https://www.spreaker.com/show/newsbeatenNewsCopyright Newsbeat Radiohttps://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/3c6bc41fe8162d0f6bd4f2d1401e3e37.jpghttps://www.spreaker.com/show/newsbeatMon, 20 May 2019 09:42:08 +0000Newsbeat RadioNewsbeat Radiofeeds@spreaker.comListen to the latest news published on the Newsbeat app. Download form the Apple App Store or Google Play StorecleanepisodicNewsbeat Radiofeeds@spreaker.comListen to the latest news published on the Newsbeat app. Download form the Apple App Store or Google Play StoreNohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-cult-of-homeworkAmerica has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed, which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.
The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.
But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.
Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.
“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”
Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.
Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.
Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”
Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”
That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.
As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.
In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s, and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.
This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.
In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”
According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)
In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork, while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)
Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”
His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.
Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.
Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.
Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)
Barbara Stengel,]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-29:/posts/7217410Fri, 29 Mar 2019 20:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Atlantic America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed, which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This...America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed, which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.
The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.
But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.
Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.
“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”
Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.
Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.
Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”
Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of...]]>843cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Atlantic America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed, which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more. The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it. But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject. Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break. “The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.” Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past. Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week. Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.” Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/what-will-it-take-for-humans-to-trust-seOn March 18, 2018, Elaine Herzberg, 49, was crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. ­Although she was one of thousands of U.S. pedestrians killed by vehicles every year, one distinctive—and highly modern—aspect set her death apart: Nobody was driving that Volvo. A computer was.
A fatality caused by a self-driving car might not be more tragic than another, but it does encourage the wariness many of us feel about technology making life-and-death decisions. Twelve months later, a survey by AAA revealed that 71 percent of Americans were too scared to zip around in a totally autonomous ride—an eight percent increase from a ­similar poll taken before Herzberg’s death.
Self-driving cars are already cruising our streets, their spinning lasers and other sensors scanning the world around them. Some are from big companies such as Waymo—part of Google’s parent conglomerate Alphabet—or General Motors, while others are the work of outfits you might not have heard of, including Drive.ai or Aptiv. (Uber operated the Volvo involved in Arizona’s fatal crash and took its self-​­driving cars off the roads for about nine months afterward.) But what makes some of us so wary of these robotic chauffeurs, and how can they earn our trust?
To understand these questions, it first helps to consider what psychologists call the theory of mind. Put simply, it’s the recognition that other people have brains in their heads that are busy thinking, just like ours (usually) are. The theory comes in handy on the road. Before we venture into a crosswalk, we might first make eye contact with a driver and then think, He sees me, so I’m safe, or He doesn’t, so I’m not. It’s a technique we likely use more than we realize, both behind the wheel and on our feet. “We know how other people are going to act because we know how we would act,” explains Azim Shariff, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has written about this issue in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
But you can’t make eye contact with an algorithm. Autonomous cars generally have backup humans ready to take control if necessary, but when the car is in self-driving mode, the computer’s in charge. “We’re going to have to learn a theory of the machine mind,” Shariff says. What that means in practice is that self-driving cars will need to provide clear signals—and not just turn signals—to let the public know what that machine mind is planning.
One solution comes from Drive.ai, a company ­running self-driving vans in Texas. The bright-orange-and-blue vehicles have LED signs on all four sides that respond to the environment with messages. They can tell a pedestrian who wants to cross in front of the car, “Waiting for You.” Or they can warn them: ­“Going Now/Please Wait.” A related strategy is intended for passengers, not pedestrians: Screens in Waymo vehicles show car occupants a simple, animated version of what the autonomous vehicle is seeing. Those displays can also show what the car is doing, like if it’s pausing to allow a human to cross. “Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to somebody else,” Shariff says. “We engage in it because we can pretty easily predict what the other person will do.” All of which means that if the cars are predictable and do what they say they will do, people will be more likely to trust them. Sound familiar?
Communicating with the machine mind is important, but that doesn’t mean we want it to mimic exactly how humans think and act while driving. In fact, the promise of traveling by autonomous car is that silicon brains won’t do dumb things such as text and drive, or drink and drive, or rocket down the highway while upset after a breakup. (Cars don’t date.) “I believe that they have the potential to be safer” than regular cars, says Marjory S. Blumenthal, a senior policy ana­lyst at the RAND Corporation think tank who has researched the vehicles. But she says there’s not enough good data yet to know for sure.
One practical way to create a reputation for safety is to start slow. The University of Michigan’s pair of self-driving shuttles go just 12 miles per hour. Huei Peng, a professor of mechanical engineering who oversees the little buses, says the research team behind the project is building trust by not asking too much: The predetermined route is just about a mile long, so they’re not exactly speeding down a highway in the snow. “We’re trying to push the envelope but in a very cautious way,” Peng says. Like other experts, Peng compares self-​­driving cars to elevators: an initially frightening technology that people eventually got used to.
Ultimately, not everyone will have to trust driverless cars enough to go for a ride, and especially not at first. Indeed, the public isn’t homogeneous, says Raj Rajkumar, who directs the Metro21: Smart Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He notices three categories of potential users: tech skeptics, who know that their computer crashes and worry about getting into a vehicle controlled by one; early adopters, who are delighted by the promise of new tech; and people who are stressed by driving and would rather not do it if they don’t have to. The early adopters will buy in first, followed by the folks who just dislike driving, and then finally the skeptics, he argues. “So it’s a long process.” Trust grows like a self-driving shuttle drives: slowly.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-29:/posts/7217441Fri, 29 Mar 2019 20:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioPopular Science On March 18, 2018, Elaine Herzberg, 49, was crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. ­Although she was one of thousands of U.S. pedestrians killed by vehicles every year,...On March 18, 2018, Elaine Herzberg, 49, was crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. ­Although she was one of thousands of U.S. pedestrians killed by vehicles every year, one distinctive—and highly modern—aspect set her death apart: Nobody was driving that Volvo. A computer was.
A fatality caused by a self-driving car might not be more tragic than another, but it does encourage the wariness many of us feel about technology making life-and-death decisions. Twelve months later, a survey by AAA revealed that 71 percent of Americans were too scared to zip around in a totally autonomous ride—an eight percent increase from a ­similar poll taken before Herzberg’s death.
Self-driving cars are already cruising our streets, their spinning lasers and other sensors scanning the world around them. Some are from big companies such as Waymo—part of Google’s parent conglomerate Alphabet—or General Motors, while others are the work of outfits you might not have heard of, including Drive.ai or Aptiv. (Uber operated the Volvo involved in Arizona’s fatal crash and took its self-​­driving cars off the roads for about nine months afterward.) But what makes some of us so wary of these robotic chauffeurs, and how can they earn our trust?
To understand these questions, it first helps to consider what psychologists call the theory of mind. Put simply, it’s the recognition that other people have brains in their heads that are busy thinking, just like ours (usually) are. The theory comes in handy on the road. Before we venture into a crosswalk, we might first make eye contact with a driver and then think, He sees me, so I’m safe, or He doesn’t, so I’m not. It’s a technique we likely use more than we realize, both behind the wheel and on our feet. “We know how other people are going to act because we know how we would act,” explains Azim Shariff, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has written about this issue in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
But you can’t make eye contact with an algorithm. Autonomous cars generally have backup humans ready to take control if necessary, but when the car is in self-driving mode, the computer’s in charge. “We’re going to have to learn a theory of the machine mind,” Shariff says. What that means in practice is that self-driving cars will need to provide clear signals—and not just turn signals—to let the public know what that machine mind is planning.
One solution comes from Drive.ai, a company ­running self-driving vans in Texas. The bright-orange-and-blue vehicles have LED signs on all four sides that respond to the environment with messages. They can tell a pedestrian who wants to cross in front of the car, “Waiting for You.” Or they can warn them: ­“Going Now/Please Wait.” A related strategy is intended for passengers, not pedestrians: Screens in Waymo vehicles show car occupants a simple, animated version of what the autonomous vehicle is seeing. Those displays can also show what the car is doing, like if it’s pausing to allow a human to cross. “Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to somebody else,” Shariff says. “We engage in it because we can pretty easily predict what the other person will do.” All of which means that if the cars are predictable and do what they say they will do, people will be more likely to trust them. Sound familiar?
Communicating with the machine mind is important, but that doesn’t mean we want it to mimic exactly how humans think and act while driving. In fact, the promise of traveling by autonomous car is that silicon brains won’t do dumb things such as text and drive, or drink and drive, or rocket down the highway while upset after a breakup. (Cars don’t date.) “I believe that they have the potential to be safer” than regular cars, says Marjory S. Blumenthal, a senior policy ana­lyst at the RAND Corporation think...]]>356cleanfullNewsbeat RadioPopular Science On March 18, 2018, Elaine Herzberg, 49, was crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. ­Although she was one of thousands of U.S. pedestrians killed by vehicles every year, one distinctive—and highly modern—aspect set her death apart: Nobody was driving that Volvo. A computer was. A fatality caused by a self-driving car might not be more tragic than another, but it does encourage the wariness many of us feel about technology making life-and-death decisions. Twelve months later, a survey by AAA revealed that 71 percent of Americans were too scared to zip around in a totally autonomous ride—an eight percent increase from a ­similar poll taken before Herzberg’s death. Self-driving cars are already cruising our streets, their spinning lasers and other sensors scanning the world around them. Some are from big companies such as Waymo—part of Google’s parent conglomerate Alphabet—or General Motors, while others are the work of outfits you might not have heard of, including Drive.ai or Aptiv. (Uber operated the Volvo involved in Arizona’s fatal crash and took its self-​­driving cars off the roads for about nine months afterward.) But what makes some of us so wary of these robotic chauffeurs, and how can they earn our trust? To understand these questions, it first helps to consider what psychologists call the theory of mind. Put simply, it’s the recognition that other people have brains in their heads that are busy thinking, just like ours (usually) are. The theory comes in handy on the road. Before we venture into a crosswalk, we might first make eye contact with a driver and then think, He sees me, so I’m safe, or He doesn’t, so I’m not. It’s a technique we likely use more than we realize, both behind the wheel and on our feet. “We know how other people are going to act because we know how we would act,” explains Azim Shariff, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has written about this issue in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. But you can’t make eye contact with an algorithm. Autonomous cars generally have backup humans ready to take control if necessary, but when the car is in self-driving mode, the computer’s in charge. “We’re going to have to learn a theory of the machine mind,” Shariff says. What that means in practice is that self-driving cars will need to provide clear signals—and not just turn signals—to let the public know what that machine mind is planning. One solution comes from Drive.ai, a company ­running self-driving vans in Texas. The bright-orange-and-blue vehicles have LED signs on all four sides that respond to the environment with messages. They can tell a pedestrian who wants to cross in front of the car, “Waiting for You.” Or they can warn them: ­“Going Now/Please Wait.” A related strategy is intended for passengers, not pedestrians: Screens in Waymo vehicles show car occupants a simple, animated version of what the autonomous vehicle is seeing. Those displays can also show what the car is doing, like if it’s pausing to allow a human to cross. “Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to somebody else,” Shariff says. “We engage in it because we can pretty easily predict what the other person will do.” All of which means that if the cars are predictable and do what they say they will do, people will be more likely to trust them. Sound familiar? Communicating with the machine mind is important, but that doesn’t mean we want it to mimic exactly how humans think and act while driving. In fact, the promise of traveling by autonomous car is that silicon brains won’t do dumb things such as text and drive, or drink and drive, or rocket down the highway while upset after a breakup. (Cars don’t date.) “I believe that they have the potential to be safer” than regular cars, says Marjory S. Blumenthal, a senior policy ana­lyst at the RAND Corporation think tank who has researched the...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/spam-has-taken-over-our-phones-will-we-eThe phones have turned on us. Our little pocket pals seduced us with cheap long distance, unlimited texts, endless apps. Now they beep and shudder and flash with strange numbers at all hours of the day. We answer, and our beloved iPhone (or Android, or bedside landline) impales our eardrum with a cruiseline ad. It tries to sell us a medical back brace. It threatens to jail us unless we wire our life savings to the IRS.
Spam bots nest in call centers on every continent, spewing out phone calls by the millions, saturating the communication networks. Spam and scams swarm through our phones like Hitchcock’s birds down the living-room chimney. There is no escape.
More than 10 billion robo-calls have been placed so far in 2019, by call-blocking company YouMail’s estimate — almost double the same period a year before. Another report by First Orion, the call-blocking and caller-ID tech company, estimates that nearly half of all cellphone calls will be scams at some point this year.
Assuming the plague ever subsides, how will we forgive our phones?
Press 1 to be transferred to the nightmare realm.
“It started off two or three a day. As time went by, it went to 50 or 60,” said Matt Briscoe, who switched cell-service providers last summer and brought home the telephonic equivalent of a roach-infested couch.
Briscoe, who runs a community newspaper in Corpus Christi, Tex., hears from far more spambots than humans these days. On March 11 alone, he declined 44 calls purporting to originate from the 704 area code in Albemarle, N.C. — which, given the prevalence of number spoofing, probably means the caller is anywhere but Albemarle, N.C.
“This thing is just buzzing in my pocket constantly,” Briscoe said, shortly before his conversation with The Washington Post was interrupted by his eighth spam call of the morning. “If it’s something that seems odd, I won’t answer. If I do, nine times out of 10, it’s: ‘Hello! Would you like to be connected to a health insurance specialist?’ ”
He has the voice down pat: the cheerful, soulless “Hello!” of a spambot inviting you into an abyssal call center from which you may never return. You’ve probably heard such a voice yourself.
If not, you will.
Press 2 and scream to disconnect this call.
When Cabot Phillips stepped into the elevator at his apartment building in Alexandria, Va., one evening last month, the elevator was talking.
“Excuse me, is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” a muffled, presumably human voice said from inside the emergency speaker. Phillips had assumed the speaker was for the fire department. Now, as he ascended to his home, it seemed to be asking him in broken English for $299 in IT charges.
“Sir, you are illegible for your labor, okay?” the spam said.
“Dude, you’re calling an elevator,” Phillips said, and proceeded to his door. He later reflected, “I was hoping an elevator was still a sacred location for peace.”
Press 3 for desperate prayer.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Surely this is spam’s most powerful incarnation yet. Earlier outbreaks were at least contained to our email inboxes, or hampered by the relatively primitive telemarketing technology of the past century. Now spam teleports into our purses and nightstands and innermost lives, advertising gastric balloons, demanding debt payments, speaking languages we don’t understand. Spam dispatched by fly-by-night ministries even offers to pray for us.
If you plotted a graph of a phone call’s usefulness from Alexander Graham Bell’s first in 1876 until today, it would climb steadily through the 20th century, rocket skyward with the advent of mobile phones, and then take a U-turn and slap us around the ears with everything the machines have learned.
“We’ve returned right back to where we were in the ’80s,” said Jeffrey A. Hansen, an IT consultant who has testified as an expert witness in dozens of consumer lawsuits against robodialers. “Same software. The only difference now is computers are exponentially faster. Tens of millions [of calls] versus thousands.”
Hansen traces the phone spam era back to 1974, when two men in Colorado patented an “automatic telephone caller” that simply dialed numbers in numerical sequence — 555-1111, 555-1112 — and blared a prerecorded message at whomever picked up. The technology improved with cell centers’ profit margins. By the early 1980s, Computerworld magazine was advertising $13,000 Davox terminals that fused a monitor, keyboard and a phone handset into a telemarketer’s dream machine. Brrrrring brrrrring!
Press 4 if this sounds familiar.
In 1991, a committee room full of U.S. senators listened to an answering machine recording that had been annoying people across the country. A disembodied voice boomed over Hawaiian background music: “Just think about that, you and a friend or a loved one enjoying the beautiful beaches of Waikiki, and call me at 1-900-321-6666.”
“Telannoyers,” as some called them, were so endemic at the time that Congress passed laws restricting them, followed by the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. For a few years, it seemed like phone spam was contained. Then came the age of cellphones, international VoIP calls and offshore call centers that can mask their location to make it look like they are calling you from down the block. Then came the Trump administration’s deregulatory zeal, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai celebrated a 2018 court ruling undoing Obama-era restrictions on autodialers.
In April, a Senate subcommittee convened once again to discuss the phone-spam crisis. They interrogated a Florida telemarketer named Adrian Abramovich, who was accused of placing nearly 100 million robo-calls with spoofed caller IDs.
“I’m not the kingpin of robo-calling that is alleged,” Abramovich protested. “I receive four or five robo-calls a day. . . . I’ve been receiving more than ever, myself. Usually I never answer the phone.”
Press 0 to speak to the void.
Abramovich had a point; the problem goes far beyond any one person or call center. Despite the government’s $120 million dollar fine against him last May, the call-blocking company Hiya estimates spam calls increased nearly 50 percent in 2018. They come from all corners of the world — from the marketing departments of major American banks and from clandestine call centers hidden above bars in Delhi, India.
More and more, the spam makes us mistrustful of our own ears.
“I got one just the other night,” said Margot Saunders, senior counsel for the National Consumer Law Center. “Someone said, ‘Hello Cathy.’ I said, there’s no Cathy here. A voice said, ‘Oh, that’s okay. Since I got you . . . .’ It took a few minutes to figure out I wasn’t talking to a real person. It’s a robot! There’s a company making snippets of recorded voice which operators in India press buttons to implement.”
Your torment may be recorded for quality assurance.
When Paul Romer got a 6 a.m. call from an unrecognized number at his home in New York last fall, he assumed it was spam and went back to sleep. He later learned it was from Sweden; he’d won the Nobel Prize in economics.
Courtney Kelsey, 21, made the same mistake when she answered her spam-infested iPhone in St. Louis this month, and the man on the other end struggled to pronounce her name.
“I asked him to — whatever list I’m on or wherever they’re calling from, could they take me off the list?” Kelsey recalled. “He said, ‘I can’t hear you. Is this Courtney?’ I just hung up.”
She ignored a second call, blocked the number and only later realized it was from the Ritz-Carlton, where she had applied for a serving job. Kelsey hadn’t managed to reschedule the job interview by the time she spoke to The Washington Post last week.
Stay on the line to repeat this call forever.
So it’s come to this. We confuse spambots for humans, and humans for spambots. The sci-fi author Charlie Stross once posited a future in which spam becomes so good at mimicking human interaction it becomes self-aware — the “Spamularity.” Is that what awaits us if the phones don’t shut up?
Saunders, the consumer group lawyer getting spammed by human simulacrums, says the nightmare could be over within months if the telecom giants would invest more in anti-spam technology, which is now spotty at best — or if the government would force them to (as the FCC’s Pai has now indicated he might). If not, she said, the unsustainable status quo will continue.
In the meantime, Briscoe — the Texas newspaper publisher besieged with health insurance calls from not-Albemarle, N.C. — has tried just about every spam-blocking app on the market.
“We’ve used RoboKiller. That hasn’t worked with this one at all,” he said. “Hiya. Truecaller. Mr. Number. Not even close.”
In desperation, he once tried staying on the line with the spam, perhaps hoping to plead for his sanity with the promised “health insurance specialist.”
Instead, he said, an agent asked him for his height, weight, birth date and social security number. When Briscoe asked for an insurance license number, the agent supplied one as fake as whatever $299 anti-virus software is sold in an elevator.
Finally, Briscoe asked his tormentor who he worked for.
“You didn’t want no [expletive] insurance anyway,” the agent replied and, for a change, hung up on him.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-26:/posts/7213495Tue, 26 Mar 2019 21:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioWashington Post The phones have turned on us. Our little pocket pals seduced us with cheap long distance, unlimited texts, endless apps. Now they beep and shudder and flash with strange numbers at all hours of the day. We answer, and our beloved...The phones have turned on us. Our little pocket pals seduced us with cheap long distance, unlimited texts, endless apps. Now they beep and shudder and flash with strange numbers at all hours of the day. We answer, and our beloved iPhone (or Android, or bedside landline) impales our eardrum with a cruiseline ad. It tries to sell us a medical back brace. It threatens to jail us unless we wire our life savings to the IRS.
Spam bots nest in call centers on every continent, spewing out phone calls by the millions, saturating the communication networks. Spam and scams swarm through our phones like Hitchcock’s birds down the living-room chimney. There is no escape.
More than 10 billion robo-calls have been placed so far in 2019, by call-blocking company YouMail’s estimate — almost double the same period a year before. Another report by First Orion, the call-blocking and caller-ID tech company, estimates that nearly half of all cellphone calls will be scams at some point this year.
Assuming the plague ever subsides, how will we forgive our phones?
Press 1 to be transferred to the nightmare realm.
“It started off two or three a day. As time went by, it went to 50 or 60,” said Matt Briscoe, who switched cell-service providers last summer and brought home the telephonic equivalent of a roach-infested couch.
Briscoe, who runs a community newspaper in Corpus Christi, Tex., hears from far more spambots than humans these days. On March 11 alone, he declined 44 calls purporting to originate from the 704 area code in Albemarle, N.C. — which, given the prevalence of number spoofing, probably means the caller is anywhere but Albemarle, N.C.
“This thing is just buzzing in my pocket constantly,” Briscoe said, shortly before his conversation with The Washington Post was interrupted by his eighth spam call of the morning. “If it’s something that seems odd, I won’t answer. If I do, nine times out of 10, it’s: ‘Hello! Would you like to be connected to a health insurance specialist?’ ”
He has the voice down pat: the cheerful, soulless “Hello!” of a spambot inviting you into an abyssal call center from which you may never return. You’ve probably heard such a voice yourself.
If not, you will.
Press 2 and scream to disconnect this call.
When Cabot Phillips stepped into the elevator at his apartment building in Alexandria, Va., one evening last month, the elevator was talking.
“Excuse me, is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” a muffled, presumably human voice said from inside the emergency speaker. Phillips had assumed the speaker was for the fire department. Now, as he ascended to his home, it seemed to be asking him in broken English for $299 in IT charges.
“Sir, you are illegible for your labor, okay?” the spam said.
“Dude, you’re calling an elevator,” Phillips said, and proceeded to his door. He later reflected, “I was hoping an elevator was still a sacred location for peace.”
Press 3 for desperate prayer.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Surely this is spam’s most powerful incarnation yet. Earlier outbreaks were at least contained to our email inboxes, or hampered by the relatively primitive telemarketing technology of the past century. Now spam teleports into our purses and nightstands and innermost lives, advertising gastric balloons, demanding debt payments, speaking languages we don’t understand. Spam dispatched by fly-by-night ministries even offers to pray for us.
If you plotted a graph of a phone call’s usefulness from Alexander Graham Bell’s first in 1876 until today, it would climb steadily through the 20th century, rocket skyward with the advent of mobile phones, and then take a U-turn and slap us around the ears with everything the machines have learned.
“We’ve returned right back to where we were in the ’80s,” said Jeffrey A. Hansen, an IT consultant who has testified as an expert witness in dozens of consumer...]]>607cleanfullNewsbeat RadioWashington Post The phones have turned on us. Our little pocket pals seduced us with cheap long distance, unlimited texts, endless apps. Now they beep and shudder and flash with strange numbers at all hours of the day. We answer, and our beloved iPhone (or Android, or bedside landline) impales our eardrum with a cruiseline ad. It tries to sell us a medical back brace. It threatens to jail us unless we wire our life savings to the IRS. Spam bots nest in call centers on every continent, spewing out phone calls by the millions, saturating the communication networks. Spam and scams swarm through our phones like Hitchcock’s birds down the living-room chimney. There is no escape. More than 10 billion robo-calls have been placed so far in 2019, by call-blocking company YouMail’s estimate — almost double the same period a year before. Another report by First Orion, the call-blocking and caller-ID tech company, estimates that nearly half of all cellphone calls will be scams at some point this year. Assuming the plague ever subsides, how will we forgive our phones? Press 1 to be transferred to the nightmare realm. “It started off two or three a day. As time went by, it went to 50 or 60,” said Matt Briscoe, who switched cell-service providers last summer and brought home the telephonic equivalent of a roach-infested couch. Briscoe, who runs a community newspaper in Corpus Christi, Tex., hears from far more spambots than humans these days. On March 11 alone, he declined 44 calls purporting to originate from the 704 area code in Albemarle, N.C. — which, given the prevalence of number spoofing, probably means the caller is anywhere but Albemarle, N.C. “This thing is just buzzing in my pocket constantly,” Briscoe said, shortly before his conversation with The Washington Post was interrupted by his eighth spam call of the morning. “If it’s something that seems odd, I won’t answer. If I do, nine times out of 10, it’s: ‘Hello! Would you like to be connected to a health insurance specialist?’ ” He has the voice down pat: the cheerful, soulless “Hello!” of a spambot inviting you into an abyssal call center from which you may never return. You’ve probably heard such a voice yourself. If not, you will. Press 2 and scream to disconnect this call. When Cabot Phillips stepped into the elevator at his apartment building in Alexandria, Va., one evening last month, the elevator was talking. “Excuse me, is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” a muffled, presumably human voice said from inside the emergency speaker. Phillips had assumed the speaker was for the fire department. Now, as he ascended to his home, it seemed to be asking him in broken English for $299 in IT charges. “Sir, you are illegible for your labor, okay?” the spam said. “Dude, you’re calling an elevator,” Phillips said, and proceeded to his door. He later reflected, “I was hoping an elevator was still a sacred location for peace.” Press 3 for desperate prayer. Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. Surely this is spam’s most powerful incarnation yet. Earlier outbreaks were at least contained to our email inboxes, or hampered by the relatively primitive telemarketing technology of the past century. Now spam teleports into our purses and nightstands and innermost lives, advertising gastric balloons, demanding debt payments, speaking languages we don’t understand. Spam dispatched by fly-by-night ministries even offers to pray for us. If you plotted a graph of a phone call’s usefulness from Alexander Graham Bell’s first in 1876 until today, it would climb steadily through the 20th century, rocket skyward with the advent of mobile phones, and then take a U-turn and slap us around the ears with everything the machines have learned. “We’ve returned right back to where we were in the ’80s,” said Jeffrey A. Hansen, an IT consultant who has testified as an expert witness in dozens of consumer lawsuits against robodialers. “Same software. The only difference now is computers are exponentially...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/never-confuse-luck-with-smart-investingWhat can we learn from the case of someone who turned $100,000 in short-dated call options into a $2.5 million profit?
As detailed in MarketWatch earlier this month, trader Steve Oliverez was pretty sure the Republican tax overhaul was going to be approved by Congress. Working with a data set of one -- the 1987 tax overhaul -- he correctly surmised that passage would be bullish for stocks.
His gamble paid off. Oliverez took his winnings, bought a new house with cash and took the rest of the year off to celebrate, traveling throughout the U.S., Southeast Asia and Japan. Who wouldn’t want to buy a new home and travel the world for a year? One trade, a huge return -- time to open that options-trading account and get in on the winnings.
No. Don't.
Investors need to beware of how highlighting one person's one winning trade is an invitation to trouble -- and losing money. Focusing on a single outcome 1 versus a repeatable process raises more questions than it answers, including:
-- Are these trade results statistically significant?
-- Was this trade the result of luck or skill?
-- What is the long-term track record of this approach?
-- Is it a repeatable strategy?
Poker champion Annie Duke notes that professional card players call the focus on what just occurred “resulting.” In her book “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts,” she explains the problem with this approach. “Resulting” assumes “the quality of the outcome tells you about the quality of the decision-making.” It doesn’t.
Looking at a single big winning trade suffers from this same error.
Resulting looks to me like a combination of several other behavioral problems: Availability bias (thinking that what comes easily to mind is representative) in what we read in online media; a degree of hindsight bias in the after-the-fact explanation as to why this was a good trade; some outcome-over-process focus as well. But perhaps the most important aspect of this is the survivorship bias: How many trades that were losers were not included in the discussion?
Some years ago, I pointed out how various lost-and-found trades are a classic example of survivorship bias. Two favorites are the lost EMC stock certificate and forgotten bitcoin purchase. In each case, the record of an investment was somehow misplaced. Many years later, when they were found, these positions had enormous gains.
Why survivorship bias? These big trade winners generate headlines, but the day-to-day run-of-the-mill wins and losses do not. Thus, you are more likely to learn about are the outsized gainers, with none of the offsetting losses provided for context. Let's cite a few headlines that you didn't see (because I made them up) to make the point:
-- Man Finds Worthless Lehman Brothers Stock in Attic
-- Woman Inherits 10 Million GM Shares Just Before Bankruptcy Filing
-- Misplaced AIG Shares Are Almost Worthless
-- Penny Stocks Found Under Mattress Lost All Value
OK, so these aren't real headlines, but they make the point. Yet, they reflect an important aspect of financial markets, or the fuller story about the vast majority of speculative trades. They are not newsworthy, and so a selection bias in what makes news means you never saw them. Some of the imagined events are no doubt true, but there is no reason that you would ever know about them.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with speculating if done wisely and with eyes open. Take a small portion of your assets -- no more than 5 percent of your liquid net worth -- and dump them into a separate account. 2 Label it “speculative fund” and do whatever you want with that capital: become an angel investor, buy microcaps, trade options, whatever.
These sorts of accounts have several advantages: first, they are relatively small, so if the investments crash and burn, there is little harm done to your net worth. Indeed, it might even help prevent speculation with your real money, which could result in catastrophic losses.
Second, if any trade works out, you can let it ride. It is much easier to say, Sell your losers but hold onto your winners, than to actually do so. Try to find people who bought meaningful amounts of Apple Inc. circa 1997 or Amazon.com Inc. in 2009 and are still holding the shares today. When a trade works out so well it creates the equivalent of several decades worth of your normal earnings it is all but impossible to be unemotional and objective about it. Working with a small percentage of total assets avoids many of the usual loss-aversion issues that are so common.
Perhaps the most important lesson comes from Oliverez himself. “Even if you get a big payout from time to time, the longer you play the more you lose,” he said. That is smart, and it shows that he understands just how big a role luck played in his trade. So, let’s say congratulations to him, and learn the correct lessons from his successful speculation: Never confuse lucky gambles with a good investing strategy.
We discussed the trouble with anecdotes last month via Ray Wolfinger. He coined the original quote, “the plural of anecdote is data.” What he meant by this was that “anecdote might bevalid data leading to a potentially significant conclusion. For that reason, when an unusual anecdote captures one’s attention, it shouldn’t be casually dismissed, lest a deeper truth be missed.”
I suggest doing it at a different brokerage firm fromwhere you keep your real money. This makes it more difficult for you to transfer money into losing positions with merely a click.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-26:/posts/7213496Tue, 26 Mar 2019 20:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioBloomberg What can we learn from the case of someone who turned $100,000 in short-dated call options into a $2.5 million profit? As detailed in MarketWatch earlier this month, trader Steve Oliverez was pretty sure the Republican tax overhaul was going...What can we learn from the case of someone who turned $100,000 in short-dated call options into a $2.5 million profit?
As detailed in MarketWatch earlier this month, trader Steve Oliverez was pretty sure the Republican tax overhaul was going to be approved by Congress. Working with a data set of one -- the 1987 tax overhaul -- he correctly surmised that passage would be bullish for stocks.
His gamble paid off. Oliverez took his winnings, bought a new house with cash and took the rest of the year off to celebrate, traveling throughout the U.S., Southeast Asia and Japan. Who wouldn’t want to buy a new home and travel the world for a year? One trade, a huge return -- time to open that options-trading account and get in on the winnings.
No. Don't.
Investors need to beware of how highlighting one person's one winning trade is an invitation to trouble -- and losing money. Focusing on a single outcome 1 versus a repeatable process raises more questions than it answers, including:
-- Are these trade results statistically significant?
-- Was this trade the result of luck or skill?
-- What is the long-term track record of this approach?
-- Is it a repeatable strategy?
Poker champion Annie Duke notes that professional card players call the focus on what just occurred “resulting.” In her book “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts,” she explains the problem with this approach. “Resulting” assumes “the quality of the outcome tells you about the quality of the decision-making.” It doesn’t.
Looking at a single big winning trade suffers from this same error.
Resulting looks to me like a combination of several other behavioral problems: Availability bias (thinking that what comes easily to mind is representative) in what we read in online media; a degree of hindsight bias in the after-the-fact explanation as to why this was a good trade; some outcome-over-process focus as well. But perhaps the most important aspect of this is the survivorship bias: How many trades that were losers were not included in the discussion?
Some years ago, I pointed out how various lost-and-found trades are a classic example of survivorship bias. Two favorites are the lost EMC stock certificate and forgotten bitcoin purchase. In each case, the record of an investment was somehow misplaced. Many years later, when they were found, these positions had enormous gains.
Why survivorship bias? These big trade winners generate headlines, but the day-to-day run-of-the-mill wins and losses do not. Thus, you are more likely to learn about are the outsized gainers, with none of the offsetting losses provided for context. Let's cite a few headlines that you didn't see (because I made them up) to make the point:
-- Man Finds Worthless Lehman Brothers Stock in Attic
-- Woman Inherits 10 Million GM Shares Just Before Bankruptcy Filing
-- Misplaced AIG Shares Are Almost Worthless
-- Penny Stocks Found Under Mattress Lost All Value
OK, so these aren't real headlines, but they make the point. Yet, they reflect an important aspect of financial markets, or the fuller story about the vast majority of speculative trades. They are not newsworthy, and so a selection bias in what makes news means you never saw them. Some of the imagined events are no doubt true, but there is no reason that you would ever know about them.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with speculating if done wisely and with eyes open. Take a small portion of your assets -- no more than 5 percent of your liquid net worth -- and dump them into a separate account. 2 Label it “speculative fund” and do whatever you want with that capital: become an angel investor, buy microcaps, trade options, whatever.
These sorts of accounts have several advantages: first, they are relatively small, so if the investments crash and burn, there is little harm done to your net worth....]]>351cleanfullNewsbeat RadioBloomberg What can we learn from the case of someone who turned $100,000 in short-dated call options into a $2.5 million profit? As detailed in MarketWatch earlier this month, trader Steve Oliverez was pretty sure the Republican tax overhaul was going to be approved by Congress. Working with a data set of one -- the 1987 tax overhaul -- he correctly surmised that passage would be bullish for stocks. His gamble paid off. Oliverez took his winnings, bought a new house with cash and took the rest of the year off to celebrate, traveling throughout the U.S., Southeast Asia and Japan. Who wouldn’t want to buy a new home and travel the world for a year? One trade, a huge return -- time to open that options-trading account and get in on the winnings. No. Don't. Investors need to beware of how highlighting one person's one winning trade is an invitation to trouble -- and losing money. Focusing on a single outcome 1 versus a repeatable process raises more questions than it answers, including: -- Are these trade results statistically significant? -- Was this trade the result of luck or skill? -- What is the long-term track record of this approach? -- Is it a repeatable strategy? Poker champion Annie Duke notes that professional card players call the focus on what just occurred “resulting.” In her book “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts,” she explains the problem with this approach. “Resulting” assumes “the quality of the outcome tells you about the quality of the decision-making.” It doesn’t. Looking at a single big winning trade suffers from this same error. Resulting looks to me like a combination of several other behavioral problems: Availability bias (thinking that what comes easily to mind is representative) in what we read in online media; a degree of hindsight bias in the after-the-fact explanation as to why this was a good trade; some outcome-over-process focus as well. But perhaps the most important aspect of this is the survivorship bias: How many trades that were losers were not included in the discussion? Some years ago, I pointed out how various lost-and-found trades are a classic example of survivorship bias. Two favorites are the lost EMC stock certificate and forgotten bitcoin purchase. In each case, the record of an investment was somehow misplaced. Many years later, when they were found, these positions had enormous gains. Why survivorship bias? These big trade winners generate headlines, but the day-to-day run-of-the-mill wins and losses do not. Thus, you are more likely to learn about are the outsized gainers, with none of the offsetting losses provided for context. Let's cite a few headlines that you didn't see (because I made them up) to make the point: -- Man Finds Worthless Lehman Brothers Stock in Attic -- Woman Inherits 10 Million GM Shares Just Before Bankruptcy Filing -- Misplaced AIG Shares Are Almost Worthless -- Penny Stocks Found Under Mattress Lost All Value OK, so these aren't real headlines, but they make the point. Yet, they reflect an important aspect of financial markets, or the fuller story about the vast majority of speculative trades. They are not newsworthy, and so a selection bias in what makes news means you never saw them. Some of the imagined events are no doubt true, but there is no reason that you would ever know about them. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with speculating if done wisely and with eyes open. Take a small portion of your assets -- no more than 5 percent of your liquid net worth -- and dump them into a separate account. 2 Label it “speculative fund” and do whatever you want with that capital: become an angel investor, buy microcaps, trade options, whatever. These sorts of accounts have several advantages: first, they are relatively small, so if the investments crash and burn, there is little harm done to your net worth. Indeed, it might even help prevent speculation with your real money, which could result in catastrophic losses....Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/medieval-diseases-are-infecting-homelessJennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.
But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.
“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who has been homeless most of her life.
Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.
Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.
People in Washington State have been infected with the diarrheal disease shigella, spread through feces, as well as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever, which spreads through body lice.
Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio, and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.
Public-health officials and politicians are using terms like disaster and public-health crisis to describe the outbreaks, and they are warning that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.
“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County.
“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”
The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.
The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, helped along by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems, and limited access to health care.
“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, says Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”
Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warns: “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections [is] not.”
At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.
There were 167 cases of typhus from January 1, 2018, through February 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.
Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain, and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.
The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.
Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also called for an investigation and more cleaning.
Hepatitis A is caused by a virus usually transmitted when people come in contact with the feces of infected people. Most people recover on their own, but the disease can be very serious for those with underlying liver conditions. There were 948 cases of hepatitis A in 2017 and 178 in 2018 and 2019, the state public-health department said. Twenty-one people have died as a result of the 2017–18 outbreak.
The infections are not a surprise, given the lack of attention to housing and health care for the homeless and the dearth of bathrooms and places to wash hands, says Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, Washington, which has seen shigella, trench fever, and skin infections among homeless populations.
“It’s a public-health disaster,” Duchin says.
New York City, where the majority of the homeless population lives in shelters rather than on the streets, has not experienced the same outbreaks of hepatitis A and typhus, says Kelly Duran, an emergency-medicine physician and assistant professor at New York University. But Duran says different infections occur in shelters, including tuberculosis, a disease that spreads through the air and typically infects the lungs.
The diseases sometimes get the “medieval” moniker because people in that era lived in squalid conditions without clean water or sewage treatment, says Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.
People living on the streets or in homeless shelters are vulnerable to such outbreaks because their weakened immune systems are worsened by stress, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation. Many also have mental illness and substance-abuse disorders, which can make it harder for them to stay healthy or get health care.
On one recent February afternoon, the Saban Community Clinic physician assistant Negeen Farmand walked through homeless encampments in Hollywood carrying a backpack with medical supplies. She stopped to talk to a man sweeping the sidewalks. He said he sees “everything and anything” in the gutters and hopes he doesn’t get sick.
She introduced herself to a few others and asked if they had any health issues that needed checking. When she saw Millar, Farmand checked her blood pressure, asked about her asthma, and urged her to come see a doctor for treatment of her hepatitis C, a viral infection spread through contaminated blood that can lead to serious liver damage.
“To get these people to come into a clinic is a big thing,” she said. “A lot of them are distrustful of the health-care system.”
On another day, 53-year-old Karen Mitchell waited to get treated for a persistent cough by St. John’s Well Child & Family Center’s mobile health clinic. She also needed a tuberculosis test, as required by the shelter where she was living in Bellflower, California.
Mitchell, who said she developed alcoholism after a career in pharmaceutical sales, said she has contracted pneumonia from germs from other shelter residents. “Everyone is always sick, no matter what precautions they take.”
During the hepatitis-A outbreak, public-health officials administered widespread vaccinations, cleaned the streets with bleach and water, and installed hand-washing stations and bathrooms near high concentrations of homeless people.
But health officials and homeless advocates said more needs to be done, including helping people access medical and behavioral health care and affordable housing.
“It really is unconscionable,” says Bobby Watts, the CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a policy and advocacy organization. “These are all preventable diseases.”]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-11:/posts/7199012Mon, 11 Mar 2019 21:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Atlantic Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority. But...Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.
But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.
“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who has been homeless most of her life.
Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.
Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.
People in Washington State have been infected with the diarrheal disease shigella, spread through feces, as well as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever, which spreads through body lice.
Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio, and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.
Public-health officials and politicians are using terms like disaster and public-health crisis to describe the outbreaks, and they are warning that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.
“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County.
“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”
The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.
The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, helped along by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems, and limited access to health care.
“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, says Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”
Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warns: “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections [is] not.”
At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.
There were 167 cases of typhus from January 1, 2018, through February 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.
Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain, and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.
The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.
Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles...]]>522cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Atlantic Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority. But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences. “I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who has been homeless most of her life. Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard. Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building. People in Washington State have been infected with the diarrheal disease shigella, spread through feces, as well as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever, which spreads through body lice. Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio, and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs. Public-health officials and politicians are using terms like disaster and public-health crisis to describe the outbreaks, and they are warning that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population. “Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County. “Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.” The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California. The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, helped along by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems, and limited access to health care. “The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, says Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.” Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warns: “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections [is] not.” At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A. There were 167 cases of typhus from January 1, 2018, through February 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department. Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain, and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats. The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas. Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/feel-better-now-the-rise-and-rise-of-theConsider the squishy. The point of the squishy, a palm-sized mass of polyurethane in the shape of a fruit or a croissant or a unicorn cat, occasionally scented with strawberry, is to squish. The point of the squishy is to be held in the hand of a person with energy that needs redirecting and for them to direct it into the soft heart of the squishy, to squeeze it into almost nothing in their palm, only for it to reinflate again, asking for more. In 1988 a TV writer called Alex Carswell threw a pen at a photo of his mother after a stressful phone call with his boss. It gave him an idea.
It was the “Age of Stress” – the Daily Mirror (among other newspapers) had identified it as “a killer” – and so the perfect time for Carswell to launch his “stress ball”. By the 1990s it had evolved from something squishy designed to be thrown into something squishy designed to be squeezed, and to be squeezed mainly by kids, who collected them in small scented families in their rucksacks. In a 2015 study of patients undergoing varicose vein surgery, those that handled stress balls reported feeling “less anxious”.
Advertisement
“When you’re stressed, your body tightens up,” says Dr Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute, explaining why throwing or squeezing something feels good, “so a physical release helps to let go of some of that energy.” Carswell was not the first person to link a calming of the mind to a busy-ness of a hand – in 206 BC, the Han dynasty in China trained to stay mentally focused during combat by squeezing walnuts. The croissant squishy comes from an ancient place.
That repeated action led to fidget spinners becoming one of the most popular items bought on Amazon in 2017. They were not simply triangles of plastic; they were a stress-relief toy, a treatment for ADHD, an answer to smartphone addiction, a modern rosary – and the cause of moral panic, as teachers confiscated them as contraband. They were the stars of a growing anxiety economy.
Alongside products designed purely as medical aids, such as meditation apps, there is a thriving offshoot of lifestyle goods marketed through their anxiety-relieving qualities. Product innovation oriented around anxiety (encompassing stress, mood and sleep) spans nearly 30 different categories, including chocolate, yogurt, air fresheners, fabric conditioners and skincare. There is a company called Body Vibes which, for £30, will sell you a pack of anti-anxiety stickers that “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies”. Throw a squishy ball in the high street and you’re likely to hit something to cure your stress.
If the 80s were the age of stress, this is the age of anxiety, with 30% of Britons experiencing an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. “The NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, published in 2016, indicated that anxiety and depression affected about one in six people,” confirms consultant clinical psychologist Dr Nihara Krause, founder of youth mental health charity Stem4. This rise in anxiety coincides with a crisis in mental health care. And long waits for treatment often lead to more complications, and the problems multiply, a kind of silent mitosis, leading to even more pressure on the NHS as well as the patient. This has created a market for domestic anxiety cures that can be bought online, and fast.
“Because community services are cut,” says Krause, “there is little in the way of help for those who are unwell but don’t meet the threshold for acceptance to established services. And those who are severe can’t access help because specialist services are under-resourced. I am really keen on providing early intervention tools that are evidence-based and are therefore effective. Sadly there are a lot of products on the market that are not tested for their efficacy.”
Developed in the early 1990s by American engineer Catherine Hettinger, fidget spinners were designed as a calming tool, but when they went mainstream, marketers built on their medical promise simply by adjusting the aesthetics – much like adult colouring books, the publishing phenomenon of 2015 which sold millions due to their therapeutic mental health benefits; and more recently, the weighted blanket. In 2017 the sleep-health industry was worth between $30bn and $40bn. Mattresses were being marketed like iPads, iPads were swollen with sleep apps and the weighted blanket, a therapeutic aid, was redesigned as a chic lifestyle accessory.
A fleece Gravity Blanket costs £149 and is the colour of a Manchester sky. “Studies have shown that using a weighted blanket increases the level of serotonin and melatonin as well as reduces cortisol,” says its website. The company was founded by psychologist Joanna Goliszek. She ran a therapy centre in Poland, working with, she tells me, “an autistic boy with an urgent need for a weighted blanket. But most products available on the market were simply not affordable.” She started to manufacture them in her apartment and, in 2017, launched across Europe, reshifting their focus, the new customer being “everyone”. On Instagram, there are almost 32,000 posts with the #weightedblanket hashtag, including one from Tori Spelling, naked but for her blanket, explaining how it has changed her life by helping her sleep. Despite the fact that companies had been manufacturing them primarily for children with autism-spectrum disorders for many years (leading, as they went mainstream, to claims of appropriation), Time magazine named “blankets that ease anxiety” one of the best inventions of 2018, quoting figures from a sleek US start-up (also called Gravity, no relation) which had already sold $18m worth of blankets.
In early 2018, in her New Yorker essay The Seductive Confinement of a Weighted Blanket in an Anxious Time, Jia Tolentino wrote that their success “arrived deep into a period when many Americans were beginning their emails with reflexive, panicked condolences about the news.” It was no coincidence that they had become a million-dollar business when much of the world felt like it needed to be put to bed. They had co-opted a familiar coping strategy (the feeling of being held) by repackaging a product that originated to assist a vulnerable community and selling it to people who felt anxious, ie almost everyone.
Mine arrived in a large box and, when I opened it, the blanket felt extremely cold. It took some effort to unfold it and then transport it to my bed – carrying the blanket felt not like carrying something objectively heavy like bricks or bags of tins, but like carrying a very light thing when you’re coming down with flu. I arranged myself under its grey soft weight, and then I fell asleep.
In the morning I woke in the same position. Unlike other anxiety aids, which encourage movement, fiddling, this large flat beanbag prevents movement. You are gently forced into a comforting stillness. Brushing my teeth the morning after a deep, deep sleep, I swilled the phrase “self-care” around my mouth.
In its earliest iteration it was used by doctors advising elderly patients on how to stay healthy at home, but by the late 1960s people used it more often in reference to the doctors themselves, having recognised that those in emotionally wearing professions could only look after others if they first looked after themselves. With the rise of the civil rights movement, self-care became political. Women and people of colour insisted that an autonomy over one’s body was necessary to fight racist and sexist systems, and indeed to survive. The phrase has since spread and mutated to include such diverse applications as gardening, antidepressants and peeling foot masks.
Today one of the places the phrase is most visible is in online articles about skincare routines, the ritual massaging in of oils and perfecting lotions, where the user is encouraged to concentrate less on how their skin looks tomorrow, but more on the mindful motions of looking after themselves.
“I know now that anxiety doesn’t really ever go away entirely,” wrote Olivia Muenter in an article called How My Beauty Routine Helps With My Anxiety, for Bustle, “but sometimes it shuts the hell up. And, for me, it’s often the quietest during my beauty routine.” She describes the action of moisturising as if it was meditation. Her skincare routine “pushes [her worries] away and what I’m left with is the simple act of doing something that makes me feel good”.
It’s at skincare that two arms of the anxiety economy cross, with the rise of CBD beauty. Owing to the increased interest in cannabis for medicinal use, the CBD (a non-psychoactive chemical compound found in marijuana) industry is expected to reach an estimated value of $22bn by 2022, with products including (but not limited to) teas, ice cream, vapes and hair conditioner. Last year Estée Lauder became one of the first mainstream beauty brands to release cannabis-infused products, alongside a growing list of smaller companies that included it in their brightening face creams, soaps, moisturising oils and mascaras, with the promise that CBD has anti-inflammatory properties. Though some claim it to be “stress-relieving”, simply by containing CBD their anxiety-relieving side effects are implicit.
A cynic might point out that considering the pressure the cosmetic industry has maintained in pushing customers to achieve unrealistic beauty standards, their new insistence that their primary role is to reduce anxiety is ironic. Evidence of CBD’s efficacy in skincare is largely anecdotal and a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found widespread mislabelling of CBD products sold online. There is a similar issue in all areas of the CBD industry – complications around legalisation have made it hard for researchers to discover what it actually does. Small trials suggest that CBD could be effective in treating anxiety, but only in far larger doses than are usually offered. While a product can boast in its marketing materials that CBD reduces anx]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-03-11:/posts/7199013Mon, 11 Mar 2019 20:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Guardian Consider the squishy. The point of the squishy, a palm-sized mass of polyurethane in the shape of a fruit or a croissant or a unicorn cat, occasionally scented with strawberry, is to squish. The point of the squishy is to be held in the...Consider the squishy. The point of the squishy, a palm-sized mass of polyurethane in the shape of a fruit or a croissant or a unicorn cat, occasionally scented with strawberry, is to squish. The point of the squishy is to be held in the hand of a person with energy that needs redirecting and for them to direct it into the soft heart of the squishy, to squeeze it into almost nothing in their palm, only for it to reinflate again, asking for more. In 1988 a TV writer called Alex Carswell threw a pen at a photo of his mother after a stressful phone call with his boss. It gave him an idea.
It was the “Age of Stress” – the Daily Mirror (among other newspapers) had identified it as “a killer” – and so the perfect time for Carswell to launch his “stress ball”. By the 1990s it had evolved from something squishy designed to be thrown into something squishy designed to be squeezed, and to be squeezed mainly by kids, who collected them in small scented families in their rucksacks. In a 2015 study of patients undergoing varicose vein surgery, those that handled stress balls reported feeling “less anxious”.
Advertisement
“When you’re stressed, your body tightens up,” says Dr Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute, explaining why throwing or squeezing something feels good, “so a physical release helps to let go of some of that energy.” Carswell was not the first person to link a calming of the mind to a busy-ness of a hand – in 206 BC, the Han dynasty in China trained to stay mentally focused during combat by squeezing walnuts. The croissant squishy comes from an ancient place.
That repeated action led to fidget spinners becoming one of the most popular items bought on Amazon in 2017. They were not simply triangles of plastic; they were a stress-relief toy, a treatment for ADHD, an answer to smartphone addiction, a modern rosary – and the cause of moral panic, as teachers confiscated them as contraband. They were the stars of a growing anxiety economy.
Alongside products designed purely as medical aids, such as meditation apps, there is a thriving offshoot of lifestyle goods marketed through their anxiety-relieving qualities. Product innovation oriented around anxiety (encompassing stress, mood and sleep) spans nearly 30 different categories, including chocolate, yogurt, air fresheners, fabric conditioners and skincare. There is a company called Body Vibes which, for £30, will sell you a pack of anti-anxiety stickers that “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies”. Throw a squishy ball in the high street and you’re likely to hit something to cure your stress.
If the 80s were the age of stress, this is the age of anxiety, with 30% of Britons experiencing an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. “The NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, published in 2016, indicated that anxiety and depression affected about one in six people,” confirms consultant clinical psychologist Dr Nihara Krause, founder of youth mental health charity Stem4. This rise in anxiety coincides with a crisis in mental health care. And long waits for treatment often lead to more complications, and the problems multiply, a kind of silent mitosis, leading to even more pressure on the NHS as well as the patient. This has created a market for domestic anxiety cures that can be bought online, and fast.
“Because community services are cut,” says Krause, “there is little in the way of help for those who are unwell but don’t meet the threshold for acceptance to established services. And those who are severe can’t access help because specialist services are under-resourced. I am really keen on providing early intervention tools that are evidence-based and are therefore effective. Sadly there are a lot of products on the market that are not tested for their efficacy.”
Developed in the early 1990s by American engineer Catherine Hettinger, fidget spinners were designed as a calming tool, but when they went...]]>889cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Guardian Consider the squishy. The point of the squishy, a palm-sized mass of polyurethane in the shape of a fruit or a croissant or a unicorn cat, occasionally scented with strawberry, is to squish. The point of the squishy is to be held in the hand of a person with energy that needs redirecting and for them to direct it into the soft heart of the squishy, to squeeze it into almost nothing in their palm, only for it to reinflate again, asking for more. In 1988 a TV writer called Alex Carswell threw a pen at a photo of his mother after a stressful phone call with his boss. It gave him an idea. It was the “Age of Stress” – the Daily Mirror (among other newspapers) had identified it as “a killer” – and so the perfect time for Carswell to launch his “stress ball”. By the 1990s it had evolved from something squishy designed to be thrown into something squishy designed to be squeezed, and to be squeezed mainly by kids, who collected them in small scented families in their rucksacks. In a 2015 study of patients undergoing varicose vein surgery, those that handled stress balls reported feeling “less anxious”. Advertisement “When you’re stressed, your body tightens up,” says Dr Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute, explaining why throwing or squeezing something feels good, “so a physical release helps to let go of some of that energy.” Carswell was not the first person to link a calming of the mind to a busy-ness of a hand – in 206 BC, the Han dynasty in China trained to stay mentally focused during combat by squeezing walnuts. The croissant squishy comes from an ancient place. That repeated action led to fidget spinners becoming one of the most popular items bought on Amazon in 2017. They were not simply triangles of plastic; they were a stress-relief toy, a treatment for ADHD, an answer to smartphone addiction, a modern rosary – and the cause of moral panic, as teachers confiscated them as contraband. They were the stars of a growing anxiety economy. Alongside products designed purely as medical aids, such as meditation apps, there is a thriving offshoot of lifestyle goods marketed through their anxiety-relieving qualities. Product innovation oriented around anxiety (encompassing stress, mood and sleep) spans nearly 30 different categories, including chocolate, yogurt, air fresheners, fabric conditioners and skincare. There is a company called Body Vibes which, for £30, will sell you a pack of anti-anxiety stickers that “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies”. Throw a squishy ball in the high street and you’re likely to hit something to cure your stress. If the 80s were the age of stress, this is the age of anxiety, with 30% of Britons experiencing an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. “The NHS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, published in 2016, indicated that anxiety and depression affected about one in six people,” confirms consultant clinical psychologist Dr Nihara Krause, founder of youth mental health charity Stem4. This rise in anxiety coincides with a crisis in mental health care. And long waits for treatment often lead to more complications, and the problems multiply, a kind of silent mitosis, leading to even more pressure on the NHS as well as the patient. This has created a market for domestic anxiety cures that can be bought online, and fast. “Because community services are cut,” says Krause, “there is little in the way of help for those who are unwell but don’t meet the threshold for acceptance to established services. And those who are severe can’t access help because specialist services are under-resourced. I am really keen on providing early intervention tools that are evidence-based and are therefore effective. Sadly there are a lot of products on the market that are not tested for their efficacy.” Developed in the early 1990s by American engineer Catherine Hettinger, fidget spinners were designed as a calming tool, but when they went mainstream, marketers built on their medical...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/different-kinds-of-stupidThe older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.”
– Jeff Bezos
You can ace the most prestigious grad school and then spend years in prison for insider trading. It’s happened. And the decision to risk everything on a trade that nets you a few percentage points is the kind of thing someone with half the IQ will look at and say, “How stupid are you?”
There are types of smart that have nothing to do with intellect. And there are types of stupid that have nothing to do with unintelligence.
Smart is the ability to solve hard problems, which can be done many ways. Stupid is a tendency to not comprehend easy problems. It’s also is a diversified trait.
A few kinds of stupid prevalent in business and investing:
1. Intelligence creep: Not knowing the boundaries of what you’re good at, and assuming talent in one area signals skill in all others.
Dictators are never marketed as just good at politics. They’re portrayed as superhumans, masters of everything. Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Jughashvili, but changed his name to a word that translates to “Man of steel.” North Korea said Kim Jong Il shot 11 holes in one on his first round of golf, was an architectural master, and a music virtuoso.
An innocent version of this happens when you’re good at one thing, so you and those around you assume you should be good at all other things.
Take the investor who is gifted at, and made a lot of money doing, one kind of strategy (merger arbitrage) and then extrapolates that confidence into something they have no experience in (gold, macro, politics, predicting recessions). The odds of a disappointing outcome then round to 100. Of course they do – the kind of nuance and skill needed to, say, forecast global interest rates is not the kind you thing you can pick up in a year.
The important thing is most investors without big success in one strategy would never consider betting their portfolio on a new, disparate strategy. They’re more likely to stick to what they know. You need intelligence in one strategy to make you think, with confidence, that you’re good at all the other ones.
An important investing skill is defining what you’re incapable of and staying away from it.
2. Underestimating the complexity of how past successes were gained in a way that makes you overestimate their repeatability.
There’s a thing in biology called Dollo’s Law that says organisms can never re-evolve to a former state because the path that led to its former state was so complicated that the odds of retracing that exact path round to zero.
Say an animal has horns, and then it evolves to lose its horns. The odds that it will ever evolve to regain its horns are nil, because the path that originally gave it horns was so complex.
Dollo’s Law affects investors and CEOs with a unique kind of stupid.
There are things that, once lost, will likely never be regained, because the chain of events that created them in the first place can’t easily be replicated. If you realized how valuable those things are you’d be more careful about risking their loss.
Brand is one. Brands are so hard to build, requiring the right product at the right time targeted to the right users who want that one thing, produced in the right way by the right people, all done with consistency. Once lost it is nearly impossible to regain, because of odds of building a successful brand in the first place were so low. So when management cashes in brand equity for short-term gain, I want to shout, “Stop! This isn’t a factory that you can just rebuild when it’s broken. If you lose that brand it’s gone for good.”
Teams are another. Success is often personalized among one person, discounting how important members of their team were to a win. That one person will often marginalize their team, or go out on their own, only to learn the hard way how vital others were to what they considered to be “their” success. And once disbanded that specific team will likely never return.
3. Discounting the views of people who aren’t as credentialed as you are, underestimating the special knowledge they have since they’ve experienced a world you haven’t.
A different kind of stupid is not believing that there are different kinds of smart.
Only seeking the input from those who fit your singular definition of smart misses the masses whose knowledge wasn’t measured by standardized tests. And those masses, with lower credentials than you, have likely experienced a world that you haven’t, which gives them a perspective you don’t have.
Solving problems means understanding how people behave. And you’ll only understand how lots of people are likely to behave if you open your mind to their views, opinions, goals, and solutions. Even people who are different than you. Especially people who are different than you.
4. Not understanding that in the classroom the game is you vs. the test, but in the real world it’s you vs. coworkers, employees, customers, regulators, etc., all of whom need to be persuaded by more than having the right answer.
This is a cousin of #1 above. It’s common when technical founders assume their ability to design a great product is correlated with their ability to manage hundreds of people, when in fact those things can be miles apart.
People who create the best products are often able to do so specifically because their thought process isn’t restricted by norms that ground most people. But that same trait can make them counterproductive bosses, because the “rules-don’t-apply-to-me” mindset that’s so effective when building a new product can be disastrous when managing people, especially as a company scales. Very talented engineers, designers, product people can make HR and managerial decisions for which the only response is, “How stupid are you?”
The first rule of natural maniacs: No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like.
5. Closed-system thinking: Underestimating the external consequences of your decisions in a hyperconnected world, or dismissing how quickly those consequences can backfire on you.
There’s a thing in economics where the professor says “assume a closed economy.” You model how an economy works assuming zero trade with, or influence from, other countries. Then you drop that assumption, view at the world as it actually operates, and BOOM … the original models are useless.
One kind of stupid is when you assume your business decisions live in their own closed economy, and the things you do either don’t affect others, or if you know they do, you underestimate those people’s ability to turn around and stick it back to you.
This is especially true in today’s world where things aren’t just connected; they’re an untangleable web where nothing is more than a few degrees removed from everything else in the world. If you mistreat your employees, or your customers, or your suppliers, and assume that it’s OK to do so because those actions will be contained to those people, the odds that your actions will eventually become known to someone who’s indispensable and who you rely upon are greater than they’ve ever been.
Bernie Madoff summarized this idea a year before his scheme unraveled. “In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate the rules,” he told an audience in 2007. “This is something the public doesn’t really understand. It’s impossible for a violation to go undetected. Certainly not for a considerable period of time.”]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-02-22:/posts/7183160Fri, 22 Feb 2019 17:31:32 +0000Newsbeat RadioCollaborative Fund The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.” – Jeff Bezos You can ace the most prestigious grad school and then spend years in...The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.”
– Jeff Bezos
You can ace the most prestigious grad school and then spend years in prison for insider trading. It’s happened. And the decision to risk everything on a trade that nets you a few percentage points is the kind of thing someone with half the IQ will look at and say, “How stupid are you?”
There are types of smart that have nothing to do with intellect. And there are types of stupid that have nothing to do with unintelligence.
Smart is the ability to solve hard problems, which can be done many ways. Stupid is a tendency to not comprehend easy problems. It’s also is a diversified trait.
A few kinds of stupid prevalent in business and investing:
1. Intelligence creep: Not knowing the boundaries of what you’re good at, and assuming talent in one area signals skill in all others.
Dictators are never marketed as just good at politics. They’re portrayed as superhumans, masters of everything. Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Jughashvili, but changed his name to a word that translates to “Man of steel.” North Korea said Kim Jong Il shot 11 holes in one on his first round of golf, was an architectural master, and a music virtuoso.
An innocent version of this happens when you’re good at one thing, so you and those around you assume you should be good at all other things.
Take the investor who is gifted at, and made a lot of money doing, one kind of strategy (merger arbitrage) and then extrapolates that confidence into something they have no experience in (gold, macro, politics, predicting recessions). The odds of a disappointing outcome then round to 100. Of course they do – the kind of nuance and skill needed to, say, forecast global interest rates is not the kind you thing you can pick up in a year.
The important thing is most investors without big success in one strategy would never consider betting their portfolio on a new, disparate strategy. They’re more likely to stick to what they know. You need intelligence in one strategy to make you think, with confidence, that you’re good at all the other ones.
An important investing skill is defining what you’re incapable of and staying away from it.
2. Underestimating the complexity of how past successes were gained in a way that makes you overestimate their repeatability.
There’s a thing in biology called Dollo’s Law that says organisms can never re-evolve to a former state because the path that led to its former state was so complicated that the odds of retracing that exact path round to zero.
Say an animal has horns, and then it evolves to lose its horns. The odds that it will ever evolve to regain its horns are nil, because the path that originally gave it horns was so complex.
Dollo’s Law affects investors and CEOs with a unique kind of stupid.
There are things that, once lost, will likely never be regained, because the chain of events that created them in the first place can’t easily be replicated. If you realized how valuable those things are you’d be more careful about risking their loss.
Brand is one. Brands are so hard to build, requiring the right product at the right time targeted to the right users who want that one thing, produced in the right way by the right people, all done with consistency. Once lost it is nearly impossible to regain, because of odds of building a successful brand in the first place were so low. So when management cashes in brand equity for short-term gain, I want to shout, “Stop! This isn’t a factory that you can just rebuild when it’s broken. If you lose that brand it’s gone for good.”
Teams are another. Success is often personalized among one person, discounting how important members of their team were to a win. That one person will often marginalize their team, or go out on their own,...]]>526cleanfullNewsbeat RadioCollaborative Fund The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smart there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too.” – Jeff Bezos You can ace the most prestigious grad school and then spend years in prison for insider trading. It’s happened. And the decision to risk everything on a trade that nets you a few percentage points is the kind of thing someone with half the IQ will look at and say, “How stupid are you?” There are types of smart that have nothing to do with intellect. And there are types of stupid that have nothing to do with unintelligence. Smart is the ability to solve hard problems, which can be done many ways. Stupid is a tendency to not comprehend easy problems. It’s also is a diversified trait. A few kinds of stupid prevalent in business and investing: 1. Intelligence creep: Not knowing the boundaries of what you’re good at, and assuming talent in one area signals skill in all others. Dictators are never marketed as just good at politics. They’re portrayed as superhumans, masters of everything. Joseph Stalin was born Joseph Jughashvili, but changed his name to a word that translates to “Man of steel.” North Korea said Kim Jong Il shot 11 holes in one on his first round of golf, was an architectural master, and a music virtuoso. An innocent version of this happens when you’re good at one thing, so you and those around you assume you should be good at all other things. Take the investor who is gifted at, and made a lot of money doing, one kind of strategy (merger arbitrage) and then extrapolates that confidence into something they have no experience in (gold, macro, politics, predicting recessions). The odds of a disappointing outcome then round to 100. Of course they do – the kind of nuance and skill needed to, say, forecast global interest rates is not the kind you thing you can pick up in a year. The important thing is most investors without big success in one strategy would never consider betting their portfolio on a new, disparate strategy. They’re more likely to stick to what they know. You need intelligence in one strategy to make you think, with confidence, that you’re good at all the other ones. An important investing skill is defining what you’re incapable of and staying away from it. 2. Underestimating the complexity of how past successes were gained in a way that makes you overestimate their repeatability. There’s a thing in biology called Dollo’s Law that says organisms can never re-evolve to a former state because the path that led to its former state was so complicated that the odds of retracing that exact path round to zero. Say an animal has horns, and then it evolves to lose its horns. The odds that it will ever evolve to regain its horns are nil, because the path that originally gave it horns was so complex. Dollo’s Law affects investors and CEOs with a unique kind of stupid. There are things that, once lost, will likely never be regained, because the chain of events that created them in the first place can’t easily be replicated. If you realized how valuable those things are you’d be more careful about risking their loss. Brand is one. Brands are so hard to build, requiring the right product at the right time targeted to the right users who want that one thing, produced in the right way by the right people, all done with consistency. Once lost it is nearly impossible to regain, because of odds of building a successful brand in the first place were so low. So when management cashes in brand equity for short-term gain, I want to shout, “Stop! This isn’t a factory that you can just rebuild when it’s broken. If you lose that brand it’s gone for good.” Teams are another. Success is often personalized among one person, discounting how important members of their team were to a win. That one person will often marginalize their team, or go out on their own, only to learn the hard way how vital others were to what they considered to be “their” success....Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/how-i-have-made-email-my-secret-weaponI’ve become quite the contrarian on this subject. I love email. It’s my secret weapon. Some of the best news I’ve ever gotten came in an email. As an adoptive dad, I caught my first glimpse of two of my kids through an email. I’ve closed deals, hired amazing talent, and connected great people via email.
I love Slack as well, but there is still nothing better than email for connecting with the world outside, and looping in members of your team to get things done.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who get more email than me, but I’m no slouch in that department. I’m the CEO of a 200+ employee company with 20,000+ customers. It takes a full time executive assistant and a full time Chief of Staff to keep my world in orbit right now. My email address is also not hard to figure out. In fact, I put it right on my LinkedIn page.
And yet, I get to Inbox Zero anywhere between 1–3x a week.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me how that’s possible, so I decided I’d take a little time on vacation and write this post. (Yep, sharing ideas like these are my idea of fun. 😂)
Slow the Fire Hose
People talk about the messages that appear in their inbox as if they have no control over them, and that’s not entirely true. The first thing you probably need to do is turn down the flow of messages.
Email is for messages, not for articles. There is VERY little content that I allow to flow into my inbox. Unsubscribe from all those blogs and newsletters you subscribed to. Follow them on Twitter, or drop them into Pocket. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, think about setting up a separate email account for this stuff. That isn’t an inbox; it’s your personal magazine.
Be selective on marketing. There are 10–15 brands that I have a strong connection with who I’ll let into my inbox because I actually want to hear from them. Otherwise, I’m pretty confident they will find a way to get my attention in another channel.
Kill non-essential or duplicate email notifications. Every app and service that we use is pinging us with notifications. But a lot of time, they are non-essential, or the same alert also comes as a push notification on your phone. Either change the settings in the app, or put in some email rules to kill those.
Be an aggressive unsubscriber. When you get unsolicited email you don’t want, always click unsubscribe if the link is there. Most unsub systems work with 1–2 clicks.
I know people who have followed these four tips and killed an astounding 80% of their incoming messages.
Kill the Notifications
I’m decently responsive to important things in my inbox, but the only way I got there was to massively reduce the noise, so I could hear the signal.
Turn off all the app notifications. Email shouldn’t generate banners, unread badges or sounds. Trust me, you won’t forget that your inbox exists; you don’t need any reminders to check it. Give yourself the space to do focused work and then tap your email app when you’re ready to triage your inbox.
Use the VIP feature if it’s helpful. I have my direct reports and my board members on the iOS Mail VIP list, so I get a notification on my phone if one of them emails. However, the more that our urgent stuff moves to Slack or texting, the less valuable this has become.
Free yourself from feeling obligated to respond to everything. I’m sure I miss emails from real people that go into spam, but I also get a lot of “asks” from people I don’t know. Given that I’ve committed my time to family, company and non-profit work, spending time and attention on those is breaking my commitments to others. These emails are like people who show up to your office without an appointment — you might drop everything to give them your time, but you usually can’t. Why is an email any different?
Upgrade Your Tools
I’m a big believer that high quality tools more than pay for themselves in higher productivity. There are limits to that logic, of course, but if you can make your own tool decisions, ask yourself if having a good setup can increase your productivity by 1, 2, 3%. You can do the math on that.
Use an email service with great search. You need to be able to find archived messages with ease. Nobody beats Google on this front. Both my company and personal addresses are on Gmail. I have both accounts set up in Apple Mail on my Mac, iPhone and iPad because those apps work really well when offline. But if a quick search isn’t turning up the message I need, I hop into Gmail and there it is.
Kill all those folders. I know people who make long lists of folders for every project or topic. Guess what? It takes a lot of time to archive emails that way. I have two folders (more detail below) and I still misfile things by accident once in a while. If you use an email service with great search, you do not need 85 folders in your mailbox. Put everything in one big archive, and use search to find it when you need it.
Get a to-do app. Too many people use email as a to-do list, and trust me, your inbox is awful at that. What is important gets mixed in with what is new. You constantly have to re-read the email and reinterpret what you actually need to do. My favorite to-do app right now is Asana, particularly because I can hit forward on an email, change the subject line to “call Bill re: contract terms” and hit send. Bam, it’s on the list, and I can archive that email.
If you’re in a big organization stuck on an archaic version of Exchange server, or they won’t let you use a tool like Asana, a few of these tips may be a challenge for you. You should come join Riskalyze and help us empower the world to invest fearlessly instead. 😉
Set up Text Macros
I get more sales pitches, and requests for calls or meetings with VCs, private equity firms and investment bankers, than I know what to do with. These are personal emails without unsubscribe links.
If I don’t respond, I usually get a second or third email from them. So I set up text replacements on my iPhone and, to my delight, discovered they sync to my iPad and Mac. Here are my three…
notint = Not interested but thanks; please remove. This is short, sweet and to the point. The “but thanks” disarms the person and makes them want to be polite and follow my wishes. It used to read “please remove me from your list” but that resulted in a bunch of silly replies insisting I wasn’t on a list. Shortening it did the trick.
novc = I’m sorry; I’m heads down on a bunch of initiatives and don’t have time for a call right now. Maybe in a few quarters. This has worked well for VC, PE and investment bankers. I might want to talk with them eventually, but I genuinely don’t have time to invest in a call or meeting right now. They’ll email me back in six or nine months, and my answer will either change or be the same.
nocant = I’m sorry; I’ve already made commitments I’d have to break if I tried to make a call or meeting work right now. Is there another way I can help? The last sentence is only for those I genuinely feel like I might have a way to help, like an introduction to make.
These don’t work for every circumstance, but they’re often a good starting point, and then I edit them from there.
It’s Time to Triage
Okay, we’ve got the flow of email reduced to the messages that matter. We’ve equipped ourselves with a to-do app so we can move our tasks out of the inbox. And we’ve killed the notifications so we can stop going into our email every 30 seconds. Now we’re going to triage our inbox.
Triaging is not the same as processing. We’ll get to that below. Triage is something we can do for two minutes, even if we don’t get every message triaged. We can do it on our phones while walking down the hallway. I always scan the names and subject lines, and triage the most important messages first.
And oh yes, let’s just forget the silly myth of “touch each email only once” — it’s a nice thought, but that’s for people who aren’t busy, or can do the “I only check email twice a day” thing. The rest of us need to triage first.
Here are the actions you might take while triaging.
Reply. If a very quick reply is all that is warranted — like a “Thanks” or “Great” or “On it” — I’ll reply while triaging.
Reply with a Macro. If one of my pre-written replies works, I’ll send it while triaging. Done.
Forward/Delegate. I’ll delegate things that don’t need context or deep explanation. My team is very used to getting messages from me with “please handle” or “?” as my only note.
Process Later. The “To Process” folder is my second inbox. This is where I put messages that need more than 10 seconds of work each. I don’t have time to handle them during triage, so I move them into To Process instead.
Archive or Delete. If no further action is needed, I hit archive. If it’s something I don’t need, I might hit delete instead. (On the other hand, I might put it into “To Process” if I want to unsubscribe or block the sender later.)
At the end of triage, the only things left in my inbox are the deeply urgent things that I must handle on the run, before I’ll get back to my to-do list. If my CFO needs me to call the bank, or one of my board members has sent me a note that shouldn’t wait until later, that stays in the inbox to deal with as quickly as possible. Emails from your boss or up your chain of command, unless explicitly not urgent, probably belong here!
After triaging, my inbox is often empty…but I don’t consider this Inbox Zero quite yet.
Okay, Let’s Process!
When your inbox is empty, and the critically urgent is under control, it’s time to process. I always process emails in the order they were received, oldest to newest. On a good week, I might find half an hour every day to process, and be running 2–3 days behind. On non-stop week]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-02-22:/posts/7183159Fri, 22 Feb 2019 17:31:32 +0000Newsbeat RadioIt’s quite fashionable to hate email. Countless articles have been written decrying how awful it is. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to reinvent it. And the latest fad is just to give up — screenshots proudly showing six-figure unread...I’ve become quite the contrarian on this subject. I love email. It’s my secret weapon. Some of the best news I’ve ever gotten came in an email. As an adoptive dad, I caught my first glimpse of two of my kids through an email. I’ve closed deals, hired amazing talent, and connected great people via email.
I love Slack as well, but there is still nothing better than email for connecting with the world outside, and looping in members of your team to get things done.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who get more email than me, but I’m no slouch in that department. I’m the CEO of a 200+ employee company with 20,000+ customers. It takes a full time executive assistant and a full time Chief of Staff to keep my world in orbit right now. My email address is also not hard to figure out. In fact, I put it right on my LinkedIn page.
And yet, I get to Inbox Zero anywhere between 1–3x a week.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me how that’s possible, so I decided I’d take a little time on vacation and write this post. (Yep, sharing ideas like these are my idea of fun. 😂)
Slow the Fire Hose
People talk about the messages that appear in their inbox as if they have no control over them, and that’s not entirely true. The first thing you probably need to do is turn down the flow of messages.
Email is for messages, not for articles. There is VERY little content that I allow to flow into my inbox. Unsubscribe from all those blogs and newsletters you subscribed to. Follow them on Twitter, or drop them into Pocket. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, think about setting up a separate email account for this stuff. That isn’t an inbox; it’s your personal magazine.
Be selective on marketing. There are 10–15 brands that I have a strong connection with who I’ll let into my inbox because I actually want to hear from them. Otherwise, I’m pretty confident they will find a way to get my attention in another channel.
Kill non-essential or duplicate email notifications. Every app and service that we use is pinging us with notifications. But a lot of time, they are non-essential, or the same alert also comes as a push notification on your phone. Either change the settings in the app, or put in some email rules to kill those.
Be an aggressive unsubscriber. When you get unsolicited email you don’t want, always click unsubscribe if the link is there. Most unsub systems work with 1–2 clicks.
I know people who have followed these four tips and killed an astounding 80% of their incoming messages.
Kill the Notifications
I’m decently responsive to important things in my inbox, but the only way I got there was to massively reduce the noise, so I could hear the signal.
Turn off all the app notifications. Email shouldn’t generate banners, unread badges or sounds. Trust me, you won’t forget that your inbox exists; you don’t need any reminders to check it. Give yourself the space to do focused work and then tap your email app when you’re ready to triage your inbox.
Use the VIP feature if it’s helpful. I have my direct reports and my board members on the iOS Mail VIP list, so I get a notification on my phone if one of them emails. However, the more that our urgent stuff moves to Slack or texting, the less valuable this has become.
Free yourself from feeling obligated to respond to everything. I’m sure I miss emails from real people that go into spam, but I also get a lot of “asks” from people I don’t know. Given that I’ve committed my time to family, company and non-profit work, spending time and attention on those is breaking my commitments to others. These emails are like people who show...]]>893cleanfullNewsbeat RadioIt’s quite fashionable to hate email. Countless articles have been written decrying how awful it is. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to reinvent it. And the latest fad is just to give up — screenshots proudly showing six-figure unread message counts and articles about “inbox infinity” abound. I’ve become quite the contrarian on this subject. I love email. It’s my secret weapon. Some of the best news I’ve ever gotten came in an email. As an adoptive dad, I caught my first glimpse of two of my kids through an email. I’ve closed deals, hired amazing talent, and connected great people via email. I love Slack as well, but there is still nothing better than email for connecting with the world outside, and looping in members of your team to get things done. I’m sure there are a lot of people who get more email than me, but I’m no slouch in that department. I’m the CEO of a 200+ employee company with 20,000+ customers. It takes a full time executive assistant and a full time Chief of Staff to keep my world in orbit right now. My email address is also not hard to figure out. In fact, I put it right on my LinkedIn page. And yet, I get to Inbox Zero anywhere between 1–3x a week. I’ve had a lot of people ask me how that’s possible, so I decided I’d take a little time on vacation and write this post. (Yep, sharing ideas like these are my idea of fun. 😂) Slow the Fire Hose People talk about the messages that appear in their inbox as if they have no control over them, and that’s not entirely true. The first thing you probably need to do is turn down the flow of messages. Email is for messages, not for articles. There is VERY little content that I allow to flow into my inbox. Unsubscribe from all those blogs and newsletters you subscribed to. Follow them on Twitter, or drop them into Pocket. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, think about setting up a separate email account for this stuff. That isn’t an inbox; it’s your personal magazine. Be selective on marketing. There are 10–15 brands that I have a strong connection with who I’ll let into my inbox because I actually want to hear from them. Otherwise, I’m pretty confident they will find a way to get my attention in another channel. Kill non-essential or duplicate email notifications. Every app and service that we use is pinging us with notifications. But a lot of time, they are non-essential, or the same alert also comes as a push notification on your phone. Either change the settings in the app, or put in some email rules to kill those. Be an aggressive unsubscriber. When you get unsolicited email you don’t want, always click unsubscribe if the link is there. Most unsub systems work with 1–2 clicks. I know people who have followed these four tips and killed an astounding 80% of their incoming messages. Kill the Notifications I’m decently responsive to important things in my inbox, but the only way I got there was to massively reduce the noise, so I could hear the signal. Turn off all the app notifications. Email shouldn’t generate banners, unread badges or sounds. Trust me, you won’t forget that your inbox exists; you don’t need any reminders to check it. Give yourself the space to do focused work and then tap your email app when you’re ready to triage your inbox. Use the VIP feature if it’s helpful. I have my direct reports and my board members on the iOS Mail VIP list, so I get a notification on my phone if one of them emails. However, the more that our urgent stuff moves to Slack or texting, the less valuable this has become. Free yourself from feeling obligated to respond to everything. I’m sure I miss emails from real people that go into spam, but I also get a lot of “asks” from people I don’t know. Given that I’ve committed my time to family, company and non-profit work, spending time and attention on those is breaking my commitments to others. These emails are like people who show up to your office without an appointment — you might drop everything to give them...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/retail-is-broken-apple-has-a-planDespite the recent profits warning, Apple is bolstering its investment in experiential retail, with expansive flagships, and classes and workshops in every store. "When you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection."
Big companies have created a "tragedy in retail" by becoming remote from their customers and staff.
Ahrendts urges retailers to rethink their approach: "You can’t just look at the profitability of one store or the profitability of one app or the online business. You have to put it all together: one customer, one brand.”
Angela Ahrendts stands on the snowy steps in front of the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC. This noble construction, built between 1901 and 1903, and once filled with books, will soon become an Apple store – and something more. Alongside $1,250 iPhones and $130 Apple Pencils, the space will play host to creative workshops, sketching tours of the neighbourhood and author readings that will be live-streamed to other stores around the world.
This is retail, but not as we know it.
As chief executive of Burberry from 2006 to 2014, Ahrendts, 58, proved that a bricks-and-mortar store could appeal to the millennial generation. On London’s Regent Street in 2012, Burberry unveiled what was then hailed as the store of the future: a 44,000-square-foot space of smart mirrors and simulated rain showers.
“We bought 10,000 iPads and put them in the stores and everyone thought that was so revolutionary,” says Ahrendts. “For us it really wasn’t rocket science, we had targeted the millennial consumer and we knew that was the best way to talk to them.” Then, five years ago, she left London for Silicon Valley – and since then has been dreaming up a new vision for retail at one of the world’s largest technology companies.
Retail has never been so in need of reinvention. Since 2017 almost 10,000 stores in the US have closed their doors. Some analysts predict that by 2022 one in four US malls could be out of business. Although 2018 showed some signs of improvement, the twin threat remains: retailers around the world need to find a way to both compete with online shopping and to attract younger, more demanding customers.
It’s easy to look at Apple’s grand new fleet of flagships and be dazzled by their surfaces: the Foster + Partners-designed Champs Élysées store boasts floor-to-ceiling glass, trees in the courtyard, and a preserved carved wooden staircase connecting hyper-modern rooms. But the real difference, Ahrendts claims, is much more fundamental. Apple stores show a vision for retail in the way they help Apple build long-term customer relationships, the way they are financially accounted for and the way they connect a network of 70,000 employees across the globe.
The Apple vision
Since 2015, Apple has opened a series of high-profile flagships to promote its brand, each requiring, in the company’s words, “substantially” more investment than its typical stores. “We are now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that’s Apple,” Ahrendts explains as we pick our way past Carnegie Library’s historic pillars and through concrete and rubble to where a hard-hat brigade are inserting beacons into the walls.
“We don’t talk a lot about it but there are thousands of beacons behind those walls,” she remarks. These location-aware sensors connect with the Apple Store app on iPhones, sending visitors a greeting when they arrive in store, and prompting them to skip the cash register and pay for purchases via the app as they approach the accessories area. (They must opt-in on the app to access these features.) “As we renovate every store we update all of the technology. We don’t want to be gimmicky, but stores need to become living, breathing spaces, not just two-dimensional boxes.”
That is now coming to life at Carnegie Library. “A few years ago I sent a photo to Tim [Cook, chief executive of Apple] saying there’s this library that Apple could turn into a community space,” she explains. “Carnegie envisioned it years ago when he had the reading room. For Apple, we’ll have field trips with busloads of kids; or they will be coming in learning to code every morning. It’s a different type of investment.”
It’s a continuation of founder Steve Jobs’s original vision. “Steve told the teams when he opened retail 18 years ago, ‘Your job is not to sell, your job is to enrich their lives and always through the lens of education.’”
Apple isn’t the only company trying its hand at “experiential retail”. Urban Outfitters has its three “Space” stores in Austin, Williamsburg and LA, which offer live gigs and flower-arranging workshops alongside avocado-shaped phone chargers. And at at the Réel Mall in Shanghai, you can learn carpentry, painting or silver jewellery-making between visits to the Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga stores next door. Ahrendts herself admires what Soho House and CitizenM have created: “They have filled this huge niche, a combination of experience and human connection."
But no company is doing experiential retail with the same level of scale or ambition as Apple. Its ‘Today at Apple’ programme offers classes, talks, concerts and workshops, each designed, in Ahrendts’s words, to “enrich lives”. The lineup is part whimsy and part inspiration, including events like “Drawing Treehouses with Foster + Partners”, fitness walks and “Make Your Own Emoji” sessions for kids. As always with Apple, the scale is breathtaking, with thousands of events held in 21 countries each week and imminent plans to expand.
“I think as humans we still need gathering places,” Ahrendts says. “And when you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection. Eye contact.”
“I’m only one person,” Ahrendts says when I ask her about the parallels between her earlier transformation of Burberry and now at Apple. “I just set the vision and I am the connector – I am the enabler if you will. The common denominator for me is always the people. I love the fact seven of my directors at Burberry have gone on to be CEOs. You put together an amazing group of people, you all share the same vision and mission and purpose of something you want to achieve together.”
“There’s a slight difference,” she adds with a smile. “We had about 11,000 people at Burberry and there’s about 70,000 in Apple Retail, but then you say, how much more can we do if we get everyone aligned? And then you say, well, how do you do that?”
The short answer is technology. At 506 stores around the world, Apple staff start their day with an app called Hello, which briefs them on the most important “need to knows” of the day, often featuring videos from Ahrendts and her team. A second app, Loop, functions as an internal social network where staff can share learnings with each other. “Someone might be selling more phones than anybody else and we ask them to share that on a 20-second video on Loop,” Ahrendts explains. “We use auto-translate and everybody in the world can see what Tom in Regent Street is doing. It’s a huge unlock, just getting all the stores to talk to one another.”
This approach to internal communication – using human-touch internal video conferences – helped employees buy into Ahrendts’s vision at Burberry.
The same formula appears to be working at Apple. “Many retailers have become so big they’re removed from their own employees. They are lucky if they keep more than 20 per cent every year. We keep nearly 90 per cent of our full-time employees. We moved 20 per cent of the people in retail last year – they got promoted, took on new positions.”
“The tragedy in retail is that it has become about numbers,” Ahrendts continues. “It’s about cost-cutting the way to prosperity instead of investing in your people, and in that environment, big isn’t always good.”
In spite of all the admiration heaped on Apple, it is not immune to the winds of change. In January, Cook sent out a profit warning citing an unexpected downturn in China towards the end of year, which briefly sent the share price tumbling. The company will release its fourth-quarter earnings forecast after the market close on Tuesday the 29th.
When asked about the warning, Ahrendts points out that Apple is primarily a phone company. The iPhone generated 62 per cent of its $266 billion in sales last year, while retail accounts for about a quarter of revenue, according to Erwan Rambourg, managing director at HSBC. “In retail, the phone is not our largest category,” says Ahrendts. “We are actually number one in the company for Mac.”
Contrary to the rest of the retail sector, Ahrendts is more concerned with the effect Apple’s stores have on its brand than how many sales they generate each day.
“From a financial perspective we look at [our stores] differently. We look at Los Angeles and say, what do we want to achieve there? Now, my big flagship may not make as much money as my store over in Century City, but I’m looking at all the customers in LA from all these different touch points. What’s the profitability for those customers in LA?
“It’s a very different way from traditional retailers, who think door by door by door,” she continues. “Who think, ‘I’m going to close that door because it wasn’t profitable.’
“One of the things we’ve had to do at Apple is to stop looking at everything on a linear basis,” she adds. “You can’t just look at the profitability of one store or the profitability of one app or the online business. You have to put it all together: one customer, one brand.
“No matter how that customer comes in and buys, you have to look at it as one P&L. This is the issue, companies try and make these stores work on a standalone basis. When someone buys online and picks up in-store the revenue goes to online and not the store, but you are doing all the work in the store. They need to look at it differently.”
Apple sends a survey to everyone who attends one of its “Today]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-02-08:/posts/7169207Fri, 08 Feb 2019 19:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioVogue Business Despite the recent profits warning, Apple is bolstering its investment in experiential retail, with expansive flagships, and classes and workshops in every store. "When you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than...Despite the recent profits warning, Apple is bolstering its investment in experiential retail, with expansive flagships, and classes and workshops in every store. "When you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection."
Big companies have created a "tragedy in retail" by becoming remote from their customers and staff.
Ahrendts urges retailers to rethink their approach: "You can’t just look at the profitability of one store or the profitability of one app or the online business. You have to put it all together: one customer, one brand.”
Angela Ahrendts stands on the snowy steps in front of the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC. This noble construction, built between 1901 and 1903, and once filled with books, will soon become an Apple store – and something more. Alongside $1,250 iPhones and $130 Apple Pencils, the space will play host to creative workshops, sketching tours of the neighbourhood and author readings that will be live-streamed to other stores around the world.
This is retail, but not as we know it.
As chief executive of Burberry from 2006 to 2014, Ahrendts, 58, proved that a bricks-and-mortar store could appeal to the millennial generation. On London’s Regent Street in 2012, Burberry unveiled what was then hailed as the store of the future: a 44,000-square-foot space of smart mirrors and simulated rain showers.
“We bought 10,000 iPads and put them in the stores and everyone thought that was so revolutionary,” says Ahrendts. “For us it really wasn’t rocket science, we had targeted the millennial consumer and we knew that was the best way to talk to them.” Then, five years ago, she left London for Silicon Valley – and since then has been dreaming up a new vision for retail at one of the world’s largest technology companies.
Retail has never been so in need of reinvention. Since 2017 almost 10,000 stores in the US have closed their doors. Some analysts predict that by 2022 one in four US malls could be out of business. Although 2018 showed some signs of improvement, the twin threat remains: retailers around the world need to find a way to both compete with online shopping and to attract younger, more demanding customers.
It’s easy to look at Apple’s grand new fleet of flagships and be dazzled by their surfaces: the Foster + Partners-designed Champs Élysées store boasts floor-to-ceiling glass, trees in the courtyard, and a preserved carved wooden staircase connecting hyper-modern rooms. But the real difference, Ahrendts claims, is much more fundamental. Apple stores show a vision for retail in the way they help Apple build long-term customer relationships, the way they are financially accounted for and the way they connect a network of 70,000 employees across the globe.
The Apple vision
Since 2015, Apple has opened a series of high-profile flagships to promote its brand, each requiring, in the company’s words, “substantially” more investment than its typical stores. “We are now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that’s Apple,” Ahrendts explains as we pick our way past Carnegie Library’s historic pillars and through concrete and rubble to where a hard-hat brigade are inserting beacons into the walls.
“We don’t talk a lot about it but there are thousands of beacons behind those walls,” she remarks. These location-aware sensors connect with the Apple Store app on iPhones, sending visitors a greeting when they arrive in store, and prompting them to skip the cash register and pay for purchases via the app as they approach the accessories area. (They must opt-in on the app to access these features.) “As we renovate every store we update all of the technology. We don’t want to be gimmicky, but stores need to become living, breathing spaces, not just two-dimensional boxes.”
That is now coming to life at Carnegie Library. “A few years ago I sent...]]>716cleanfullNewsbeat RadioVogue Business Despite the recent profits warning, Apple is bolstering its investment in experiential retail, with expansive flagships, and classes and workshops in every store. "When you are serving digital natives, the thing they long for more than anything is human connection." Big companies have created a "tragedy in retail" by becoming remote from their customers and staff. Ahrendts urges retailers to rethink their approach: "You can’t just look at the profitability of one store or the profitability of one app or the online business. You have to put it all together: one customer, one brand.” Angela Ahrendts stands on the snowy steps in front of the former Carnegie Library in Washington, DC. This noble construction, built between 1901 and 1903, and once filled with books, will soon become an Apple store – and something more. Alongside $1,250 iPhones and $130 Apple Pencils, the space will play host to creative workshops, sketching tours of the neighbourhood and author readings that will be live-streamed to other stores around the world. This is retail, but not as we know it. As chief executive of Burberry from 2006 to 2014, Ahrendts, 58, proved that a bricks-and-mortar store could appeal to the millennial generation. On London’s Regent Street in 2012, Burberry unveiled what was then hailed as the store of the future: a 44,000-square-foot space of smart mirrors and simulated rain showers. “We bought 10,000 iPads and put them in the stores and everyone thought that was so revolutionary,” says Ahrendts. “For us it really wasn’t rocket science, we had targeted the millennial consumer and we knew that was the best way to talk to them.” Then, five years ago, she left London for Silicon Valley – and since then has been dreaming up a new vision for retail at one of the world’s largest technology companies. Retail has never been so in need of reinvention. Since 2017 almost 10,000 stores in the US have closed their doors. Some analysts predict that by 2022 one in four US malls could be out of business. Although 2018 showed some signs of improvement, the twin threat remains: retailers around the world need to find a way to both compete with online shopping and to attract younger, more demanding customers. It’s easy to look at Apple’s grand new fleet of flagships and be dazzled by their surfaces: the Foster + Partners-designed Champs Élysées store boasts floor-to-ceiling glass, trees in the courtyard, and a preserved carved wooden staircase connecting hyper-modern rooms. But the real difference, Ahrendts claims, is much more fundamental. Apple stores show a vision for retail in the way they help Apple build long-term customer relationships, the way they are financially accounted for and the way they connect a network of 70,000 employees across the globe. The Apple vision Since 2015, Apple has opened a series of high-profile flagships to promote its brand, each requiring, in the company’s words, “substantially” more investment than its typical stores. “We are now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that’s Apple,” Ahrendts explains as we pick our way past Carnegie Library’s historic pillars and through concrete and rubble to where a hard-hat brigade are inserting beacons into the walls. “We don’t talk a lot about it but there are thousands of beacons behind those walls,” she remarks. These location-aware sensors connect with the Apple Store app on iPhones, sending visitors a greeting when they arrive in store, and prompting them to skip the cash register and pay for purchases via the app as they approach the accessories area. (They must opt-in on the app to access these features.) “As we renovate every store we update all of the technology. We don’t want to be gimmicky, but stores need to become living, breathing spaces, not just two-dimensional boxes.” That is now coming to life at Carnegie Library. “A few years ago I sent a photo to Tim [Cook, chief executive of Apple] saying there’s...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht-influencerWhile chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched intoxicated rich people having expensive fun in their cheap white shower slippers — first rule of yacht club is there are no shoes on the yacht, which are instead piled in a big heap at the yacht’s entrance — I began to wonder, “How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?”
Then, almost on cue, seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted a dude who had, in fact, spent his entire life doing this. Alex Jimenez was a professional yacht influencer, and he was hard at work.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I just saw an open chair next to a lanky guy wearing a loose polo shirt and a flat-brimmed Yankees hat, and sat down in it. As everyone else gradually made their way toward the raucous festivities taking place on the foredeck, Jimenez struck up a conversation with me. He remarked that I seemed both thoughtful and decidedly out of place.
“I’m working,” I said. “I never stop working. All I can think about is work.”
“Hey, me too,” he replied. “I’m working right now.”
“I used to feel all messed up about my career,” he continued. “I was a short-haul truck driver in the Bronx, and I guess I caught the yacht bug. I’d go to a bookstore, grab a table and read everything I could about yachts. Then, on the very first weekend after I downloaded the Instagram app, right after Instagram became a thing you could download, I went to a luxury boat show and took some of pictures of the yachts. I added some hashtags, and pretty soon I had 800,000 followers. But the quantity doesn’t really matter to the folks who pay me, it’s the quality. Influential people follow me, Gulf state princes and Russian moguls who might actually be able to buy these yachts.”
Wait, what?
When Jimenez said that he was working, I assumed he was “working” the same way Lindsay Lohan was — that is, “working the crowd.” He looked important enough, wearing an expensive, custom-made watch with all of the wheels, ratchets and levers exposed.
“Nah, I’m nobody you’d know,” he assured me. “I’m here to take some pictures and post some video stories of the yacht, which a brokerage group is trying to sell. The watch is a loaner from a friend. I wear it, take a picture of my wrist and tag his company on my Instagram account. It’s just a small part of the hustle.”
The yacht hustle, I soon learned, was the all-consuming passion of Jimenez’s life. He went from a guy who took Instagram pictures, always head-on yacht shots run through one of the generic filters, to a guy that yacht brokers paid to stay on their yachts in order to mention that said yachts were docked in a port and available for sale or charter. He was helicoptered from yacht to yacht, and slept in the smallest guest cabins.
“The yacht we’re on right now used to be a cruise ship that they retrofitted,” he told me. “You can sleep a dozen or more people on here, and the decks can fit a bunch more, but it’s all kind of crowded.”
I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul.
“Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.”
We took a walk around the yacht while people boozed and bumped into each other, their words slurring together and distorted further by the deep bass thump of the music playing from the upper and lower decks. Jimenez’s own cabin was indeed tiny, very nearly a capsule hotel. He showed me the heavy-duty metal suitcase where he secured his borrowed valuables, a collection of watches on loan from various business acquaintances.
“The watches are heavy on the wrist,” he said. “They’re great to look at, but their bands often cut into the wrist. And yeah, the room is small, but with my nocturnal schedule, it’s not like I sleep very much. I take maybe one picture a day and post a few Instagram stories, but I’m expected to be up on the deck, mingling with partygoers and selling the mystique of the yacht.”
Jimenez leveled with me — once upon a time, he had been excited by the idea of partying on a yacht. After all, who wouldn’t be? But now he was basically just a working stiff. He too had a home and a family, with kids he didn’t see as much as he could because his “feet were never on dry land.”
He had considerable yacht expertise and knew all the major players in the yacht world, buyers and sellers and their glorious boats. He had been on the 100-foot yachts and the 500-foot yachts, and seen yacht-related activities he assured me exceeded any fantasies, dark or light, that I could ever imagine. Yet all that meant he was now just another yacht worker, someone who punched the clock — or the pearl-faced wristwatch, in his case — the same as the kitchen staff, the bartenders and the yacht’s crew.
“You’ve seen the crew,” he told me. “It’s about 30 people on this yacht, and they’re Greek and serious as a heart attack. Nine times out of ten, the crews on these yachts are either Greek or Russian. The rich people that staff these yachts talk at length about whether it’s better to go with one or the other. They can make pretty decent money, and on a 500-footer with a 60 or 70 person crew, you’re probably talking $5,000 or $6,000 a month plus room and board.”
After years of yacht influence, the true appeal of high-class maritime life had become clear to Jimenez. “You have to be really rich to own one of these,” he said. “I mean, you have to be so rich to own a yacht that’s 300 feet or more. You can’t be rich like LeBron James, because that’s nothing. You can’t be rich like Tiger Woods or Johnny Depp. They’re not rich in super-yacht terms. We’re talking 10 percent or more of the purchase cost of the yacht paid out in upkeep every month. The brokerages and buying groups can swing it because there’s a bunch of investors, and because they charter the yachts to offset costs.
“But for the guy who owns the Eclipse [Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch], that’s not the point. He’s not chartering that thing out. It has a submarine and a missile detection system. See, the power of owning a magnificent yacht like that is in how you’re telling the world that you’re beyond buying and selling. You have more money than there is money to have. You’ve transcended. There are no frontiers left for you on dry land. I mean, true peace is only at sea.”
Jimenez, a poor Puerto Rican kid, grew up hustling. He worked 50- and 60-hour shifts at whatever job he had; he considered overtime to be a necessary part of his base pay and counts himself among those annoying grinders who dismiss 40 hours of work per week as a “part-time job.” He now made a “comfortable middle-class living,” but sitting there with me in the cabin, fretted that it could go away at any time. “This is me working a little network I’ve built using someone else’s social media platform,” he said. “If Instagram changes its algorithm slightly, there goes a bit of my business. If Instagram disconnects some of the tools I use to build and monitor my account, there goes a bit of my business. And if Instagram goes away and is replaced by something newer and better, I need to get there first, just like I did with this account. If I don’t, I’m done. I’m totally dependent on a platform that’s completely out-of-control.”
For Jimenez, Instagram is essentially a money tree that must be fertilized and harvested as much as possible before its popularity wanes. As another side hustle, he “plants” subsidiary yacht accounts, accounts with soundalike names and images, and uses cross-promotion from his primary account to grow them until they’re large enough to sell to yacht brokers or manufacturers. “I build them up and then sell them off, and my client gets a ready-made account that has real followers and legitimate engagement,” he told me. “I started focusing on that when I realized that this wasn’t just a ‘life of the party’ job, that pushing social media is something you do all day and all night long.
“I fire off these posts while I’m sitting around on the yacht, when things are very slow. I’m not in this for the fun of it, I’m not posting silly stuff. I basically do sponsored advertisements that follow a set format. I watch Instagram like a hawk to see if anything is hampering the growth of these other accounts, and to see if I’m continuing to get the activity I need on my primary posts.”
After surveying his cabin, Jimenez and I walked to the side deck and slouched over the railing. The sun had set, and we studied the well-lit coastline of Cannes. “If you could have anything at all, anything in the world, what would you want?” he asked me.
“I guess I’d want to keep writing and keep getting paid for it,” I responded.
“Well, I want to own a yacht,” Jimenez said. “I used to just want to be on yachts, because I thought the parties were cool and the technology was awesome, but now that I’ve spent a good portion of my life partying on them, I actually want to own a yacht. Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you’ve somehow freed yourself from work and want. If you own the yacht that way, you’re a free man. The hustle and grind are things of the past.”
I asked him if he had plans to leave the yacht while we were in the French Riviera.
“No, I’m going to hang back here, because I’m scheduled to be on another o]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-02-08:/posts/7169194Fri, 08 Feb 2019 18:44:37 +0000Newsbeat RadioMel Magazine While chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched...While chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched intoxicated rich people having expensive fun in their cheap white shower slippers — first rule of yacht club is there are no shoes on the yacht, which are instead piled in a big heap at the yacht’s entrance — I began to wonder, “How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?”
Then, almost on cue, seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted a dude who had, in fact, spent his entire life doing this. Alex Jimenez was a professional yacht influencer, and he was hard at work.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I just saw an open chair next to a lanky guy wearing a loose polo shirt and a flat-brimmed Yankees hat, and sat down in it. As everyone else gradually made their way toward the raucous festivities taking place on the foredeck, Jimenez struck up a conversation with me. He remarked that I seemed both thoughtful and decidedly out of place.
“I’m working,” I said. “I never stop working. All I can think about is work.”
“Hey, me too,” he replied. “I’m working right now.”
“I used to feel all messed up about my career,” he continued. “I was a short-haul truck driver in the Bronx, and I guess I caught the yacht bug. I’d go to a bookstore, grab a table and read everything I could about yachts. Then, on the very first weekend after I downloaded the Instagram app, right after Instagram became a thing you could download, I went to a luxury boat show and took some of pictures of the yachts. I added some hashtags, and pretty soon I had 800,000 followers. But the quantity doesn’t really matter to the folks who pay me, it’s the quality. Influential people follow me, Gulf state princes and Russian moguls who might actually be able to buy these yachts.”
Wait, what?
When Jimenez said that he was working, I assumed he was “working” the same way Lindsay Lohan was — that is, “working the crowd.” He looked important enough, wearing an expensive, custom-made watch with all of the wheels, ratchets and levers exposed.
“Nah, I’m nobody you’d know,” he assured me. “I’m here to take some pictures and post some video stories of the yacht, which a brokerage group is trying to sell. The watch is a loaner from a friend. I wear it, take a picture of my wrist and tag his company on my Instagram account. It’s just a small part of the hustle.”
The yacht hustle, I soon learned, was the all-consuming passion of Jimenez’s life. He went from a guy who took Instagram pictures, always head-on yacht shots run through one of the generic filters, to a guy that yacht brokers paid to stay on their yachts in order to mention that said yachts were docked in a port and available for sale or charter. He was helicoptered from yacht to yacht, and slept in the smallest guest cabins.
“The yacht we’re on right now used to be a cruise ship that they retrofitted,” he told me. “You can sleep a dozen or more people on here, and the decks can fit a bunch more, but it’s all kind of crowded.”
I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul.
“Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.”
We took a walk around the yacht while people boozed and bumped into each other, their words...]]>686cleanfullNewsbeat RadioMel Magazine While chasing a 2017 story about medical tourism and Slovakian stem cells that had already taken me to hospital facilities in Bratislava and Vienna, I wound up partying on a 283-foot yacht floating in the French Riviera. As I watched intoxicated rich people having expensive fun in their cheap white shower slippers — first rule of yacht club is there are no shoes on the yacht, which are instead piled in a big heap at the yacht’s entrance — I began to wonder, “How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?” Then, almost on cue, seated at a table on the rear deck with Lindsay Lohan and her entourage, I spotted a dude who had, in fact, spent his entire life doing this. Alex Jimenez was a professional yacht influencer, and he was hard at work. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I just saw an open chair next to a lanky guy wearing a loose polo shirt and a flat-brimmed Yankees hat, and sat down in it. As everyone else gradually made their way toward the raucous festivities taking place on the foredeck, Jimenez struck up a conversation with me. He remarked that I seemed both thoughtful and decidedly out of place. “I’m working,” I said. “I never stop working. All I can think about is work.” “Hey, me too,” he replied. “I’m working right now.” “I used to feel all messed up about my career,” he continued. “I was a short-haul truck driver in the Bronx, and I guess I caught the yacht bug. I’d go to a bookstore, grab a table and read everything I could about yachts. Then, on the very first weekend after I downloaded the Instagram app, right after Instagram became a thing you could download, I went to a luxury boat show and took some of pictures of the yachts. I added some hashtags, and pretty soon I had 800,000 followers. But the quantity doesn’t really matter to the folks who pay me, it’s the quality. Influential people follow me, Gulf state princes and Russian moguls who might actually be able to buy these yachts.” Wait, what? When Jimenez said that he was working, I assumed he was “working” the same way Lindsay Lohan was — that is, “working the crowd.” He looked important enough, wearing an expensive, custom-made watch with all of the wheels, ratchets and levers exposed. “Nah, I’m nobody you’d know,” he assured me. “I’m here to take some pictures and post some video stories of the yacht, which a brokerage group is trying to sell. The watch is a loaner from a friend. I wear it, take a picture of my wrist and tag his company on my Instagram account. It’s just a small part of the hustle.” The yacht hustle, I soon learned, was the all-consuming passion of Jimenez’s life. He went from a guy who took Instagram pictures, always head-on yacht shots run through one of the generic filters, to a guy that yacht brokers paid to stay on their yachts in order to mention that said yachts were docked in a port and available for sale or charter. He was helicoptered from yacht to yacht, and slept in the smallest guest cabins. “The yacht we’re on right now used to be a cruise ship that they retrofitted,” he told me. “You can sleep a dozen or more people on here, and the decks can fit a bunch more, but it’s all kind of crowded.” I mentioned that the bathrooms were both tiny, and with a hundred or so people aboard the yacht, already rather foul. “Yeah, that’s just how it goes,” he said. “It’s an endless party, especially on the yachts that are 200 feet and up, the so-called ‘superyachts.’ Conditions are cramped, everyone’s out of their mind on some substance, and the bathrooms are being used for who knows what. There’s a kitchen and a big dining area, but good luck getting food out of there when you really want it. You’re not on here to eat a sit-down meal, even though they usually have nice dining rooms. The bars on each level are the focal points of these things.” We took a walk around the yacht while people boozed and bumped into each other, their words slurring together and distorted further by the deep bass thump of the music...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/where-amazon-returns-go-to-be-resold-by-With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes, you could go to a liquidation website right now and buy a pallet full of stuff that people have returned to Amazon. It will have, perhaps, been lightly sorted by product category—home decor, outdoor, apparel—but this is mostly aspirational. For example, in one pallet labeled “home decor,” available for sale on liquidation.com, you could find hiking crampons, shimmer fabric paint, a High Visibility Thermal Winter Trapper Hat, a Mr. Ellie Pooh Natural White Paper List Pad, a St. Patrick’s Pot O’ Gold Cupcake Decorating Kit, a Spoontiques Golf Thermometer, a Feliz Cumpleanos Candle Packaged Balloon, and five Caterpillar Hoodies for Pets.
Every box is a core sample drilled through the digital crust of platform capitalism. On Amazon’s website, sophisticated sorting algorithms relentlessly rank and organize these products before they go out into the world, but once the goods return to the warehouse, they shake free of the database and become random objects thrown together into a box by fate. Most likely, never will this precise box of shit ever exist again in the world. On liquidation.com, each pallet’s manifest comes with suggested prices for each product in a pristine state. If you add them up, the “value” of the box might be $4,000, while the auction price might only come to $200.
While Amazon doesn’t publicly talk about how it chooses which returned products go back up for sale and which go to the liquidators, it does sell some products through Amazon Warehouse at a discount. If it sounds crazy to sell products at massive discounts, consider that goods sitting in a warehouse are a cost. So is the labor necessary to repackage something for resale. If Amazon and other retailers let another company pay them something, they avoid those costs and add some revenue.
So, Liquidity Services, the operator of liquidation.com, became a major (though not exclusive) handler of Amazon’s American liquidations. The company calls dealing with returns “the reverse supply chain”—a part of the retail business that has been growing in importance as online shopping becomes more popular. Liquidity Services now has 3,357,000 registered buyers on its various liquidation websites. In the past fiscal year, it sold $626.4 million worth of stuff.
Amazon represents a growing chunk of Liquidity’s business. In its most recent SEC filing, the company disclosed that it spent approximately $33.7 million on Amazon liquidation inventory, which it then turns around and sells for maybe 5 percent of the supposed retail value. And, assuming the company is trying to turn a profit, it must buy the inventory for a fraction of that. Doing the rough math, we’re talking about inventory that once had a collective value reaching into the billions, before it landed in some box on a doorstep.
Of course, once people do buy all these unwanted goods, they rearrange them into more profitable configurations. It seems so easy: Sort the still-good stuff from the broken objects, the trash, the worthless, and then post that stuff to Amazon or eBay. Who couldn’t sell $4,000 worth of stuff for more than $200?
My colleague Alana Semuels demonstrated in her story on the proselytizers selling get-rich-quick classes about retailing products on Amazon that the lure of the high-margin, online business is nearly irresistible. This is a variation on that hustle: Buy liquidation, sell high. This idea has won serious viewership for some YouTubers. It’s become a micro-genre on the video service, where different personalities unbox dozens of things and oooh and ahhh at how much money they are worth relative to what they paid for the box of stuff.
YouTuber Safiya Nygaard got 12.6 million views for her unboxing of a liquidation pallet. YouTuber Kristofer Yee racked up 2.7 million views with a similar video. Another YouTuber, Randomfrankp, got 1.8 million. There’s an undeniable appeal to watching someone go through a whole bunch of strange stuff on camera. And these videos appear to have driven a noticeable spike of interest in liquidation on YouTube.
The implication in most of the videos is that the value of what’s in the box far exceeds the cost. Of course, two Yahoo reporters did it for themselves and got soaked. There’s a difference between something having a suggested retail price of $40 and actually getting someone to pay you $40 for it. The exchange value of most of these items is incredibly low outside the retail context in which they were purchased.
A level-headed Flint, Michigan, liquidation reseller named Walter Blake Knoblock offered a more realistic assessment in a live video he posted last year. He proffered five rules for Amazon pallets. The first? “Don’t expect it all to be good.” “ Don’t get discouraged if you’re halfway through your pallet and it’s all trash,” he said. In his business, it’s typical to throw away a third to half of everything.
After other rules about electronics (“boom or bust”), shipping (“Understand freight cost”), and sales strategy (“Speed through your inventory; don’t squeeze it for every dollar”), he gave his final lesson: “Don’t invest money that you absolutely need. It isn’t like a savings account at your bank. You’re taking a risk.”
Staring into his camera from his warehouse in Michigan, the young entrepreneur implored his viewers to consider the bad things that could happen, not merely the potential profits.
“I don’t want to let anyone believe the fallacy that pallets are a guaranteed way to make money. They’re absolutely not. You’re going to see a bunch of videos of people making a bunch of money on pallets,” Knoblock said. “But just keep in mind that, just like everything else in social media, you’re probably only seeing the top 10, 5 percent of what they do.”
“I’m just pulling this number out of my ass; I don’t know,” he added. “But just like everything else in social media, always take people’s benefits and their profits with a grain of salt.”
But who wants to hear that? That video has just over 30,000 views, orders of magnitude fewer than the hype videos.
The people who seem to have decent success have to work hard and stay disciplined with their purchases and sales. Which is, more or less, the opposite of getting rich quick, or as Knoblock put it in the title of one video, “There Is No Such Thing as Passive Income.”]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-01-25:/posts/7154835Fri, 25 Jan 2019 19:51:10 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Atlantic With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes, you could go to a liquidation website right now and buy a pallet full of stuff that people have returned to Amazon. It will have, perhaps, been lightly sorted by product category—home...With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes, you could go to a liquidation website right now and buy a pallet full of stuff that people have returned to Amazon. It will have, perhaps, been lightly sorted by product category—home decor, outdoor, apparel—but this is mostly aspirational. For example, in one pallet labeled “home decor,” available for sale on liquidation.com, you could find hiking crampons, shimmer fabric paint, a High Visibility Thermal Winter Trapper Hat, a Mr. Ellie Pooh Natural White Paper List Pad, a St. Patrick’s Pot O’ Gold Cupcake Decorating Kit, a Spoontiques Golf Thermometer, a Feliz Cumpleanos Candle Packaged Balloon, and five Caterpillar Hoodies for Pets.
Every box is a core sample drilled through the digital crust of platform capitalism. On Amazon’s website, sophisticated sorting algorithms relentlessly rank and organize these products before they go out into the world, but once the goods return to the warehouse, they shake free of the database and become random objects thrown together into a box by fate. Most likely, never will this precise box of shit ever exist again in the world. On liquidation.com, each pallet’s manifest comes with suggested prices for each product in a pristine state. If you add them up, the “value” of the box might be $4,000, while the auction price might only come to $200.
While Amazon doesn’t publicly talk about how it chooses which returned products go back up for sale and which go to the liquidators, it does sell some products through Amazon Warehouse at a discount. If it sounds crazy to sell products at massive discounts, consider that goods sitting in a warehouse are a cost. So is the labor necessary to repackage something for resale. If Amazon and other retailers let another company pay them something, they avoid those costs and add some revenue.
So, Liquidity Services, the operator of liquidation.com, became a major (though not exclusive) handler of Amazon’s American liquidations. The company calls dealing with returns “the reverse supply chain”—a part of the retail business that has been growing in importance as online shopping becomes more popular. Liquidity Services now has 3,357,000 registered buyers on its various liquidation websites. In the past fiscal year, it sold $626.4 million worth of stuff.
Amazon represents a growing chunk of Liquidity’s business. In its most recent SEC filing, the company disclosed that it spent approximately $33.7 million on Amazon liquidation inventory, which it then turns around and sells for maybe 5 percent of the supposed retail value. And, assuming the company is trying to turn a profit, it must buy the inventory for a fraction of that. Doing the rough math, we’re talking about inventory that once had a collective value reaching into the billions, before it landed in some box on a doorstep.
Of course, once people do buy all these unwanted goods, they rearrange them into more profitable configurations. It seems so easy: Sort the still-good stuff from the broken objects, the trash, the worthless, and then post that stuff to Amazon or eBay. Who couldn’t sell $4,000 worth of stuff for more than $200?
My colleague Alana Semuels demonstrated in her story on the proselytizers selling get-rich-quick classes about retailing products on Amazon that the lure of the high-margin, online business is nearly irresistible. This is a variation on that hustle: Buy liquidation, sell high. This idea has won serious viewership for some YouTubers. It’s become a micro-genre on the video service, where different personalities unbox dozens of things and oooh and ahhh at how much money they are worth relative to what they paid for the box of stuff.
YouTuber Safiya Nygaard got 12.6 million views for her unboxing of a liquidation pallet. YouTuber Kristofer Yee racked up 2.7 million views with a similar video. Another YouTuber, Randomfrankp, got 1.8 million. There’s an undeniable appeal to watching...]]>438cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Atlantic With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes, you could go to a liquidation website right now and buy a pallet full of stuff that people have returned to Amazon. It will have, perhaps, been lightly sorted by product category—home decor, outdoor, apparel—but this is mostly aspirational. For example, in one pallet labeled “home decor,” available for sale on liquidation.com, you could find hiking crampons, shimmer fabric paint, a High Visibility Thermal Winter Trapper Hat, a Mr. Ellie Pooh Natural White Paper List Pad, a St. Patrick’s Pot O’ Gold Cupcake Decorating Kit, a Spoontiques Golf Thermometer, a Feliz Cumpleanos Candle Packaged Balloon, and five Caterpillar Hoodies for Pets. Every box is a core sample drilled through the digital crust of platform capitalism. On Amazon’s website, sophisticated sorting algorithms relentlessly rank and organize these products before they go out into the world, but once the goods return to the warehouse, they shake free of the database and become random objects thrown together into a box by fate. Most likely, never will this precise box of shit ever exist again in the world. On liquidation.com, each pallet’s manifest comes with suggested prices for each product in a pristine state. If you add them up, the “value” of the box might be $4,000, while the auction price might only come to $200. While Amazon doesn’t publicly talk about how it chooses which returned products go back up for sale and which go to the liquidators, it does sell some products through Amazon Warehouse at a discount. If it sounds crazy to sell products at massive discounts, consider that goods sitting in a warehouse are a cost. So is the labor necessary to repackage something for resale. If Amazon and other retailers let another company pay them something, they avoid those costs and add some revenue. So, Liquidity Services, the operator of liquidation.com, became a major (though not exclusive) handler of Amazon’s American liquidations. The company calls dealing with returns “the reverse supply chain”—a part of the retail business that has been growing in importance as online shopping becomes more popular. Liquidity Services now has 3,357,000 registered buyers on its various liquidation websites. In the past fiscal year, it sold $626.4 million worth of stuff. Amazon represents a growing chunk of Liquidity’s business. In its most recent SEC filing, the company disclosed that it spent approximately $33.7 million on Amazon liquidation inventory, which it then turns around and sells for maybe 5 percent of the supposed retail value. And, assuming the company is trying to turn a profit, it must buy the inventory for a fraction of that. Doing the rough math, we’re talking about inventory that once had a collective value reaching into the billions, before it landed in some box on a doorstep. Of course, once people do buy all these unwanted goods, they rearrange them into more profitable configurations. It seems so easy: Sort the still-good stuff from the broken objects, the trash, the worthless, and then post that stuff to Amazon or eBay. Who couldn’t sell $4,000 worth of stuff for more than $200? My colleague Alana Semuels demonstrated in her story on the proselytizers selling get-rich-quick classes about retailing products on Amazon that the lure of the high-margin, online business is nearly irresistible. This is a variation on that hustle: Buy liquidation, sell high. This idea has won serious viewership for some YouTubers. It’s become a micro-genre on the video service, where different personalities unbox dozens of things and oooh and ahhh at how much money they are worth relative to what they paid for the box of stuff. YouTuber Safiya Nygaard got 12.6 million views for her unboxing of a liquidation pallet. YouTuber Kristofer Yee racked up 2.7 million views with a similar video. Another YouTuber, Randomfrankp, got 1.8 million. There’s an undeniable appeal to watching someone go through a whole bunch of strange...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/everything-you-need-to-know-about-what-iVenezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remained defiant Wednesday, despite a domestic political challenge to his leadership, and the denunciation of his “illegitimate” regime by the United States.
“We've had enough interventionism, here we have dignity, damn it!” Maduro said in a televised address from the presidential palace, blasting the White House.
Maduro announced that he was cutting all diplomatic ties with Washington, and told U.S. diplomats they had 72 hours to leave the country.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit back, stating that Maduro no longer had the authority to make such a decision, while Trump told reporters that U.S. military intervention remained an option.
Maduro’s speech came hours after 35-year-old Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president.
Guaidó is leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, which Maduro stripped of its powers in 2015.
Addressing hundreds of thousands of protestors in Caracas, Guaidó declared: “I swear to formally assume the national executive powers as acting president.”
Maduro’s many opponents inside and outside Venezuela now hope that Guaidó — who was unknown outside the country before Wednesday — will unite the opposition and end Maduro’s stranglehold on power.
After several days of protests in Caracas — which left at least 14 dead and dozens arrested — Guaidó made his move Wednesday afternoon. Hours later Trump weighed in by declaring that the U.S. was backing the new claim and no longer consider Maduro the president of Venezuela.
Guaidó said protests would continue until "until Venezuela is liberated" and fair elections could be held.
But Maduro showed no sign of stepping down, telling the country that “no one here is surrendering.” Despite the internal and external opposition, Maduro, for now, commands the support of the military and much of the country’s major institutions.
Guaidó was a low-profile politician in Venezuela until his surprise election as leader of the opposition-held National Assembly three weeks ago.
He was reportedly drawn to politics after the government’s ineffective response to flash floods in the port city of La Guaira, Guaidó’s home town. The floods killed tens of thousands of people.
Along with the U.S. and Canada, most of Venezuela’s neighbors support Guaidó claim, including Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Paraguay.
The EU said the voice of the Venezuelan people “cannot be ignored” and called for “free and credible elections.”
European Council President Donald Tusk added that Guaidó “has a democratic mandate from the people.”
Even Instagram — which was temporarily blocked along with Twitter and YouTube in recent days — appeared to pick a side, switching its verified symbol from Maduro to Guaidó.
But Maduro still has some international support.
Russia, a major Venezuelan ally, said it considers the attempted removal of Maduro from office to be illegal. “I do not think that we can recognize this — it is, in essence, a coup,” Vladimir Dzhabrailov, a Russia lawmaker and member of the foreign affairs committee, said.
Maduro has also received a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offering his support. “Our president extended Turkey’s support to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and said ‘My brother Maduro! Stand tall, we stand by you!’,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter.
Mexico, Iran, Cuba and Uruguay continue to recognize Maduro’s presidency.
China, which has given Venezuela $62 billion worth of loans over the last decade, said it “opposes external intervention in Venezuela.”
The oil-rich nation has suffered years of economic mismanagement under Maduro, and was hit hard by the 2014 collapse of oil prices. This has led to hyperinflation, power cuts and shortages of food and medicine, all of which has driven millions of Venezuelans out of the country.
The Venezuelan opposition, while united in its hatred of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, has long been undone by its own divisions and inability to put forth a concrete political program.
Maduro and his party have been able to secure control of all levels of government in part because the opposition for years has boycotted elections — and because the government has exiled or imprisoned most of the opposition’s viable leaders.
UN chief António Guterres appealed Thursday for dialogue, hoping to “avoid an escalation that would lead to the kind of conflict that would be a disaster for the people of Venezuela and for the region.”
But many fear that the U.S. threat to use force could lead to just such an escalation.
“The threat of military action that the administration has wielded is incredibly unhelpful,” Jacob Parakilas, deputy head of the U.S. and the Americas Program at London-based think tank Chatham House, told VICE News. “On balance I think the threat of military action is so unhelpful as to outweigh any positive impact from the diplomatic offensive against Maduro.”
Venezuela is already one the most violent countries in the world, and it is in a region — wedged between the similarly violent Brazil and Colombia — that could explode at any moment.
“Colombia, in particular, is trying to cement a very fragile peace after a decades-long civil war that was armed to the teeth by billions of dollars in US military aid and drug money, with the ELN still operating along Venezuela’s porous western border. It’s a tinderbox, and intervention could be a huge spark,” Asa Cusack, a researcher from the Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the London School of Economics, told VICE News.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-01-25:/posts/7154837Fri, 25 Jan 2019 19:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioVice Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remained defiant Wednesday, despite a domestic political challenge to his leadership, and the denunciation of his “illegitimate” regime by the United States. “We've had enough interventionism, here we have...Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remained defiant Wednesday, despite a domestic political challenge to his leadership, and the denunciation of his “illegitimate” regime by the United States.
“We've had enough interventionism, here we have dignity, damn it!” Maduro said in a televised address from the presidential palace, blasting the White House.
Maduro announced that he was cutting all diplomatic ties with Washington, and told U.S. diplomats they had 72 hours to leave the country.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit back, stating that Maduro no longer had the authority to make such a decision, while Trump told reporters that U.S. military intervention remained an option.
Maduro’s speech came hours after 35-year-old Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president.
Guaidó is leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, which Maduro stripped of its powers in 2015.
Addressing hundreds of thousands of protestors in Caracas, Guaidó declared: “I swear to formally assume the national executive powers as acting president.”
Maduro’s many opponents inside and outside Venezuela now hope that Guaidó — who was unknown outside the country before Wednesday — will unite the opposition and end Maduro’s stranglehold on power.
After several days of protests in Caracas — which left at least 14 dead and dozens arrested — Guaidó made his move Wednesday afternoon. Hours later Trump weighed in by declaring that the U.S. was backing the new claim and no longer consider Maduro the president of Venezuela.
Guaidó said protests would continue until "until Venezuela is liberated" and fair elections could be held.
But Maduro showed no sign of stepping down, telling the country that “no one here is surrendering.” Despite the internal and external opposition, Maduro, for now, commands the support of the military and much of the country’s major institutions.
Guaidó was a low-profile politician in Venezuela until his surprise election as leader of the opposition-held National Assembly three weeks ago.
He was reportedly drawn to politics after the government’s ineffective response to flash floods in the port city of La Guaira, Guaidó’s home town. The floods killed tens of thousands of people.
Along with the U.S. and Canada, most of Venezuela’s neighbors support Guaidó claim, including Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Paraguay.
The EU said the voice of the Venezuelan people “cannot be ignored” and called for “free and credible elections.”
European Council President Donald Tusk added that Guaidó “has a democratic mandate from the people.”
Even Instagram — which was temporarily blocked along with Twitter and YouTube in recent days — appeared to pick a side, switching its verified symbol from Maduro to Guaidó.
But Maduro still has some international support.
Russia, a major Venezuelan ally, said it considers the attempted removal of Maduro from office to be illegal. “I do not think that we can recognize this — it is, in essence, a coup,” Vladimir Dzhabrailov, a Russia lawmaker and member of the foreign affairs committee, said.
Maduro has also received a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offering his support. “Our president extended Turkey’s support to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and said ‘My brother Maduro! Stand tall, we stand by you!’,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter.
Mexico, Iran, Cuba and Uruguay continue to recognize Maduro’s presidency.
China, which has given Venezuela $62 billion worth of loans over the last decade, said it “opposes external intervention in Venezuela.”
The oil-rich nation has suffered years of economic mismanagement under Maduro, and was hit hard by the 2014 collapse of oil prices. This has led to hyperinflation, power cuts and shortages of food and medicine, all of which has driven millions of Venezuelans out of the...]]>378cleanfullNewsbeat RadioVice Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remained defiant Wednesday, despite a domestic political challenge to his leadership, and the denunciation of his “illegitimate” regime by the United States. “We've had enough interventionism, here we have dignity, damn it!” Maduro said in a televised address from the presidential palace, blasting the White House. Maduro announced that he was cutting all diplomatic ties with Washington, and told U.S. diplomats they had 72 hours to leave the country. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit back, stating that Maduro no longer had the authority to make such a decision, while Trump told reporters that U.S. military intervention remained an option. Maduro’s speech came hours after 35-year-old Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president. Guaidó is leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, which Maduro stripped of its powers in 2015. Addressing hundreds of thousands of protestors in Caracas, Guaidó declared: “I swear to formally assume the national executive powers as acting president.” Maduro’s many opponents inside and outside Venezuela now hope that Guaidó — who was unknown outside the country before Wednesday — will unite the opposition and end Maduro’s stranglehold on power. After several days of protests in Caracas — which left at least 14 dead and dozens arrested — Guaidó made his move Wednesday afternoon. Hours later Trump weighed in by declaring that the U.S. was backing the new claim and no longer consider Maduro the president of Venezuela. Guaidó said protests would continue until "until Venezuela is liberated" and fair elections could be held. But Maduro showed no sign of stepping down, telling the country that “no one here is surrendering.” Despite the internal and external opposition, Maduro, for now, commands the support of the military and much of the country’s major institutions. Guaidó was a low-profile politician in Venezuela until his surprise election as leader of the opposition-held National Assembly three weeks ago. He was reportedly drawn to politics after the government’s ineffective response to flash floods in the port city of La Guaira, Guaidó’s home town. The floods killed tens of thousands of people. Along with the U.S. and Canada, most of Venezuela’s neighbors support Guaidó claim, including Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Paraguay. The EU said the voice of the Venezuelan people “cannot be ignored” and called for “free and credible elections.” European Council President Donald Tusk added that Guaidó “has a democratic mandate from the people.” Even Instagram — which was temporarily blocked along with Twitter and YouTube in recent days — appeared to pick a side, switching its verified symbol from Maduro to Guaidó. But Maduro still has some international support. Russia, a major Venezuelan ally, said it considers the attempted removal of Maduro from office to be illegal. “I do not think that we can recognize this — it is, in essence, a coup,” Vladimir Dzhabrailov, a Russia lawmaker and member of the foreign affairs committee, said. Maduro has also received a call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offering his support. “Our president extended Turkey’s support to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and said ‘My brother Maduro! Stand tall, we stand by you!’,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter. Mexico, Iran, Cuba and Uruguay continue to recognize Maduro’s presidency. China, which has given Venezuela $62 billion worth of loans over the last decade, said it “opposes external intervention in Venezuela.” The oil-rich nation has suffered years of economic mismanagement under Maduro, and was hit hard by the 2014 collapse of oil prices. This has led to hyperinflation, power cuts and shortages of food and medicine, all of which has driven millions of Venezuelans out of the country. The Venezuelan opposition, while united in its hatred of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, has long...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/us-democrats-say-they-want-fresh-faces-bAfter congressional elections in which Democrats in record numbers chose to elevate women, minority and gay candidates, casting ballots for diversity and youth in district after district, the list of presidential hopefuls most exciting to Democratic voters is a bit curious.
At the top, several polls indicate, is a septuagenarian white guy synonymous with the party establishment — Joe Biden.
Next is another 70-plus white man whose trouble connecting with black voters hurt his last presidential run — Bernie Sanders.
And just behind them in the early polls is yet another white elected official, albeit a younger one — Beto O’Rourke.
Even if early voter surveys are a limited indicator of where the race is going — measuring the familiarity of candidate names as much as anything — the sustained popularity of these straight white men is hard to overlook.
The conventional wisdom holds that the Democratic Party is looking for fresher, more diverse faces. Yet being an older white man isn’t shaping up to be a deal breaker.
Biden and Sanders remain top candidates even in a party that has made confronting white privilege a central plank. That shouldn’t be a surprise, political scientists say: The reality that candidates are products of white privilege themselves will likely matter less to party activists than how effectively they can disavow it and crusade for racial justice — and describe themselves to voters as best positioned to topple President Trump.
“A septuagenarian white guy may not be the first preference of Democratic voters, but if that is who emerges as the best choice to beat President Trump, they are going to vote for him,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of the book “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Election and the Battle for the Meaning of America.”
The anxiety among some Democratic officials that the new face of the party could end up being another old, white male is misplaced, she said.
“The people who are out there saying the nominee should be a person of color, or they should be this or that, are offering a quick and dirty way of thinking about the race, but it is not really that productive,” Vavreck said.
The color of a candidate’s skin, their gender and their age play only a peripheral role in their potential to reignite the coalitions of racially and ethnically diverse voters who helped propel Barack Obama to victory and, more recently, Democrats to flip 40 seats in Congress, she said.
Even so, the headwinds are real in 2020 for old, white candidates in a young, increasingly nonwhite party. When the Wall Street Journal recently surveyed 76 Democratic Party county chairs in Iowa, nearly two-thirds said they were looking for a candidate who wouldn’t be in their 70s on caucus day and who hadn’t run for president before.
The activists were less concerned about whether a candidate was a man or a woman.
Those results did not bode well for Biden, Sanders or the one well-known Democrat who has already formed an exploratory committee for the race, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose 70th birthday will be this June.
Another possible indicator of sentiment among activists comes from a straw poll released this week of 35,000 readers of the Daily Kos blog, who tend to be liberal voters intently focused on finding a candidate who can beat Trump. Though not a random survey, the poll gives some indication of the degree of support among the type of activists who can influence primaries.
By contrast with the more general polls, Warren won decisively among the DailyKos readers, with 22%, followed by O’Rourke at 15% and Biden tied with Sen. Kamala Harris at 14%.
The belief that Democratic voters will eschew white, male candidates, whether accurate or not, has influenced media coverage of the candidates. As CNN rolled out its “power rankings” of possible candidates last month, for example, political-data expert Harry Enten punctuated an otherwise flattering assessment of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown by noting his race and gender could be a deal killer.
“Another white male,” he said, noting the preference for diversity Democrats had just expressed through the midterm election. “I am very suspect of that this year…. I am not sure it is time to nominate a white man.”
Such talk is a little jolting to Cornell Belcher, a strategist who was on Obama’s polling team and has long argued that the Democrats need to do more to focus on the concerns of black voters.
For much of his life, one of the biggest liabilities a presidential candidate could have was not being white, Belcher says. He bristles at the idea that white men like Sanders and Biden are at any kind of disadvantage, but says the playing field is finally level.
“I don’t think there is a racial qualifier or disqualifier,” said Belcher, who is not affiliated with any of the potential candidates.
“You have to be someone who can speak truth to power around issues of inclusion and diversity,” he added. “The candidate who can do that with a forward-focused vision for the future of this country that is about bringing people together will do well in this primary whether he or she is black or white.”
Biden could be particularly well positioned for that role, he said.
“Being the guy who most voters of color and even younger voters see as the guy who unquestionably had Barack Obama’s back more than anyone else doesn’t hurt you in this primary,” he said.
In a recent Suffolk University/USA Today poll, more Democrats said they were excited about Biden — 53% — than any other politician mulling a presidential run.
Texas congressman O’Rourke’s ability to draw large numbers of millennials and Latinos to the polls by passionately confronting Trump’s immigration policies, sermonizing about unity and hope at packed town halls, and harnessing social media to mobilize activists makes the 46-year-old Irish Catholic an attractive champion for the party’s diversity push, Belcher noted.
“A white candidate might get extra kudos if he or she can speak authentically to these issues of discrimination,” Belcher said. “It is almost like a counter-narrative. When Beto started talking about speaking truth to power about discrimination and profiling, he caught the attention of a lot of people.”
Sanders proved through his candidacy in 2016 that even a candidate of retirement age can catch fire with young voters and draw legions of new people into the process. The Vermont senator emerged as the second-most-popular choice in the Suffolk poll, which was released Dec. 26. He maintained an impressive 74% favorability rating among Democrats in a Quinnipiac University poll published a week earlier, edged out only by Biden.
Most analysts don’t expect Biden, Sanders and O’Rourke to all still be at the top of the polls a year from now. Their current strong numbers are skewed by the fact that voters are much more likely to know who they are. Other candidates will have ample opportunity to boost their profiles.
At this point in the last presidential cycle, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was polling as the runaway favorite to win the GOP nomination, and Trump barely even registered as a factor in the race. Those polls gave no indication that Sanders would crush Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and several other states.
The race is about to be joined by several candidates who are not yet household names in Iowa and New Hampshire but will be soon. Among them are likely to be Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, prominent black lawmakers who can speak to issues of discrimination and intolerance from personal experience and family history, which their white male counterparts can’t.
The increasingly diverse party’s desire to see nonwhites at the helm — and a primary calendar in which African American voters will have considerable influence in choosing the nominee — may play to their advantage.
“It will be about more than just, ‘this person is black,’” said Andra Gillespie, a scholar in African American politics at Emory University.
“People have the impression that’s how it is because they saw how many voters flocked to Barack Obama,” she said. “But blacks weren’t on that bandwagon initially. It wasn’t until Obama proved himself a viable candidate.”
Even so, Gillespie said, it would not be a good look for the party if the circle of front-runners remains exclusively white men when Iowans caucus a year from now.
“The Democratic Party would have some serious soul-searching to do if three white men are still at the top next January,” she said. “That would be a cause for concern if no serious candidates of color emerge.”]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-01-11:/posts/7140124Fri, 11 Jan 2019 01:44:41 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Los Angeles Times After congressional elections in which Democrats in record numbers chose to elevate women, minority and gay candidates, casting ballots for diversity and youth in district after district, the list of presidential hopefuls most...After congressional elections in which Democrats in record numbers chose to elevate women, minority and gay candidates, casting ballots for diversity and youth in district after district, the list of presidential hopefuls most exciting to Democratic voters is a bit curious.
At the top, several polls indicate, is a septuagenarian white guy synonymous with the party establishment — Joe Biden.
Next is another 70-plus white man whose trouble connecting with black voters hurt his last presidential run — Bernie Sanders.
And just behind them in the early polls is yet another white elected official, albeit a younger one — Beto O’Rourke.
Even if early voter surveys are a limited indicator of where the race is going — measuring the familiarity of candidate names as much as anything — the sustained popularity of these straight white men is hard to overlook.
The conventional wisdom holds that the Democratic Party is looking for fresher, more diverse faces. Yet being an older white man isn’t shaping up to be a deal breaker.
Biden and Sanders remain top candidates even in a party that has made confronting white privilege a central plank. That shouldn’t be a surprise, political scientists say: The reality that candidates are products of white privilege themselves will likely matter less to party activists than how effectively they can disavow it and crusade for racial justice — and describe themselves to voters as best positioned to topple President Trump.
“A septuagenarian white guy may not be the first preference of Democratic voters, but if that is who emerges as the best choice to beat President Trump, they are going to vote for him,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of the book “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Election and the Battle for the Meaning of America.”
The anxiety among some Democratic officials that the new face of the party could end up being another old, white male is misplaced, she said.
“The people who are out there saying the nominee should be a person of color, or they should be this or that, are offering a quick and dirty way of thinking about the race, but it is not really that productive,” Vavreck said.
The color of a candidate’s skin, their gender and their age play only a peripheral role in their potential to reignite the coalitions of racially and ethnically diverse voters who helped propel Barack Obama to victory and, more recently, Democrats to flip 40 seats in Congress, she said.
Even so, the headwinds are real in 2020 for old, white candidates in a young, increasingly nonwhite party. When the Wall Street Journal recently surveyed 76 Democratic Party county chairs in Iowa, nearly two-thirds said they were looking for a candidate who wouldn’t be in their 70s on caucus day and who hadn’t run for president before.
The activists were less concerned about whether a candidate was a man or a woman.
Those results did not bode well for Biden, Sanders or the one well-known Democrat who has already formed an exploratory committee for the race, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose 70th birthday will be this June.
Another possible indicator of sentiment among activists comes from a straw poll released this week of 35,000 readers of the Daily Kos blog, who tend to be liberal voters intently focused on finding a candidate who can beat Trump. Though not a random survey, the poll gives some indication of the degree of support among the type of activists who can influence primaries.
By contrast with the more general polls, Warren won decisively among the DailyKos readers, with 22%, followed by O’Rourke at 15% and Biden tied with Sen. Kamala Harris at 14%.
The belief that Democratic voters will eschew white, male candidates, whether accurate or not, has influenced media coverage of the candidates. As CNN rolled out its “power rankings” of possible candidates last month, for...]]>550cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Los Angeles Times After congressional elections in which Democrats in record numbers chose to elevate women, minority and gay candidates, casting ballots for diversity and youth in district after district, the list of presidential hopefuls most exciting to Democratic voters is a bit curious. At the top, several polls indicate, is a septuagenarian white guy synonymous with the party establishment — Joe Biden. Next is another 70-plus white man whose trouble connecting with black voters hurt his last presidential run — Bernie Sanders. And just behind them in the early polls is yet another white elected official, albeit a younger one — Beto O’Rourke. Even if early voter surveys are a limited indicator of where the race is going — measuring the familiarity of candidate names as much as anything — the sustained popularity of these straight white men is hard to overlook. The conventional wisdom holds that the Democratic Party is looking for fresher, more diverse faces. Yet being an older white man isn’t shaping up to be a deal breaker. Biden and Sanders remain top candidates even in a party that has made confronting white privilege a central plank. That shouldn’t be a surprise, political scientists say: The reality that candidates are products of white privilege themselves will likely matter less to party activists than how effectively they can disavow it and crusade for racial justice — and describe themselves to voters as best positioned to topple President Trump. “A septuagenarian white guy may not be the first preference of Democratic voters, but if that is who emerges as the best choice to beat President Trump, they are going to vote for him,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of the book “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Election and the Battle for the Meaning of America.” The anxiety among some Democratic officials that the new face of the party could end up being another old, white male is misplaced, she said. “The people who are out there saying the nominee should be a person of color, or they should be this or that, are offering a quick and dirty way of thinking about the race, but it is not really that productive,” Vavreck said. The color of a candidate’s skin, their gender and their age play only a peripheral role in their potential to reignite the coalitions of racially and ethnically diverse voters who helped propel Barack Obama to victory and, more recently, Democrats to flip 40 seats in Congress, she said. Even so, the headwinds are real in 2020 for old, white candidates in a young, increasingly nonwhite party. When the Wall Street Journal recently surveyed 76 Democratic Party county chairs in Iowa, nearly two-thirds said they were looking for a candidate who wouldn’t be in their 70s on caucus day and who hadn’t run for president before. The activists were less concerned about whether a candidate was a man or a woman. Those results did not bode well for Biden, Sanders or the one well-known Democrat who has already formed an exploratory committee for the race, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose 70th birthday will be this June. Another possible indicator of sentiment among activists comes from a straw poll released this week of 35,000 readers of the Daily Kos blog, who tend to be liberal voters intently focused on finding a candidate who can beat Trump. Though not a random survey, the poll gives some indication of the degree of support among the type of activists who can influence primaries. By contrast with the more general polls, Warren won decisively among the DailyKos readers, with 22%, followed by O’Rourke at 15% and Biden tied with Sen. Kamala Harris at 14%. The belief that Democratic voters will eschew white, male candidates, whether accurate or not, has influenced media coverage of the candidates. As CNN rolled out its “power rankings” of possible candidates last month, for example, political-data expert Harry Enten punctuated an otherwise flattering assessment of...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/when-former-spies-go-rogue-by-becoming-lOnce Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover.
She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She aspired to an appointment somewhere as chief of station, the Langley equivalent of ambassador. Instead she wound up leaving the agency in 2014 in search of a less nomadic life after having three children.
Then came the Trump presidency and an overheated climate in which partisanship often triumphed over facts. So Spanberger (D-Va.), a proudly apolitical collector of evidence, decided to do something profoundly radical for an ex-spy. She ran for the House of Representatives — and won, upsetting Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th District. On Thursday, as the 116th Congress convened, she joined a small vanguard of ex-intelligence officers becoming Instagram-friendly lawmakers.
“Leaving the CIA was the biggest loss of my life. I mourned the agency. I miss it every day,” said Spanberger, 39, one of three former CIA officers serving in the new Congress.
The idea of CIA officers running for national political office would have struck previous generations of agency spies as sacrilegious, said former CIA director Leon E. Panetta, who headed the agency after more than 15 years as a California congressman. For one thing, agency officers, more than others in the intelligence community, usually maintain low profiles, even after they leave Langley. And even if CIA people do take on a modicum of celebrity — television punditry or Hollywood are popular career paths — they typically have avoided Congress, whose oversight of the agency has generated lingering ill will.
“The old Yale guys would say, ‘What the hell is going on? You gotta be secret and anonymous and let the other guys who don’t know what they’re doing play the political game,’ ” Panetta said. “But young people at the CIA now are not particularly tied to the long legacies of the intelligence business and recognize that it’s important to get involved in politics because if they do not, others will distort the work of intelligence agencies.”
Spanberger, who worked for the CIA for eight years, is serving alongside two other former agency officers: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), 42, an analyst who deployed to Iraq three times and won a seat representing Michigan’s 8th District by beating a Republican incumbent; and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), 41, who worked undercover in the Middle East and South Asia, and has served Texas’s 23rd District since 2015.
“For so many of us with national security backgrounds, bringing our history of public service without a partisan lens is important — and it’s a skill set,” Spanberger said. “We served the mission under Republican and Democratic presidents.”
While Spanberger and Slotkin have earned attention for being spies turned lawmakers, their paths are not without precedent.
Porter Goss began his CIA career as a clandestine officer in the 1960s, then served in Congress from 1989 to 2004, representing the 14th District in Florida, before returning to Langley as its director. Bob Barr, a former Latin American analyst, represented Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003. (Barr ran in 2008 for president as a libertarian; former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin vied for the White House in 2016 as an independent.)
This year’s Congress includes at least 10 others besides Spanberger, Slotkin and Hurd who have worked with classified material in the military or at the National Security Council, according to the public affairs analytics firm Quorum.
Panetta, who served as CIA director from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, considers President Trump’s attacks against the intelligence community to have emboldened its recent former members to enter the political fray.
Nine days before his inauguration, Trump likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis, after news reports surfaced about his links to Russia. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he tweeted.
Trump also has constantly disputed key findings by American spy agencies, including those about North Korea’s nuclear threats, Iran’s adherence to a 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi dissident who was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post.
Spanberger said she was shocked when Trump, on his first full day in office, visited the CIA’s headquarters and gave a ­self-aggrandizing and error-filled speech in front of its Memorial Wall honoring operatives killed in the line of duty. Trump boasted how youthful he felt, attacked reporters as “the most dishonest human beings on Earth” and falsely claimed he’d been on the cover of Time magazine more than anyone else.
“It was a sad moment to witness that. This is hallowed ground,” said Spanberger, who had been at the Women’s March on Washington that day and caught footage of the speech on television.
But more than anything, she is disturbed by Trump’s rejection of the intelligence community’s assessments on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “I know what goes into collecting intelligence reports,” Spanberger said. “And, for him to take the side of a foreign adversary over our country is appalling to me.”
In Congress, she expects that her time handling assets will help her bridge the divide with Republicans. At the CIA, when she tended to informants, she said: “I was responsible for their safety and security, so working with others is about building trust and relationships with people across the aisle who may not otherwise want to work with Democrats. Whatever bit of commonality I can find with them is the skill.”
She also said the CIA prepared her to become a quick expert in complicated subjects.
“One day, I was working nuclear cases, the next day drug cases, or another it was about political leadership,” said Spanberger, who worked for an educational consulting firm before running for Congress. “I had to go into debriefings with scientists and be able to ask really specific, informed questions. I am more practiced at this than the average Congress member.”
She would like to serve on the House Agriculture Committee, but, of course, also hopes for a spot on the Intelligence Committee. “When I was putting my requests for committee, I said, ‘Where can I be the greatest use?’ ” she said. “They typically don’t put first-term members on the Intelligence Committee. I would be surprised, frankly, if I get it. But there are compelling reasons why it would make sense.”
Along with Spanberger, Slotkin hopes she can apply her expertise to subjects such as cybersecurity and election interference by Russia. She likened her role in Congress to her position as an analyst in the agency’s intelligence directorate.
“My job was to separate the wheat from the chaff, reduce it down, and present it to senior folks,” Slotkin said.
What most infuriates her about politics is that Congress allows conflicts over key issues to fester, she said. “When there’s disagreement over gun safety, they just kick the can down the road,” Slotkin said. “But if you’re in the intelligence community, and a big threat is revealed, we all get in a room, have a vigorous debate, and you leave with a plan.”
During her campaign, Spanberger was not shy about using the CIA as an asset, an effective move as a woman running in a swing district. In a biographical video on her website, she includes a photo of herself with former CIA director Michael V. Hayden and former deputy director Stephen Kappes — an image that required CIA permission to use.
And on Twitter, she referenced her CIA background in more than 40 tweets, according to Quorum.
But even though Spanberger is reveling in her new public role — one of her latest Instagram photos shows her and her husband and three daughters clad in striped Christmas pajamas — she still keeps secrets. She can’t say where exactly in Western Europe she served. She can’t reveal her cover story when she served abroad, nor can she say what she did on “the West Coast” for the agency. She can’t even explain the symbols on a gold challenge coin she earned after completing her CIA training in 2007.
The tiny memento, which she keeps in a dresser drawer with her engagement ring, shows an eagle and a torch, with the numbers 20-339 on the back.
What do the numbers signify? She won’t say.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2019-01-11:/posts/7140115Fri, 11 Jan 2019 01:24:40 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Washington Post Once Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover. She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She...Once Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover.
She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She aspired to an appointment somewhere as chief of station, the Langley equivalent of ambassador. Instead she wound up leaving the agency in 2014 in search of a less nomadic life after having three children.
Then came the Trump presidency and an overheated climate in which partisanship often triumphed over facts. So Spanberger (D-Va.), a proudly apolitical collector of evidence, decided to do something profoundly radical for an ex-spy. She ran for the House of Representatives — and won, upsetting Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th District. On Thursday, as the 116th Congress convened, she joined a small vanguard of ex-intelligence officers becoming Instagram-friendly lawmakers.
“Leaving the CIA was the biggest loss of my life. I mourned the agency. I miss it every day,” said Spanberger, 39, one of three former CIA officers serving in the new Congress.
The idea of CIA officers running for national political office would have struck previous generations of agency spies as sacrilegious, said former CIA director Leon E. Panetta, who headed the agency after more than 15 years as a California congressman. For one thing, agency officers, more than others in the intelligence community, usually maintain low profiles, even after they leave Langley. And even if CIA people do take on a modicum of celebrity — television punditry or Hollywood are popular career paths — they typically have avoided Congress, whose oversight of the agency has generated lingering ill will.
“The old Yale guys would say, ‘What the hell is going on? You gotta be secret and anonymous and let the other guys who don’t know what they’re doing play the political game,’ ” Panetta said. “But young people at the CIA now are not particularly tied to the long legacies of the intelligence business and recognize that it’s important to get involved in politics because if they do not, others will distort the work of intelligence agencies.”
Spanberger, who worked for the CIA for eight years, is serving alongside two other former agency officers: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), 42, an analyst who deployed to Iraq three times and won a seat representing Michigan’s 8th District by beating a Republican incumbent; and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), 41, who worked undercover in the Middle East and South Asia, and has served Texas’s 23rd District since 2015.
“For so many of us with national security backgrounds, bringing our history of public service without a partisan lens is important — and it’s a skill set,” Spanberger said. “We served the mission under Republican and Democratic presidents.”
While Spanberger and Slotkin have earned attention for being spies turned lawmakers, their paths are not without precedent.
Porter Goss began his CIA career as a clandestine officer in the 1960s, then served in Congress from 1989 to 2004, representing the 14th District in Florida, before returning to Langley as its director. Bob Barr, a former Latin American analyst, represented Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003. (Barr ran in 2008 for president as a libertarian; former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin vied for the White House in 2016 as an independent.)
This year’s Congress includes at least 10 others besides Spanberger, Slotkin and Hurd who have worked with classified material in the military or at the National Security Council, according to the public affairs analytics firm Quorum.
Panetta, who served as CIA director from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, considers President Trump’s attacks against the intelligence community to have emboldened its recent former members to enter the political fray.
Nine days before his inauguration, Trump likened U.S. intelligence...]]>554cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Washington Post Once Rep. Abigail Spanberger embraced the secret life of a CIA operative, she never imagined breaking cover. She handled and recruited spies in Europe, where she specialized in counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues. She aspired to an appointment somewhere as chief of station, the Langley equivalent of ambassador. Instead she wound up leaving the agency in 2014 in search of a less nomadic life after having three children. Then came the Trump presidency and an overheated climate in which partisanship often triumphed over facts. So Spanberger (D-Va.), a proudly apolitical collector of evidence, decided to do something profoundly radical for an ex-spy. She ran for the House of Representatives — and won, upsetting Rep. Dave Brat (R) in Virginia’s 7th District. On Thursday, as the 116th Congress convened, she joined a small vanguard of ex-intelligence officers becoming Instagram-friendly lawmakers. “Leaving the CIA was the biggest loss of my life. I mourned the agency. I miss it every day,” said Spanberger, 39, one of three former CIA officers serving in the new Congress. The idea of CIA officers running for national political office would have struck previous generations of agency spies as sacrilegious, said former CIA director Leon E. Panetta, who headed the agency after more than 15 years as a California congressman. For one thing, agency officers, more than others in the intelligence community, usually maintain low profiles, even after they leave Langley. And even if CIA people do take on a modicum of celebrity — television punditry or Hollywood are popular career paths — they typically have avoided Congress, whose oversight of the agency has generated lingering ill will. “The old Yale guys would say, ‘What the hell is going on? You gotta be secret and anonymous and let the other guys who don’t know what they’re doing play the political game,’ ” Panetta said. “But young people at the CIA now are not particularly tied to the long legacies of the intelligence business and recognize that it’s important to get involved in politics because if they do not, others will distort the work of intelligence agencies.” Spanberger, who worked for the CIA for eight years, is serving alongside two other former agency officers: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), 42, an analyst who deployed to Iraq three times and won a seat representing Michigan’s 8th District by beating a Republican incumbent; and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), 41, who worked undercover in the Middle East and South Asia, and has served Texas’s 23rd District since 2015. “For so many of us with national security backgrounds, bringing our history of public service without a partisan lens is important — and it’s a skill set,” Spanberger said. “We served the mission under Republican and Democratic presidents.” While Spanberger and Slotkin have earned attention for being spies turned lawmakers, their paths are not without precedent. Porter Goss began his CIA career as a clandestine officer in the 1960s, then served in Congress from 1989 to 2004, representing the 14th District in Florida, before returning to Langley as its director. Bob Barr, a former Latin American analyst, represented Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003. (Barr ran in 2008 for president as a libertarian; former CIA operations officer Evan McMullin vied for the White House in 2016 as an independent.) This year’s Congress includes at least 10 others besides Spanberger, Slotkin and Hurd who have worked with classified material in the military or at the National Security Council, according to the public affairs analytics firm Quorum. Panetta, who served as CIA director from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, considers President Trump’s attacks against the intelligence community to have emboldened its recent former members to enter the political fray. Nine days before his inauguration, Trump likened U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis, after news reports surfaced about his links to...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/will-the-billions-from-uber-ipo-go-to-maSilicon Valley is used to minting millionaires. But this many?
When tech’s highest-valued companies finally go public next year, they will unleash billions of liquid dollars into the market and make 2019 a year of incredible wealth creation.
And that’ll shape the world in which we live, even if you’re not making a single penny in a banner year of IPOs. An early employee might use the $20 million he makes to buy a new home and price you out of a neighborhood. Or a startup co-founder might set up a charitable foundation that makes a difference in your life.
Startup darlings like Uber, Pinterest and Slack are expected to headline the best IPO year in recent memory, allowing investors and rank-and-file employees to eventually sell their shares and turn stock into real money. The companies will likely together be worth over $100 billion — and it’s got to go somewhere.
There’s a lot of focus on the Travis Kalanicks of the world, but much of the real wealth next year will be bestowed upon people who are decamillionaires but not centimillionaires — people with at least $10 million, but not $100 million, in stock.
That’s why the wealth advisory world is anticipating next year — and the non-wealthy should be, too. Because the decisions that the rich make in 2019 will shape the real estate, philanthropy and startup worlds for years to come.
The first to bend: The Bay Area housing market.
“For people who have suddenly jumped into megawealth — however they define it — it’s a pretty big thing to go, ‘This two-bedroom has been fine for me and my wife for the last two years, but we’ve got $40 million now,’” said Patrick Carlisle, a longtime analyst of the San Francisco real estate market. “They’ve never even owned a property before and go, ‘Yeah, we’ll take this. And we’ll pay all cash.’”
Carlisle said he’s been getting a steady stream of calls over the last few weeks from other real estate agents who read the news about upcoming IPOs and want to know what happened following previous seminal moments like the public offerings of Facebook and Google. Though it’s hard to pinpoint causation, Carlisle’s research shows that in the 12 months before Google’s 2004 IPO, San Francisco’s median real estate price in areas popular with tech workers increased by 12 percent. But in the twelve months after, that median price rose by 23 percent.
“The new wealth from tech poured into housing, which made housing values soar, which created trillions of dollars in additional new wealth,” he said. “It’s all been piling onto each other.”
So it’s a safe prediction, wealth managers say, that the high-end real estate market is going to be inundated with curious buyers. Upgrading the home is basically the first thing that Silicon Valley’s people with money do — and those already with homes will buy second spots in places like Tahoe.
The people making money here typically fall into three categories: Venture capitalists, who can keep their shares and ride their horse through the public markets. Founders, who try not to sell shares too early lest it be read as a vote of no confidence in their company. And employees, who are subject to often six-month lockups that keep them from selling their shares. And none of those folks are required, of course, to sell any stock.
But still, if you’re one of the first 100 employees at a place like Uber, for instance, you’ve likely been hounded by the Morgan Stanleys and Goldman Sachses of the world. Top wealth advisers tell Recode that they track stock-rich-to-be millionaires starting as far back as three years before a so-called liquidity event like an IPO and as close to 18 months before. So this bonanza does not begin when the largest shareholders are revealed on an S-1 filing just a few weeks before the actual IPO.
Wealth managers might have helped some of those people cash in already, too. Some institutions have been willing to treat startup stock as collateral and extend credit to tech workers, giving them money for a home before they have actually sold their stock.
And who says they can’t sell their stock yet? Employees can sometimes do that before the company goes public in private stock sales. Those so-called “secondary deals” have served as a pressure valve for Silicon Valley’s soon-to-be loaded in a way that was not true during the lead-up to Facebook’s $100 billion IPO six years ago, for instance.
So real estate is the first priority for the fortunate. Those who still have money after purchasing the new place? Welcome to the world of big-dollar philanthropy.
The newly rich generally try to make their charitable gifts in the year when they book a big gain in income — like when they sell their shares in a public company — to avoid paying a big tax on that gain. That’s why people expect that next year will be a big year in the world of giving — with new millionaires and billionaires shoveling money into controversial vehicles like donor-advised funds, for instance, which are pools of cash that provide immediate tax benefits but aren’t required to be disbursed to charities ASAP.
“We see IPOs generally as a good opportunity for donors to make contributions,” said Keita Matsumoto, who advises high-net-worth clients at Fidelity Charitable.
Millionaires have grown more sophisticated about how to find tax breaks, said Matsumoto, as the explosion in donor-advised fund accounts should make clear. The same is true for Opportunity Zones, quasi-philanthropic projects that offer tax breaks for investing in undeveloped parts of the U.S. and remain a new fascination in the world of the megarich.
Lastly, there’s the money that wealth and philanthropy advisers expect to go back into the market.
Most of that is standard fare in Silicon Valley — building out a personal investment portfolio, and perhaps starting a private foundation if they’re a billionaire. But given where the money was made — in startups — there’s a sense that some of that money will flow back into the tech ecosystem, funding the next generation of entrepreneurs and IPOs.
If you think everyone already moonlights as an angel investor, wait till next year.
This will make an especially big impact for any newfound wealthy people who today live outside the Bay Area. One of the biggest ways to fund a new tech hub in Middle America? Turn a former coder into a billionaire — think Omniture founder Josh James of Utah — and let him or her loose in a place that’s not Silicon Valley.
Plus, a good chunk of the money untapped next year will be made by venture capitalists and their investors or limited partners (like Lance Armstrong). Some of the money made by professional investors should stay invested broadly in tech.
So if you’re a startup looking for more investors, a nonprofit looking for more donors or a wealth adviser looking for more clients, you’re a winner next year. If you’re a middle-class renter looking to buy a home, you’re likely out of luck.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-12-26:/posts/7127208Wed, 26 Dec 2018 21:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioRecode Silicon Valley is used to minting millionaires. But this many? When tech’s highest-valued companies finally go public next year, they will unleash billions of liquid dollars into the market and make 2019 a year of incredible wealth creation....Silicon Valley is used to minting millionaires. But this many?
When tech’s highest-valued companies finally go public next year, they will unleash billions of liquid dollars into the market and make 2019 a year of incredible wealth creation.
And that’ll shape the world in which we live, even if you’re not making a single penny in a banner year of IPOs. An early employee might use the $20 million he makes to buy a new home and price you out of a neighborhood. Or a startup co-founder might set up a charitable foundation that makes a difference in your life.
Startup darlings like Uber, Pinterest and Slack are expected to headline the best IPO year in recent memory, allowing investors and rank-and-file employees to eventually sell their shares and turn stock into real money. The companies will likely together be worth over $100 billion — and it’s got to go somewhere.
There’s a lot of focus on the Travis Kalanicks of the world, but much of the real wealth next year will be bestowed upon people who are decamillionaires but not centimillionaires — people with at least $10 million, but not $100 million, in stock.
That’s why the wealth advisory world is anticipating next year — and the non-wealthy should be, too. Because the decisions that the rich make in 2019 will shape the real estate, philanthropy and startup worlds for years to come.
The first to bend: The Bay Area housing market.
“For people who have suddenly jumped into megawealth — however they define it — it’s a pretty big thing to go, ‘This two-bedroom has been fine for me and my wife for the last two years, but we’ve got $40 million now,’” said Patrick Carlisle, a longtime analyst of the San Francisco real estate market. “They’ve never even owned a property before and go, ‘Yeah, we’ll take this. And we’ll pay all cash.’”
Carlisle said he’s been getting a steady stream of calls over the last few weeks from other real estate agents who read the news about upcoming IPOs and want to know what happened following previous seminal moments like the public offerings of Facebook and Google. Though it’s hard to pinpoint causation, Carlisle’s research shows that in the 12 months before Google’s 2004 IPO, San Francisco’s median real estate price in areas popular with tech workers increased by 12 percent. But in the twelve months after, that median price rose by 23 percent.
“The new wealth from tech poured into housing, which made housing values soar, which created trillions of dollars in additional new wealth,” he said. “It’s all been piling onto each other.”
So it’s a safe prediction, wealth managers say, that the high-end real estate market is going to be inundated with curious buyers. Upgrading the home is basically the first thing that Silicon Valley’s people with money do — and those already with homes will buy second spots in places like Tahoe.
The people making money here typically fall into three categories: Venture capitalists, who can keep their shares and ride their horse through the public markets. Founders, who try not to sell shares too early lest it be read as a vote of no confidence in their company. And employees, who are subject to often six-month lockups that keep them from selling their shares. And none of those folks are required, of course, to sell any stock.
But still, if you’re one of the first 100 employees at a place like Uber, for instance, you’ve likely been hounded by the Morgan Stanleys and Goldman Sachses of the world. Top wealth advisers tell Recode that they track stock-rich-to-be millionaires starting as far back as three years before a so-called liquidity event like an IPO and as close to 18 months before. So this bonanza does not begin when the largest shareholders are revealed on an S-1 filing just a few weeks before the actual IPO.
Wealth managers might have helped some of those people cash in already, too. Some institutions have been willing to treat startup stock as...]]>415cleanfullNewsbeat RadioRecode Silicon Valley is used to minting millionaires. But this many? When tech’s highest-valued companies finally go public next year, they will unleash billions of liquid dollars into the market and make 2019 a year of incredible wealth creation. And that’ll shape the world in which we live, even if you’re not making a single penny in a banner year of IPOs. An early employee might use the $20 million he makes to buy a new home and price you out of a neighborhood. Or a startup co-founder might set up a charitable foundation that makes a difference in your life. Startup darlings like Uber, Pinterest and Slack are expected to headline the best IPO year in recent memory, allowing investors and rank-and-file employees to eventually sell their shares and turn stock into real money. The companies will likely together be worth over $100 billion — and it’s got to go somewhere. There’s a lot of focus on the Travis Kalanicks of the world, but much of the real wealth next year will be bestowed upon people who are decamillionaires but not centimillionaires — people with at least $10 million, but not $100 million, in stock. That’s why the wealth advisory world is anticipating next year — and the non-wealthy should be, too. Because the decisions that the rich make in 2019 will shape the real estate, philanthropy and startup worlds for years to come. The first to bend: The Bay Area housing market. “For people who have suddenly jumped into megawealth — however they define it — it’s a pretty big thing to go, ‘This two-bedroom has been fine for me and my wife for the last two years, but we’ve got $40 million now,’” said Patrick Carlisle, a longtime analyst of the San Francisco real estate market. “They’ve never even owned a property before and go, ‘Yeah, we’ll take this. And we’ll pay all cash.’” Carlisle said he’s been getting a steady stream of calls over the last few weeks from other real estate agents who read the news about upcoming IPOs and want to know what happened following previous seminal moments like the public offerings of Facebook and Google. Though it’s hard to pinpoint causation, Carlisle’s research shows that in the 12 months before Google’s 2004 IPO, San Francisco’s median real estate price in areas popular with tech workers increased by 12 percent. But in the twelve months after, that median price rose by 23 percent. “The new wealth from tech poured into housing, which made housing values soar, which created trillions of dollars in additional new wealth,” he said. “It’s all been piling onto each other.” So it’s a safe prediction, wealth managers say, that the high-end real estate market is going to be inundated with curious buyers. Upgrading the home is basically the first thing that Silicon Valley’s people with money do — and those already with homes will buy second spots in places like Tahoe. The people making money here typically fall into three categories: Venture capitalists, who can keep their shares and ride their horse through the public markets. Founders, who try not to sell shares too early lest it be read as a vote of no confidence in their company. And employees, who are subject to often six-month lockups that keep them from selling their shares. And none of those folks are required, of course, to sell any stock. But still, if you’re one of the first 100 employees at a place like Uber, for instance, you’ve likely been hounded by the Morgan Stanleys and Goldman Sachses of the world. Top wealth advisers tell Recode that they track stock-rich-to-be millionaires starting as far back as three years before a so-called liquidity event like an IPO and as close to 18 months before. So this bonanza does not begin when the largest shareholders are revealed on an S-1 filing just a few weeks before the actual IPO. Wealth managers might have helped some of those people cash in already, too. Some institutions have been willing to treat startup stock as collateral and extend credit to tech workers, giving them money for a...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-political-flashpoints-to-watch-in-20The world is changing fast and 2019 promises to be another bewildering and chaotic year. The rise of China in the East and populists in the West means that, by mid-2018, economies run by mainstream democratic parties accounted for just a third of the combined gross domestic product of the Group of 20 nations, down from 83 percent in 2007, according to Bloomberg Economics. And that was before the election of two more populist presidents, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
“In 20 years I haven’t operated in an environment like this, ever, because there were always safe havens before. Countries we thought easy to predict are becoming harder to read now,” says Claire Simpson, global claims director at Willis Tower Watson Plc, a global risk advisory and insurance company.
Whether this upheaval is due to a technological revolution, income inequality, a clash of civilizations or Western arrogance (choose your poison), the trend is set to continue. In 2019, a number of these transitions from the post-Cold War era have the potential to come to a head, each carrying “worst case” risks. To help navigate them, we’ve compiled a calendar of some of the key moments to watch, organized by topic. Happy New Year.
A New Arms Race
On Dec. 4, Donald Trump gave Russia 60 days to comply with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty or see Washington trigger a six-month notice period to end its commitments not to produce land-based missiles and launchers that have a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles) to 5,500 kilometers. The clock runs out at the end of February. The 1987 treaty was negotiated between the U.S. and then-Soviet Union to dismantle thousands of middle-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Shorter trajectories made them hard to respond to and therefore destabilizing. That remains true today, but non-signatory China wasn’t covered and now has a large arsenal of them. Russia says it hasn’t breached the treaty’s terms.
► Worst case: The U.S. exits and Russia points previously banned missiles at its Western neighbors, supercharging an arms race in high-tech weapons already underway, and tossing a political grenade into NATO, as the U.S. and eastern and western European members divide over whether to respond in kind.
► Risk of INF treaty collapse: High
► Risk of new nuclear arms race in Europe: Medium
Russia
A 2018 survey for Willis Towers Watson found that its larger clients suffered most losses in Russia, often as a result of sanctions. So Russia gets its own category. The Kremlin may have given up on cultivating Trump, after he canceled two meetings with President Vladimir Putin toward the end of the year. Russia’s meddling in foreign elections, and its efforts to extend influence in the Balkans and former Soviet republics look set to continue, with further U.S. sanctions in response. A summit in Washington, previously floated for 2019, appears to be in jeopardy, though the two could potentially meet at the next G-20 summit in Japan in June.
Trump's sudden decisions to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan -- longstanding Russian demands -- and the coming departure of Defense Secretary and Russia hawk James Mattis won praise from the Kremlin, but officials there remain skeptical a genuine detente is possible.
► Worst case: U.S.-Russian relations descend into open hostility, affecting arms control and areas where they had until now been able to cooperate.
► Risk: High
Trade Wars
The 90-day tariff truce that Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed at the recent G-20 expires at the end of February. If they fail, U.S. tariffs would rise on a $200 billion tranche of imports from China. The whipsaw on the S&P 500, as events repeatedly boosted and then undermined belief in the truce, show the stakes.
► Worst case: A full-fledged trade war that expands into an open struggle for strategic dominance by the end of the year, undermining growth and security around the globe.
► Risk: High
Also by February, the U.S. Commerce Department is due to rule on whether automobile imports constitute a national security threat, a designation that would let the U.S. slap higher tariffs on imports of cars without technically breaching World Trade Organization rules. European, and in particular German car manufacturers have most to lose. U.S. trade talks with Japan could take place any time from January, with more scope for a deal than with the EU. The Japan G-20 summit could be tense as a result.
► Worst case: The U.S. raises tariffs on auto imports, triggering a full-fledged trade war with Europe. The G-20, made impotent by rising nationalism, loses relevance.
► Risk: High
To close out the year, unless the U.S. stops blocking appointments to the appellate body of the WTO in Geneva, the trade body will on Dec. 10 lose the minimum three judge quorum needed to issue rulings.
► Worst case: The world loses its dispute resolution mechanism for trade disputes.
► Risk: High
War Wars
U.S. pressure on Iran will build, after Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and, in November, reimposed so-called secondary sanctions on companies from other countries that breach U.S. sanctions. The strategy, backed by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is to squeeze Iran out of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and back to the nuclear negotiating table. So far the effort has had both limited cost and success, but with sanctions taking full effect, 2019 could be an eventful year. With so many flashpoints, the potential for escalation is clear. (Click here for the International Crisis Group’s interactive map of trigger areas).
► Worst case: Iran restarts nuclear fuel production, prompting a rapid escalation. Pressured, Tehran tries to block the Strait of Hormuz, where it has naval exercises scheduled for August and through which 30 percent of the world’s crude oil supply passes every day.
► Risk: Medium
North Korea would have topped any list of global security threats at the start of 2018, but the June summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un defused an escalatory spiral of threats and ballistic missile tests. Things remain calm, but Kim shows no sign of genuinely dismantling his nuclear or missile programs, and likely used the détente to stockpile nuclear material and improve his weapons systems. Kim says the arrogance of U.S. demands is to blame for the lack of progress. Trump has said he wants another meeting, in January or February. Annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises usually take place in March and August.
► Worst case: A summit bust-up that leads to a renewed cycle of escalation.
► Risk: Low
The low level conflict in Eastern Ukraine returned to the headlines in November, when Russian special forces rammed, fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels making their way into the Sea of Azov. Russia had been restricting commercial shipping to Ukrainian commercial ports in the sea for months before. The rhetorical fireworks between Kiev and Moscow are unlikely to die down before Ukrainian presidential elections on March 31.
► Worst case: Political instability and an incident that escalates to a rekindled Russian-Ukrainian war.
► Risk: Medium
Afghanistan is due to hold presidential elections on April 20. The U.S., anxious to find an exit from a war that in 2019 will be in its 18th year, is raising the pace of peace talks with Islamist insurgents from the Taliban movement that ruled the country at the time of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., in 2001. Washington is also pressuring Pakistan, the Taliban's backer, to cooperate. Trump's plan to cut the U.S. troop presence in half, if it happens, could further undermine the government and its weak army, emboldening the Taliban to take an even tougher line.
► Worst case: The war intensifies and the government loses more ground as the Taliban pushes its advantage amid the U.S. pullout.
► Risk: High
The war in Syria looks certain to continue for an eighth year with the planned U.S. military withdrawal strengthening President Bashar al-Assad plus his Russian and Iranian backers. Turkey put off its planned offensive against ethnic Kurdish fighters who control much of northeast Syria after Trump's surprise announcement of his plan to pull out of the country, but has vowed to defeat the erstwhile U.S. allies. Trump's move could also open the way for Iran to expand its presence in Syria, sparking more intense skirmishes with Israel. Russia may call time on a truce in which it agreed not to attack Idlib, the last major territory held by rebel groups fighting the Assad regime. The truce is designed to give Turkey time to clear jihadists and heavy weaponry from the area.
► Worst case: The war escalates into a wider conflict among regional powers, driving more refugees to fragile states such as Jordan and Lebanon, as well as to Turkey.
► Risk: High
Nigeria holds elections on Feb. 16 and an intensified campaign by an Islamic State-allied faction of the jihadist Boko Haram is expected. After declaring victory, Nigeria’s military has struggled to reassert control over swathes of the country and has suffered a succession of humiliating defeats, as Boko Haram overran under-resourced military posts to seize their weapons stores. Hence, the fear of a major campaign to come.
► Worst case: Boko Haram gets a fresh wind as a demoralized Nigerian military fails to protect polling booths and civilians from attack.
► Risk: High
The opening of Ethiopia’s much delayed $4.8 billion hydroelectric dam project on the Blue Nile is now expected in late 2019. The impact of filling the dam on Egypt, downstream, has led to intense negotiations over how long this should take, with a possible range of 3-to-15 years. Too short and Egypt, which is already water poor, could lose an estimated 20 percent of its supply. Ethiopia is anxious to start generating power to defray the investment cost. At times, Egyptian leaders hinted at a military solution, but for now diplomacy rules.
► Worst case: Ethiopia stars filling th]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-12-26:/posts/7127178Wed, 26 Dec 2018 21:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioBloomberg The world is changing fast and 2019 promises to be another bewildering and chaotic year. The rise of China in the East and populists in the West means that, by mid-2018, economies run by mainstream democratic parties accounted for just a...The world is changing fast and 2019 promises to be another bewildering and chaotic year. The rise of China in the East and populists in the West means that, by mid-2018, economies run by mainstream democratic parties accounted for just a third of the combined gross domestic product of the Group of 20 nations, down from 83 percent in 2007, according to Bloomberg Economics. And that was before the election of two more populist presidents, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
“In 20 years I haven’t operated in an environment like this, ever, because there were always safe havens before. Countries we thought easy to predict are becoming harder to read now,” says Claire Simpson, global claims director at Willis Tower Watson Plc, a global risk advisory and insurance company.
Whether this upheaval is due to a technological revolution, income inequality, a clash of civilizations or Western arrogance (choose your poison), the trend is set to continue. In 2019, a number of these transitions from the post-Cold War era have the potential to come to a head, each carrying “worst case” risks. To help navigate them, we’ve compiled a calendar of some of the key moments to watch, organized by topic. Happy New Year.
A New Arms Race
On Dec. 4, Donald Trump gave Russia 60 days to comply with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty or see Washington trigger a six-month notice period to end its commitments not to produce land-based missiles and launchers that have a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles) to 5,500 kilometers. The clock runs out at the end of February. The 1987 treaty was negotiated between the U.S. and then-Soviet Union to dismantle thousands of middle-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Shorter trajectories made them hard to respond to and therefore destabilizing. That remains true today, but non-signatory China wasn’t covered and now has a large arsenal of them. Russia says it hasn’t breached the treaty’s terms.
► Worst case: The U.S. exits and Russia points previously banned missiles at its Western neighbors, supercharging an arms race in high-tech weapons already underway, and tossing a political grenade into NATO, as the U.S. and eastern and western European members divide over whether to respond in kind.
► Risk of INF treaty collapse: High
► Risk of new nuclear arms race in Europe: Medium
Russia
A 2018 survey for Willis Towers Watson found that its larger clients suffered most losses in Russia, often as a result of sanctions. So Russia gets its own category. The Kremlin may have given up on cultivating Trump, after he canceled two meetings with President Vladimir Putin toward the end of the year. Russia’s meddling in foreign elections, and its efforts to extend influence in the Balkans and former Soviet republics look set to continue, with further U.S. sanctions in response. A summit in Washington, previously floated for 2019, appears to be in jeopardy, though the two could potentially meet at the next G-20 summit in Japan in June.
Trump's sudden decisions to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan -- longstanding Russian demands -- and the coming departure of Defense Secretary and Russia hawk James Mattis won praise from the Kremlin, but officials there remain skeptical a genuine detente is possible.
► Worst case: U.S.-Russian relations descend into open hostility, affecting arms control and areas where they had until now been able to cooperate.
► Risk: High
Trade Wars
The 90-day tariff truce that Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed at the recent G-20 expires at the end of February. If they fail, U.S. tariffs would rise on a $200 billion tranche of imports from China. The whipsaw on the S&P 500, as events repeatedly boosted and then undermined belief in the truce, show the stakes.
► Worst case: A full-fledged trade war that expands into an open struggle for strategic dominance by the end of the...]]>916cleanfullNewsbeat RadioBloomberg The world is changing fast and 2019 promises to be another bewildering and chaotic year. The rise of China in the East and populists in the West means that, by mid-2018, economies run by mainstream democratic parties accounted for just a third of the combined gross domestic product of the Group of 20 nations, down from 83 percent in 2007, according to Bloomberg Economics. And that was before the election of two more populist presidents, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. “In 20 years I haven’t operated in an environment like this, ever, because there were always safe havens before. Countries we thought easy to predict are becoming harder to read now,” says Claire Simpson, global claims director at Willis Tower Watson Plc, a global risk advisory and insurance company. Whether this upheaval is due to a technological revolution, income inequality, a clash of civilizations or Western arrogance (choose your poison), the trend is set to continue. In 2019, a number of these transitions from the post-Cold War era have the potential to come to a head, each carrying “worst case” risks. To help navigate them, we’ve compiled a calendar of some of the key moments to watch, organized by topic. Happy New Year. A New Arms Race On Dec. 4, Donald Trump gave Russia 60 days to comply with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty or see Washington trigger a six-month notice period to end its commitments not to produce land-based missiles and launchers that have a range of 500 kilometers (310 miles) to 5,500 kilometers. The clock runs out at the end of February. The 1987 treaty was negotiated between the U.S. and then-Soviet Union to dismantle thousands of middle-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Shorter trajectories made them hard to respond to and therefore destabilizing. That remains true today, but non-signatory China wasn’t covered and now has a large arsenal of them. Russia says it hasn’t breached the treaty’s terms. ► Worst case: The U.S. exits and Russia points previously banned missiles at its Western neighbors, supercharging an arms race in high-tech weapons already underway, and tossing a political grenade into NATO, as the U.S. and eastern and western European members divide over whether to respond in kind. ► Risk of INF treaty collapse: High ► Risk of new nuclear arms race in Europe: Medium Russia A 2018 survey for Willis Towers Watson found that its larger clients suffered most losses in Russia, often as a result of sanctions. So Russia gets its own category. The Kremlin may have given up on cultivating Trump, after he canceled two meetings with President Vladimir Putin toward the end of the year. Russia’s meddling in foreign elections, and its efforts to extend influence in the Balkans and former Soviet republics look set to continue, with further U.S. sanctions in response. A summit in Washington, previously floated for 2019, appears to be in jeopardy, though the two could potentially meet at the next G-20 summit in Japan in June. Trump's sudden decisions to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan -- longstanding Russian demands -- and the coming departure of Defense Secretary and Russia hawk James Mattis won praise from the Kremlin, but officials there remain skeptical a genuine detente is possible. ► Worst case: U.S.-Russian relations descend into open hostility, affecting arms control and areas where they had until now been able to cooperate. ► Risk: High Trade Wars The 90-day tariff truce that Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed at the recent G-20 expires at the end of February. If they fail, U.S. tariffs would rise on a $200 billion tranche of imports from China. The whipsaw on the S&P 500, as events repeatedly boosted and then undermined belief in the truce, show the stakes. ► Worst case: A full-fledged trade war that expands into an open struggle for strategic dominance by the end of the year, undermining growth and security around the globe. ► Risk: High Also by...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/your-apps-know-where-you-were-last-nightThe millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.
One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark, New Jersey, to a nearby Planned Parenthood. Another represents a person who travels with New York’s mayor during the day and returns to Long Island at night.
Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, 46, a math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.
An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than 1 million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.
The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office. It followed her hiking and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing.
“It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data.
Like many consumers, Magrin knew apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds. It is a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps.
Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there.
Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game. But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried in a vague privacy policy.
After Elise Lee, a nurse in Manhattan, saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room at the hospital where she works, she expressed concern about her privacy and that of her patients.
“It’s very scary,” said Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it reviewed.
Retailers look to tracking companies to tell them about their own customers and their competitors’. For a web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out the path of a hypothetical consumer from home to work to show potential clients how tracking could reveal a person’s preferences.
“We look to understand who a person is, based on where they’ve been and where they’re going, in order to influence what they’re going to do next,” Greenstein said.
Health care facilities are among the more enticing but troubling areas for tracking, as Lee’s reaction demonstrated. Tell All Digital, a Long Island advertising firm that is a client of a location company, says it runs ad campaigns for personal injury lawyers targeting people anonymously in emergency rooms.
To evaluate location-sharing practices, The Times tested 20 apps, most of which had been flagged by researchers and industry insiders as potentially sharing the data. Together, 17 of the apps sent exact latitude and longitude to about 70 businesses. Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS, was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that data described it as “unsolicited” or “inappropriate.”
Companies that use location data say people agree to share their information in exchange for customized services, rewards and discounts. Magrin, the teacher, noted that she liked that tracking technology let her record her jogging routes.
Brian Wong, chief executive of Kiip, a mobile ad firm that has also sold anonymous data from some of the apps it works with, says users give apps permission to use and share their data. “You are receiving these services for free because advertisers are helping monetize and pay for it,” he said, adding, “You would have to be pretty oblivious if you are not aware that this is going on.”
But Lee, the nurse, had a different view. “I guess that’s what they have to tell themselves,” she said of the companies. “But come on.”
Lee had given apps on her iPhone access to her location only for certain purposes and only if they did not indicate that the information would be used for anything else, she said. Magrin had allowed about a dozen apps on her Android phone access to her whereabouts for services like traffic notifications.
But it is easy to share information without realizing it. Of the 17 apps The Times saw sending precise location data, just three on iOS and one on Android told users in a prompt during the permission process that the information could be used for advertising.
Apps form the backbone of this new location data economy.
The app developers can make money by directly selling their data, or by sharing it for location-based ads, which command a premium. Location data companies pay half a cent to 2 cents per user per month, according to offer letters to app makers reviewed by The Times.
Google and Facebook, which dominate the mobile ad market, also lead in location-based advertising. Both companies collect the data from their own apps. They say they do not sell it but keep it for themselves to personalize their services, sell targeted ads across the internet and track whether the ads lead to sales at brick-and-mortar stores.
Apple and Google have a financial interest in keeping developers happy, but both have taken steps to limit location data collection. In the most recent version of Android, apps that are not in use can collect locations “a few times an hour,” instead of continuously.
Apple has been stricter, for example requiring apps to justify collecting location details in pop-up messages. But Apple’s instructions for writing these pop-ups do not mention advertising or data sale.
Apple recently shelved plans that industry insiders say would have significantly curtailed location collection. Last year, the company said an upcoming version of iOS would show a blue bar on screen whenever an app not in use was gaining access to location data.
The discussion served as a “warning shot” to people in the location industry, David Shim, chief executive of the location company Placed, said at an industry event last year.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-12-11:/posts/7114226Tue, 11 Dec 2018 19:29:05 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe New York Times The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark, New Jersey, to a nearby Planned...The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user.
One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark, New Jersey, to a nearby Planned Parenthood. Another represents a person who travels with New York’s mayor during the day and returns to Long Island at night.
Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, 46, a math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her.
An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than 1 million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot.
The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office. It followed her hiking and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing.
“It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data.
Like many consumers, Magrin knew apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds. It is a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps.
Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there.
Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game. But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried in a vague privacy policy.
After Elise Lee, a nurse in Manhattan, saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room at the hospital where she works, she expressed concern about her privacy and that of her patients.
“It’s very scary,” said Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it reviewed.
Retailers look to tracking companies to tell them about their own customers and their competitors’. For a web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out the path of a hypothetical consumer from home...]]>502cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe New York Times The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark, New Jersey, to a nearby Planned Parenthood. Another represents a person who travels with New York’s mayor during the day and returns to Long Island at night. Yet another leaves a house in upstate New York at 7 a.m. and travels to a middle school 14 miles away, staying until late afternoon each school day. Only one person makes that trip: Lisa Magrin, 46, a math teacher. Her smartphone goes with her. An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than 1 million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times. While Magrin’s identity was not disclosed in those records, The Times was able to easily connect her to that dot. The app tracked her as she went to a Weight Watchers meeting and to her dermatologist’s office. It followed her hiking and staying at her ex-boyfriend’s home, information she found disturbing. “It’s the thought of people finding out those intimate details that you don’t want people to know,” said Magrin, who allowed The Times to review her location data. Like many consumers, Magrin knew apps could track people’s movements. But as smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive. At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. The database reviewed by The Times — a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company — reveals people’s travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day. These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds. It is a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps. Businesses say their interest is in the patterns, not the identities, that the data reveals about consumers. They note that the information apps collect is tied not to someone’s name or phone number but to a unique ID. But those with access to the raw data — including employees or clients — could still identify a person without consent. They could follow someone they knew, by pinpointing a phone that regularly spent time at that person’s home address. Or, working in reverse, they could attach a name to an anonymous dot, by seeing where the device spent nights and using public records to figure out who lived there. Many location companies say that when phone users enable location services, their data is fair game. But, The Times found, the explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading. An app may tell users that granting access to their location will help them get traffic information, but not mention that the data will be shared and sold. That disclosure is often buried in a vague privacy policy. After Elise Lee, a nurse in Manhattan, saw that her device had been tracked to the main operating room at the hospital where she works, she expressed concern about her privacy and that of her patients. “It’s very scary,” said Lee, who allowed The Times to examine her location history in the data set it reviewed. Retailers look to tracking companies to tell them about their own customers and their competitors’. For a web seminar last year, Elina Greenstein, an executive at the location company GroundTruth, mapped out the path of a hypothetical consumer from home to work to show potential clients how tracking could reveal a...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-american-dream-is-alive-in-china
China is still much poorer over all than the United States. But the Chinese have taken a commanding lead in that most intangible but valuable of economic indicators: optimism.

In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution, where politics are tightly circumscribed by an authoritarian state, the Chinese are now among the most optimistic people in the world — much more so than Americans and Europeans, according to public opinion surveys.

What has changed?

Most of all, an economic expansion without precedent in modern history.

Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States.

Not only are incomes drastically rising within families, but sons are outearning their fathers. That means expectations are rising, too, especially among China’s growing middle class.

Life expectancy has also soared. Chinese men born in 2013 are expected to live more than seven years longer than those born in 1990; women are expected to live nearly 10 years longer.

“It feels like there are no limits to how far you can go,” said Wu Haifeng, 37, a financial analyst who was born to a family of corn farmers in northern China and now earns more than $78,000 a year. “It feels like China will always be strong.”

China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class.

There are risks, of course, and no guarantees that China’s rise will continue indefinitely.

A prolonged economic slump could inflict major damage. And experts warn that China could fall into the middle-income trap — in which growth and earnings plateau — if it fails to address high corporate debt levels or doesn’t do more to encourage innovation. Demography is also a ticking bomb: China is racing to get rich before it gets old.

Yet for now, the economic arc seems ever upward.

Like the United States, China still has a yawning gap between the rich and the poor — and the poorest Chinese are far poorer, with nearly 500 million people, or about 40 percent of the population, living on less than $5.50 a day, according to the World Bank.

But by some measures Chinese society has about the same level of inequality as the United States. Here are the world’s major countries ordered by inequality and income mobility.
Today, the economic output per capita in China is $12,000, compared with $3,500 a decade ago. The number is far higher in the United States, $53,000.

Yet few analysts doubt where the bigger increases will come.

China’s progress is especially remarkable given how the government has used social engineering to restrict where people live and how many children they have. Loosening those constraints could accelerate income growth.

This is why many people now talk about “the Chinese Dream.”

Xu Liya, 49, once tilled wheat fields in Zhejiang, a rural province along China’s east coast. Her family ate meat only once a week, and each night she crammed into a bedroom with seven relatives.

Then she attended university on a scholarship and started a clothing store. Now she owns two cars and an apartment valued at more than $300,000. Her daughter attends college in Beijing.

“Poverty and corruption have hurt average people in China for too long,” she said. “While today’s society isn’t perfect, poor people have the resources to compete with rich people, too.”]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-11-27:/posts/7098862Tue, 27 Nov 2018 02:20:34 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe New York Times China is still much poorer over all than the United States. But the Chinese have taken a commanding lead in that most intangible but valuable of economic indicators: optimism. In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution,...
China is still much poorer over all than the United States. But the Chinese have taken a commanding lead in that most intangible but valuable of economic indicators: optimism.

In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution, where politics are tightly circumscribed by an authoritarian state, the Chinese are now among the most optimistic people in the world — much more so than Americans and Europeans, according to public opinion surveys.

What has changed?

Most of all, an economic expansion without precedent in modern history.

Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States.

Not only are incomes drastically rising within families, but sons are outearning their fathers. That means expectations are rising, too, especially among China’s growing middle class.

Life expectancy has also soared. Chinese men born in 2013 are expected to live more than seven years longer than those born in 1990; women are expected to live nearly 10 years longer.

“It feels like there are no limits to how far you can go,” said Wu Haifeng, 37, a financial analyst who was born to a family of corn farmers in northern China and now earns more than $78,000 a year. “It feels like China will always be strong.”

China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class.

There are risks, of course, and no guarantees that China’s rise will continue indefinitely.

A prolonged economic slump could inflict major damage. And experts warn that China could fall into the middle-income trap — in which growth and earnings plateau — if it fails to address high corporate debt levels or doesn’t do more to encourage innovation. Demography is also a ticking bomb: China is racing to get rich before it gets old.

Yet for now, the economic arc seems ever upward.

Like the United States, China still has a yawning gap between the rich and the poor — and the poorest Chinese are far poorer, with nearly 500 million people, or about 40 percent of the population, living on less than $5.50 a day, according to the World Bank.

But by some measures Chinese society has about the same level of inequality as the United States. Here are the world’s major countries ordered by inequality and income mobility.
Today, the economic output per capita in China is $12,000, compared with $3,500 a decade ago. The number is far higher in the United States, $53,000.

Yet few analysts doubt where the bigger increases will come.

China’s progress is especially remarkable given how the government has used social engineering to restrict where people live and how many children they have. Loosening those constraints could accelerate income growth.

This is why many people now talk about “the Chinese Dream.”

Xu Liya, 49, once tilled wheat fields in Zhejiang, a rural province along China’s east coast. Her family ate meat only once a week, and each night she crammed into a bedroom with seven relatives.

Then she attended university on a scholarship and started a clothing store. Now she owns two cars and an apartment valued at more than $300,000. Her daughter attends college in Beijing.

“Poverty and corruption have hurt average people in China for too long,” she said. “While today’s society isn’t perfect, poor people have the resources to compete with rich people, too.”]]>233cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe New York Times China is still much poorer over all than the United States. But the Chinese have taken a commanding lead in that most intangible but valuable of economic indicators: optimism. In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution, where politics are tightly circumscribed by an authoritarian state, the Chinese are now among the most optimistic people in the world — much more so than Americans and Europeans, according to public opinion surveys. What has changed? Most of all, an economic expansion without precedent in modern history. Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States. Not only are incomes drastically rising within families, but sons are outearning their fathers. That means expectations are rising, too, especially among China’s growing middle class. Life expectancy has also soared. Chinese men born in 2013 are expected to live more than seven years longer than those born in 1990; women are expected to live nearly 10 years longer. “It feels like there are no limits to how far you can go,” said Wu Haifeng, 37, a financial analyst who was born to a family of corn farmers in northern China and now earns more than $78,000 a year. “It feels like China will always be strong.” China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class. There are risks, of course, and no guarantees that China’s rise will continue indefinitely. A prolonged economic slump could inflict major damage. And experts warn that China could fall into the middle-income trap — in which growth and earnings plateau — if it fails to address high corporate debt levels or doesn’t do more to encourage innovation. Demography is also a ticking bomb: China is racing to get rich before it gets old. Yet for now, the economic arc seems ever upward. Like the United States, China still has a yawning gap between the rich and the poor — and the poorest Chinese are far poorer, with nearly 500 million people, or about 40 percent of the population, living on less than $5.50 a day, according to the World Bank. But by some measures Chinese society has about the same level of inequality as the United States. Here are the world’s major countries ordered by inequality and income mobility. Today, the economic output per capita in China is $12,000, compared with $3,500 a decade ago. The number is far higher in the United States, $53,000. Yet few analysts doubt where the bigger increases will come. China’s progress is especially remarkable given how the government has used social engineering to restrict where people live and how many children they have. Loosening those constraints could accelerate income growth. This is why many people now talk about “the Chinese Dream.” Xu Liya, 49, once tilled wheat fields in Zhejiang, a rural province along China’s east coast. Her family ate meat only once a week, and each night she crammed into a bedroom with seven relatives. Then she attended university on a scholarship and started a clothing store. Now she owns two cars and an apartment valued at more than $300,000. Her daughter attends college in Beijing. “Poverty and corruption have hurt average people in China for too long,” she said. “While today’s society isn’t perfect, poor people have the resources to compete with rich people, too.”Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/3-big-takeaways-from-the-bleak-climate-r
A new government climate report outlines the planet’s path toward environmental crisis in the darkest terms: frequent destructive weather events, deteriorating health, and a stunted economy.

In the most recent National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated report that dropped on Friday, during the holiday weekend — scientists across 13 federal agencies outlined the serious environmental threats facing the United States in more than 1,500 pages. They clearly state that climate change has already had adverse effects on the country and considered the ways those effects could multiply.

By 2050, for examples, the contiguous United States might see temperatures warm at least 2.3 degrees, according to the report, which would lead to more heat-related deaths, higher coastal flooding, and economic damage from the resulting loss of agricultural productivity.

“The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future — but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changes that will occur,” scientists wrote in Friday’s report.

The United States is certain to see more wildfires, stronger hurricanes, and more intense flooding, according to the report. In some parts of the country, wildfire seasons will destroy up to six times more forest area every year by the middle of this century.

Such extreme weather events will further stress the country’s infrastructure and economy by disrupting energy, agricultural, and transportation systems. That could also cripple recovery efforts after severe weather events even more, too. Parts of the country will see longer-duration power outages, for example.

“Many places are subject to more than one climate-related impact, such as extreme rainfall combined with coastal flooding, or drought coupled with extreme heat, wildfire, and flooding,” the scientists wrote. Coastal flooding will also impact those living in the Northeast and western Gulf of Mexico.

Already, the United States has incurred costs of nearly $400 billion since 2015 in addressing weather and climate disasters, according to the report.

Extreme weather events and rising temperatures will leave more Americans more exposed to foodborne and waterborne illnesses, according to the report. Heat-related deaths will also rise.

Due to climate change, more people will also be diagnosed with asthma and other allergy-related respiratory conditions and saddled with polluted air. As disease-carrying insects migrate, more people might be exposed to things like Lyme disease and Zika viruses.

Mental health will suffer amid environmental and economic changes — particularly among Indigenous populations — especially as people are forced to evacuate their communities because of coastal damage. The scientists note in their report that large-scale evacuations are already happening to people in the Louisiana tribal community of Isle de Jean Charles.

“Unless counteracting efforts to improve air quality are implemented, climate change is expected to worsen ozone pollution across much of the country, with adverse impacts on human health,” the scientists write.

And those health impacts will have economic consequences. For example, thousands of additional heat-related deaths in 2090 carry a projected cost of $140 billion in a worst-case scenario, and a cost of $60 billion in a best-case scenario.

With a sick and shrunken workforce, higher commodity prices, and declining crop yields, the scientists warned that “the potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century.” Ultimately, poor people and people of color will see the greatest economic impact.

In a worst-case scenario, climate change could cost the U.S. economy more than 10 percent of its gross domestic product by the end of this century, according to the report. In the best-case scenario, the cost of climate change would still be more than $100 billion in 2015 dollars each year.

Meanwhile, rising temperatures and flooding could send Midwestern corn fields reeling as agricultural productivity declines. Some farms may be able to produce less than 75 percent of their current yields, scientists predict. Soybean farmers, meanwhile, could also lose more than 25 percent of their current yields.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-11-27:/posts/7098863Tue, 27 Nov 2018 02:20:34 +0000Newsbeat RadioVice News A new government climate report outlines the planet’s path toward environmental crisis in the darkest terms: frequent destructive weather events, deteriorating health, and a stunted economy. In the most recent National Climate Assessment —...
A new government climate report outlines the planet’s path toward environmental crisis in the darkest terms: frequent destructive weather events, deteriorating health, and a stunted economy.

In the most recent National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated report that dropped on Friday, during the holiday weekend — scientists across 13 federal agencies outlined the serious environmental threats facing the United States in more than 1,500 pages. They clearly state that climate change has already had adverse effects on the country and considered the ways those effects could multiply.

By 2050, for examples, the contiguous United States might see temperatures warm at least 2.3 degrees, according to the report, which would lead to more heat-related deaths, higher coastal flooding, and economic damage from the resulting loss of agricultural productivity.

“The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future — but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changes that will occur,” scientists wrote in Friday’s report.

The United States is certain to see more wildfires, stronger hurricanes, and more intense flooding, according to the report. In some parts of the country, wildfire seasons will destroy up to six times more forest area every year by the middle of this century.

Such extreme weather events will further stress the country’s infrastructure and economy by disrupting energy, agricultural, and transportation systems. That could also cripple recovery efforts after severe weather events even more, too. Parts of the country will see longer-duration power outages, for example.

“Many places are subject to more than one climate-related impact, such as extreme rainfall combined with coastal flooding, or drought coupled with extreme heat, wildfire, and flooding,” the scientists wrote. Coastal flooding will also impact those living in the Northeast and western Gulf of Mexico.

Already, the United States has incurred costs of nearly $400 billion since 2015 in addressing weather and climate disasters, according to the report.

Extreme weather events and rising temperatures will leave more Americans more exposed to foodborne and waterborne illnesses, according to the report. Heat-related deaths will also rise.

Due to climate change, more people will also be diagnosed with asthma and other allergy-related respiratory conditions and saddled with polluted air. As disease-carrying insects migrate, more people might be exposed to things like Lyme disease and Zika viruses.

Mental health will suffer amid environmental and economic changes — particularly among Indigenous populations — especially as people are forced to evacuate their communities because of coastal damage. The scientists note in their report that large-scale evacuations are already happening to people in the Louisiana tribal community of Isle de Jean Charles.

“Unless counteracting efforts to improve air quality are implemented, climate change is expected to worsen ozone pollution across much of the country, with adverse impacts on human health,” the scientists write.

And those health impacts will have economic consequences. For example, thousands of additional heat-related deaths in 2090 carry a projected cost of $140 billion in a worst-case scenario, and a cost of $60 billion in a best-case scenario.

With a sick and shrunken workforce, higher commodity prices, and declining crop yields, the scientists warned that “the potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century.” Ultimately, poor people and people of color will see the greatest economic impact.

In a worst-case scenario,...]]>299cleanfullNewsbeat RadioVice News A new government climate report outlines the planet’s path toward environmental crisis in the darkest terms: frequent destructive weather events, deteriorating health, and a stunted economy. In the most recent National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated report that dropped on Friday, during the holiday weekend — scientists across 13 federal agencies outlined the serious environmental threats facing the United States in more than 1,500 pages. They clearly state that climate change has already had adverse effects on the country and considered the ways those effects could multiply. By 2050, for examples, the contiguous United States might see temperatures warm at least 2.3 degrees, according to the report, which would lead to more heat-related deaths, higher coastal flooding, and economic damage from the resulting loss of agricultural productivity. “The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future — but the severity of future impacts will depend largely on actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changes that will occur,” scientists wrote in Friday’s report. The United States is certain to see more wildfires, stronger hurricanes, and more intense flooding, according to the report. In some parts of the country, wildfire seasons will destroy up to six times more forest area every year by the middle of this century. Such extreme weather events will further stress the country’s infrastructure and economy by disrupting energy, agricultural, and transportation systems. That could also cripple recovery efforts after severe weather events even more, too. Parts of the country will see longer-duration power outages, for example. “Many places are subject to more than one climate-related impact, such as extreme rainfall combined with coastal flooding, or drought coupled with extreme heat, wildfire, and flooding,” the scientists wrote. Coastal flooding will also impact those living in the Northeast and western Gulf of Mexico. Already, the United States has incurred costs of nearly $400 billion since 2015 in addressing weather and climate disasters, according to the report. Extreme weather events and rising temperatures will leave more Americans more exposed to foodborne and waterborne illnesses, according to the report. Heat-related deaths will also rise. Due to climate change, more people will also be diagnosed with asthma and other allergy-related respiratory conditions and saddled with polluted air. As disease-carrying insects migrate, more people might be exposed to things like Lyme disease and Zika viruses. Mental health will suffer amid environmental and economic changes — particularly among Indigenous populations — especially as people are forced to evacuate their communities because of coastal damage. The scientists note in their report that large-scale evacuations are already happening to people in the Louisiana tribal community of Isle de Jean Charles. “Unless counteracting efforts to improve air quality are implemented, climate change is expected to worsen ozone pollution across much of the country, with adverse impacts on human health,” the scientists write. And those health impacts will have economic consequences. For example, thousands of additional heat-related deaths in 2090 carry a projected cost of $140 billion in a worst-case scenario, and a cost of $60 billion in a best-case scenario. With a sick and shrunken workforce, higher commodity prices, and declining crop yields, the scientists warned that “the potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century.” Ultimately, poor people and people of color will see the greatest economic impact. In a worst-case scenario, climate change could cost the U.S. economy more than 10 percent of its gross domestic product by the end of this century, according to the report. In the...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/how-dead-bodies-save-lives-every-day-on-
Glass explodes. Metal screams against metal. A car crash is a waking nightmare, but one that has become increasingly survivable—and we have piles of dead bodies to thank.

At the Wayne State University campus in midtown Detroit, there stands an empty building once used by the school’s Biomechanical Engineering department. It was here that one of the grandfathers of modern automotive safety, Dr. Lawrence Patrick, first tossed a human corpse down an unused elevator shaft. You know, for science.

While using human remains as test subjects may seem ghoulish, these researchers and donated bodies were, and still are, on the front lines of saving lives.

This is gonna be a creepy one. Buckle up.

If you really want a good scare, check out the crash rates during the U.S. automotive industry’s golden era. In the 1950s and ’60s cars were not very safe, to put it mildly. Check out this crash test between a modern-day Chevrolet and Jalopnik Deputy Editor Mike Ballaban’s favorite classic car, a ‘59 Chevy Bel Air:

It’s not a pleasant sight. The Malibu crumples when it strikes the older Bel Air, keeping the passenger compartment mostly intact and the dummy fairly safe and cozy. The front of the Bel Air, however, throws the crash dummy around the cabin as its front end is crushed into the seats.

It’s true that technology and manufacturing techniques weren’t as sophisticated back then, but the fact is safety wasn’t a priority for automakers for a long time. Automakers knew their cars were killing people. In the post-war years, the auto industry even had a motto that sounds crazy to us today: “Safety doesn’t sell.” And as Automotive News noted in a 1996 story, there were no federal safety regulations, nor were consumers demanding safer cars en masse.

It was 1946 when car crash deaths in the U.S. first crested 30,000 per year, and that number, while ebbing and rising a bit year by year, never significantly dropped back down.

Ford had tried to sell a “Lifeguard Design” package filled with innovative safety features in 1956. Citing work done by Cornell, Lifeguard Design featured such safety innovations as a padded instrument panel, shatter-proof rearview mirror and a deep-dish steering wheel that would deform instead of impaling the driver. These features may seem like common sense today, but they didn’t exactly catch on at the time.

By 1963, traffic fatalities breached 40,000 a year. Just two years later, Ralph Nader published Unsafe At Any Speed, which took aim at the Chevrolet Corvair and safety standards in the auto industry in general. Only two years after that, in 1968, U.S. traffic deaths climbed above 50,000 a year.

So why wasn’t anything done sooner? In Ford’s case, the safety package quickly fizzled out. Buyers ended up going for those sexy and unsafe Chevys like the Bel Air pictured above to the tune of 190,000 cars more than Ford sold. Henry Ford II even begrudgingly said this about his own general manager, Robert McNamara: “McNamara is selling safety, but Chevrolet is selling cars.”

In fact, by 1964, steering columns alone had killed 1.2 million drivers. Much like today’s push for cleaner and more efficient cars, automakers knew there was a problem, but wouldn’t address the problem until Congress forced their hands in the late ’60s.

Even seatbelts were relatively new during this time period. Ford installed them as options on some cars starting in 1955, but other automakers were slow to follow suit until a federal law requiring all cars come with seatbelts in 1968. (The Swedes did it better, installing seat belts standard on Saabs and Volvos by the late 1950s.)

But if automakers weren’t interested in saving lives, some academics were. And they went about developing safety enhancements in unusual ways.

Dr. Lawrence Patrick was a professor at Wayne State and, in some ways, he was also one of the first crash test dummies. While gathering data on what the human body could endure, Patrick subjected himself to multiple impact tests, including a 22-pound metal pendulum to the chest and over 400 rides on a rapid-deceleration sled. Patrick’s grad students also endured punishment after punishment in the name of safety. In a 1965 paper, Patrick described how his students volunteered for knee impacts of up to 1,000 pounds of force.

But to get the really good data, they had to push past the limits of human endurance. And since it was illegal to kill a grad student—yes, even back then—that meant getting access to some dead bodies.

“God help you if you lived in the vicinity of Wayne State University in the mid-’60s and you donated your body to science,” Mary Roach wrote in her book Stiff: The Interesting Lives Of Human Cadavers. Patrick and his students first measured the impact limits of a human skull by tossing a cadaver down an empty elevator shaft in the now-shuttered Shapero Hall in midtown Detroit.

Bodies were slammed, smashed and thrown from deceleration sleds by grateful grad students who were no ...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-11-09:/posts/7080248Fri, 09 Nov 2018 20:31:02 +0000Newsbeat RadioJalopnik Glass explodes. Metal screams against metal. A car crash is a waking nightmare, but one that has become increasingly survivable—and we have piles of dead bodies to thank. At the Wayne State University campus in midtown Detroit, there stands...
Glass explodes. Metal screams against metal. A car crash is a waking nightmare, but one that has become increasingly survivable—and we have piles of dead bodies to thank.

At the Wayne State University campus in midtown Detroit, there stands an empty building once used by the school’s Biomechanical Engineering department. It was here that one of the grandfathers of modern automotive safety, Dr. Lawrence Patrick, first tossed a human corpse down an unused elevator shaft. You know, for science.

While using human remains as test subjects may seem ghoulish, these researchers and donated bodies were, and still are, on the front lines of saving lives.

This is gonna be a creepy one. Buckle up.

If you really want a good scare, check out the crash rates during the U.S. automotive industry’s golden era. In the 1950s and ’60s cars were not very safe, to put it mildly. Check out this crash test between a modern-day Chevrolet and Jalopnik Deputy Editor Mike Ballaban’s favorite classic car, a ‘59 Chevy Bel Air:

It’s not a pleasant sight. The Malibu crumples when it strikes the older Bel Air, keeping the passenger compartment mostly intact and the dummy fairly safe and cozy. The front of the Bel Air, however, throws the crash dummy around the cabin as its front end is crushed into the seats.

It’s true that technology and manufacturing techniques weren’t as sophisticated back then, but the fact is safety wasn’t a priority for automakers for a long time. Automakers knew their cars were killing people. In the post-war years, the auto industry even had a motto that sounds crazy to us today: “Safety doesn’t sell.” And as Automotive News noted in a 1996 story, there were no federal safety regulations, nor were consumers demanding safer cars en masse.

It was 1946 when car crash deaths in the U.S. first crested 30,000 per year, and that number, while ebbing and rising a bit year by year, never significantly dropped back down.

Ford had tried to sell a “Lifeguard Design” package filled with innovative safety features in 1956. Citing work done by Cornell, Lifeguard Design featured such safety innovations as a padded instrument panel, shatter-proof rearview mirror and a deep-dish steering wheel that would deform instead of impaling the driver. These features may seem like common sense today, but they didn’t exactly catch on at the time.

By 1963, traffic fatalities breached 40,000 a year. Just two years later, Ralph Nader published Unsafe At Any Speed, which took aim at the Chevrolet Corvair and safety standards in the auto industry in general. Only two years after that, in 1968, U.S. traffic deaths climbed above 50,000 a year.

So why wasn’t anything done sooner? In Ford’s case, the safety package quickly fizzled out. Buyers ended up going for those sexy and unsafe Chevys like the Bel Air pictured above to the tune of 190,000 cars more than Ford sold. Henry Ford II even begrudgingly said this about his own general manager, Robert McNamara: “McNamara is selling safety, but Chevrolet is selling cars.”

In fact, by 1964, steering columns alone had killed 1.2 million drivers. Much like today’s push for cleaner and more efficient cars, automakers knew there was a problem, but wouldn’t address the problem until Congress forced their hands in the late ’60s.

Even seatbelts were relatively new during this time period. Ford installed them as options on some cars starting in 1955, but other automakers were slow to follow suit until a federal law requiring all cars come with seatbelts in 1968. (The Swedes did it better, installing seat belts standard on Saabs and Volvos by the late 1950s.)

But if automakers weren’t interested in saving lives, some academics were. And they went about developing safety enhancements in unusual ways.

Dr. Lawrence Patrick was a professor at Wayne State and, in some...]]>574cleanfullNewsbeat RadioJalopnik Glass explodes. Metal screams against metal. A car crash is a waking nightmare, but one that has become increasingly survivable—and we have piles of dead bodies to thank. At the Wayne State University campus in midtown Detroit, there stands an empty building once used by the school’s Biomechanical Engineering department. It was here that one of the grandfathers of modern automotive safety, Dr. Lawrence Patrick, first tossed a human corpse down an unused elevator shaft. You know, for science. While using human remains as test subjects may seem ghoulish, these researchers and donated bodies were, and still are, on the front lines of saving lives. This is gonna be a creepy one. Buckle up. If you really want a good scare, check out the crash rates during the U.S. automotive industry’s golden era. In the 1950s and ’60s cars were not very safe, to put it mildly. Check out this crash test between a modern-day Chevrolet and Jalopnik Deputy Editor Mike Ballaban’s favorite classic car, a ‘59 Chevy Bel Air: It’s not a pleasant sight. The Malibu crumples when it strikes the older Bel Air, keeping the passenger compartment mostly intact and the dummy fairly safe and cozy. The front of the Bel Air, however, throws the crash dummy around the cabin as its front end is crushed into the seats. It’s true that technology and manufacturing techniques weren’t as sophisticated back then, but the fact is safety wasn’t a priority for automakers for a long time. Automakers knew their cars were killing people. In the post-war years, the auto industry even had a motto that sounds crazy to us today: “Safety doesn’t sell.” And as Automotive News noted in a 1996 story, there were no federal safety regulations, nor were consumers demanding safer cars en masse. It was 1946 when car crash deaths in the U.S. first crested 30,000 per year, and that number, while ebbing and rising a bit year by year, never significantly dropped back down. Ford had tried to sell a “Lifeguard Design” package filled with innovative safety features in 1956. Citing work done by Cornell, Lifeguard Design featured such safety innovations as a padded instrument panel, shatter-proof rearview mirror and a deep-dish steering wheel that would deform instead of impaling the driver. These features may seem like common sense today, but they didn’t exactly catch on at the time. By 1963, traffic fatalities breached 40,000 a year. Just two years later, Ralph Nader published Unsafe At Any Speed, which took aim at the Chevrolet Corvair and safety standards in the auto industry in general. Only two years after that, in 1968, U.S. traffic deaths climbed above 50,000 a year. So why wasn’t anything done sooner? In Ford’s case, the safety package quickly fizzled out. Buyers ended up going for those sexy and unsafe Chevys like the Bel Air pictured above to the tune of 190,000 cars more than Ford sold. Henry Ford II even begrudgingly said this about his own general manager, Robert McNamara: “McNamara is selling safety, but Chevrolet is selling cars.” In fact, by 1964, steering columns alone had killed 1.2 million drivers. Much like today’s push for cleaner and more efficient cars, automakers knew there was a problem, but wouldn’t address the problem until Congress forced their hands in the late ’60s. Even seatbelts were relatively new during this time period. Ford installed them as options on some cars starting in 1955, but other automakers were slow to follow suit until a federal law requiring all cars come with seatbelts in 1968. (The Swedes did it better, installing seat belts standard on Saabs and Volvos by the late 1950s.) But if automakers weren’t interested in saving lives, some academics were. And they went about developing safety enhancements in unusual ways. Dr. Lawrence Patrick was a professor at Wayne State and, in some ways, he was also one of the first crash test dummies. While gathering data on what the human body could endure, Patrick subjected himself to...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/what-if-the-placebo-effect-is-not-a-tric
The Chain of Office of the Dutch city of Leiden is a broad and colorful ceremonial necklace that, draped around the shoulders of Mayor Henri Lenferink, lends a magisterial air to official proceedings in this ancient university town. But whatever gravitas it provided Lenferink as he welcomed a group of researchers to his city, he was quick to undercut it. “I am just a humble historian,” he told the 300 members of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies who had gathered in Leiden’s ornate municipal concert hall, “so I don’t know anything about your topic.” He was being a little disingenuous. He knew enough about the topic that these psychologists and neuroscientists and physicians and anthropologists and philosophers had come to his city to talk about — the placebo effect, the phenomenon whereby suffering people get better from treatments that have no discernible reason to work — to call it “fake medicine,” and to add that it probably works because “people like to be cheated.” He took a beat. “But in the end, I believe that honesty will prevail.”

Lenferink might not have been so glib had he attended the previous day’s meeting on the other side of town, at which two dozen of the leading lights of placebo science spent a preconference day agonizing over their reputation — as purveyors of sham medicine who prey on the desperate and, if they are lucky, fool people into feeling better — and strategizing about how to improve it. It’s an urgent subject for them, and only in part because, like all apostate professionals, they crave mainstream acceptance. More important, they are motivated by a conviction that the placebo is a powerful medical treatment that is ignored by doctors only at their patients’ expense.

And after a quarter-century of hard work, they have abundant evidence to prove it. Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin. Give a drug a fancy name, and it works better than if you don’t.

You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing.

But as ubiquitous as the phenomenon is, and as plentiful the studies that demonstrate it, the placebo effect has yet to become part of the doctor’s standard armamentarium — and not only because it has a reputation as “fake medicine” doled out by the unscrupulous to the credulous. It also has, so far, resisted a full understanding, its mechanisms shrouded in mystery. Without a clear knowledge of how it works, doctors can’t know when to deploy it, or how.

Not that the researchers are without explanations. But most of these have traditionally been psychological in nature, focusing on mechanisms like expectancy — the set of beliefs that a person brings into treatment — and the kind of conditioning that Ivan Pavlov first described more than a century ago. These theories, which posit that the mind acts upon the body to bring about physical responses, tend to strike doctors and researchers steeped in the scientific tradition as insufficiently scientific to lend credibility to the placebo effect. “What makes our research believable to doctors?” asks Ted Kaptchuk, head of Harvard Medical School’s Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter. “It’s the molecules. They love that stuff.” As of now, there are no molecules for conditioning or expectancy — or, indeed, for Kaptchuk’s own pet theory, which holds that the placebo effect is a result of the complex conscious and nonconscious processes embedded in the practitioner-patient relationship — and without them, placebo researchers are hard-pressed to gain purchase in mainstream medicine.

But as many of the talks at the conference indicated, this might be about to change. Aided by functional magnetic resonance imaging (f.M.R.I.) and other precise surveillance techniques, Kaptchuk and his c...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-11-09:/posts/7080249Fri, 09 Nov 2018 20:31:02 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe New York Times The Chain of Office of the Dutch city of Leiden is a broad and colorful ceremonial necklace that, draped around the shoulders of Mayor Henri Lenferink, lends a magisterial air to official proceedings in this ancient university...
The Chain of Office of the Dutch city of Leiden is a broad and colorful ceremonial necklace that, draped around the shoulders of Mayor Henri Lenferink, lends a magisterial air to official proceedings in this ancient university town. But whatever gravitas it provided Lenferink as he welcomed a group of researchers to his city, he was quick to undercut it. “I am just a humble historian,” he told the 300 members of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies who had gathered in Leiden’s ornate municipal concert hall, “so I don’t know anything about your topic.” He was being a little disingenuous. He knew enough about the topic that these psychologists and neuroscientists and physicians and anthropologists and philosophers had come to his city to talk about — the placebo effect, the phenomenon whereby suffering people get better from treatments that have no discernible reason to work — to call it “fake medicine,” and to add that it probably works because “people like to be cheated.” He took a beat. “But in the end, I believe that honesty will prevail.”

Lenferink might not have been so glib had he attended the previous day’s meeting on the other side of town, at which two dozen of the leading lights of placebo science spent a preconference day agonizing over their reputation — as purveyors of sham medicine who prey on the desperate and, if they are lucky, fool people into feeling better — and strategizing about how to improve it. It’s an urgent subject for them, and only in part because, like all apostate professionals, they crave mainstream acceptance. More important, they are motivated by a conviction that the placebo is a powerful medical treatment that is ignored by doctors only at their patients’ expense.

And after a quarter-century of hard work, they have abundant evidence to prove it. Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin. Give a drug a fancy name, and it works better than if you don’t.

You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing.

But as ubiquitous as the phenomenon is, and as plentiful the studies that demonstrate it, the placebo effect has yet to become part of the doctor’s standard armamentarium — and not only because it has a reputation as “fake medicine” doled out by the unscrupulous to the credulous. It also has, so far, resisted a full understanding, its mechanisms shrouded in mystery. Without a clear knowledge of how it works, doctors can’t know when to deploy it, or how.

Not that the researchers are without explanations. But most of these have traditionally been psychological in nature, focusing on mechanisms like expectancy — the set of beliefs that a person brings into treatment — and the kind of conditioning that...]]>788cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe New York Times The Chain of Office of the Dutch city of Leiden is a broad and colorful ceremonial necklace that, draped around the shoulders of Mayor Henri Lenferink, lends a magisterial air to official proceedings in this ancient university town. But whatever gravitas it provided Lenferink as he welcomed a group of researchers to his city, he was quick to undercut it. “I am just a humble historian,” he told the 300 members of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies who had gathered in Leiden’s ornate municipal concert hall, “so I don’t know anything about your topic.” He was being a little disingenuous. He knew enough about the topic that these psychologists and neuroscientists and physicians and anthropologists and philosophers had come to his city to talk about — the placebo effect, the phenomenon whereby suffering people get better from treatments that have no discernible reason to work — to call it “fake medicine,” and to add that it probably works because “people like to be cheated.” He took a beat. “But in the end, I believe that honesty will prevail.” Lenferink might not have been so glib had he attended the previous day’s meeting on the other side of town, at which two dozen of the leading lights of placebo science spent a preconference day agonizing over their reputation — as purveyors of sham medicine who prey on the desperate and, if they are lucky, fool people into feeling better — and strategizing about how to improve it. It’s an urgent subject for them, and only in part because, like all apostate professionals, they crave mainstream acceptance. More important, they are motivated by a conviction that the placebo is a powerful medical treatment that is ignored by doctors only at their patients’ expense. And after a quarter-century of hard work, they have abundant evidence to prove it. Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin. Give a drug a fancy name, and it works better than if you don’t. You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing. But as ubiquitous as the phenomenon is, and as plentiful the studies that demonstrate it, the placebo effect has yet to become part of the doctor’s standard armamentarium — and not only because it has a reputation as “fake medicine” doled out by the unscrupulous to the credulous. It also has, so far, resisted a full understanding, its mechanisms shrouded in mystery. Without a clear knowledge of how it works, doctors can’t know when to deploy it, or how. Not that the researchers are without explanations. But most of these have traditionally been psychological in nature, focusing on mechanisms like expectancy — the set of beliefs that a person brings into treatment — and the kind of conditioning that Ivan Pavlov first described more than a century ago. These...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/crash-test-dummies-are-getting-fatter-be
At first glance, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc. looks like it has a pretty sweet business model. The suburban Detroit company is the world’s largest maker of crash-test dummies, the steel-and-vinyl humanoids stuffed with electronics that gauge how a car crash could injure a human body. The company enjoys a global market share exceeding 70 percent, and its dummies can cost as much as $1 million apiece. Regulators in the U.S. and other countries effectively require Humanetics customers to buy at least some of its products.

With a setup like that, you might say, even a dummy could make a fortune. This makes Humanetics Chief Executive Officer Christopher O’Connor laugh, though for a different reason than you might think. He’d much rather discuss the implications of 3D printers and driverless cars than how Humanetics, or any dummy maker, turns a profit. “I’ve said to myself, if I had $10 million, I wouldn’t invest in this business,” O’Connor says. “I love it, but the reality is, you’re not going to make a ton of money. The margins are always going to be tight.”


The business of making and selling crash dummies is odd, and not only because it involves faceless mannequins acting as proxies for the mangled and the dead. Dummy makers spend years and millions of dollars developing products that customers profess to admire but decline to buy. Vehicles and drivers have changed dramatically, but the model of dummy used in many government-required crash tests has been around for four decades. The industry sells a mere 200 to 250 dummies in a decent year and generated $111 million in revenue globally in 2016, according to market-research company Technavio.

At the Humanetics headquarters in Farmington Hills, Mich., and its factory in Huron, Ohio, cubicles and worktables are littered with flesh-colored dummy heads, feet, and hands, and parts carts hold shiny aluminum elbows, knees, and clavicles. They’ll be assembled by some of Humanetics’ 750 employees into anthropomorphic devices of various genders and ages. Information gleaned from dummies has helped automakers develop air bags, advanced seat belts, penetration-resistant glass, and energy-absorbing frames. Dummy performance in crash tests is central to the popular vehicle safety rating, which influences sales. Given all this, it seems like Humanetics’ continual improvement of its product ought to produce robust growth. The problem is that dummies, unlike humans, don’t die, though a decade ago the industry almost did.

In Volvo Car Group’s cavernous crash facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, eight banks of 4,000-watt lamps shine on a V60 station wagon as technicians scurry about making final preparations for a side-impact crash test. A bank of electronic measuring equipment rests on the hood. Two dummies wait, one in the front seat, the other directly behind.

The techs disperse. The garage is silent but for a voice on an intercom counting down from 10. At zero, a flat barrier accelerates toward the car at 31 mph and T-bones it. The scene is placid one second and then suddenly, jarringly violent—as in a real collision.

Then the serious work begins, much of it involving the collection and analysis of data from the sensors inside the dummies: Did a rib deflect far enough that it could have fractured? Might the intrusion of the driver’s door have punctured an internal organ? Volvo runs as many as 10 full-scale crash tests a week, including head-on collisions, lateral and angular impacts, and outdoor tests in which vehicles are run into a roadside ditch to see how the bodies—that is, the dummies’ bodies—are tossed around inside.

The company owns about 100 dummies, some brand-new, some as old as 40. A number of Volvo’s Humanetics dummies represent a 5-foot-9-inch, 172-pound male, which at one point was a statistically average man. (Said man is now pushing 200.) Volvo also has dummies that stand in for larger men, small women, and children of various ages. Then there’s a replica moose—collisions with Bullwinkle are common in Sweden—that resembles an oil drum tipped sideways and propped on four stilts.



Some of the early crash dummies, in the mid-20th century, were human cadavers flung down elevator shafts and hogs impaled on steering columns. There were live humans, too. In 1954, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Stapp, a physician studying how deceleration affected military pilots in crashes, rode a rocket sled at 632 mph on a New Mexico test track. He didn’t hit anything, but blood filled his eyes as vessels burst under the pressure. His research caught the attention of automakers; later he founded the annual Stapp Car Crash Conference, which still contributes to crash-test development.

The U.S. highway fatality rate in the 1950s ranged from 5 to 7 deaths per 1 million miles traveled. Autos were built with stiff exteriors that transferred the deadly energy of a collision to their occupants. Interiors were loaded with sharp doorknobs, radio buttons, rearview m...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-10-26:/posts/7062550Fri, 26 Oct 2018 16:16:46 +0000Newsbeat RadioBloomberg At first glance, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc. looks like it has a pretty sweet business model. The suburban Detroit company is the world’s largest maker of crash-test dummies, the steel-and-vinyl humanoids stuffed with electronics...
At first glance, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc. looks like it has a pretty sweet business model. The suburban Detroit company is the world’s largest maker of crash-test dummies, the steel-and-vinyl humanoids stuffed with electronics that gauge how a car crash could injure a human body. The company enjoys a global market share exceeding 70 percent, and its dummies can cost as much as $1 million apiece. Regulators in the U.S. and other countries effectively require Humanetics customers to buy at least some of its products.

With a setup like that, you might say, even a dummy could make a fortune. This makes Humanetics Chief Executive Officer Christopher O’Connor laugh, though for a different reason than you might think. He’d much rather discuss the implications of 3D printers and driverless cars than how Humanetics, or any dummy maker, turns a profit. “I’ve said to myself, if I had $10 million, I wouldn’t invest in this business,” O’Connor says. “I love it, but the reality is, you’re not going to make a ton of money. The margins are always going to be tight.”


The business of making and selling crash dummies is odd, and not only because it involves faceless mannequins acting as proxies for the mangled and the dead. Dummy makers spend years and millions of dollars developing products that customers profess to admire but decline to buy. Vehicles and drivers have changed dramatically, but the model of dummy used in many government-required crash tests has been around for four decades. The industry sells a mere 200 to 250 dummies in a decent year and generated $111 million in revenue globally in 2016, according to market-research company Technavio.

At the Humanetics headquarters in Farmington Hills, Mich., and its factory in Huron, Ohio, cubicles and worktables are littered with flesh-colored dummy heads, feet, and hands, and parts carts hold shiny aluminum elbows, knees, and clavicles. They’ll be assembled by some of Humanetics’ 750 employees into anthropomorphic devices of various genders and ages. Information gleaned from dummies has helped automakers develop air bags, advanced seat belts, penetration-resistant glass, and energy-absorbing frames. Dummy performance in crash tests is central to the popular vehicle safety rating, which influences sales. Given all this, it seems like Humanetics’ continual improvement of its product ought to produce robust growth. The problem is that dummies, unlike humans, don’t die, though a decade ago the industry almost did.

In Volvo Car Group’s cavernous crash facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, eight banks of 4,000-watt lamps shine on a V60 station wagon as technicians scurry about making final preparations for a side-impact crash test. A bank of electronic measuring equipment rests on the hood. Two dummies wait, one in the front seat, the other directly behind.

The techs disperse. The garage is silent but for a voice on an intercom counting down from 10. At zero, a flat barrier accelerates toward the car at 31 mph and T-bones it. The scene is placid one second and then suddenly, jarringly violent—as in a real collision.

Then the serious work begins, much of it involving the collection and analysis of data from the sensors inside the dummies: Did a rib deflect far enough that it could have fractured? Might the intrusion of the driver’s door have punctured an internal organ? Volvo runs as many as 10 full-scale crash tests a week, including head-on collisions, lateral and angular impacts, and outdoor tests in which vehicles are run into a roadside ditch to see how the bodies—that is, the dummies’ bodies—are tossed around inside.

The company owns about 100 dummies, some brand-new, some as old as 40. A number of Volvo’s Humanetics dummies represent a 5-foot-9-inch, 172-pound male, which at one point was a statistically average man. (Said man is now pushing 200.) Volvo also has dummies that...]]>903cleanfullNewsbeat RadioBloomberg At first glance, Humanetics Innovative Solutions Inc. looks like it has a pretty sweet business model. The suburban Detroit company is the world’s largest maker of crash-test dummies, the steel-and-vinyl humanoids stuffed with electronics that gauge how a car crash could injure a human body. The company enjoys a global market share exceeding 70 percent, and its dummies can cost as much as $1 million apiece. Regulators in the U.S. and other countries effectively require Humanetics customers to buy at least some of its products. With a setup like that, you might say, even a dummy could make a fortune. This makes Humanetics Chief Executive Officer Christopher O’Connor laugh, though for a different reason than you might think. He’d much rather discuss the implications of 3D printers and driverless cars than how Humanetics, or any dummy maker, turns a profit. “I’ve said to myself, if I had $10 million, I wouldn’t invest in this business,” O’Connor says. “I love it, but the reality is, you’re not going to make a ton of money. The margins are always going to be tight.” The business of making and selling crash dummies is odd, and not only because it involves faceless mannequins acting as proxies for the mangled and the dead. Dummy makers spend years and millions of dollars developing products that customers profess to admire but decline to buy. Vehicles and drivers have changed dramatically, but the model of dummy used in many government-required crash tests has been around for four decades. The industry sells a mere 200 to 250 dummies in a decent year and generated $111 million in revenue globally in 2016, according to market-research company Technavio. At the Humanetics headquarters in Farmington Hills, Mich., and its factory in Huron, Ohio, cubicles and worktables are littered with flesh-colored dummy heads, feet, and hands, and parts carts hold shiny aluminum elbows, knees, and clavicles. They’ll be assembled by some of Humanetics’ 750 employees into anthropomorphic devices of various genders and ages. Information gleaned from dummies has helped automakers develop air bags, advanced seat belts, penetration-resistant glass, and energy-absorbing frames. Dummy performance in crash tests is central to the popular vehicle safety rating, which influences sales. Given all this, it seems like Humanetics’ continual improvement of its product ought to produce robust growth. The problem is that dummies, unlike humans, don’t die, though a decade ago the industry almost did. In Volvo Car Group’s cavernous crash facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, eight banks of 4,000-watt lamps shine on a V60 station wagon as technicians scurry about making final preparations for a side-impact crash test. A bank of electronic measuring equipment rests on the hood. Two dummies wait, one in the front seat, the other directly behind. The techs disperse. The garage is silent but for a voice on an intercom counting down from 10. At zero, a flat barrier accelerates toward the car at 31 mph and T-bones it. The scene is placid one second and then suddenly, jarringly violent—as in a real collision. Then the serious work begins, much of it involving the collection and analysis of data from the sensors inside the dummies: Did a rib deflect far enough that it could have fractured? Might the intrusion of the driver’s door have punctured an internal organ? Volvo runs as many as 10 full-scale crash tests a week, including head-on collisions, lateral and angular impacts, and outdoor tests in which vehicles are run into a roadside ditch to see how the bodies—that is, the dummies’ bodies—are tossed around inside. The company owns about 100 dummies, some brand-new, some as old as 40. A number of Volvo’s Humanetics dummies represent a 5-foot-9-inch, 172-pound male, which at one point was a statistically average man. (Said man is now pushing 200.) Volvo also has dummies that stand in for larger men, small women, and children of various ages. Then there’s a...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-ai-cold-war-that-could-doom-us-all

IN THE SPRING of 2016, an artificial intelligence system called AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player in a match at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul. In the US, this momentous news required some unpacking. Most Americans were unfamiliar with Go, an ancient Asian game that involves placing black and white stones on a wooden board. And the technology that had emerged victorious was even more foreign: a form of AI called machine learning, which uses large data sets to train a computer to recognize patterns and make its own strategic choices.

Still, the gist of the story was familiar enough. Computers had already mastered checkers and chess; now they had learned to dominate a still more complex game. Geeks cared, but most people didn’t. In the White House, Terah Lyons, one of Barack Obama’s science and technology policy advisers, remembers her team cheering on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Building. “We saw it as a win for technology,” she says. “The next day the rest of the White House forgot about it.”

In China, by contrast, 280 million people watched AlphaGo win. There, what really mattered was that a machine owned by a California company, Alphabet, the parent of Google, had conquered a game invented more than 2,500 years ago in Asia. Americans don’t even play Go. And yet they had somehow figured out how to vanquish it? Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of AI, remembers being asked to comment on the match by nearly every major television station in the country. Until then, he had been quietly investing in Chinese AI companies. But when he saw the attention, he started broadcasting his venture fund’s artificial intelligence investment strategy. “We said, OK, after this match, the whole country is going to know about AI,” he recalls. “So we went big.”

In Beijing, the machine’s victory cracked the air like a warning shot. That impression was only reinforced when, over the next few months, the Obama administration published a series of reports grappling with the benefits and risks of AI. The papers made a series of recommendations for government action, both to stave off potential job losses from automation and to invest in the development of machine learning. A group of senior policy wonks inside China’s science and technology bureaucracy, who had already been working on their own plan for AI, believed they were seeing signs of a focused, emerging US strategy—and they needed to act fast.

In May 2017, AlphaGo triumphed again, this time over Ke Jie, a Chinese Go master, ranked at the top of the world. Two months later, China unveiled its Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, a document that laid out the country’s strategy to become the global leader in AI by 2030. And with this clear signal from Beijing, it was as if a giant axle began to turn in the machinery of the industrial state. Other Chinese government ministries soon issued their own plans, based on the strategy sketched out by Beijing’s planners. Expert advisory groups and industry alliances cropped up, and local governments all over China began to fund AI ventures.

China’s tech giants were enlisted as well. Alibaba, the giant online retailer, was tapped to develop a “City Brain” for a new Special Economic Zone being planned about 60 miles southwest of Beijing. Already, in the city of Hangzhou, the company was soaking up data from thousands of street cameras and using it to control traffic lights with AI, optimizing traffic flow in much the way AlphaGo had optimized for winning moves on the Go board; now Alibaba would help design AI into a new megacity’s entire infrastructure from the ground up.

On October 18, 2017, China’s president, Xi Jinping, stood in front of 2,300 of his fellow party members, flanked by enormous red drapes and a giant gold hammer and sickle. As Xi laid out his plans for the party’s future over nearly three and a half hours, he named artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet as core technologies that would help transform China into an advanced industrial economy in the coming decades. It was the first time many of these technologies had explicitly come up in a president’s speech at the Communist Party Congress, a once-in-five-years event.

In the decisive span of a few months, the Chinese government had given its citizens a new vision of the future, and made clear that it would be coming fast. “If AlphaGo was China’s Sputnik moment, the government’s AI plan was like President John F. Kennedy’s landmark speech calling for America to land a man on the moon,” Kai-Fu Lee writes in his new book, AI Superpowers.

Meanwhile, as Beijing began to build up speed, the United States government was slowing to a walk. After President Trump took office, the Obama-era reports on AI were relegated to an archived website. In March 2017, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the idea of humans losing jobs because of AI “is not even on our radar screen.” It might be a threat, he ...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-10-26:/posts/7062549Fri, 26 Oct 2018 16:16:46 +0000Newsbeat RadioWired IN THE SPRING of 2016, an artificial intelligence system called AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player in a match at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul. In the US, this momentous news required some unpacking. Most Americans were unfamiliar...

IN THE SPRING of 2016, an artificial intelligence system called AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player in a match at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul. In the US, this momentous news required some unpacking. Most Americans were unfamiliar with Go, an ancient Asian game that involves placing black and white stones on a wooden board. And the technology that had emerged victorious was even more foreign: a form of AI called machine learning, which uses large data sets to train a computer to recognize patterns and make its own strategic choices.

Still, the gist of the story was familiar enough. Computers had already mastered checkers and chess; now they had learned to dominate a still more complex game. Geeks cared, but most people didn’t. In the White House, Terah Lyons, one of Barack Obama’s science and technology policy advisers, remembers her team cheering on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Building. “We saw it as a win for technology,” she says. “The next day the rest of the White House forgot about it.”

In China, by contrast, 280 million people watched AlphaGo win. There, what really mattered was that a machine owned by a California company, Alphabet, the parent of Google, had conquered a game invented more than 2,500 years ago in Asia. Americans don’t even play Go. And yet they had somehow figured out how to vanquish it? Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of AI, remembers being asked to comment on the match by nearly every major television station in the country. Until then, he had been quietly investing in Chinese AI companies. But when he saw the attention, he started broadcasting his venture fund’s artificial intelligence investment strategy. “We said, OK, after this match, the whole country is going to know about AI,” he recalls. “So we went big.”

In Beijing, the machine’s victory cracked the air like a warning shot. That impression was only reinforced when, over the next few months, the Obama administration published a series of reports grappling with the benefits and risks of AI. The papers made a series of recommendations for government action, both to stave off potential job losses from automation and to invest in the development of machine learning. A group of senior policy wonks inside China’s science and technology bureaucracy, who had already been working on their own plan for AI, believed they were seeing signs of a focused, emerging US strategy—and they needed to act fast.

In May 2017, AlphaGo triumphed again, this time over Ke Jie, a Chinese Go master, ranked at the top of the world. Two months later, China unveiled its Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, a document that laid out the country’s strategy to become the global leader in AI by 2030. And with this clear signal from Beijing, it was as if a giant axle began to turn in the machinery of the industrial state. Other Chinese government ministries soon issued their own plans, based on the strategy sketched out by Beijing’s planners. Expert advisory groups and industry alliances cropped up, and local governments all over China began to fund AI ventures.

China’s tech giants were enlisted as well. Alibaba, the giant online retailer, was tapped to develop a “City Brain” for a new Special Economic Zone being planned about 60 miles southwest of Beijing. Already, in the city of Hangzhou, the company was soaking up data from thousands of street cameras and using it to control traffic lights with AI, optimizing traffic flow in much the way AlphaGo had optimized for winning moves on the Go board; now Alibaba would help design AI into a new megacity’s entire infrastructure from the ground up.

On October 18, 2017, China’s president, Xi Jinping, stood in front of 2,300 of his fellow party members, flanked by enormous red drapes and a giant gold hammer and sickle. As Xi laid out his plans for the party’s future over nearly three and a half...]]>750cleanfullNewsbeat RadioWired IN THE SPRING of 2016, an artificial intelligence system called AlphaGo defeated a world champion Go player in a match at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul. In the US, this momentous news required some unpacking. Most Americans were unfamiliar with Go, an ancient Asian game that involves placing black and white stones on a wooden board. And the technology that had emerged victorious was even more foreign: a form of AI called machine learning, which uses large data sets to train a computer to recognize patterns and make its own strategic choices. Still, the gist of the story was familiar enough. Computers had already mastered checkers and chess; now they had learned to dominate a still more complex game. Geeks cared, but most people didn’t. In the White House, Terah Lyons, one of Barack Obama’s science and technology policy advisers, remembers her team cheering on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Building. “We saw it as a win for technology,” she says. “The next day the rest of the White House forgot about it.” In China, by contrast, 280 million people watched AlphaGo win. There, what really mattered was that a machine owned by a California company, Alphabet, the parent of Google, had conquered a game invented more than 2,500 years ago in Asia. Americans don’t even play Go. And yet they had somehow figured out how to vanquish it? Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of AI, remembers being asked to comment on the match by nearly every major television station in the country. Until then, he had been quietly investing in Chinese AI companies. But when he saw the attention, he started broadcasting his venture fund’s artificial intelligence investment strategy. “We said, OK, after this match, the whole country is going to know about AI,” he recalls. “So we went big.” In Beijing, the machine’s victory cracked the air like a warning shot. That impression was only reinforced when, over the next few months, the Obama administration published a series of reports grappling with the benefits and risks of AI. The papers made a series of recommendations for government action, both to stave off potential job losses from automation and to invest in the development of machine learning. A group of senior policy wonks inside China’s science and technology bureaucracy, who had already been working on their own plan for AI, believed they were seeing signs of a focused, emerging US strategy—and they needed to act fast. In May 2017, AlphaGo triumphed again, this time over Ke Jie, a Chinese Go master, ranked at the top of the world. Two months later, China unveiled its Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, a document that laid out the country’s strategy to become the global leader in AI by 2030. And with this clear signal from Beijing, it was as if a giant axle began to turn in the machinery of the industrial state. Other Chinese government ministries soon issued their own plans, based on the strategy sketched out by Beijing’s planners. Expert advisory groups and industry alliances cropped up, and local governments all over China began to fund AI ventures. China’s tech giants were enlisted as well. Alibaba, the giant online retailer, was tapped to develop a “City Brain” for a new Special Economic Zone being planned about 60 miles southwest of Beijing. Already, in the city of Hangzhou, the company was soaking up data from thousands of street cameras and using it to control traffic lights with AI, optimizing traffic flow in much the way AlphaGo had optimized for winning moves on the Go board; now Alibaba would help design AI into a new megacity’s entire infrastructure from the ground up. On October 18, 2017, China’s president, Xi Jinping, stood in front of 2,300 of his fellow party members, flanked by enormous red drapes and a giant gold hammer and sickle. As Xi laid out his plans for the party’s future over nearly three and a half hours, he named artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet as core...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/memo-to-trump-beware-of-the-reckless-cro
Everyone keeps saying they want peace in the Middle East, right? Well, memo to Saudi Arabia and President Trump: This isn’t the way to do it.

Saudi Arabia has been making dramatic international headlines in recent months. The kingdom’s 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) wants to introduce progressive reforms to his conservative nation. So far that has meant granting women the right to drive, envisioning plans for a futuristic city and trying to attract foreign investment. But MBS’s version of reform has also meant the arrests of scores of elites, clerics, social media stars, princes. The kingdom, long dependent on oil wealth, says that it wants to crack down on corruption. But as a number of my colleagues have pointed out, the young prince’s tactics mirror those of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. And in a country where the state and the royal family are one and the same, arrests and property seizures without meaningful legal reforms and transparency efforts will make MBS’s anti-corruption moves little more than a headline-grabbing show of political force.

But the kingdom is risking stoking more geopolitical chaos in a region that can ill-afford it. Lebanon has become the latest front: Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, (who is also a Saudi citizen) resigned last weekend, announcing his departure from office in Riyadh, on Saudi state TV. Lebanese officials have accused Saudi Arabia of basically holding Hariri hostage, in what may be an effort to squeeze the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that Saudi Arabia has declared war on Lebanon and Hezbollah. You know things are getting heated when even Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi is telling Saudi Arabia to cool it on Hezbollah, saying the region can’t support more turmoil. On top of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has been boycotting Qatar, and the Saudi-led coalition continues to pound Yemen into a humanitarian mess.

Watch the video for more. Saudi Arabia is leaning heavily on the Trump card — relying on Trump’s full-throated endorsment of MBS’s actions. But Trump could be making a huge mistake by putting all of America’s eggs in the reckless MBS’s basket.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-10-12:/posts/7043685Fri, 12 Oct 2018 14:08:55 +0000Newsbeat RadioWashington Post Everyone keeps saying they want peace in the Middle East, right? Well, memo to Saudi Arabia and President Trump: This isn’t the way to do it. Saudi Arabia has been making dramatic international headlines in recent months. The...
Everyone keeps saying they want peace in the Middle East, right? Well, memo to Saudi Arabia and President Trump: This isn’t the way to do it.

Saudi Arabia has been making dramatic international headlines in recent months. The kingdom’s 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) wants to introduce progressive reforms to his conservative nation. So far that has meant granting women the right to drive, envisioning plans for a futuristic city and trying to attract foreign investment. But MBS’s version of reform has also meant the arrests of scores of elites, clerics, social media stars, princes. The kingdom, long dependent on oil wealth, says that it wants to crack down on corruption. But as a number of my colleagues have pointed out, the young prince’s tactics mirror those of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. And in a country where the state and the royal family are one and the same, arrests and property seizures without meaningful legal reforms and transparency efforts will make MBS’s anti-corruption moves little more than a headline-grabbing show of political force.

But the kingdom is risking stoking more geopolitical chaos in a region that can ill-afford it. Lebanon has become the latest front: Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, (who is also a Saudi citizen) resigned last weekend, announcing his departure from office in Riyadh, on Saudi state TV. Lebanese officials have accused Saudi Arabia of basically holding Hariri hostage, in what may be an effort to squeeze the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that Saudi Arabia has declared war on Lebanon and Hezbollah. You know things are getting heated when even Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi is telling Saudi Arabia to cool it on Hezbollah, saying the region can’t support more turmoil. On top of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has been boycotting Qatar, and the Saudi-led coalition continues to pound Yemen into a humanitarian mess.

Watch the video for more. Saudi Arabia is leaning heavily on the Trump card — relying on Trump’s full-throated endorsment of MBS’s actions. But Trump could be making a huge mistake by putting all of America’s eggs in the reckless MBS’s basket.]]>156cleanfullNewsbeat RadioWashington Post Everyone keeps saying they want peace in the Middle East, right? Well, memo to Saudi Arabia and President Trump: This isn’t the way to do it. Saudi Arabia has been making dramatic international headlines in recent months. The kingdom’s 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) wants to introduce progressive reforms to his conservative nation. So far that has meant granting women the right to drive, envisioning plans for a futuristic city and trying to attract foreign investment. But MBS’s version of reform has also meant the arrests of scores of elites, clerics, social media stars, princes. The kingdom, long dependent on oil wealth, says that it wants to crack down on corruption. But as a number of my colleagues have pointed out, the young prince’s tactics mirror those of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping. And in a country where the state and the royal family are one and the same, arrests and property seizures without meaningful legal reforms and transparency efforts will make MBS’s anti-corruption moves little more than a headline-grabbing show of political force. But the kingdom is risking stoking more geopolitical chaos in a region that can ill-afford it. Lebanon has become the latest front: Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, (who is also a Saudi citizen) resigned last weekend, announcing his departure from office in Riyadh, on Saudi state TV. Lebanese officials have accused Saudi Arabia of basically holding Hariri hostage, in what may be an effort to squeeze the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that Saudi Arabia has declared war on Lebanon and Hezbollah. You know things are getting heated when even Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi is telling Saudi Arabia to cool it on Hezbollah, saying the region can’t support more turmoil. On top of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia has been boycotting Qatar, and the Saudi-led coalition continues to pound Yemen into a humanitarian mess. Watch the video for more. Saudi Arabia is leaning heavily on the Trump card — relying on Trump’s full-throated endorsment of MBS’s actions. But Trump could be making a huge mistake by putting all of America’s eggs in the reckless MBS’s basket.Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/why-you-do-not-know-the-price-until-you-

It was 1935 and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a problem with Albert Einstein. Einstein had just released a paper with two fellow scientists that discussed the concept of superposition, an idea that seemed somewhat absurd to Schrödinger. Superposition implied that an atom (or any quantum system) was simultaneously in multiple states until the point of observation. Once the system was observed, its true state would be revealed to the observer. This implied that the act of observation changed how the universe behaved. In order to convey his skeptical view on the matter, Schrödinger devised a thought experiment (emphasis mine, minor changes for clarity):

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber with a Geiger counter and a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none of it decays. If it decays, the counter tube discharges and releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, the cat still lives if no atom has decayed. However, the first atomic decay would have poisoned it…the entire system would express this by having in it both the living and dead cat.

Schrödinger argued that since the atom’s state of decay is unknown, the cat’s state of being alive or dead is also unknown. Only once you have opened the steel chamber could you determine whether the cat was living or deceased. You have probably heard of Schrödinger’s cat as a thought experiment, but you may not have realized how useful it is for thinking about asset prices.

Most of the time when we want to know the price of something we can use the market or comparable assets. When you go to buy and sell an S&P 500 ETF, the price is known and displayed for you. When you go to sell your home, a proper appraisal and similar homes can be used to determine the approximate selling price. This is likely to be true 95% of the time or more.

However, when markets become abnormal, pricing an asset is no longer straight forward. Instability emerges and you quickly realize that you won’t know the price of your asset until you go to sell it. Just like Schrödinger’s cat, we don’t know what the state of something is until we observe it. It is in the act of selling that we have “opened the steel chamber” to see an asset’s true price.

I know you might think this is a grand leap of faith, but it’s not. History is riddled with examples of individuals thinking they knew the prices of their assets, only to get a rude awakening when they tried to sell. The Nobel Laureates behind Long Term Capital Management learned this the hard way when their bets on bond spreads turned against them in 1998. As Roger Lowenstein writes in When Genius Failed:

Disturbingly, the traders said there was no demand for Long-Term’s trades, despite their seeming soundness. The Tokyo partners reported a similar story: there simply weren’t any buyers.

LTCM had assumed far more liquidity and ease of exit from their positions than what they eventually realized during the 1998 crisis. They had no idea the buyers would disappear and the stable prices would go with them. As you know, if there are no buyers and you need to sell, you only have one option—lower your price.

You might think that this situation will never apply to you. You aren’t trading foreign illiquid securities, right? But, what about something closer to home (literally). If you are a homeowner and you think you will always be able to sell your home at a reasonable price, I would advise caution. The Vanderbilts discovered this bitter truth after spending $11 million in 1892 to build the famed Marble House only to sell during the depths of the Great Depression for $100,000! That is a 99% haircut on one of the most beautiful homes ever built. I understand that the Great Depression was unlike any other time in American financial history, but that doesn’t mean that your home is exempt from price discounts during financial calamity.

And it is during such financial calamity when the harshest truth about asset pricing becomes apparent: those times when you are most desperate to sell are the same times when prices are most likely to be in flux. When you are the neediest for cash is also when it is most difficult to sell an asset at a fair price. Consider the unfortunate experience of Jews trying to emigrate out of Europe during the start of WWII. From Wealth, War, and Wisdom (emphasis mine):

These middle-class Jews had less to lose than the wealth, and often they were more amenable to emigrating. Many of them faced with this cruel dilemma of a persecuted minority opted to sell and get out. Of course when they went to sell their businesses and homes, they found it was a buyers’ market and the proceeds they received were half of what the true value was. ...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-09-27:/posts/7024808Thu, 27 Sep 2018 20:19:08 +0000Newsbeat RadioOf Dollars and Data It was 1935 and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a problem with Albert Einstein. Einstein had just released a paper with two fellow scientists that discussed the concept of superposition, an idea that seemed somewhat...

It was 1935 and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a problem with Albert Einstein. Einstein had just released a paper with two fellow scientists that discussed the concept of superposition, an idea that seemed somewhat absurd to Schrödinger. Superposition implied that an atom (or any quantum system) was simultaneously in multiple states until the point of observation. Once the system was observed, its true state would be revealed to the observer. This implied that the act of observation changed how the universe behaved. In order to convey his skeptical view on the matter, Schrödinger devised a thought experiment (emphasis mine, minor changes for clarity):

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber with a Geiger counter and a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none of it decays. If it decays, the counter tube discharges and releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, the cat still lives if no atom has decayed. However, the first atomic decay would have poisoned it…the entire system would express this by having in it both the living and dead cat.

Schrödinger argued that since the atom’s state of decay is unknown, the cat’s state of being alive or dead is also unknown. Only once you have opened the steel chamber could you determine whether the cat was living or deceased. You have probably heard of Schrödinger’s cat as a thought experiment, but you may not have realized how useful it is for thinking about asset prices.

Most of the time when we want to know the price of something we can use the market or comparable assets. When you go to buy and sell an S&P 500 ETF, the price is known and displayed for you. When you go to sell your home, a proper appraisal and similar homes can be used to determine the approximate selling price. This is likely to be true 95% of the time or more.

However, when markets become abnormal, pricing an asset is no longer straight forward. Instability emerges and you quickly realize that you won’t know the price of your asset until you go to sell it. Just like Schrödinger’s cat, we don’t know what the state of something is until we observe it. It is in the act of selling that we have “opened the steel chamber” to see an asset’s true price.

I know you might think this is a grand leap of faith, but it’s not. History is riddled with examples of individuals thinking they knew the prices of their assets, only to get a rude awakening when they tried to sell. The Nobel Laureates behind Long Term Capital Management learned this the hard way when their bets on bond spreads turned against them in 1998. As Roger Lowenstein writes in When Genius Failed:

Disturbingly, the traders said there was no demand for Long-Term’s trades, despite their seeming soundness. The Tokyo partners reported a similar story: there simply weren’t any buyers.

LTCM had assumed far more liquidity and ease of exit from their positions than what they eventually realized during the 1998 crisis. They had no idea the buyers would disappear and the stable prices would go with them. As you know, if there are no buyers and you need to sell, you only have one option—lower your price.

You might think that this situation will never apply to you. You aren’t trading foreign illiquid securities, right? But, what about something closer to home (literally). If you are a homeowner and you think you will always be able to sell your home at a reasonable price, I would advise caution. The Vanderbilts discovered this bitter truth after spending $11 million in 1892 to build the famed Marble House only to sell during the depths of the Great Depression for $100,000! That...]]>397cleanfullNewsbeat RadioOf Dollars and Data It was 1935 and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a problem with Albert Einstein. Einstein had just released a paper with two fellow scientists that discussed the concept of superposition, an idea that seemed somewhat absurd to Schrödinger. Superposition implied that an atom (or any quantum system) was simultaneously in multiple states until the point of observation. Once the system was observed, its true state would be revealed to the observer. This implied that the act of observation changed how the universe behaved. In order to convey his skeptical view on the matter, Schrödinger devised a thought experiment (emphasis mine, minor changes for clarity): One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber with a Geiger counter and a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none of it decays. If it decays, the counter tube discharges and releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, the cat still lives if no atom has decayed. However, the first atomic decay would have poisoned it…the entire system would express this by having in it both the living and dead cat. Schrödinger argued that since the atom’s state of decay is unknown, the cat’s state of being alive or dead is also unknown. Only once you have opened the steel chamber could you determine whether the cat was living or deceased. You have probably heard of Schrödinger’s cat as a thought experiment, but you may not have realized how useful it is for thinking about asset prices. Most of the time when we want to know the price of something we can use the market or comparable assets. When you go to buy and sell an S&P 500 ETF, the price is known and displayed for you. When you go to sell your home, a proper appraisal and similar homes can be used to determine the approximate selling price. This is likely to be true 95% of the time or more. However, when markets become abnormal, pricing an asset is no longer straight forward. Instability emerges and you quickly realize that you won’t know the price of your asset until you go to sell it. Just like Schrödinger’s cat, we don’t know what the state of something is until we observe it. It is in the act of selling that we have “opened the steel chamber” to see an asset’s true price. I know you might think this is a grand leap of faith, but it’s not. History is riddled with examples of individuals thinking they knew the prices of their assets, only to get a rude awakening when they tried to sell. The Nobel Laureates behind Long Term Capital Management learned this the hard way when their bets on bond spreads turned against them in 1998. As Roger Lowenstein writes in When Genius Failed: Disturbingly, the traders said there was no demand for Long-Term’s trades, despite their seeming soundness. The Tokyo partners reported a similar story: there simply weren’t any buyers. LTCM had assumed far more liquidity and ease of exit from their positions than what they eventually realized during the 1998 crisis. They had no idea the buyers would disappear and the stable prices would go with them. As you know, if there are no buyers and you need to sell, you only have one option—lower your price. You might think that this situation will never apply to you. You aren’t trading foreign illiquid securities, right? But, what about something closer to home (literally). If you are a homeowner and you think you will always be able to sell your home at a reasonable price, I would advise caution. The Vanderbilts discovered this bitter truth after spending $11 million in 1892 to build the famed Marble House only to sell during the depths of the Great Depression for $100,000! That is a 99% haircut on one of the most beautiful homes ever built. I understand that the Great...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/ultra-rich-families-ride-stocks-surge-to



These are heady times for the world’s richest clans.

Family offices scored average returns of 15.5 percent last year, up from 7 percent in 2016 and 0.3 percent the prior year, according to UBS Group AG and Campden Wealth. Those in Asia led the way with a 16.4 percent return in 2017, fueled by soaring stock markets and private equity.

This is the fifth annual survey from UBS and Campden, providing insight into the discreet world of family offices, which manage the fortunes, tax affairs and often lifestyles of the wealthy. While the Rockefeller family set up one of the earliest versions in the 1800s and European families were early adopters, they’ve proliferated this century, partly because of the boom in tech billionaires.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen created Vulcan Capital in 2003. A few years later, Alphabet Inc. President Sergey Brin started Bayshore Global Management, and former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt set up Hillspire. Brin’s Los Altos, California-based firm has employed ex-bankers, philanthropy experts and a former Navy SEAL for security, while Schmidt’s Palo Alto-based family office controls a 20 percent stake in hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. The trio have collective fortunes valued at almost $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The pace of new family offices has accelerated especially within the past decade, driven by the rise of Asian wealth, with UBS estimating that a new billionaire is minted in China every two days. Asia is now home to a quarter of the people on Bloomberg’s ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, second only to North America.


Of the 311 family offices that responded to the latest survey, 37 percent were created after 2010. The average assets held by respondents was $808 million and the average worth of the families was $1.1 billion. Just over 1 in 5 said they have two family office sites, while some have as many as five locations.

“This is still a very early trend, and it needs to be monitored,” said Sara Ferrari, UBS’s head of global family office. “U.S. family offices with more than one branch tend to have the second one in the country, and it’s mostly the same with Europe. But family offices in the emerging markets and Asia tend to diversify more regionally.”

There are probably more than 5,000 family offices worldwide, said Campden research director Rebecca Gooch. Three-quarters of the firms that participated in the company’s latest survey manage the wealth of just a single family.

Family offices are seeking higher risk and more illiquid assets to boost returns. They’re also taking a more hands-on approach to investments, reflecting a global deal-making trend. Direct private equity made up about 14 percent of family offices’ portfolios, twice the level made through fund allocations, according to UBS and Campden.

UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, describes families with more than $150 million as the “ideal candidates” to set up a family office. At the end of 2017, the bank managed 120 billion Swiss francs ($125 billion) through its family office program.]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-09-27:/posts/7024809Thu, 27 Sep 2018 20:00:00 +0000Newsbeat RadioBloomberg These are heady times for the world’s richest clans. Family offices scored average returns of 15.5 percent last year, up from 7 percent in 2016 and 0.3 percent the prior year, according to UBS Group AG and Campden Wealth. Those in Asia...



These are heady times for the world’s richest clans.

Family offices scored average returns of 15.5 percent last year, up from 7 percent in 2016 and 0.3 percent the prior year, according to UBS Group AG and Campden Wealth. Those in Asia led the way with a 16.4 percent return in 2017, fueled by soaring stock markets and private equity.

This is the fifth annual survey from UBS and Campden, providing insight into the discreet world of family offices, which manage the fortunes, tax affairs and often lifestyles of the wealthy. While the Rockefeller family set up one of the earliest versions in the 1800s and European families were early adopters, they’ve proliferated this century, partly because of the boom in tech billionaires.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen created Vulcan Capital in 2003. A few years later, Alphabet Inc. President Sergey Brin started Bayshore Global Management, and former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt set up Hillspire. Brin’s Los Altos, California-based firm has employed ex-bankers, philanthropy experts and a former Navy SEAL for security, while Schmidt’s Palo Alto-based family office controls a 20 percent stake in hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. The trio have collective fortunes valued at almost $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The pace of new family offices has accelerated especially within the past decade, driven by the rise of Asian wealth, with UBS estimating that a new billionaire is minted in China every two days. Asia is now home to a quarter of the people on Bloomberg’s ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, second only to North America.


Of the 311 family offices that responded to the latest survey, 37 percent were created after 2010. The average assets held by respondents was $808 million and the average worth of the families was $1.1 billion. Just over 1 in 5 said they have two family office sites, while some have as many as five locations.

“This is still a very early trend, and it needs to be monitored,” said Sara Ferrari, UBS’s head of global family office. “U.S. family offices with more than one branch tend to have the second one in the country, and it’s mostly the same with Europe. But family offices in the emerging markets and Asia tend to diversify more regionally.”

There are probably more than 5,000 family offices worldwide, said Campden research director Rebecca Gooch. Three-quarters of the firms that participated in the company’s latest survey manage the wealth of just a single family.

Family offices are seeking higher risk and more illiquid assets to boost returns. They’re also taking a more hands-on approach to investments, reflecting a global deal-making trend. Direct private equity made up about 14 percent of family offices’ portfolios, twice the level made through fund allocations, according to UBS and Campden.

UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, describes families with more than $150 million as the “ideal candidates” to set up a family office. At the end of 2017, the bank managed 120 billion Swiss francs ($125 billion) through its family office program.]]>214cleanfullNewsbeat RadioBloomberg These are heady times for the world’s richest clans. Family offices scored average returns of 15.5 percent last year, up from 7 percent in 2016 and 0.3 percent the prior year, according to UBS Group AG and Campden Wealth. Those in Asia led the way with a 16.4 percent return in 2017, fueled by soaring stock markets and private equity. This is the fifth annual survey from UBS and Campden, providing insight into the discreet world of family offices, which manage the fortunes, tax affairs and often lifestyles of the wealthy. While the Rockefeller family set up one of the earliest versions in the 1800s and European families were early adopters, they’ve proliferated this century, partly because of the boom in tech billionaires. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen created Vulcan Capital in 2003. A few years later, Alphabet Inc. President Sergey Brin started Bayshore Global Management, and former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt set up Hillspire. Brin’s Los Altos, California-based firm has employed ex-bankers, philanthropy experts and a former Navy SEAL for security, while Schmidt’s Palo Alto-based family office controls a 20 percent stake in hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. The trio have collective fortunes valued at almost $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The pace of new family offices has accelerated especially within the past decade, driven by the rise of Asian wealth, with UBS estimating that a new billionaire is minted in China every two days. Asia is now home to a quarter of the people on Bloomberg’s ranking of the world’s 500 richest people, second only to North America. Of the 311 family offices that responded to the latest survey, 37 percent were created after 2010. The average assets held by respondents was $808 million and the average worth of the families was $1.1 billion. Just over 1 in 5 said they have two family office sites, while some have as many as five locations. “This is still a very early trend, and it needs to be monitored,” said Sara Ferrari, UBS’s head of global family office. “U.S. family offices with more than one branch tend to have the second one in the country, and it’s mostly the same with Europe. But family offices in the emerging markets and Asia tend to diversify more regionally.” There are probably more than 5,000 family offices worldwide, said Campden research director Rebecca Gooch. Three-quarters of the firms that participated in the company’s latest survey manage the wealth of just a single family. Family offices are seeking higher risk and more illiquid assets to boost returns. They’re also taking a more hands-on approach to investments, reflecting a global deal-making trend. Direct private equity made up about 14 percent of family offices’ portfolios, twice the level made through fund allocations, according to UBS and Campden. UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, describes families with more than $150 million as the “ideal candidates” to set up a family office. At the end of 2017, the bank managed 120 billion Swiss francs ($125 billion) through its family office program.Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/where-will-the-trump-investigations-go-n
This man told me about the door to Trump’s office in Trump Tower. The door was always open, with people streaming in and out. “Every schmo in the Trump Organization would run in with the newest and stupidest of information,” the man told me. He said that people would sometimes show up at Trump Tower, take an elevator to the organization’s main office, on the twenty-sixth floor, and tell a receptionist that they had an idea for Donald Trump; now and again, they’d find themselves sitting with the Donald himself, sharing their pitch.

At times, though, the door would be closed. This was an anomaly at the Trump Organization. It meant that Trump was doing something that didn’t come naturally. He was cutting off the flow of constant distraction; he was choosing to focus on something important. If Trump was discussing a deal, he liked to be able to call someone into his office and share how great the deal was. If he was meeting with someone especially rich or famous, he would make introductions. So closing the door meant that he was not to be disturbed; he was negotiating something so important and secretive that Trump allowed his door to be shut.

The people allowed inside the room when the door was closed were the ones who would know Trump’s secrets, this man told me. And those people were always the same: Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Allen Weisselberg. It’s possible to reconstruct what at least some of those closed-door conversations might have covered by examining what has been made public through legal action and investigative reporting.

Weisselberg, who has been granted partial immunity by federal prosecutors and testified before a grand jury in the investigation of Michael Cohen, knows the most: “He’s keeper of the books, keeper of the secrets,” my source told me. Weisselberg handled the money when Trump was doing business with Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, the public face of the Genovese crime family, for example. Weisselberg also ran Trump’s finances when the Trump Taj Mahal received a ten-million-dollar fine for violating laws meant to prevent money laundering.

The one person who likely knew as much or more than Weisselberg about recent business, aside from Trump himself, is Ivanka—“she knows a million times more than Don, Jr.,” my source said. Ivanka personally handled many of the most problematic deals. She was the point person, for example, on the Trump project in Azerbaijan and worked closely with the Mammadov family when they were suspected of laundering money for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. She oversaw a licensing deal in Vancouver with a prominent Malaysian whose father was convicted of financial fraud—a deal that government-watchdog groups say may violate the foreign-emoluments clause. The partner in Ivanka’s own jewelry business is now being sued by the Department of Justice for more than sixty million dollars in unpaid tax liabilities.

Some have argued that Trump didn’t knowingly break the law—that he was just impulsive and unfocussed and would, accidentally and without proper due diligence, end up working with crooks. My source told me that this was nonsense: of course Trump knew when he was breaking the law. “Come on. He was trained by fucking Roy Cohn. Seriously.”

I explained to my source that we already know about Weisselberg and, of course, the Trump children, and asked who else might know Trump’s secrets. He then named Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant. She was the interface between Trump and the rest of the world: she answered and made his phone calls, read and wrote his e-mails, ushered people into his office, and scheduled his out-of-office interactions. Graff may not know the details of any particular deal, but she—more than anyone else—could reconstruct Trump’s social, business, and political network.

I spoke with several longtime lawyers for the Trump Organization and was surprised to learn that most of Trump’s legal staff may not know all that much. They each independently described a similar vetting process. Early on, Trump would test new lawyers’ ethics by asking them to do something a bit questionable; perhaps he’d ask them to file a legal document with the city containing misleading information. If the lawyer pushed back at all, Trump would categorize the person as a stickler and never ask them to do anything untoward again. Most of the dozen or so lawyers who work at Trump headquarters spend most of their time doing routine legal work: writing contracts, filing documents with government offices, handling countless lawsuits.

Jason...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-09-12:/posts/7005185Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:49:28 +0000Newsbeat RadioLike countless other journalists these days, I have been desperately trying to predict where the various investigations into President Trump may turn next. I called a man I know who worked with the Trump Organization during the years before Trump ran...
This man told me about the door to Trump’s office in Trump Tower. The door was always open, with people streaming in and out. “Every schmo in the Trump Organization would run in with the newest and stupidest of information,” the man told me. He said that people would sometimes show up at Trump Tower, take an elevator to the organization’s main office, on the twenty-sixth floor, and tell a receptionist that they had an idea for Donald Trump; now and again, they’d find themselves sitting with the Donald himself, sharing their pitch.

At times, though, the door would be closed. This was an anomaly at the Trump Organization. It meant that Trump was doing something that didn’t come naturally. He was cutting off the flow of constant distraction; he was choosing to focus on something important. If Trump was discussing a deal, he liked to be able to call someone into his office and share how great the deal was. If he was meeting with someone especially rich or famous, he would make introductions. So closing the door meant that he was not to be disturbed; he was negotiating something so important and secretive that Trump allowed his door to be shut.

The people allowed inside the room when the door was closed were the ones who would know Trump’s secrets, this man told me. And those people were always the same: Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Allen Weisselberg. It’s possible to reconstruct what at least some of those closed-door conversations might have covered by examining what has been made public through legal action and investigative reporting.

Weisselberg, who has been granted partial immunity by federal prosecutors and testified before a grand jury in the investigation of Michael Cohen, knows the most: “He’s keeper of the books, keeper of the secrets,” my source told me. Weisselberg handled the money when Trump was doing business with Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, the public face of the Genovese crime family, for example. Weisselberg also ran Trump’s finances when the Trump Taj Mahal received a ten-million-dollar fine for violating laws meant to prevent money laundering.

The one person who likely knew as much or more than Weisselberg about recent business, aside from Trump himself, is Ivanka—“she knows a million times more than Don, Jr.,” my source said. Ivanka personally handled many of the most problematic deals. She was the point person, for example, on the Trump project in Azerbaijan and worked closely with the Mammadov family when they were suspected of laundering money for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. She oversaw a licensing deal in Vancouver with a prominent Malaysian whose father was convicted of financial fraud—a deal that government-watchdog groups say may violate the foreign-emoluments clause. The partner in Ivanka’s own jewelry business is now being sued by the Department of Justice for more than sixty million dollars in unpaid tax liabilities.

Some have argued that Trump didn’t knowingly break the law—that he was just impulsive and unfocussed and would, accidentally and without proper due diligence, end up working with crooks. My source told me that this was nonsense: of course Trump knew when he was breaking the law. “Come on. He was trained by fucking Roy Cohn. Seriously.”

I explained to my source that we already know about Weisselberg and, of course, the Trump children, and asked who else might know Trump’s secrets. He then named Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant. She was the interface between Trump and...]]>575cleanfullNewsbeat RadioLike countless other journalists these days, I have been desperately trying to predict where the various investigations into President Trump may turn next. I called a man I know who worked with the Trump Organization during the years before Trump ran for President. I asked him who investigators and reporters should be focussing on—who in Trump’s inner circle would know if the President had violated the law in his business dealings. This man told me about the door to Trump’s office in Trump Tower. The door was always open, with people streaming in and out. “Every schmo in the Trump Organization would run in with the newest and stupidest of information,” the man told me. He said that people would sometimes show up at Trump Tower, take an elevator to the organization’s main office, on the twenty-sixth floor, and tell a receptionist that they had an idea for Donald Trump; now and again, they’d find themselves sitting with the Donald himself, sharing their pitch. At times, though, the door would be closed. This was an anomaly at the Trump Organization. It meant that Trump was doing something that didn’t come naturally. He was cutting off the flow of constant distraction; he was choosing to focus on something important. If Trump was discussing a deal, he liked to be able to call someone into his office and share how great the deal was. If he was meeting with someone especially rich or famous, he would make introductions. So closing the door meant that he was not to be disturbed; he was negotiating something so important and secretive that Trump allowed his door to be shut. The people allowed inside the room when the door was closed were the ones who would know Trump’s secrets, this man told me. And those people were always the same: Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Allen Weisselberg. It’s possible to reconstruct what at least some of those closed-door conversations might have covered by examining what has been made public through legal action and investigative reporting. Weisselberg, who has been granted partial immunity by federal prosecutors and testified before a grand jury in the investigation of Michael Cohen, knows the most: “He’s keeper of the books, keeper of the secrets,” my source told me. Weisselberg handled the money when Trump was doing business with Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, the public face of the Genovese crime family, for example. Weisselberg also ran Trump’s finances when the Trump Taj Mahal received a ten-million-dollar fine for violating laws meant to prevent money laundering. The one person who likely knew as much or more than Weisselberg about recent business, aside from Trump himself, is Ivanka—“she knows a million times more than Don, Jr.,” my source said. Ivanka personally handled many of the most problematic deals. She was the point person, for example, on the Trump project in Azerbaijan and worked closely with the Mammadov family when they were suspected of laundering money for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. She oversaw a licensing deal in Vancouver with a prominent Malaysian whose father was convicted of financial fraud—a deal that government-watchdog groups say may violate the foreign-emoluments clause. The partner in Ivanka’s own jewelry business is now being sued by the Department of Justice for more than sixty million dollars in unpaid tax liabilities. Some have argued that Trump didn’t knowingly break the law—that he was just impulsive and unfocussed and would, accidentally and without proper due diligence, end up working with crooks. My source told me that this was nonsense: of course Trump knew when he was breaking the law. “Come on. He was trained by fucking Roy Cohn. Seriously.” I explained to my source that we already know about Weisselberg and, of course, the Trump children, and asked who else might know Trump’s secrets. He then named Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant. She was the interface between Trump and the rest of the world: she answered and made his phone calls, read and...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/rebuilding-lives-10-years-after-lehman-f
It is an image that became a symbol of the global financial crisis -- about 20 bankers, their backs turned to the window, attending an emergency meeting at the London office of Lehman Brothers as the firm slid towards collapse.

Gwion Moore, one of those pictured in the Reuters photograph taken on Sept. 11, 2008, recalled how the growing sense of panic in financial markets contrasted with the mood inside the building at the time.

"It was almost a festival atmosphere at the bank. We weren't doing any business. But people were still coming to work and just chatting to each other," Moore said.

The photograph caught the moment when he and his colleagues were being told by bosses that things were going to be OK, despite the plummeting Lehman Brothers share price.

"Senior management thought they needed to get the workforce focused again," Moore said. "The phrase was stop 'goofing around and get back to work'. I don’t think anyone took the message very seriously because we went back to doing what we had been doing beforehand. No one was going to trade with us."

Within four days, the U.S. government chose not to save the bank, intensifying the already widespread chaos in markets that brought the financial system to its knees and tipped the world economy into a deep recession.

Moore's department -- European fixed income -- was not among the parts of Lehman Brothers that were sold to other banks. Two weeks after the firm's collapse, his security card stopped working and he was laid off.

Moore spent six months unemployed before finding a job as a fund manager. He now works in his native Australia.

The crisis also shook up the life of Eric Lipps, a U.S. public sector worker, who appeared in another well-known Reuters photograph from the period.

In late 2009, he was pictured in a long line of people seeking to meet potential employers at a jobs fair in New York.

At the time, the U.S. unemployment rate had soared to 10 percent, its highest level since the early 1980s.

Lipps, wrapped up against the cold in a beige raincoat, looked directly into the camera, his face appearing to reflect the despondency of many people at the time.

"Mercifully I had money so I wasn't going to be hand-to-mouth," Lipps said. "Still it was a little nervous time because I didn't know how long I was going to be unemployed."

He was hired again a few months later as a child support enforcement officer in New York, a job he continues to hold.

Alistair Darling, who was Britain's finance minister 10 years ago, recalled how his warnings of a looming disaster for the economy, made shortly before the Lehman crash, had generated howls of protest from economists and fellow politicians.

"But I could see the rupture in the financial system was quite catastrophic," he said.

For Darling, now a Labour member of the upper house of Britain's parliament, the damage done by the crisis in Britain was all the greater for the decision taken in 2010 by the newly elected Conservative-led government to aim for the eradication of the country's budget deficit in only five years.

"What is commonly called austerity has prolonged the downturn. It has taken far, far longer to see a recovery and of course the process is by no means complete," he said.

Indeed, for many, the damage wrought by the near-meltdown in the world's financial system and the subsequent debt crisis in many European countries remains deep.

Jose Manuel Abel bade farewell to his wife and children and left his native Spain in 2012 after losing his job. He worked doing low-paid jobs in Germany before returning to Spain last year.

He now has a temporary job as a waiter, working 17 hours a day, but he expects to be laid off once the summer tourists stop coming to Chipiona, a coastal town near Cadiz on Spain's southern Atlantic Coast.

Unemployment in Spain peaked at nearly 27 percent in early 2013 before falling back to just over 15 percent in the second quarter of this year -- still much higher than in many other countries, even five years into an economic recovery.

"I'm working as a waiter and I don't have a problem with that because I think that any kind of job is respectable," Abel said. "I have studies, training and I intend to use them in the future."

He is also working with friends to set up a local political party which will contest municipal elections in 2019.

"I don't want my sons to suffer and live what I had to live through," Abel said. "I don't want to them to migrate and to look for a job opportunity away from this marvellous place."]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-09-12:/posts/7005184Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:49:28 +0000Newsbeat RadioReuters It is an image that became a symbol of the global financial crisis -- about 20 bankers, their backs turned to the window, attending an emergency meeting at the London office of Lehman Brothers as the firm slid towards collapse. Gwion Moore,...
It is an image that became a symbol of the global financial crisis -- about 20 bankers, their backs turned to the window, attending an emergency meeting at the London office of Lehman Brothers as the firm slid towards collapse.

Gwion Moore, one of those pictured in the Reuters photograph taken on Sept. 11, 2008, recalled how the growing sense of panic in financial markets contrasted with the mood inside the building at the time.

"It was almost a festival atmosphere at the bank. We weren't doing any business. But people were still coming to work and just chatting to each other," Moore said.

The photograph caught the moment when he and his colleagues were being told by bosses that things were going to be OK, despite the plummeting Lehman Brothers share price.

"Senior management thought they needed to get the workforce focused again," Moore said. "The phrase was stop 'goofing around and get back to work'. I don’t think anyone took the message very seriously because we went back to doing what we had been doing beforehand. No one was going to trade with us."

Within four days, the U.S. government chose not to save the bank, intensifying the already widespread chaos in markets that brought the financial system to its knees and tipped the world economy into a deep recession.

Moore's department -- European fixed income -- was not among the parts of Lehman Brothers that were sold to other banks. Two weeks after the firm's collapse, his security card stopped working and he was laid off.

Moore spent six months unemployed before finding a job as a fund manager. He now works in his native Australia.

The crisis also shook up the life of Eric Lipps, a U.S. public sector worker, who appeared in another well-known Reuters photograph from the period.

In late 2009, he was pictured in a long line of people seeking to meet potential employers at a jobs fair in New York.

At the time, the U.S. unemployment rate had soared to 10 percent, its highest level since the early 1980s.

Lipps, wrapped up against the cold in a beige raincoat, looked directly into the camera, his face appearing to reflect the despondency of many people at the time.

"Mercifully I had money so I wasn't going to be hand-to-mouth," Lipps said. "Still it was a little nervous time because I didn't know how long I was going to be unemployed."

He was hired again a few months later as a child support enforcement officer in New York, a job he continues to hold.

Alistair Darling, who was Britain's finance minister 10 years ago, recalled how his warnings of a looming disaster for the economy, made shortly before the Lehman crash, had generated howls of protest from economists and fellow politicians.

"But I could see the rupture in the financial system was quite catastrophic," he said.

For Darling, now a Labour member of the upper house of Britain's parliament, the damage done by the crisis in Britain was all the greater for the decision taken in 2010 by the newly elected Conservative-led government to aim for the eradication of the country's budget deficit in only five years.

"What is commonly called austerity has prolonged the downturn. It has taken far, far longer to see a recovery and of course the process is by no means complete," he said.

Indeed, for many, the damage wrought by the near-meltdown in the world's financial system and the subsequent debt crisis in many European countries remains deep.

Jose Manuel Abel bade farewell to his wife and children and left his native Spain in 2012 after losing his job. He worked doing low-paid jobs in Germany before returning to Spain last year.

He now has a temporary job as a waiter, working 17 hours a day, but he expects to be laid off once the summer tourists stop coming to Chipiona, a coastal town near...]]>293cleanfullNewsbeat RadioReuters It is an image that became a symbol of the global financial crisis -- about 20 bankers, their backs turned to the window, attending an emergency meeting at the London office of Lehman Brothers as the firm slid towards collapse. Gwion Moore, one of those pictured in the Reuters photograph taken on Sept. 11, 2008, recalled how the growing sense of panic in financial markets contrasted with the mood inside the building at the time. "It was almost a festival atmosphere at the bank. We weren't doing any business. But people were still coming to work and just chatting to each other," Moore said. The photograph caught the moment when he and his colleagues were being told by bosses that things were going to be OK, despite the plummeting Lehman Brothers share price. "Senior management thought they needed to get the workforce focused again," Moore said. "The phrase was stop 'goofing around and get back to work'. I don’t think anyone took the message very seriously because we went back to doing what we had been doing beforehand. No one was going to trade with us." Within four days, the U.S. government chose not to save the bank, intensifying the already widespread chaos in markets that brought the financial system to its knees and tipped the world economy into a deep recession. Moore's department -- European fixed income -- was not among the parts of Lehman Brothers that were sold to other banks. Two weeks after the firm's collapse, his security card stopped working and he was laid off. Moore spent six months unemployed before finding a job as a fund manager. He now works in his native Australia. The crisis also shook up the life of Eric Lipps, a U.S. public sector worker, who appeared in another well-known Reuters photograph from the period. In late 2009, he was pictured in a long line of people seeking to meet potential employers at a jobs fair in New York. At the time, the U.S. unemployment rate had soared to 10 percent, its highest level since the early 1980s. Lipps, wrapped up against the cold in a beige raincoat, looked directly into the camera, his face appearing to reflect the despondency of many people at the time. "Mercifully I had money so I wasn't going to be hand-to-mouth," Lipps said. "Still it was a little nervous time because I didn't know how long I was going to be unemployed." He was hired again a few months later as a child support enforcement officer in New York, a job he continues to hold. Alistair Darling, who was Britain's finance minister 10 years ago, recalled how his warnings of a looming disaster for the economy, made shortly before the Lehman crash, had generated howls of protest from economists and fellow politicians. "But I could see the rupture in the financial system was quite catastrophic," he said. For Darling, now a Labour member of the upper house of Britain's parliament, the damage done by the crisis in Britain was all the greater for the decision taken in 2010 by the newly elected Conservative-led government to aim for the eradication of the country's budget deficit in only five years. "What is commonly called austerity has prolonged the downturn. It has taken far, far longer to see a recovery and of course the process is by no means complete," he said. Indeed, for many, the damage wrought by the near-meltdown in the world's financial system and the subsequent debt crisis in many European countries remains deep. Jose Manuel Abel bade farewell to his wife and children and left his native Spain in 2012 after losing his job. He worked doing low-paid jobs in Germany before returning to Spain last year. He now has a temporary job as a waiter, working 17 hours a day, but he expects to be laid off once the summer tourists stop coming to Chipiona, a coastal town near Cadiz on Spain's southern Atlantic Coast. Unemployment in Spain peaked at nearly 27 percent in early 2013 before falling back to just over 15 percent in the second quarter of this year -- still much higher than...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/it-would-take-only-a-single-senator
A few days ago I wrote a long item about changing assessments of Donald Trump: which first impressions had held up, and which had called for second thoughts over time.

The last part of the post concerned the main, and depressing, area where second thoughts were necessary. That was the complete failure of the congressional governing party—Paul Ryan and his large Republican majority in the House, Mitch McConnell and his razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate—to stand up either for its institutional prerogatives, as a separate branch of government, or for normal principles of accountability and the rule of law.

In keeping with the concept that if something is worth saying once, it’s worth saying again—and more concisely—here is the ending part of that previous post once more. It’s also been updated to reflect a sad change in the math of the Senate. When I wrote it, John McCain was ailing and absent from the Senate. Now, of course, he has died, and (as I write, when no replacement has yet been named) the Senate has for the moment only 99 members.

Here is the payoff part of the earlier post.

Is there a surprise, a disappointment, and a settled tragedy so far? There is. It is the same one I described last year, in the first summer of the Trump age:

The major weakness these six months have revealed in our governing system is almost too obvious to mention, but I’ll name it anyway. It is the refusal, so far, by any significant Republican figure in Congress to apply to Donald Trump the standards its members know the country depends on for long-term survival of its government. A system of checks and balances relies on each of its component branches resisting overreach by the others. The judiciary has done its part; Paul Ryan’s House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate have not. We’re seeing the difference that can make.

At that time, McConnell’s Republicans held 52 seats in the Senate. To constitute a 51-vote Senate majority, which in turn could have begun to put some limit on Trump (by authorizing hearings or issuing subpoenas), three of them would have had to switch their votes to join the other side.


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That’s a relatively tall order, especially early in any president’s term. But with Doug Jones’s victory in the Senate race in Alabama, the Republican count shrank to 51. With McCain’s death, and until a (presumably Republican) replacement is named, only 50 Republican senators are available to vote, while the Democrats and independents together number 49.

This means that just one Republican senator joining the Democrats and independents would give them 50 votes, against only 49 Republicans, until McCain’s successor is sworn in. And even after that, a total of two Republican senators would have it in their power to create a 51-vote majority and impose limits on an executive they know to be out of control.

Who might those two senators theoretically be? A list I offered early this year still applies:

Two like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker who are not running for re-election and have no primary-challenge consequences to fear;
Two like Orrin Hatch and John McCain who mainly have their places in history to think about [this was written seven months ago];
Two like the young Ben Sasse and the veteran Lamar Alexander who pride themselves on being “thoughtful”;
Two like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who pride themselves on being “independent”;
Two like Rand Paul and Mike Lee who pride themselves on their own kind of independence;
Two like Rob Portman and John Barrasso who pride themselves on being decent;
Two like Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton with conceivable long-term higher-office hopes;
Two like Tim Scott and James Lankford who jointly wrote a statement on the need for broad-minded inclusion;
Two like Chuck Grassley and Richard Shelby, who like Hatch and McCain are in their 80s and conceivably have “legacy” on their minds (remember that in the Alabama Senate race Shelby took a stand against his party’s odious nominee, Roy Moore);
One like Dean Heller, facing a tough re-election race, plus maybe Lindsey Graham, who used to be among the leaders in blunt talk about Trump’s excesses.
That’s 20 senators total. The current GOP majority includes 31 more, most of whom are even stauncher party-line voters than those listed above and thus would give rise to sarcastic “Oh, sure!” eye-roll reactions at the mere idea of their breaking ranks.

But remember: Every one of them swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, not simply their own careerist comfort. And not a one of them, yet, has been willing to risk comfort, career, or fund-raising to defend the constitutional check-and-balance prerogatives of their legislative branch.

They now confront a ...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-08-28:/posts/6987373Tue, 28 Aug 2018 19:00:56 +0000Newsbeat RadioThe Atlantic A few days ago I wrote a long item about changing assessments of Donald Trump: which first impressions had held up, and which had called for second thoughts over time. The last part of the post concerned the main, and depressing, area...
A few days ago I wrote a long item about changing assessments of Donald Trump: which first impressions had held up, and which had called for second thoughts over time.

The last part of the post concerned the main, and depressing, area where second thoughts were necessary. That was the complete failure of the congressional governing party—Paul Ryan and his large Republican majority in the House, Mitch McConnell and his razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate—to stand up either for its institutional prerogatives, as a separate branch of government, or for normal principles of accountability and the rule of law.

In keeping with the concept that if something is worth saying once, it’s worth saying again—and more concisely—here is the ending part of that previous post once more. It’s also been updated to reflect a sad change in the math of the Senate. When I wrote it, John McCain was ailing and absent from the Senate. Now, of course, he has died, and (as I write, when no replacement has yet been named) the Senate has for the moment only 99 members.

Here is the payoff part of the earlier post.

Is there a surprise, a disappointment, and a settled tragedy so far? There is. It is the same one I described last year, in the first summer of the Trump age:

The major weakness these six months have revealed in our governing system is almost too obvious to mention, but I’ll name it anyway. It is the refusal, so far, by any significant Republican figure in Congress to apply to Donald Trump the standards its members know the country depends on for long-term survival of its government. A system of checks and balances relies on each of its component branches resisting overreach by the others. The judiciary has done its part; Paul Ryan’s House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate have not. We’re seeing the difference that can make.

At that time, McConnell’s Republicans held 52 seats in the Senate. To constitute a 51-vote Senate majority, which in turn could have begun to put some limit on Trump (by authorizing hearings or issuing subpoenas), three of them would have had to switch their votes to join the other side.


MORE STORIES
Donald Trump
Trump’s Contempt for the Law Will Be His Downfall
BOB BAUER

The Greatest Disappointment of the Trump Presidency
JAMES FALLOWS

Donald Trump in the Oval Office
How This Will End
ELIOT A. COHEN

The Death of Political Courage
RICHARD FONTAINE

That’s a relatively tall order, especially early in any president’s term. But with Doug Jones’s victory in the Senate race in Alabama, the Republican count shrank to 51. With McCain’s death, and until a (presumably Republican) replacement is named, only 50 Republican senators are available to vote, while the Democrats and independents together number 49.

This means that just one Republican senator joining the Democrats and independents would give them 50 votes, against only 49 Republicans, until McCain’s successor is sworn in. And even after that, a total of two Republican senators would have it in their power to create a 51-vote majority and impose limits on an executive they know to be out of control.

Who might those two senators theoretically be? A list I offered early this year still applies:

Two like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker who are not running for re-election and have no primary-challenge consequences to fear;
Two like Orrin Hatch and John McCain who mainly have their places in history to think about [this was written seven months ago];
Two like the young Ben Sasse and the veteran Lamar Alexander who pride themselves on being “thoughtful”;
Two like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who pride themselves on being “independent”;
Two like Rand Paul and Mike Lee who pride themselves on their own kind of independence;
Two like Rob...]]>477cleanfullNewsbeat RadioThe Atlantic A few days ago I wrote a long item about changing assessments of Donald Trump: which first impressions had held up, and which had called for second thoughts over time. The last part of the post concerned the main, and depressing, area where second thoughts were necessary. That was the complete failure of the congressional governing party—Paul Ryan and his large Republican majority in the House, Mitch McConnell and his razor-thin Republican majority in the Senate—to stand up either for its institutional prerogatives, as a separate branch of government, or for normal principles of accountability and the rule of law. In keeping with the concept that if something is worth saying once, it’s worth saying again—and more concisely—here is the ending part of that previous post once more. It’s also been updated to reflect a sad change in the math of the Senate. When I wrote it, John McCain was ailing and absent from the Senate. Now, of course, he has died, and (as I write, when no replacement has yet been named) the Senate has for the moment only 99 members. Here is the payoff part of the earlier post. Is there a surprise, a disappointment, and a settled tragedy so far? There is. It is the same one I described last year, in the first summer of the Trump age: The major weakness these six months have revealed in our governing system is almost too obvious to mention, but I’ll name it anyway. It is the refusal, so far, by any significant Republican figure in Congress to apply to Donald Trump the standards its members know the country depends on for long-term survival of its government. A system of checks and balances relies on each of its component branches resisting overreach by the others. The judiciary has done its part; Paul Ryan’s House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate have not. We’re seeing the difference that can make. At that time, McConnell’s Republicans held 52 seats in the Senate. To constitute a 51-vote Senate majority, which in turn could have begun to put some limit on Trump (by authorizing hearings or issuing subpoenas), three of them would have had to switch their votes to join the other side. MORE STORIES Donald Trump Trump’s Contempt for the Law Will Be His Downfall BOB BAUER The Greatest Disappointment of the Trump Presidency JAMES FALLOWS Donald Trump in the Oval Office How This Will End ELIOT A. COHEN The Death of Political Courage RICHARD FONTAINE That’s a relatively tall order, especially early in any president’s term. But with Doug Jones’s victory in the Senate race in Alabama, the Republican count shrank to 51. With McCain’s death, and until a (presumably Republican) replacement is named, only 50 Republican senators are available to vote, while the Democrats and independents together number 49. This means that just one Republican senator joining the Democrats and independents would give them 50 votes, against only 49 Republicans, until McCain’s successor is sworn in. And even after that, a total of two Republican senators would have it in their power to create a 51-vote majority and impose limits on an executive they know to be out of control. Who might those two senators theoretically be? A list I offered early this year still applies: Two like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker who are not running for re-election and have no primary-challenge consequences to fear; Two like Orrin Hatch and John McCain who mainly have their places in history to think about [this was written seven months ago]; Two like the young Ben Sasse and the veteran Lamar Alexander who pride themselves on being “thoughtful”; Two like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who pride themselves on being “independent”; Two like Rand Paul and Mike Lee who pride themselves on their own kind of independence; Two like Rob Portman and John Barrasso who pride themselves on being decent; Two like Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton with conceivable long-term higher-office hopes; Two like Tim Scott and James Lankford who jointly wrote a statement on...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/the-250-biohack-that-is-revolutionizing-

When her daughter, Sydney, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, Kate Farnsworth stopped sleeping through the night. She’d set the alarm for 3 a.m. so she or her husband, Dave, could prick the girl’s fingers and check her blood sugar. If the results were worrisome, they’d adjust her insulin and keep checking every 15 minutes. At 6 a.m., another alarm went off to signal the next insulin dose, but by then, Kate had usually snapped awake again already. When Sydney got home from school each afternoon, Kate was there to check her glucose level. “Diabetes is one of the only diseases where you’re sent a prescription and have to adjust the dosage on your own” forever, Kate says. For Sydney, the biggest worry was “how I wouldn’t ever be normal again.”

Two exhausting years in, Kate found the beginnings of an alternative in an online forum. A loose confederation of do-it-yourselfers were working on a system that would eventually help link an insulin pump to a glucose monitor and connect both to a smartphone app. The idea was that the wearer—or her parents—could track and adjust her blood sugar, in person or from afar. That would mean fewer pinpricks, and far fewer alarms, because her blood sugar would stay out of the danger zone. Most of the time, the contraption would be able to regulate the wearer’s insulin itself.

Two long years after that, Kate, a graphic artist in the Toronto suburbs, was able to follow the community’s step-by-step instructions and build her daughter what amounted to an artificial pancreas, the organ that regulates blood sugar. Suddenly, the Farnsworths could take a breath. Sydney, now 15, is still using an updated version of that DIY system, which, because a fellow DIYer donated the pump, cost only $250 to make. “I’m really happy with where I am now,” she says. “It’s so simple to just click a button and give insulin while I’m on my phone.” The app she uses, connected to a sensor under her skin, keeps monitoring her whether she’s sleeping, taking a math quiz, or doing jumps on her snowboard. “It has totally changed the way we manage diabetes,” Kate Farnsworth says.

Twenty years ago, internet utopians envisioned scientific innovation gradually becoming more open-source. Instead, most amateur “biohacking” has remained fringe-y and often focused on aesthetics—inserting lights under the skin as a fashion statement, for example. But like the prosthetic arm a teenager built himself out of Legos, the device keeping Sydney alive is a rare example of the idea working out, at least in microcosm. By some estimates, as many as 2,000 people around the world have used a home-built pancreas, cobbled together mostly via social media and the free-code clearinghouse GitHub. Tech support consists of parents and patients who use Facebook Messenger or email to help newcomers fix bugs or revive busted equipment. There are plenty of potential converts: In the U.S. alone, about 1.3 million people have Type 1 diabetes, and there are indications the technology could also help some sufferers of Type 2, the group that accounts for most of the world’s 422 million diabetes cases.


Although no users have reported a disastrous malfunction, trusting your life (or your child’s) to a DIY pancreas carries obvious risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is years away from approving a comparably flexible and automated rig for sale. “You’ve got a group that is circumventing all of the controls that are in place,” says Hooman Hakami, president of the diabetes group at Medtronic Plc, the leader in the $8.3 billion market for old-school diabetes devices. “I can show you what a few of our engineers have put together over a weekend, and it would blow you away. But we don’t call that a finished product. We call that a prototype.”

So far, though, the rough-and-tumble version is way ahead of the market. Apple Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. have hired DIYers, and Medtronic’s latest FDA-approved product can now do most of the things the Farnsworths’ system can—for $7,000, before insurance. It’s not hard to understand why diabetics and their loved ones might opt for the Farnsworth model, says Courtney Lias, who oversees chemistry and toxicology devices at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “You can do everything on your phone except manage diabetes,” Lias says. “You should be able to do that, too.”

The DIY pancreas movement would never have happened if not for a Medtronic blunder. In 2011 a pair of security researchers alerted the public that the wireless radio frequency links in some of the company’s best-selling insulin pumps had been left open to hackers. Medtronic closed the loophole after the researchers warned of risks to patients, but it never recalled the devices, leaving thousands in circulation.

By then, Ben West, a programmer and diabetes patient in San Francisco, had decided to hack the pump. “This is not what I wanted,” he says. “This is all a last-ditch effort.” He says he’d been caref...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-08-13:/posts/6968818Mon, 13 Aug 2018 19:09:59 +0000Newsbeat RadioBloomberg When her daughter, Sydney, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, Kate Farnsworth stopped sleeping through the night. She’d set the alarm for 3 a.m. so she or her husband, Dave, could prick the girl’s fingers and check her blood...

When her daughter, Sydney, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, Kate Farnsworth stopped sleeping through the night. She’d set the alarm for 3 a.m. so she or her husband, Dave, could prick the girl’s fingers and check her blood sugar. If the results were worrisome, they’d adjust her insulin and keep checking every 15 minutes. At 6 a.m., another alarm went off to signal the next insulin dose, but by then, Kate had usually snapped awake again already. When Sydney got home from school each afternoon, Kate was there to check her glucose level. “Diabetes is one of the only diseases where you’re sent a prescription and have to adjust the dosage on your own” forever, Kate says. For Sydney, the biggest worry was “how I wouldn’t ever be normal again.”

Two exhausting years in, Kate found the beginnings of an alternative in an online forum. A loose confederation of do-it-yourselfers were working on a system that would eventually help link an insulin pump to a glucose monitor and connect both to a smartphone app. The idea was that the wearer—or her parents—could track and adjust her blood sugar, in person or from afar. That would mean fewer pinpricks, and far fewer alarms, because her blood sugar would stay out of the danger zone. Most of the time, the contraption would be able to regulate the wearer’s insulin itself.

Two long years after that, Kate, a graphic artist in the Toronto suburbs, was able to follow the community’s step-by-step instructions and build her daughter what amounted to an artificial pancreas, the organ that regulates blood sugar. Suddenly, the Farnsworths could take a breath. Sydney, now 15, is still using an updated version of that DIY system, which, because a fellow DIYer donated the pump, cost only $250 to make. “I’m really happy with where I am now,” she says. “It’s so simple to just click a button and give insulin while I’m on my phone.” The app she uses, connected to a sensor under her skin, keeps monitoring her whether she’s sleeping, taking a math quiz, or doing jumps on her snowboard. “It has totally changed the way we manage diabetes,” Kate Farnsworth says.

Twenty years ago, internet utopians envisioned scientific innovation gradually becoming more open-source. Instead, most amateur “biohacking” has remained fringe-y and often focused on aesthetics—inserting lights under the skin as a fashion statement, for example. But like the prosthetic arm a teenager built himself out of Legos, the device keeping Sydney alive is a rare example of the idea working out, at least in microcosm. By some estimates, as many as 2,000 people around the world have used a home-built pancreas, cobbled together mostly via social media and the free-code clearinghouse GitHub. Tech support consists of parents and patients who use Facebook Messenger or email to help newcomers fix bugs or revive busted equipment. There are plenty of potential converts: In the U.S. alone, about 1.3 million people have Type 1 diabetes, and there are indications the technology could also help some sufferers of Type 2, the group that accounts for most of the world’s 422 million diabetes cases.


Although no users have reported a disastrous malfunction, trusting your life (or your child’s) to a DIY pancreas carries obvious risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is years away from approving a comparably flexible and automated rig for sale. “You’ve got a group that is circumventing all of the controls that are in place,” says Hooman Hakami, president of the diabetes group at Medtronic Plc, the leader in the $8.3 billion market for old-school diabetes devices. “I can show you what a few of our engineers have put together over a weekend, and it would blow you away. But we don’t call that a finished product. We call that a prototype.”

So far, though, the rough-and-tumble version is way ahead of the market. Apple Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. have hired DIYers, and...]]>748cleanfullNewsbeat RadioBloomberg When her daughter, Sydney, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, Kate Farnsworth stopped sleeping through the night. She’d set the alarm for 3 a.m. so she or her husband, Dave, could prick the girl’s fingers and check her blood sugar. If the results were worrisome, they’d adjust her insulin and keep checking every 15 minutes. At 6 a.m., another alarm went off to signal the next insulin dose, but by then, Kate had usually snapped awake again already. When Sydney got home from school each afternoon, Kate was there to check her glucose level. “Diabetes is one of the only diseases where you’re sent a prescription and have to adjust the dosage on your own” forever, Kate says. For Sydney, the biggest worry was “how I wouldn’t ever be normal again.” Two exhausting years in, Kate found the beginnings of an alternative in an online forum. A loose confederation of do-it-yourselfers were working on a system that would eventually help link an insulin pump to a glucose monitor and connect both to a smartphone app. The idea was that the wearer—or her parents—could track and adjust her blood sugar, in person or from afar. That would mean fewer pinpricks, and far fewer alarms, because her blood sugar would stay out of the danger zone. Most of the time, the contraption would be able to regulate the wearer’s insulin itself. Two long years after that, Kate, a graphic artist in the Toronto suburbs, was able to follow the community’s step-by-step instructions and build her daughter what amounted to an artificial pancreas, the organ that regulates blood sugar. Suddenly, the Farnsworths could take a breath. Sydney, now 15, is still using an updated version of that DIY system, which, because a fellow DIYer donated the pump, cost only $250 to make. “I’m really happy with where I am now,” she says. “It’s so simple to just click a button and give insulin while I’m on my phone.” The app she uses, connected to a sensor under her skin, keeps monitoring her whether she’s sleeping, taking a math quiz, or doing jumps on her snowboard. “It has totally changed the way we manage diabetes,” Kate Farnsworth says. Twenty years ago, internet utopians envisioned scientific innovation gradually becoming more open-source. Instead, most amateur “biohacking” has remained fringe-y and often focused on aesthetics—inserting lights under the skin as a fashion statement, for example. But like the prosthetic arm a teenager built himself out of Legos, the device keeping Sydney alive is a rare example of the idea working out, at least in microcosm. By some estimates, as many as 2,000 people around the world have used a home-built pancreas, cobbled together mostly via social media and the free-code clearinghouse GitHub. Tech support consists of parents and patients who use Facebook Messenger or email to help newcomers fix bugs or revive busted equipment. There are plenty of potential converts: In the U.S. alone, about 1.3 million people have Type 1 diabetes, and there are indications the technology could also help some sufferers of Type 2, the group that accounts for most of the world’s 422 million diabetes cases. Although no users have reported a disastrous malfunction, trusting your life (or your child’s) to a DIY pancreas carries obvious risks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is years away from approving a comparably flexible and automated rig for sale. “You’ve got a group that is circumventing all of the controls that are in place,” says Hooman Hakami, president of the diabetes group at Medtronic Plc, the leader in the $8.3 billion market for old-school diabetes devices. “I can show you what a few of our engineers have put together over a weekend, and it would blow you away. But we don’t call that a finished product. We call that a prototype.” So far, though, the rough-and-tumble version is way ahead of the market. Apple Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. have hired DIYers, and Medtronic’s latest FDA-approved product can now do most of the things the...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/a-new-pacemaker-hack-puts-malware-direct
THE FIRST PACEMAKER hacks emerged about a decade ago. But the latest variation on the terrifying theme depends not on manipulating radio commands, as many previous attacks have, but on malware installed directly on an implanted pacemaker.

For nearly two years, researchers Billy Rios of the security firm Whitescope and Jonathan Butts of QED Secure Solutions have gone back and forth with pacemaker manufacturer Medtronic, which makes Carelink 2090 pacemaker programmers and other relevant equipment that the researchers say contain potentially life-threatening vulnerabilities. The Department of Homeland Security and the Food and Drug Administration have gotten involved as well. And while Medtronic has remediated some of the issues the researchers discovered, Rios and Butts say that too much remains unresolved, and that the risk remains very real for pacemaker patients. The pair will walk through their findings Thursday at the Black Hat security conference.

Rios and Butts say that they've discovered a chain of vulnerabilities in Medtronic's infrastructure that an attacker could exploit to control implanted pacemakers remotely, deliver shocks patients don't need or withhold ones they do, and cause real harm.

"The time period Medtronic spent discussing this with us, if they had just put that time into making a fix they could have solved a lot of these issues," Butts says. "Now we’re two years down the road and there are patients still susceptible to this risk of altering therapy, which means we could do a shock when we wanted to or we could deny shocks from happening. It’s very frustrating."

Rios and Butts originally disclosed bugs they had discovered in Medtronic's software delivery network, a platform that doesn't communicate directly with pacemakers, but rather brings updates to supporting equipment like home monitors and pacemaker programmers, which health care professionals use to tune implanted pacemakers. Since the software delivery network is a proprietary cloud infrastructure, it would have been illegal for Butts and Rios to knowingly break into the system to confirm the authentication issues and lack of integrity checks they suspected. So they instead created a proof of concept that the vulnerabilities existed by mapping the platform from the outside, and creating their own replica environment to test on.

Medtronic took 10 months to vet the submission, at which point it opted not to take action to secure the network. "Medtronic has assessed the vulnerabilities per our internal process," the company wrote in February. "These findings revealed no new potential safety risks based on the existing product security risk assessment. The risks are controlled, and residual risk is acceptable." The company did acknowledge to the Minnesota Star Tribune in March that it took too long to assess Rios and Butts' findings.

That didn't allay the researchers' initial concerns. But unable to fully vet the proprietary cloud infrastructure, they moved on to investigating other aspects of the Medtronic system, buying some of the company equipment from medical supply distributors and third-party resellers to tinker with directly. At Black Hat, Rios and Butts will demonstrate a series of vulnerabilities in how pacemaker programmers connect to Medtronic's software delivery network. The attack also capitalizes on a lack of "digital code signing"—a way of cryptographically validating the legitimacy and integrity of software—to install tainted updates that let an attacker control the programmers, and then spread to implanted pacemakers.

"If you just code sign, all these issues go away, but for some reason they refuse to do that," Rios says. "We’ve proven that a competitor actually has these mitigations in place already. They make pacemakers as well, their programmer literally uses the same operating system [as Medtronic's], and they have implemented code signing. So that’s what we recommend for Medtronic and we gave that data to the FDA." The programmers run the Windows XP operating system. (Yes, Windows XP.)


"All devices carry some associated risk, and, like the regulators, we continuously strive to balance the risks against the benefits our devices provide," Medtronic spokesperson Erika Winkels told WIRED in a statement. "Medtronic deploys a robust, coordinated disclosure process and takes seriously all potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in our products and systems. ... In the past, WhiteScope, LLC has identified potential vulnerabilities which we have assessed independently and also issued related notifications, and we are not aware of any additional vulnerabilities they have identified at this time."

Medtronic did resolve a cloud vulnerability Rios and Butts found, in which an attacker could remotely access and modify patients' pacemaker data. And their disclosures are also documented in Department of Homeland Security industrial control system advisories—including a separate Medtronic insulin pump vulne...]]>tag:audioboom.com,2018-08-13:/posts/6968817Mon, 13 Aug 2018 19:09:58 +0000Newsbeat RadioWired THE FIRST PACEMAKER hacks emerged about a decade ago. But the latest variation on the terrifying theme depends not on manipulating radio commands, as many previous attacks have, but on malware installed directly on an implanted pacemaker. For...
THE FIRST PACEMAKER hacks emerged about a decade ago. But the latest variation on the terrifying theme depends not on manipulating radio commands, as many previous attacks have, but on malware installed directly on an implanted pacemaker.

For nearly two years, researchers Billy Rios of the security firm Whitescope and Jonathan Butts of QED Secure Solutions have gone back and forth with pacemaker manufacturer Medtronic, which makes Carelink 2090 pacemaker programmers and other relevant equipment that the researchers say contain potentially life-threatening vulnerabilities. The Department of Homeland Security and the Food and Drug Administration have gotten involved as well. And while Medtronic has remediated some of the issues the researchers discovered, Rios and Butts say that too much remains unresolved, and that the risk remains very real for pacemaker patients. The pair will walk through their findings Thursday at the Black Hat security conference.

Rios and Butts say that they've discovered a chain of vulnerabilities in Medtronic's infrastructure that an attacker could exploit to control implanted pacemakers remotely, deliver shocks patients don't need or withhold ones they do, and cause real harm.

"The time period Medtronic spent discussing this with us, if they had just put that time into making a fix they could have solved a lot of these issues," Butts says. "Now we’re two years down the road and there are patients still susceptible to this risk of altering therapy, which means we could do a shock when we wanted to or we could deny shocks from happening. It’s very frustrating."

Rios and Butts originally disclosed bugs they had discovered in Medtronic's software delivery network, a platform that doesn't communicate directly with pacemakers, but rather brings updates to supporting equipment like home monitors and pacemaker programmers, which health care professionals use to tune implanted pacemakers. Since the software delivery network is a proprietary cloud infrastructure, it would have been illegal for Butts and Rios to knowingly break into the system to confirm the authentication issues and lack of integrity checks they suspected. So they instead created a proof of concept that the vulnerabilities existed by mapping the platform from the outside, and creating their own replica environment to test on.

Medtronic took 10 months to vet the submission, at which point it opted not to take action to secure the network. "Medtronic has assessed the vulnerabilities per our internal process," the company wrote in February. "These findings revealed no new potential safety risks based on the existing product security risk assessment. The risks are controlled, and residual risk is acceptable." The company did acknowledge to the Minnesota Star Tribune in March that it took too long to assess Rios and Butts' findings.

That didn't allay the researchers' initial concerns. But unable to fully vet the proprietary cloud infrastructure, they moved on to investigating other aspects of the Medtronic system, buying some of the company equipment from medical supply distributors and third-party resellers to tinker with directly. At Black Hat, Rios and Butts will demonstrate a series of vulnerabilities in how pacemaker programmers connect to Medtronic's software delivery network. The attack also capitalizes on a lack of "digital code signing"—a way of cryptographically validating the legitimacy and integrity of software—to install tainted updates that let an attacker control the programmers, and then spread to implanted pacemakers.

"If you just code sign, all these issues go away, but for some reason they refuse to do that," Rios says. "We’ve proven that a competitor actually has these mitigations in place already. They make pacemakers as well, their programmer literally uses the same operating system [as Medtronic's], and they have implemented code...]]>430cleanfullNewsbeat RadioWired THE FIRST PACEMAKER hacks emerged about a decade ago. But the latest variation on the terrifying theme depends not on manipulating radio commands, as many previous attacks have, but on malware installed directly on an implanted pacemaker. For nearly two years, researchers Billy Rios of the security firm Whitescope and Jonathan Butts of QED Secure Solutions have gone back and forth with pacemaker manufacturer Medtronic, which makes Carelink 2090 pacemaker programmers and other relevant equipment that the researchers say contain potentially life-threatening vulnerabilities. The Department of Homeland Security and the Food and Drug Administration have gotten involved as well. And while Medtronic has remediated some of the issues the researchers discovered, Rios and Butts say that too much remains unresolved, and that the risk remains very real for pacemaker patients. The pair will walk through their findings Thursday at the Black Hat security conference. Rios and Butts say that they've discovered a chain of vulnerabilities in Medtronic's infrastructure that an attacker could exploit to control implanted pacemakers remotely, deliver shocks patients don't need or withhold ones they do, and cause real harm. "The time period Medtronic spent discussing this with us, if they had just put that time into making a fix they could have solved a lot of these issues," Butts says. "Now we’re two years down the road and there are patients still susceptible to this risk of altering therapy, which means we could do a shock when we wanted to or we could deny shocks from happening. It’s very frustrating." Rios and Butts originally disclosed bugs they had discovered in Medtronic's software delivery network, a platform that doesn't communicate directly with pacemakers, but rather brings updates to supporting equipment like home monitors and pacemaker programmers, which health care professionals use to tune implanted pacemakers. Since the software delivery network is a proprietary cloud infrastructure, it would have been illegal for Butts and Rios to knowingly break into the system to confirm the authentication issues and lack of integrity checks they suspected. So they instead created a proof of concept that the vulnerabilities existed by mapping the platform from the outside, and creating their own replica environment to test on. Medtronic took 10 months to vet the submission, at which point it opted not to take action to secure the network. "Medtronic has assessed the vulnerabilities per our internal process," the company wrote in February. "These findings revealed no new potential safety risks based on the existing product security risk assessment. The risks are controlled, and residual risk is acceptable." The company did acknowledge to the Minnesota Star Tribune in March that it took too long to assess Rios and Butts' findings. That didn't allay the researchers' initial concerns. But unable to fully vet the proprietary cloud infrastructure, they moved on to investigating other aspects of the Medtronic system, buying some of the company equipment from medical supply distributors and third-party resellers to tinker with directly. At Black Hat, Rios and Butts will demonstrate a series of vulnerabilities in how pacemaker programmers connect to Medtronic's software delivery network. The attack also capitalizes on a lack of "digital code signing"—a way of cryptographically validating the legitimacy and integrity of software—to install tainted updates that let an attacker control the programmers, and then spread to implanted pacemakers. "If you just code sign, all these issues go away, but for some reason they refuse to do that," Rios says. "We’ve proven that a competitor actually has these mitigations in place already. They make pacemakers as well, their programmer literally uses the same operating system [as Medtronic's], and they have implemented code signing. So that’s what we recommend for Medtronic and we gave that data to the...Nohttps://www.spreaker.com/user/newsbeat/as-trump-struggles-with-helsinki-s-fallo
Now, as they grapple with the political and foreign policy fallout from President Trump’s summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, all Republicans, regardless of their stance so far, are facing a charge even from within their own party that goes beyond the White House: complicity.

The Republicans’ split-screen response was underscored with this weekend’s release of highly classified documents underlying the F.B.I.’s requests to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who the bureau believed was a Russian agent.

Mr. Trump on Sunday doubled down on his accusation that the F.B.I. had “illegally spied upon” his campaign. While Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, pushed back against the president, Mr. Trump’s allies in the House Republican conference backed him up, saying the documents contained revelations damaging to the F.B.I. and seeking to minimize Mr. Page’s role.

“Potentially groundbreaking development here,” Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter. “The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth.”

The back and forth over Mr. Page came after nearly a week of intense focus on Mr. Trump’s performance in Helsinki, where the president stood by Mr. Putin and contradicted his own intelligence agencies, only to reverse himself the next day. That prompted an impassioned speech about Republican complicity from Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona.

“We have indulged myths and fabrications, pretended it wasn’t so bad, and our indulgence got us the capitulation in Helsinki,” Mr. Flake said. “We in the Senate who have been elected to represent our constituents cannot be enablers of falsehoods.”

The Helsinki meeting forced the collision of two conflicting impulses that have guided Republicans on Capitol Hill through the Russia episode — and even before Mr. Trump was elected. The party’s deeply held skepticism of Mr. Putin and commitment to national security have clashed with a desire in some quarters to support the president at almost any cost, even as he cozies up to Mr. Putin.

That battle will be put to the test again this week, when senators have their first chance to grill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the meeting and lawmakers begin to formally weigh enacting additional sanctions on Russia. In an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called for “new sanctions over Putin’s head.”

All this is playing out against the backdrop of midterm elections, where lawmakers will face Republican voters who are still wildly enthusiastic about Mr. Trump and have, in many cases, adopted his skepticism about the Russian interference. Attacks by Mr. Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill and Fox News against those investigating him have not only fired up the president’s base but, polls show, substantially eroded trust in the impartiality of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the F.B.I. itself.

Some Republicans have concluded that keeping their heads down without uttering much more than general statements about Russian hostility is the only safe course.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop a president, let alone this president, from saying what he thinks or what he wants to say,” said Representative Ryan Costello, Republican of Pennsylvania, who broke with party leaders to endorse proposed legislation protecting Mr. Mueller’s job. “I think a lot of Republicans feel it’s not worth engaging because all you do is upset a lot of Republican voters.”

Democrats view Russia’s election interference as nothing short of an existential threat to American democracy, and have repeatedly pushed Republican leaders to take a tougher line toward Mr. Trump and stop the attacks on investigators.

“The road to the Helsinki disaster was paved by Republican inaction every time Trump overstepped,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “Their silence, their acquiescence to things they know are wrong have given Trump the extra jolt he needed.”

Even before Mr. Trump was elected, Democrats and Republicans grappled with how to respond as Russians were hacking and leaking Democratic emails, flooding social media with pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton messages, and even organizing pro-Trump rallies. In September 2016, President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders to the Oval Office to ask them to issue a strongly-worded bipartisan letter to state and local...]]>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/us/politics/congressional-republicans-trump-russia.html?partner=rss&emc=rssMon, 23 Jul 2018 13:05:06 +0000Newsbeat RadioIn the nearly two years since Russia attacked the American democratic process, congressional Republicans have played conflicting roles in the drama: Some have pressed to impose sanctions on Russia and quietly pursue investigations, but they have been...
Now, as they grapple with the political and foreign policy fallout from President Trump’s summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, all Republicans, regardless of their stance so far, are facing a charge even from within their own party that goes beyond the White House: complicity.

The Republicans’ split-screen response was underscored with this weekend’s release of highly classified documents underlying the F.B.I.’s requests to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who the bureau believed was a Russian agent.

Mr. Trump on Sunday doubled down on his accusation that the F.B.I. had “illegally spied upon” his campaign. While Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, pushed back against the president, Mr. Trump’s allies in the House Republican conference backed him up, saying the documents contained revelations damaging to the F.B.I. and seeking to minimize Mr. Page’s role.

“Potentially groundbreaking development here,” Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter. “The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth.”

The back and forth over Mr. Page came after nearly a week of intense focus on Mr. Trump’s performance in Helsinki, where the president stood by Mr. Putin and contradicted his own intelligence agencies, only to reverse himself the next day. That prompted an impassioned speech about Republican complicity from Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona.

“We have indulged myths and fabrications, pretended it wasn’t so bad, and our indulgence got us the capitulation in Helsinki,” Mr. Flake said. “We in the Senate who have been elected to represent our constituents cannot be enablers of falsehoods.”

The Helsinki meeting forced the collision of two conflicting impulses that have guided Republicans on Capitol Hill through the Russia episode — and even before Mr. Trump was elected. The party’s deeply held skepticism of Mr. Putin and commitment to national security have clashed with a desire in some quarters to support the president at almost any cost, even as he cozies up to Mr. Putin.

That battle will be put to the test again this week, when senators have their first chance to grill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the meeting and lawmakers begin to formally weigh enacting additional sanctions on Russia. In an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called for “new sanctions over Putin’s head.”

All this is playing out against the backdrop of midterm elections, where lawmakers will face Republican voters who are still wildly enthusiastic about Mr. Trump and have, in many cases, adopted his skepticism about the Russian interference. Attacks by Mr. Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill and Fox News against those investigating him have not only fired up the president’s base but, polls show, substantially eroded trust in the impartiality of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the F.B.I. itself.

Some Republicans have concluded that keeping their heads down without uttering much more than general statements about Russian hostility is the only safe course.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop a president, let alone this president, from saying what he thinks or what he wants to say,” said Representative Ryan Costello, Republican of Pennsylvania, who broke with party leaders...]]>765cleanfullNewsbeat RadioIn the nearly two years since Russia attacked the American democratic process, congressional Republicans have played conflicting roles in the drama: Some have pressed to impose sanctions on Russia and quietly pursue investigations, but they have been outshouted by Republicans who have obfuscated and undercut efforts to uncover the Kremlin’s plot. Now, as they grapple with the political and foreign policy fallout from President Trump’s summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, all Republicans, regardless of their stance so far, are facing a charge even from within their own party that goes beyond the White House: complicity. The Republicans’ split-screen response was underscored with this weekend’s release of highly classified documents underlying the F.B.I.’s requests to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who the bureau believed was a Russian agent. Mr. Trump on Sunday doubled down on his accusation that the F.B.I. had “illegally spied upon” his campaign. While Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, pushed back against the president, Mr. Trump’s allies in the House Republican conference backed him up, saying the documents contained revelations damaging to the F.B.I. and seeking to minimize Mr. Page’s role. “Potentially groundbreaking development here,” Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter. “The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth.” The back and forth over Mr. Page came after nearly a week of intense focus on Mr. Trump’s performance in Helsinki, where the president stood by Mr. Putin and contradicted his own intelligence agencies, only to reverse himself the next day. That prompted an impassioned speech about Republican complicity from Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona. “We have indulged myths and fabrications, pretended it wasn’t so bad, and our indulgence got us the capitulation in Helsinki,” Mr. Flake said. “We in the Senate who have been elected to represent our constituents cannot be enablers of falsehoods.” The Helsinki meeting forced the collision of two conflicting impulses that have guided Republicans on Capitol Hill through the Russia episode — and even before Mr. Trump was elected. The party’s deeply held skepticism of Mr. Putin and commitment to national security have clashed with a desire in some quarters to support the president at almost any cost, even as he cozies up to Mr. Putin. That battle will be put to the test again this week, when senators have their first chance to grill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the meeting and lawmakers begin to formally weigh enacting additional sanctions on Russia. In an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called for “new sanctions over Putin’s head.” All this is playing out against the backdrop of midterm elections, where lawmakers will face Republican voters who are still wildly enthusiastic about Mr. Trump and have, in many cases, adopted his skepticism about the Russian interference. Attacks by Mr. Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill and Fox News against those investigating him have not only fired up the president’s base but, polls show, substantially eroded trust in the impartiality of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the F.B.I. itself. Some Republicans have concluded that keeping their heads down without uttering much more than general statements about Russian hostility is the only safe course. “There’s nothing you can do to stop a president, let alone this president, from saying what he thinks or what he wants to say,” said Representative Ryan Costello, Republican of Pennsylvania, who broke with party leaders to endorse proposed legislation protecting Mr. Mueller’s job. “I think a lot of Republicans feel it’s not worth...No