Hear! Hear!

Apple's Hearing Aid, Democracy's Close Race

The Rolling Stones uttered what is perhaps the most accurate lyric of all time in Mother's Little Helper: "What a drag it is getting old." Sure, we get a little wiser, but our parts gradually wear out, and the replacements are limited by price, stigma, and effectiveness. A couple years ago, the F.D.A. took a step toward addressing the issue afflicting one of our parts by approving over-the-counter hearing aids. "The idea was to change the existing gatekeeper model, in which people could acquire prescription aids only through licensed professionals for several thousand dollars a pair. Instead, over-the-counter hearing aids that could benefit a majority of the people with hearing loss would be available for a few hundred dollars at any CVS or Walmart, no audiologist or prescription required. The F.D.A. had three years to develop those regulations; it took five. Finally, two years ago, the hearing health world braced for a transformation — one that still hasn’t quite happened." That transformation could finally be kickstarted by Apple. In a few weeks, your Airpods will be transformed into a tool that operates both as a hearing test and a hearing aid. That removes the barrier of getting your hearing checked and it removes the stigma many people have about wearing hearing aids. What could make you look more young and cool than wearing your Airpods all day? I put that question to my kids, but neither one answered. The new Airpods have noise cancellation, too. NYT (Gift Article): The Cutting-Edge Hearing Aids That You May Already Own.

2

Democracy, Inc

Should it be called Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day? Today's winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics decided to ask a different question. "Rather than asking whether colonialism is good or bad, we note that different colonial strategies have led to different institutional patterns that have persisted over time." What did they find? "Colonies where a large share of settlers survived tended to establish inclusive, democratic institutions and subsequently prospered, the prize-winning researchers found. Those where relatively few settlers survived often formed more autocratic, extractive institutions and ended up languishing." Nobel Prize goes to 3 economists who study the wealth and poverty of nations. Unfortunately, since three people won the prize, each will only get a third of the associated prize money, proving that sometimes you can be an economic genius but fail Econ 101.

+ NYT (Gift Article): Three Receive Nobel in Economics for Research on Global Inequality. "Countries that developed institutions that protected personal property rights and allowed for widespread economic participation tended to end up on a pathway to longer-term prosperity. Those that had extractive institutions — ones that helped elites to maintain control, but which gave workers little hope of sharing in the wealth — merely provided short-term gains for the people in power." (In lay terms, ranting that "They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats!" is not particularly productive.)

3

A Busted Flush

After the media moves on from natural disasters, communities that experience them are often just beginning a long, hard slog back to normalcy. In Asheville, NC, one of the first problems that needed solving was figuring out how to enable folks to flush their toilets. Luckily, there are often good people who stop doing whatever they usually do in their daily lives and start working full time to help their neighbors. "Asheville’s water system was badly damaged in the storm, which knocked out major pipes connecting its reservoirs to the rest of the distribution system. There’s still no estimate of when service will be restored — though it is likely a matter of weeks, not days. The lack of running water is preventing schools and most restaurants from reopening as concerns about public health mount. That’s why some citizens are taking matters into their own hands." With no running water, Asheville finds other ways to flush thousands of toilets.

+ Sadly, not everyone in affected areas is being helpful. Those who are being the least helpful are motivated by a familiar force. Some FEMA operations paused in North Carolina after reports National Guard troops saw ‘armed militia’ threatening them.

+ Sometimes, natural disasters in one place can have big impacts on a lot of other places. "More than 86 percent of healthcare providers surveyed across the US are experiencing shortages of intravenous fluids after Hurricane Helene's rampage took out a manufacturing plant in western North Carolina that makes 60 percent of the country's supply."

4

Grin Probability

"This season, ESPN announced that a special graphic would appear on all of its Major League Baseball telecasts. In the upper-left corner of the screen, just above the score, each team’s chance of winning the game is expressed as a percentage—a whole number, reassuring in its roundness, that is recalculated after every at-bat ... You might think that so insistently reminding fans of their team’s 'Win Probability' would be against ESPN’s interests. If your team is down by several runs in the eighth inning, your hopes will already be fading. But to see that sinking feeling represented on the screen, in a crisp and precise-sounding 4 percent, could make an early bedtime more enticing. The producers of reality shows such as The Amazing Race know this, which is why they use quick cuts and split screens to deceive fans into thinking that teams are closer than they really are, and that the outcome is less certain than it really is. But ESPN has a more evolved consumer in mind. We got a clue as to who this person might be in March, when Phil Orlins, a vice president of production at the company, previewed the graphic. Orlins said that Win Probability would speak “to the way people think about sports right now,” especially people 'who have a wager on the game.'" Ross Andersen in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Scourge of ‘Win Probability’ in Sports. (I totally ignore those AI-powered numbers and stick with the model that's always worked for me: Grin Probability: My desire for a team to lose is inversely proportional to the chances that team will end up winning. For example, the Dodgers won 9-0 over the Mets last night and haven't given up a single run for 33 innings.)

5

Extra, Extra

Close Minded: If you've been worrying about the election all weekend (as I have), you probably think I buried the lede. But the simple truth is that this remains a remarkably close race and a point here or there in the latest poll doesn't change that. I don't understand why it's close. But it is. Here's an interview with Harris (formerly Obama) campaign advisor David Plouffe in NY Mag. "Inside the campaign we’ve had the race very close now for many weeks. So we’ve not seen much volatility. You know, the real change was between when she became the nominee through, let’s say, the second week of September. Obviously Trump had a big lead and that lead was erased. But we’ve seen a steady race since then. So my advice to people who are paying attention to this race is: Any poll out there that shows a lot of volatility is inconsistent with where this race stands." And here's Dan Pfeiffer in MessageBox: It's Time to Stop Panicking About the Polls. "The whiplash between the Democratic elation of a few weeks ago and the full-on panic of the last few days is detached from reality. This has been a remarkably stable race. The vibes changed, but the race hasn’t." (OK, now that you've stopping panicking, you can go back to freaking out.)

+ Kamala Mode: "David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s Presidential campaigns, told me, 'There was an argument that she would be strengthened by a competition, but she showed a mastery of the internal politics, which is one test of a potential candidate. People respond to competence, and that was a very competent operation.' He compared it to a rapid military strike. 'She didn’t get handed this nomination,' he said. 'She took it.'" Evan Osnos in The New Yorker on what has been, win or lose, one of the more remarkable rises in American politics. Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign.

+ The Good, The Thaad, The Ugly: As Israel gets closer to responding to Iran's missile attacks, America gets closer to direct involvement in the fight. "The United States announced it is sending an advanced anti-missile system and a number of troops to Israel, deepening America's involvement in the spiraling conflict as the region readies for Israeli retaliatory strikes against Iran." And from CNN: What is THAAD? The powerful US anti-missile defense system is being sent to Israel – along with up to 100 supporting troops.

+ Dire Strait: "Four days after Taiwan celebrated the founding of its government on its National Day, when Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said in a speech that China has no right to represent Taiwan and declared his commitment to 'resist annexation or encroachment,'" China made its counter argument. It was a loud one. China deploys record 125 warplanes in large scale military drill in warning to Taiwan.

+ Carjack in the Box: "Stealing cars is as old as making them; as soon as Henry Ford’s factories began churning out Model T’s in the early 1900s, people began swiping them. But over time, car alarms and anti-theft systems made them harder to steal. You could no longer take most vehicles just by pushing a screwdriver into the ignition or manipulating wires. Which is partly why, in the 1980s and ’90s, another type of car theft exploded: stealing occupied cars at gunpoint. In 1991, Scott Bowles, a police reporter for The Detroit News, wrote a story about Ruth Wahl, a 22-year-old drugstore cashier who’d been shot and killed after refusing to give up her Suzuki Sidekick. Bowles described this crime as a 'carjacking.'" More than three decades later, carjacking is more popular than ever in some places (like our nation's capital), and police are often fighting their own rules of engagement when trying to chase down the problem. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Inside the Carjacking Crisis.

+ Catch Me If You Can: SpaceX catches returning rocket in mid-air, turning a fanciful idea into reality.

+ Running Counter to What Seemed Possible: "Kenyan runner Ruth Chepngetich shattered the women's marathon world record with plenty of time to spare. She finished the Chicago Marathon in 2:09:56 on Sunday, slashing almost 2 minutes off the previous world record. The 30-year-old is the first woman to run the 26.2 mile-distance in under 2 hours and 10 minutes. Chepngetich placed 10th overall, with only nine men running faster." (Two minutes under the previous world record is truly nuts.)

6

Bottom of the News

Because there's not enough dividing Americans, WaPo (Gift Article) took a look at the vast divide between Republicans and Democrats over fast food. "We wanted to wrap our arms around a bigger question: where the campaigns spend the most money. We limited our analysis to places that racked up at least $5,000 in campaign spending, coming up with a list of roughly 500 popular restaurants and food purveyors, involving more than 21,000 receipts worth a collective $13 million." (It's a bit disturbing to realize that your quite large political donations ended up being used to buy a few burgers and fake burrito from Chipotle.)