Club Med

Getting Men to the Doctor

Check the scoreboard. The only one that really matters. Women live a lot longer than men. "Male life expectancy at birth is currently 75.8 years — 5.3 years less than it is for women ... Over the past several years, men have died at higher rates than women from 14 of the top 15 causes of death. The only exception has been Alzheimer’s disease — and that, at least to some extent, is because more women live long enough to develop it ... That disparity has many causes, one of which is that men simply don’t go to the doctor as often." I'm not one of the men who avoids the doctor. I have high everything and pretty much any symptom I read about I manage to manifest. My personal tagline could be test in progress. I've turned my head and coughed so many times that it's become my signature dance move. If I see anyone wearing rubber gloves, I instinctively drop my underpants and bend over (which, I'll admit, has caused some confusion in my local grocery store's meat section). But a lot middle aged men have been avoiding the doctor since their pediatrician days. At one clinic outside Cleveland, medical professionals are trying to figure out if a doctor's office vibe change can increase visits. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor? "As soon as I stepped off the elevator at the Cutler Center for Men earlier this summer, I was greeted by a smiling woman with short gray hair in an athletic half-zip top, standing in front of a sign that read, 'Welcome Guys.' Past check-in, there were pool tables and foosball tables and two giant-screen televisions showing replays from the N.B.A. finals between the Thunder and the Pacers. A small cafe, decorated with vintage album covers and a classic arcade game, offered flavored water and coffee." (Once, when I was getting barium enema CT scan, the radiologist decided to play the song Sexual Healing. It was definitely a vibe. But I'm not sure it made we want to come back for another visit.)

2

Biting the Hand That Feeds Us

"The lettuce and tomato on your hamburger very likely came from California. The almonds and pistachios you snack on as well. There’s a good chance the olive oil on your pasta is from California. Did you pair that with a glass of wine? Probably California, too. This bounty all depends on a reliable, skilled and experienced labor force that is overwhelmingly made up of immigrants ... These immigrants are nothing less than the backbone of America’s food supply, doing jobs that few native-born Americans seek. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting them now will have real consequences for all Americans, very likely including higher grocery prices and fewer options in the produce aisle." NYT (Gift Article): Wilted Lettuce. Rotten Strawberries. Here’s What Happens When You Round Up Farmworkers. "These workers are not strangers, and they’re not a burden on California or the nation. They are part of the fabric of our communities. Many have lived and worked here for decades. Our kids go to school together. We live in the same neighborhoods. We worship in the same churches and shop in the same stores."

+ Mass deportations are starting to hurt agriculture. (And removing or scaring away hard working members of the community isn't helping anything.)

+ Meanwhile, Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been detained by ICE in Baltimore just days after he was freed. Now, because he refused to plea guilty, the administration is working to deport him to Uganda.

3

The Algorithm Method

"Algorithms are old—around 300 B.C., Euclid invented one for finding the greatest common divisor of two integers. They are, essentially, mathematical procedures for solving problems. We use them to coördinate physical things (like elevators) and bureaucratic things (like medical residencies). Did it make sense to treat unclaimed time as a problem? We’ve solved it algorithmically, and now have none." Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker on how algorithms changed our daily rhythms, and how the AI chat programs that are replacing them could change everything. A.I. Is Coming for Culture. "The messages around us are changing, even writing themselves. From a certain angle, they seem to be silencing some of the algorithmically inflected human voices that have sought to influence and control us for the past couple of decades."

+ "There are two main ways to understand what is happening here. One is the idea that the world’s most powerful tech companies are bending toward the current ruling political class in America, casting their own missions in terms that they believe will be favorable to MAGA Republicans, generally, and Donald Trump, specifically, to avoid regulation and further enrich themselves. The other way to understand this moment is to see that the world’s most powerful tech companies are now producing dramatic innovation that, in an earlier era, would be solely under the purview of the U.S. government, and they recognize the responsibility they have to the world’s citizens. The truth of what’s happening is somewhere in the middle." The Atlantic (Gift Article): Do AI Companies Actually Care About America?

+ There's actually another way to understand what's happening here. AI is a really cool and powerful technology. It also comes with many risks. Those risks are unlikely to be mitigated or even addressed because the big money behind the AI boom is actually interested in one thing, and it's not America, it's not Trump, and it's definitely not you. Silicon Valley Launches Pro-AI PACs to Defend Industry in Midterm Elections. "One of its goals is to push back against a movement backed by some other tech titans that focuses on regulating AI models before they get too powerful and create catastrophic risks for society."

4

A Slice of the Action

"You know the pizza tracker. You’ve likely used it to follow your pizza’s journey from a store to your home. But even if you haven’t, you live in the world the Domino’s pizza tracker built. Because in marketing, product development, and user experience, the pizza tracker is an icon. An inspiration. A platonic ideal that has been imitated across industries ranging from food-delivery apps to businesses where the only grease is on the hands of auto mechanics." How the Domino’s pizza tracker conquered the business world.

5

Extra, Extra

Hot Air: Opponents of offshore wind projects didn't like the research done by a Brown University professor. So they've demanded a retraction and they've threatened to try to get the Trump administration to take action. Welcome to the new age of unfree thought. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Offshore Wind Opponents Target Work of Brown University Researcher. These opponents are likely to receive a warm response from a White House that loves attacking universities and hates wind. Trump administration halts work on an almost-finished wind farm.

+ Putin Getting Tired of All the Winning: Pentagon restricts Ukraine's use of US missiles against Russia.

+ Tragic Mishap: 20 Killed, Including 5 Journalists, in Israeli Strikes on Gaza Hospital. Bibi called it a "tragic mishap." In fact, his current strategy could use the same moniker.

+ For Which It Stands: Today in authoritarianism, Trump is preparing to send troops to Chicago, has threatened another one of his political enemies with legal retribution (Trump Threatens to Investigate Chris Christie Over ‘Bridgegate’), and has signed an executive order banning the burning of the American flag. (So we're protecting the flag while burning everything it stands for.)

+ All Politics Are Local: "In the past few years, these organizations have quietly foiled the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government while backing others who supported policies of the country’s ruling Communist Party. The groups, many of them tax-exempt nonprofits, have allowed America’s most formidable adversary to influence elections in the country’s largest city." NYT (Gift Article): How China Influences Elections in America’s Biggest City.

+ Fleetwood Max: Tommy Fleetwood has had a lot of high finishes during his 164 PGA starts, including some heartbreaking defeats in the final holes of tournaments. Even fellow players wanted to see him come in first. He finally won one. And it was a good one to win. Tommy Fleetwood finally has his moment ... and a $10 million check to boot.

+ Goal Achievement: "Fifteen years ago, I coached in a final here and there were fewer than 3,000 fans ... And now we have a league game with over 40,000." Oracle Park just hosted the most-attended women’s professional sports league event in the U.S.

6

Bottom of the News

We are constantly bombarded with headlines that shock and surprise us. So it's nice to know we can still get the occasional headline that doesn't. In fact, I think I've found the least surprising headline of all time. Man driving to Burning Man arrested on charges involving a 'substantial' amount of drugs.