Infoman

Member since 2017-07-15T03:50:57Z. Last seen 2025-01-02T20:05:01Z.

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  Infoman

  London hospitals axe cancer operations after cyber-attack

  Camp­bell Health pol­icy ed­i­tor

  The Guardian 08 Jun 2024

  Hospitals in London have had to cancel cancer operations this week because of a Russian cyber-attack that continues to cause disruption for NHS services in the capital.

  St Thomas’ and King’s College hospitals have postponed procedures since the attack began on Monday, the Guardian can reveal. The hack meant they would not have been able to provide a blood transfusion for any patient who needed one.

  Russian hackers, thought to be the Qilin group, launched a ransomware attack on Synnovis, which supplies blood tests to St Thomas’, King’s and hospitals in south-east London.

  NHS England has released few details of the impact of the cyberattack, despite the fact that it continues to cause major disruption for six NHS trusts and dozens of GP services in south-east London, which between them provide care to about 2 million people.

  It refused yesterday to confirm how many operations, including cancer and transplant surgeries, hospitals have been put off as a result of the attack. Officials maintained that they did not have figures for the number of operations affected, even though managers in the hospitals affected have had to explain to patients why their procedure has been delayed.

  In a statement on Thursday it said only that “some non-urgent operations and procedures including transplants” were being postponed but gave no details. “We are sorry to all those who have been impacted and staff will work hard to re-arrange appointments and treatments as quickly as possible”, said Dr Chris Streather, the medical director for NHS England’s London region.

  The statement also disclosed for the first time that six NHS trusts – four more than NHS England initially admitted – had been affected.

  They include the South London and Maudsley and Oxleas mental health trusts, Lewisham and Greenwich acute trust and the Bromley community services trust, as well as the very large acute trusts that run King’s and St Thomas’.

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  2024/06/08
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  Infoman

  The very cheek of it: how the bottom fell out of the market for German naturismKate Con­nolly Ber­lin

  The Guardian 08 Jun 2024

  Germany has always been seen as one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to taking clothes off in public. But an organisation promoting nudity and a self-confident approach towards the body in Germany has sounded the alarm over the future of naturism in the country.

  The German Association for Free Body Culture (DFK), an umbrella organisation for myriad naturist interest groups, has told its members that celebrations in August marking the anniversary of its creation will no longer go ahead owing to a “lack of interest”.

  Membership of the DFK has slumped from 65,000 members 25 years ago to fewer than 34,000 now, with many remaining members said to be losing interest.

  Germany embraces public nudity. Areas are often reserved for naturists in parks and on beaches and there is a high tolerance towards communal mixing among the dressed and undressed.

  Disciples of the movement revel in the life-affirming freedom of being nude together across the generations, as well as the health benefits they say it brings, including mental wellbeing, in part from shedding the sense of shame around nakedness.

  There are many reasons for the drop in interest, according to Alfred Sigloch, the president of the DFK. They include conflicts between the generations, and a lack of willingness among younger naturists in individual clubs to stick to older members’ rigid rules, “such as specified afternoon nap or quiet times”.

  The prevalence of digital technology was putting some people off, Sigloch told German media this week, including nude bathers’ fear of people taking sneak pictures on mobile phones or via drone cameras, and putting them on social media.

  “The rise of the cult of the perfect body on TikTok or Instagram is increasing the pressure to not want to undress,” Sigloch added.

  The origins of Germany’s free body culture (Freikörperkultur in German or FKK for short) go back to the late 19th century, and emerged from a social movement that was critical of materialism and industrialisation. In the early 20th century, free body culture became more widespread, offering an alternative to the restrictive industrial life of towns and cities. FKK flourished in particular in the lakeside resorts around liberal Berlin, as well as on Germany’s Baltic and North Sea coasts.

  While largely frowned upon during the Nazi era, the strong association between nudity and freedom made the trend particularly popular in communist East Germany. The population may have been restricted in everything from freedom of speech to the ability to travel, and were even banned from taking inflatable swimming rings or lilos into the sea in case they tried to escape – but people had a strong sense of exercising their free will when it came to summer holidays by being allowed to take off their clothes on beaches or campsites without legal restrictions.

  Sigloch said the rise of glamping was partly responsible for holiday sites dedicated to FKK closing down, because campsite owners were able to make more money from higherpaying campers wanting a more luxurious experience than from naturists.

  He warned that individual clubs were haemorrhaging members, with some forced to close. But he has pledged to confront the issues and revive the movement. “We will fight to keep on board every single naked person who wants to be with us,” he said. “FKK is an ancient culture that cannot and will not die.”

  He said he remained optimistic not least because many nudist clubs had seen a rise in interest during the Covid crisis. The number of members in the federal association had fallen as low as 30,000 five years ago but has recovered to almost 34,000 since the pandemic.

  “This can be attributed, among other things, to the fact that the pandemic has encouraged many people to seek alternative and healthy outdoor leisure activities,” he said.

  Kerstin, a 65-year-old retired confectioner, who has practised FKK “all my life” but is not in an official club, said she would continue to bathe in the nude on regular trips to Germany’s Baltic coast “until my dying day”.

  “But while I used to be one of the many and didn’t stand out at all, I notice now there are fewer and fewer of us. Some people are worried about skin cancer, others have just become more prudish, I think, which is a shame, because it’s nothing to do with sex or prurience and everything to do with health and freedom,” she said. “Sometimes I now get pointed at on the beach, because people find it not to their liking. That never used to happen.”

  In a plaintive message to its members announcing it was calling off the anniversary celebrations, the DFK leadership said: “Unfortunately we have had too few registrations for our celebration, so … with a heavy heart we have had to make the decision to cancel it. The costs relative to those who would have participated were simply too high.”

  However, advocates say all is not lost. Upcoming events for the FKK community include the 15th International Naturist Run on the Baltic Coast on 27 July, Nackt ins Watt, a naturist mudflat hike in Dithmarschen on the North Sea coast on 17 August, and later this month, in locations across Germany, the DFK’s FKK Swimming Championships.

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  2024/06/08
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  Infoman

  Is this a 1938 moment for the world?

  The Guardian 08 Jun 2024

  Patrick Wintour talks to the historians and politicians who fear we could be on the brink of a third world war.

  When big history is self-evidently being written and leaders face momentous choices, the urge to find inspiration in historical parallels is natural. “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,” the historian RG Collingwood once wrote.

  One of the contemporary politicians most influenced by the past is the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas. She lugs books on Nato-Russian relations with her on beach holidays. In her hi-tech office in Tallinn, she argues that this is a 1938 moment – a point when a wider war is imminent but the west has not yet joined the dots.

  She said the same mistake was made in 1938 when tensions in Abyssinia, Japan and Germany were treated as isolated events. The proximate causes of the current conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and even Armenia might be different, but the bigger picture shows an interconnected battlefield where post-cold war certainties have given way to “greatpower competition”, in which authoritarian leaders are testing the boundaries of their empires. “The lesson from 1938 and 1939 is that if aggression pays off somewhere, it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere,” Kallas said.

  Her favourite historian, Prof Tim Snyder, adds a twist by reimagining 1938 as a year in which Czechoslovakia, like Ukraine in 2022, had chosen to fight. “So you had in Czechoslovakia, like Ukraine, an imperfect democracy. The farthest democracy in eastern Europe. When threatened by a larger neighbour, it chooses to resist. In that world, where Czechoslovakia resists, there’s no second world war.”

  He said such an outcome had been possible. “They could have held the Germans back. It was largely a bluff on the German side. If the Czechs resisted, and the French, British and maybe Americans started to help, there would have been conflict, but there wouldn’t have been a world war.

  “Instead, when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it was invading Poland with the Czech armaments industry, which was the best in the world. It was invading with Slovak soldiers. It was invading from a geographical position that it only gained because it had destroyed Czechoslovakia.

  “If Ukrainians give up, or if we give up on Ukraine, then it’s different. It’s Russia making war in the future. It’s Russia making war with Ukrainian technology. At that point, we’re in 1939. We’re in 1938 now. In effect, what Ukrainians are letting us do is extend 1938.”

  As Christopher Hitchens once wrote, much American foolishness abroad, from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq, has been launched on the back of Munich syndrome, the belief that those who appease bullies, as the then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain sought to do with Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938, are either dupes or cowards. Such leaders are eventually forced to put their soldiers into battle, often unprepared and ill-equipped.

  Snyder made his remarks in Tallinn last month at the Lennart Meri conference, which met under the slogan “Let us not despair, but act”. It was held against the backdrop of Russia and China hailing a new authoritarian world order. Many at the conference wrestled with how much had gone wrong in Ukraine and whether the west would shed its self-imposed constraints on helping Kyiv.

  In a sense, everyone wanted an answer to the question posed by the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski: “Ukraine has bought us time. Will we put it to good use?” In 1934-35, what Winston Churchill termed the “locust years”, Britain did not put the time to good use, instead allowing Germany to race ahead in rearmament.

  Johann Wadephul, the deputy chair of the German Christian Democratic Union’s defence policy committee, is pessimistic. “If the war goes on like it is, it’s clear Ukraine will lose. It cannot withstand Russian power with its well-organised support from Iran, China and North Korea and countries like India looking only at its self-interest.”

  Europe had simply not reorganised itself for war, he said. Listing the consequences in terms of lost human rights, access to resources and confidence in the west, he said simply: “If Ukraine loses, it will be a catastrophe.”

  Samir Saran, the head of the Indian thinktank the Observer Research Foundation, agreed that something bigger than Europe was at stake as he almost mocked the inability of the west’s $40tn economy to organise a battlefield defeat of Russia’s $2tn economy.

  "One side is not participating in the battle. You have hosted conferences supporting Ukraine and then do nothing more,” he said. “It tells countries like us that if something like this were to happen in the Indo-Pacific, you have no chance against China.”

  Yet it is paradoxical. Nato is bigger and stronger than ever. The transatlantic alliance is functioning

  far better than the US, France and Britain did in the 1930s – and, after five months of hesitation, some of the extra $60bn in US arms may reach the frontline within weeks.

  But from Kyiv’s perspective, everything remains too slow. Germany’s Marie-Agnes StrackZimmermann, the Free Democratic party’s top candidate for the European elections, said: “We have the problem that, while Poland is doing a lot as a neighbouring country, while Germany is doing a lot, France is doing relatively little.”

  Others say the culprit is Berlin and that, despite recognising the threat Vladimir Putin represents, it cannot accept the consequences in terms of the nuclear risks of going all in for a Russian defeat. Benjamin Tallis, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said: “For all of this talk of political will, what we actually face is political won’t. We won’t define victory as a goal.”

  Without naming Germany, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “Europe clearly faces a moment when it will be necessary not to be cowards.”

  Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, had less compunction about naming names. “[Olaf] Scholz’s behaviour has shown that, as far as the security of Europe goes, he is the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time,” he said of the German chancellor.

  Eliot Cohen, a neocon neverTrumper, finds a wider institutional and moral malaise that needs addressing through a theory of victory. He said: “Are you willing to lift the restrictions on arms factories to run them 24 hours a day? Are you willing to give them ATACMS [missiles] and hit targets in Russia, and get Germany to give them Taurus missiles? My chief concern is that war is so remote from our societies that we have trouble grappling with what success requires.”

  Sabine Fischer, a political scientist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said behind these disputes is the pivot around which every judgment turns: whether Europe believes a Ukrainian defeat can be contained. In other words, what are the consequences for Europe, if any, if Ukraine collapses or a Russian-dictated peace leads to its retention of land gained by military conquest? Would a victorious Putin turn off the war machine and say Russia’s imperial ambitions were now sated?

  Russia’s foreign policy concept issued in 2023 focuses on a global confrontation with the US and building alliances to defeat the west. Given his unrivalled record of broken promises, a Russian peace guarantee might end up as reassuring as Chamberlain’s advice to the British people to have a quiet night’s sleep after he returned from Munich.

  Joe Biden, interviewed in Time magazine this week, appeared to regard the consequences as vast. “If we ever let Ukraine go down, mark my words: you’ll see Poland go, and you’ll see all those nations along the actual border of Russia, from the Balkans and Belarus, all those, they’re going to make their own accommodations.”

  Others said the Polish response would be less conciliatory. One former Nato commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “If Ukraine fails, I am certain that our Polish allies are not going to sit and wait for them to keep coming. I think the Romanian allies are not going to sit and wait for Russia to go into Moldova. So the best way to prevent Nato from being involved directly in a conflict is to help Ukraine defeat Russia in Ukraine.”

  Fischer said the consequences of a Russian-dictated peace would not be containable. “Ukraine will experience a new wave of refugees fleeing to the west,” she said. “The terror regime of the Russian occupation will expand and hundreds of thousands will suffer.”

  Ukrainians have tried to frame the consequences of defeat in lurid terms, in an attempt to galvanise the west. Olena Halushka, the co-founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, urged Europe to think about the bombardment of Kharkiv. “Imagine a city the size of Munich is likely to be without electricity this winter. The cost in terms of millions of migrants will overwhelm Europe.”

  Wadephul fears even such framing has not worked. “If you ask the average German on the street, ‘Do you really recognise what is at stake? That we have to spend money not for health but for defence?’, the answers show there is still a lot of persuasion to do. Europeans think they can have this war without thinking they are themselves at war.”

  He thinks the guilty people are the leaders who pander to voters who dismiss the Russian threat. That takes the debate back to Germany’s, and specifically the Social Democratic party’s, ambivalence about a Russian defeat, which Scholz refuses to set as an objective.

  Five 20th-century historians, including the Weimar Republic expert Heinrich August Winkler, complained in an open letter that Scholz was not willing to learn from history or recognise that Russia was bent on destroying Ukraine.

  “The chancellor and the SPD leadership, by drawing red lines, not for Russia but for German politics, weaken Germany’s security policy and benefit Russia.” The government had to come up with a strategy for victory, they argued.

  Liberal market economies are inherently likely to be slower to adapt to war than their authoritarian counterparts, but one of the lessons of the 1930s, and those locust years, is that organising for rearmament entails planning and not just false reassurances, which were the stock in trade of Chamberlain and his predecessor Stanley Baldwin.

  The reality was that Britain, overstretched and in debt, fell behind, and calls for a ministry of supply to coordinate the flow of arms were spurned. Nevertheless, Chamberlain complacently predicted that the “terrifying power” Britain was building by boosting its defences would have a “sobering effect on the opinion of the world”.

  Something similar happened with regard to ammunition supplies for Ukraine in Europe. In 2023, leaders said they would have 1m shells ready for Ukraine by March 2024, only to admit they could reach only half that number.

  A Ukrainian military adviser said the reality is that the Russian arms industry can now churn out 4.5m shells a year, each costing about $1,000 to manufacture.

  Meanwhile, in Europe and the US, a total of 1.3m shells are being produced at an average cost of about $4,000.

  The adviser said: “We need a central plan like in the first or second world war. Industrial warfare requires national institutions and a Nato-level industrial warfare committee, which would regulate prices.”

  Some say things are improving, but the fact is that, according to Sikorski, 40% of the Russian government’s budget is devoted to defence. Russia, not Europe, has turned into a war economy.

  The Ukrainian military adviser predicts the west may have caught up in two to three years in drones and munitions, but that means the next few years are the most dangerous the region would face.

  Michael Bohnert, an engineer at the Rand Corporation, sees no sign of a public coordinated military plan to raise the firepower needed, let alone new munitions factories. Incredibly, the adviser to the Polish chief of staff, Krzysztof Król, admitted last month that after two years, “we have not yet created proper conditions for a Ukrainian victory ... As it is, we give enough only for Ukraine to survive.”

  To the extent that any European leader has grasped this lacuna, it is Macron, with his emergency meeting in Paris on 26 February to look at ammunition shortfalls and repeated speeches on the existential threat to Europe from the far right and Putin.

  It will take two meetings, one involving the G7 leaders in Italy next week and then the 75th anniversary Nato summit in July, to reveal whether the west wishes not to contain Putin, but to defeat him, with all the risk that carries.

  Macron will know many in Europe see the external threat as coming from migration, not Putin, and as a French politician he knows the popular lure of an easy peace.

  Flowers, not tomatoes, greeted the French prime minister, Édouard Daladier, to his surprise, when he returned from Munich in 1938. Knowing the threat posed by Hitler, and that he and Chamberlain had betrayed Czechoslovakia, he turned to his aide and said of the cheering crowds: “Bunch of fools.”

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  2024/06/08
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  Infoman

  Taylor Swift arrives in the UK at last

  Guardian 08 Jun 2024

  As Cruel Summer fades away and she surveys the audience, Taylor Swift looks startled. She clasps her hand to her chest and shakes her head in disbelief. They cheer louder. “That went straight to my head!” she exclaims, apparently unable to take in the vociferousness of their reaction.

  Of course, this is hokum – she doubtless says something similar every night. That said, a certain degree of incredulity does attend the Eras tour.

  It arrives in the UK trailing yet more mind-boggling headlines. In Aberfeldy, Loch Tay has been renamed Loch Tay-Tay in her honour. Not to be outdone, and undaunted by their inability to come up with a Taylor Swift-related pun, Liverpool has rebranded itself as Taylor Town. A radio station in London has been set up that plays nothing but Taylor Swift songs. A recent feature in this newspaper claimed that it has become literally impossible to avoid hearing Taylor Swift’s name mentioned: no mean feat in an era where popular culture is so atomised and personally tailored that – if a rash of puzzled social media posts about SZA are to be believed – an artist can be big enough to headline Glastonbury while remaining unknown to a significant proportion of Glastonbury-goers.

  So much attention has been focused on the Eras tour that reviewing it seems almost beside the point. Every conceivable detail has already been dissected, from the surprise songs she inserts into each show – here it was Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve from 2022’s Midnights and a medley of ’Tis the Damn Season from Evermore and Lover’s Daylight – to the mass of visual signifiers and concert rituals that leave Swifties looking less like mainstream pop fans than Deadheads, albeit more prone to sequins and less interested in LSD than the Grateful Dead devotees.

  Still, it’s an incredibly impressive show. It succeeds in leaping across an eclectic range of material – dubstep-inspired, dark-hued pop, tweedy folk, monster chorussporting anthems, and acoustic guitar-driven songs that show her Nashville grounding – all linked by Swift’s keen melodic awareness and ability to turn songs about famous exes and celebrity rivals into universally relatable figures.

  You don’t want for plumes of dry ice and flames, costume changes – snake-bedecked catsuit; diaphanous wood nymph with cape suitable for Stevie Nicksish twirling – or indeed dancers pedalling around the stage on glowing neon bicycles during Blank Space, but it feels less predicated on special effects than on Swift’s ability to work the cameras that track her every move in a way that seems to draw in the walls of a vast rugby stadium. She’s a genuinely engaging performer on a grand scale: the big screens behind her constantly pick up on an array of expressions and asides that create a sense of collusion and intimacy.

  The songs from her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, get the same vociferous response as hits from 1989 or Red, but it does leave you wondering where she will go next. It’s not Cassandra-ish to suggest that this kind of ubiquity is an unsustainable moment. Whether she’ll even try is an interesting question; perhaps, like Macavity, the character Swift sang about in the movie Cats, she’ll do a disappearing act.

  But, for now, Swift seems all powerful, so much so that she can take risks: amid the big hits, truncated so more can be crammed into the show, she plays All Too Well – a 10-minutelong song rejected by her record company – and it’s a show-stopping emotional sucker punch. And when she performs the piano ballad Champagne Problems, the response is so loud, and goes on for so long, that Swift looks overwhelmed again, and this time it doesn’t seem like hokum.

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  2024/06/08
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  Infoman

  Airbnb Gets Help From Hosts To Fight Lawmaker

  KON­RAD PUTZIER AND AL­LI­SON POHLE

  The Wall Street Journal 05/6/2024

  Julie Marks rents out her Jericho, Vt., basement and a guest unit on Airbnb. When state officials proposed a bill in 2021 to restrict short-term rentals, she wrote an opinion piece against it in a local paper.

  Soon, she got a message from Rent Responsibly, the national network for shortterm rental host groups that is partly funded by Expedia Group, which owns the vacation rental-listing site Vrbo. Rent Responsibly encouraged her to form her own state group to oppose the bill.

  “One night after a couple of glasses of wine at 1 a.m. I made a website and then boom—there it was,” Marks said. Within three weeks, 600 supporters had signed on.

  At the suggestion of another state’s host group, she hired a lobbyist. Marks and other group leaders met lawmakers for coffee. They testified at hearings and hosted happy hours at local breweries. Within a few months, the Vermont bill was dead.

  Airbnb hosts are emerging as a potent political force, often with the financial backing and organizational support of the industry that prefers to let the individual hosts be the face of the movement while the companies help behind the scenes.

  Hosts have formed countless advocacy groups across the U.S. under Rent Responsi

  bly. They are swarming statehouses, flooding cities and towns with letters and showing up at community meetings by the hundreds.

  And, in states such as Vermont, they are starting to tip the political balance of power.

  “The professionalization of host advocacy efforts is really leading to a turning of the tides in a lot of communities,” said Noah Stewart, head of U.S. advocacy at Expedia Group.

  Airbnb also helps leaders craft messages and keeps hosts in the loop about coming legislative hearings through its platform.

  “That’s huge, because otherwise we have no way to reach all those folks,” Marks said.

  Hosts’ rising political clout comes at a crucial time for the U.S. short-term rental industry, which is facing a wave of bills and rules designed to make it harder to turn homes into Airbnbs.

  New York City last year took the most aggressive step yet, eliminating nearly all short-term rentals when it began strictly enforcing registration rules. Other states and cities may follow suit.

  “The snowball effect is the risk,” said Robert Mollins, a stock analyst at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors who tracks Airbnb and Expedia.

  Hosts and short-term rental companies face a formidable coalition of hotel companies and unions and neighborhood groups worried about traffic and party houses. Housing advocates have also been critical, saying that renting homes on Airbnb shrinks the housing supply and raises rents.

  Host groups say their industry promotes tourism, creating jobs and tax revenue, and helps middle-class homeowners pay their bills.

  Upsurge in hosts

  Until recently, hosts struggled to match the political clout of their opponents. One big reason that is starting to change: There are way more hosts now. Their number in the U.S. has grown to more than 790,000, according to data company AirDNA, an eightfold increase since 2014 and up 35% since the start of the pandemic.

  Host revenues have also surged as people spend more on travel. That means there are now lots of people with lots more money to lose if Airbnb restrictions pass.

  Colorado’s advocacy group, the Colorado Lodging and Resort Alliance, or Clara, launched in 2019. At first, members mainly used the host group to share information on bills. By 2023, the focus shifted to advocacy. Clara later used funding from the industry group Vacation Rental Management Association to hire its own lobbyist to help defeat proposed shortterm rental regulations, said Toby Babich, a Clara founder.

  The Colorado Senate introduced a bill this year that would quadruple property taxes on short-term rentals. But by then, “the wagons were circled,” Babich said. The group formed a coalition of stakeholder groups, held meetings with lawmakers and solicited economic impact studies.

  In April, the bill died in committee.

  Not all groups have been successful. Surging rents during the pandemic led to more calls to restrict short-term rentals, which can shrink the housing supply as homes get turned into de facto hotels.

  In Hawaii, short-term rental owners last year formed a statewide group and lawmakers later introduced a bill that would leave counties free to set limits on Airbnbs. Hawaii has faced surging rents and the Lahaina fires, which destroyed hundreds of homes on Maui, worsened the matter.

  “The fires provided a lot more fuel for this fight,” said Jennifer Wilkinson, vice president of the state host group Hawai’i Mid and Short-Term Rental Alliance. The bill became law in May, and the mayor of Maui has proposed a county law that would remove thousands of short-term rental listings on the island.

  In New York, hosts last year staged protests outside City Hall and filed a lawsuit alongside Airbnb, but failed to stop the de facto short-termrental ban.

  ‘Community leader’

  Aside from independent, politically active host groups such as Clara, there are also more informal groups set up by Airbnb. Andrea Henderson, a short-term rental host in Denver, received an Airbnb email soliciting applications to be a host “community leader” and run one of these groups. She was selected in 2022.

  She isn’t on the company’s payroll, but said she does get funding to put on local meetups. The Denver group grew from 10 members in 2022 to more than 1,000 in 2024, she said.

  Many hosts hadn’t heard of the Colorado Senate bill. Henderson corresponded with a member of Airbnb’s advocacy team, shared information about the legislation with hosts and encouraged those interested to testify at hearings.

  Some independent groups also get support from Airbnb and Expedia. “They speak authentically because they’re not hired consultants, they’re not PR agencies,” said Jay Carney, global head of policy and communications at Airbnb.

  In Pennsylvania, the Poconos Association of Vacation Rental Owners has biweekly calls with members of the two companies’ policy teams who help draft letters to homeowners associations and community boards, said the group’s executive director Ricky Cortez.

  Still, for the most part the companies stay in the background, and hosts said they are happy with that.

  “If Airbnb walks in the door, no one is going to support them,” Marks said. “But if Julie Marks and her three friends, who are also Vermonters, walk through the door, they’ll listen.”

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  2024/06/05
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  Infoman

  All Hail Phoenix, America’s Robo-Taxi King

  EL­IZA COLLINS

  The Wall Street Journal 05/6/2024 The city’s met­ro­pol­i­tan area reigns as leader in au­ton­o­mous-ve­hi­cle ser­vice

  PHOENIX—While on vacation, Catherine Brist and her husband rode to breakfast in a driverless car, rolling to the beat of electronic dance music.

  They had an escape plan. The couple brought along a hefty marble spoon rest, shaped like a fish and borrowed from their Airbnb. They figured they could bust open a window if the tech taxi went haywire. They didn’t need it.

  After a couple of driverless rides, Brist said she has become “very pro-robot car.” Having no human driver means “nobody is trying to pitch me a weird business,” said the 34-year-old Ph.D. student from New York City.

  The Phoenix area is home to the largest autonomous-vehicle operation in the world, and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is a proud booster. Driverless vehicles are great for traveling incognito, especially on dates, said Gallego, who is single. “When you’re mayor you never know if someone may recognize you or not,” she said.

  The mayor learned who was in charge during a driverless trip to a news conference. “I unbuckled early to make sure people weren’t waiting, and the vehicle stopped,” Gallego said. “A voice came in to be like telling me that you have to remain buckled to be in a Waymo.”

  Waymo One is an appbased ride service similar to Uber—except nobody’s behind the wheel. The app logs tens of thousands of rides every week in the Phoenix metropolitan region, the company said. The company also operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent-company Alphabet, says its driverless cars are safer. There is no risk of getting a lead-footed fleshand-blood driver or one who has been drinking between calls. Yet, as with all manmade machinery, the risk isn’t zero. This year, a Waymo vehicle collided with a cyclist in San Francisco, causing minor injuries. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the company’s safety record. Waymo said the cyclist was initially obscured, and the car didn’t have enough time to avoid the collision. The company said it was cooperating in the investigation.

  Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands wanted to try the driverless experience during a visit to Arizona last year. His security team wasn’t going to take any chances and went on a test drive first. When it was the prime minister’s turn, one agent rode in the front seat. A car followed with another agent behind the wheel.

  Dirk Janssen, the Dutch Consul General in San Francisco, helped organize the ride and acknowledged feeling only a little nervous when the car began to drive away with the prime minister. He had already entrusted Waymo with VIPs in San Francisco.

  “If I put my kids in it,” Janssen said, “we can put the prime minister in it as well.”

  The prime minister appeared to enjoy the ride. “Wow, it’s driving,” Rutte said in a video from the trip. “It’s totally crazy.”

  Phoenix officials pitch Waymo’s driverless transportation as a boon for businesses interested in locating operations in the area. During visits to potential sites by outof-towners, members of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council ask if they want to ride on a Waymo from the airport.

  For many people, the Waymo ride is the first thing they chat about, said Chris Camacho, head of the economic council. People love not having to make small talk, he said.

  Christine Bustamante, a site consultant for companies seeking to expand, visited Phoenix this year and said she enjoyed riding in a Waymo so much she plans to use them for every ride when she visits.

  “I was just mesmerized,” she said. ”The wheel was turning, and nobody was there.”

  Even so, Bustamante said, her clients make their decisions based on affordable realestate prices, a suitable labor force and a business friendly environment—not who or what is behind the wheel.

  Meghan Alfonso, the CEO of events-planning company Girl About Town, said her staff typically recommend Waymo travel for small bachelor and bachelorette parties.

  Women tend to appreciate not having an unknown person ferrying them late at night, especially after a night of drinking, she said, and men like the freedom to be loud or curse in the car.

  One group was scolded for trying to squeeze too many riders into their Waymo. A voice came through the speaker, yelled and left without them, Alfonso said. Riders also complain about the cars sticking to the speed limits, she said.

  Chris Bonelli, a spokesman for Waymo, said company vehicles adhere to speed limits, require seat belts and don’t allow overcrowding.

  Paul Cronin, a 60-year-old Scottsdale, Ariz., resident, said that seeing driverless Waymo vehicles driving around the area makes him feel as if the future has arrived.

  Yet, Cronin doesn’t see himself riding in one. “I don’t even like to get in airplanes,” he said. “I don’t like to not have control.”

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  2024/06/05
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  Infoman

  Raina

  https://youtu.be/75YqpsZifQI?feature=shared

  2024/06/03
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  Infoman

  How two teenagers changed tennis

  CINDY SHMER­LER

  The New York Times (International Edition) 25 May 2024 In 1974, Evert and Borg won in Paris with the two-handed back­hand

  When Chris Evert arrived in Paris for the 1973 French Open, she was an 18year-old making just her second trip out of the United States. So she is still baffled as to why Philippe Chatrier, then the president of the French Tennis Federation, decided to take her and her mother, Colette, to Le Lido, the legendary burlesque theater on the Champs-Élysées.

  “He took us to dinner, and it was a dance club with half-naked women,” Evert said by phone from her Florida home in April. “They had their breasts showing. My eyes were like saucers. I had never been exposed to anything so sophisticated like that.”

  For Bjorn Borg, the ultimate Paris experience was celebrating his first French Open championship in 1974 with a private dinner in the Eiffel Tower.

  It has been more than a half century since Borg and Evert first played the French Open, but this year marks the 50th anniversary of their winning their first major championships in Paris. Evert went on to capture 18 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record seven at the French Open, six at the United States Open, three at Wimbledon and two at the Australian Open. Borg won six French Opens from 1974 to 1981 and five consecutive Wimbledons from 1976 to 1980.

  Borg was just days shy of his 17th birthday when he lost to Adriano Panatta in the round of 16 at the French Open in 1973, only his second appearance at a major after a first-round loss at the 1972 U.S. Open.

  “When I started to play tennis at 8, 9 years old, I had three dreams,” Borg, who will turn 68 in June, said from his home outside Stockholm. “One was to play Davis Cup for Sweden, one was to walk on Centre Court at Wimbledon and the third dream was to win a Grand Slam tournament. Those were my dreams when I was hitting the ball against the wall. So, it meant a lot for me to come to Paris and play my first match in that beautiful stadium.”

  After reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 1971 and the semis of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1972, Evert made her first appearance at the French Open the next year. She reached the final, where she led Margaret Court, the No. 1 seed, by a set and was up 5-3, just two points from the championship in the second set, before losing 6-7 (5), 7-6 (6), 6-4.

  “I just didn’t have that intense feeling,” said Evert, who will turn 70 in December. “Everyone thinks I had that killer instinct like I did in the juniors with the girls my own age. But when I got to the women’s tournament, for some reason I was just more relaxed, and I felt like I had time on my side. I didn’t have the fervor to win that match.”

  A year later, Borg and Evert were ready.

  Borg remembers being down 4-1 and two breaks of serve in the deciding set of his first-round match against Jean-François Caujolle. He then needed five sets to beat Erik Van Dillen and Raul Ramirez before facing Manuel Orantes in the final. After dropping the first two sets, Borg rallied for a 2-6, 6-7 (4), 6-0, 6-1, 6-1 win.

  “Before the tournament I would definitely say I was not the favorite to win,” Borg said. “I surprised myself by being in my first Grand Slam final. I was a bit nervous, but I think he felt more pressure than I did. Plus, he got very tired. And the more we played, the more tired he got and the more pressure I could see that he felt.”

  Evert has no recollection of whom she played along the way to capturing her first French Open in 1974. She doesn’t recall ousting Virginia Ruzici, who would go on to win the 1978 French Open and then lose to Evert in the final in 1980. Or that she didn’t lose a set en route to the title, which she won 6-1, 6-2 over her friend and doubles partner Olga Morozova. She does, however, remember having a vastly different attitude that year.

  “I was a different person,” Evert said. “I had the experience of the year before, of letting it slip away, of not closing it out like I should have, and I learned from that. I was mentally tougher, and I knew that if I had that opportunity again, to close out the match and win a Slam, I was going to do it.”

  Evert won again in 1975 and, after skipping the tournament for three years to play World Team Tennis, she won back-to-back championships again in 1979 and 1980. Her greatest victory came in 1985, when she upset topseeded Martina Navratilova 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-5 in a nearly three-hour final that enabled her to reclaim the world No. 1 ranking. She beat Navratilova again in the 1986 final for her last victory at a major.

  Evert and Borg possessed tangible similarities. Both were introverts by nature and, for the most part, imperturbable on the court. They, along with Jimmy Connors, hit with then-novel two-handed backhands, spawning generations of players with double-fisted ground strokes. And they both almost never missed.

  “I think we introduced the world to the way we played,” Borg said. “Chrissie and I liked to play from the back court. We had two-handed backhands, and not too many players did that.”

  To Evert, whose two-handed backhand was encouraged by her teaching-pro father, Jimmy, Borg was always the star.

  “In Paris they were a little behind the times when it came to equality and women’s liberation and celebrating women athletes,” said Evert, who won at least one major every year from 1974 to 1986. “It was all about men’s tennis. And Bjorn was like a rock star, like one of the Beatles. He had to have security guards around him. The girls were screaming and crying and trying to grab at him. I’d never seen anybody idolized like him. To this day I think he’s still the biggest star tennis has ever had.”

  Even the current generation of players recognizes the impact that Borg and Evert have had.

  “Bjorn Borg? I mean he was a freak,” said Frances Tiafoe. “He was unreal. Crazy records within a short span. He didn’t say a word, the silent assassin. His movement, great form, he changed the game to be played more from the back of the court. He was a full-on rock star, the kind of guy I like.”

  Jessica Pegula called Evert a legend.

  “She changed the game with her twohanded backhand, not just for girls but for guys too,” Pegula said. “She was a trendsetter, which is pretty cool.”

  Evert said she believed that her legacy in the sport was more than her backhand and steely determination.

  “My real legacy was bringing girls into the game of tennis,” she said. “Bjorn and I were the first teenagers who made it big. And we brought a new generation of kids to the game.”

  As for the 50th anniversary of their first French Open titles, Borg and Evert are struck by the speed of time.

  “It sounds scary when you say it, really strange,” said Borg, who will retire as captain of the Laver Cup’s Team Europe after this year’s event in Berlin in September. “Fifty years is a long time, but I remember it like it was yesterday, and it’s good to have that memory.”

  “When I hear it, I can’t believe it,” said Evert, who recently concluded chemotherapy for a recurrence of ovarian cancer and will return to ESPN’s broadcast booth at the French Open and at Wimbledon. “I’m in the last trimester of my life right now, and yeah, it makes me feel old.”

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  Corporate-minded, unapologetically

  FRANCESCA MARI

  The New York Times (International Edition) 25 May 2024 Gen Z col­lege stu­dents seek fi­nance jobs, but don’t call them sell­outs

  The meme was an image of a head with “I need to get rich” slapped across it. “Freshmen after spending 0.02 seconds on campus,” read the caption, posted in 2023 to the anonymous messaging app Sidechat.

  The campus in question was Harvard, where, at a wood-paneled dining hall last year, two juniors explained how to assess a fellow undergraduate’s earning potential. It’s easy, they said, as we ate mussels, beets and sautéed chard: You can tell by who’s getting a bulge bracket internship.

  “What?” Benny Goldman, a then-28year-old economics P.h.D. student and their residential tutor, was confused.

  One of the students paused, surprised that he was unfamiliar with the term: A bulge bracket bank, like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase or Citi. The biggest, most prestigious global investment banks. A B.B., her friend explained. Not to be confused with M.B.B., which stands for three of the most prestigious management consulting firms: McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group.

  While the main image of elite campuses during this commencement season might be activists in kaffiyehs pitching tents on electric green lawns, most students on campus are focused not on protesting the war in Gaza, but on what will come after graduation.

  Despite the popular image of this generation — that of Greta Thunberg and the Parkland activists — as one driven by idealism, Gen Z students at these schools appear to be strikingly corporate-minded. Even when they arrive at college wanting something very different, an increasing number of students at elite universities seek the imprimatur of employment by a powerful firm and “making a bag” (slang for a sack of money) as quickly as possible.

  Elite universities have always been major feeders into finance and consulting, and students have always wanted to make money. According to the annual American Freshman Survey, the biggest increase in students wanting to become “very well off financially” happened between the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s been creeping up since then.

  But in the last five years, faculty and administrators say, the pull of these industries has become supercharged. In an age of astronomical housing costs, high tuition and inequality, students and their parents increasingly see college as a means to a lucrative job, more than a place to explore.

  A “HERD MENTALITY”

  At Harvard, a graduating senior, who passed on a full scholarship to another school, told me that he felt immense pressure to show his parents that their $400,000 investment in his Harvard education would allow him to get the sort of job where he could make a million dollars a year. Upon graduation, he will join the private equity firm Blackstone, where, he believes, he will learn and achieve more in six years than 30 years in a public-service-oriented organization.

  Another student, from Uruguay, who spent his second summer in a row practicing case studies in preparation for management consulting internship interviews, told me that everyone arrived on campus hoping to change the world. But what they learn at Harvard, he said, is that actually doing anything meaningful is too hard. People give up on their dreams, he told me, and decide they might as well make money. Someone else told me it was common at parties to hear their peers say they just want to sell out.

  “There’s definitely a herd mentality,” said Joshua Parker, a 21-year-old Harvard junior from Hawaii. “If you’re not doing finance or tech, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong.”

  As a freshman, he planned to major in environmental engineering. As a sophomore, he switched to economics, joining five of his six roommates. One of those roommates told me that he hoped to run a hedge fund by the time he was in his 30s. Before that, he wanted to earn a good salary, which he defined as $500,000 a year.

  According to a survey of Harvard seniors by the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, the share of 2023 graduates going into finance and consulting exceeded 40 percent for the second year in a row. (The official Harvard Institutional Research survey yields lower percentages for those fields than the Crimson survey, because it includes students who aren’t entering the work force.)

  These statistics approach the previous highs in 2007, after which the global financial crisis drove the share down to a recent low of 20 percent in 2009, from which it’s been regaining ground since.

  Fifteen years ago, fewer students went into tech. Adding in that sector, the share of graduates starting what some students non-disparagingly refer to as “sellout jobs” was a record-shattering 60 percent in 2022 and nearly 54 percent in 2023. (That decrease reflected an industrywide contraction in tech hiring.)

  “When people say ‘selling out,’ I mean, obviously, there’s some implicit judgment there,” said Aden Barton, a 23year-old Harvard senior who wrote an opinion column for the student newspaper headlined, “How Harvard Careerism Killed the Classroom.”

  “But it really is just almost a descriptive term at this point for people pursuing certain career paths,” he continued. “I’m not trying to denigrate anybody’s career path nor my own.” (He interned at a hedge fund last summer.)

  David Halek, director of employer relations at Yale’s Office of Career Strategy, thinks students may use the term “sell out” because of the perceived certainty: “It’s the easy path to follow. It is well defined,” he said.

  “It’s hard to conceptualize other things,” said Andy Wang, a social studies concentrator at Harvard who recently graduated.

  Some students talk about turning to a different career later on, after they’ve made enough money. “Nowadays, English concentrators often say they’re going into finance or management consulting for a couple of years before writing their novel,” said James Wood, a Harvard professor of the practice of literary criticism.

  And a surprising number of students explain their desire for a corporate job by drawing on the ethos of effective altruism: Whether they are conscious of the movement or not, they believe they can have greater impact by maximizing earnings to donate to a cause than working for that cause.

  But once students board the prestige escalator and become accustomed to a certain salary, walking away can feel funny. Like, well, walking off an escalator.

  FINANCIAL PRESSURES

  The change is striking to those who have been in academia for years, and not just at Harvard.

  Roger Woolsey, executive director of the career center at Union College, a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, N.Y., said he first noticed a change around 2015, with students who had been in high school during the Great Recession and who therefore prioritized financial security.

  “The students saw what their parents went through, and the parents saw what happened to themselves,” he said. “You couple that with college tuition continuing to rise,” he continued, and students started looking for monetary payoffs right after graduation.

  Sara Lazenby, an institutional policy analyst for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that might be why students and their parents were much more focused on professional outcomes than they used to be.

  “In the past few years,” she said, “I’ve seen a higher level of interest in this first-destination data” — stats on what jobs graduates are getting out of college.

  “Twenty years ago, an ‘introduction to investment banking’ event was held at the undergraduate library at Harvard,” said Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Forty students showed up, all men, and when asked to define ‘investment banking,’ none raised their hands.”

  Now, according to Goldman Sachs, the bank had six times as many applicants this year for summer internships as it did 10 years ago, and was 20 percent more selective for this summer’s class than it was last year. JPMorgan also saw a record number of undergraduate applications for internships and full-time positions this year.

  The director of the Mignone Center for Career Success at Harvard, Manny Contomanolis, also chalked up the change, in part, to financial pressure. “Harvard is more diverse than ever before,” Mr. Contomanolis said, with nearly one in five students eligible for a low-income Pell Grant.

  Those students, he said, weigh whether to, for instance, “take a job back in my border town community in Texas and make a big impact in a kind of public service sense” or get a job with “a salary that would be life changing for my family.”

  However, according to The Harvard Crimson’s senior survey, as Mr. Barton noted in his opinion column, “The aggregate rate of ‘selling out’ is about the same — around 60 percent — for all income brackets.”

  The main distinction is that students from low-income families are comparatively more likely to go into technology than finance.

  In other words, there is something additional at play, which Mr. Barton argues has to do with the nature of prestige. “If you tell me you’re working at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, that’s amazing, their eyes are going to light up,” Mr. Barton said. “If you tell somebody, ‘Oh, I took this random nonprofit job,’ or even a journalism job, even if you’re going to a huge name, it’s going to be a little bit of a question mark.”

  Maibritt Henkel, a 21-year-old junior at Harvard, is an economics major with moral reservations about banking and consulting. Ms. Henkel sometimes worries that others might misread her decision not to go into those industries as evidence that she couldn’t hack it.

  “Even if you don’t want to do it for the rest of your life, it’s seen kind of as the golden standard of a smart, hardworking person,” she said.

  Some students have also become skeptical about traditional avenues of social change, like government and nonprofits, which have attracted fewer Harvard students since the pandemic, according to the Harvard Office of Institutional Research.

  Matine Khalighi, 22, founded a nonprofit organization to award scholarships to homeless youth when he was in eighth grade. When he began studying economics at Harvard, his organization, EEqual, was granting 50 scholarships a year. But some of the corporations that funded EEqual were contributing to inequality that created homelessness, he said. Philanthropy wasn’t the solution for systemic change, he decided. Instead, he turned to finance, with the idea that the sector could marshal capital quickly for social impact.

  Employers encourage this way of thinking. “We often talk about the fact that we work with some of the biggest emitters on the planet because we believe that’s how we actually affect climate change,” said Blair Ciesil, the global leader of talent attraction at McKinsey.

  THE RECRUITMENT RATCHET

  Princeton University’s senior survey results are nearly identical to The Crimson’s Senior Survey: About 38 percent of 2023 graduates who were employed took jobs in finance and consulting; adding tech and engineering, the rate is close to 60 percent, compared with 53 percent in 2016, the earliest year for which the data is available.

  This isn’t solely an Ivy League phenomenon. Schools slice their data differently, but at many colleges, a large percentage of students pursue these fields. At Amherst College in Massachusetts, in 2022, 32 percent of employed undergrads went into finance and consulting, and 11 percent went into internet and software, for a total of about 43 percent. Between 2017 and 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles, sent about 21 percent of employed students into engineering and computer science, 9 percent into consulting and nearly 10 percent into finance, for a total of roughly 40 percent.

  Part of that has to do with recruitment; the most prestigious banks and consulting firms do so only at certain colleges, and they have intensified their presence on those campuses in recent years. Over the last five years or so, “the idea of thinking about your professional path has moved much earlier in the undergraduate experience,” Ms. Ciesil said.

  She said the banks first began talking to students earlier, and it was the entrance of Big Tech onto the scene, asking for junior summer applications by the end of sophomore year, that accelerated recruitment timelines.

  THE EFFECTIVE ALTRUIST INFLUENCE

  The marker that really distinguishes Gen Z is how pessimistic its members are, and how much they feel like life is beyond their control, according to Jean Twenge, a psychologist who analyzed data from national surveys of high school students and first-year college students in her book “Generations.”

  Money, of course, helps give people a sense of control. And because of income inequality, “there’s this idea that you either make it or you don’t, so you better make it,” Ms. Twenge said.

  Mihir Desai, a professor at Harvard’s business and law schools, wrote a 2017 essay in The Crimson titled “The Trouble With Optionality,” arguing that students who habitually pursue the security of prestigious employment foreclose the risk-taking and longer-range thinking necessary for more unusual or idealistic achievements.

  Mr. Desai believes that’s often because they are responding to the bigger picture, like threats to workers from artificial intelligence, and political and financial upheaval.

  In recent years, he’s observed two trends among students pursuing wealth. There’s “the option-buyer,” the student who takes a job in finance or consulting to buy more time or to keep options open. Then there’s what he calls “the lottery ticket buyer,” the students who go all-in on a risky venture hoping to make a windfall. “They know people who bought Bitcoin at $2,000. They know people who bought Tesla at $20,” he said.

  Some faculty see the influence of effective altruism among this generation: In the last five years, Roosevelt Montás, a senior lecturer at Columbia University and the former director of its Center for the Core Curriculum, has noticed a new trend when he asks students in his American Political Thought classes to consider their future.

  “Almost every discussion, someone will come in and say, ‘Well, I can go and make a lot of money and do more good with that money than I could by doing some kind of charitable or service profession,’” Mr. Montás said. “It’s there constantly — a way of justifying a career that is organized around making money.”

  Mr. Desai said all of this logic goes, “‘Make the bag so you can do good in the world, make the bag so you can go into retirement, make the bag so you can then go do what you really want to do.’”

  But this “really underestimates how important work is to people’s lives,” he said. “What it gets wrong is, you spend 15 years at the hedge fund, you’re going to be a different person. You don’t just go work and make a lot of money, you go work and you become a different person.”

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  Infoman

  Drugs or sacraments? Churches blur the lines

  It showed me how everything in my life was perfectly placed at the right moment at the right time for a purpose

  ERNESTO LON­DOÑO

  The New York Times (International Edition) 25 May 2024 Psychedelics are of­fered at spir­i­tual re­treats, even in places they are il­le­gal

  Facing the latest participants attending her four-day psychedelic retreat, Whitney Lasseter made a bold claim: The ceremonies they would take part in were sanctioned by U.S. law, which sets a high bar for the government to interfere in religious practices.

  “We are using these medicines to connect with the divine,” said Ms. Lasseter, the founder of All Tribes Medicine Assembly, one of dozens of organizations that describe themselves as churches and view their use of psychoactive substances as sacramental, even though they are generally illegal under federal law. “It’s your right to practice your religion however you are guided.”

  Eight guests seated in a circle in a suburban Austin, Texas, living room nodded, some looking apprehensive, as Ms. Lasseter outlined the sequence of rituals ahead.

  First, there would be a detoxification protocol in which poisonous secretions of a frog from the Amazon are dabbed on tiny burn marks on a person’s skin, often inducing nausea and projectile vomiting. Later, they would take a potent dose of psilocybin mushrooms, then smoke toxins from the Sonoran Desert toad, which brings on a brief altered state in which people often flail about, scream and sob. When it is done, many describe a feeling of bliss.

  As psychedelics show promise as treatments for depression, trauma and addiction, they are increasingly being offered at retreats that blend spirituality with alternative medicine by people who assert that their dispensing of such compounds is protected under religious freedom laws.

  There is no official count of psychedelic churches, but an association of them, established two years ago, says it has more than 60 groups in North America.

  Two churches, in New Mexico and Oregon, sued the Drug Enforcement Administration in the 2000s, winning the right to import and serve ayahuasca, a psychoactive Amazonian brew. The ruling set a legal precedent at the intersection of religion and drug policy, but as new organizations have emerged rapidly in recent years, the courts are grappling again to determine what constitutes a church.

  The growing field includes a wide range: retreat businesses, operations that sell psychoactive drugs online and congregations that hold worship services regularly in keeping with longstanding traditions.

  For now, law enforcement officials have shown little interest in cracking down on these groups, most of which are subject to little state or federal regulation. But experts say they worry that as such operations rise in visibility, especially among people seeking help with mental health issues, many lack the oversight and scientific rigor needed to safely administer psychedelics.

  “There is going to be a disaster down the road,” said Anthony Coulson, a former D.E.A. agent who now works as a consultant for medical companies that hope to bring psychedelics into clinical settings. “There’s no doubt in my mind there’s going to be a reckoning.”

  SHIFTING LANDSCAPE

  Evidence suggests that ancient societies used mind-altering drugs ritualistically long before a British psychiatrist coined the term psychedelics in the 1950s, when scientists were studying whether compounds like L.S.D. could improve psychotherapy and help patients overcome alcoholism.

  In the 1970s, the Nixon administration’s war on drugs ended that research as psychedelics were added to the government’s most restricted category of illegal drugs.

  Narrow exceptions were made in the decades that followed. In 1981, the Department of Justice sanctioned the use of peyote, a psychoactive cactus, in Native American Church rituals.

  Members of that church sued an Oregon state agency after losing their jobs for using peyote, which remained banned under state law.

  The case, which reached the Supreme Court, led Congress in 1993 to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, establishing that the government could restrict religious practices only to advance a “compelling governmental interest,” and even then, the “least restrictive means” were required.

  That standard was tested when the churches in New Mexico and Oregon successfully sued the D.E.A., bolstering the case for the sacramental use of psychedelics.

  Major universities and the federal government are spending millions of dollars researching the medicinal value of psychedelics, which scientists say disrupt routine brain function in therapeutic ways.

  For some, psychedelics can be more destabilizing than healing and can, in rare cases, induce psychosis, mental health experts say. No government agency closely tracks adverse experiences with psychedelics in unregulated settings.

  Oregon and Colorado recently passed measures allowing the therapeutic use of psychedelics.

  But for now, the drugs remain largely unavailable for patients in regulated settings because they are illegal under federal law, leaving people who seek them turning to groups that claim religious exemptions.

  Law enforcement officials have expressed concern that some groups are actually drug retailers or profit-making retreat businesses using religious grounds to skirt drug laws.

  The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidelines on the criteria religious groups must meet to get tax benefits, but Congress and the courts have not established clear guidance on what constitutes a legitimate church.

  INSIDE A RETREAT

  Ms. Lasseter, 44, founded All Tribes Medicine Assembly in Austin two years ago. Her guiding belief, she said, is that psychedelics can unlock people’s innate healing potential and give them a direct connection to God or the divine.

  Psychedelics had first helped Ms. Lasseter, who had struggled with addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, when she was in her late 30s, she said. Reeling after a breakup, she smoked Bufo, the psychedelic derived from the Sonoran desert toad. It left her with clarity about her past and future, Ms. Lasseter recalled, seeming to wipe clear years of pain and self-loathing.

  “It showed me how everything in my life was perfectly placed at the right moment at the right time for a purpose,” she said.

  Ms. Lasseter and many others who administer psychedelics in spiritual settings say they help numerous people who are suffering and have seen a vast majority of them walk away from retreats or ceremonies feeling better.

  Still, even some intimately familiar with the field have misgivings.

  The Rev. Joe Welker, who leads a Presbyterian congregation in Vermont, spent years taking psychedelics in spiritual communities and credited those experiences with deepening his understanding of theology. But about three years ago, he said, he grew wary about the blending of spirituality and psychedelics as he saw people who emerged from such settings more destabilized than healed.

  “The risks are understudied,” he said. And instances of harm often get swept under the rug, he added.

  Ms. Lasseter, who was ordained as a minister through an online organization, said that she is well aware of the risks of her work. She said she engages a nurse to screen retreat applicants for psychiatric disorders that can be exacerbated by psychedelics, such as schizophrenia, and has participants sign waivers.

  Since 2022, Ms. Lasseter has hosted dozens of workshops, ceremonies and a biweekly worship service where, she said, “we celebrate being alive.”

  But her highest priority is the church’s therapeutic retreats, which cost $4,444 a person and are held every few months. Ms. Lasseter said her church is just breaking even financially.

  Attendees struggling with depression, trauma and addiction, the church’s website says, can expect to walk away with “a new lease on life.”

  During psilocybin and Bufo ceremonies at a recent retreat, Ms. Lasseter remained calm as participants displayed a jarring range of emotions.

  One participant on this day was Mekenzi Falslev, a mother of two from Utah who was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said she had been in deep distress when she met Ms. Lasseter last year.

  “I remember praying and thinking, ‘This is it ,’” Ms. Fa ls lev ,33, said .“I have done everything I can do. What can God give me?”

  Another participant, John Verhelst, 57, said he had come from his home in New Braunfels, Texas, hoping for a chance to reclaim his religious faith after hearing from a colleague who had smoked Bufo with Ms. Lasseter.

  Then there was Sean Carnell, a former Marine from Massachusetts, who became interested in psychedelics after listening to accounts of transformation on a popular podcast hosted by a former Navy SEAL.

  Mr. Carnell, 44, said he came to the retreat hoping to tend to wounds that began in childhood, when he said he was sexually abused, then compounded after the suicide of his best friend, a fellow Marine. He found little reprieve in the psychiatric drugs he got from the Department of Veterans Affairs, he said. “I felt like a zombie. I didn’t feel alive.”

  Much of the time guests spent at the retreat near Austin did not involve psychedelic compounds.

  Members of the group began their days going on morning walks and praying together while watching the sunrise. They attended yoga classes and meditation sessions. At night, before eating, they held hands as someone said grace.

  In the end, Mr. Verhelst said the ceremonies allowed him to make peace with his turbulent relationship with his late mother, who, like him, had struggled with addiction.

  Ms. Falslev called the experience a “beautiful rebirth.”

  Mr. Carnell said he felt an incandescent form of love during the ceremonies — for himself and those who stood by him as he struggled. But the most meaningful insight, he said, was feeling deeply connected to God, a figure who at one point seemed tangible, like a divine force sitting on his shoulder.

  Other than witnessing the birth of his children, he said, “It was the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

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  Infoman

  The Real Reasons Stocks Are Hitting Highs

  CONTRIBUTOR Martin Tillier PUBLISHED MAY 22, 2024 10:34AM EDT Image of an investor looking at market data on a computer CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

  I speak to a lot of people, and in conversations with investors, the most frequent thing expressed to me about the current level of the major stock indices is a kind of happy bewilderment. They are happy to see stocks at or around all-time highs, but a bit mystified as to why the market is so elevated.

  After all, inflation, while down significantly from its peak, has remained stubbornly above 3%. As a result, the expectations for six or seven rate cuts this year -- the thing that drove the market higher in the second half of last year -- have turned into a debate about whether interest rates should be cut at all. One even hears occasional talk of a further hike later this year.

  Then there is the insidious impact of the early ads in the Presidential election, with Republicans pointing out that the federal debt is massive and growing and suggesting that the economy is basically a slow moving car wreck, and Democrats in Republican-led states and municipalities also suggesting economic failure.

  Overall, it is hard to escape the feeling that we are in bubble giving some investors a false sense of security. So, what is driving all of this? Is it actually a bubble, fueled by the government handing out money in defiance of the Fed’s attempts to slow things down using monetary policy? Or is it an inevitable result of so much cash hitting the system during a decade of ultra-low rates, money that is still seeking a return? Or might it be that things aren’t that bad at all, that our perception of an economy in trouble is wrong?

  The evidence suggests that it is the latter; we may feel that things are going badly, but the facts suggest otherwise. I will take my facts over your feelings anytime.

  This is about more than tech, or crypto, or whatever else people think is driving what they see as unsustainable gains. The Nasdaq, which is seen as best reflecting tech stocks, is around its high for sure, but the run up has been led by the Dow, which is more representative of industrial and manufacturing names. That isn’t the stuff of which bubbles are made. In fact, 2023 saw the highest manufacturing output in US history and so far, 2024 looks like it will beat that record.

  And anyway, a “bubble,” by definition, is a move up based on speculation and froth, whereas this move is based on two solid, fundamental things.

  First, Q1 earnings have been objectively good. According to the most recent blog from John Butters at FactSet’s Earnings Insight, after 93% of S&P 500 companies had reported, an above average 78% beat expectations for EPS. They are recording beats by an average of 7.5%, which is above the 10-year average for that metric, and their profits grew by 5.7%, the highest rate since Q2 of 2022. It might not feel like it, but American business is doing just fine, thank you.

  Then there is the basic fact that we are at the beginning of a shift in the way we work that will result in a massive increase in productivity. AI may seem overhyped in some ways, but it is changing the way companies of every size, shape and specialty are doing business. One could argue that those changes are or will be disruptive from a societal perspective, but from a business perspective, greater efficiency, and therefore greater profitability, is coming.

  Ultimately, when you consider the evidence, the surprising thing is not that stock indices are at such high levels, but rather why they aren’t even higher. That is because the current situation is being tempered by some concern for the future, and not just from traders and investors. So far this earnings season, 54 of the 91 companies that have guided for next quarter have issued guidance that was negative or fell short of expectations, with only 37 sounding positive.

  On the other side of that coin, though, as Butters points out in his most recent post, mentions of “inflation” by CEOs in their commentary fell again this quarter, making that less of a concern than it has been for a while.

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  Ultimately, American stock prices are reflective of the profits and prospects for profits of US businesses above all else, and on that front, things are going well, no matter what politicians’ attack ads may say or what you might feel. There is some concern going forward that is holding stocks back but, all things considered, the market looks quite fairly valued right now.

  Skip Ad The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

  2024/05/22
• 
  

  Infoman

  PC makers hope A.I. can reverse years of decline

  KAREN WEISE AND BRIAN X. CHEN Karen Weise re­ported from Red­mond, and Brian X. Chen from San Fran­cisco.

  The New York Times (International Edition) 22 May 2024

  The race to put artificial intelligence everywhere is taking a detour through the good old laptop computer.

  Microsoft on Monday introduced a new kind of computer designed for artificial intelligence. The machines, Microsoft says, will run A.I. systems on chips and other gear inside the computers so they are faster, more personal and more private.

  The new computers, called Copilot+ PC, will allow people to use A.I. to make it easier to find documents and files they have worked on, emails they have read or websites they have browsed. Their A.I. systems will also automate tasks like photo editing and language translation.

  The new design will be included in Microsoft’s Surface laptops and highend products that run on the Windows operating system offered by Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, some of the largest PC makers in the world.

  The A.I. PC, industry analysts believe, could reverse a longtime decline in the importance of the personal computer. For the last two decades, the demand for the fastest laptops has diminished because so much software was moved into cloud computing centers. A strong internet connection and web browser was all most people needed.

  But A.I. stretches that long-distance relationship to its limits. ChatGPT and other generative A.I. tools are run in data centers stuffed with expensive and sophisticated chips that can process the largest, most advanced systems. Even the most cutting-edge chatbots take time to receive queries, process them and send back responses. It is also extremely expensive to manage.

  Microsoft wants to run A.I. systems directly on a personal computer to eliminate that lag time and cut the price. Microsoft has been shrinking the size of A.I. systems, called models, to make them easier to run outside of data centers. It said more than 40 will run directly on the laptops.

  Analysts expect Apple to follow suit next month at its conference for software developers, where the company will announce an overhaul for Siri, its virtual assistant, and an overall strategy for integrating more A.I. capabilities into its laptops and iPhones.

  Whether the A.I. PC takes off depends on the companies’ ability to create compelling reasons for buyers to upgrade. The initial sales of these new computers, which cost more than $1,000, will be small, said Linn Huang, an analyst at IDC, which closely tracks the market. But by the end of the decade — assuming A.I. tools turn out to be useful — they will be “ubiquitous,” he predicted. “Everything will be an A.I. PC.”

  The computer industry is looking for a jolt. Consumers have been upgrading their own computers less frequently, as the music and photos they once stored on their machines now often live online, on Spotify, Netflix or iCloud. Computer purchases by companies, schools and other institutions have finally stabilized after booming — and then crashing — during the pandemic.

  Some high-end smartphones have already been integrating A.I. chips, but the sales have fallen short because the features “are still not sophisticated enough to catalyze a faster upgrade cycle,” Mehdi Hosseini, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group, wrote in a research note. It will be at least another year, he said, before enough meaningful breakthroughs will lead consumers to take note.

  At the event, Microsoft showed new laptops with what it likened to having a photographic memory. A user can ask Copilot, Microsoft’s chatbot, to use a feature called Recall to look up a file by typing a question using natural language, such as, “Can you find me a video call I had with Joe recently where he was holding an ‘I Love New York’ coffee mug?” The computer will then immediately be able to retrieve the file containing those details because the A.I. systems are constantly scanning what the user does on the laptop.

  “It remembers things that I forget,” Matt Barlow, Microsoft’s head of marketing for Surface computers, said in an interview.

  Microsoft said the information used for this Recall function was stored directly on the laptop for privacy and would not be sent back to the company’s servers or be used in training future A.I. systems. Pavan Davuluri, a Microsoft executive overseeing Windows, said that with the Recall system, users would also be able to opt out of sharing certain types of information, such as visits to specific websites, but that some sensitive data, such as financial information and private browsing sessions, would not be monitored by default.

  Microsoft last month released A.I. models small enough to run on a phone that it said performed almost as well as GPT-3.5, the much larger system that initially underpinned OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot when it debuted in late 2022.

  (The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

  Chipmakers have also made advances, like adjusting a laptop’s battery life to allow for the enormous number of calculations that A.I. demands. The new computers have dedicated chips built by Qualcomm, the largest chip provider for smartphones.

  Though the type of chip inside the new A.I. computers, known as a neural processing unit, specializes in handling complex A.I. tasks, such as generating images and summarizing documents, the benefits may still be unnoticeable to consumers, said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor and researcher of artificial intelligence at Arizona State University.

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  Infoman

  How to invest for the forever renters

  PAULETTE PER­HACH

  The New York Times (International Edition) 22 May 2024 Build­ing long-term wealth without own­ing a home re­quires a mind-set shift

  Moving back and forth from Tennessee to Alaska, Michael Rogers and his wife Christy have twice been stuck simultaneously paying a mortgage and rent. Once, in 2006, the situation dragged on for eight months, finally ending when they sold their house in Tennessee for $20,000 below what they’d paid for it.

  Other adventures in homeownership ended well — the couple doubled their money after selling a fixer-upper. Then later, with another property, they had to pay out $30,000 to fix a mudslide around their home, a mistake caused by the builder.

  Two years ago, the Rogerses moved to Kingsport, in northeastern Tennessee, where they signed a lease on an apartment they thought would be a yearlong stopgap before buying again.

  They just renewed their lease for a third year, and have decided to remain renters for good. Mr. Rogers, a construction manager, likes the convenience of being able to move when a job calls.

  Either by choice or by being priced out of the market, many people have decided that renting forever is their best — or only — option. Housing costs and interest rates have risen in the last few years, and it can make financial sense to rent. (The New York Times has recently updated its popular rent-versus-buy calculator to help people understand the trade-offs.) In the 1960s, the median house price was a little over twice as much as the average income. It’s now nearly six times as much.

  Home-ownership is a traditional strategy for long-term wealth building. For people who aren’t planning to buy, creating a strong financial plan without building home equity requires a different mind-set.

  Owning a home isn’t a magic bullet to secure retirement. Mr. Rogers has seen how being “house poor” has affected older family members, one of whom has three-quarters of her net worth tied up in her house. That situation leaves people with the option of borrowing against the equity in their home or selling the home to get at the value within it.

  He’s focused on investing instead, preferring the liquidity and stability of the stock market.

  “If you’re buying something like a broad-based U.S. stock index, you’re just kind of buying a slice of the entire U.S. economy,” Mr. Rogers said. “When you buy a house, your risk is concentrated literally down to one house, in one neighborhood, in one state.”

  Mr. Rogers has found that people tend to focus on home equity over other factors. He thinks that can be a mistake.

  “In the current market, particularly in my area, rent looks like an absolute bargain, compared to what houses are selling for now,” he said. “That allows me to really bump up my savings rate. People are like, ‘Well, you’re not building equity.’ Yeah, but I’ve got a 35 percent savings rate. I’m building investment accounts much faster than I would ever build equity in the house.”

  CHOOSING TO RENT

  As in any other market, predicting the future of rent charges is impossible. Rents could deflate as they did during the pandemic in New York City or balloon as they have in Amazon-inflated Seattle. Housing prices could crumble as they did during the Great Recession or explode as they have in San Francisco. The key is to have a plan that covers you in a variety of scenarios.

  “Renting can be a better financial decision; owning can be a better financial decision,” said Ramit Sethi, author of “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” “Too often, we simply buy because our parents told us to, and their parents told them to.”

  Though he’s a millionaire, Mr. Sethi has rented for the last 20 years in cities like San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. When he lived in New York, he calculated that it would have cost him 2.2 times as much per month to own, rather than rent. He emphasizes that your calculations have to include the phantom costs of mortgage interest, taxes and maintenance, which is often estimated at 1 to 3 percent of a home’s value. So he rented and focused on investing. He’s a fan of index funds, target date funds or any long-term, low-cost investment.

  “If you choose to rent, there’s one key thing that is the most important thing of all, which is you absolutely must run your numbers,” he said, “and if it’s cheaper to rent than to buy, you must invest the difference.”

  He also negotiates his rent, which he said many people aren’t aware is an option. He recommends that renters pay attention to comparable housing costs in their area. If they can find better deals, they should go in at renewal time with documentation. “It doesn’t always work,” he said. “When it does, it’s a huge benefit.”

  Over the last century, the S&P 500 has returned an average of about 7 percent a year, when adjusted for inflation.

  Mr. Sethi said most people have no idea what the stock market is returning. “But you need to know that number,” he said, “because it tells you what your opportunity cost is — in other words, how much you could be making if you just put money into the market.”

  Planning your finances while renting also has an emotional element. Mr. Sethi said people shouldn’t feel guilty if they’re renting.

  “Remember that there are literally millions of people in America who rent and invest the difference,” he said.

  RUNNING THE NUMBERS

  “I am constantly being asked why I’m not buying a house,” said Miranda Marquit, who is in her mid-40s and living in Idaho Falls, Idaho. “People think it’s weird.”

  Ms. Marquit earns between $10,000 and $12,000 each month and has been creating an investment portfolio for the last 25 years and multiple income streams for the last 15 years. If you want to start planning a successful financial life without homeownership, she suggests starting with retirement calculators at investor.gov.

  “When deciding how much I’m going to invest each month, I take a very conservative approach and assume a 6 percent rate of return,” she said. “I know a lot of people will say you should assume a much higher rate of return, especially if you’re investing in stocks, but I like to err on the side of caution.”

  You’ll need to factor in how much rent is likely to increase over time (Ms. Marquit uses a 3 percent inflation-based estimate) to come up with the number for how much you’re going to need in retirement.

  “Figuring out whether you’re set for retirement is about running the numbers, whether you rent, have a mortgage or are building a rental empire,” she said. “Look at what you want to do in retirement and estimate your monthly needs. Then figure out how you’ll meet those monthly needs.”

  THE RENTING-ONLY STRATEGY

  “This is very much my life,” said Berna Anat, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. “I don’t see home owning in my future.”

  When someone says she’s throwing away money on renting, she thinks of friends who have homes. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we can’t go on vacation for two years, because termites have eaten the foundation of our bathroom,’ or like, ‘Yeah, we actually can’t hang out this weekend because we are on our hands and knees tiling the grout of our decrepit sunroom,’” she said.

  “Forever renting is very much a movement. It’s a lifestyle.”

  It comes with a cost: the theoretical equity many plan as a stronghold of their retirement.

  Ms. Anat, author of “Money Out Loud,” said replacing that home equity and living a renting lifestyle is about diversification and maximizing investments. If you’re employed full time, she said, you’ll want to be fully invested in a retirement account and getting as much of an employer match as possible.

  “The idea is, if you are not spending on housing costs, closing costs, escrow, property taxes” and charges like homeowners’ association fees, she said, “then you are investing all of that money so that your retirement is as cushy as possible, since you won’t have that equity.”

  “For me, as a forever renter, I have all those things and I’m investing as aggressively as possible,” she said.

  In the short term, Ms. Anat said, you also need to plan for real-world volatility. Your rent could spike or your building could get sold. She recommends an emergency fund of at least six months and a spreadsheet detailing your plan if you lose housing.

  “If you were to have to move out of your apartment tomorrow, what is the actual plan for your funds and your life?” she said. “It’s almost like those earthquake escape plan situations.”

  Another consideration is your credit score: Keep it clean. Make your payments on time and try to keep the amount you owe low compared with your limit. The usual advice is to restrict your borrowing to 30 percent of your credit limit; Ms. Anat tries to stick to 10 to 15 percent.

  Maintaining a strong credit score is critical, she said, because “landlords are looking at that, and you’re more likely to have to shop the market again next month or next year.”

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  2024/05/22
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  Infoman

  Facebook Group Hunts Down Stolen Cars

  TA­LAL AN­SARI

  The Wall Street Journal 22 May 2024 Am­a­teur sleuths help re­unite own­ers with their ve­hi­cles and take no re­wards

  a Facebook group boasting more than 20,000 members, scours Portland, Ore., for vehicles taken from their owners and has become a resource for the city’s police bureau.

  PORTLAND, Ore.—Each day after work, Titan Crawford drives his red 2005 Chevy Silverado through the alleys and dumping grounds of this city, looking for cars that have been reported stolen. If he finds one, he grabs his phone to post it on the Facebook group he founded, PDX Stolen Cars. With over 20,000 members, it is often the second place Portlanders go after calling the police to report a stolen vehicle.

  “Some people have hobbies, like playing sports. Mine has turned into this,” said Crawford, a 40-year-old used-car salesman.

  Crawford founded PDX Stolen Cars in October of 2021 after he found an out-of-place, damaged Kia while walking his dog. He was able to see the registration on the front seat and called the owners, who were out of town and didn’t know their car had been stolen.

  As in many major cities at the time, auto thefts were surging in Portland, with around 1,000 reported each month—the highest since at least 2015, as far back as online police data goes. Crawford searched Facebook for a group where people could post information on stolen cars and others could help find them, but there wasn’t one. So he created PDX Stolen Cars. (PDX refers to the Portland airport code.) Within a week, 300 people had joined. In a month, after the group had a few successes, it was close to 1,000.

  “You find a few stolen cars and then it spreads like wildfire on the internet,” he said. He estimates his group has helped to find around 3,000 cars since its creation.

  PDX Stolen Cars receives nearly 30 posts a day. Some are photos of stolen vehicles along with information like vehicle identification numbers and license-plate numbers, while others are pictures of suspicious vehicles people think may be stolen. Theft victims can search for their vehicle’s license plate, or make and model.

  Bounties and rewards for returning cars are forbidden on the group, as are monetary tips. For safety reasons, members tend to focus on finding abandoned or parked cars.

  Other cities have similar Facebook groups. One in Detroit has nearly 50,000 members and another in Dallas has 24,000. Crawford said he has tried to keep his group smaller to weed out potential scammers.

  PDX Stolen Cars has earned enough respect in the city that it has collaborated with the local police department 18 times since last July on operations to locate large numbers of stolen vehicles. “They’re really providing you the best leads,” Portland Police officer Michael Terrett said of the group.

  Nationwide, vehicle-theft rates rose steadily from 2019 to 2023, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. That was in part due to a raft of stolen Kias and Hyundais, which led to lawsuits and a settlement by the companies. While increases have slowed, nationwide auto thefts rose 1% last year to 1.02 million, according to the NICB.

  Oregon reported a 27% decrease, the second biggest drop in the nation behind Utah. In Portland, car thefts were down 40% in March from the same month last year, at 442.

  Maria del Rosario Perez’s 2000 Ford Explorer was stolen in front of her house in April while she was on unpaid maternity leave. The loss was devastating for the 32-yearold. Her car contained a stroller, booster seat and an infant car seat. With her husband using their other car for work, Perez struggled to go to the grocery store and infant checkups. Each morning, she would embark on a 20-minute walk each way to drop off her other two children at the school-bus stop while carrying her 3-month-old. “It was a lot of walking. I think I even lost weight,” she said.

  After reporting the theft to the police and her insurance company, Perez went to the PDX Stolen Cars group on Facebook, which she had first heard about years ago when another car of hers was stolen and Facebook suggested the group to her.

  Two weeks later, another member replied to her post with photos of an Explorer that looked exactly like hers, right down to the “baby on board” sticker. Crawford met Perez at the stolen vehicle’s location, where police arrived and verified it belonged to her before she took it home— though the baby items were missing.

  “I’m very excited and happy that someone came through for us,” Perez said. “No one paid them.”

  Nicole Heath, an administrator for the group, first joined after her boyfriend’s motorcycle was stolen. “I went out every day searching for his bike. I just instinctively started searching for other people’s stolen cars as well. And then I got hooked,” she said. The 43year-old estimates she has helped recover more than 100 cars in the past 2½ years.

  Earlier this month, Crawford and two other group admins headed out on an operation in conjunction with the Portland Police Bureau and other law-enforcement agencies to find stolen vehicles.

  Admins like Crawford looked primarily for parked vehicles that have been reported stolen, while police officers looked for occupied ones.

  The PDX Stolen Cars team has helped police recover 41 vehicles during similar past operations, but didn’t find any this time.

  The police, however, ended up in a high-speed chase after a stolen Ford F-250, the drivers of which were eventually captured after spike strips were deployed.

  In addition to help from the Facebook group, Portland Police said their operations have improved thanks to a data system made with input from a local team of medical researchers that helps specify characteristics indicating a vehicle has likely been stolen, such as self-installed tinted windows.

  Despite its recent doubledigit decreases, the Portland metro area had the 11th highest vehicle-theft rate per 100,000 residents in 2023, according to the latest available data analyzed by the NICB. That is down from the fifth highest theft rate in 2022.

  “Two years ago, you couldn’t turn a corner without having a stolen car in the vicinity,” Crawford said. “And now it’s nice to have to go out and actually have to try hard to find them.”

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  Infoman

  CareerTok

  Economist (UK) 11 May 2024

  Bartleby CareerTok

  YOUNG JOB-SEEKERS are different from their elders. They expect employers to be cuddlier, more forgiving and more generous with perks and pay cheques. The way they go about hunting for work is also distinct. Rather than relying on family and friends, a growing number of Americans are turning to TikTok in search of advice that will help them climb those all-important first steps up the career ladder.

  Scrolling through their feeds on the short-video app they might come across a creator called Lauren Spearman. Ms Spearman uploads videos about “redflag job postings” and “unreasonable job applications”. Or they might find Kennie Bukky, who shares her “salary journey” and hot tips for pay negotiations. If they scroll down further, sooner or later they are likely to happen upon Brittany Peatsch. She went viral after posting a video account of her own experience being laid off from Cloudflare, a software company, and now creates videos offering advice to others suffering through similar ordeals.

  Videos like these, with the hashtag CareerTok, have had over 2bn views on the app. Their creators are a diverse bunch: people old enough to be former chief executives, 30-somethings recounting their own early career mistakes, the youngsters themselves. Many of those viewing the clips belong, like your guest columnist, to Generation Z. Given that this cohort, born between 1997 and 2012, will make up 27% of the workforce in the OECD club of mostly rich countries by 2025, social-media career counsel is likely only to grow in prominence.

  One thing the success of careerrelated content on TikTok makes clear as day is that Gen-Zers desire transparency in the workplace. “I love that people are recording their lay-offs because it is exposing the people who are doing terrible lay-offs,” says Chris Williams, formerly in charge of human resources at Microsoft, a software giant, who is now a career adviser—and a content creator himself. Ms Spearman started posting videos on TikTok to document the difficulties she was having job-hunting. “There was a lack of salary transparency, I was set unreasonable tasks, I wasn’t getting any feedback,” she recalls. “In some instances, it was complete ghosting.”

  Ms Spearman’s videos are designed primarily to encourage companies to do better. A surprising number respond— probably a reflection of the power of TikTok, but also a sign of workers’ expectations. After she posted a “red flag role” clip about Never Fully Dressed, the clothing firm replied to her and the job listing was updated to reflect her criticism. In the aftermath of Ms Peatsch’s viral lay-off video, Cloudflare’s chief executive, Matthew Prince, tweeted on X that the video was painful to watch. He added that the company was determined not to make similar mistakes in the future. Businesses have hired Ms Spearman to work on marketing campaigns. CareerTok stardom can, it seems, lead to a career beyond social media.

  CareerTok gives the creators and viewers a sense of solidarity. More important, its roaring success and billions of views also give them strength in numbers. Ms Bukky, a black woman, hopes that her thoughts and experiences regarding pay negotiations make her viewers more confident in their own professional lives. TikTokers are, she says, forcing employers to ask themselves, “are we paying our employees properly and are we treating them fairly?”

  CareerTok videos do not always get the same positive reception. Lay-off clips in particular have faced a backlash from certain quarters. Even if they do not admit to it, many older executives doubtless find them to be an expression of Gen-Z entitlement. On X, Candace Owens, a prominent right-wing commentator, called Ms Peatsch’s Cloudflare video “young and stupid”.

  A bigger worry than grumpy managers and hectoring conservatives is potential legal liability. David Harmon, an employment lawyer, cautions creators to “be mindful”. It is all too easy to post something that runs afoul of non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, securities laws or trade secrets, he says— valuable career advice in itself.

  Neither the wrath of old fogeys nor fear of legal consequences is likely to stop venues like CareerTok becoming the site of a workplace struggle between the expectations of Gen-Z workers and their employers. The struggle is not going away, even if TikTok is banned in America. Young professionals will simply find another outlet.

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  2024/05/13