Humanity's Small Achievement
We don’t hear enough stories about humanity working together these days. So here’s a small example. Very small. Well, the output is often small, but the process is enormous and spread across the globe. “There are a handful of truly monumental collective achievements in our history: Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, and perhaps, if we’re being generous, the Roman aqueducts. Modern global civilization has made one contribution to this eternal pantheon. It is not the moon landing. It is the semiconductor supply chain. This strikes almost all of us as ridiculous. A microchip is a bauble of metal and refined sand. It doesn’t appear to have epic proportions. Upon close examination, however, the epic proportions are there in miniature. Imagine a perfect replica of a sprawling metropolis, a Tokyo or a São Paulo, engraved at atomic dimensions on a tile the size of a fingernail. The urban details would be faithfully rendered to the last golf ball or egg—each reduced to approximately the bulk of a hemoglobin molecule, or the distance grown by a human fingernail every five seconds. If a chip were merely a sculpture, this chiselling would represent a considerable achievement. But a chip is, in fact, a functional city for a population of busy electrons.” Some are enabling you to read this right now. There could be about 2,000 of them in your car. Even things that seem much bigger and bolder among our human achievements require them to run. They are at the core of the industry that is essentially propping up our entire economy. “If basic chips grow scarce, it will not be long before the average homeowner cannot afford a dishwasher, let alone a phone. If the A.I. backlash seems fervent now, just wait until the dishes pile up. But the financial interests pale in comparison with the geopolitical ones.” In short, all our chips are on the table, and that means everything else is, too. Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker: Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made (Alt link). I would have guessed that accolade belonged to the Tater Tot. But even that remarkable invention and manufacturing process can be handled by one company called Ore-Ida. It takes a big machine to deploy these little cogs. “The global semiconductor supply chain … has united its participants in the pursuit of something profoundly difficult that could not have been achieved in the absence of intercontinental solidarity.” That’s what makes them great. That’s what makes their manufacturing and movements so precarious; it takes a lot of big elements to make these tiny products.
+ Scheduling Note: NextDraft will be off for the next couple days.
Forget Me Knot
During his first Inaugural Address, Donald Trump claimed, “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” He’s hoping a lot of voters forget that. “Bottom line: During the second term of Trump’s Robin Hood regime, the net worth of the top 0.1 percent has grown 6,800 times faster on average per household than for those in the bottom half. The comparison for Trump himself is astronomical: His riches grew at a rate more than 367,000 times faster than for a household in the bottom half.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Can No Longer Mask His Real Agenda. Of course, that only matters if a party steps in to remember those that Trump forgot.
The Commander in Thief
Back in May, I wrote that I thought that the key to the midterms for the opposition would be consistently and constantly tying the administration’s corruption to individual pocketboots. Every issue — the money spent on the war, healthcare cuts, tax cuts for the wealthy, the wanton Trump family corruption — needs to be connected directly to the daily experiences of the average American. No one is managing this narrative better than Jon Ossoff: “The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes, while he plunders our healthcare to cut taxes for the rich. Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries and healthcare have all hit all-time highs this year. While you pay more for everything, the first family’s wealth is growing by billions of dollars – because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.” To quote the Mandalorian: This is the way. It took a lot of messaging, and even more corruption, but the connection seems to be getting made. A recent “Fox News poll asked voters how concerned they were about more than a dozen issues, and ‘corruption in government’ ranked at the very top.” Corruption is finally breaking through to voters this time.
An About Face
“This is the first time that we’ve shown that we can actually predict directly your mortality risk — not just your biological age, but your mortality risk — from a photograph alone.” (Too bad the trademark FaceTime is already registered.) WaPo (Gift Article): How a photo of a patient’s face could predict whether they’ll survive cancer. I guess, at some point, the question, why the long face sort of answers itself.
Extra, Extra
What Comes Around Gets Around: “The mass riots in France, which started as protests over underfunded schools, are a shocking example. But the phenomenon has been building for years, with the perceived failure of liberal democracy to make good on its promises of a better future, especially for the young and the salaried working class.” It’s Not Just France. Europe’s Political Center Is Crumbling. The protests aren’t just in France either. Italy to deploy 500 troops to Milan after days of protests and looting.
+ With Friends Like These… “In essence, Moscow is reaffirming its commitment to cooperation with Iran.” Iran hosts Russia’s FM Lavrov as Moscow seeks benefit from US sanctions relief. This is just one of many reasons why Trump’s current backing of Putin makes no sense for America. Yesterday, I wrote about how this is all stranger than fiction. The Axis of A-Holes. A positive sign: Zelensky says early warning system for Russian missile attacks resumes following call with Rubio. (Let’s just hope Natalie Harp doesn’t print out this headline for Trump.)
+ Remain Calm: “Voters in oil-rich Alberta province overwhelmingly backed remaining in Canada, according to referendum results released Tuesday, delivering a boost to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s push for national unity.”
+ Idaho Undertow: “Since 2023, three hospitals in rural parts of Idaho have shuttered their labor and delivery wards because of staffing shortages. In the southeastern corner of the state, one OB-GYN serves a population of more than 120,000 people, according to a recent paper by a researcher at Oregon State University. Even in more populated areas, like Boise, OB-GYNs are so overloaded that the wait for a hysterectomy can be six months. It can take nine months to secure an appointment for an annual exam. Increasingly, hospital administrators say, women facing life-threatening complications are loaded into a helicopter and flown out of state for treatment that OB-GYNs in Idaho are not allowed to administer.” In other words, when you take away women’s access to health care, you take away women’s access to health care. NYT (Gift Article): When Idaho Banned Abortion, OB-GYNs Fled. The Doctors Who Stayed Are Cracking.
+ Nurse Curse: “America’s nurses are more educated than ever and can command six-figure salaries. Most have their bachelor’s degree. Their income has boomed since the pandemic to a median $97,550 a year, and their hands-on work isn’t easily automated away. Nursing schools have seen their ranks swell, minting thousands of new graduates every year. They’re also leaving the bedside in droves.” WSJ (Gift Article): Nurses Are in High Demand—but They’re Quitting in Droves.
+ Rotary Club: “I think that people assume that when you call 911, they know where you are. And in the vast majority of places, that’s not the case. 911 was developed on the infrastructure of landline phones, but less than 10% of 911 calls now come from landlines.” The Marshall Project with an interesting Q&A that provides the 411 on 911.
+ Pan for Gold: A collection of some of the highest-scoring images from the 17th edition of this panoramic photo competition. Wow.
Bottom of the News
The Brewers and Rays are set to meet in the World Series. But one of their logos already deserves top prize. The story behind the Brewers’ ball-in-glove logo and its hidden double meaning. “The glove’s fingers are cut to look like an ‘M,’ while the thumb and palm holding the white ball form the ‘B’ in Brewers.” (It reads as MB when they win, but BM if they lose…)
+ Scheduling Note: NextDraft will be off for the next couple days.
