That Escalated Quickly

The Ages of Aging

Gradually and then suddenly. That's how the character Mike Campbell in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises answers the question: "How did you go bankrupt?" It turns out that the same answer applies to the question, "How did you get so old?" We know that time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future. What researchers are now learning is that, as it relates to human aging, time also occasionally leaps, surges, and accelerates. Actually, time isn't going faster. It's just that we're slowing down. Ironically, the only thing we can do more quickly as we age is age. In short, midlife is a crisis. "In a new study, scientists at Stanford University tracked age-related changes in over 135,000 types of molecules and microbes, sampled from over 100 adults. They discovered that shifts in their abundance — either increasing or decreasing in number — did not occur gradually over time, but clustered around two ages." WaPo (Gift Article): Feeling old? Your molecules change rapidly around ages 44 and 60. (I have a feeling my molecules are more precocious than most.)

2

Whatcha Got?

"The symptoms belonged to a broad spectrum of neurological disorders, but there was always something starkly atypical about the patients’ presentation. Their decline was too swift, or not swift enough; they lacked key indicators of a particular disease; or they failed to respond to known therapies, a hallmark of how neurologists diagnose conditions." NYT Mag (Gift Article): They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why. "Doctors in Canada have identified dozens of patients with similar, unexplained symptoms — a scientific puzzle that has now become a political maelstrom."

3

The Fiber That Binds Us

"At a glance, optical fiber looks like plastic fishing line, but there’s a lot more to it. It’s actually thin strands of extremely pure glass — silicon dioxide — that are flexible enough to be bundled into cables that can bend and loop. In the first step of the manufacturing process, which engineers call laydown, glass is crystallized into a fluffy solid form, like how cotton candy is spun on a stick." It's hard to imagine something that is spun like cotton candy but that gives people and even more addictive rush. But here we are. WaPo (Gift on Article) on the fiber that connects us. How the World Wide Web gets spun out of thin air.

4

Floor Exorcism

"What a legal lark to be a CAS judge and to lord it over athletes with rulings such as the banning of a Jamaican hammer thrower for a technical failure in her entry paperwork committed during a hurricane outage. Or, in the case of Gharavi, the stripping of gymnast Chiles’s bronze medal over an alleged four-second lapse by U.S. officials in filing a scoring appeal on her behalf, so you can give it to your longtime legal client, Romania, that trove of billable hours." Sally Jenkins: The push to strip Jordan Chiles of her Olympic medal smells awfully foul. "The court that ruled against Jordan Chiles is a hive of cronies and insiders, established and steered by the IOC and various sports federations as cover."

5

Extra, Extra

A Pox in the Henhouse: "Since the beginning of this year, more than 17,000 cases and more than 500 deaths have been reported in 13 countries in Africa, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which classifies the outbreak as a 'very high risk event.'" WHO declares mpox outbreak a global health emergency.

+ Changing the Invasion Equation: Reuters: "This offensive is a major gamble, especially since Russia dominates much of the front line in Ukraine and has made significant inroads in the east. If Ukrainian troops are able to hold territory, they could stretch the capacity of Russian troops, deliver a major embarrassment for Putin and get a bargaining chip for any peace negotiations. But if Russia manages to push Ukrainian troops out of Kursk and simultaneously move forward in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian military leaders could be blamed for giving the Russians an opening to gain more ground, particularly in the Donetsk region." Deception and a Gamble: How Ukrainian Troops Invaded Russia. Apparently, Ukraine is all in on this gamble. Ukrainian forces attack a second border region in western Russia.

+ Ballot Boxing: "Peter Harf and Olivier Goudet became billionaires while managing the Reimanns’ money. The family would have done better if they’d put their wealth in a low-cost index fund." This about is money managers for people with massive fortunes. But the lessons apply to all investors. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Secretive Dynasty Missed Out on Billions While Advisers Got Rich.

+ Cool Beans: NYT: Inflation Cools to 2.9%, Shoring Up Case for a Fed Rate Cut.

+ Democracy Eye to Eye: More than 70,000 people joined a Zoom for Republicans for Harris. "When the Harris team wins and prevents the sudden death of American democracy, we can joyfully return to arguing over marginal tax rates and the role of government in healthcare, and all the other issues that defined our politics for generations." Amen.

6

Bottom of the News

"The amount of methamphetamine in each candy was up to 300 times the level someone would usually take and could be lethal, according to the New Zealand Drug Foundation — a drug checking and policy organization, which first tested the candies." New Zealand food bank unknowingly distributed meth in candy.

+ More than 2,300 pounds of meth is found hidden in celery at Georgia farmers market. (The high demand for celery was a dead giveaway.)