Fascinating write-up of Jimmy Carter’s life in The Economist. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a remarkable man. RIP.

When fundamentalism rules the day, new information becomes a threat.

This quote is from back in 2012, but it feels more apt than ever.

Thanks to Grant Sowter for pointing me towards this.

“I’m changing the way I read news”.

This is good from Laura Hazard Owen:

I’ll read news, not other people’s reactions to news. I have resubscribed to print newspapers because they are finite; when you’re done, you’re done. Here, I’m taking a cue from Kelsey Richards, the “print princess” and “media literate hottie” who reads print newspapers on TikTok. “When you read print media, you give yourself that space to feel those emotions compared to if you read something online and then you immediately switch over to Instagram…and then you go on Twitter….and then you go on Facebook…and then a CNN notification comes up on your phone,” she told Slate last year. “With all those distractions, those emotions no longer belong to that blocked-out time period. They are now convoluting your schedule, your work, the fact that your mom just texted you that something’s going on with your grandparents — it’s just too much for your body to handle. Print media gives us the opportunity to sit down, and decide when we want to feel the emotions we want to feel, rather than letting some arbitrary algorithm decide how we should feel.”

It’s so easy to get sucked into a way of life where we’re never not looking at the news. But it’s not good for us.

I don’t have a print subscription, but I do tend to mostly just read one newspaper each morning for 30 minutes on my iPad. And then I check in on my RSS feeds a couple of times a day. I’ve found this approach so much better.

[niemanlab.org]

Qualities of masculinity.

How should re respond to the crisis of masculinity? This is spot on:

Instead of talking about being an alpha, high-T lion, or whatever other pseudoscientific garbage proliferates on the internet, why not refocus our attention and create mental models for masculinity that include the following qualities:

– Being a good father, brother, friend, and husband.
– Having integrity and honor.
– Caring deeply about others.
– Showing real toughness based on equanimity and embracing challenges instead of a fake and performative machismo that avoids feelings and emotions.
– Pursuing meaningful work and showing up consistently.
– Modeling and showing a diverse array of career paths.
– Being a protector of the weak.
– Showcasing your physicality in competitive pursuits (if you are so inclined), and doing so within the rules and ethics of those competitive pursuits.

[thegrowtheq.com]

100 new words a year thanks to TikTok.

Fascinating look at the impact of social media on language:

On social media words spread far and fast. At least 100 English words are produced, or given new meaning, on TikTok a year, reckons Tony Thorne, director of the Slang and New Language Archive at King’s College London. Some linguists think the platform is changing not just what youngsters are saying, but how they are saying it. A “TikTok accent”, which includes “uptalk”, an intonation that rises at the end of sentences, may be spreading.

[economist.com]

Nature absorbed almost no carbon last year.

The hope is that this is temporary, but the implications of this could accelerate the heating of our world dramatically:

In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon.

There are warning signs at sea, too. Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected, which is disrupting the Gulf Stream ocean current and slows the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. For the algae-eating zooplankton, melting sea ice is exposing them to more sunlight – a shift scientists say could keep them in the depths for longer, disrupting the vertical migration that stores carbon on the ocean floor.

[theguardian.com]

Vaping teenagers.

…parents are passing vapes through the school fence to pupils, according to head teachers. A tidal wave of teenage vaping has normalised the habit in many areas, and some parents are buying vapes for their children or turning a blind eye because they reason it is better than them taking drugs…

…43 per cent of schools catch children vaping daily and 30 per cent weekly.

The acceptance of vaping as a better alternative to smoking is something that will, I fear, properly come back to haunt us.

[thetimes.com]

Zero cases of cervical cancer among women vaccinated before age 14.

A historic new study out of Scotland shows the real-world impact of vaccines against the human papillomavirus: The country has detected no cases of cervical cancer in women born between 1988-1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV between the ages of 12 and 13.

Many previous studies have shown that HPV vaccines are extremely effective in preventing cervical cancer. But the study, published on Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the first to monitor a national cohort of women over such a long time period and find no occurrence of cervical cancer.

Remarkable.

[statnews.com]

New London restaurant is staffed by the recently homeless.

Love this story.

In cities across Britain and the world, homelessness and joblessness feed upon each other. Most employers won’t hire someone who does not have a stable address, which means the homeless can’t earn the money to afford a place to live.

Home Kitchen aims to break that cycle by training people for a career in the restaurant industry. Before opening day, recruits took a three-week culinary crash course and then spent two weeks in a kitchen at the Megaro, the five-star hotel where Mr. Simmonds was recently appointed chef patron.

[nytimes.com]

New law: All tips must go to workers.

All tips, whether in cash or by card, must be shared between workers by law in Britain, with millions of workers such as those working for cafes, pubs, restaurants, taxi companies and hairdressers most likely to benefit…

…The Department for Business and Trade has predicted the new law will mean a further £200m will be received by workers rather than their employers.

Some rogue employers will no doubt still find workarounds, but this feels like a good step.

[bbc.co.uk]

Broken Britain.

Fascinating essay by Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes, and Sam Bowman unpacking why Britain has stagnated:

…the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere. This prevents investment, increases energy costs, and makes it harder for productive economic clusters to expand. This, in turn, lowers our productivity, incomes, and tax revenues…

…Britain’s economy has stagnated for a fundamentally simple reason: because it has banned the investment in housing, transport and energy that it most vitally needs. Britain has denied its economy the foundations it needs to grow on.

[ukfoundations.co]

On Monday Britain will become the first rich nation to quit coal.

A good news story on Britain’s energy transition.

On Monday Britain’s last coal-fired power station will spew vapour from its massive towers for the last time. When it shuts it will end 142 years of coal in Britain…

…In 1920 virtually all of Britain’s electricity was produced by burning coal. Today, after advances in wind and solar power, it accounts for almost nothing.

[thetimes.com]

Oscar-winning star Maggie Smith dies aged 89.

Maggie Smith, the prolific, multi-award-winning actor whose work ranged from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter to Downton Abbey, has died aged 89.

The news was confirmed by her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens in a statement. They said: “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27 September.”

What a truly incredible career.

[theguardian.com]

Less open-plan, more nooks.

Max Rollitt, an antique dealer and decorator:

We’re seeing a reversal of open-plan living – walls and doors being put in, rather than taken out. People are spending more time at home and, in doing so, they’ve needed more of a delineation of space. Nooks needn’t be architecturally led. You can create one almost anywhere simply by defining the space, be it with furniture or fabrics.

[ft.com]

Why is it so hard to get humans back on the moon?

All about the money.

[The current programme] Artemis is expensive, but Apollo was exorbitant: the program cost around $290 billion in today’s dollars, according to the Planetary Society, compared with Artemis’s $93 billion. In those years NASA was often blessed with 4 percent of the nation’s budget. Today it’s lucky to get around 1 percent, with the additional burden of many other spacecraft, telescopes and research projects beyond human spaceflight to fund.

[scientificamerican.com]

“Israel’s pager attacks have changed the world”.

Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, highlights what Israel’s recent actions have revealed about the vulnerabilities throughout our world:

The bottom line: our supply chains are vulnerable, which means that we are vulnerable. Anyone — any country, any group, any individual — that interacts with a high-tech supply chain can potentially subvert the equipment passing through it. It could be subverted to eavesdrop. It could be subverted to degrade or fail on command. And, although it’s harder, it can be subverted to kill.

[nytimes.com]

How the medical profession made peanut allergies worse.

In a second clinical trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, [Dr. Gideon] Lack compared one group of infants who were exposed to peanut butter at 4-11 months of age to another group that had no peanut exposure. He found that early exposure resulted in an 86% reduction in peanut allergies by the time the child reached age 5 compared with children who followed the AAP recommendation [of no peanut exposure until children are three]. 

Fascinating look into how the medical profession ended up inadvertently creating a peanut allergy crisis with non-evidence-based advice.

[wsj.com] / [Apple News]

Animals don’t worry what tomorrow will bring.

The psychologist Steve Biddulph on his new technique for transforming mental health:

We are born with this skill [to use the left and right side of our brains] and our ancestors used it for thousands of years. It’s just a matter of noticing it again. Animals don’t worry what tomorrow will bring. They live in the moment and when something comes up they’re all adrenaline and sharp teeth, but then they are peaceful again, whereas we get all caught up in our left brain.

[thetimes.com]

Keir Starmer’s excessive freebies.

If you’re in the UK, you’ll be well aware that the political news cycle this week has been dominated by the amount of freebies Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been receiving. Two and a half times more than the next closest MP, apparently. It’s not a good look, even if there’s no actual wrongdoing.

As Marina Hyde quipped in her weekly Guardian column, ‘Can someone gift the prime minister a designer spade? He wants to keep digging.’

[thetimes.com]

Instagram is now restricted for teenagers.

Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.

Too little, too late for many, but a good move moving forwards.

[theverge.com]

“Citizens’ jury in England backs assisted dying for terminally ill”.

Thirty jurors were selected from 7,000 invitations sent to randomly selected households across England. They met between April and June, spending a total of about 24 hours exploring and deliberating on the issues. Two of the jurors were unable to take part in the final session due to illness.

The jury backed assisted dying for people who have a terminal condition and have the capacity to make their own decision. They supported both assisted suicide, where healthcare professionals would prescribe lethal drugs to be taken by eligible patients, and voluntary euthanasia, where a healthcare professional would administer lethal drugs.

The top three reasons given for supporting a change in the law were to stop pain, having the option to end your own life and knowing you could die with dignity.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with Labour MP Jake Richards considering bringing forward a bill to the House of Commons soon.

[theguardian.com]

“Goodbye Tinder, hello Strava”.

Singletons looking to shack up with their soulmates online have relied on two key routes in the past decade or so: take your chance on dating apps, or befriend as many mutuals as possible on social media, in the hope that you find the one.

But some have found a third way, using services such as Goodreads and Strava to meet partners with whom they hope to spend the rest of their lives. Those couples proved to be trendsetters. So-called hobby apps – built around activities such as running, reading or movie-going – are having a moment, and not just for love.

People finding meaningful connections around shared interests rather than through a dating app, who would have thought?

[guardian.com]

Australia looking to ban children from social media.

Children in Australia could be banned from social media under government plans to set an age limit to use platforms including Instagram and TikTok. It would make Australia among the first countries in the world to impose an age restriction on social media, as it aims to tackle mental and physical health concerns linked to online activity among the younger population.

Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said that a minimum age of between 14 and 16 for the use of social media apps is being considered. He then had this to say when making the announcement:

I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts. We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm.

[inews.co.uk]

Free speech for humans (not bots).

William Hague, the former Conservative MP, highlights Yuval Noah Harari’s compelling proposal to address the challenges of reducing misinformation’s dangerous impact without censoring views:

Harari’s solution is to be clear that free speech is for humans, not for automated bots or algorithmic programmes that are designed to turn us against each other. If, he argues, a group of people were standing in the street discussing politics when some robots approached them, entering the discussion and spreading unfounded rumours, the people would give them very short shrift. Yet in the online world we allow robots to speak to us as equals, believe what they say and let them choose most of what we hear. He offers two solutions. One is to “ban the bots”, passing laws to prohibit any attempt by a non-human agent to pass itself off as human.

[thetimes.com]

World’s first physically disabled astronaut.

John McFall, a Paralympic sprinter who later became an orthopedic and trauma surgeon, has had an esteemed career fueled by his intense drive and curiosity. Now he’s adding yet another acclaimed career to the mix: astronaut.

[scientificamerican.com]

Free speech too important to become a political football.

Free speech has become a black-or-white issue for many. But, like pretty much anything that truly matters, the truth is in the nuance.

Jemima Kelly’s article in the Financial Times does a good job of navigating this.

Too often, the conversation around free speech is reduced to “misinformation bad!” from the left, and “censorship worse!” from the right. Too often, there seems to be a reluctance among right-thinking types to condemn censorship simply because of the dubious credentials — not to mention self-interest — of some of the characters who do complain about what they call the “censorship industrial complex”…

…It is clear that there are important conversations to be had around how to regulate platforms such as X, to change the profit incentives away from promoting hateful and incendiary content. It is also the case that there must be limits to free speech, as laid out by the law in many countries — “free speech absolutism” is neither a reality nor something we should aspire to. But we must not allow our most important principles to become tainted by the people who defend them. Free speech is far too important to become a political football.

[ft.com]

“Put the smartphones away, I’m trying to eat.”

Giles Coren, the restaurant critic and Times columnist, argues that atmosphere is as much a part of dining out as the food itself, and if you’re scrolling or texting, you’re ruining it for everyone:

…people with their smartphones out, scrolling, texting, swiping while they eat or between courses or at any time at all between walking in and walking out drives me into conniptions. Because if you’re on your phone, you’re not there. You are sucking the energy out of a room that was built to welcome and cherish your presence. You are disrespecting the low-paid workers who serve you and spitting in the faces of paying guests who have come to take part in an atmosphere of which you are an integral part.

[thetimes.com]

“Mobile phones not linked to brain cancer”.

The review found no overall association between mobile phone use and cancer, no association with prolonged use (if people use their mobile phones for 10 years or more), and no association with the amount of mobile phone use (the number of calls made or the time spent on the phone).

“I’m quite confident with our conclusion. And what makes us quite confident is … even though mobile phone use has skyrocketed, brain tumour rates have remained stable,” said Karipidis, Arpansa’s health impact assessment assistant director.

Surely that puts this issue to bed once and for all?!

[guardian.com]

Over 6,000 suicides in England and Wales last year

Lots of alarming statistics on suicide rates in 2023, but these stand out:

Three-quarters of the deaths were of males, but the female suicide rate reached its highest level since 1994.

Rates increased across all age groups compared to 2022, especially among those aged 45 to 64 years.

The suicide rate for women across England and Wales was 5.7 per 100,000 people. The rate for men was 17.4 per 100,000 but increased to 25.5 for men aged 45 to 49.

As a man in that 45 to 49 age bracket, these statistics feel particularly poignant. We men still have a long way to go with being vulnerable and not leaving one another to struggle on alone in silence.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie.

[theguardian.com]

The Democrats scrap plans to abolish the death penalty

Shane Claiborne, the activist and author, has drawn attention to a quiet move by the Democratic Party in the United States to remove abolishing the death penalty from the party platform:

Unfortunately, on at least one issue, the Democrats have gone backward rather than forward, in a move that caught many of us by surprise. As the festivities finished up in Chicago last week, the Democrats quietly removed abolishing the death penalty from the party platform, a move that certainly will not help them distinguish themselves from Trump and win this election.

Living in a country where the death penalty has not been enacted since 1964 (although it was only officially removed in 1998), it’s hard to comprehend that it still exists in America, and that the Democrats are abandoning their plans to abolish it.

Claiborne adds:

It is disappointing that this key commitment, and a signal difference with the Trump agenda, has been removed from the DNC platform. President Biden and Vice President Harris need to do more than pause executions for the remainder of their administration; we need them to stop executions for good.

[religionnews.com]

Food allergies have doubled over the last decade

Analysis of data from GP surgeries in England revealed 4 per cent of under-fives had a “probable” food allergy in 2018, up from 1.2 per cent in 2008. Across all age groups, the prevalence of food allergies has increased from 0.4 per cent of the population to 1.1 per cent over the same decade.

That’s a pretty dramatic rise! And scientists still don’t fully understand why, though they do have some theories:

Experts also believe that changes in the Western diet, including a shift towards ultra-processed food, and the timing of weaning babies onto solid food, may be playing a role in driving up allergy rates. There is now good evidence that introducing allergens such as peanuts early into a baby’s life, from four months old, helps to reduce the risk of allergies compared with holding off until children are older, as had previously been advised.

[thetimes.com]

The need for more ‘social prescriptions’

Interesting article in Scientific American discussing the need for more ‘social prescriptions’ within the medical profession.

Why?

80 percent of our health outcomes are driven by social factors in our environments, while only 16 percent are related to clinical care.

Do social prescriptions actually work?

One review of 86 social prescribing programs in the U.K. found patients who received social prescriptions experienced not only a decrease in anxiety, depression and negative mood, but also an increase in self-esteem, confidence, mental well-being and positive mood. This complements decades of research demonstrating the ways certain kinds of social prescriptions are effective for treating certain kind of ailments, like exercise for depression, or forest bathing for stress and heart diseases.

Clearly, there’s no either-or to this. But it seems a no-brainer, when health services are so constrained, to promote more of these social prescriptions.

New London tube map idea is great, but this is all I need:

Image source: The Spectator

“Return-to-office mandates hurt employee retention, productivity, survey says”

Surprise, surprise: forcing people back into offices may not have the effect employers are hoping for.

…remote workers were 23 percent more likely to say they have “a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace,” 19 percent were more likely to cite “high levels of cooperation,” and 18 percent were more likely to say that people avoid office politics and backstabbing.

‘Free speech’ and online offences

Today’s briefing in the Guardian explores what we can learn from the recent UK riots about the criminal justice system.

British courts have long held that freedom of speech does not entitle people to incite violence. Part of the outrage may be due to a perception that online behaviour is somehow exempt from this general principle; these sentences may change that.

Cassia Rowland, a researcher focused on criminal justice at the Institute for Government, added:

I think most people have been aware for some time that online behaviour may be illegal. But they may not see that their own behaviour can qualify to be taken seriously as a criminal offence, especially in this kind of context.

What it feels like living in a tourist hotspot

Locals against tourist stories have been in the news a lot lately. This is a thoughtful article, recognising some of nuances that are involved.

Tourism is very important, and if it disappears, we’ll be poorer. But we want to preserve the island and have a better quality of life and better access to housing. Diversifying [the economy] is the obvious answer, but that’s really hard at this point.

How it feels to be a British Jew after October 7

Many on the Left most energised by Israel and Palestine can’t accept they could ever be anti-Semitic because they believe they’ve always fought racism. Well-meaning people end up being anti-Semitic by accident, susceptible to peer pressure, half-truths and outright falsehoods. That means that those who have convinced themselves they possess the facts – let alone the armies of previously uninterested and ignorant newbies – feel their desire to be morally right outweighs the sensitivities of those they see as wrong.

I’m hesitant to even venture near the subject of Israel and Palestine. Sadly, for many it is become a black and white, either or issue. Reality is always more nuanced.

Rude disregard for female teachers is unprecedented

Alarming, anonymously written, piece in The Times by a senion pastoral leader at a school in England.

I had a lesson recently where Andrew Tate was mentioned by a boy who remarked on all the cars and money he seemed to have as a reason that he was someone to emulate. One of the girls tried to cut in and say, “But you do understand that he’s a bad person?” And the boy said, “Well, you can’t say that; he’s doing pretty well for himself.” At this point I added, “He’s also someone awaiting trial for sexual offences. And I think we’re going to shut this conversation down.” Wealth equals good in class, with little regard for how it is achieved.

“Trump and Musk share tips on running companies into ground”

“I think the key to turning any business into a disaster is simple,” Musk opined. “You have to take a brand that people love and make it toxic. I don’t mean to brag, but that’s kind of my superpower.”

“That’s true up to a point, but you also have to make sure that the product itself is horrible,” Trump responded. “Ask anyone who’s stayed at one of my hotels and found it infested with bedbugs.”

😂

Graham Thorpe’s daughter: We’re not ashamed of talking about his suicide

I grew up watching Graham Thorpe play cricket for England. It’s devastating to read of his mental health illness that led to the taking of his own life.

I love what his daughter had to say about why they’re sharing more details about his illness and death though:

We are not ashamed of talking about it. There is nothing to hide and it is not a stigma.

Archbishop Justin Welby: “Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith”

…the Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith, and all that Jesus was and is. Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group – because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally antichristian.

“Inside the ‘cult’ of the Far Right”

This interview with Kaelin Robertson, a former friend and ally of Tommy Robinson is insightful and definitely worth listening to. The journey of how someone became radicalised is informative. The comments below are undeniably worrying though.

“Somebody that is tweeting the things that he’s tweeting, he doesn’t believe half of it, but it doesn’t matter because the truth is totally irrelevant to him, will genuinely disrupt normalcy in the UK. The majority of people that have been protesting and rioting in the last few days who are far right have done so because they saw his tweets. What we saw with the riots in the last few days, I genuinely think is just the beginning.

Somebody that doesn’t care about the truth and somebody that doesn’t care about anything other than blowing up their own profile, regardless of what happens to Britain, is extremely dangerous.”

UK disorder: What’s Elon Musk’s game?

Mr Musk has highlighted his concerns that the media doesn’t hold power to account any more. And yet most of the time, when I want to ask questions of both him and of X - there is no response from the social media company.

Good article by Marianna Spring.

The far right riots, Starmer’s response, and the role of Elon Musk

This episode of The News Agents is a helpful take on the recent rioting, the far right, policing, disinformation, and more.

And I thought this comment on the two-tier policing accusation was apt:

“…this accusation of like two-tier policing, one of the things that’s come out in the last 24 hours is to say, oh well, the police were much gentler when looking at what was happening with the Gaza protests over the course of the last year or so.

It’s like, hello, this is sort of crazy critique. Yes, some of the things that were said on those Gaza protests were distasteful. They were racist, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Semitic tropes.

They reported that on that at the time. Sometimes, they were intimidating to Jewish people who were there. But they weren’t going lot around orchestrating that level of violence and disorder, and they weren’t going around burning down shoe zones.

These were largely peaceful by comparison. So yeah, there’s two-tier policing in the sense that different sorts of protests and if different sorts of crimes are committed, have different sorts of responses from the police. That is kind of how justice and the law works.

You do different sorts of things, you get treated differently by the police.”

Emphasis mine.

Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport much worse

We’re in danger of sleepwalking back in time to the world dissected by Hannah Arendt six years after World War Two: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Whole article is worth a read. What we’re seeing across the UK following the Southport murders is horrific. And it’s hard to disagree with the premise that X is making it worse and shoulders culpability.

“It’s good to mock and make fun of people who are bad or want to do bad things. It’s also necessary politically… Good thrusting mockery cuts right through that. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also insecure, stunted degenerates.”

From: Are You on Team ‘Weird’?

How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths

This is both fascinating and alarming in equal measure.

“Vultures are considered nature’s sanitation service because of the important role they play in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment - without them, disease can spread. Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, and not just the cute and cuddly. They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.”

–Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.