Weekend Reading
Into the season of the Witch ....
“Gold miners have been moonlighting as paleontologists in the permafrost of Canada’s Yukon Territory. With over 5,000 fossils discovered annually by miners carving through the frozen earth, finding fully intact remains from tens of thousands of years ago is becoming almost commonplace. Miners have uncovered everything from a 30,000-year-old, balled-up squirrel to a 57,000-year-old wolf pup likely killed when its den collapsed on top of it. One of the key finds, though, was in 2022 when a group of miners working on Eureka Creek dug a fully mummified woolly mammoth out of the permafrost. ‘As they’re actively gold mining,’ Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Government of Yukon, told Business Insider, ‘they’re constantly uncovering the remains of Ice Age animals like woolly mammoths.’ … The baby woolly mammoth, named Nun cho ga, believed to be over 30,000 years old, was frozen in permafrost and is considered the first near-complete and best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North America. ‘There will be one thing that stands out in a person’s entire life,’ Brian McCaughan, co-founder of Treadstone Gold, the company that discovered the specimen, said in a statement in 2022, ‘and I can guarantee you this is my one thing.’ Zazula said in a statement that when they found the woolly mammoth, it was a dream come true … As the Yukon becomes the new Siberia in terms of fascinating finds—’We were constantly getting jealous of the cool stuff found in Siberia,’ Zazula told Business Insider—the seemingly mundane is helpful in ongoing research. ‘We drive back with truckloads of skeletons,’ Zazula said. They all get categorized and are open to researchers worldwide. The genetic testing of the bones can open new areas of research, such as tracing the movement of ancient horses. The chance to look further and clearer into the distant past, for some, is more valuable than gold.” (Tim Newcomb/Popular Mechanics)
“I was born on the banks of the Rukarara, but I have no memory of it. My memories come from my mother. The Rukarara flows in my imagination and my dreams. I was just a few months old when my family left its shores. My father’s job required our relocation to Magi, a village at the top of a tall, steep incline that overlooks another river, the Akanyaru. Beyond the Akanyaru is Burundi. For us to go down to the river was out of the question. Mama forbade her children to climb down the hill, even the intrepid boys, for fear of seeing us tumble to the bottom, where crocodiles and hippopotami crouched in the papyrus, waiting to devour us—not to mention, she added, the Burundian outlaws who lurked in the swamps along the banks, ready to spirit children away in their canoes and sell them to the Senegalese, who traded in human blood. For me, as for my brothers and sisters, the Akanyaru remained an inaccessible stream visible far below, like a long serpent amid the papyrus that barred our access to the unknown world stretching beyond the horizon—a world in which other rivers surely flowed, other rivers that I swore to myself I’d explore someday. When my family, like so many other Tutsi, was deported to Nyamata, in the Bugesera district, the truck convoy carrying these ‘internal refugees’ had to cross an iron bridge over the Nyabarongo River. Neither the unbelievable din nor the jostling of the vehicles on the metal overpass could trouble my sleep in my mother’s arms. But Gitagata, the settlement village to which we were assigned, was far from the Nyabarongo. I went with the other girls to fetch water from Lake Cyohoha or, for solemn occasions, at the source of the Rwakibirizi, whose copious flow seemed to surge by the grace of an improbable miracle in this arid landscape. The deportees mentioned the Nyabarongo only to curse it. With its clay-reddened waters like a bad omen, it seemed the liquid wall of our prison, and that iron bridge, which I had to cross to and from school in Kigali, was the site of every humiliation and brutality, perpetrated by the soldiers at the guard post. At school, I learned that the Greeks, to get to hell, had to cross a black, freezing river called the Styx; I knew of another that led there: the Nyabarongo.” ( Scholastique Mukasonga/The Paris Review)
“Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books. This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover. ‘My jaw dropped,’ Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to. In 1979, Martha Maxwell, an influential literacy scholar, wrote, ‘Every generation, at some point, discovers that students cannot read as well as they would like or as well as professors expect.’ Dames, who studies the history of the novel, acknowledged the longevity of the complaint. ‘Part of me is always tempted to be very skeptical about the idea that this is something new,’ he said. And yet, ‘I think there is a phenomenon that we’re noticing that I’m also hesitant to ignore.’ Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and Crime and Punishment the next. Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.” (Rose Horowitch/The Atlantic)
“Kamala Harris talks a lot about Shyamala Gopalan, and she always has. Her mother, who died in 2009, is by far, she has said, her most significant, most lasting influence — ‘the toughest, smartest and most loving person I have ever known,’ her ‘greatest source of inspiration,’ ‘the most important person.’ Harris is, Carole Porter, a friend of hers since early elementary school, told me, ‘her mother’s daughter, completely.” One simply cannot understand the woman who might be president without understanding the woman who raised her. ‘Mommy,’ she wrote in her memoir, ‘you were the reason for everything.’ If anything, though, Harris has undersold her mother’s influence.Over the years, and perhaps especially now in her sprint of a campaign against Donald Trump, Harris has placed her mother and her mother’s story mostly in an economic frame. But the story more than anything else is an immigrant story, and an extraordinary one. Harris nodded to this, of course, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention this summer, alluding to the ‘unlikely journey’ of ‘a brown woman with an accent’ who ‘crossed the world alone.’ But even such evocative phrasing scarcely scratches the surface of this foundational tale: an Indian woman, barely 5 feet tall and not yet 20 years old, landing in this country in 1958, seven years before the Immigration and Nationality Act eased restrictive and discriminatory and quotas, managing to maintain ties to her Indian and Tamilian heritage while at the same time bucking a series of its central conventions — rejecting an arranged marriage and instead marrying for love, marrying a Black man, divorcing that Black man, rearing primarily as a single mother her precocious daughters quite consciously as Black, all along pursuing her own cancer-researching career.” (Michael Kruse/politico)
“A politician’s side gigs also open the door to corruption. The Trump Victory Tourbillon Watch sells for $100,000 — how is buying that watch different from handing Trump $100,000 (or $99,980 after subtracting the value of the watch)? Did you know that the total amount of money Eric Adams is accused of taking from Turkey happens to be $100,000? And did you know that you can buy the Trump watch with Bitcoin, thus making the payment untraceable? It’s easy to imagine foreign actors sitting around wondering what’s the best way to bribe Trump, and then they see the ad for Trump Brand Luxury Watches For Men With Weird Penises and think: ‘Eureka!’ I’m honestly surprised that Trump didn’t record the watch promo in Turkish, Russian, and Arabic to reach his target audience. Trump is uniquely bribable because of his extensive legal troubles. He owes $546 million from civil suits, which he has told the court he can’t pay.1 He also has unknown legal fees, and I don’t know if you know this about lawyers in New York, but they can be a tad expensive. People always assume that Trump is rich, but consider that most of what he owes from civil suits comes from the fact that he was lying about his wealth. He’s also done things that are hard to explain if he’s flush with cash, such as nickel and diming David Pecker and retaining the services of Rudy Giuliani. So: You’ve got a guy with no ethical standards who might be desperate for cash hawking overpriced junk that can be bought with untraceable crypto. His presidential run seems to be critical to his business strategy, because he wouldn’t get this kind of attention if he wasn’t running for president. If you’re not convinced by that last point, then ask yourself: How many early-2000s reality TV stars have enough name recognition to sell overpriced, self-branded crap? If the lady from The Weakest Link sold $100 coins with her face on them, would anyone buy them? If Trump can capitalize on his presidential run enough to squeeze money from sad losers and foreign interests, then he wins even if he loses.” (Jeff Maurer)
“Nearly two months ago, CNN reached out to Melania Trump’s book publisher to request an interview with the former first lady ahead of her upcoming memoir. After several exchanges about a possible interview, the publisher sent an unusual demand last week: an interview would cost $250,000. In an email to CNN, Skyhorse Publishing sent a document labeled, ‘Confidentiality and Nondisclosure Agreement’ that laid out strict terms for an interview and use of material from the book, titled ‘Melania,’ due to publish on October 8. On top of that, the agreement stipulated that ‘CNN shall pay a licensing fee of two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000).’ CNN did not sign the agreement.” (CNN)
“‘(For) his second term, Trump is proposing further trade restrictions that make the near decade-long trade war look like a tempest in a teapot by comparison. His explicit plan calls for a universal tariff on all US imports (of between 10% and 20%) plus larger tariffs on Chinese imports (60% or more), and reciprocal tariffs on nations that tax US exports. Beyond these initial policies, continuous escalation of tariff rates is frequently an implicit or explicit policy goal and Trump often personally threatens other large tariffs on specific countries, industries, and companies. The entirety of the last eight years of trade wars have driven average effective US tariff rates—the amount of customs duties paid as a share of total imports—up from 1.6% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2023. Trump’s plans promise to at least quadruple that tax rate, and possibly increase it by 7 times its current levels or more. There is simply no modern precedent for US tariff rates anywhere close to that high. Moreover, Trump’s tariff plans would also be out of step with policy in all of the world’s prosperous high-income nations—most countries with effective tariff rates near the levels he is proposing are pariah oil producers or struggling low-income agricultural economies. No strong major global economy functions with tariffs that high because the consequences would simply be so overwhelmingly negative—the closest analog to the size and scope of Trump’s proposals are the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs that contributed to the Great Depression.Universal tariffs as high as Trump is proposing will substantially increase prices—US consumers will bear the brunt of inefficient taxes on a wide variety of basic foods and essential goods that physically cannot be produced stateside, with the poorest households being hit the hardest.” (Joseph Politano/Apricitas Economics)
“Last month, Saudi Arabia said that it would not recognize Israel until the creation of a Palestinian state, which if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to be believed, is a long way off. This is in sharp contrast to (Jared) Kushner’s pitch to move Palestinians to the Negev desert, and transform Gaza’s ‘very valuable’ ‘waterfront property.’ Kushner served as a top Middle East adviser during Trump’s time in office, and was instrumental in installing the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize ties with two other Gulf countries. Kushner’s cozy relationship with MBS highlights how Donald Trump might choose to work with Saudi Arabia should he be reelected in November. Three sources close to Kushner said that they expect Trump’s son-in-law to be involved in any Saudi talks in an unofficial capacity. A spokesperson for Kushner denied that he was seeking any such role. It’s not clear, however, that Kushner has any leverage in his relationship with MBS. Last month, the Senate Finance Committee found that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, had yet to return any profit to its foreign investors after receiving billions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other foreign governments. In his report, Senator Ron Wyden wrote that ‘sovereign wealth fund investments and prospective real estate deals give foreign governments leverage over the Trump family.’” (Edith Olmstead/TNR)
“The Republican Party’s most distinctive feature, the one that sets it apart from conservative parties in other industrialized democracies, is its refusal to accept the legitimacy of the welfare state. The dominant tradition of the American right is a belief that the distribution of income produced by markets is morally sacrosanct, an ideology Richard Hofstadter characterized as ‘Social Darwinism.’ American conservatives greeted every new social benefit, from Social Security to Medicare to Obamacare, as a socialist or communist plot that would inevitably cascade into economic collapse and political tyranny … Conservatives have stewed in resentment as their party has repeatedly won elections while failing to stop the growth of social programs they warn pose an existential threat to the American way of life. At every turn, they are being tricked by the Democrats or betrayed by their own leaders. Trump absorbed that rage and turned it into a somewhat different mode of politics. That is why he is widely seen as a ‘populist,’ the antithesis of a traditional Republican. But during his first term, Trump hewed more closely to the conventional Republican style than his rhetoric suggested. More importantly, circumstances in a second term would be very different and might well push his economic policy further right. Conservatives grumbled that Donald Trump spent too much money during his first term, but that is typical of modern Republicans. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump all enacted enormous, regressive tax cuts combined with buildups in spending, especially on the military. They all followed the same formula because it is the path of least resistance for Republicans. What enabled the formula to work, however, is a set of economic conditions that no longer prevails. Reagan and George W. Bush inherited low deficits from their predecessor. Trump inherited a budget deficit that was slightly higher, about 3 percent of gross domestic product, just slightly higher than the growth rate of the economy. More importantly, the labor market still hadn’t fully recovered from the Great Recession, and increasing the deficit could stimulate growth without causing inflation or interest rates to rise. Trump’s deficits ate up this cushion as the economy returned to full strength. His popular mix of tax cuts and free spending came during an era in which Washington could issue as much debt as it wanted and have no problem finding customers willing to lend it money at rock-bottom rates. That time, which ran roughly from the George W. Bush era to the first year of the Biden administration, is now distant history.” (Jonathan Chait/NYMag)
“Physicists have discovered a new form of (gamma)-ray radiation that emerges from tropical thunderstorms — and shown that such invisible bursts of energy are more common on Earth than previously thought. The phenomenon is described1,2 in two studies published in Nature on 2 October. ‘These papers are game-changers for the field,’ says Joseph Dwyer, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The findings added a new animal to the ‘zoo’ of high-energy phenomena seen in storms, he adds. ‘These two papers are very important and will make a big splash in the thunderstorm and lightning community.’ More energetic than X-rays, γ-radiation is found around black holes, and other extreme cosmic environments. It is also seen on Earth, and its origins could help to explain what initiates lightning, which often follows these events. The trigger for lightning has remained a mystery for centuries because observations struggle to find electric fields strong enough to initiate it. A group led by scientists at the University of Bergen in Norway made the discoveries using instruments on a high-altitude ex-cold-war spy plane, converted by NASA. The single-pilot aircraft flew as close as 1.5 kilometres above storms in the Caribbean and Central America, during ten flights in 2023. Scientists had previously documented two kinds of γ-ray phenomenon in storms — seconds-long glows and higher-intensity bursts known as terrestrial γ-ray flashes (TGFs), which last just millionths of a second. The mechanisms behind either are not well understood, nor is their relationship.Detectors aboard the plane spotted both types of radiation appearing in the same storm. They saw around 500 glows and 130 TGFs — many more than they had anticipated. And the glows were not as expected. Rather than a steady hum, the radiation surged up and down in intensity, bubbling across a region around 100 kilometres wide, like a boiling pot of water. Both kinds of radiation have rarely been observed before. ‘We saw that, over these tropical storms, they are really very common,’ says Martino Marisaldi, a co-author and high-energy atmospheric physicist at the University of Bergen. But the team also saw 24 instances of a new kind of γ-ray radiation: a flickering flash. These pulses grew out of glows and lasted as long as 250 milliseconds, with traits in between that of the other two types of radiation. During each flash, radiation spiked around a dozen times over around one-tenth of a second.” (Elizabeth Gibney/Nature)