David Foster Wallace interview on German TV
This interview only becomes more prescient.
A model of life…in which I have a right to be entertained all the time seems not to be a promising one.
Chlorpyrifos: pesticide tied to brain damage in children
Population based case-control study found that, “Prenatal or infant exposure to a priori selected pesticides—including glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and permethrin—were associated with increased odds of developing autism spectrum disorder.”
Better Living Through Chemistry™
TikTok is urging users to call Congress about a looming ban
“Meth dealer is urging users to call police about a looming meth ban.”
Listen to what your body says after you eat something. That cheesecake probably feels like a good idea before rather than after eating it. Whereas, a good steak in your stomach (avocado or nuts for vegetarians?) gives you a healthy feeling of satisfaction that lasts.
Nerdy internals of an Apple text editor
There's an incredible amount of design behind all software.
The Prophets | Marshall McLuhan
McLuhan anticipated that the electronic age would be one of constant change, such that nobody could adapt quickly enough. As a result, people would be plunged into nostalgia, and yearn for their old, solid identities.
For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It
Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern. The president’s closest aides push back in exasperation against those questioning his decision to run again and dismiss polls as meaningless this far before the vote. They argue that doubters constantly underestimate Mr. Biden and that Democrats have won or outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and even a special House election this year.
Fools.
Arrogant fools.
If we lose our republic, it’s because the Democrats became as power-hungry as the Republicans.
What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath
I think my sociopathy is entirely beneficial to me. I see my friends struggling with guilt. On an almost daily basis I think, I’m glad I don’t have that. The psychological characteristics of sociopathy are not inherently bad. Lack of remorse and shame and guilt has been misappropriated to mean this horrible thing, but again, just because I don’t care about you doesn’t mean I want to cause you more pain. I like that I don’t have guilt because I’m making my decisions based on logic, based on truth, as opposed to ought or should. Now, there is a flip side. I don’t have those natural emotional connections to other people, but I’ve never had those. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Just because I love differently doesn’t mean my love doesn’t count.
This, strangely, describes a tension I feel within.
I am at times consumed by guilt and remorse. I am also fiercely logical, and when I let logic guide my decisions, I feel far more at peace, yet far more isolated from others.
Because this is the internet, I feel I have to disclaim: I don’t think I’m a sociopath, nor do I have sociopathic tendencies.
But I know a few people who are, and they are each intelligent, kind, relatable people. There is an ease with which they move about the world that I envy, and often live lives that are far more interesting that most.
What I find as I age is that empathy is exhausting. It has become draining. I have a hunch this has something to do with our culture. Perhaps the Internet has twisted our ability to relate to one another, because there are precious few interactions I have other people that don’t involve projection.
Many of us are desperate to be understood. Myself more than most, and now more than ever as I embrace middle-age as an only child and most of the people I love and relate to have begun the slow process of dying.
This profound-yet-unsated desire to be understood has become fuel for my anxiety, my anger, my disappointment.
A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men
A mother in Alabama said parents couldn’t ignore the reality of this new economy.
“Social media is the way of our future, and I feel like they’ll be behind if they don’t know what’s going on,” the mother said. “You can’t do anything without it now.”
One 12-year-old girl in Maryland, who spoke with The Times alongside her mother, described the thrill of seeing other girls she knows wear a brand she represents in Instagram posts.
“People are actually being influenced by me,” she said.
iMessage gets a major makeover that puts it on equal footing with Signal
One of the biggest looming threats to many forms of encryption is quantum computing. The strength of the algorithms used in virtually all messaging apps relies on mathematical problems that are easy to solve in one direction and extremely hard to solve in the other. Unlike a traditional computer, a quantum computer with sufficient resources can solve these problems in considerably less time.
No one knows how soon that day will come. One common estimate is that a quantum computer with 20 million qubits (a basic unit of measurement) will be able to crack a single 2,048-bit RSA key in about eight hours. The biggest known quantum computer to date has 433 qubits.
Whenever that future arrives, cryptography engineers know it’s inevitable. They also know that it’s likely some adversaries will collect and stockpile as much encrypted data now and decrypt it once quantum advances allow for it. The moves by both Apple and Signal aim to defend against that eventuality using Kyber, one of several PQC algorithms currently endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Apple is a corporation and I am proud of their stance on user privacy.
Just a friendly reminder: turn on Advanced Data Protection.
Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot:
On the day Jake Moffatt's grandmother died, Moffat immediately visited Air Canada's website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of how Air Canada's bereavement rates worked, Moffatt asked Air Canada's chatbot to explain.
The chatbot provided inaccurate information, encouraging Moffatt to book a flight immediately and then request a refund within 90 days. In reality, Air Canada's policy explicitly stated that the airline will not provide refunds for bereavement travel after the flight is booked. Moffatt dutifully attempted to follow the chatbot's advice and request a refund but was shocked that the request was rejected.
According to Air Canada, Moffatt never should have trusted the chatbot and the airline should not be liable for the chatbot's misleading information because Air Canada essentially argued that "the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions," a court order said.
The Meaningless Incoherence Of "LGBTQ+"
The trouble is that words have meanings, and the term “LGBTQ+” — like the term “Hispanic” or “Latino” — is not like NATO. It doesn’t refer to a single, identifiable group, experience, or community. It refers to multiple ones. And each is distinct, discrete and often very different. When you examine its component parts, you realize that the Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts, let alone the Is and the +s, differ dramatically in basic things like psychology, lifestyle, income, geography, education, and politics.
Lumping them all together and treating them as a single unit is like treating Jews and Arabs as the “Middle East community,” or Cubans and Salvadorans as indistinguishable “Latinos.” “LGBTQ+” is a term that obscures and misleads more than it enlightens and clarifies. And it has made any study or understanding of homosexuals as a discreet [sic] group close to impossible.
Protein biomarkers predict dementia 15 years before diagnosis
Of 1,463 proteins analysed, aided by with a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, 11 proteins were identified and combined as a protein panel, which the researchers have shown to be highly accurate at predicting future dementia. Further incorporation of conventional risk factors of age, sex, education level and genetics, showed for the first time the high accuracy of the predictive model, measured at over 90%*, indicating its potential future use in community-based dementia screening programs.
Apple Watch Ultra succeeds where Watch Edition failed
The Watch Ultra is different. Its large screen, clear yet dense interface, and rugged yet refined physical design all suggest that it must be far more expensive than the rest of the Apple Watch lineup. Yet, at $799, it’s only a mere seven percent costlier than the $749 stainless steel model.
The Ultra is second only to my phone as my favorite piece of Apple hardware. For my lifestyle, habits, location, and interests, it’s close to ideal (though I’ll never say no to more battery life), and the goodwill inspired by its utility is notable.
Pricing it just above the stainless steel regular watch was smart — Apple convinced me the Ultra was a bargain, effectively obfuscating their infamous profit margin.
The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
…while Americans have today given up the old dream of liberalizing China, they should maybe look a little closer. It’s true that China never remotely liberalized—if you consider liberalism to be all about democratic elections, a free press, and respect for human rights. But many political thinkers would argue there is more to a comprehensive definition of modern liberalism than that. Instead, they would identify liberalism’s essential telos as being the liberation of the individual from all limiting ties of place, tradition, religion, associations, and relationships, along with all the material limits of nature, in pursuit of the radical autonomy of the modern “consumer.”
Most Republican Senators Are Barred From Re-election in Oregon After Walkouts
Yes, and.
Indeed the will of the voters, but the divide between the east and west sides of the state is profound. Democratic legislators and the bulk of Oregon’s population on the west side of the state (majority democratic) don’t often represent the values of people around here. (Whether I agree with them or not.) It’s fostering real resentment, and I worry about what that means long-term.
Those that win elections should be as gracious as the losers, and in this state, that doesn’t always feel true.
(That said, I’d much rather live here than in almost any other state.)
NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data
The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.
Train Robbery for Amazon Packages? More Common Than You Think.
The Los Angeles basin is the country’s undisputed capital of cargo theft, the region with the most reported incidents of stuff stolen from trains and trucks and those interstitial spaces in the supply chain, like rail yards, warehouses, truck stops and parking lots. Cases of reported cargo theft in the United States have nearly doubled since 2019, according to CargoNet, a theft-focused subsidiary of Verisk, a multinational company that analyzes business risks, primarily for the insurance sector. On CargoNet’s map of cargo-theft hot spots, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Memphis show up as distinct, high-incident red blobs. But the biggest blob, a red oblong smear, stretches out over the Los Angeles valley like molten lava.
That photo is really quite something…
Israeli Soldiers Clearing Buffer Zone in Gaza Die in Blast
The deaths plunged Israel into a state of mourning as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intensifying domestic divisions over how to proceed in the war as well as growing international condemnation of the civilian death toll in Gaza and the worsening humanitarian conditions there.
Israeli leaders expressed heartbreak over the deaths, but declared that the fighting would continue until Hamas was defeated.
What does that mean? How will we know Hamas is defeated? Hope does one defeat a political movement? Do you kill everyone that believes in that ideology? Once they are dead, once you turn the dead into martyrs, then what? How do you stop the ideology from spreading?
Bill Beard Was a Good Man. Then He Committed a Terrible Crime.
When Betty Friedan called attention in the 1960s to the lack of women’s rights, she described it as “the problem that has no name.” In a similar way, there isn’t a good term for the bundle of pathologies that have afflicted working-class Americans like Bill.
My “How America Heals” series has explored how to overcome these afflictions, which include stagnant incomes, addiction, homelessness, suicide, chronic pain, loneliness and early death. We still don’t fully understand how they are correlated or why most of them affect men more than women. I do believe that, as with Friedan’s probing of gender inequity, our explorations of these problems will help us chip away at them. That’s the reason for this series: A nation cannot thrive when so many have been left behind.
“A nation cannot thrive when so many have been left behind.”
If there’s any one sentence than could sum up my feelings about America, it is this one.
Here’s OpenAI’s big plan to combat election misinformation
Yesterday TikTok presented me with what appeared to be a deepfake of Timothee Chalamet sitting in Leonardo Dicaprio’s lap and yes, I did immediately think “if this stupid video is that good imagine how bad the election misinformation will be.” OpenAI has, by necessity, been thinking about the same thing and today updated its policies to begin to address the issue.
Ah, the internet.
What an interesting idea. (And what a nerd.) I’m in.
ps. Listen to Vulfpeck. They’re great.
I woke up this morning having had very little restful sleep last night. I can't pinpoint why beyond a lingering anxiety about the future.
Are we really about to face another Biden-Trump election? What the hell is wrong with this country? Yes, I'm horrified that Trump is running and somehow gaining in popularity, particularly among the young, but I'm beyond angry that the Democratic party — a private organization, remember — has somehow anointed Biden for another run. I don't give a shit how effective he's been (and I think he's been a decent president), he is too old to run. He might be mentally present, but he appears like a doddering old man. In relief, Trump looks downright virile. What do the Democrats think is going to happen in November?
Just a few days ago, there's a woman (though to call her such feels generous) walking down the aisle of the grocery store in her mid- to late-20s, purple hair, in a full-body cow onesie, complete with tail. She's pushing a cart while talking a little too loudly to her friend, clearly desperate for the attention of passers-by. What type of person is this? I don't know her or anyone like her, and yet there she was, in real life. And in a small town, no less.
Contrast that with some of the gun-totin', bible-lovin', lifted-truck, fuck-all-taxes conservatives I'm surrounded by. What fantasy world do they live in? That without government, without pesky taxes and laws, they'd ride around in their gas guzzlers and, what? Survive off the land? Bullshit. These cowboys are just as delusional as Cow Girl, they're just far more common.
I try not to use the word 'hate' too often, but gosh, some days I get a little too close to hating people. It's a terrible place to be — corrosive, insular, and a delusion of its own. But I no longer know my place in this country. I go to Portland and I feel horribly out of place. I come out to the rural spaces and I feel more at home, but surrounded by people who are struggling and suffering, all while pretending they aren't, afraid to be vulnerable. They’re all — country folk _and_ city folk — propping up these insane delusions, the biggest being the most dangerous: that we can't trust other people.
This country is such a mindfuck, and the ever-increasing pace of technological development is making things exponentially worse. The anxiety we all feel from no longer having a tomorrow we can reasonably understand cannot be overstated. I often think of my grandparents, of how in their lifetimes, they had what all humans have had thus far: some certainty that tomorrow will be like today. Of course there were exceptions, but these days, with AI and social media, even knowing what is true and real can't be taken for granted, let alone what tomorrow might bring.
How will we survive this? In my circles — my hometown, the small town where I now live, some of the surrounding rural areas — talk of civil war isn't out of the question. Sure, the talk of one has died down since the fever pitch of 2020, but it hasn't gone away. In some way, I understand it: while most people haven't a clue what war looks like, there is some purpose to be found in a potential conflict. I was never more certain of my purpose than when I was living in Palestinian refugee camps, and if we've gotten to a point in this country where the Right and Left feel that each is an existential threat to the country? Well, then defending your way of life is a hell of a purpose. This should not be underestimated.
Some days, this all leaves me feeling helpless. Tiny and helpless.