Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• My Car Is Becoming a Brick: EVs are poised to age like smartphones: Cars from the 2000s/2010s will be serviceable for decades to come. Cars from the 2020s? Not so much… (The Atlantic)
• Gambling. Investing. Gaming. There’s No Difference Anymore. Given a recentexplosion in unsafe gambling and growing evidence of severe financial harm, one might ask whether the government should be permitting 18-year-olds to effectively bet on the Dallas Cowboys with the same accounts they can use to invest in Coca-Cola. (NYT) see also Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently… (The Guardian)
• They Signed Up for Citi’s New Premium Card. It Turned Into a Nightmare. Strata Elite cardholders say they were shut out of their accounts without explanation for weeks. (Wall Street Journal)
• From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy As tech companies build data centers worldwide to advance artificial intelligence, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts and water shortages. When Microsoft opened a data center in central Mexico last year, nearby residents said power cuts became more frequent. Water outages, which once lasted days, stretched for weeks. The shortages led to school cancellations and the spread of stomach bugs in the town of Las Cenizas. Artificial intelligence building boom is straining an already fragile power and water infrastructures in communities around the world. (New York Times)
• Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data: With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted. (Wired)
• DC’s Access Journalists Turned the News Into a Luxury Good. Access to news and information has become a luxury good, no different than the comfortable seat you must pay to access on an airplane. Google and Facebook robbed publishers of the ad revenue; between 2004 and 2022, over 2,100 newspapers have gone out of business. (Talking Points Memo)
• Why aren’t smart people happier? AAAA https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier
• Crypto crime scene: How the companies behind crypto ATMs profit as Americans lose millions to scams. The victims were led to the Arizona convenience store by an increasingly familiar scam: Crooks had tricked them into believing they were in legal trouble, their bank accounts were hacked or that they had to pay off debts. To fix the “crisis,” they were told to feed cash into the crypto ATM – where it was promptly routed to scammers’ accounts. (CNN)
• A Short Seller’s AI Exercise Paints a Dire Picture of Private Equity: “The industry’s problems are hiding in plain sight,” according to Orso Partners cofounder Nate Koppikar. (II)
• Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal: To secure Washington’s access to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, the secretary of state made an extraordinary offer to President Nayib Bukele. (Washington Post) see also Stephen Miller’s Snowballing Deportation Deceptions. As NYT’s stories lay out, starting at least as early as 2023, Stephen Miller viewed the Alien Enemies Act as a way to deport people with no due process. (emptywheel) see also How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump: The claim that Aurora, Colo., has been overrun by gun-toting migrants stemmed from the city’s fight with a landlord. Now it is central to one of former President Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign promises. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist, Charles Schwab & Co. Named “Best Market Strategist” by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, she is also on Barron’s “100 Most Influential Women in Finance” every year since the list’s inception.
Which states have the highest and lowest adult literacy rates?
Source: USA Facts
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