News
CBS News – October 17, 2024 (03:22)
New research suggests diabetes drugs like Ozempic, which some people also take to lose weight, may also help patients suffering from substance addiction. CBS News contributor Dr. Celene Gounder has more.
TODAY’S SEGMENTS:
House votes to avoid government shutdown, approves funding 
• House votes to avoid government shutd…
Schweikert says Musk’s political influence is ‘wonderful’ • GOP Rep. Schweikert says Musk’s polit…
News Wrap: Man drives through German Christmas market • News Wrap: German police believe man …
Former ambassador on challenges to rebuilding Syria • Former U.S. ambassador to Syria outli…
How life in West Bank has become brutal and unpredictable • How life in the West Bank has become …
Brooks and Capehart on Trump’s role in the funding battle • Brooks and Capehart on Trump’s role i…
Court weighs who owns a ‘vibe’ after influencer sues another • Court weighs who owns a ‘vibe’ after …
The Conversation articles for this day
Politics + Society
Santa, maybe? Why we have different names for who ‘hurries down the chimney’ on Christmas
Valerie M. Fridland, University of Nevada, Reno
You may call him Santa Claus, but the bearded guy in the red suit is a man known by many names. That doesn’t make him disreputable, just a reflection of changing American culture.
Rachel Locke, University of San Diego
Researchers surveyed hundreds of elected officials in three Southern California counties. They found 2 in 3 respondents had been threatened or abused – and that many worried for their safety.
Kamri Hudgins, University of Michigan; Erykah Noelle Benson, University of Michigan; Mara Ostfeld, University of Michigan; Vincent Hutchings, University of Michigan
19 US cities have introduced local reparations initiatives to address historic harms against Black residents. But designing a program that is both popular and sustainable isn’t easy.
What does the US attorney general actually do? A law professor explains
Jennifer Selin, Arizona State University
The combined political and legal roles and responsibilities of the US attorney general can create conflicts. Some attorneys general yielded to political pressure from the president – many did not.
The Ghost of Banking Panics Future
Making financial crises great again
Paul Krugman
When “anticipatory obedience” becomes “autocratic capture”
The ABC settlement, Disney, and the need for collective defense
Ben Raderstorf
Liberals Need to Listen to the Science: Stop Pandering to the Right
Liberal politicians are tethered to a system created for the wealthy and powerful. Maybe science has some answers on how to break free from it.
Dr Dan Goyal
The Mump Regime
Musk, Trump, and Illness
Timothy Snyder
House Republicans just exposed the limits of Trump’s power
That bodes poorly for his agenda next year.
Eric Levitz
What the hell is going on in Congress, explained
Trump stoked another congressional crisis. But there’s an intriguing twist to this one.
by Andrew Prokop
The people who deliver your Amazon packages are striking. Here’s why.
Drivers and delivery workers are trying to disrupt Amazon’s Christmas package deliveries.
by Ellen Ioanes
December 20, 2024 – 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm (ET)
Link to full morning briefing
Mike Allen with Noah Bressner orchestrating. Copy edited by Bryan McBournie.
1 big thing: Media vs. reporting
This week’s epic fight over funding the government captures the power — and flaws — of the new information ecosystem, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.
- Why it matters: Elon Musk and his followers on X proved they dominate the Republican media industrial complex — using a digital revolt to kill a spending bill, and open the door to a government shutdown. That revolt was powered by some false information, tweeted with total self-certainty.
“We aren’t just the media here now. We are also the government,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted yesterday to his 13 million followers.
- MAGA’s online army now can assess “information rapidly & pressure our representatives to act in a manner that actually represents what we want,” Don Jr. added. “They can’t hide and do the bidding of swamp oligarchs anymore.”
🖼️ The big picture: This reality highlights the difference between media (what people consume) and reporting (a set of standards for pursuing fact-based information). In the new world order, media and reporting are tossed together with a mix of truth, opinion, and nonsense.
2. 🗞️ Scoop: Kara Swisher’s long-shot Post bid
3. 🏛️ GOP rage erupts in House
4. ⏱️ Charted: Longest shutdowns
5. 💰 Most concentrated stock market ever
6. Deportations hit 10-year high
7. 🎙️ New podcast beats Rogan
8. 🚰 1 food thing: Wine-style water menu
Language AIs in 2024: Size, guardrails and steps toward AI agents
John Licato, University of South Florida, The Conversation
The rubber met the road for language AIs in 2024. The hard realities led to new, smaller models and safety measures for the big ones. 2024’s R&D also set the stage for the next big thing: AI agents.
Emerging Architectures in AI
Liquid AI, Inference, Memory, Application layers updates, semiconductor potential. Super Datacenters.
Michael Spencer
PR Newswire, – January 16, 2024
Published by Crown Publishing Group, civic entrepreneur Frank McCourt joins forces with journalist Michael Casey to present a galvanizing call to action for a tech revolution that empowers people over platforms and accelerates a new internet era.
On March 12, 2024, Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, will publish OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age—a resounding call to action for building a healthier and more equitable internet that frees users from Big Tech’s exploitation, recognizes individuals’ rights to their data, safeguards children and prioritizes the common good—from Frank H. McCourt, Jr., and acclaimed journalist, Michael J. Casey.
The internet was once a utopian dream. And its impact has transformed how we live, learn, work and communicate. Despite its conveniences and connectivity, today’s internet is causing real harm and is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. Instead of driving progress and collaboration, its dominant platforms are fueling a youth mental health crisis, polluting public discourse with misinformation and toxicity, eroding trust and undermining our most important institutions. Left unchecked, the internet in its current, highly centralized form—dominated by a handful of Big Tech giants that feed on our data—threatens to destabilize societies, democracies and human interaction at every level. And it will get exponentially more harmful in the age of artificial intelligence. McCourt and Casey explain how we can get off this destructive path and seize this most urgent of moments to build an internet that serves society’s needs.
For decades, thought leaders and policy experts have weighed in with suggestions for fixing the internet’s ills, mostly through top-down regulation. What sets McCourt and Casey apart is their relentless focus on the need to innovate our way forward and address the problem at its roots, starting with the web’s underlying infrastructure. Inspired by historical calls to action like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT depicts a set of compelling parallels between the American revolution and the need for a similar action today to throw off the shackles of Big Tech. Now is the time, McCourt and Casey argue, to embed the core values of a free, democratic society in the internet of tomorrow.
McCourt is the executive chairman of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future and extending the McCourt family’s 130-year legacy of developing infrastructure and merging community and social impact with financial results through its work across the real estate, sports & media, technology and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Named one of the Top 50 Philanthropists in the U.S. by The Chronical of Philanthropy, McCourt is the foundational donor of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. As a fifth-generation builder, he’s wary of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos and, as a father of seven, concerned about how technology is impacting children, families and communities – and putting our future at risk. Determined to carry out projects that leave a positive impact on society, McCourt is focused on Project Liberty, a bold and far-reaching effort to build an internet where individuals have more control over their data, a voice in how digital platforms operate, and more access to the economic benefits of innovation. Supported by a $500-million commitment from McCourt, Project Liberty encompasses the work of the Project Liberty Foundation—a 501(c)(3) with an international partner network that includes Georgetown University, Stanford University, Sciences Po, and other leading academic institutions and civic organizations—and Amplica Labs, a technology business launched by McCourt Global that is focused on developing the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Information is the lifeblood of any society, and our current system for accessing, engaging and sharing it is corrupted at its heart. Rather than a free-flowing exchange of ideas in a decentralized environment, today’s internet is a closed-loop system, dominated by large technology firms feeding on our individual data and using increasingly sophisticated algorithms to keep people addicted and perpetually doom scrolling. In plain but forceful language, the authors illustrate how this centralized system, controlled by a small group of for-profit entities, has set a catastrophe in motion and stripped us of our personhood. Trust is gone, hostility is on the rise and people—especially parents concerned about their kids’ use of social media—are desperate for solutions.
McCourt and Casey offer much-needed hope for a better future. Optimistically and convincingly, they lay out a groundbreaking solution to reclaim what Big Tech has co-opted and corrupted: a new, decentralized model for managing information over the internet that, by its very design, puts the rights of the individuals first. They reimagine the internet as a place where the individual can choose whether or not to share their data. A place where people can reclaim their identity, digital footprint, and personal sovereignty. A place where individual rights are sacrosanct – and where tech corporations must agree to our terms of use before accessing the data, content and connections we create online.
Much like Americans have amended the U.S. Constitution in order to enshrine new rights and obligations, so too must we amend the protocols by which the internet operates. By upgrading the internet’s current architecture, we can lay the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive web that prioritizes people over platforms and enables users to own and control their personal data.
McCourt and Casey make a powerful argument for acting now, before a Big Tech-driven AI transformation is complete, to build a new, open internet that works for humanity, rather than against it. Americans have an opportunity—perhaps the last one we’ll ever get—to lead the world out of a mess we helped create.
About the Authors
Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is the Executive Chairman of McCourt Global, a private family enterprise working across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries. He is the founder and Executive Chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching effort to build an internet where individuals have more control over their data, a voice in how digital platforms operate, and more access to the economic benefits of innovation. Supported by a $500-million commitment from McCourt, Project Liberty encompasses the work of the Project Liberty Foundation—a 501(c)(3) with an international partner network that includes Georgetown University, Stanford University, Sciences Po, and other leading academic institutions and civic organizations—and Amplica Labs, a technology business launched by McCourt Global that is focused on developing the next generation of digital infrastructure that empowers people and safeguards children.
Michael J. Casey is the Chief Content Officer at the award-winning media company CoinDesk, co-host of the “Money Reimagined” podcast, and the Chairman of the Consensus conference. He has worked as a journalist on five continents, including eighteen years with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, and was a founding staffer at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. Casey’s previous books include The Age of Cryptocurrency, The Social Organism, and The Truth Machine.
ABOUT MCCOURT GLOBAL & PROJECT LIBERTY
McCourt Global (MG) is a private family company focused on building for tomorrow through its work across real estate, sports & media, technology, capital investment and social impact. Led by founder and Executive Chairman Frank McCourt, a civic entrepreneur and fifth-generation builder, and an international leadership team, MG extends the McCourt family’s 130-year legacy of developing infrastructure and merging community and social impact with financial results — an approach that began when the original McCourt company was launched in Boston in 1893.
In 2021, MG publicly launched Project Liberty, a far-reaching effort to build an internet where individuals have more control over their data, a voice in how digital platforms operate, and more access to the economic benefits of innovation. Project Liberty’s activities include the release and stewardship of the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which is available as a public utility to serve as the bedrock of a more equitable and inclusive web, and its launch of the Safe Tech, Safe Kids campaign focused on youth mental health and social media. Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute) works to ensure that digital governance is prioritized in the development of the next generation of the internet. The institute’s founding academic partners include Georgetown University, Stanford University, and Sciences Po; and it is collaborating with MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication and Cortico, as well as Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society to support the creation of healthier social networks. In 2023, Frank McCourt unveiled Project Liberty’s “Better Web, Better World” manifesto at Web Summit in Lisbon. This vision for a new web is supported by the work of Amplica Labs, which is led by the tech team behind DSNP and focused on developing the next generation of digital infrastructure. Through a $500-million commitment that supports both nonprofit and commercial activities, Project Liberty aims to unleash a new era of innovation that empowers people over platforms and serves the common good.
SOURCE McCourt Global
Making financial crises great again
But now the incoming Trump administration seems eager to deregulate the financial industry. We’re hearing about the possibility of abolishing the FDIC. Deposit insurance would supposedly remain, although it would be absorbed into the Treasury Department. But the FDIC has a lot of institutional experience in bank regulation, which would presumably be lost. And this comes amid a general push to loosen financial regulation, indeed regulation of all types.
I have no idea how far this stuff will go, although Wall Street types are clearly eager to start taking dangerous risks again.
But it does seem like a reasonable guess that panics, along with pollution and polio, are well-positioned to make a comeback.
PBS NewsHour – December 19, 2024 (07:11)
This week, we are reporting on some promising treatments for two of the deadliest drugs in America: opioids and alcohol. William Brangham sat down with one of the nation’s leading researchers who is studying America’s addictions and how we can better address them.
Ozempic, Mounjaro and similar medications for Type 2 diabetes and weight loss could also help people struggling with addiction, according to a new study.
Researchers found that people addicted to alcohol who also had a prescription for Ozempic or similar medications had a 50% lower rate of binging on alcohol, compared to people who were not on the medications. And people with opioid use disorder who were taking the medications had a 40% lower rate of opioid overdose.
The findings appear this week in the journal Addiction.
The impact that these medications appeared to have on reducing addictive behaviors was surprising, says Fares Qeadan, an associate professor of biostatistics at Loyola University Chicago and the study’s lead author.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behaviour that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use often alters brain function in ways that perpetuate craving, and weakens (but does not completely negate) self-control.
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The Addiction category has related posts on government agencies and departments and committees and their Chairs.
OnAir Post: Addiction
Scott Kanoski, PhD, a neurobiologist at USC Dornsife in Los Angeles, says semaglutide can affect the reward centers in the brain. In research in rodents published in Molecular Psychiatry in July 2019, he and his team found that this class of drugs may act on the hippocampus, one of the brain regions that control certain aspects of eating behavior, including the impulse to keep eating “palatable” food. The study notes, though, that further research is needed to untangle the underlying mechanisms.
“One way in which this could be happening is by reducing the ability of rewarding cues to engage the release of dopamine, which is a biological currency for motivation and reward in the brain,” Dr. Kanoski says.
People taking drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro (tirzepatide, another GLP-1 agonist) may not get that feel-good “high” from experiences that ordinarily would result in a dopamine payoff — including activities like nail biting and compulsive shopping.
Today’s Poll
What best explains the timing of recent reports on President Biden’s diminished capacity?
New information
Coverup
Yesterday’s Poll Results
When choosing a place to live, would you consider a community’s political leanings as seriously as you do taxes, safety, and school quality?
55.21% – Yes
44.79% – No
*Percentage of 30,290 votes
Headlines: smerconish.com/headlines
– December 13, 2024
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