This is a Steal!

Shoplifting, And Let’s Win North Carolina

The limelight. The show. Valor. A heart. A kiss. Your thunder. People will steal anything. We've all done it. When I was a kid, we used to steal blank cassette tapes from a local store until they put them behind the counter. When my son was little, I made him march back to a neighborhood party supply store to apologize to the owner and pay off the dime he owed after pinching a balloon. Shoplifting is an illicit right (or wrong) of passage. Retailers know this and they factor some theft into their projections. In the business, it's called shrink. But, as you can probably tell by the glass barriers between you and the product you want at the pharmacy, shrink is getting huge. And no, those glass barriers don't do a lot to deter shoplifting (although they do tend to dissuade paying customers). It turns out, most big stores aren't sure how to stop the problem, and because executives have made use of the issue to explain away other more intrinsic business challenges, we're not quite sure how big a problem it is. If I can steal a moment of your time, here's a gift article (which I've basically stolen on your behalf) in The Atlantic from Marc Fisher: Shoplifters Gone Wild. "An estimated one in 11 Americans have shoplifted at least once. In one study, criminologists spent the spring of 2000 to the spring of 2001 monitoring surveillance video in a major national chain drugstore in Atlanta. They determined that about 20,000 incidents of shoplifting took place in that one store, compared with only about 25,000 larceny-theft cases reported to police in the entire city in 2001. The study used shoppers’ clothing, jewelry, and other markers to draw conclusions about their economic class, providing a rough profile of who steals. The result: The shoplifters were not disproportionately minority, male, and lower-class, as many experts had assumed. In fact, about a third were middle-class and nearly 40 percent were women, and white people were just as likely to steal as were Black or Hispanic people." There's an old saying that stolen fruit is the sweetest. If that were true, your local grocery store's produce section would be behind glass.

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The Tar Heal State

I've been looking for one thing that the NextDraft community can support that could make a big difference in the biggest of elections. A great friend of mine from North Carolina has been singing the praises of a group called Mecklenburg Democrats. They have built an amazing organization working to squeeze every last vote out of their Dem heavy region. The NYT (Gift Article) wrote about their work this week: Can Charlotte, N.C., Deliver for Kamala Harris? My answer: Oh Meck Yeah! That's why I've given a sizable donation to the group and I will match whatever you give today up to $5000. So let's do this together. And quickly.

+ Donate to MeckDems and Unleash the Power of Mecklenburg County’s Untapped Democratic Votes.

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AI Yai Yai

"One morning in early October, about 18 years after his daughter Jennifer was murdered, Drew Crecente received a Google alert flagging what appeared to be a new profile of her online. The profile had Jennifer’s full name and a yearbook photo of her. A short biography falsely described Jennifer, whose ex-boyfriend killed her in 2006 during her senior year of high school, as a 'video game journalist and expert in technology, pop culture and journalism.' Jennifer had seemingly been re-created as a 'knowledgeable and friendly AI character.'" This is a uniquely disturbing example of a problem that could be increasingly widespread as AI blurs the lines between what's real and what isn't. WaPo (Gift Article): His daughter was murdered. Then she reappeared as an AI chatbot.

+ AI fakery is already in full effect in the 2024 election. This WaPo (Gift Article) piece provides some examples of Trump and Harris AI voices. See if they'd fool you. AI is spawning a flood of fake Trump and Harris voices. Here’s how to tell what’s real.

+ AI-powered fraud is exploding, FBI says.

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No Nukes! Scratch That. Yes Nukes!

A lot of energy experts argue that we need more nuclear energy to hit our climate goals. But nuclear energy has a bad rap. The demand for more energy to power AI systems for big cloud providers could be a tipping point. Amazon is joining Google and Microsoft in going big on nuclear power. "While the AI boom has boosted revenues for major tech companies, the technology’s massive demand for energy is hindering climate change efforts." (If we don't find a good solution, it could hinder climate change efforts for all of us.)

+ Amazon, Google make dueling nuclear investments to power data centers with clean energy.

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Extra, Extra

Think Different: "What makes this moment different, and unusually dangerous, is that we have never before had a president who is sociopathic; who relishes cruelty and encourages political violence; who refers to his political opponents as 'vermin,' echoing the rhetoric of 20th-century fascists; who resorts to crimes to overturn elections, who admires dictators and thrives on stoking hate. Trump has never been well, but he has never been this unwell. The prospect of his again possessing the enormous power of the presidency, this time with far fewer restraints, is frightening." Peter Wehner, who self-describes as someone who has "had strong rooting interests in Republican presidential candidates who have won and those who have lost," explains why this election is so different (and so disturbing, even if Kamala wins). The Atlantic (Gift Article): This Election Is Different: "No election prior to the Trump era, regardless of the outcome, ever caused me to question the fundamental decency of America." (Word.)

+ All over Hell and Half of Georgia: However it turns out, this election won't suffer from a lack of interest. Record number of early votes cast in Georgia as election gets underway in battleground state. (And we're talking records that smash previous numbers.) One of those early voters: Jimmy Carter. And some more peachy news from Georgia. Georgia judge blocks rule requiring counties to hand-count Election Day ballots.

+ Plumbing the Depths: Sink won't drain? Air conditioner on the fritz? Call private equity. They're buying up the mom and pops. WSJ (Gift Article): America’s New Millionaire Class: Plumbers and HVAC Entrepreneurs. "Their growth marks a major shift, taking home-services firms away from family operators by offering mom-and-pop shops seven-figure and eight-figure paydays. It is a contrast from previous generations, when more owners handed companies down to their children or employees."

+ Unnatural Disaster: "'When people assert that help is not coming to western North Carolina -- which is completely untrue, which is a lie -- the people who are actually on the ground helping feel demoralized,' NC Gov Roy Cooper said. 'If you're participating in spreading this stuff, stop it ... Whatever your aim is, the people you are really hurting are those in western North Carolina who need help. The safety of our government and volunteer response workers, including FEMA, remains a top priority.'" 92 unaccounted for in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, 'dangerous flow of misinformation' ongoing.

+ Want Add: "Sinwar’s victory strategy evidently lay in a vision of a war that would spread to engulf Iran and the entire Middle East. As Israel calculates its next steps, it should consider the possibility that a major escalation and regionwide conflagration is Sinwar’s last hope." David Ignatius in WaPo: What Hamas hoped would happen after Oct. 7.

+ Moto-Vation: "The Razr had something that other handsets had mostly neglected: it was hot ... It seemingly prioritized fashion over function, and that felt desirably fresh compared to the typical blobs of chunky plastic that had become commonplace (looking at you, Nokia 1100)." Looking back at one of the coolest phones. Hello Moto.

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Bottom of the News

"The 2024 edition of a quintessential English competition now includes a controversy, after the men’s winner of the World Conker Championships — a two-person game with the object of crushing a conker, or horse chestnut — was accused of using a metal chestnut to secure a long-elusive title." (I don't what that means, but I love a good scandal...)

+ The owner of Lay’s, Doritos, Tostitos and Ruffles chips will put more chips in some bags to claw back customers tired of higher prices with skimpier bags.

+ "A man flying high above Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza in a powered paraglider spotted something unexpected on top of the ancient landmark: a dog." (Apparently this misinformed pooch was trying to get as far away from Springfield as he could...)