Visiting Congo, Pope Francis Embraces the Poor and Exploited The Central African country is wracked by war, poverty and environmental plunder — and it may be the future of the Catholic Church........ The turnout to welcome Francis was overwhelming in Kinshasa, the capital. Tens of thousands of people lined the road from the airport, cheering and waving flags in colorful local dress and Catholic school uniforms under enormous billboards of Francis (often alongside the country’s president). ......... terrible forms of exploitation, unworthy of humanity and of creation ......... South Sudan, where the church is deeply involved in peace negotiations and democracy building ........ Congo is home to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. It is fueled by a legacy of colonialism and the genocide across the border in Rwanda, which has helped fill refugee camps with more than 5.5 million people. .......... Rebel groups, some supported by Rwanda and Uganda, pillage villages, steal livestock, murder residents and rape women. Vast rainforests are plundered for gold, cobalt and other resources, partly to pay for weapons and war. Some local church officials say widespread corruption is at the heart of the problem. ......... About half of Congo’s more than 95 million people are Catholic, making it the faith’s deepest well in Africa, the continent many hope will replenish the church as
attendance shrinks in the West
. ......... Africa’s 265 million Catholics made up about 20 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion followers. And that number is growing. ......... the church provided health care, food programs and education to many millions of Congolese. ......... The Congo bishops’ conference, the most vocal in Africa, did not shy away when President Joseph Kabila postponed elections after the completion of his term in December 2016. It organized protests and brought the issue to international attention, helping to force Mr. Kabila to renounce a third term. ......... The church later deployed about 40,000 observers for a presidential election in 2018, announcing that there was a clear winner, but stopping short of saying who it was. Experts agreed that it was Martin Fayulu, the leading opposition candidate, but another opposition figure, Félix Antoine Tshilombo Tshisekedi, took power. Still, it was the country’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since it achieved independence from Belgium in 1960. .......... “Power is meaningful only if it becomes a form of service,” Francis said, admonishing authoritarianism and greed. ......... Catholics have remained politically engaged. After celebrating Mass on some Sundays, congregations across the country have marched straight from church in large-scale demonstrations, making it more difficult for the authorities to crack down on them. Protesters have demanded fresh elections and an end to the war in the east. .......... M23, or the March 23 Movement, which refers to a failed peace agreement signed on that date in 2009. ......... There are also more than 120 other armed groups and self-defense militias fighting for land and power in the North and South Kivu, Ituri, and Tanganyika provinces. .........
“For more than 90 percent of people, it’s extreme poverty, extreme insecurity.”
........... Congo, a country rich in gold, copper, diamonds and two-thirds of the world’s cobalt. ........ China and the United States have been racing to gain control over the global supply of cobalt, an essential part of electric car batteries. Almost all of Congo’s gold ends up in the hands of regional powers, and is then smuggled out to international markets. ......... “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said. “We cannot grow accustomed to the bloodshed that has marked this country for decades, causing millions of deaths that remain mostly unknown elsewhere. What is happening here needs to be known.”
Russian Attacks Intensify in East, Ukraine Says The Ukrainian military reports attacks at dozens of points across the eastern front. Russian forces attacked dozens of Ukrainian positions across the eastern front, the Ukrainian military said on Monday, as Moscow’s assaults widen and intensify ahead of what Kyiv has warned could be the Kremlin’s largest offensive since the first weeks of the war. ....... the chaotic nature of the Russian effort — including waves of inexperienced recruits and former convicts belonging to the Wagner paramilitary group — was limiting its effectiveness. ......... “There was a complete lack of coordination and interaction among the servicemen of Russian occupation troops and the so-called Wagner Group’s mercenaries” ........ Just as Russia used its overwhelming advantage in artillery early in the war to grind out gains in eastern Ukraine, it is now deploying hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers, in small groups, to probe for vulnerabilities in Ukrainian defensive lines. ......... The eastern front has remained largely the same, running along a 140-mile stretch of territory that forms the shape of a jagged crescent moon. ........ Moscow is determined to break through Ukrainian defensive lines before the anniversary of its invasion, on Feb. 24.
For Better and for Worse, Elon Musk Is His Own Spokesman Under its new owner, Twitter has done away with its press department. One reporter who writes about the company compares it to a “giant black box.” ........ for the journalists who cover the company, the subsequent experience has defied expectations. ....... He has also been cooperative with Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein and is now working on a book about Mr. Musk. ........ Like Twitter, Tesla does not have a designated public relations team. Mr. Musk addressed the decision to do without a Tesla press office (over Twitter, natch) in 2021: “Other companies spend money on advertising & manipulating public opinion, Tesla focuses on the product,” he wrote.
The Road to a Supreme Court Clerkship Starts at Three Ivy League Colleges The chances of obtaining a coveted clerkship, a new study found, increase sharply with undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton..... When Ted Cruz attended Harvard Law School, he liked to study with people who had undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. “He said he didn’t want anybody from ‘minor Ivies’ like Penn or Brown” ........ the finding was disturbing. ........ “We don’t really live in a meritocracy,” he said. “The Supreme Court is guilty of perpetuating some of the worst pathologies in American society.” ......... “Elite law school degrees don’t repair or overcome a lower-status undergraduate degree,” she said. “You can’t scrub your undergraduate degree with a law degree.” ......... There can be a clubby quality to the justices’ remarks about the schools they attended. Chief Justice Roberts, who has two Harvard degrees, was asked in 2009 whether Supreme Court justices “could relate to ordinary folks.” ........ The chief justice said he wanted to dispel a myth. “Not all justices went to elite institutions,” he said. “Some of them went to Yale.”
DeSantis Takes On the Education Establishment, and Builds His Brand A proposal by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to overhaul higher education would mandate courses in Western civilization, eliminate diversity programs and reduce the protections of tenure. ....... Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, as he positions himself for a run for president next year, has become an increasingly vocal culture warrior, vowing to take on liberal orthodoxy and its champions, whether they are at Disney, on Martha’s Vineyard or in the state’s public libraries. .......... rejected math textbooks en masse for what the state called “indoctrination.” .......... If enacted, courses in Western civilization would be mandated, diversity and equity programs would be eliminated, and the protections of tenure would be reduced. .......... His plan for the state’s education system is in lock step with other recent moves — banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, shipping a planeload of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and stripping Disney, a once politically untouchable corporate giant in Florida, of favors it has enjoyed for half a century. ........ His pugilistic approach was rewarded by voters who re-elected him by a 19 percentage-point margin in November. .......... While expressing her love for both the college and its students, Dr. Okker called the move a hostile takeover. “I do not believe that students are being indoctrinated here at New College,” she said. “They are taught, they read Marx and they argue with Marx. They take world religions, they do not become Buddhists in February and turn into Christians in March.” ............ “It seems many of the students that come here have determined that they don’t necessarily fit into other schools,” Ms. Braden said. “They embrace their differences and exhibit incredible bravery in staking a path forward. They thrive, they blossom, they go out into the world for the betterment of society. This is well documented. Why would you take this away from us?” ......... DeSantis’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs coincides with the recent criticisms of such programs by conservative organizations and think tanks. ......... Examples of such initiatives include campus sessions on “microaggressions” — subtle slights usually based on race or gender ........ Critics of the programs say they sometimes gloss over the pitfalls of Western thinking and ignore the philosophies of non-Western civilizations. .......... “The core curriculum must be grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We don’t want students to go through, at taxpayer expense, and graduate with a degree in Zombie studies.” ........... Manhattan Institute who is known for his vigorous attacks on “critical race theory,” an academic concept that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions.
I'm proud to announce that Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed me to the Board of Trustees of the New College of Florida.
My ambition is to help the new board majority transform New College into a classical liberal arts institution.
Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City Black children in particular are disappearing from the city, and many families point to one reason: Raising children here has become too expensive. ......... She grew up in mostly Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, graduated from public schools and attended a liberal arts college on a full scholarship. She went on to start her own event-planning business in the city. ......... But as Mrs. Rodney’s own family grew, she found herself living in a cramped one-bedroom rental, where her three children shared a bunk bed in the living room. It was hard to get them into programs that exposed them to green spaces or swim classes. As she scrolled through friends’ social media posts showing off trampolines in spacious backyards in Georgia, the solution became clearer: Leave. .......... a national trend of younger Black professionals, middle-class families and retirees leaving cities in the Northeast and Midwest for the South. ......... one main cause: the ever-increasing cost of raising a family in New York. ......... Black households have a median income of $53,000, compared with roughly $98,000 for white households .......... In late 2019, Ms. Horry moved to Jersey City through a New York City voucher program, known as the Special One-Time Assistance program, which relocates vulnerable families into permanent housing with a full year’s rent upfront. ......... New York City’s loss of Black residents has been a gain for the South especially. The region’s economy has boomed as newcomers from the city and other urban areas in the North flock there. ........ Bedford-Stuyvesant lost more than 22,000 Black residents while gaining 30,000 white residents. ........ Citywide, white residents now make up about 31 percent of the population, according to census data, Hispanic residents 28 percent and Asian residents nearly 16 percent. While the white population has stayed about the same, the Asian population grew by 34 percent and Hispanic population grew by 7 percent ........ Overall, the public schools have lost more than 100,000 students in the past five years, a crisis facing other urban districts like Boston and Chicago. In 2005, Black children comprised 35 percent of K-12 students in New York City; they now make up closer to 20 percent........ Her oldest son’s Brooklyn Heights school was largely white. In his final year there, fewer than 5 percent of the students and only a small number of teachers were Black. She noticed him growing increasingly insecure about his natural hair; classmates would sometimes try to touch it. ........ “He was starting to feel different,” Ms. Brooks said. “He needed to be around more diversity and see more kids who looked like him.” ....... After a trip to North Carolina in the spring of 2020 revealed how much cheaper life could be elsewhere, the Brooks family chose to move to Charlotte, where a growing Black population makes up more than a third of residents. Most of her sons’ new teachers, and more of their classmates, are Black.
Year Two of the Ukraine War Is Going to Get Scary Ukraine, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map in 10 tries ......... no U.S. combat forces are in Ukraine, so it feels as if all that we’re risking, for now, is arms and treasure — while the full brunt of the war is borne by Ukrainians. ......... to the extent that we have used our power wisely and in concert with our allies, we have built and protected a liberal world order since 1945, which has been hugely in our interest — economically and geopolitically. ......... an order in which autocratic great powers like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan or modern Russia and China are not free to simply devour their neighbors. And this is an order where more democracies than ever have been able to flourish, and where free markets and open trade have lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in the history of the world ........... this order has produced almost 80 years without a Great Power war, the kind of war that can destabilize the whole world. .........
Putin’s “marry me or I’ll kill you” invasion of Ukraine
.......... Putin, it’s now clear, has decided to double down, mobilizing in recent months possibly as many as 500,000 fresh soldiers for a new push on the war’s first anniversary. Mass matters in war — even if that mass contains a large number of mercenaries, convicts and untrained conscripts. .......... Putin is basically saying to Biden: I can’t afford to lose this war and I will pay any price and bear any burden to ensure that I come away with a slice of Ukraine that can justify my losses. How about you, Joe? How about your European friends? Are you ready to pay any price and bear any burden to uphold your “liberal order”? ......... “the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.” Somebody needs to keep the order and enforce the rules. .......... Franklin Roosevelt’s 1939 State of the Union address. At a time when American security was in no way threatened — Hitler had not yet invaded Poland and the fall of France was almost impossible to imagine — Roosevelt insisted there were nevertheless times ‘in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.’ In both world wars and throughout the Cold War, Americans acted not in immediate self-defense but to defend the liberal world against challenges from militaristic authoritarian governments, just as they are doing today in Ukraine.” ............ International relations theorists, Kagan added, “have taught us to view ‘interests’ and ‘values’ as distinct, with the idea that for all nations ‘interests’ — meaning material concerns like security and economic well-being — necessarily take primacy over values. But this is not, in fact, how nations behave.
Russia after the Cold War has enjoyed greater security on its western border than at practically any time in its history, even with NATO’s expansion.
Yet Putin has been willing to make Russia less secure to fulfill traditional Russian great power ambitions which have more to do with honor and identity than with security.” The same seems to be true with President Xi when it comes to recovering Taiwan. ................. “The ‘isolationists’ in the 1930s were overwhelmingly Republicans. Their greatest fear, or so they claimed, was that F.D.R. was leading the nation toward communism. In international affairs, therefore, they tended to be more sympathetic to the fascist powers than liberal Democrats. They thought well of Mussolini, opposed aiding the Spanish Republicans against the fascist, Nazi-backed Franco and regarded Hitler as a useful bulwark against the Soviet Union. ............. Republicans were destroyed politically by their opposition to World War II and were only able to resurrect themselves by electing an internationalist Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.” .......... “Any negotiation that leaves Russian forces in place on Ukrainian soil will only be a temporary truce before Putin’s next attempt,” he said. “Putin is in the process of completely militarizing Russian society, much as Stalin did during World War II. He is in it for the long haul, and he is counting on the United States and the West to grow weary at the prospect of a long conflict
The Shift to Renewable Energy Is Speeding Up. Here’s How. The head of the world’s leading energy organization called the war in Ukraine an “accelerator” of the transition. ............ an estimated $1.4 trillion poured into “clean energy” projects in 2022, a category that includes solar farms, batteries and electric vehicle charging stations. ......... more than ever before, and more than the money that poured into new oil and gas projects ........ Renewables are increasingly affordable, once they’re built, and they offer security as well. ........ In Europe, wind and solar accounted for 22 percent of electricity generation last year, overtaking for the first time the share of gas (20 percent) and coal (16 percent) ......... Globally, renewable energy installations grew by 25 percent in 2022. ....... China’s investments exceeded, by a long shot, that of every other country. ........ In 2022, nearly 15 percent of all new car sales globally were electric, compared to 3 percent of all new car sales in 2019 ........ China’s biggest electric car and bus maker, BYD, has a higher global market share than Tesla. ......... by 2030, every second car sold in the biggest car markets — China, the United States and Europe — will be powered by electricity, not fossil fuels. ......... If you want to develop a solar project in Brazil or India, Birol said, you’re likely to pay three times more for financing than if you were to build the same project in Europe. .......... “The biggest hurdle in front of us is the cost of capital,” Birol said.
It’s Time for a Reality Check on Eggs They’re expensive, difficult to find and myths about them abound on social media. Here’s what to know. ....... An avian flu outbreak in the United States killed millions of hens last year, eliminating a critical egg supply. ...... To Joe Rogan, eggs cause blood clots. To some on Twitter sharing screenshots of the abstract of a scholarly paper, yolks can ward off Covid. ........ Since eggs are rich in cholesterol — a single egg yolk can contain around 200 milligrams — and high lipid levels have been linked to poor cardiovascular health, some targeted them as an easy dietary fix: Ditch the eggs Benedict, and protect your heart. ........ “if you eat a cheese omelet today and you haven’t eaten one in a while, your arteries aren’t going to clog immediately,” she said. Eggs are also high in protein, making them an alternative to meat, which tends to be high in saturated fat. ........ promote eggs as a “nutrient-dense” protein source. ........ Are eggs all they’re cracked up to be? ........ Eggs contain vitamins B, E and D, and they’re low in saturated fat. “You get high protein for low calories” ......... They also contain nutrients that are beneficial for your eyes and bones ......... some eggs are enriched with omega-3 fatty acids, depending on what hens have been fed. ............ eating them in moderation, like one full egg (including the yolk) per day, is safe for people who don’t have underlying cardiovascular issues ......... yolk is also where most of an egg’s vitamins lie ......... A breakfast that features an egg with toast and fresh fruit, for example, is far better for your heart health than a doughnut and sweetened coffee.
Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting. Ms. Harris is struggling to carve out a lane for herself in what may be one of the most consequential periods in the vice presidency. ........ The teachers she was about to address were on the front lines of the nation’s culture wars, Ms. Harris told her staff. They were the same ones on the front lines of school shootings. ....... She has already made history as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American ever to serve as vice president, but she has still struggled to define her role much beyond that legacy. ........ she is expected to not do anything to overshadow Mr. Biden while navigating intractable issues he has assigned her such as voting rights and illegal immigration. And some see a double standard applied to a prominent woman of color. ......... Because the Senate was split evenly for the last two years, Ms. Harris has cast 26 tiebreaking votes in her role as president of the Senate, more than any vice president since John C. Calhoun, who left office in 1832. Tethered to Washington, she could never be more than 24 hours away from the Capitol when the Senate was in session in case her vote was needed. ........... She has told her staff that she wants to make at least three out-of-town trips a week in the coming year. ........ the Ms. Harris they say they see when the cameras are off, one who can cross-examine policymakers on the intricacies of legislative proposals and connect with younger voters across the country. ........ “My bias has always been to speak factually, to speak accurately, to speak precisely about issues and matters that have potentially great consequence,” she said in the interview in Japan. “I find it off-putting to just engage in platitudes. I much prefer to deconstruct an issue and speak of it in a way that hopefully elevates public discourse and educates the public.” .......... In planning meetings before she travels abroad, officials from foreign governments have proposed meetings or public appearances with the first lady of the country Ms. Harris is visiting. Her staff rebuffs those proposals, saying the vice president is not visiting as a spouse but as the second-ranking official of the United States ........ Ms. Harris — who stands about 5-foot-2 ........ When the Biden administration confronted a shortage of baby formula across the nation last year, Ms. Harris declined a request by the West Wing to highlight efforts to solve the problem by meeting a shipment of formula at Washington Dulles International Airport .......... she feels most comfortable receiving intelligence briefings or addressing law enforcement officials, venues where she says substance is valued over politics ....... has watched the vice president try to distill complex health care issues in a way that “everyday citizens” can understand......... she asked if Americans can ever “truly be free” if a woman cannot make decisions about her own body. ...... how threats to Roe represent a broader threat to civil rights.
Jimmy Kimmel Takes on Trump’s ‘Sad’ Return to the Campaign Trail Kimmel called Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign “the political equivalent of when Michael Jordan went to play for the Wizards.” .......... “Trump also warned that if Ron DeSantis runs for president, he would consider it a great act of disloyalty. And, you know, loyalty means everything to the guy who cheated on his third wife with a porn star and thought it might be cool to hang his vice president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ........ ‘DeSantis 2024: Make America Florida Again.’ ........ “I would tell them, I would sit them down and say, ‘Boys, whoever wins is the son we love more and that’s that.’ That’s how Trump does it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL
Doctors Aren’t Burned Out From Overwork. We’re Demoralized by Our Health System. the diseased systems for which we work. ........ The United States is the only large high-income nation that doesn’t provide universal health care to its citizens. Instead, it maintains a lucrative system of for-profit medicine. For decades, at least tens of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred each year because health care here is so expensive. ....... at least 338,000 Covid deaths in the United States could have been prevented by universal health care. ....... in 2021 alone, about 117,000 physicians left the work force, while fewer than 40,000 joined it. ........ One in five doctors says he or she plans to leave practice in the coming years. ....... burnout. Nearly two-thirds of physicians report they are experiencing its symptoms. ........ What’s burning out health care workers is less the grueling conditions we practice under, and more our dwindling faith in the systems for which we work. What has been identified as occupational burnout is a symptom of a deeper collapse. We are witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology. ........ a belief system made up of interlinking political, moral and cultural narratives upon which we depend to make sense of our social world ........ nearly one-fifth of physicians reporting they knew a colleague who had considered, attempted or died by suicide during the first year of the pandemic alone. ........... the structural perversity of our institutions ......... ostensibly nonprofit charity hospitals have illegally saddled poor patients with debt for receiving care to which they were entitled without cost and have exploited tax incentives meant to promote care for poor communities to turn large profits. ......... Hospitals are deliberately understaffing themselves and undercutting patient care while sitting on billions of dollars in cash reserves. Little of this is new, but doctors’ sense of our complicity in putting profits over people has grown more difficult to ignore. ........ Resistance to self-criticism has long been a hallmark of U.S. medicine and the industry it has shaped. From at least the 1930s through today, doctors have organized efforts to ward off the specter of “socialized medicine.” We have repeatedly defended health care as a business venture against the threat that it might become a public institution oriented around rights rather than revenue. .......... We sit at our patients’ bed sides and counsel them on their duty to counteract the risks of obesity, heart disease and diabetes, for example, while largely ignoring how those diseases are tied to poor access to quality food because of economic inequities. .......... teaches us to suppress critical thinking and trust the system, even with its perverse incentives. ........ a system of billing codes invented by the American Medical Association as part of a political strategy to protect its vision of for-profit health care now dictates nearly every aspect of medical practice, producing not just endless administrative work, but also subtly shaping treatment choices. .........
Any illusion that medicine and politics are, or should be, separate spheres has been crushed under the weight of over 1.1 million Americans killed by a pandemic that was in many ways a preventable disaster.
........ our institutions, and much of our work inside them, primarily serve a moneymaking machine. .......... We have a responsibility to use our collective power to insist on changes: for universal health care and paid sick leave but also investments in community health worker programs and essential housing and social welfare systems. .......... If we can build an organizing network through doctors’ unions, then proposals to demand universal health care through use of collective civil disobedience via physicians’ control over health care documentation and billing, for example, could move from visions to genuinely actionable plans. ......... until doctors join together to call for a fundamental reorganization of our medical system, our work won’t do what we were promised it would do, nor will it prioritize the people we claim to prioritize. To be able to build the systems we need, we must face an unpleasant truth: Our health care institutions as they exist today are part of the problem rather than the solution.
ChatGPT Wrote (Most of) This Letter, but Its Editors Are Human A chatbot comes to its own defense, saying the idea that it is a threat to democracy is “fear-based speculation.” .......... While it is true that ChatGPT can generate text that is often indistinguishable from human writing, it is important to note that this technology is not capable of understanding the nuances and subtleties of political networks and systems. ....... ChatGPT and similar technologies have the potential to be powerful tools for businesses, researchers and educators. They can be used to automate repetitive tasks, improve efficiency and generate new insights
The U.S. Has Made a Coldly Logical Decision in Ukraine. So Has Russia. Kyiv wants as many weapons as the West can send, it wants to reclaim every inch of territory, and it doesn’t want to entertain terms that would concede anything to the invading Russians. ......... shared by many hawkish voices in Europe and America, who continue to plan for Ukraine’s triumph and Vladimir Putin’s overthrow. .......... the White House’s proximate goal is a favorable armistice, not complete Russian defeat. ......... the Russians seem to be not just digging in but also girding for their own renewed offensive. ....... From the assumed Russian perspective, Ukrainian gains in the fall and European resilience in the winter have made military success only more urgent. There’s no point in elaborating peace proposals so long as the Ukrainians are convinced that they can win a total victory, and they’re more convinced of that than ever. ......... escalation is embraced as a coldly logical decision, as the only reasonable course. ....... And out of such rationality, you get closer to the irrationality of fighting for years in a war that neither side can fully hope to win.
Putin Has No Red Lines The Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021 — an outcome the West had spent two decades and trillions of dollars preventing — was the brightest of red lines, until, in the face of changing priorities and a different view of costs and benefits, it suddenly wasn’t. ........... preoccupation with red lines invites deception. A state will seek to manipulate an adversary’s desire to restrain itself by enlarging the range of interests it claims are fundamental and actions it considers unacceptable. Fear of escalation thus encourages an escalation of bluff. ........ communicating the certainty of severe consequences should Russia use nuclear weapons. ........ Russia has no red lines: It has only, at each moment, a range of options and perceptions of their relative risks and benefits. ........ a long war threatens his regime — whose preservation seems to be the only thing he values more highly than a subordinated Ukraine — by fatally weakening domestic cohesion or by escalating out of control. ........ To signal unilateral restraint is to make an unforced concession. ....... An orderly withdrawal is unlikely to lead to regime change, let alone the breakup of Russia. ......... if Russia’s elites conclude that it is as dangerous for Russia to leave Ukraine as to stay, they have no incentive to press for an end to the war.
Are We in the West Weaker Than Ukrainians? I worry that we in the West are made of weaker stuff. ........ almost half of Americans want the United States to push Ukraine “to settle for peace as soon as possible,” even if it loses territory .......... We are holding Ukraine’s coat as it is sacrificing lives and infrastructure in ways that benefit us, by degrading Russia’s military threat to NATO and Western Europe — and thus to us. ......... “They’re doing us a favor; they’re fighting our fight” ........ “If Ukraine falls, there will certainly be a wave of nuclear proliferation” ....... If the West falters and allows Putin to win in Ukraine, Xi will feel greater confidence that he can win in Taiwan. ........ Putin has been a destabilizing and brutal bully for many years — from Chechnya to Syria, Georgia to Moldova — partly because the world has been unwilling to stand up to him and partly because he possesses a powerful military force that Ukraine is now dismantling. Aside from energy, Russia’s economy is not substantial. ........... “Russia is a poor country, an oil appendage to the world, a gas station.” ......... bowing to nuclear blackmail and rewarding an invasion would create their own risks for many years to come, and on balance those dangers seem greater than those of maintaining the present course. .......... The world could use a spinal transplant from brave Ukrainians.
How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees. ......... When we humans do these things, we call it lobbying. Successful agents in this sphere pair precision message writing with smart targeting strategies. Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting. A.I. could provide techniques for that as well. ......... What makes the threat of A.I.-powered lobbyists greater than the threat already posed by the high-priced lobbying firms on K Street is their potential for acceleration. Human lobbyists rely on decades of experience to find strategic solutions to achieve a policy outcome. That expertise is limited, and therefore expensive. ......... A.I. could, theoretically, do the same thing much more quickly and cheaply. ......... Just as teachers will have to change how they give students exams and essay assignments in light of ChatGPT, governments will have to change how they relate to lobbyists. ........ Not everyone can afford an experienced lobbyist, but a software interface to an A.I. system could be made available to anyone. If we’re lucky, maybe this kind of strategy-generating A.I. could revitalize the democratization of democracy by giving this kind of lobbying power to the powerless.
What Will Russia Without Putin Look Like? Maybe This. Russia’s current condition — militarized, isolated, corrupt, dominated by the security services and hemorrhaging talent as hundreds of thousands flee abroad to escape service in a horrific war — is bleak. ........ To change the country, however, it is not enough for Mr. Putin to die or step down. Russia’s future leaders must dismantle and transform the structures over which he has presided for more than two decades. .......... an “act on peace” that would demobilize the army and end the occupation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; create a joint group for the investigation of war crimes; pay reparations for damaged infrastructure and the families of the dead; and reject future “wars of conquest.” ......... The officials responsible for the devastation will need to be rooted out, too — something that never happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ........ The congress would bar from working in state and educational institutions those who belonged to “criminal” organizations — such as the Federal Security Services or state television channels — or publicly supported the war ........ The Russian Federation is highly centralized, with a patchwork of over 80 republics and regions that are strongly subordinate to the president, enabling the accumulation of enormous power. .......... dissolve the Russian Federation and replace it with a new parliamentary democracy. .......... “self-determination,” the future Russian state should be “joined on the basis of free choice by the peoples who populate it.” ............ From Vladimir Lenin to Boris Yeltsin, modern Russian leaders have a history of offering decentralization to win support and then reneging once they consolidate power. ........ the disproportionate deployment and death of ethnic minorities from poorer republics like Dagestan and Buryatia in the war in Ukraine. .......... Mr. Khodorkovsky and Aleksei Navalny, the country’s most well-known dissident, who is currently languishing in a penal colony, have also issued calls to turn Russia into a parliamentary democracy with more power devolved to the local and regional levels. .......... history shows that radical developments are often incubated abroad or underground. ....... In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political émigrés in bickering communities around Europe plotted the downfall of the Russian empire. Among them was Vladimir Lenin, who was living in Poland at the outbreak of World War I. ......... In early 1917, a pessimistic Lenin lamented that he probably wouldn’t live to see the revolution; a few weeks later, the czar was overthrown.
Where is Physics Headed (and How Soon Do We Get There)? she now uses quantum computers to investigate the properties of wormholes......... things have never been more exciting in particle physics, in terms of the opportunities to understand space and time, matter and energy, and the fundamental particles — if they are even particles. .......... I was so excited in 1980 about the idea of grand unification, and that now looks small compared to the possibilities ahead. .......... the basic building blocks of matter are quarks and leptons; the rules that govern them are described by the quantum field theory called the Standard Model. .......... Why two different kinds of building blocks? Why so many “elementary” particles? Why four forces? How do dark matter, dark energy, gravity and space-time fit in? Answering these questions is the work of elementary particle physics. ......... for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: We didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle. ........ Discussing what space and time are and where they came from is now within the realm of particle physics. ......... does the universe have an end? Is there a multiverse? How many spaces and times are there? Does that question even make sense? ........... At high enough energies, the fundamental forces — gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces — seem to become equal. ............ the ultimate law remains a persistent puzzle, and the way we solve it is going to be through new thinking. .......... it looks like the four different forces we see are just different facets of a unified force. ........... the hallmark of great science: You ask a question, and often it turns out to be the wrong question, but you have to ask a question just to find out it’s the wrong one. If it is, you ask a new one. .......... String theory — the vaunted “theory of everything” — describes the basic particles and forces in nature as vibrating strings of energy. ............ Some scientists criticize string theory as being outside science. ....... Mathematics is the language of science, and the more our language is enriched, the more fully we can describe nature. We will have to wait and see what comes from string theory, but I think it will be big. ......... Among the many features of string theory is that the equations seem to have 10⁵⁰⁰ solutions — describing 10⁵⁰⁰ different possible universes or even more. Do we live in a multiverse? .......... the multiverse gives me a headache; not being testable, at least not yet, it isn’t science ......... But it may be the most important idea of our time. ........ the standard model of cosmology doesn’t say what 95 percent of the universe is .......... space can bend and time can warp ........ Particle physics invented big, global science, and national and now global facilities. ........ science has allowed humankind to do big things — Covid vaccines, the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, the Webb telescope — that extend our vision and our power to shape our future. ....... If we continue to dream big and work together, even more amazing things lie ahead.
A New View of the Most Explosive Moon in the Solar System Recent strange activity around Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, confused and excited scientists........ Because Io is far from the sun and has a very thin atmosphere, its surface, on average, sits at around minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is coated in a frosty layer of sulfuric compounds. ........ Volcanic eruptions there, which come in many different forms and intensities, can reach temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. When super hot meets super cold, molecules like sulfur dioxide and sodium can be shot into space. ..... Some of the most explosive eruptions come from fissures in the surface and throw fountains of lava half a mile into space. The charged molecules create what is known as a “plasma torus” in Io’s wake: a doughnut-shaped cloud of ionized gas that collects in Jupiter’s magnetic field. ....... “You can think of it like looking at different parts of an elephant”
A Brutal New Phase of Putin’s Terrible War in Ukraine The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so. ........ After 11 months during which Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces, clawed back some of its lands and cities and withstood lethal assaults on its infrastructure, the war is at a stalemate. ........ Both sides are now said to be bracing for a fierce new round of offensives in the late winter or spring. Russia has mobilized 300,000 new men to throw into the fray, and some arms factories are working around the clock. ........ the broad, muddy fields of Ukraine will soon again witness full-scale tank-and-trench warfare, this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia. This was never supposed to happen again in Europe after the last world war. ......... But as Mr. Putin digs himself ever deeper into pursuing his delusions, it is also critical that the Russian people be aware of what is being done in their name, and how it is destroying their own future. ....... their lives are being mortgaged for generations to come in a state distrusted and disliked in many parts of the world. ......... The Kremlin’s propaganda machinery has been working full time churning out false narratives about a heroic Russian struggle against forces of fascism and debauchery, in which the Western arms are but more proof that Ukraine is a proxy war by the West to strip Russia of its destiny and greatness. Mr. Putin has concocted an elaborate mythology in which Ukraine is an indelible part of a Russkiy mir, a greater Russian world. .......... The start of the war stunned Russians, but Mr. Putin seemed convinced that a West wasted by decadence and decline would squawk but take no action. He and his commanders were apparently unprepared for the extraordinary resistance they met in Ukraine, or for the speed with which the United States and its allies, horrified by the crude violation of the postwar order, came together in Ukraine’s defense. .......... what he insists on calling his “limited military offensive” into an existential struggle between a spiritually ordained Great Russia and a corrupt and debauched West. ........ until Mr. Putin began trying to change Ukraine’s borders by force in 2014, they were finally enjoying what those in other industrialized countries had long considered normal — the opportunity to earn decent salaries, buy consumer goods and enjoy vastly expanded freedoms to travel abroad and speak their mind. ........ Like the last great European war, this one is mostly one man’s madness. .......... Russia faces decades of economic stagnation and regression even if the war ends soon ......... Many Western companies have left, trade with the West has dwindled, and financing the war is draining the budget. Numerous foreign airlines have ceased service to Russia. Add to that the millions of Russia’s best and brightest who have fled, and the future is bleak. ......... Moscow’s casualties were “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded.” About 300,000 men have been pressed into cannon-fodder duty in the army and many more may follow. ........... on Jan. 11, in his first televised meeting with government ministers in the new year, when he tore into Denis Manturov, deputy prime minister, over aircraft production figures Mr. Putin insisted were wrong and Mr. Manturov defended. Mr. Putin finally exploded, “What are you doing, really, playing the fool?” “Yest’,” Mr. Manturov finally said, the Russian equivalent of “Yes, sir.”
Jacinda Ardern, the Star That Didn’t Quite Deliver For a brief time, Jacinda Ardern put us on the map....... Here was a young prime minister, elected in 2017 at just 37, with an Obama-grade 1,000-watt smile, who symbolized optimism and Kiwi values of fairness and hope. To progressive admirers around the world, she became a symbolic alternative to Donald Trump, proving that progressives could win elections and even have a baby in office. ....... over time, many Kiwis came to feel that, despite her international image, Jacinda’s rhetoric was never quite matched by substance. ........ Lockdown was possible only with the consent of the governed. No one liked it, but most of us agreed with it. We were relieved that thousands were not dying, and her government was re-elected with a colossal mandate in 2020. But those tough Covid policies led to growing division, spurred conspiracy theorists and strained the economy. ........ But New Zealand today feels as unequal as when Ms. Ardern was elected. ........ Her government kept wages paid and businesses going during the pandemic with stimulus checks and low interest rates. But that has caused a massive transfer of wealth to asset owners. .......... Mario Cuomo said that we campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Ms. Ardern gave us the poetry, showing that elections can be won with progressive values and a promise to leave no child behind. But you’ve got to deliver. Rising crime, inflation and stubborn inequality matter more to New Zealand voters than global star power. ......... Ms. Ardern’s star still shines brightly overseas, and her time on the global stage may just be beginning. Since borders reopened to travel as the pandemic eased, her international miles have increased in inverse proportion to her government’s popularity. .
There’s Been a Revolution in How China Is Governed Yuen Yuen Ang argues that understanding China as an “autocracy with democratic characteristics” is key to making sense of its rise and trajectory. ......... You can’t understand this era in American politics without recognizing that it’s playing out in the context of China. Sometimes it’s direct, as in the way much of American manufacturing moved offshore to China, altering the politics of a lot of the Midwest. Sometimes it’s indirect, as in the way the sense that China still builds things and we don’t, has become a driving political argument, and has largely inspired, I think, the new focus on production and industrial policy in Washington. Things like the CHIPS and Science Act are explicitly framed as keeping our technology lead or increasing our technology lead, vis-à-vis China. ....... China’s size and centrality make it a kind of political hyper-object. It’s near and far and different and familiar and here and there, all at the same time. To cover China is to cover, in a way, America. ........ Yuen Yuen Ang, a China scholar at Johns Hopkins University ....... we are so focused on how China chooses its leaders on the symmetry, or lack thereof, between our political institutions and China’s, that we really miss its governing institutions. We really miss a much more consequential revolution in how China is actually administrated. ....... marked the end of the reform era and the beginning of a personalist dictatorship under Xi Jinping. ........
“the clash of two gilded ages.”
...... the 10-year Cultural Revolution, which was a de facto civil war within China. ........ the dominant political emotion is envy. ...... we envy their manufacturing prowess, that they still make things, that they act. ......... how slow and sclerotic we are ....... from the Chinese point of view, the prevalent perception is the Americans are not only envious of China’s rise, envious of its state capacity, but that America is now on a project to contain China’s rise. So from the Chinese point of view, it’s more than envy. .......... There’s this idea that as they got richer, they would become a liberal democracy. And that didn’t happen. ......... America sometimes forgets what its real strengths are. ........... after 35 years, China did not become a liberal democracy. And it actually became more authoritarian under Xi Jinping’s rule. And so the West freaked out .......... actually, political reforms were a fundamental prerequisite of China’s economic reforms. ....... what happened within the Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping is that he introduced partial democratic qualities. ........ He also introduced a tremendous amount of competition into the political system. ......... “In the United States, politics are exciting and bureaucracy is boring. In China, the opposite is true.” ............ you have the same Chinese Communist Party in office since 1949. But if you look at the bureaucracy and the governance, it has dramatically transformed up and down over time. ......... In China, you take the existence of the Chinese Communist Party for granted. You know that it’s the only party and it’s not going away. ......... Bureaucracy is a dirty word. It’s an epithet, I think, in America. If I say you’re a bureaucrat, I’m not typically saying something good about you. .......... Historically, bureaucrats, or government officials, have always occupied the highest position in the social hierarchy. And this is true until modern day China ........ until this day, when you look at the annual civil service examinations in China, millions and millions of people line up. It is very attractive to be a civil servant, not only because of the job stability but because of the status it brings. ........ they opened up, they made more flexible, they made more experimental, they made more results oriented their public administration. ......... The autocracies that we are familiar with are autocracies with bad governance — for example, North Korea, Maoist China. But there’s another kind of autocracy, which is autocracy with partial liberalization and effective governance. And that was reform China under Deng Xiaoping. ......... The same economic success brought corruption, inequality, debt risks, environmental pollution — all of the defining problems facing China when Xi Jinping took over. ....... “Public employees took a cut of revenue produced by their organizations. And these changes fueled a results-oriented culture in the bureaucracy. All the results in the Chinese context are measured purely in economic terms.” ......... in China, you have low salaries and a fair amount of profit-sharing, which you could look at as corruption, or you could look at as incentive alignment .......... It occurs at all levels of power. At the highest level, it’s not about salaries. But it is about the very top elites essentially privately splitting up the spoils of capitalism. ........ we get to know, ah, so-and-so, he was in Politburo and goodness, he amassed billions of dollars through his family networks when he was in power ............. everyone gets to share. Whether you are the very top elite in the Politburo, right down to being a rank-and-file bureaucrat in a particular Chinese city, you get to share, in terms of the revenue being made by your agency. ......... in the past, in pre-modern societies, whether it’s in the West or in China, actually most officials and bureaucrats function on like a tax farming commission salesmen basis. .............. They were not actually paid a salary by the state. They took a cut of taxes they collected. ......... we can see all of the consequences play out today in the combination of crazy growth and, at the same time, crazy corruption. ......... And that was actually true in America in its period of really torrid development, too.......... the growth-damaging forms of corruption are like petty bribery, embezzlement, extortion of businesses ......... access money corruption and capitalism has actually gone hand-in-hand ......... “Inflexible procedural rules are a hallmark of the American state. The ubiquity of court challenges, the artificial rigors of notice and comment rule-making, zealous environmental review, pre-enforcement review of agency rules, picayune legal rules, governing hiring and procurement, nationwide court injunctions — the list goes on and on. Collectively, these procedures frustrate the very government action that progressives demand to address the urgent problems that now confront us.” ........... the administrative state is so rule bound in America, it’s become highly nonresponsive and highly nonexperimental. ........... the focus of American and democratic politics is, we’re going to limit the government, but we are going to give society as much freedom as possible. And so oftentimes, what my Chinese colleagues would say is, America is a society where the government is small but society is large. ............. China is a mirror image. In China, the focus of limits and restrictions is not placed on the government, but on society. .............. In America, you see that from society — from civil society, universities, the private sector. Whereas, when you look at China, very often the source of policy adaptability comes from the bureaucracy. It comes from the government itself. That’s not to say that Chinese private sector does not have innovations. It also has many, many innovations. But it’s always taking the lead of the government. ............ “The goal of economic growth was always paired with an indispensable requisite, maintaining political stability. Failing this requirement, for instance, allowing a mass protest to break out, could cause leaders to flunk their entire test in a given year.” ...............
the number one goal of the party is to keep itself in power.
........... capitalism is allowed to thrive, to the extent that it allows China to become prosperous. .......... he came to power in 2012, in the midst of the greatest scandal facing the Communist Party in a whole generation. ........... he was relatively unknown before 2012 ......... he was seen as a safe choice, that he was a low-profile politician, unlike Bo Xilai, who was too flamboyant and made too much trouble. .......... some people give Xi credit for his ability to lie low and to bide his time. And by appearing to be this extremely low-profile, mild-mannered politician, he got his chance in 2012. And then year after year, he surprised everyone who put him in power. .......... he has correctly identified corruption as a systemic problem. He correctly identified that he could use anti-corruption to get party officials in line with his orders. Because the system was so systemically corrupt, there were likely so many individuals who were vulnerable to investigations and indictments. So he had something to use against all of them. And I think that really helped him to get the obedience and consolidation of power that he finally achieved to perfection in 2022. .......... he is genuinely concerned about systemic corruption across the entire bureaucracy .......... he empowered the disciplinary apparatus and launched them on a massive investigation drive. ......... he didn’t address the root causes of corruption, which is that the party and government has so much power in the economy. And that power was creating a demand for bribes and graft. ......... now to be successful within the political system, the number one thing to do is to demonstrate personal loyalty to Xi. And that may still involve some economic growth, but not always. ......... since 1949, there isn’t just one China, but there has been at least three different Chinas. So China under Mao, under Deng and under Xi are three completely different Chinas. .......... he has drastically changed the economic and political system in China. .......... What Xi Jinping has tried to do is he took this system that he inherited from Deng Xiaoping, which had created tremendous wealth for China, but it also created tremendous problems of capitalism, like corruption, inequality, debt risk, pollution. .............. with him having all of the say, now he doesn’t have to go through anyone. He gets to slam the table and make a decision, like “zero Covid.” .......... former President Hu Jintao. So he was the paramount leader of the Party who selected and brought Xi to power. .......... it was shocking, not only for the rest of the world, but for people in China, to see a former leader be escorted out in such a disrespectful manner. .......... Xi Jinping in 2012 and Xi Jinping in 2022 are actually quite two different men. .......... you can see him initially being very respectful toward his benefactor, Hu Jintao. And by the end of this 10 year process, when he finally emerges at the top with no challenges whatsoever to his power, he finally also shoves his benefactor out of the door, literally. ............ The key significance of these protests that we saw in November is that it is the first time Chinese citizens have come out into the streets in demonstration against a national policy, and have successfully made China’s top leader change his mind. That is something unusual........... they successfully got Xi to listen. And he changed course very suddenly. ......... “Legitimacy is not solely, not even primarily, a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive and fair.” .............. that sense that the Chinese people have had that their government is almost omniscient and keeps making these good decisions and continuing growth and moving the country forward ......... his anti-poverty and anti-corruption policies, you could describe them as populist. They appeal to the poor and the lower classes in China. They appeal to the public resentment against corruption. ........... the party’s desire to exert political control on tech companies that were growing too big and powerful from the party’s point of view. ............ within months, $1 trillion in market valuation was wiped off by the common prosperity campaign. ............ on eradicating poverty, we have plenty of experience. But in managing capitalism, we have much to learn. ........ It doesn’t know how to deal with corruption on this scale, inequality on this scale. ......... And in that speech, he told the local bureaucrats, why don’t you guys go and experiment and figure it out. And so what we now see in 2023 is an even more drastic course correction. ........... they would like to drastically relax regulations, because they want to bring back business confidence. ......... And then comes Joe Biden, and he is tougher on China — not rhetorically, but in substance, than Donald Trump. ..........
China and America are similar, in the sense that they are both extremely self-centered
............. he chose to project ambition as a global power, which alarmed the United States. He also chose to take the country on a more authoritarian path, which alarmed the United States even more. .......... the two countries have extremely different strengths and weaknesses. .......... which of these two countries are going to make use of their political system to solve problems of capitalism. ............ a fascinating story about a mathematical genius who is not accepted for many, many years by society because his genius was so wide that it could not fit in any given disciplinary box. .
We are happy to announce the next phase of our partnership with Microsoft: https://t.co/mqx3ZJNGfL
Elon Musk’s Appetite for Destruction A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s self-driving software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about the company’s erratic C.E.O.? ........ Tesla was at one point worth more than Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and General Motors combined ........ He’s the sort of man who walks around with a battery of fully formed opinions on life’s most important subjects — computers, software, exercise, money — and a willingness to share them. ....... He was particularly concerned that I understand that Autopilot and F.S.D. were saving lives: “The data shows that their accident rate while on Beta is far less than other cars” ........ “Slowing down the F.S.D. Beta will result in more accidents and loss of life based on hard statistical data.” ........ Key drew an analogy to the coronavirus vaccines, which prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths but also caused rare deaths and injuries from adverse reactions. ........ Key didn’t want to talk about Musk, but the executive’s reputational collapse had become impossible to ignore. He was in the middle of his bizarre, on-again-off-again campaign to take over Twitter, to the dismay of Tesla loyalists. And though he hadn’t yet attacked Anthony Fauci or spread conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi’s husband or gone on a journalist-banning spree on the platform, the question was already suggesting itself: How do you explain Elon Musk? .......... Autopilot, he said, was like fancy cruise control: speed, steering, crash avoidance. ...... He was looking at a favorite trail and ignoring the road. “I looked up to the left, and the car went off to the right,” he said. “I was in this false sense of security.” ........ First, he reached out directly to someone who was harmed by one of his products — something it’s hard to imagine the head of G.M. or Ford contemplating, if only for legal reasons. (Indeed, this email was entered into evidence after Riley sued Tesla.) And then Musk rebuffed Riley. No vague “I’ll look into it” or “We’ll see what we can do.” Riley receives a hard no. ........ Tesla is a big car company with thousands of employees. It existed before Elon Musk. It might exist after Elon Musk. ...... the lawsuits, a crashing stock price and an A.I. that still seems all too capable of catastrophic failure — you should look to its mercurial, brilliant, sophomoric chief executive. ....... during a recent deposition, when a lawyer asked him, “Do you have some kind of unique ability to identify narcissistic sociopaths?” and he replied, “You mean by looking in the mirror?” ....... his breakneck pursuit of A.I., which in the long term, he believes, will save countless lives. ........ Day in, day out, we scare and maim and kill ourselves in cars. In the United States last year, there were around 11 million road accidents, nearly five million injuries and more than 40,000 deaths. ........ there is at least one Autopilot-related crash in the United States every day ........ The cars didn’t have sufficient driver monitoring because Musk didn’t want drivers to think that the car needed human supervision. ...... The company would admit to the technology’s limitations in the user manual but publish viral videos of a Tesla driving a complicated route with no human intervention. ......... On days when it was sunny out and there was a lot of glare, the car could be “moody.” And when it was foggy, and it was often foggy in Fresno, “it freaks out.” .......... Once we had come to a complete stop, the Tesla accelerated quickly, cutting off one car turning across us and veering around another. It was not so much inhuman as the behavior of a human who was determined to be a jerk. .......... There was a situation that kept stumping the A.I. until, after enough data had been collected by dedicated drivers like Alford, the neural net figured it out. Repeat this risk-reward conversion X number of times, and maybe Tesla will solve self-driving. Maybe even next year. .......... (He was even more enthusiastic about the version of F.S.D. released in December, which he described as nearly flawless.) .......... Peter Thiel, Musk’s former business partner at PayPal, once said that if he wrote a book, the chapter about Musk would be called “The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk.” ......... a man who simply embraces astonishing amounts of present-day risk in the rational assumption of future gains. .......... give him credit for creating the now-robust market in electric vehicles in the United States and around the world. ........ Neuralink had the potential to cure paralysis, he believed, which would improve the lives of millions of future humans. ......... He called Twitter a “digital town square” that was responsible for nothing less than preventing a new American civil war. ......... In 2019, in a testy exchange of email with the activist investor and steadfast Tesla critic Aaron Greenspan, Musk bristled at the suggestion that Autopilot was anything other than lifesaving technology. “The data is unequivocal that Autopilot is safer than human driving by a significant margin,” he wrote. “It is unethical and false of you to claim otherwise. In doing so, you are endangering the public.” ................ Musk rarely talks about Autopilot or F.S.D. without mentioning how superior it is to a human driver. At a shareholders’ meeting in August, he said that Tesla was “solving a very important part of A.I., and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving just an order of magnitude safer than people.” ........ Teslas with Autopilot engaged were one-tenth as likely to crash as a regular car. ........ even if Autopilot and human drivers were equally deadly, we should prefer the A.I., provided that the next software update, based on data from crash reports and near misses, would make the system even safer. “That’s a little bit like surgeons doing experimental surgery,” he said. “Probably the first few times they do the surgery, they’re going to lose patients, but the argument for that is they will save more patients in the long run.” ............ In the third quarter of 2022, Tesla claimed that there was one crash for every 6.26 million miles driven using Autopilot — indeed, almost 10 times better than the U.S. baseline of one crash for every 652,000 miles. .......... crashes were five times as common on local roads as on turnpikes. When comparing Autopilot numbers to highway numbers, Tesla’s advantage drops significantly. ......... Teslas crashed just as often when Autopilot was on as when it was off. ......... Right now in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, and coming soon to cities all over the world, you can hail a robotaxi operated by Cruise or Waymo. ...... at this point, Tesla’s competitors are closer to achieving full self-driving than any vehicle equipped with F.S.D. ........ “I thought the self-driving problem would be hard,” he said, “but it was harder than I thought. It’s not like I thought it’d be easy. I thought it would be very hard. But it was actually way harder than even that.” ............. The car did a good job of staying in its lane, better than any other traffic-aware cruise control I’ve used. .
Oliver Stone Goes Nuclear at Davos At the World Economic Forum, the provocative filmmaker received a warm reception for his film promoting nuclear power. ....... nuclear has been unfairly maligned by oil companies ........ “Despite our investments in renewables, it’s not improving our carbon emissions because we haven’t tackled the core issue — eliminating fossil fuels,” he told DealBook. “Climate change has forced us to take a new look at nuclear power.” .
The Sanctions on Russia Are Working Slowly but Surely, They Are Weakening Putin ........ Russia accumulated substantial financial reserves. Since 2014, Russia has increased trade to Asia, which has allowed it to weather a reduction of commerce with the West. Most important, Putin aggressively strengthened his repressive machine to deter mass protests against deteriorating living standards. ........ 10 percent of the Russian workforce is without work. This is comparable with the worst levels in the 1990s, during the second half of which 10 to 13 percent of Russians were unemployed. ....... The so-called strong ruble is propped up by draconian currency controls and a plunge in imports. This policy has badly hurt industries like the steelmaking sector: finished steel output contracted by over seven percent in 2022. ........ The output of the Russian automotive industry, which directly or indirectly provides jobs to 3.5 million people, plummeted by two-thirds in 2022. ........ Russians’ living standards are sharply deteriorating. ........ October 2022, 68 percent of Russians had noticed a reduction in the supply of goods offered in stores over the past three months. ........... 35 percent of Russians were forced to cut their spending on food in 2022 ......... only 23 percent of Russians considered their personal financial situation to be “good.” ........ Asian countries such as China and India are mostly interested in buying cheap Russian raw materials such as oil, gas, coal, and roundwood at a significant discount. Leaders in those countries are not interested in helping Russia develop its own competitive manufacturing sectors. ......... Capital flight from Russia in 2022 is projected to equal $251 billion .......... Putin destroyed the organized political opposition after he imprisoned the leading dissident, Alexei Navalny, and sent most of Russia’s other most prominent opposition figures to jail or into exile. He has successfully intimidated the Russian population by introducing tough prison terms for those protesting his leadership: Russians face up to 15 years in jail for “political extremism” or “discrediting Russia’s armed forces.” ............
But public opinion is trending against Putin. As the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrates, once long-suppressed public discontent breaks out into the open, change can happen fast.
Is It Bad to Drink Coffee on an Empty Stomach? Your gut is adaptable, experts say, but there are a few facts you should keep in mind.......... For many people, enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee first thing in the morning is a nonnegotiable way to start the day. ........ Fortunately, the stomach can withstand all kinds of irritants, including coffee. ....... Irritants like alcohol, cigarette smoke and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs — such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or naproxen (Aleve) — are well known to alter our stomach’s natural defense mechanisms and injure its lining .......... Outside of the gut, the caffeine from coffee is well known to increase heart rate and blood pressure. And if you drink it too close to bedtime, it can disrupt your sleep. .......... Drinking coffee on an empty stomach is unlikely to cause any damage to your stomach, but it could theoretically provoke heartburn ........ Adding a splash of milk or cream or a small bite of food with your morning cup can also help. ...... coffee drinking has many health benefits, including links to longevity, a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and protection against many cancers, including liver, prostate, breast and colorectal cancer. ....... “There’s far more evidence for coffee’s benefits than harms” .
This Is How Red States Silence Blue Cities. And Democracy. a blue city that serves as the capital of a red state had better brace itself when the legislature arrives in town ....... Republicans in the Tennessee House and Senate introduced legislation that would cut our Metro Council in half. (The bills ostensibly apply to all city governments with a legislative body larger than 20 members, but that’s just Nashville.) ........ state lawmakers are once again interfering in the self-governance of the blue city that drives the economic engine of the entire red state. And they’re doing it for absolutely no reason but spite. .......... Joe Biden won Nashville with almost 65 percent of the vote. ........ Occurring as it does among so many other political injustices in a nation moving rapidly toward minority rule, even the utter disenfranchisement of an entire American city is hard to get very worked up about. ......... In dismembering Nashville to create three Republican voting districts, in other words, the Tennessee General Assembly managed only to nationalize its own brand of chaos. And maybe that was the whole point. ........ Last fall Mr. Green flew to Brazil to do the same thing in that much more fragile democracy. In a trip paid for by the American Conservative Union, he met with Brazilian lawmakers pushing to change election laws. The meeting’s agenda was to discuss “voting integrity policies.” We know what happened next: Thanks in part to one of Nashville’s representatives in Congress, antidemocracy riots are now an American export. ........ Meanwhile, here at home, Mr. Green has just been named chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. .
Why Republican Politicians Still Hate Medicare The Republicans who now control the House will soon try to slash Social Security and Medicare. ............ George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005 surely played a role in the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006; Donald Trump’s attempt to kill Obamacare helped Nancy Pelosi regain the speakership in 2018. ......... Even now many, perhaps most Republicans in Congress aren’t culture-war zealots. Instead, they’re careerists who depend, both for campaign contributions and for post-Congress career prospects, on the same billionaires who have supported right-wing economic ideology for decades. They won’t stand up to the crazies and conspiracy theorists, but their own agenda is still tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor and middle class. ......... .
Big Banks Set Aside Billions as They Brace for a Downturn The country’s largest lenders increased their reserves to protect against deteriorating economic conditions this year, after reporting resilient profits for the end of last year. ......... The bank anticipates a drop in demand for auto loans, home equity lines and other consumer credit because “people are reading the same headlines we’re all reading, about a recession is coming and they should be careful” .
The Trouble With Paradise Within hours, midwinter gloom had been transformed, as if by magic, into tropical sunshine. I was paying two dollars a night for a cottage of my own with a golden beach 45 seconds away, down a fragrant, palm-shaded lane. ........ In Sri Lanka I’d realized that the island has so often been taken to be Arcadia — Arabs saw it as “contiguous with the Garden of Eden,” and an Italian papal legate announced that the waters of paradise could be there — that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and millions of us tourists have all scrambled to grab a piece of it. ......... In Jerusalem, like every other visitor, I’d been vividly reminded that the city of faith has always been a city of conflict. .......... In Kashmir, I’d sat on a houseboat in the sun — nothing to be heard but the sound of kingfishers’ wings above a lotus pond — as locals in little boats paddled past, offering aromatic spices and exquisitely carved small boxes. I was truly in Heaven — so long as I forgot that, minutes across the water, army roadblocks and encampments spoke for the more than half a million soldiers trying to maintain peace in a bitterly contested territory claimed for more than 70 years now by both India and Pakistan. ........... In Ladakh, the kind of pristine Himalayan region that might have inspired the notion of Shangri-La, I discovered more peace and beauty than I dared to dream of — along with local kids who reminded me that the real paradise was that place called California. ........... Besides, if I really did come upon a calm and self-contained Eden, what would it have to gain from me? I, like any visitor, could only be the serpent in the garden. .......... Naked ascetics, smeared in ash, were expressing their contempt for simple notions of right and wrong by living in graveyards and drinking from skulls. The holy waters the faithful were gratefully imbibing contained hundreds of times the maximum level of coliform bacteria the World Health Organization has deemed safe for drinking. .
Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It. OpenAI’s new chatbot is raising fears of cheating on homework, but its potential as an educational tool outweighs its risks....... ChatGPT, the buzzy chatbot developed by OpenAI that is capable of writing cogent essays, solving science and math problems and producing working computer code. ........ Students are using it to write their assignments, passing off A.I.-generated essays and problem sets as their own. .......... One high school teacher told me that he used ChatGPT to evaluate a few of his students’ papers, and that the app had provided more detailed and useful feedback on them than he would have, in a tiny fraction of the time. ......... “Am I even necessary now?” he asked me, only half joking. .......... (Tim Robinson, a spokesman for Seattle Public Schools, told me that ChatGPT was blocked on school devices in December, “along with five other cheating tools.”) .......... ChatGPT is a freakishly capable tool that landed in their midst with no warning, and it performs reasonably well across a wide variety of tasks and academic subjects. ........
banning ChatGPT from the classroom is the wrong move.
......... schools should thoughtfully embrace ChatGPT as a teaching aid — one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside A.I. systems as adults. ........ Right now, ChatGPT is the only free, easy-to-use chatbot of its caliber. ........... while they found the idea of ChatGPT-assisted cheating annoying, policing it sounded even worse. ......... schools should treat ChatGPT the way they treat calculators — allowing it for some assignments, but not others, and assuming that unless students are being supervised in person with their devices stashed away, they’re probably using one. ........ with the right approach, it can be an effective teaching tool. ......... It could serve as an after-hours tutor (“explain the Doppler effect, using language an eighth grader could understand”) or a debate sparring partner (“convince me that animal testing should be banned”). ......... ChatGPT wasn’t a threat to student learning as long as teachers paired it with substantive, in-class discussions. .......... today’s students will graduate into a world full of generative A.I. programs. .
How Western Goods Reach Russia: A Long Line of Trucks Through Georgia With Western sanctions barring many imports, a lot of what Russia needs now travels a slow, crowded truck route through the Caucasus Mountains from Georgia. ........ The trucks wait for days with their cargo — car parts, industrial materials, chemicals, even the paper for tea bags — to cross the frontier on a journey that usually starts in Turkey and ends in Russian towns and cities where Western goods are in high demand. ........ While growth prospects remain dim, the outright collapse that some economists had predicted in the face of Western sanctions did not come about. ......... The lines sometimes stretch all the way to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, about 100 miles from the border, with special parking lots along its bypass road where truckers can rest, and sleep, while they wait. ........ “Georgia is performing a balancing act between its official pro-Western orientation and its economic dependence on Russia” .......... Since May, Russia has received more than $20 billion worth of goods, through the so-called parallel imports process — when something is brought to a country without the consent of the company that owns the trademark ........ Overall, by the end of 2022, Russia had almost restored its prewar level of imports, according to the country’s Central Bank — while also adding to a major source of income: the customs duties it collects on goods entering the country. ........... the boost to Georgia’s economy could just be too much for businesses and the government to resist. .
She Witnessed Mao’s Worst Excesses. Now She Has a Warning for the World. At 93, the memoirist Yuan-tsung Chen hopes that her recollections of China’s tumultuous past will help the country confront its historical wrongs — and avoid repeating them. .......... the story of the man so hungry that he ate himself. ......... “When you do things in the spirit of Mao, that scares me,” she says, referring to China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. ...... Under Mr. Xi, China enforced a sweeping crackdown on Hong Kong that included an all-encompassing national security law put in place in 2020. Since then, the city has fallen under a cloak of silence that Ms. Chen says she recognizes. “My current situation looks uncannily like the one I found myself in more than 60 years ago.” .
African and Invisible: The Other New York Migrant Crisis Like many who have crossed the border from Latin America, they arrived in New York after a desperate journey. But these men have few options in the city, often relying on one man in the Bronx. ......... there is a Little Senegal in Harlem, and more recent immigrants from Gambia have established themselves in the Bronx. ........ About two million African immigrants arrived in the United States in 2019, up from 600,000 in 2000....... Imam Omar comes from a long line of imams in Senegal — his father, grandfather, uncles and now his 21-year-old son are imams — and manages the migrants like one gigantic congregation. .
Microsoft Bets Big on the Creator of ChatGPT in Race to Dominate A.I. As a new chatbot wows the world with its conversational talents, a resurgent tech giant is poised to reap the benefits while doubling down on a relationship with the start-up OpenAI. ........ But at Microsoft, it was a cause for celebration. For several years, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, had been putting the pieces in place for this moment. ....... In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, the tiny San Francisco company that designed ChatGPT. And in the years since, it has quietly invested another $2 billion .......... The $3 billion paid for the huge amounts of computing power that OpenAI needed to build the chatbot. And it meant that Microsoft could rapidly build and deploy new products based on the technology. ......... Microsoft is now poised to challenge Big Tech competitors like Google, Amazon and Apple with a technological advantage the company has not possessed for more than two decades. Microsoft is in talks to invest another $10 billion in OpenAI as it seeks to push its technology even further ......... The potential $10 billion deal — which would mainly provide OpenAI with even larger amounts of computing power .........
what has become the hottest technology in the tech industry.
......... ChatGPT answers questions, writes poetry and riffs on almost any topic tossed its way. ...... generative artificial intelligence, the term for a system that can generate text, images, sounds and other media in response to short prompts. ....... The new generative A.I. technologies could reinvent everything from online search engines like Google to digital assistants like Alexa and Siri. ........... OpenAI is working on an even more powerful system called GPT-4 ........ OpenAI is led by Sam Altman, who became well known in Silicon Valley as the head the start-up builder Y Combinator. Mr. Altman, 37, and his co-founders created OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit. But he soon remade the venture as a for-profit company that could more aggressively pursue financing. ......... With backing from Microsoft, OpenAI went on to build a milestone technology called GPT-3. Known as a “large language model,” it could generate text on its own, including tweets, blog posts, news articles and even computer code. ......... GitHub, a popular online service for programmers owned by Microsoft, began offering a programming tool called Copilot. As programmers built smartphone apps and other software, Copilot suggested the next line of code as they typed, much the way autocomplete tools suggest the next word as you type texts or emails. ......... Google, Meta and other companies have spent years building models similar to ChatGPT. The A.I. systems develop their skills by analyzing enormous amounts of digital text, including books, Wikipedia articles, computer programs and chat logs. ............. most of Microsoft’s $1 billion investment came in the form of the computing power OpenAI needs — and that Microsoft would eventually become the lab’s sole source of computing power. ............ as much as 10 percent of all data could be A.I.-generated in just three years, which could lead to as much as $7 billion in revenue for Azure .
Prince Harry’s Memoir Has Record Breaking Sales The steady drumbeat of revelations that preceded the book’s release helped push early orders and initial sales, making “Spare,” on its first day, one of the best-selling hardcover books in recent memory........ Prince Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” has become a record-breaking success, with first-day sales that exceed some of publishing’s biggest hits, including blockbusters by Barack and Michelle Obama. ........ the largest first-day sales for any nonfiction book ever published by Penguin Random House, the world’s largest publisher. ....... the velocity of sales throughout the day was gigantic.” ......... In Britain, “Spare” set a record for first-day sales of a nonfiction book, selling 400,000 copies ........ “The only books that have sold faster in a day have been about the other Harry, Harry Potter” ....... and the last section of his tell-all degenerates into a tiresome back-and-forth about who’s leaking what and why ........ “if Harry is going to set fire to his family, he has at least done it with some style.” ........ The Guardian ran an article that detailed a physical confrontation between Prince William and Prince Harry; as Harry describes it in the book, William knocked him to the floor. That same week, copies of “Spare” accidentally went on sale early in Spain and were snatched up by news outlets. Dozens of stories followed from around the world: Prince Harry said in the book that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. Prince Harry wrote that his brother encouraged him to dress as a Nazi for a costume party. Prince Harry lost his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a bar. .......... the news media frenzy that followed each new release appeared to help the book sell. .......... pre-orders jumped after the article in The Guardian detailing the scuffle between the brothers ....... Barnes & Noble expects the book to be one of the biggest releases of 2023. .........
the “expertise and talent” of the book’s ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer
......... “Spare” was sold for a rumored sum of $20 million as part of a multi-book deal .......... His answer was that by publishing a memoir, he was trying to put many of the rumors to rest by speaking up. .
When the Writing Demands Talent and Discretion, Call the Ghostwriter Ghostwriters write books in someone else’s voice — without leaving fingerprints. Doing it well requires great technical skill and a flexible ego........ Perhaps the most exalted practitioner of a little-understood craft, Moehringer aims, ultimately, to disappear. ......... Doing it well requires a tremendous amount of technical skill ......... “The lion’s share of my job is about getting out of the way, vanishing so the voice of my client can come through as clearly as possible.” ....... they provide the raw materials to build a house and she puts it together, brick by brick. “You own the bricks,” she said she tells them. “But you — and there should be no shame in this — don’t have the skill set to actually erect the building.” ........ Fees can range from about $50,000 to many times that, into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. ......... “Authors run the gamut from someone who is a complete control freak and has to approve every semicolon to those who barely phone it in,” said Madeleine Morel, an agent who specializes in matchmaking book projects with ghostwriters. “And when you start working with someone, you don’t know where they’re going to fall on that curve.” ........... Often, a writer will meet the subject only a few times, then follow up with phone calls, emails and texts. Others say that in order to get enough of a sense of the person to capture on the page, they need at least a few dozen hours in the presence of a client, sitting together in a room or shadowing the daily routines of the subject’s public and private lives. ......... To write Andre Agassi’s memoir, “Open,” Moehringer moved to Las Vegas, where Agassi lived. Agassi said he bought a house a mile away from his own, and Moehringer occupied it for two years while he worked on the book. All the writer requested was a long table where he could lay out the scenes he’d piece together “like a necklace,” Agassi recalled. They’d meet in the morning, fueled by breakfast burritos from Whole Foods. .......... “I’d spend a couple of hours with him over breakfast and a tape recorder,” Agassi said. ......... A former newspaper reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, Moehringer has a reputation for intense work habits — he rarely sleeps when finishing a book ......... Prince Harry’s book is his third ghostwriting project. Maybe. ........ by pushing their subjects, ghostwriters can make books more authentic than if they were written by the public figures themselves ........ “He’s half psychiatrist,” Phil Knight, a founder of Nike, said of Moehringer, who was the collaborator on his memoir, “Shoe Dog.” “He gets you to say things you really didn’t think you would.” ....... She doesn’t interview them, she said, but tries to have normal conversations. She broaches delicate subjects in phone calls late at night ............. some of his books are more merchandise than literature, meant to capitalize on someone’s 15 minutes of fame. ....... most people don’t have the time, or the ability, to write a good book .......... “Writing is a technical skill” ........ in the old days, nobody would ever admit to internet dating, and now everybody talks about it .
Could Black Flight Change a Model of Integration? American suburbs have long faced the issue of white families leaving as more residents of color move in. But in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Black families, upset about changes in the schools, are trickling to nearby suburbs........ American suburbs have long faced the issue of white flight, where white families pack up in large numbers as demographics shift and more residents of color move in. But in Shaker Heights, it’s Black families who are leaving. Many of them point to initiatives rolled out over the past decade meant to combat systemic racism in the classroom — good intentions that they feel have done more harm than good when it comes to their children’s academic achievement. ......... Home values and school rankings exist as two sides of the same real estate coin. About 90 percent of American children attend public school, and higher school spending produces higher property values. Stronger school rankings, in turn, are often offered as justification for higher property taxes. And Shaker Heights, which is governed by the motto “A community is known by the schools it keeps,” has one of the highest tax rates in Ohio. ........... Siobhan Aaron, 42, who in 2020 switched her 16-year-old son Kareem to private school and then moved out of the district to Twinsburg, a community 15 miles south of Shaker Heights, where the property taxes are significantly lower. ............ Kareem was often stereotyped by administrators, who presumed that because he was Black, he needed extra help ....... “Curriculum and instruction that works for gifted students is usually good for all students.” ........ Shaker Heights appears integrated, but within its schools, where gifted and honors classes have long skewed overwhelmingly white, it is anything but. ......... In the 1950s, a handful of Black and white couples formed the Ludlow Community Association — a group that encouraged Black families to move in while also imploring white families to stay. The result was the first successfully integrated community in Cleveland, and one of the first in the nation. And for many years, it was considered something of a utopia. .......... Like Black students in districts across the country, they also receive a disproportionate share of discipline, which ricochets into higher suspensions and lower grades ........ Parents I interviewed said they are not elitist or classist; they just want the best for their children. .
