“Much remains a mystery about the Neanderthals' demise roughly 40,000 years ago. But a DNA analysis of a Neanderthal known as Thorin, nicknamed after a dwarf in ‘The Hobbit’ by J. R. R. Tolkien, gave us some wild gossip about his group. Thorin hailed from a previously unknown Neanderthal lineage that had been genetically isolated for the past 50,000 years, even though they were only a few days' walk from another group of Neanderthals, the researchers found. He was also highly inbred, which is perhaps unsurprising given his group's isolation. Thorin lived around 42,000 years ago, meaning he was one of the last Neanderthals. It makes you wonder how unconnected other Neanderthal groups were to each other, and how connected they were to humans. Finally, genetics can reveal when modern humans interacted with Neanderthals, at least somewhat. Two studies that used different genetic methods both found that starting around 49,000 years ago, modern humans and Neanderthals mated for a 7,000-year-long ‘pulse’ lasting generations. It's unclear why they started and why they stopped. And we'll likely never know if this mingling was consensual or what Neanderthal-human relationships looked like. But at least we know this much: within a few thousands of years of their extinction, Neanderthals mixed with humans, leaving their genetic imprints on our genomes even to this day.” (Laura Geggel/Live Science)
“In 2025, NASA has several CLPS missions planned, including deliveries by companies Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace. These missions will carry a variety of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to different lunar locations. The payloads will include experiments to study lunar geology, test new technologies for future human missions and gather data on the moon's environment. In February 2025, NASA plans to launch the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx, observatory. This mission will survey the sky in near-infrared light, which is a type of light that is invisible to the naked eye but that special instruments can detect. Near-infrared light is useful for observing objects that are too cool or too distant to be seen in visible light. SPHEREx will create a comprehensive map of the universe by surveying and collecting data on more than 450 million galaxies along with over 100 million stars in the Milky Way. Astronomers will use this data to answer big questions about the origins of galaxies and the distribution of water and organic molecules in stellar nurseries – where stars are born from gas and dust.” (Zhenbo Wang/CBSNews)
“In 2025 we will see AI and machine learning leveraged to make real progress in understanding animal communication, answering a question that has puzzled humans as long as we have existed: ‘What are animals saying to each other?’ The recent Coller-Dolittle Prize, offering cash prizes up to half-a-million dollars for scientists who ‘crack the code’ is an indication of a bullish confidence that recent technological developments in machine learning and large language models (LLMs) are placing this goal within our grasp. Many research groups have been working for years on algorithms to make sense of animal sounds. Project Ceti, for example, has been decoding the click trains of sperm whales and the songs of humpbacks. These modern machine learning tools require extremely large amounts of data, and up until now, such quantities of high-quality and well-annotated data have been lacking. Consider LLMs such as ChatGPT that have training data available to them that includes the entirety of text available on the internet. Such information on animal communication hasn't been accessible in the past. It’s not just that human data corpora are many orders of magnitude larger than the kind of data we have access to for animals in the wild: More than 500 GB of words were used to train GPT-3, compared to just more than 8,000 ‘codas’ (or vocalizations) for Project Ceti’s recent analysis of sperm whale communication.” (Arik Kershenbaum/WIRED)
“I had traveled a lot in the Middle East, but never before to Beirut, the ‘Paris of the Orient.’ I went just before Christmas that year, to interview a famous, beautiful woman. I had a half-day to see the sights. Out on the Corniche - the once elegant edge of the Mediterranean now rimmed by bombed and ruined art deco beachfront high-rises, lodging rats not VIPs — you can still rent a bike. The mid-December sun was warm and it seemed a shame not to pedal around the city on my free afternoon. Seeking the bike shop, I encountered two boys on a bench by the sea. One was smoking, holding his cigarette between flesh stumps where his hands had been cut or burned off at the wrists. Judging by the hair on his lip, he looked a very small 14. A smaller boy next to him pointed at, but did not open, a plastic bag on his lap. He was not a high-pressure salesman, but when I seemed receptive, he pulled out a plastic and cloth toy, a Chinese-made quacking duck hand puppet. He was asking 1,500 Lebanese pounds, the equivalent of about a dollar. I only had large bills. I went across the street to a little shop to get some change and bought a bag of chips and some Pepsi. I gave the boys the treats and bought one duck. Eventually I found the bike shop, behind a McDonald’s beside a mosque. I pedaled into the stream of cars on the Corniche. There were no bike lanes, but by following the toxic fumes of the mopeds slaloming through the traffic and dodging piles of rubble from recent bombings, I made quick progress. I pedaled in the shadows of corrugated metal walls set up to prevent people from falling into holes where buildings had once stood, holes with great big cranes replacing war ruins with new ugly boxes. The Paris of the Orient is a city of hundreds of small ground zeros, apparently.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“While the traditional Hollywood studios spent 2024 calibrating their streaming services in the hopes of achieving the kind of profits Netflix posts, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters worked on expanding their existing lead, particularly on the live sports front. The streamer's Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson event was a smash hit, nabbing 108 million viewers. And this week, Netflix is scheduled to stream a pair of NFL Christmas games, with Beyoncé headlining one of the half-time shows. Sarandos and Peters will close out the year with Netflix's stock up 94% YTD.” (Oliver Darcy/STATUS)
“The middle class is evaporating. Cities that once manufactured products and offered factory jobs are boarded up-wastelands. Prisons are overflowing. Corporations have orchestrated the destruction of trade barriers, allowing them to stash $1.42 trillion in profits in overseas banks to avoid paying taxes. Neoliberalism, despite its promise to build and spread democracy, swiftly gutted regulations and hollowed out democratic systems to turn them into corporate leviathans. The labels ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are meaningless in the neoliberal order, evidenced by a Democratic presidential candidate who bragged about an endorsement from Dick Cheney, a war criminal who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The attraction of Trump is that, although vile and buffoonish, he mocks the bankruptcy of the political charade.” (Chris Hedges)
“In other ways, though, journalism’s painful realities have been the focus of 2024. The year began with a wave of layoffs; before January was out, I had counted a minimum of two hundred and thirty journalists who had lost their jobs at major outlets, and that was likely a conservative estimate. As the year went on, so did the job cuts, including at CNN, which eliminated a hundred or so positions over the summer—part of a broad restructuring aimed at repositioning the network for a digital future under Mark Thompson, its CEO (and one of many Brits who, we were relentlessly told this year, were coming to lead the US media industry out of its quagmire). As Adam Piore reported for CJR in August, that task will take time. In 2021, Thompson had described the US TV news business as ‘unchanged since the nineteen-eighties’ and in ‘dead trouble.’ He has ‘experience turning around struggling news companies—first as director general of the BBC, then at the New York Times,’ Piore noted—but ‘even for an executive of his experience, CNN posed any number of vexing challenges that could blemish his reputation as a turnaround artist.’ Journalists in the US have had to grapple with threats other than the financial, of course. Beyond Trump’s continued bullying of the press (which we wrote about in Monday’s ‘Year in Politics’ newsletter), journalists—and photojournalists in particular—have faced intimidation while covering protests linked to the ongoing war in Gaza. In October, Merid reported, citing the US Press Freedom Tracker, that forty-three journalists had been arrested in the US in the past year, triple the previous number; assaults of journalists were up more than 50 percent, too. (The Tracker recently updated the arrest figure to forty-eight.) As demonstrations flared on college campuses nationwide (starting with Columbia’s), student journalists did an excellent job of covering them—a much better one, often, than many of their professional counterparts—and were sometimes harassed and detained.” (Jon Alsop/CJR)
“Enrollment in (NYC) schools dropped dramatically during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, decreasing by 4.5 percent between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021 — a loss of roughly 50,000 students. But the influx of migrant children into the school system made up for some of the losses, before evening out this year as migration has slowed. The increase in English language learners has only made the need for smaller class sizes more urgent, teachers said. Mr. Mulgrew agreed that smaller classes could help. ‘New York City is facing an educational challenge that no school district has ever faced in the history of education, ever,’ he said. ‘We have to figure this out on our own.’ The state gave city schools five years to lower their class sizes, with yearly benchmarks. This year, 40 percent of classes must be under the state’s new limits. Next year, that jumps to 60 percent. Currently, 46 percent of classes meet the limits, according to the D.O.E. — no more than 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade, 23 students for fourth through eighth grade and 25 students for high school classes. The largest classes in the city currently have about 34 students. Mr. Mulgrew said that the state would provide $300 million for this year’s efforts to shrink class sizes. More than 350 schools had applied for funding ahead of Friday’s deadline. According to the teachers’ union, the idea for schools to apply for the funding themselves came from Tracy Ivanic, a science teacher at P.S. 153 in Queens. ‘I think having less students in a class is a better thing for all reasons: socially, emotionally, educationally,’ said Ms. Ivanic, who has taught in city schools for 28 years.” (Claire Fahy/NYT)
“For 2025, I’ve called upon the digital oracle, AI, which, let’s be honest, just gobbles up what human gurus post online to predict what might be the next big thing, twist, or turn. We’ve added a splash of human feel in editing AI’s sometimes bizarre and cheeky forecasts, weeding out the most outlandish, while keeping the wild cards for their volatility value (like suggesting Uganda might see a coup in 2024 – no way, Okello, not in the foreseeable future) … Forecasting conflict in Africa for 2025 is like trying to predict which volcano will erupt next. Here’s what might bubble over: Sudan could see its conflict between the SAF and RSF intensify, potentially splitting the country like a banana, reminiscent of Libya’s saga. This could spread like wildfire or drag in neighbours. Ethiopia and Eritrea might clash, especially over that contentious port access, potentially destabilising the whole region. The Eastern DRC’s ongoing saga with various militia groups could see new chapters or alliances, possibly leading to broader conflict if diplomacy fails. The spread of militant groups in the Sahel, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, could spill into neighbouring states, creating new hotspots if these groups gain more ground … “ (Charles Onyango-Obbo/Pan African Review)
“A Japanese death row inmate known as the ‘Black Widow’ for killing multiple elderly lovers has died, officials said on Friday. Chisako Kakehi was sentenced to death for murdering three men, including her husband, and the attempted murder of a fourth man between 2007 and 2013. ‘Her death was confirmed at a hospital on Thursday’ after she was found lying in her cell at an Osaka detention center, an official from Japan's Justice Ministry told the AFP news agency. She was 78 years old. She had been seeking a retrial in one of the three murder cases, according to Japan's Kyodo news agency, but had already been rebuffed in a lower court. Kakehi had several relationships with elderly or ill men. She met some of them through dating agencies, where she stipulated that prospective partners must be wealthy and childless. In 2017, she was sentenced to death after a court found she had murdered three partners by poisoning them with cyanide and attempted to murder a fourth. Kakehi reportedly amassed one billion yen (roughly $9 million at the time) in insurance payouts and inheritance over 10 years. But she subsequently lost most of the money through unsuccessful financial trading. Her death sentence was upheld by Japan's Supreme Court in 2021, with judge Yuko Miyazaki saying she had ‘used cyanide on the men after making them trust her as a life partner.’ ‘It's a calculated, cruel crime based on a strong intent of murder,’ Miyazaki said.” (DW via AFP)
“We had confirmation this week that not only are North Koreans being used in combat in Kursk, but are suffering significant casualties. Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder this week stated the U.S. believed North Korean soldiers were now ‘engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces’ and that ‘they’re taking casualties. Based on the latest understanding that we have as of this afternoon, we’re looking at several hundred casualties, both killed and wounded.’ In his evening address of 16 December, the Ukrainian president noted that ‘the Commander-in-Chief reported on the involvement of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside the Russian army. Preliminary data suggests that the Russians are trying to conceal the losses of the North Koreans. Unfortunately, we are forced to defend against them as well, even though there is not a single reason for North Koreans to die in this war.’ The interesting thing to watch in 2025 is whether this current contingent of 11,000 North Koreans is a one-off deployment, or is just the beginning of a constant flow of North Korean soldiers for the war.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)
“Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hardline immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday. ‘H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,’ the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily. ‘This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,’ Bannon added. Musk set off the MAGA faithful on social media on Wednesday morning, posting on X about how more foreign tech workers need to be allowed to work in the United States because ‘there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent.’ Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sidekick, generated his own backlash from the right Thursday by suggesting American culture was to blame for why employers seek tech employees from overseas.” (Hafiz Rashid/TNR)
“The sheer volume of the world’s elections this past year is difficult to fully comprehend. Voters in more than 60 countries, comprising more than than 40 percent of the planet’s population, went to the polls in 2024. The countries ranged from from full democracies to outright autocracies to various types of regimes in between.Even more baffling is that a unified set of themes managed to emerge, linking the disparate global events into a single political narrative. Incumbents were punished, newcomers were rewarded, and previously fringe views cemented a place in the political mainstream. The world’s election results tell us that 2024 was a year of political frustration. The most prominent example of that discontent was the U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump, the former Republican president, regained the White House after four years of a Democratic administration. Iran’s reformist Masoud Pezeshkian channeled the liberal enthusiasm of young voters to defeat his hardline and conservative opponents. And in the United Kingdom, the government experienced a historic shift in the opposite direction. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority, bringing 14 years of Conservative Party rule to an end. Even when existing leaders managed to hold onto power, the anti-incumbency trend was still legible. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) eked out a third consecutive victory but were only able to keep power by forging a coalition with opposition parties. In South Africa, the African National Congress ceded its majority in parliament for the first time since the end of the apartheid era. The coalition headed by Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party—a party that has held power for almost the entirety of the country’s post-World War II era—also lost its parliamentary majority.” (Cameron Abadi/FP)
“The wealth of US private capital bosses jumped by more than $56bn in 2024 as shares of Blackstone, Apollo and KKR hit new highs, fuelled by rapid growth and their addition to the main US stock index. The share surge has enriched private equity pioneers such as Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman and KKR co-founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts, and spawned a new set of billionaire dealmakers in the industry ahead of expected deregulation from the incoming Trump administration that could fuel dealmaking and asset growth in 2025. Among the seven largest listed US private capital firms, gains in shares held by the industry’s top executives and founders were over $56bn, led by the leadership of Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative manager, according to Financial Times calculations based on public filings. Blackstone’s top leaders saw their shares rise by $13.5bn in 2024 as its market value soared nearly 50 per cent to $214bn. Its stock was propelled by the growth of its assets, which have soared beyond $1tn. In September 2023, Blackstone became the first private equity group included in the S&P 500 index. Analysts expect Blackstone funds for wealthy private investors in real estate, credit and private equity to generate lucrative fees in 2025, bolstering profits. Expectations for its performance have pushed its valuation to more than 40 times its distributable earnings over the past 12 months, a proxy for the group’s cash flow. Most of the growth in executives’ holdings went to Blackstone chief executive Schwarzman, whose stock rose by more than $11bn this year.” (Antoine Gara/FT)
Thank you Ron!