Extra, Extra

Must Be the Money: “To save the lives of infants and small children living in low- and middle-income countries, there are a handful of tried and tested tools, like anti-malarial drugs, bed nets and vaccines. The results from a massive experiment in rural Kenya suggests another: cash.” NPR: Researchers discover a secret weapon that saves babies’ lives.

+ Operation Warped Speed: “The federal government also offered hefty incentives: up to $50,000 in signing bonuses and up to $60,000 in student loan forgiveness. No undergraduate degree is required. DHS also lifted the age cap for law-enforcement roles … ‘America has been invaded by criminals and predators,’ the agency says on its recruiting website. ‘We need YOU to get them out.'” $50,000 Signing Bonus, No Age Caps: The Blitz to Hire ICE Officers. One of their social media campaigns encourages applicants to “deport illegals with your absolute boys.”

+ Defense Mechanism: “If the United States abandons mRNA, it will not simply be forfeiting a public health advantage. It will be ceding a strategic asset. In national security terms, mRNA is the equivalent of a missile defense system for biology.” NYT (Gift Article): America Is Abandoning One of the Greatest Medical Breakthroughs.

+ The A Team: “Grammarly is launching several new AI agents for specific writing challenges, from educators trying to detect plagiarism and AI-generated text to students looking to gauge reader reaction to their paper, needing help with citations, and even seeing their predicted grade.” (It’s only a matter of a time until a student sues a teacher for giving them a B on a paper that AI said deserves an A.)

+ Letter RIP: MSNBC will soon be renamed as MS NOW, meaning “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.” (They would have been better off going with TCBY.)

+ Snap Decisions: “Former NFL players now entering retirement age are more likely to be living with chronic pain or a disability, are more depressed and anxious, and are far more likely to report having some type of cognitive decline than the average American man … Yet, in spite of all that, the vast majority say they would do it all over again, and that playing football had a positive effect on their lives.”

+ Thinking Inside the Box: Looking for a solid, short-term economic indicator. Consider cardboard. “US box shipments—that is, volumes of empty packaging materials sold to retailers, which in turn use them to ship orders to warehouses, storefronts and Americans’ doorsteps—fell to the lowest second-quarter reading since 2015.”