during the late 19th century, it was increasingly used to describe the inner experience of empty moments
  • By the mid-20th century, psychologists were suggesting that boredom was a measurable problem and that individuals were entitled to diversion in daily life, a message which movie studios, radio producers, television tycoons and merchants eagerly took up
  • Americans soon began to regard it as a dangerous emotion that ought to be stamped out as quickly as possible.
  • the people who were pushing photography, telephones, radios, movies and other consumer goods did so by exploiting shifting mores around vanity, loneliness and boredom
  • they also exacerbated them, reinforcing the belief that people should present their best faces to the world and the conviction that they should always be in contact, and never be bored or unstimulated.
  • these ideas have become central to our daily lives. We harbor fewer reservations about vanity than our ancestors
  • We turn to our phones because we have become accustomed to celebrating ourselves, and to seek out the affirmation of others.
  • Radios and phonographs, likewise, came to fill the silences in American homes, creating a sense of companionship at all times.
  • these emotions are now considered feelings to be cured rather than endured.
  • we use our phones to seek out constant companionship and unending entertainment.
  • because we worry more about loneliness and boredom than our ancestors did, we’re more apt to turn to our phones since they promise to relieve these afflictions.
  • it’s important to remember that the vulnerabilities Silicon Valley exploits are far from inevitable and are instead a result of culture and history
  • The way our culture trains us to experience vanity, loneliness and boredom can be changed. We can shift our thinking to recognize the value of humility, of solitude and of empty moments
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Opinion | Want to See My Genes? Get a Warrant - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...police-dna-warrant.html genetic testing legal surveillance privacy
shared by Javier E on 12 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • While there may be broad public support for a technique that solved serial murders, just because technology allows for a new type of investigation doesn’t mean the government should be allowed to use it in all cases.
  • 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable from their DNA within a year or two, even if they have not used a consumer DNA service
  • As for easy access, GEDmatch’s website provides exactly this opportunity. Consumers can take profiles generated from other commercial genetic testing services, upload them free and compare them to other profiles. So can the police.
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  • If the police felt free to use it in an assault case, why not shoplifting, trespassing or littering?
  • When you consent to genetic sleuthing, you are also exposing your siblings, parents, cousins, relatives you’ve never met and even future generations of your family
  • Legitimate consent to the government’s use of an entire family tree should involve more than just a single person clicking “yes” to a website’s terms and conditions.
  • the police usually confirm leads by collecting discarded DNA samples from a suspect. How comfortable should we be that a school resource officer hung around a high school cafeteria waiting to collect a teenager’s “abandoned” DNA?
  • All of these issues point to one problem: Police use of genetic genealogy is virtually unregulated
  • Our genetic and digital identities raise similar questions of autonomy, civil liberties, and intrusion by public and private entities.
  • Rather than wait for the courts to deal with difficult and novel issues about genetic surveillance and privacy, state legislatures and attorneys general should step in and articulate guidelines on how far their law enforcement agencies should go.
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China's Birthrate Falls To Lowest Level In 70 Years : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...owest-level-in-nearly-30-years economics China Policy politics US
shared by liamhudgings on 18 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • New birthrate figures show that China has so far failed to reverse the effects of its longtime one-child policy
  • The National Bureau of Statistics of China released the new data on Friday, the same day it announced that the country's GDP growth has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 30 years.
  • Last year, there were 10.48 births per 1,000 people, the lowest birthrate since 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was founded.
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  • The one-child policy was put in place in 1979 by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who feared that the country's exploding population would hold back economic development.
  • Experts say that improved education and higher incomes in China have led to delayed marriage and childbirth and that once-strict government restrictions on births have made one-child households the norm.
  • By 2050, a third of China's people will be 60 or older, according to current projections, placing a significant burden on the government to care for the elder
  • Meanwhile, the world's second-largest economy cooled to its slowest pace in nearly three decades, with China posting year-on-year growth of 6.1% last year — a further sign that the protracted trade war with the U.S. has taken a toll.
  • Its economy has been undergoing a painful shift away from heavy industry and commodities. Instead, Beijing has aimed for a more consumer-based economy.
  • In 2007, the Chinese economy grew by a blistering 14%.
  • The new trade deal eases U.S. tariffs on some popular consumer goods manufactured in China, such as cellphones, but leaves in place hundreds of billions of dollars of other tariffs, including on components that U.S. factories use to assemble finished products.
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New Signs of Economic Distress Emerge as Trump Imperils Aid Deal - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • A decline in consumer income and spending poses a further challenge to the recovery as jobless claims remain high and benefits approach a cutoff.
  • Personal income fell in November for the second straight month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, and consumer spending declined for the first time since April, as waning government aid and a worsening pandemic continued to take a toll on the U.S. economy.
  • “We know that things are going to get worse,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. “The question is how much worse.”
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  • Mr. Trump’s criticism of the relief effort, which he called a “disgrace,” was that it was not generous enough: He called on Congress to provide $2,000 a person in direct payments to households, rather than the $600 included in the bill.
  • The pullback in spending is spilling over into the labor market. About 869,000 people filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week. That was down from a week earlier but is significantly above the level in early November, before a surge in coronavirus cases prompted a new round of layoffs in much of the country.
  • A further 398,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, one of two federal programs to expand jobless benefits that were set to expire this month without congressional action. Some forecasters expect the December employment report to show a net loss of jobs.
  • By waiting until the last minute to act, legislators forced state labor departments — which administer both state and federal unemployment benefits — to prepare for the programs’ end. Many states won’t be able to reverse course in time to avoid a lapse in payments.
  • Those savings could help fuel a rapid recovery once coronavirus vaccines are widely available, allowing Americans to resume traveling, attending concerts and gathering in bars and restaurants. But that prospect only underscores the need for aid to ensure that businesses make it until then.
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Powell, Mnuchin Outline Contrasting Perils Facing Economy - WSJ - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 20 May 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Mnuchin echoed comments by President Trump and other administration officials who are predicting a V-shaped recovery—a sharp downturn followed by a strong bounceback.
  • “We’re going to have a really good third quarter. It’s already happening,” Mr. Trump told reporters
  • Mr. Powell, meanwhile, challenged the premise that there is a trade-off between economic growth and protecting the public’s health
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  • Fear of coronavirus infection is the economy’s biggest hurdle, he said, and the recovery will be held back until Americans believe it’s safe to resume commercial activities involving person-to-person contact.
  • “The No. 1 thing, of course, is people believing that it’s safe to go back to work so they can go out,” said Mr. Powell. “That’s what it will take for people to regain confidence.”
  • “If consumers are afraid to eat out, shop or travel, a relaxation in laws requiring business closures may do little to bring back customers and thus jobs,”
  • Mr. Powell and other senior central bank officials have indicated they don’t think a V-shaped recovery is likely. This has fueled their concern that the government’s initial relief measures may prove insufficient to nurse the economy through a shock with no modern parallel and with interest rates already near zero.
  • Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said he expected the unemployment rate to peak near 20% this year and to stay above 10% through the end of the year. “This outlook is both sobering and a call to action,” he said. “Now is the time for both monetary and fiscal policy to act boldly to minimize the economic pain from the pandemic.”
  • For the third time in a week, Mr. Powell suggested additional spending by Washington could be needed to prevent long-term damage from high unemployment and waves of bankruptcies. “The scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent and are significantly worse than any recession since World War II,”
  • Mr. Rosengren warned that simply allowing businesses to reopen without slowing the spread of the virus risked making the economy worse.
  • It is vital that the design and timing of reductions in business restrictions not result in worse outcomes and higher unemployment over a longer period of time.”
  • Congress has appropriated nearly $2.9 trillion so far to support households, businesses, health-care providers and state and local governments, or around 14% of national economic output.
  • “I do think we need to take a step back and ask over time is it enough, and we need to be prepared to act further,” Mr. Powell said Tuesday.
  • Animating the administration’s approach is the expectation of a V-shaped recovery, he indicated. “We believe it’s the best bet,” Mr. Kudlow said.
  • “They’re all assuming after Labor Day everything is fine. Hope is not a strategy,” said Stephen Myrow, a former Treasury official in the George W. Bush administration
  • The issue has taken on urgency because of uncertainty over how long consumers will shun commercial activities that require human contact and because of partisan differences that could hold up further federal spending.
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Opinion | The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • we’re failing dismally on both the epidemiological and the economic fronts. But why?
  • Trump and allies were so eager to see big jobs numbers that they ignored both infection risks and the way a resurgent pandemic would undermine the economy. As I and others have said, they failed the marshmallow test, sacrificing the future because they weren’t willing to show a little patience.
  • In their vision, unrestricted profit maximization by businesses and unregulated consumer choice is the recipe for a good society.
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  • For one thing, people truly focused on restarting the economy should have been big supporters of measures to limit infections without hurting business — above all, getting Americans to wear face masks.
  • Also, politicians eager to see the economy bounce back should have wanted to sustain consumer purchasing power until wages recovered
  • Instead, Senate Republicans ignored the looming July 31 expiration of special unemployment benefits, which means that tens of millions of workers are about to see a huge hit to their incomes, damaging the economy as a whole.
  • there’s a deeper explanation of the profoundly self-destructive behavior of Trump and his allies: They were all members of America’s cult of selfishness.
  • the modern U.S. right is committed to the proposition that greed is good, that we’re all better off when individuals engage in the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest.
  • And there’s surely a lot to that explanation. But it isn’t the whole story.
  • Support for this proposition is, if anything, more emotional than intellectual. I’ve long been struck by the intensity of right-wing anger against relatively trivial regulations, like bans on phosphates in detergent and efficiency standards for light bulbs. It’s the principle of the thing: Many on the right are enraged at any suggestion that their actions should take other people’s welfare into account.
  • This rage is sometimes portrayed as love of freedom. But people who insist on the right to pollute are notably unbothered by, say, federal agents tear-gassing peaceful protesters. What they call “freedom” is actually absence of responsibility.
  • Indeed, it sometimes seems as if right-wingers actually make a point of behaving irresponsibly. Remember how Senator Rand Paul, who was worried that he might have Covid-19 (he did), wandered around the Senate and even used the gym while waiting for his test results?
  • Anger at any suggestion of social responsibility also helps explain the looming fiscal catastrophe. It’s striking how emotional many Republicans get in their opposition to the temporary rise in unemployment benefits; for example, Senator Lindsey Graham declared that these benefits would be extended “over our dead bodies.” Why such hatred?
  • It’s not because the benefits are making workers unwilling to take jobs. There’s no evidence that this is happening — it’s just something Republicans want to believe
  • Again, it’s the principle. Aiding the unemployed, even if their joblessness isn’t their own fault, is a tacit admission that lucky Americans should help their less-fortunate fellow citizens. And that’s an admission the right doesn’t want to make.
  • I’m not saying that Republicans are selfish. We’d be doing much better if that were all there were to it. The point, instead, is that they’ve sacralized selfishness, hurting their own political prospects by insisting on the right to act selfishly even when it hurts others.
  • Rational policy in a pandemic, however, is all about taking responsibility. The main reason you shouldn’t go to a bar and should wear a mask isn’t self-protection, although that’s part of it; the point is that congregating in noisy, crowded spaces or exhaling droplets into shared air puts others at risk
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Opinion | How Progressive States Can Respond to Conservative Courts - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • Trump made explicit that he wants “his” judges, and the 6-to-3 conservative majority on the court, to achieve what he could not through Congress, including eliminating health care for millions and undermining what remains of the Voting Rights Act.
  • But if progressives are going to have fewer victories in federal courts, then we need to think about what that means for states, too.
  • First, state elected officials must be ready to respond quickly to, or act in advance of, rulings from the Supreme Court. If, for example, the Affordable Care Act is weakened or struck down, Democratic state legislatures should have bills drafted to introduce that day to protect people who will lose coverage.
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  • The new court may also make it easier for companies to degrade the environment, and harder for government agencies to address racism. Here too, states can step in with policies and laws to patch holes ripped open by the court. They can take aggressive action when it comes to protecting our air, reforming policing, expanding civil rights and more.
  • Second, state officials, especially attorneys general, must enforce those newly enacted laws and existing protections in state courts. Because federal enforcement actions will face hostility from the federal bench, states will need to be vigilant and aggressive.
  • For example, if the Supreme Court further constrains the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, states can go after corporations for violations of state securities and consumer protection statutes.
  • The third prong of the plan rests on progressive advocacy groups and lawyers outside government to litigate rights enshrined in state constitutions. This will be particularly important in states where leaders hew to a conservative agenda.
  • The final part of this plan applies to all progressives: In a conservative legal environment, we need to rethink the arguments we make and the language we use. The positions that conservatives have been taking for years can sometimes serve progressive aims.
  • Of course, Washington will have a key role to play, and our proposals will work best in the states that already have strong progressive traditions; it will take time for state-level victories to catch on elsewhere.
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New Layoffs Add to Worries Over U.S. Economic Slowdown - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • Companies including Disney, the insurance giant Allstate and two major airlines announced plans to fire or furlough more than 60,000 workers in recent days,
  • Democrats are pushing a $2.2 trillion proposal, while the White House has floated a $1.6 trillion plan.
  • the economy rebounded in May and June with the help of stimulus money and rock-bottom interest rates. But the loss of momentum since then, coupled with fears of a second wave of coronavirus cases this fall
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  • said 787,000 people filed new applications for state jobless benefits last week
  • When you combine the layoffs with fiscal aid drying up, it points to very soft momentum in the final quarter of the year.
  • . A $50 billion bailout in March obligated the carriers to hold off on job cuts through Oct. 1.
  • Travel, entertainment, and leisure and hospitality employers have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic, and they continue to lag even as other areas of the economy have reopened. The American Hotel & Lodging Association, a trade group, said that without new stimulus legislation, 74 percent of hotels would lay off additional employees and two-thirds would be out of business in six months.
  • Consumer spending on goods — whether for immediate consumption, like food, or used over a longer term, like appliances — now exceeds levels preceding the pandemic. But outlays for services, which account for roughly two-thirds of the nation’s economic activity, remain down about 8 percent.
  • The economic picture is not completely bleak. Personal spending was up 1 percent last month, and readings of consumer confidence have been gaining.
  • When she was furloughed in mid-March after the pandemic hit, she thought she would be out of work for just a few weeks. But on Tuesday, a text message from her union representative told her that her job would not be coming back.“I was just in shock,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
  • Ms. Perez said she could pay her rent and utilities on the roughly $250 a week she receives in state unemployment benefits, but could not afford any extra expenses, like the car she needs after hers broke down in March.
  • For those like Ms. Perez who lost work earlier in the year, the end of the $600 federal unemployment supplement has added to financial hardships.
  • I will have to go to every church around me and ask for help,” she said. “I will stand in food lines with the kids, because I cannot leave them at home. I will apply anywhere that I can for help, because there’s no way that I can allow us to be homeless.”
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Facebook Whistleblower's Testimony Builds Momentum for Tougher Tech Laws - WSJ - 0 views

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  • “I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profit and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits,” Ms. Haugen told a Senate consumer protection subcommittee. “As long as Facebook is operating in the shadows, hiding its research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable. Until the incentives change, Facebook will not change.”
  • “There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself,” she said. Facebook under Mr. Zuckerberg makes decisions based on how they will affect measurements of user engagement, rather than their potential downsides for the public, she said.
  • “Mark has built an organization that is very metrics-driven,” she said. “The metrics make the decision. Unfortunately that itself is a decision.”
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  • Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), the chairman of the subcommittee conducting Tuesday’s hearing, called on Mr. Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to testify, terming the company “morally bankrupt.”
  • Facebook has said it plans to continue doing internal research and is working on ways to make that work available to others. The company has recently battled with some academic researchers over access to its data, but Facebook says that it works cooperatively with many others.
  • Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the hearing renewed their calls for regulation, such as strengthening privacy and competition laws and special online protections for children, as well as toughening of the platforms’ accountability. One idea that got a particular boost was requiring more visibility into social-media data as well as the algorithms that shape users’ experiences.
  • “The severity of this crisis demands that we break out of previous regulatory frames,” she said. “Tweaks to outdated privacy protections…will not be sufficient.”
  • A good starting point, she added, would be “full access to data for research not directed by Facebook. On this foundation, we can build sensible rules and standards to address consumer harms, illegal content, data protection, anticompetitive practices, algorithmic systems and more.”
  • Ms. Haugen also raised national-security concerns about Facebook, citing foreign surveillance on the platform—for example, Chinese monitoring of Uyghur populations—and what she termed Facebook’s “consistent understaffing” of its counterintelligence teams.
  • Ms. Haugen made the case for policy changes to address her perceived concerns. In products such as cars and cigarettes, she said, independent researchers can evaluate health effects, but “the public cannot do the same with Facebook.”
  • “This inability to see in Facebook’s actual systems and confirm that they work as communicated is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by only watching them drive down the highway,” she said, arguing for an independent government agency that would employ experts to audit the impact of social media.
  • She said that if Congress moves to change Section 230, a federal accountability law that protects Facebook and other companies from liability for user-generated content, it should distinguish between that kind of content and choices that companies make about what type of content to promote.
  • “Facebook should not get a pass on choices it makes to prioritize virality and growth and reactiveness over public safety,” she said.
  • Ms. Haugen was hired by Facebook two years ago to help protect against election interference on Facebook. She said she acted because she was frustrated by what she viewed as Facebook’s lack of openness about the platform’s potential for harm and its unwillingness to address its flaws.
  • “I would simply say, let’s get to work,” said Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), who has sponsored several measures on algorithm transparency. “We’ve got some things we can do here.”
  • “There’s always reason for skepticism” about Congress reaching consensus on legislation, Mr. Blumenthal said after the hearing. But he added that “there are times when the dynamic is so powerful that something actually is done…I have rarely, if ever, seen the kind of unanimity on display today.”
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Opinion | For Teen Girls, Instagram Is a Cesspool - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 09 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • the whistle-blower was citing the company’s own research, which among other things found that, based on surveys, “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,”
  • What exactly are we talking about here? Say you’re a 13-year-old girl who is beginning to feel anxious about your appearance, who has followed some diet influencers online. Instagram’s algorithm might suggest more extreme dieting accounts with names such as “Eternally starved,” “I have to be thin” and “I want to be perfect.”
  • n an interview with “60 Minutes,” Ms. Haugen called this “tragic.” “As these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed,” she said. “It actually makes them use the app more. And so they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more.”
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  • Facebook and Instagram are simply carrying on a longstanding American tradition: stoking the insecurities of teenage girls to cash in on them.
  • The global beauty industry generates $500 billion in annual sales, and social media is now an important driver, especially for the youngest target demographic, Gen Z.
  • The global weight management market was estimated at more than $260 billion in 2020, and is projected to grow to more than $400 billion by 2027.
  • Before American girls’ confidence was commodified by Instagram, it was at the whim of magazines filled with impossibly slender, airbrushed models and ads from industries relying on girls and women for revenue
  • That’s because social media is addictive. Writing in The Atlantic, Derek Thompson called it “attention alcohol,” explaining, “Like booze, social media seems to offer an intoxicating cocktail of dopamine, disorientation, and, for some, dependency.”
  • as a student at Harvard, he put his female classmates’ photos on his now-notorious “Facemash” website, where students could rank and compare the students’ headshots based on how hot they were. He wrote at the time, “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”
  • For girls now, things have changed. They’re largely worse. Social media platforms such as Instagram feel like algorithmic free-for-alls, full of images of people who have altered how they look, whether by using online filters or in real life, with dieting, surgery or both. In the feed, influencers’ and celebrities’ photos are interspersed with photos of your friends and yourself. Now any photo is subject to scrutiny, comparison and assessment in the form of likes and comments.
  • No school health class or parental reassurance is a match for the might of these powerful tech platforms, combined with entire industries that prey on girls’ insecurities.
  • Girls themselves often know Instagram is not good for them, but they keep coming back.
  • At the core of this marketing, the message endures: You are riddled with flaws and imperfections. We will tell you what to buy, and what do, to fix yourself.
  • Ultimately, Instagram is just a vicious messenger. But the cesspool of content fueling it? That comes from us.
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Why China Is the World's Last 'Zero Covid' Holdout - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • Since then, China has locked down a city of 4 million, as well as several smaller cities and parts of Beijing, to contain a fresh outbreak that has infected more than 240 people in at least 11 provinces and regions. The authorities have shuttered schools and tourist sites. Government websites have detailed every movement of the unlucky couple and their sprawling web of contacts, including what time they checked into hotels and on which floors of restaurants they sat.
  • China has reported fewer than 5,000 deaths since the pandemic began
  • Its thriving exports have helped to keep the economy afloat. The ruling Communist Party’s tight grip on power enables lockdowns and testing to be carried out with astonishing efficiency. Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics in February.
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  • But the policy has also, increasingly, made China an outlier. The rest of the world is reopening, including New Zealand and Australia, which also once embraced zero tolerance. China is now the only country still chasing full eradication of the virus.
  • Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has repeatedly pointed to the country’s success in containment as proof of the superiority of its governance model
  • China may find itself increasingly isolated, diplomatically and economically, at a time when global public opinion is hardening against it.
  • the Chinese Communist Party’s very hold on power seemed to hinge on its ability to control the virus. Its initial attempts to cover up the outbreak in Wuhan gave rise to a stunning outpouring of public anger. Images of overwhelmed hospitals and patients begging for help flooded the Chinese internet.
  • China’s strict lockdowns and mass testing campaigns, once criticized as heavy handed, became models for other countries.
  • When Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease expert from Shanghai, suggested this summer that China learn to live with the virus, he was attacked viciously online as a lackey of foreigners. A former Chinese health minister called such a mindset reckless.
  • Australia, which was home to the world’s longest lockdown, is scrapping quarantine requirements for vaccinated residents returning from overseas. New Zealand formally abandoned its quest for zero this month. Singapore is offering quarantine-free travel to vaccinated tourists from Germany, the United States, France and several other countries
  • There are also more practical reasons for China’s hesitation. Medical resources are highly concentrated in big cities, and more remote areas could quickly be overwhelmed by an uptick in cases, said Zhang Jun, an urban studies scholar at the City University of Hong Kong.
  • In addition, though China has achieved a relatively high full inoculation rate, at 75 percent of its population, questions have emerged about the efficacy of its homegrown vaccines.
  • And, at least for now, the elimination strategy appears to enjoy public support. While residents in locked-down areas have complained about seemingly arbitrary or overly harsh restrictions on social media, travel is relatively unconstrained in areas without cases. Wealthy consumers have poured money into luxury goods and fancy cars since they’re not spending on trips abroad.
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German Utilities Seek Extra Funding as Energy Prices Explode - The New York Times - 0 views

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  • As natural gas prices in Europe continue to hit record highs, utility companies in Germany are scrambling to secure millions of euros in extra liquidity to ensure they can meet future contracts.
  • Last week, another leading German utility, Uniper, announced that high energy prices had forced it to seek extra credit worth 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion). Most of the money, €8 billion, came from Uniper’s parent company, Fortum, based in Finland. The rest is from Germany’s state-owned development bank, KfW, and was secured as a backup to mitigate future price swings, the company said.
  • Other German energy companies, including RWE and EnBW, said that they had taken similar steps to ensure they had sufficient credit to weather the volatility in the European energy market, but declined to give details.
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  • They all face the same challenge of needing to hedge their sales of gas and electricity to cover price differences across different markets.
  • In a statement explaining the decision to provide Uniper with extra financing, Fortum said that European gas prices reached “unprecedented levels” in December.
  • In Germany, the price for energy to heat and power homes in November rose more than 101 percent from a year earlier, the country’s official statistics office, Destatis, said.
  • In Britain, the sudden price rise has led to the collapse of several smaller energy suppliers.
  • Global demand for energy jumped last year, after the world economy reawakened from widespread shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. When many economies started up again last spring, the need for natural gas shot up. Natural gas is crucial for generating electricity, running factories and heating homes across the continent.
  • European countries normally stock up on gas in the summer, when prices are relatively cheap, but the pandemic and a cold winter last year drew down levels of stored gas, leading to the wild swings in prices.
  • Prices for natural gas have risen about sixfold, to record levels. The surge means the wholesale price of electricity has reached stratospheric levels, making headlines across Europe as consumers, battered by the pandemic, are now hit by big increases in their home energy bills. Many European countries have tried to buffer the shock to consumers with price caps, subsidies and direct payments.
  • These high costs are also undermining the economics of companies that make fertilizer, steel, glass and other materials that require a lot of electricity.
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