Today's Must-Reads - 10 January 2024

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and interesting articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. This is a slimmed down version for all readers but is usually for paid subscribers only.

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Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• New research finds the natural seasonality of coronaviruses had more influence on the COVID-19 pandemic than government interventions. A new international study on the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in six northern European countries has unexpectedly discovered that the pre-existing seasonal nature of coronaviruses may have played more of a role during the pandemic than any of the government public health intervention policies – including vaccinations, lockdowns, masks and travel restrictions. The scientific study was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Clinical Medicine.

• “I'm an A&E doctor and this is why it's time to start wearing masks again... as experts issue dire warnings over a virulent new Covid variant. I can hear the universal groan. But if you want to spend winter without an irritating cough rattling through your chest day and night (you know, that cough doing the rounds in the office, or supermarket) or that gnawing whole body ache, where even your hair hurts — then wear a mask.”

Economy/Energy/Finance

• India plans to double its coal production. India faces a challenge in building more power capacity to meet growing demand, as the country plans to double coal production and add 88 gigawatts of thermal power plants by 2032. This move may seem counterintuitive for India, which is highly vulnerable to climate impacts. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to avoid power shortages as the country heads into elections.

• Money is leaving China for the first time in over 20 years.

  

• German Industry Shrinks for Sixth Month as Recession Looms. Production declined 0.7% from October, led by capital goods, and intermediate goods, the statistics office said Tuesday. That’s the sixth consecutive drop and defies economists in a Bloomberg survey, who’d predicted a 0.3% increase. Germany probably ended 2023 with its first recession since the pandemic, as analysts reckon data will reveal a second straight contraction in output in the fourth quarter.

• The Next Supply Chain Crisis? The kids Obama attempted to bomb in Yemen all those years ago grew up fast. They’ve now formed surprisingly efficient militias who hate the West and have become powerful enough to impact global trade. Yemeni Houthi rebels are blocking carriers from passing through the Suez Canal and have created near pandemic-level disruptions to the supply chain. The militia is currently in route to the Suez Canal via the Red Sea. There has been a 25% drop in commercial traffic through the Suez Canal since November. They were initially targeted shipping liners linked to Israel, but began targeting everyone by December.

Health

• The number of people who started to receive disability benefits each month in the UK (excluding Scotland) reached record levels in 2023. An upward trend which started in 2021.

  

Politics

• The Washington Post Is in Full-Scale Collapse. According to the report, not only is the Post losing $100 million a year, but it lost over half of its online engagement by the end of 2023. The signs were already there by mid-year, and the worst has come to pass. Having a billionaire sugar daddy has helped mask some of the issues plaguing the Post, but the tide can only be held back so long. To lose over 50 percent of its online viewership is catastrophic for an outlet with such high overhead costs. Subscriber numbers have also nosedived throughout the Biden administration.

• Parents who refuse children gender change face seven years in jail in Scotland. SNP outlines proposal to ban 'conversion therapy' after its self-ID law was blocked by UK Government. Proposals published on Tuesday state that actions designed to “change or suppress” another individual’s gender identity, causing them physical or psychological harm, would become illegal under the radical law. SNP ministers acknowledged that so-called conversion practices often took place in a “family setting”, raising the prospect that parents could be criminalised if they refuse to go along with their child’s declaration that they are transgender.

• Trump Warns of ‘Big Trouble’ if Supreme Court Rules Against Ballot Access. The nation’s high court on Jan. 5 agreed to hear a case that stemmed from the Colorado Supreme Court’s earlier ruling that barred President Trump from appearing on the ballot in the state. The judges wrote that he should be blocked due to their interpretation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s Section 3, which prohibits candidates who engaged in an “insurrection or rebellion” from running for office.

• A trigger warning for James Bond? Shoot me now…The BFI is treating cinemagoers like overgrown children. The idea that the BFI needs to emphasise that it does not condone (let alone smirkingly share) Bond’s cheerfully adolescent, locker-room attitudes to curing lesbians, or passing as Japanese, genuinely does suggest a mental-health crisis. What has become of us? Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt answered that question back in 2018, in The Coddling of the American Mind. They argued that ‘overprotection is having a negative effect on university students and that the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces does more harm than good’.

• Fact-checking Rishi Sunak’s tax claims. Rishi Sunak seems to have a New Year’s resolution: to claim that taxes are falling and say it so often that people start to believe him rather than their own lying payslip. He says that the last Budget was the biggest tax-cutting event since the 1980s, etc. He tells today’s Sunday Telegraph that more welfare reform will allow him to cut taxes even more.

Science

• "No Chance" For Safe Moon Landing in US Peregrine Mission, Say Officials. An historic commercial US mission to the Moon will fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel, organizers admitted Tuesday, ending for the time being America's hopes of placing its first spacecraft on the lunar surface since the Apollo era. Fixed to the top of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander blasted off Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then successfully separated from its launch vehicle. But a few hours later, Astrobotic began reporting malfunctions, starting with an inability to orient Peregrine's solar panel towards the Sun and keep its battery topped up, owing to a propulsion glitch that also damaged the spacecraft's exterior.

Technology

• Half Of All Skills Will Be Outdated Within Two Years, Study Suggests. Executives believe nearly half of the skills that exist in today’s workforce won’t be relevant just two years from now, thanks to artificial intelligence. And a lot of that includes their own skills. This startling proclamation came out of a recent survey of 800 executives and 800 employees released by edX, an online education platform. Executives in the survey estimate that within the next five years, their organizations will eliminate over half (56%) of entry-level knowledge worker roles because of AI. What’s more, 79% of executives predict that entry-level knowledge worker jobs will no longer exist as AI creates an entirely new suite of roles for employees entering the workforce.

• The curse of the scrolletariat. Don't fall for Silicon Valley's screenless 'saviour'. What if our obsession with “screen time” is itself a smokescreen? What if, rather than saving us, this vanishing act obscures the deeper drivers of our digital dissatisfaction? After all, the real rot at the core of modern computing is not screens, but the Scylla and Charybdis of digital life: the unceasing acceleration of culture and human anxieties about our finitude.

Vaccines

• ICAN Obtains Data Used to Identify “Hot Lots” of Moderna and Pfizer Covid Vaccines. This data makes it possible to determine the number of doses distributed per lot number. According to OpenVAERS’ analyses of this data obtained by ICAN, there are several “hot lots.” Their graph below, for example, shows that one lot from both Pfizer and Moderna was responsible for extremely large numbers of myocarditis reports.