This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Donald Trump appears to experience the world through the glow of a television screen. He has long placed a premium on those who look the part in front of the camera. Paging Dr. Mehmet Oz.Trump has picked Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS, as the agency is known, falls under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Last week, Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as HHS secretary. As you may have guessed, Kennedy and Oz are not only friends but kindred spirits. Oz is a global adviser at iHerb, a for-profit company that offers “Earth’s best-curated selection of health and wellness products at the best possible value.” He and Kennedy, two relative outsiders, are now positioned to enjoy a symbiotic relationship within Trump’s chaotic ecosystem.Oz was last seen running for a Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2022. He lost to John Fetterman, who, despite dealing with the aftereffects of a stroke, carried the state by five points. Throughout that race, Oz struggled to combat the perception that he was a charlatan and carpetbagger who primarily lived in New Jersey. (Fetterman’s team repeatedly tagged Oz as an out-of-touch elitist, trolling him, for example, when he went grocery shopping for crudités and lamented high prices.) After that electoral defeat, Oz’s political dreams seemed all but dashed. But he wisely remained loyal to Trump—a person who has the ability to change trajectories on a whim.In the pre-Trump era, it might have been a stretch to describe CMS administrator as an overtly political position. But Oz’s objective under Trump couldn’t be clearer. In a statement, Trump, using his reliably perplexing capitalization, telegraphed that Oz will bring a certain ethos to the job—a little MAGA, a little MAHA. Oz, Trump promised, will “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.” And, because he’s Trump, he mentioned Oz’s nine daytime Emmy Awards.Some 150 million Americans currently rely on the agency’s insurance programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare. Oz has been a proponent of Medicare Advantage for All. Though that sounds like the Medicare for All initiative championed by progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders, the two programs are quite different. At its core, Medicare for All would set the U.S. on a path toward nationalizing health care. Trump would never go for that. But Medicare Advantage already exists within America’s patchwork private/public system, and Oz might push to strengthen it. He could also face budgetary pressure to weaken it. Oz’s own health-care views haven’t remained consistent. Though he once praised the mandatory universal models of Germany and Switzerland, as a Republican politician he threw his support behind privatized Medicare.When asked about Oz’s nomination, Fetterman, his former opponent, told CNN: “As long as he’s willing to protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, I’m voting for the dude.” Some people were pissed. Victoria Perrone, who served as the director of operations on Fetterman’s Senate campaign, called out her old boss on social media: “Dr. Oz broke his pledge to ‘do no harm’ when he said red onions prevent ovarian cancer. My sis died of OC in 6/2022. This is a huge personal betrayal to me. We know he won’t protect the Medicaid that paid for her treatments,” Perrone posted on X. “I feel like I’ve been duped and 2 years of working on your campaign was a waste,” she added.The above argument is illustrative of another reality Trump acknowledged in announcing his pick: “Make America Healthy Again” keeps growing. Oz, Trump declared, “will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” He went a step further, promising that Oz will bring “a strong voice to the key pillars of the MAHA Movement.” Oz holds degrees from Harvard and Penn, and he worked as a professor of surgery at Columbia. In spite of that pedigree, Oz has spent years facing credible accusations of medical quackery for his endorsement of dietary supplements. In 2014, he received a dramatic dressing-down on Capitol Hill. Senator Claire McCaskill read three statements that Oz had made on his eponymous show: “You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they’ve found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type: It’s green coffee extract.” “I’ve got the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat: It’s raspberry ketone.” “Garcinia cambogia: It may be the simple solution you’ve been looking for to bust your body fat for good.” Oz’s defense that day was that his job was to be a “cheerleader” for the Dr. Oz audience. “I actually do personally believe in the items I talk about in the show. I passionately study them. I recognize oftentimes they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact, but nevertheless, I would give my audience the advice I give my family,” he testified.He emerged from that hearing largely unscathed. Two years later, Oz would go on to read what he claimed were Trump’s medical records on that same show. He famously praised Trump’s testosterone levels and supposed all-around health. Four years after that, once Trump was president, Oz sent emails to White House officials, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, pushing them to rush patient trials for hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment for COVID.In the next Trump administration, those are the sorts of exchanges Oz could be having with Kennedy—or with Trump himself. How did we get here? Oz landed this gig because he’s good on TV, yes, but also because, when he entered the political arena, he fully aligned himself with Trump. The 47th president rewards loyalty. If there’s one thing that’s become clear from his administration nominations so far, it’s that.Some of Trump’s appointments will be less consequential than others. Anything involving the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans is inarguably serious. Oz’s confirmation is not guaranteed, but his selection has already confirmed that nothing about Trump 2.0 is mere bluster.Related: Trump is coming for Obamacare again. (From January) Why is Dr. Oz so bad at Twitter? (From 2022) Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Another theory of the Trump movement What the men of the internet are trying to prove Arash Azizi: The problem with boycotting Israel Today’s News Republican members of the House Ethics Committee blocked the release of the investigation into the sexual-misconduct and drug-use allegations against former Representative Matt Gaetz. Jose Ibarra, who was found guilty of killing Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Trump tapped former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, who previously led the U.S. Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, to be the secretary of education. Dispatches The Weekly Planet: Drought is an immigration issue, and Trump’s climate policies are designed to ignore that, Zoë Schlanger writes. Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening Read Video by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: Archive Films / Getty; Internet Archive; Prelinger Associates / Getty. Put Down the VacuumBy Annie Lowrey The other night, a friend came over. A dear friend. A friend who has helped me out when I’ve been sick, and who brought over takeout when I had just given birth. Still, before he arrived, I vacuumed. I thought about this while reading the Gender Equity Policy Institute’s recent report on gender and domestic labor. The study finds that mothers spend twice as much time as fathers “on the essential and unpaid work” of taking care of kids and the home, and that women spend more time on this than men, regardless of parental and relationship status. “Simply being a woman” is the instrumental variable, the study concludes. Read the full article.More From The Atlantic The cancer gene more men should test for We’re about to find out how much Americans like vaccines. Apple lost the plot on texting. What going “wild on health” looks like Culture Break Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty Read. If you feel upset about the election, these seven books are a prescription for rage and despair, Ruth Madievsky writes.Gather. Group fitness classes aren’t just about exercise—they’re also a ridiculous, perfect way to make friends, Mikala Jamison writes.Play our daily crossword.Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. 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Death was in the discourse leading up to Friday night’s boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. Marketing the fight, the two combatants repeatedly threatened to kill each other; a Netflix promo documentary referenced the bitten and bloodied ear Tyson left Evander Holyfield with in a 1997 match; social-media chatter reveled in the possibility that Paul, one of the internet’s favorite villains, would be murdered on air.But once the match began, streamed from a packed arena to 60 million households, it felt morbid in an unexpected way—in the way of a retirement home, not a slasher movie. Paul, a 27-year-old YouTube star, jabbed and jabbed with the precision of a piston. Tyson, the 58-year-old heavyweight legend who retired nearly two decades ago, hobbled around the ring and gnawed his glove anxiously, only occasionally returning fire. He looked his age, and at times quite a bit older. Six rounds into the eight-round match—which ended in a unanimous decision for Paul—the commentator Rosie Perez, a longtime friend of Tyson’s, dropped any pretense of being entertained. This was, she said, “a hard story to watch.”As I took that story in, I thought not only about how old Tyson is, but about how old the internet is—how far we are into the process of reality being hollowed-out by digital forces. The ropes advertised tech products: Meta Quest, the VR headset; DraftKings, the gambling network repopularizing one of humankind’s oldest addictions. Paul cut an imposing figure, his neck as thick as a ship’s mast, his tattooed legs swathed in diamond-draped shorts. It was breathtaking to remember that, a little more than decade ago, he became famous as a happy-go-lucky teen goofing around online with his brother, Logan. Now he’s an emblem of a generation of men—and a wider culture—starving for purpose while gorging on spectacle.To trace the Paul brothers’ career is to trace a few epochs of the internet. They got famous on Vine in 2013 by doing boys-will-be-boys stuff: tasing each other, jumping on strangers’ backs, talking to pineapples in the supermarket. These hijinks were like a last flare of the internet’s OMG-so-random era, when logging on felt like an escape to a fantasy world of cat videos and violent stick-figure cartoons. But soon, the Paul brothers came to represent a new paradigm, in which distinctions between the online world and the offline world became more blurred. They were some of the first influencers, leveraging their lives into clickbait.Which means that, suddenly, they needed to figure out what to do with the eyeballs they’d attracted. They began to augment their antics with charity efforts and self-help content. Jake joined a Disney Channel show as an actor but left halfway through its second season, then rebranded as a rapper. Logan founded a podcast that now has more than 4 million subscribers on YouTube. The continual search for the next gimmick also subjected the Pauls to plenty of internet outrage. They earned backlash for offenses as varied as insulting Kazakhstanis, publicizing shady cryptocurrency ventures, and filming a dead body. Their cockiness grew with each attempted cancellation; they tended to apologize and then bounce onward.Yet to call these guys pure trolls isn’t quite right. Every time I see Jake speak, I discern something searching and sad within his boastfulness. In a video endorsing Donald Trump before the 2024 election, he delivered familiar MAGA talking points in a tone of puppy-eyed desperation. “I don’t come to you to make this video to create more division,” he said. “I believe love is the key to the universe and that we should all love each other more and more and more.” The video made me think less about his politics than about his soul. He seemed like a man looking for a cause, and finding it—as so many others have—in Trump’s promise to transform everything.At first, boxing appeared to be just another stunt. In 2018, Logan booked a match against another YouTuber, and Jake fought on the undercard. In the years after that, Logan—whose intense, reptilian demeanor belies presidential aspirations—moved into the scripted battling of WWE. Jake, who has more of a crazy-fox kind of personality, stuck with boxing. In both cases, picking up an athletic side hustle was savvy. Combat sports have experienced a renaissance of cultural relevance over the past decade, driven by legalized betting and the popularity of MMA. Trump has deep links to the world of wrestling; just this past weekend he went to a UFC match. If you’re a man making entertainment for other men these days, chances are you have some sort of relationship to combat sports.[Read: Can a boxer return to the ring after killing?]Even so, Jake’s boxing career has been more durable and significant than anyone would have predicted in 2018. His fight with Tyson produced his 11th win out of 12 bouts. He says he wants to become a bona fide champion, and followers have been treated to footage of him sparring, ice-bathing, and scarfing hamburgers to bulk up. He started his own promotion company; he even tried (unsuccessfully so far) to get fighters to unionize. Why is he doing all of this? Aren’t there easier ways to make money? In a 2023 Netflix documentary about Jake, Logan explained, “He definitely found something with boxing that I think gave him worth”—worth that he didn’t get from “making stupid little insignificant vlogs on YouTube.”Those stupid vlogs were, in some ways, quite significant, helping rewire the aspirations of an entire culture. A Morning Consult survey last year found that a majority of Gen Z—and 41 percent of all American adults—want to be influencers. Trump waged his presidential campaign by enlisting online entertainers in the Paul brothers’ model, such as the prank-pulling Nelk Boys. (He also joined Logan on his podcast.) Yet for all the growth of the influencer economy, the career path can be hellish, involving constant hustle, relentless criticism, and existential meaninglessness. Mugging to the camera for views certainly doesn’t fit neatly with old ideals of masculinity. In that 2023 documentary, Logan remarked, proudly and disgustedly, “We’re fucking media whores.” Jake explained his turn to boxing like this: “I was sick of not being respected.”In this context, the popularity of combat sports is more than just a fad. Today’s American dream tends to involve virtual pursuits—influencing, making a killer app, getting lucky with crypto—but the gladiatorial ring is a macho, meat-space proving ground. No wonder Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match. In the case of the Paul brothers, winning substantiates their right to do what they’ve always done: peacock. As Norman Mailer wrote of Muhammad Ali, reflecting on his tendency for trash talk, “The closer a heavyweight comes to the championship, the more natural it is for him to be a little bit insane, secretly insane, for the heavyweight champion of the world is either the toughest man in the world or he is not, but there is a real possibility he is. It is like being the big toe of God.”The problem for Jake Paul is that he really doesn’t have anywhere near a claim to “toughest man in the world.” He’s widely seen as an interloper, a clown, disrupting and degrading a sport that’s supposed to be meritocratic. His fights have almost all been novelty bouts against influencers and stars from other sports (his only loss was to the most qualified professional boxer he’s previously fought). The respect he’s seeking still hasn’t been found. In publicity leading up to Friday’s fight, he played up the idea that defeating the legendary Mike Tyson would shut up his doubters forever. “I want him to be that old savage Mike,” Jake said at a press conference. “I want the hardest match possible Friday night, and I want there to be no excuses from everyone at home when I knock him out.”But as probably could have been predicted, Tyson turned out to be a 58-year-old man whose body has taken a lifetime of abuse, facing a wealthy 27-year-old who’s devoted his past few years to training. Jake set out to prove he was something realer than a media whore, but he showed only that he had the clout to overhype a terribly unfair fight. Coming so soon after an election partly decided by highly online men who feel their status to be under threat, this outcome seems like an omen: Old systems may soon be torn down, with little to replace them but bluster spun as redemption.“There’s a shift in the world, and good is rising,” Jake said, sweating and panting, in the after-match interview. “The truth is rising. I’m just honored to be a part of America. It feels like we’re back, baby.”

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.In the decade since Donald Trump began to define American politics, critics have struggled to understand his massive appeal. They have perhaps sensed by now that Trump’s support comes from someplace underneath conscious and rational political analyses. Who else but Sigmund Freud to help explain? “The past few years,” the academic and critic Merve Emre wrote in an essay for The New Yorker this past June, “have given us a Freud for the pandemic, a Freud for Ukraine and a Freud for Palestine, a Freud for transfemininity, a Freud for the far right, and a Freud for the vipers’ nest that is the twenty-first-century American university.” History has now given us another iteration: a Freud for the Trump movement.Consensus on the causes of Trump’s sweeping electoral victory has formed around the idea that voters were responding to Democratic performance on material matters, namely inflation and immigration. But the Trump movement has never been, to my mind, strictly concerned with tangible issues; part of the allure is immaterial by nature, addressed to elemental human urges. Trump offered something special on that count from the beginning—a politics consisting not mainly of a positive vision but rather of a series of opportunities to own the libs. In this project, rational policy details aren’t a priority and are sometimes absent altogether; the point is domination of one’s enemies, a libidinal desire.Consider the recent post-election slogan “Your body, my choice,” also engineered to upset and humiliate liberals: It’s an overt statement of sex and dominion. And Trump draws that out in people. “Disinhibition,” the New York Times writer Ezra Klein wrote recently, “is the engine of Trump’s success. It is a strength.” Trump is in touch with the impulses and desires that run counter to social norms, and he invites his audience to put aside the usual internal barriers to acting on or voicing them. This moment is an opportune one for a revival of Freud, whose work, with its signature focus on subterranean inner worlds, helps make sense of these tendencies and their implications for politics.[Read: Washington is shocked]The temptation to psychologize one’s political opponents typically wins out after defeat, the political theorist and professor Corey Robin told me recently. (An easy claim to test: Among the surge of post-election takes is a subgenre of explanatory pieces evaluating the psyches of unexpected Trump voters—suggestions that Latinos are wedded to political strongmen, or that conservative wives cast their votes for right-wingers purely out of fear or submission.) In those periods, “Freud is mobilized to explain why the left failed—not because of institutions or specific forms of economic power or the Cold War, etc., but instead because of psychic structures that the left never really touched,” Robin said. Freud offers something more than simply assigning diagnoses to opponents: “an archaeology of the mind,” Robin told me, that aims to unearth emotions and desires that people aren’t necessarily aware of themselves.That sort of excavation can be useful. Freud helps in forming an account of what people are drawn to in Trump—what pleasure, what gratification. Gary Greenberg, a writer and psychotherapist, argued in a 2018 Guardian essay that Trump is a figure who beckons America back to prior states of development—an indicator that the death drive is at work. Trump, Greenberg wrote, “urges us all to shake loose the surly bonds of civilized conduct: to make science irrelevant and rationality optional, to render truth obsolete, to set power free to roam the world, to lift all the core conditions written into the social contract—fealty to reason, skepticism about instincts, aspirations to justice.” Trump is, in other words, an atavist, inviting citizens to satisfy all of their hungry drives, all of their libidinous instincts: His America is a place for malign energies to express themselves in action. There’s a certain pleasure in that, perhaps, a kind of psychic relief—to lose oneself in a radical movement and to express feelings normally prohibited by society.Today’s left-of-center would also be wise to consider what Freud might teach them about countering an appeal like Trump’s. In an essay published in Jacobin shortly before the election, the author and psychoanalyst Eric Reinhart argued that liberals have still failed to reckon with the psychological tendencies Freud identified that facilitate mass political movements like those of the president-elect. “Proponents of progressive ideals must instead take the reality of aggression, racism, and sadomasochism seriously as enduring political feelings, including in their own ranks, that require constructive political redress,” Reinhart wrote. This doesn’t mean indulging those feelings—rather, it means offering a politics built to contain them. “To craft an effective liberal or left politics, we must stop vainly demanding that people be more reasonable and own up to the persistent reality of destructive human tendencies that manifest not only around Trump but also in countless contexts throughout history,” Reinhart wrote.[Read: What to read if you’re angry about the election]Freudian psychoanalysis has, in the past several decades, faded from a feverish mid-century peak. In 1960, psychoanalysts occupied the majority of psychiatry positions in the United States, but the latter half of the century saw the advent of a vituperative discursive conflict over the validity of some of Freud’s key claims and the credibility of psychoanalysis as an effective, scientific method of clinical treatment. The debate raged across disciplines—by that time, Freud and the psychoanalytic model had been absorbed into numerous other fields, including literature, politics, and sociology. And though psychoanalytic treatment has been largely replaced by more familiar forms of psychiatric care, such as psychopharmacology (the treatment of mental illness with medication) and standardized therapy, Freud’s contributions remain useful.Psychoanalyzing one’s enemies always comes with a certain degree of condescension, which is unfortunate, because the Freudian lens is an egalitarian approach so long as its advocates recognize that they, too, are ruled by motivations they cannot easily recognize or define. “Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive,” the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1936, “the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits—of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.” I believe this insight bears wide application: I’m affected enough by vibes and instincts to believe that some part of my mind beneath my conscious thoughts plays an important role in my day-to-day life and decision making, and I suspect the same is true of others. It seems to me that avid Trump support must be anchored in such parts. In that case, whatever explains the Trump movement has in some sense always been with us and has visited us historically before; let’s pray that this time, the fever breaks quickly.

For Giovanni The year my nephew becomes a man, so do I, I guess. He calls from boot camp after days of hand-to-hand combat, voice husky. A few months ago, at 17, playing Xbox, he could only imagine what the inside of a gas chamber looked like.   I do not cry. It’s the testosterone: it draws tears down to a reservoir so deep in my body, they turn to sheet ice.    Aunt Uncle has a beard now. Aunt Uncle has a jaw that makes it harder to sleep. Aunt Uncle still wears earrings and makeup. Aunt Uncle no longer bleeds—does the nephew?   Each Sunday, I send him letters signed: Love, Aunt and wonder who wrote them. I wonder, too, about the boy he put his hands on, which of them drew blood first.   That day at the park, not so long ago, the ground played to dust beneath our feet. My nephew shot a look at me and said:   I didn’t know you were one of they-them.   But I’m not them, I tried to explain, I’m us.   His expression was tough to read–for the first time, I can picture him in fatigues. All through childhood, he looked like that emoji, the one with glasses. Strangers often mistook him for older than he was.   Once, when we were skating,   I watched him slice up the ice so he could check on a small child who had fallen.   Yesterday, a man at a café told me I look like the frontman for U2.   Nowhere in my letters does it say that, or how I am changing the way leaves do, as if they must be on fire before they fall. I drop the envelopes in the mailbox, and they are weightless as boyhood—the way I imagine it to be.   I write: Do not forget who you are.   Do not lose yourself.   It was me who gave him that name the day he was born: Big Head. Years ago, in the darkness, I changed his diaper and felt his legs reaching like a spider’s.   I couldn’t believe how excited a little kid could get over strawberry yogurt, which tells you I knew nothing about the joy collecting inside of him.   Now he does drills, and the parts that were once boy harden like fruit skins in the sun. He packs a rucksack, leaving most things behind. I want to shout that we’re still with him:   Aunt, Uncle. In my letters, I don’t— I do not say I’m scared for what comes next.   Instead, I ask if he’s been eating. I ask about the pancakes.   I ask about brotherhood.   When finally he gets to see his mother, he cries like a man—like a man— and then pulls up to a little window for fries and a McFlurry. When I hear about all this, it will not be from him.   I never could get him to read. Instead, we went ice skating, he showed me his bikes, his tricks. We walked the boards.   And then, for his 18th birthday, to say goodbye, I took him axe throwing,   watched him hit the bullseye over and over, the blade sinking deep into the splintered wood, while I found it once or twice, both of us still just boys, deep down.  

A close friend—someone whom I’ve always thought of as an optimist—recently shared his theory that, no matter what time you’re living in, it’s generally a bad one. In each era, he posited, quality of life improves in some ways and depreciates in others; the overall quotient of suffering in the world stays the same.Whether this is nihilistic or comforting depends on your worldview. For instance, plenty of Americans are currently celebrating the outcome of the recent presidential election; many are indifferent to national politics; many others are overwhelmed with anger and despair over it. Looking at the bigger picture, I think the upsides of contemporary life—antibiotics, LGBTQ acceptance, transcontinental FaceTime—outweigh the horrors more often than not. I’ll also concede that this decade comes with a continuous drip of bad news about ghastly acts of violence, erosion of human rights, and climate disaster. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a 2023 Gallup poll found that rates of depression in the United States have hit a record high.What can people turn to when the itch to burn everything down, or to surrender to hopelessness, feels barely suppressible? I agree with the novelist Kaitlyn Greenidge that there is power in “naming reality”—in telling, and writing, the truth about what’s happening around us. For those who are despondent about Donald Trump’s victory and feel unable to make a difference, reading might be a place to start. This doesn’t necessitate cracking open textbooks or dense political tracts: All kinds of books can provide solace, and the past few decades have given us no shortage of clear-eyed works of fiction, memoir, history, and poetry about how to survive and organize in—and ultimately improve—a broken world.Reading isn’t a panacea. It’s a place to begin and return to: a road map for where to go from here, regardless of where “here” is. Granted, I am perhaps more comfortable than the average person with imperfect solutions. As a clinical pharmacist, I can’t cure diabetes, for example, but I can help control it, make the medications more affordable sometimes, and agitate for a better health-care system. Similarly, these seven books aren’t a cure for rage and despair. Think of them instead as a prescription.Which Side Are You On, by Ryan Lee WongWong’s novel opens with a mother picking up her son from the airport in a Toyota Prius, her hands clutching the wheel in a death grip. Wry, funny moments like this one animate Wong’s book about the dilemma of trying to correct systemic problems with individual solutions. It’s 2016, and spurred by the real-life police shooting of Akai Gurley, 21-year-old Reed is considering dropping out of Columbia University to dedicate himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. Reed wants nothing more than to usher in a revolution, but unfortunately, he’s a lot better at spouting leftist talking points than at connecting with other people. Like many children, Reed believes that his family is problematic and out of touch. His parents, one a co-leader in the 1980s of South Central’s Black-Korean Coalition, the other a union organizer, push back on his self-righteous idealism. During a brief trip home to see his dying grandmother, Reed wrestles with thorny questions about what makes a good activist and person. Later, in the Prius, Reed’s mother teaches him about the Korean concept of hwabyung, or “burning sickness”—an intense, suppressed rage that will destroy him if he’s not careful—and Reed learns what he really needs: not sound bites but true connection. Wong’s enthralling novel is a reminder that every fight for justice is, at heart, a fight for one another.Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca SolnitSolnit’s short manifesto about the revolutionary power of hope is a rallying cry against defeatism. She begins by critiquing the progressive tendency to harp on the bleakness of societal conditions, insisting that despair keeps oppressive systems afloat. Hope and joy, by contrast, are essential elements of political change, and celebrating wins is a worthy act of defiance against those who would prefer that the average person feel powerless. Originally published in 2004 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and updated in 2005 and 2016, Hope in the Dark provides modern examples of gains on race, class, environment, and queer rights. That said, this is not a feel-good book. It does not sugarcoat, for instance, the fact that we are headed toward ecological disaster. And if you look up the latest figures on the gender wage gap, you’ll find that they’ve hardly budged from those cited by Solnit years ago. Still, her deft logic and kooky aphorisms (“Don’t mistake a lightbulb for the moon, and don’t believe that the moon is useless unless we land on it”) have convinced me that to give up hope is to surrender the future. Fighting for progress can be exhausting and revelatory, full of both pain and pleasure. Solnit insists that doing so is never a waste.[Read: Trump won. Now what?]Women Talking, by Miriam ToewsThe inspired-by-true-events premise of Toews’s seventh novel is literally the stuff of nightmares. In a remote Mennonite colony, women who have suffered mysterious attacks in the night learn that they’ve been drugged and raped by several men from their community. One woman is pregnant with her rapist’s child; another’s 3-year-old has a sexually transmitted infection. The novel takes place in the aftermath of the discovery, just after the men have been temporarily jailed. They are set to be bailed out in two days, and the colony’s bishop demands that the victims forgive them—or else face excommunication and be denied a spot in heaven. The women meet in secret to decide what to do: Comply? Fight back? Leave for an outside world they’ve never experienced? Even against this harrowing backdrop, Toews’s signature humor and eye for small moments of grace make Women Talking an enjoyable and healing read. The women’s discussions are both philosophical (they cannot read, so how can they trust that the Bible requires them to forgive the men?) and practical (if they leave, do they bring their male children?). Any direction they choose will lead to a kind of wilderness: “When we have liberated ourselves,” one woman says in a particularly stirring moment, “we will have to ask ourselves who we are.”Good Talk, by Mira JacobJacob’s graphic-memoir-in-conversations took major guts to write. It begins like this: The author’s white in-laws throw their support behind Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and her otherwise loving family toes the edge of collapse. Good Talk is a funny and painful book-length answer to questions from Jacob’s 6-year-old son, who is half Jewish and half Indian, about race, family, and identity. Jacob, who was raised in the United States by parents who emigrated from India, gorgeously illustrates her formative experiences, touching on respectability politics, colorism within the Indian community, her bisexuality, and her place in America. She refuses to caricaturize the book’s less savory characters—for example, a rich white woman who hires Jacob to ghostwrite her family’s biography and ends up questioning her integrity and oversharing the grisly details of her 2-year-old’s death from cancer. Jacob’s ability to so humanely render the people who cause her grief is powerful. My daughter is too young to ask questions, but one day, when she begins inquiring about the world she’s inheriting, I can tell her, as Jacob told her son, “If you still have hope, my love, then so do I.”[Read: Hope and the historian]The Twenty-Ninth Year, by Hala AlyanStartling, sexy, and chaotic, The Twenty-Ninth Year is a collection of poems narrated by a woman on the verge—of a lot of things. She’s standing at the edge of maturity, of belonging as a Palestinian American, of recovery from anorexia and alcoholism. It’s a tender and violent place, evoked with images that catch in the throat. The first poem, “Truth,” takes the form of a litany of confessions: “I broke / into the bodies of men like a cartoon burglar”; “I’ve seen women eat cotton balls so they wouldn’t eat bread.” That Alyan is a clinical psychologist makes sense—her poems have a clarity that can’t be faked. Dark humor softens the blow of lines such as “I starved myself to starve my mother” and “Define in, I say when anyone asks if I’ve ever been in a war.” She reckons with the loneliness of living in exile and the danger of romanticizing the youthful conviction that there is something incurably wrong with you. A shallow read of the collection might be: I burned my life down so you don’t have to. But I return to the last line of the book: “Marry or burn; either way, you’re transfiguring.” There is always something to set aflame; more optimistically, there is always something left to salvage. The Twenty-Ninth Year is, in the end, a monument to endurance.Riot Baby, by Tochi OnyebuchiIf you’re sick of books described as “healing” or “hopeful,” look no further than Riot Baby. Onyebuchi’s thrilling 2020 novella asks just how far sci-fi dystopias are from real life. Kev, a Black man born during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, California, spends much of his 20s in prison after a botched armed robbery. His sister, Ella, has more supernatural problems: She sees the past and the future and, when fury takes over, can raze cities to the ground—yet she could not protect her brother from the violence of incarceration. When Kev is paroled and a new form of policing via implantable chips and pharmaceutical infusions brings “safety” to the streets of Watts, Ella understands that the subjugation of her community is not a symptom of a broken system; rather, it is evidence of one “working just as designed,” as Onyebuchi put it in an interview. Ella must make a wrenching choice: fight for a defanged kind of freedom within such a system or usher in a new world order no matter the cost. In real life, too often, you cannot control your circumstances, only your actions. But you may find relief in reading a book that reaches a different conclusion.[Read: When national turmoil becomes personal anxiety]Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, by Sarah SchulmanThis 700-plus-page history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power’s New York chapter is, I promise you, a page-turner. Schulman and the filmmaker Jim Hubbard, who were both in ACT UP New York, interviewed 188 members over the course of 17 years about the organization’s work on behalf of those living with HIV/AIDS—“a despised group of people, with no rights, facing a terminal disease for which there were no treatments,” Schulman writes. Part memoir and part oral history, Let the Record Show is a master class on the utility of anger and a historical corrective to chronicles that depict straight white men as the main heroes of the AIDS crisis. In reality, a diverse coalition of activists helped transform HIV into a highly manageable condition. “People who are desperate are much more effective than people who have time to waste,” Schulman argues. ACT UP was known for its brash public actions, and Schulman covers not just what the group accomplished but also how it did it, with electrifying detail. There can be no balm for the fact that many ACT UP members did not survive long enough to be interviewed. There is only awe at the way a group of people “unable to sit out a historic cataclysm” were determined to “force our country to change against its will,” and did.

The Close-up Photographer of the Year competition is now in its sixth year, and recently released its shortlisted picks, with the winners set to be announced in January. The contest “celebrates close-up, macro, and micro photography,” among 11 separate categories. Competition organizers were once again kind enough to share some of these amazing images with us here.To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here.

Today The Atlantic is launching Being Human, a new section and newsletter at TheAtlantic.com as part of a major expansion of its writing and reporting on health. The name describes The Atlantic’s wide-ranging approach to health coverage, on what it means to live a life bound up in a body and conducted by a mysterious, fallible brain.The Atlantic grew its health-reporting team significantly ahead of this launch, and Being Human will broaden the magazine’s existing coverage of the ideas and issues that readers encounter every day: wellness culture, human behavior, mortality and disease, and other mysteries of the body and the mind.Editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg said of the expansion: “The Atlantic’s health team produces the smartest, most analytically acute, and best-written stories of any journalism outfit nationally, and with this new expansion, we’re going to be comprehensive in a way we haven’t been before. In an age of mass confusion––not just about health, of course––I think our team is perfectly positioned to bring clarity to this important coverage area.”Being Human launches with new reporting on the BRCA gene needing a rebrand, by Kristen V. Brown; how the broad support for vaccines in America may be tested by the incoming Trump administration, by Daniel Engber; and the way people are thinking about deodorant all wrong, from Yasmin Tayag.Find more stories at the Being Human section, and please reach out with questions or interest in interviewing our writers about their reporting.Press Contact: Anna Bross | press@theatlantic.com

The other night, a friend came over. A dear friend. A friend who has helped me out when I’ve been sick, and who brought over takeout when I had just given birth. Still, before he arrived, I vacuumed.I thought about this while reading the Gender Equity Policy Institute’s recent report on gender and domestic labor. The study finds that mothers spend twice as much time as fathers “on the essential and unpaid work” of taking care of kids and the home, and that women spend more time on this than men, regardless of parental and relationship status. “Simply being a woman” is the instrumental variable, the study concludes.The time gaps are large for all women, and especially large for certain subgroups. Moms with a high-school education or less spend 19 hours a week on cleaning and child care, versus seven hours for dads with a comparable education. Latina mothers devote 26 hours a week to chores and kids, Latino dads less than a third of that time.Remarkably, having a male domestic partner means more work for women, not less. Married women spend more time on housework than single women; married men spend roughly the same amount as single men. Women’s lower wages and higher propensity to take part-time jobs explain some of the difference: To maximize the household’s total income, the person earning more does less around the house. But other studies have found that women who earn as much as or more than their male partner still devote more time to domestic care. Queer relationships, unsurprisingly, tend to be more equitable.Perhaps most enraging: The gender divide results in women having fewer hours than men to devote to socializing, exercising, going out, or practicing a hobby. No wonder women tend to experience more stress and burnout.A generation after the publication of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s The Second Shift, a lot has changed, and nothing has changed. Women are much more likely to work outside the home, but the distribution of work within the home has not become commensurately equitable. Surveys show that women are not exactly happy with the situation. What would it take for things to be different?It was once thought that technology was part of the answer. Decades of labor-saving innovations cut the hours Americans spent on chores. A dishwasher saves a household an estimated 200 hours a year, a laundry machine three-plus hours of backbreaking work per load. Yet even as technology improved, homes got bigger, filled with more items to care for. As my colleague Derek Thompson has noted, standards of cleanliness have risen over time too: “Automatic washers and dryers raised our expectations for clean clothes and encouraged people to go out and buy new shirts and pants; housewives therefore had more loads of laundry to wash, dry, and fold.”You see this tidiness treadmill on TikTok and Instagram: People recommend how to wash your walls, “refresh” your furniture season by season, and organize everything in your pantry in clear acrylic bins. This labor isn’t time-saving; it is never-ending.The Gender Equity Policy Institute suggests, well, policy changes, including “use it or lose it” parental-leave programs for new fathers, caregiving credits for the Social Security system, and expanded early-child-care programs. But the report acknowledges that the unhappy divide is cultural, and requires cultural shifts as well.Caretaking is a central way that women perform their gender. The advertising of domestic goods and cleaning products remains intently focused on women. The majority of children still grow up watching their mother do more housework than their father. The gender chore gap shows up in children as young as 8.Men doing more housework is an obvious solution, but not one that I am particularly hopeful about. Virtually every woman I know who is unhappy with her household division of labor has tried and failed to get her male partner to pick up the slack. The belief that men care less about having a messy home is pervasive, and supported by at least some evidence. In one anthropological study, researchers had people give them a video tour of their house. Mothers almost unanimously apologized for the rooms not being tidier. “Fathers in their home tours would walk in the same rooms their wives had come through and often made no mention whatsoever of the messiness,” UCLA’s Jeanne Arnold reported. “This was pretty astonishing.”Perhaps the problem is women, and the remedy is for women to do less housework and tolerate a consequentially messier home. “The tidiness level of a home is a matter of simple preference with no right or wrong,” my colleague Jonathan Chait has written, offering an “easy answer” to the chore wars. “My wife and I happily learned to converge on each other’s level of tidiness. We settled—fairly, I think—on a home that’s neater than I’d prefer to keep it, but less neat than she would.”Yet men are perfectly capable of recognizing a mess when it is not theirs. The sociologists Sarah Thébaud, Leah Ruppanner, and Sabino Kornrich asked people to look at photographs of an open-plan living room and kitchen; half saw a living space cluttered with dishes and laundry, and the other half saw a tidy area. The participants rated how clean the room was on a 100-point scale, and said how urgent they thought it was for the owner to take care of it. Men and women had essentially the same ratings of how clean the space was and how important tidying up was.In a second experiment, the same researchers told study participants that the photos were taken by someone looking to rent out their place on an Airbnb-type site. Some participants viewed rooms hosted by “Jennifer,” some by “John.” The participants thought that Jennifer’s clean space was less tidy than John’s, and were more judgmental in their assessments of the female host.Women internalize this kind of judgment, making the individual desire to keep things clean inextricable from the social expectation to do so. Women are critiqued for having pans in the sink and grime on the countertops in a way that men aren’t. Women’s cortisol levels go up when their space is messy in a way that men’s cortisol levels don’t. Asking women to clean less means asking women to accept more criticism, to buck their culture, to put aside their desire for a socially desirable space. At the same time, men internalize the message that an untidy home is not their responsibility.The best path forward might be for men and women to applaud messy, normal, mismatched, lived-in spaces. We should recognize that multinational conglomerates are in the business of devising problems that need solutions, which are conveniently available at Walmart and Target; we should admit that everything done in front of a camera is a performance, not reality; we should acknowledge that being welcomed into someone’s house is a gift of connection, not an invitation to judge. Easy enough for me to say. I am one of the millions of us who cannot seem to put down the vacuum, even if I do not want to pick it up.

Sign up for Being Human, a newsletter that explores wellness culture, mortality and disease, and other mysteries of the body and the mind.When Mary-Claire King discovered the first gene linked to hereditary breast cancer in 1990, she also got to decide its name. She settled on the four letters BRCA, which had three distinct meanings. The name paid homage to UC Berkeley, where King worked at the time; more to the point, it was a nod to Paul Broca, the 19th-century French physician whose work established a link between family history and breast cancer. It was also an abbreviation for breast cancer.A few years after King discovered BRCA1, a second BRCA gene, BRCA2, was identified. Together, they now have more name recognition than probably any other gene, their profile boosted by research that has shown staggering effects on cancer risk. Awareness campaigns followed. A 2013 New York Times op-ed in which Angelina Jolie revealed she’d had a preventive double mastectomy because of her own BRCA mutation drove many women to seek DNA tests themselves. The BRCA genes became inextricably linked with breasts, as much as the pink ribbons that have become an international symbol of breast cancer. And in driving more women to find out if they have BRCA mutations, it’s helped to greatly reduce the risk of hereditary breast cancer.But in the three decades since the genes were discovered, scientists have learned that BRCA mutations can also lead to cancer in the ovaries, the pancreas, and the prostate. More recently, they have been linked with cancers in other parts of the body, such as the esophagus, stomach, and skin. As many as 60 percent of men with changes in BRCA2 develop prostate cancer, yet men are generally far less aware than women that BRCA mutations can affect them at all.“It’s a branding problem,” Colin Pritchard, a professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Washington, told me. Men with family histories of breast cancer may not realize that they should get screened. Physicians, too, lack awareness of which men should get tested, and what steps to take when a mutation is found. Now Pritchard and other researchers are working to rebrand BRCA and the syndrome associated with it so that more men and their doctors consider testing.Normally, the BRCA genes produce proteins that help repair damaged DNA throughout the body. Most people who carry mutations that impair the gene’s function are diagnosed with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome. (Having HBOC means a person is at increased risk for cancer, not that they already have an illness.) Most breast-cancer cases have no known hereditary link, but more than 60 percent of women with a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation will develop breast cancer, compared with about 13 percent of the wider female population. Men, of course, can get breast cancer too, but it's rare, even among BRCA-mutation carriers.[Read: Cancer supertests are here]The full significance of the link between BRCA mutations and pancreatic and prostate cancer has become clear only recently—perhaps in the past decade, said Pritchard. The exact risk these mutations impart to men varies widely in studies. But it’s clearly significant: Not only are men with BRCA mutations more likely to develop prostate cancer, they are also more likely to develop the more aggressive forms of the disease.Roughly one in 400 people carry a harmful mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2, and half of them are men. But women are far more likely to have been tested for the mutations—up to 10 times as likely, according to one study. “Beyoncé’s dad was the only man that I had ever heard of who had it,” Christian Anderson, a 46-year-old social-sciences professor in Washington State who carries a BRCA2 mutation, told me. Anderson got tested after his sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, but countless men like him go undetected. Only about half of Americans get an annual physical, and doctors aren’t always aware of BRCA-screening recommendations for men. Many men who do test for a BRCA mutation report doing it for their daughters, and studies have shown that they tend to be confused about their risks of developing cancer themselves. BRCA-awareness campaigns have led many women to get tested; in the two weeks after Angelina Jolie’s viral op-ed, researchers found that BRCA-testing rates went up by 65 percent. In that case, more people may gotten tested than needed to, but in general, the rise in cancer screenings and elective surgical interventions have helped reduce the rates of deaths from breast and ovarian cancers. Education about the genes’ links to other cancers could do the same for men. To that end, Pritchard argued in a 2019 Nature commentary that Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer syndrome should be renamed King Syndrome after Mary-Claire King. “We need to really rethink this if we're going to educate the public about the importance of these genes for cancer risk for everyone, not just women,” he told me.[Read: I’ll tell you the secret of cancer]As understanding of BRCA’s risks for men has grown, Pritchard’s idea has started to catch on. King, who is now a professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, demurred when I asked her whether the syndrome associated with the BRCA genes should be renamed after her, but agreed that awareness campaigns have focused too narrowly on breasts and ovaries. “We need to bring this awareness to men in the same way that we have for 30 years now to women,” she told me.How exactly Pritchard’s plan might be put into action is unclear. Gene names are overseen by an international committee and rarely changed. That’s part of why Pritchard is suggesting that the name of the syndrome associated with BRCA mutations become King Syndrome—no single governing body oversees that. Recently, ClinGen, an international group of researchers that works to parse the medical significance of genes, recommended that HBOC be rechristened BRCA-related cancer predisposition. (Pritchard told me he thinks that name isn’t quite as “catchy” as King Syndrome.)Uncoupling the syndrome associated with BRCA mutations from breasts would likely be only the first step in getting more at-risk men screened for cancer. It would also be an important step in understanding the full impact of BRCA mutations on men. Because fewer men than women have been tested for BRCA mutations, scientists still don’t have a complete picture of their risk. For example, Pritchard told me, it’s only as more attention has been drawn to male BRCA risk that researchers have discovered mutations are linked to especially aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Penn Medicine recently launched a program dedicated to men and BRCA in part to continue this sort of research.[Read: Scientists have been studying cancers in a very strange way for decades]BRCA’s name is a legacy of a time when scientists thought genetics would offer a simple way to diagnose and treat disease—that one specific mutation would point definitively to one specific cancer. But today, “the idea that a gene would only affect one type of cancer risk is probably outmoded,” Pritchard said. The more scientists explore the human genome, the more complex its connections to health appear. It turns out that when genes don’t work like they should, the possible consequences may very well be infinite.

Sign up for Being Human, a newsletter that explores wellness culture, mortality and disease, and other mysteries of the body and the mind.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services, is America’s most prominent vaccine skeptic. An advocacy organization that he founded and chaired has called the nation’s declining child-immunization rates “good news,” and referred to parents’ lingering doubts about routine shots as COVID-19’s “silver lining.” Now Kennedy may soon be overseeing the cluster of federal agencies that license and recommend vaccines, as well as the multibillion-dollar program that covers the immunization of almost half the nation’s children.Which is to say that America’s most prominent vaccine skeptic could have the power to upend, derail, or otherwise louse up a cornerstone of public health. Raising U.S. vaccination rates to where they are today took decades of investment: In 1991, for example, just 82 percent of toddlers were getting measles shots; by 2019, that number had increased to 92 percent. The first Trump administration actually presided over the historic high point for the nation’s immunization services; now the second may be focused on promoting vaccines’ alleged hidden harms. Kennedy has said that he doesn’t want to take any shots away, but even if he were to emphasize “choice,” his leadership would be a daunting test of Americans’ commitment to vaccines.In many ways, the situation is unprecedented: No one with Kennedy’s mix of inexperience and paranoid distrust has ever held the reins at HHS. He was trained as a lawyer and has no training in biostatistics or any other research bona fides—the sorts of qualifications you’d expect from someone credibly evaluating vaccine efficacy. But the post-pandemic era has already given rise to at least one smaller-scale experiment along these lines. In Florida, vaccine policies have been overseen since 2021 by another noted skeptic of the pharmaceutical industry, State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo. (Kennedy has likened Ladapo to Galileo—yes, the astronomer who faced down the Roman Inquisition.) Under Ladapo’s direction, the state has aggressively resisted federal guidance on COVID-19 vaccination, and its department of health has twice advised Floridians not to get mRNA-based booster shots. “These vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings,” Ladapo declared in January. His public-health contrarianism has also started spilling over into more routine immunization practices. Last winter, during an active measles outbreak at a Florida school, Ladapo abandoned standard practice and allowed unvaccinated children to attend class. He also seemed to make a point of not recommending measles shots for any kids who might have needed them.Jeffrey Goldhagen, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida and the former head of the Duval County health department, believes that this vaccine skepticism has had immense costs. “The deaths and suffering of thousands and thousands of Floridians” can be linked to Ladapo’s policies, he said, particularly regarding COVID shots. But in the years since Ladapo took office, Florida did not become an instant outlier in terms of COVID vaccination numbers, nor in terms of age-adjusted rates of death from COVID. And so far at least, the state’s performance on other immunization metrics is not far off from the rest of America’s. That doesn’t mean Florida’s numbers are good: Among the state’s kindergarteners, routine-vaccination rates have dropped from 93.3 percent for the kids who entered school in the fall of 2020 to 88.1 percent in 2023, and the rate at which kids are getting nonmedical exemptions from vaccine requirements went up from 2.7 to 4.5 percent over the same period. These changes elevate the risk of further outbreaks of measles, or of other infectious diseases that could end up killing children—but they’re not unique to Ladapo’s constituents. National statistics have been moving in the same direction. (To wit: The rate of nonmedical exemptions across the U.S. has gone up by about the same proportion as Florida’s.) All of these disturbing trends may be tied to a growing suspicion of vaccines that was brought on during COVID and fanned by right-wing influencers. Or they could be a lingering effect of the widespread lapse in health care in 2020, during which time many young children were missing doses of vaccines. (Kids who entered public school in 2023 might still be catching up.)In any case, other vaccination rates in Florida look pretty good. Under Ladapo, the state has actually been gaining on the nation as a whole in terms of flu shots for adults and holding its own on immunization for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis in toddlers. Even Ladapo’s outlandish choice last winter to allow unvaccinated kids back into a school with an active measles outbreak did not lead to any further cases of disease. In short, as I noted back in February, Ladapo’s anti-vaccine activism has had few, if any, clear effects. (Ladapo did not respond when I reached out to ask why his policies might have failed to sabotage the state’s vaccination rates.)  If Florida’s immunization rates have been resilient, then America’s may hold up even better in the years to come. That’s because the most important vaccine policies are made at the state and local levels, Rupali Limaye, a professor and scholar of health behavior at Johns Hopkins University, told me. Each state decides whether and how to mandate vaccines to school-age children, or during a pandemic. The states and localities are then responsible for giving out (or choosing not to give out) whichever vaccines are recommended, and sometimes paid for, by the federal government.  But the existence of vaccine-skeptical leadership in Washington, and throughout the Republican Party, could still end up putting pressure on local decision makers, she continued, and could encourage policies that support parental choice at the expense of maximizing immunization rates. As a member of the Cabinet, Kennedy would also have a platform that he’s never had before, from which he can continue to spread untruths about vaccines. “If you start to give people more of a choice, and they are exposed to disinformation and misinformation, then there is that propensity of people to make decisions that are not based on evidence,” Limaye said. (According to The New York Times, many experts say they “worry most” about this aspect of Kennedy’s leadership.)How much will this really matter, though? The mere prominence of Kennedy’s ideas may not do much to drive down vaccination rates on its own. Noel Brewer, a behavioral scientist and public-health professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, told me that attempts to change people’s thoughts and feelings about vaccines are often futile; research shows that talking up the value of getting shots has little impact on behavior. By the same token, one might reasonably expect that talking down the value of vaccines (as Kennedy and Ladapo are wont to do) would be wasted effort too. “It may be that having a public figure talking about this has little effect,” Brewer said.Indeed, much has been made of Kennedy’s apparent intervention during the 2019 measles crisis in Samoa. He arrived there for a visit in the middle of that year, not long after measles immunizations had been suspended, and children’s immunization rates had plummeted. (The crisis began when two babies died from a vaccine-related medical error in 2018.) Kennedy has been linked to the deadly measles outbreak in the months that followed, but if his presence really did give succor to the local anti-vaccine movement, that movement’s broader aims were frustrated: The government declared a state of emergency that fall, and soon the measles-vaccination rate had more than doubled.As head of HHS, though, Kennedy would have direct control over the federal programs that do the sort of work that has been necessary in Samoa, and provide access to vaccines to those who need them most. For example, he’d oversee the agencies that pay for and administer Vaccines for Children, which distributes shots to children in every state. All the experts I spoke with warned that interference with this program could have serious consequences. Other potential actions, such as demanding further safety studies of vaccines and evidence reviews, could slow down decision making and delay the introduction of new vaccines.Kennedy would also have a chance to influence the nation’s vaccine requirements for children, as well as its safety-and-monitoring system, at the highest levels. He’d be in charge of selecting members for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on vaccines that are usually adopted by the states and result in standardized insurance coverage. He’d also oversee the head of the CDC, who in turn has the authority to overrule or amend individual ACIP recommendations.Even if he’s not inclined to squelch any determinations outright, Kennedy’s goal of giving parents latitude might play out in other ways. Brewer, who is currently a voting member of ACIP (but emphasized that he was not speaking in that capacity), said that the committee can issue several different types of rulings, some of which roughly correspond to ACIP saying that Americans should rather than may get a certain vaccine. That distinction can be very consequential, Brewer said: Shots that are made “routine” by ACIP get prioritized in doctor’s offices, for instance, while those that are subject to “shared clinical decision-making” may be held for patients who ask for them specifically. Shifting the country’s vaccination program from a should to a may regime “would destroy uptake,” Brewer told me.Those would seem to be the stakes. The case study of vaccine-skeptical governance that we have in Florida may not look so dire—at least in the specifics. But Kennedy’s ascendancy could be something more than that: He could steer the public-health establishment off the course that it’s been on for many years, and getting back to where we are today could take more years still.

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Enterprise spending on generative AI surged 500% this year, hitting $13.8 billion — up from just $2.3 billion in 2023, according to a new Menlo Ventures report.

Millions of student loan borrowers have had their debt forgiven under the Biden administration. Could President-elect Donald Trump claw back that relief?

The House Ethics panel is mulling whether to release a report on alleged sexual misconduct by Matt Gaetz, whom Donald Trump wants to run the Justice Department.

Nvidia reported earnings after the bell. Here are the results.

Gary Wang was the fifth former FTX executive to be handed a punishment for his role in the collapse of the crypto exchange in late 2022.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the Trump administration could address governmental "overreach" in regulation.

After flatlining the week before, mortgage demand rose last week, despite mortgage rates rising for the fourth straight week.

Delta, the most profitable U.S. airline, expects to expand capacity by no more than 4% year-over-year in 2025.

Capital raising activity is set for a rebound in the U.S. amid a global "industrial renaissance," Oaktree Capital Management Co-Chairman Howard Marks says. 

Senate Judiciary Committee members say the 'duopoly' has left retailers with no ability to negotiate high interchange fees.

Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects its push into new markets to generate an additional $22 billion per year by 2029.

SpaceX launched its sixth Starship test flight to date on Tuesday.

Dr. Mehmet Oz previously ran for a Senate seat from Pennsylvania. CMS is one of the biggest agencies in the U.S. government, overseeing Medicare and Medicaid.

The complaint is the latest move in a bitter legal fight between the U.S.'s three largest so-called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, and the FTC.

President-elect Donald Trump urged Republican senators to stop Democrats from confirming any more of President Joe Biden's judicial nominees.

The official launch of the 2025-26 FAFSA is on track for later this week, ahead of schedule, the Education Department said.

Stellantis is delaying the launch of its Ram electric pickup truck from this year until the first half of 2025.

President-elect Donald Trump attended a SpaceX launch in Texas with CEO Elon Musk, whom he tapped to oversee a government efficiency commission.

Super Micro, which has been battered by bad headlines in recent weeks, said on Monday that it hired BDO as its independent auditor.

Trump's selection is sounding the alarm in the public health community and leaving the biotech and pharmaceutical industries cautious of changes to come. 

• Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

• DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

• 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Jamie Foxx remains hospitalized in Georgia nearly a week after his daughter revealed the actor experienced a "medical complication," a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN on Monday.

A 13-year-old in Ohio has died after "he took a bunch of Benadryl," trying a dangerous TikTok challenge that's circulating online, according to a CNN affiliate and a GoFundMe account from his family.

Pizza guy delivers more than a pie, taking out a fleeing suspect. CNN's Jeanne Moos shows him putting his best foot forward.

Netflix is officially winding down the business that helped make it a household name.

Artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT could lead to a "turbocharging" of consumer harms including fraud and scams, and the US government has substantial authority to crack down on AI-driven consumer harms under existing law, members of the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.

Gobbling up too many refined wheat and rice products, along with eating too few whole grains, is fueling the growth of new cases of type 2 diabetes worldwide, according to a new study that models data through 2018.

At some middle and high schools in the United States, 1 in 4 teens report they've abused prescription stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during the year prior, a new study found.

CEO Tim Cook personally welcomed customers to the new Apple store in Mumbai as the tech company opens its first retail stores in India. CNN's Vedika Sud reports.

Senate Democrats railed against Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday amid reports that the Supreme Court conservative failed to disclose luxury travel, gifts and a real estate transaction involving a GOP megadonor, but their plan to investigate the conservative jurist remains unclear.

• Jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich denied detention appeal in Moscow • Putin visits Russian troops at military headquarters in Kherson • Watch moment WSJ journalist appears in Russian court

Two Russian men who claim to be former Wagner Group commanders have told a human rights activist that they killed children and civilians during their time in Ukraine.

CNN panelists react to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the idea of building a competing theme park next to Disney World in Orlando.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he hopes to replace Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and aims to set up a floor vote on the issue this afternoon, which Republicans are expected to block.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy traveled to Wall Street on Monday to deliver a fresh warning that the House GOP majority will refuse to lift a cap on government borrowing unless Biden agrees to spending cuts that would effectively neutralize his domestic agenda.

The US has sensitive nuclear technology at a nuclear power plant inside Ukraine and is warning Russia not to touch it, according to a letter the US Department of Energy sent to Russia's state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom last month.

Atiq Ahmed, a former lawmaker in India's parliament, convicted of kidnapping, was shot dead along with his brother while police were escorting them for a medical check-up in a slaying caught on live television on Saturday. CNN's Vedika Sud reports.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the terms of its emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines on Tuesday, allowing people ages 65 and older and certain people with weakened immunity to get additional doses before this fall's vaccination campaigns.

Maine authorities have detained a person of interest and continue to investigate after two shooting incidents that appear to be connected left at least four people dead and three others injured, state police said.

• Delta Air Lines reports record bookings for summer travel • Air France and Airbus acquitted in trial over 2009 plane crash

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who has been cleared to resume football activities, said Tuesday his cardiac arrest during an NFL game in January was caused by commotio cordis.

Polish pilot Lukasz Czepiela made history after landing a plane on a helipad at the top of a 56-story hotel in Dubai.

The top US Navy admiral ardently defended a non-binary sailor on Tuesday amid some criticism from Republican lawmakers, saying he is "particularly proud of this sailor."

The Fulton County District Attorney's office said some fake electors for Donald Trump have implicated each other in potential criminal activity and is seeking to disqualify their lawyer, according to a new court filing.

High speed trains have proved their worth across the world over the past 50 years.

It's April 18, the official deadline to file your federal and state income tax returns for 2022. (It is also, apparently, National Animal Crackers Day for those who celebrate.)

It's a surprising fact that's often overlooked in the immigration debate.

Tuesday is Tax Day in America, one of the most stressful days of the year, when many taxpayers will finally end their procrastination, file their federal returns, and hope for a refund from the IRS. But for many of the nation's wealthiest, it's just another Tuesday.

There are many ways to explore the seven mountains that surround the picturesque UNESCO World Heritage city of Bergen on Norway's fjord-studded west coast. The newest, however, might well be record-breaking.

A German artist has rejected an award from a prestigious international photography competition after revealing that his submission was generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society has found two of three ships that sank in the same Lake Superior storm more than a century ago, locating one in 2021 and the other in 2022.

What does intimacy look like for seniors? There's no end to sex scenes and other steamy content featuring the young and unwrinkled, but past a certain age, popular culture largely draws a blank — or treats sex as a punchline.

China's economy is off to a solid start in 2023 following its emergence from three years of strict pandemic restrictions.

• Four out of the five US metro areas with the lowest unemployment are in Florida. Here's why • Opinion: The overlooked problem with raising the retirement age for Social Security

McDonald's, which has been focusing on upgrading its core items to boost sales, is rolling out a series of changes designed to improve its signature burgers.

Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell more than 3% in early trading Monday after a report sparked concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals, including Microsoft's Bing.

The ruling earlier this month by a Texas federal judge to suspend the US Food and Drug Administration's approval of a drug that is used frequently for medication abortions, is very personal for me.

On Monday, the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Donald Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan — is set to hold a field hearing in New York City called "Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan." A statement bills the hearing as an examination of how, the Judiciary Committee says, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's policies have "led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents."

In 1917, British analysts deciphered a coded message the German foreign minister sent to one of his country's diplomats vowing to begin "unrestricted submarine warfare" and seeking to win over Mexico with a promise to "reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona" if the US entered the world war. When it became public, the Zimmerman Telegram caused a sensation, helping propel the US into the conflict against Germany.

Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

Live long and prosper, Michelle Yeoh.

After the shock came the aftershocks, the power vacuum, and perhaps most significantly and impressively, the laughs, as "Succession" pivoted to face life after Logan Roy, in an episode that finally put the HBO show's title into full flower.

Of the many dark gifts Showtime's eerie hit series "Yellowjackets" serves up for us, the juiciest this season is by far the music.

Jeremy Renner is continuing his recovery after his devastating snowplow accident in January, and recognizing those who've helped him along the way.

"Barry" has taken chances from the very beginning, which is certainly true of a fourth and final season that picks up where the third left off, with its hitman-turned-wannabe actor getting arrested. That paves the way for an even darker season that accentuates the show's ensemble aspect while leaning a little too heavily on blurring lines with flights of fancy.

A 26-year-old man was convicted of first-degree murder on Tuesday in the shooting death of a 22-year-old woman in Lakewood, according to court records. Patrick Plasencio was charged with shooting Amanda Bobian outside of a home in the 1200 block of South Marshall Street in May 2023, according to previous reporting and Denver7. Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | Man identified as suspect in fatal Hampden shooting Crime and Public Safety | Aurora man sentenced to 48 years in prison for murder in mother’s shooting Crime and Public Safety | Man arrested on suspicion of murder in Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood Crime and Public Safety | Suspect wanted in man’s murder in Denver is still at large, police say Crime and Public Safety | Judge appoints new DA after Linda Stanley disbarred for misconduct in Barry Morphew murder case Investigators believed Plasencio shot Bobian after an argument and fled the scene, Denver7 reported. A jury also convicted Plasencio of attempted murder and two misdemeanor weapons charges. First-degree murder convictions in Colorado carry the mandatory sentence of life in prison. Plasencio is set to be sentenced Dec. 20. His brother, 29-year-old Frankie Plasencio, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and being an accessory to a crime in June and was sentenced to two years in prison with credit for more than a year already served, according to court records. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

His phone rings in December 2014, and it’s too early. Sean Payton has a bad feeling. He is on his way to present a game ball to Bailey Elizabeth Leon, a 12-year-old patient at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans. The pair have become friends over the course of multiple visits. Payton promises her the Saints will beat the Chicago Bears on Monday night and he is returning with a gift. As he looked at the football in his passenger seat and answered the call, Payton knew something was wrong: Bailey was gone, passing away from pediatric cancer. “I pulled over on the side of the road and immediately called both my children (Connor and Meghan). I was devastated knowing that I should have stopped by sooner (that week),” said Payton on Wednesday, his voice cracking. “She was so tough. And such a huge fan. I remember flying to her funeral and taking the ball to her parents and them putting it in her casket. It just reminds us of our mortality. The idea of young kids dealing with sickness is so difficult.” Shaped by this experience, Payton and his wife Skylene, a former nurse, found themselves drawn to help, first in New Orleans, and now in Colorado. In June the couple asked to tour Children’s Hospital of Colorado. They were impressed during the two-hour visit and wanted to support the kids in a meaningful way. After discussing ideas, Sean and Skylene made a $150,000 donation to help build a playground on the backside of the hospital. At a time when nerves are frayed and the suffering is agonizing, this space can offer a chance for kids to be kids and for their families to suspend reality. “We shared with them an idea we had for a long time, and they thought it was a great way to engage with the youth. We are extremely grateful,” said Christy Dobson, vice president, board and community relations at Children’s Hospital. “It will be a place for some respite, for normal activities, a healthy way for them to play.” The contribution allowed the hospital to move forward, leaving optimism that the area, with adaptive swings, wheelchair accessibility and possibly a rock-climbing wall, will be ready in spring of 2025. “They were so generous with their time. We got back home, talked about it and we thought it would be something really cool,” said Payton, who had been reluctant to discuss the donation, not wanting any attention. “It constantly reinforces that if you are able to give, whether it’s time or resources, it creates that feeling of fulfillment and balance in your life.” The idea of Payton with a warm heart is quite the juxtaposition to the person seen on the sidelines or in Broncos headquarters. His factory setting is abrasive. At least for public consumption. But in his second year in Denver, Payton is becoming one of us. His understanding of this area, of Broncos Country, of what the Broncos mean to this region has evolved and grown. It started in the spring when his comfort level was noticeably different, his energy spiked from coaching a young and hungry team. Then it was reinforced in June. This season he has changed the culture. Changed the record. And found a fit with a rookie quarterback in Bo Nix. But it is clear it goes well beyond that, extending to life away from the field. He is not just passing through anymore. This place is becoming home to Payton and Skylene. “He’s all ball in the building. I would say the majority of the guys haven’t seen the other side of him. I have known him for nine years so I have seen it plenty,” kicker Wil Lutz said. “He wants to be part of and buy into the community that he’s part of. I think it is truly important. You don’t want to be a coach who only cares about the locker room. When he was in New Orleans for 15 years, you saw him embrace the city. And he’s doing it here now.” Payton provides his team with reminders of life’s fragility. It is not uncommon on Saturdays before home games for the coach to host a patient from Children’s Hospital. Prior to the visit, Payton puts a biography of the child on the big screen in the morning team meeting, listing their favorite players, food and where they are from. He wants the players to make a connection, if possible. Related Articles Sports Columnists | Renck vs. Keeler: Is Broncos’ Bo Nix the best quarterback in 2024 draft class? Sports Columnists | Renck: Javonte Williams’ touchdown run vs. Falcons shows Broncos are back: “That’s what culture is” Sports Columnists | Renck & File: NBA deserves ratings decline for focusing on Joel Embiid, Bronny and not Nikola Jokic Sports Columnists | Renck: Avs’ Val Nichushkin thankful for support of teammates, fans, hopeful can regain trust Sports Columnists | Renck: Broncos cannot afford to move on from left tackle Garett Bolles The visit concludes with the child breaking down the huddle at the end of practice. These moments, his experience a decade ago a constant reminder, can not be taken for granted. “It’s their wish to be there, to be with our guys,” Payton said. “It’s so good for our team to see. It is humbling and really puts everything in perspective.” Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.

The driver who allegedly caused a fiery crash that killed four people in Thornton in October has died from his injuries, bringing an end to the criminal investigation, police officials said Wednesday. The crash occurred at around 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 when a Ford SUV carrying two adults and two children was stopped at a red light at Washington Street and Thornton Parkway. A Subaru sedan driver speeding on northbound Washington crashed into the back of the SUV, causing the gas tank to rupture and igniting the SUV. Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | Colorado on track to see deadliest year for police shootings since 2020, data shows Crime and Public Safety | Fatal Thornton crash, car fire caused by speeding driver, rear-end collision, police say Crime and Public Safety | Man dies after exchanging gunfire with Thornton police, injuring 2 officers Crime and Public Safety | Thornton police looking for missing 16-year-old boy Crime and Public Safety | Colorado man who posed as children’s life coach sentenced for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old The two adults and children were killed in the fire and pronounced dead at the scene, while the Subaru driver was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. He died from his injuries on Nov. 7, Thornton police said in a news release. Because of the man’s death, investigators cannot pursue criminal charges and the case is closed. The names of the four people killed, along with the name of the Subaru driver, have not been released by the Adams and Broomfield County Coroner’s Office. Family members identified the four people in the SUV as parents Francisco Díaz and Beatriz Núñez and their daughters Paola, 15, and Nataly, 10, according to Denver7. They are survived by their two sons, Adam and Daniel. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Bo Nix won’t be the only offensive rookie of the year candidate on the field Sunday when the Broncos visit Las Vegas. The Raiders may be headed for a last-place finish and are 5.5-point home underdogs to Denver, but they’ve got one of the best young players in football in tight end Brock Bowers. Better yet: Nix and Bowers were selected in back-to-back picks during April’s draft at Nos. 12 and 13, respectively. “He can move, he can be outside, he can run a route tree maybe different than most tight ends,” Denver head coach Sean Payton said Wednesday. “When it’s happening week in and week out — you see it with (Detroit’s Sam LaPorta), you see it obviously with (Travis) Kelce and (George) Kittle. It becomes a little bit more challenging when they’re outside at receiver.” While Nix has come on strong in recent weeks, Bowers has been a force from the start. He’s second in the NFL in catches (70), has 713 receiving yards and is tracking toward breaking just about every rookie record on the books for tight ends. Two of his biggest games of the season came last week in a loss to Miami (13 catches for 126 yards and a touchdown) and Week 5 against Denver (8 catches for 97 and a touchdown). He’s had eight or more catches five times this year and he’s ninth overall in the NFL in yards after the catch. “They’ve made it a key for him to get the ball,” Broncos corner Pat Surtain II said. “Obviously 13 catches is a high rate, especially for a rookie. But they’ve made it a point of emphasis to get him the ball at any spot and any position. They’ve even got him at X back-side, at tight end, at Z. He’s playing all positions and they’re utilizing him very well. “It’s going to be a good challenge for us.” Turner-Yell out for the year. Wednesday brought tough news for safety Delarrin Turner-Yell. The Broncos opted not to activate him from the physically unable to perform list at the end of his 21-day practice window, meaning he’ll revert to PUP and is out for the season. “We spent a lot of time going through it,” Payton said. “We’ve got a real clear vision for him. Bright future. Had a real good visit. I know it’s difficult.” Turner-Yell tore his ACL and meniscus in Week 17 last year and had worked diligently to get back. He was on track to hit his goal of returning around midseason when Denver returned him to practice three weeks ago. Denver is healthy, though, and ultimately decided it didn’t have a roster move it felt comfortable making to get him back on the 53-man roster. “With where we’re at in the season, it just became a challenge relative to managing the roster,” Payton said. The Broncos have decisions to make on other reserve-list players in the coming week in linebacker Drew Sanders (Nov. 27 deadline) and wide receiver Josh Reynolds (Dec. 4 deadline). Powers out Wednesday. Broncos left guard Ben Powers did not practice Wednesday because of a right shoulder injury he suffered late in Sunday’s win against Atlanta. Safety Brandon Jones (abdomen) was limited all of last week, missed Sunday’s game and was limited again Wednesday. Defensive lineman Zach Allen’s been getting veteran rest days regularly on Wednesdays, while Sanders (Achilles), Reynolds (hand) and safety P.J. Locke (thumb) all practiced fully. Run defense. Given the opponent and circumstances, Sunday against Atlanta might have been the Broncos’ best run defense performance since 2019. Denver held the Falcons to 50 rushing yards despite that offense averaging 152 over its past five games. The Broncos had only held two opponents to less than 50 rushing yards since the 2019 season. “If an offense has got a run rhythm, you’re defending a lot of different elements,” Payton said Wednesday. “If an offense at some point becomes one dimensional, then you’re defending one element.” Related Articles Denver Broncos | Renck: Sean Payton and wife Skylene’s support of Children’s Hospital shows side rarely seen of coach Denver Broncos | Broncos QB Bo Nix’s AFC Offensive Player of the Week honor is another reminder of his growth: “This is just the tip of the iceberg” Denver Broncos | Blowout of Falcons offers more evidence Broncos offensive line has become formidable Denver Broncos | Broncos Mailbag: Is Garett Bolles in Denver’s plans at left tackle beyond this season? Denver Broncos | Sean Payton lays out Hall of Fame case for former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan: “It’s all right there in front of you” The Broncos have surged to No. 4 in the NFL in yards allowed per carry (3.8) and are tied for sixth in EPA per rush allowed (-.12). Denver finished the 2023 season last yards allowed per carry (5.0). Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.

Pop music icon Billie Eilish had a very important request before performing a sold-out show at Denver’s Ball Arena on Tuesday night: She wanted to snuggle with some animals. Two Front Range shelters were more than happy to bring some furry friends for a backstage meet-and-greet with Eilish and her team, Brighter Days Dog Rescue founder and director Becca Orin said. Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary first got the request through the venue, and the Commerce City sanctuary teamed up with Brighter Days in Boulder to bring puppies, kittens and a pony to the arena. Related Articles Colorado News | Pronghorn herds dying by the dozen on eastern Colorado roads after snowstorm Colorado News | CDC calls for expanded bird flu testing after more dairy worker infections found in Colorado and Michigan Colorado News | Denver voters rejecting fur ban and slaughterhouse ban initiatives Colorado News | Boulder County reports first human case of rare insect-borne disease of 2024 Colorado News | How much has Colorado’s wolf reintroduction cost? Billie Eilish snuggles with a puppy and pony from Brighter Days Dog Rescue and Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary before performing at Ball Arena in Denver on Nov. 19, 2024. (Courtesy of Becca Orin) Eilish, her mom and team were “amazing,” Orin said, and showered the animals with love – particularly Samson the pony, who was overjoyed by all of the attention and cookies. Brighter Days shared photos of the visit in a post on Facebook, with Eilish grinning cheek-to-cheek with a puppy and getting a nuzzle from Samson. “This is not the first time we have brought animals to Ball Arena for the artists ahead of their performance, but this was the first time the artist was kind enough and generous enough to let us take pictures and give us permission to post them on social media,” Orin said. Eilish is set to perform a second sold-out show at Ball Arena on Wednesday night as part of her Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour. Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

I’m a proud, first-generation, college-educated and gay Mexican American with undocumented family in the United States, including a mother who was previously deported to Mexico, and I experienced homelessness as a child. I am everything Democrats claim to support, right? Wrong. Democrats have accepted a progressive platform, ignoring decades worth of change and focusing on erroneous issues. They have built campaigns on a foundation of misleading airs and fake vibes. Voting for Donald Trump does not make me racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic or any other “ist” and “ic” I’ve been called. I, along with more than half of the voting public in America, am sick of the self-righteous and label-obsessed left alienating us over differing opinions.  In her concession speech, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed to have built strong coalitions. What she did was the opposite. She did not motivate enough Black voters, Latino voters, Asian voters, Jewish voters, union voters and female voters to cast their ballots for her. Fewer women voted for Harris than they did Joe Biden, even with abortion being a top issue. To the very end, Harris ignored the data; she ignored what voters needed.  The party spent the last four years demonizing men and blaming us for all of society’s ills. Then they spent several months drinking beer, releasing camo hats and attempting to “love” guns to desperately win our votes. Former President Barack Obama noticed Black men were not falling in line, so he resorted to shaming his “brothers,” essentially saying they were sexist, even though Black men supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Which leads us to Latinos. Democrats, we are not Latinx or Latine; we are Latinos and Latinas. Stop trying to change our language and our culture. The Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous handling of the southern border was one of the major issues for most Americans. Americans in Chicago and around the U.S. watched how veterans and other homeless and needy citizens suffered as local governments spent billions for newly arrived migrants. Americans saw Trump secure the border without any congressional approval. Seeing my undocumented family members, who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years, work, pay taxes and buy their own homes with zero benefits, then watching millions of new migrants skip the line with government-funded help, only enflamed me and other Latinos like me. When my mother came to America as a single mother of two, she did not get any benefits. This election became personal. It was about my family!  My concerns go beyond just immigration. I am a U.S.-born Mexican American. We are the youngest demographic in the U.S. What matters to me and many Latinos like me are obtaining jobs, paying for the costs of living, buying a home, growing and helping our families, and making sure the American Dream is attainable and still alive. Over the last four years, all of that has become harder. If you think it hasn’t or haven’t felt it, consider yourself blessed. This situation clearly upset many other Latinos who broke from generational loyalty to Democrats. It was also rich to have Democratic leaders such as Michelle Obama, whose personal worth is reportedly tens of millions, say that rich people take more than their fair share. She was sandwiched between billionaires Gov. JB Pritzker and Oprah Winfrey at the DNC in Chicago. Pritzker even taunted Trump on not being a “real billionaire,” which was extremely unrelatable. Billionaire Mark Cuban also hit the campaign trail for Harris. Billionaire and megastar Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris, at least gracefully encouraged everyone to do their own research, which I highly respect. Compare that to the Republican National Convention, where Trump had everyday people speak about experiences most of us worry about — the cost of groceries, safety, jobs and the border crisis.  Democrats, please look into your hearts again. Your progressive policies are crumbling your own base. Even in Chicago, Trump gained ground in Latino wards, and he lost in Illinois by only 9 percentage points. Chicago and Illinois are supposed to be a deeply blue city and state, respectively. This was a message to Democrats; they need to listen. In a recent news conference in response to the election, Pritzker told Trump, “You come for my people, you come through me.” Governor, switch that energy to the criminals who are holding up Illinoisans at gunpoint, committing smash-and-grab robberies, stealing cars in record numbers, and committing homicides, home invasions, theft and more. Where has this protection been over the last four years? If Pritzker doesn’t change his messaging, he will not fare well in any other political aspirations he may have.  I am very proud to be a Christian, gay Mexican American who voted for Trump. No, I don’t hate myself. With Republicans about to sweep the White House, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House after obtaining a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Democrats desperately need to answer the 2 a.m. wakeup call Clinton never answered. The political pendulum will swing toward Democrats again. It’s inevitable. Single-party rule is never ideal for America. We love compromise, and we need compromise. This election, voters canceled the wokeism of the extreme left. As of now, the person who is taking care of us, listening to us — the regular folks — where we can see and feel it, is the soon-to-be 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump.  J. Marcos Peterson is a Chicagoland native, a Latino of Mexican descent and an LGBTQ+ leader. His career, from public to private sectors, is defined by his commitment to impactful change across industries through strategic and positive influence.  Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The City of Glendale’s publicly funded rugby team, which won’t play next year, has been sued for allegedly reneging on its plans to hire an Argentinian coach at the end of 2023. Carlos Ignacio Fernández Lobbe, 50, played professional rugby from 1996 to 2011 and has been a coach since retiring, most recently for Los Pampas of the Super Rugby Americas League. Glendale’s team, the American Raptors, also played in that league. Last year, Los Pampas walloped the Raptors 63-0. That, according to a lawsuit filed Nov. 14, is when the Glendale team decided to lure Fernández Lobbe to Colorado. The Argentine’s coaching career was at an inflection point, he recalled in the lawsuit. He had an offer to coach Spain’s national rugby team, among other prospects. But Glendale had hired Marcelo Loffreda, a former coach of his, to run the Raptors. So, he came here to work under Loffreda. “Fernández Lobbe believed that coaching for the American Raptors would open up future career opportunities in the United States of America,” according to the lawsuit that he filed. Fernández Lobbe’s $6,500-per-month contract was signed Dec. 7, according to the assistant coach, and he planned to move here from Buenos Aires on New Year’s Day. But before he could, Loffreda was diagnosed with a health problem that prevented him from coaching the Raptors in 2024, and the City of Glendale backtracked on its plans to keep Fernández Lobbe for the 2024 season. Reportedly, the city’s stated reason for firing Fernández Lobbe was two incidents last fall when he grew agitated and insubordinate. He said those occurred during the interview process, before he had been hired to coach the Raptors, and therefore can’t be used to fire him. The city did not answer requests for comment on the case. “In reality, the city decided to ‘move in another direction for 2024’ after it learned Loffreda would not be able to join the American Raptors in Glendale,” according to Fernández Lobbe. After the assistant coach turned down severance pay offers of $5,000 and $8,000, the City of Glendale fired him in early 2024, Fernández Lobbe alleges in last week’s lawsuit. “Whether rugby is a wise use of public funds is a question for the taxpayer to decide. But as a matter of law, the City of Glendale has not been operating its rugby program like the American government it is,” claims his complaint for breach of contract and promissory estoppel. “This is not how governments are allowed to behave in the United States of America,” it added. “Carlos Ignacio Fernández Lobbe intends to hold the City of Glendale accountable.” His lawyers are Stephen Hennessy and Mirko Kruse at the Hennessy Kruse law firm. Requests for an interview or comment from Fernández Lobbe were not answered by his attorneys. Related Articles Business | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Business | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Business | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Business | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Business | How TikTok saved its e-commerce business in Indonesia Unrelated to its 2024 coaching mishap, Glendale announced last month that the Raptors will not play in 2025. Infinity Park, which was built at a cost of $22 million in 2007, and was the first city-owned rugby stadium in the country, will be used for youth rugby and events. Full story via BusinessDen Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

There’s something for everyone with these can’t-miss deals For seasoned shoppers, Black Friday is a holiday in its own right. Whether you’re ready to start ticking names off your holiday shopping list or just want to treat yourself to items you’ve had your eye on, you can score big savings on everything from laptops to sunscreen. Not sure where to start? We’ve gathered our favorite Black Friday discounts to save you the trouble. We’re excited to see deals on popular items like the Apple 2022 MacBook Air Laptop, SAMSUNG 75-Inch Class QLED 4K The Frame Series Quantum HDR Smart TV and LEVOIT Air Purifier. So, no matter who you’re shopping for, you’ll find plenty of great sales to make your budget stretch a little further. We will continue updating this page throughout the sale, so keep this page bookmarked and come back for more early Black Friday deals! Last updated on Nov. 20, 2024, at 7:56 a.m. PT. Trending deals Apple 2022 MacBook Air Laptop 20% OFF This superthin, lightweight laptop is easy to take on the go, making it perfect for students or hybrid workers. It offers up to 18 hours of battery life and a large 13.6-inch display that provides vibrant, detailed images. The advanced camera and audio make for top-notch FaceTime calls, while the all-aluminum body gives it excellent durability. Beckham Hotel Collection Bed Pillows 25% OFF + 20% OFF COUPON These highly breathable pillows can keep you cool year-round. They have a cotton cover and contain 100% polyester fill, so air can circulate freely while you sleep. They are also machine-washable, making them very easy to keep clean. INSIGNIA 32-Inch Class F20 Series Smart HD 720p Fire TV 42% OFF This smart TV has built-in Fire streaming, so you can watch your favorite movies and TV shows on services like Netflix, Hulu and Disney Plus without a separate device. It has an Alexa remote that lets you use voice commands to launch apps, search for media and more. Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Premium Noise-canceling Overhead Headphones 34% OFF These wireless headphones feature premium noise cancellation with dual noise sensor technology, so you can enjoy your favorite music, audiobooks and podcasts without interruptions. Their battery can provide up to 30 hours of listening time, with just 10 minutes of charging needed for five hours of playback. Thanks to their pressure-relieving design, they’re also very comfy. Apple Watch SE (2nd Generation) 24% OFF This popular smartwatch lets you text, make calls and control your music from your wrist. It also offers many health and fitness features, including workout tracking, fall detection and heart rate monitoring. It works seamlessly with other Apple devices, too, and allows you to send money with Apple Pay. 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It also has a fairly long cord and hose, allowing you to clean a large area without moving the machine too frequently. iRobot Roomba j7+ Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum 28% OFF With a front-facing camera and smart mapping capabilities, this robot vacuum offers some of the most precise navigation among those on the market. Its obstacle avoidance is so advanced that iRobot guarantees it will detect and avoid pet waste, or the brand will replace your robot for free. It also has a self-emptying base that can hold up to two months’ worth of dirt and debris.   Electronics deals Apple Air Tag 4 Pack 26% OFF Keep track of your belongings with these convenient tags. They are extremely easy to set up, instantly connecting with your iPhone or iPad. They emit a sound from a built-in speaker to let you know where your missing items are, or you can just ask Siri. They also provide a map with instructions when your belongings are further away. SAMSUNG 75-Inch Class QLED 4K The Frame Series Quantum HDR Smart TV 40% OFF This premium smart TV transforms into a stunning art exhibit when in art mode. It can even display personal photos if you prefer. As a TV, it delivers crystal-clear resolution, ultrasharp contrast and bright, vivid color with its 4K HDR picture. Its built-in streaming capabilities allow you to watch your favorite TV shows and movies from your chosen apps. Other electronics deals worth considering Beats Studio Buds True Wireless Noise-canceling Earbuds 33% OFF LG 65-Inch Class OLED evo C4 Series Smart TV 45% OFF Hisense 55-Inch Class U8 Series Mini-LED ULED 4K UHD Google Smart TV 37% OFF Kitchen and cookware deals Fullstar Vegetable Chopper 40% OFF + $5 OFF COUPON Get your meal prep work done as quickly as possible with this easy-to-use veggie chopper that’s earned rave reviews on TikTok. It has rust-resistant stainless steel blades that can slice, dice and chop potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots and more. The entire chopper is dishwasher-safe, too, so cleanup is a breeze. SMIRLY Charcuterie Board Gift Set 23% OFF This impressive charcuterie board can make a lovely gift for the foodie on your holiday shopping list. It is made of durable, eco-friendly bamboo and includes four cheese knives, two sauce bowls and slate labels with a chalk marker to identify your offerings. The deep grooves around the board also help keep crackers, bread and other foods in place. Other kitchen and cookware deals worth considering Nespresso Vertuo Plus Deluxe Coffee and Espresso Maker 30% OFF GE Profile Opal 2.0 XL Countertop Nugget Ice Maker 23 % OFF Keurig K-Supreme Single Serve Coffee Maker 42% OFF Home deals LEVOIT Air Purifier $15 OFF COUPON This super-quiet air purifier can clean the air in spaces up to 1000 square feet. Its HEPA filter removes at least 99.97% of dust, pollen and other airborne particles that are at least 0.3 microns. With the connected Vsync app, you can also adjust the settings when you’re out of the house. Black + Decker Allure Professional Steam Iron 40% OFF This powerful iron produces over 30% more steam than similar steam irons, so it can smooth the deepest wrinkles for all-day crisp results. Its auto-clean system helps flush out mineral deposits to keep it in working order, so it requires minimal maintenance. The automatic shut-off also turns off the iron when left unattended for 30 seconds, so you don’t have to worry about accidents. Other home deals worth considering Dyson Purifier Cool TP4B Purifying Fan 33% OFF First Alert Slim Photoelectric Smoke Alarm 20% OFF Schlage BE499WB Encode Plus Wi-Fi Deadbolt Smart Lock 22% OFF Beauty deals COSRX Snail Mucin 96% Power Face Serum 22% OFF This lightweight essence repairs and freshens the skin to help fight dryness, dullness and uneven texture. It absorbs easily and leaves behind a healthy, natural glow that instantly gives you a more youthful look. It also provides all-day hydration without leaving a heavy residue behind. Laura Geller Baked Balance-n-Brighten Powder Foundation in Fair 30% OFF  This unique baked powder foundation is handmade in Italy and leaves the skin with a natural, demi-matte finish. It contains a blend of several different shades that combine to form the perfect shade to match your skin. It’s also good for your skin, containing antioxidants like Centella Asiatica and White Tea Extracts that help protect and nourish. Other beauty deals worth considering SimplyVital Collagen, Retinol and Hyaluronic Acid Anti-Aging Moisturizer 15% OFF Image Skincare Prevention+ Daily Ultimate Protection Moisturizer SPF 50 15% OFF Auraglow Teeth Whitening Kit 32% OFF Health and wellness deals Waterpik Aquarius Water Flosser 20% OFF Keep your teeth and gums in top conditioner with this easy-to-use water flosser. It has 10 settings that allow you to customize your cleaning, a gum massage mode and a built-in timer to ensure you floss as long as you should. The wand is also small, so it’s easy to maneuver around your mouth for more thorough flossing. RENPHO Deep Tissue Massage Gun 18% OFF  Deal with sore muscles as soon as they happen with this powerful massage gun. It has five speeds and five different massage heads that allow you to target various muscle groups. It also has a 10-minute auto-off feature that prevents you from overmassaging sore body parts. Other health and wellness deals worth considering Owala Stainless Steel Triple Layer Insulated Travel Tumbler One A Day Men’s 50+ Healthy Advantage Multivitamin 23% OFF Snailax Shiatsu Massage Cushion with Heat 33% OFF Prices listed reflect time and date of publication and are subject to change. Check out our Daily Deals for the best products at the best prices and sign up here to receive the BestReviews weekly newsletter full of shopping inspo and sales. BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers. BestReviews and its newspaper partners may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.

I worked the prep sports beat early on in my career at The Denver Post. As a journalist, I never cheered for the teams I covered but sometimes you can’t help but root for certain individuals. This one I especially root for. Surrounded by more than 70 friends, family, former coaches and community members on Tuesday, senior Remy Nguyen signed her national letter of intent to play for the University of Denver women’s tennis team at the Denver Tennis Park. With a portrait from 2011 of her and her family hanging on the wall in a longstanding “Breaking the Barriers” photo exhibit next to the table set up for the ceremony, it seemed like destiny for her to end up at DU. A portrait of Remy Nguyen along with her family from 2011 adorns the wall of the Denver Tennis Park on Nov. 19, 2024. Nguyen was celebrating her signing her letter of intent to play for the University of Denver’s women’s tennis team. (Joe Nguyen, The Denver Post) “It’s a little overwhelming, I’m not going to lie,” she said about the turnout. If it sounds like I’m gushing, I absolutely am. Remy is my niece. And I could not be more proud after she became the first-ever Division I athlete in our family. Playing for Chaparral High School, the 17-year-old qualified for the Class 5A state tournament at No. 1 singles three times. And she compiled a 53-9 record while doing it, according to MaxPreps. “Her first 15 matches (in 2024), she played 193 games. Out of those 193 games played, she won 180,” Chaparral head coach Dan Padrnos said. “… She goes on and is 20-0 on the season to get to the championship match.” She finished runner-up to a longtime friend, Valor Christian’s Caroline Daugherty, in the finals, and earned a spot on CHSAA’s all-state first team. A three-star recruit and one of the top 10 mountain region players in her class, according to tennisrecruiting.net, she’s the first Colorado player to join the DU program since Steamboat Springs’ Tatum Burger in 2019. “Her racket skills, her attitude and the effort and coachability — that is everything we look for in a player. Effort and attitude are everything. … We’ve watched her over the years and know that she has everything to be a success at D-I tennis,” DU assistant coach Maureen Kechriotis said. Remy Nguyen, center, watches a video play on her signing day for the University of Denver’s women’s tennis team on Nov. 19, 2024 at the Denver Tennis Park. (Joe Nguyen, The Denver Post) National Signing Day has always been one of my favorite events to cover. It’s a celebration of hard work, dedication and sacrifice. Not just from the athletes, but their families. The travel, the practice — it becomes a family affair. I can’t tell you how many times my brother Tod and his wife, Vie, changed their lives around to travel with Remy to a tournament several states away. So often, that is the story of Signing Day all across the country. “They’ve done so much, it’s actually crazy,” Remy said about her parents. “Practices, training, I mean, individual training, group training, scheduling, practice matches, scheduling tournaments, outside tournaments, out-of-state tournaments, high school tennis — like every single thing is just a ton of work. It’s just crazy the amount of stuff they’ve done for me.” Several of her coaches shared fond memories during the event, from her prowess on the court to an eagerness to learn to helping teammates improve. High praise about the strong values held by those who helped shape who she is today. A crowd looks on as Remy Nguyen’s first tennis coach, Brent Mazza, gives a speech during her signing day to the University of Denver’s women’s tennis team on Nov. 19, 2024 at the Denver Tennis Park. (Joe Nguyen, The Denver Post) Related Articles Preps | Keeler: CU Buffs QB Shedeur Sanders needs an heir. Four-star recruit Julian Lewis just decommitted from USC. Talk about perfect timing. Longtime family friend and Remy’s mental coach Brad Bernthal said it best: “No one goes it alone. To have your coaches here, your parents, family and friends, we are all so excited for you. But it’s also a celebration of each other. People like this don’t fall out of the sky. It’s a product of a community. … “Remy, just know that we’re all here rooting for you and your success is reflected in all of us. We’re excited by what you have done and it gets us excited for where things are going.” Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.

A Castle Rock school bus driver abandoned 40 elementary schoolers Monday evening at a random intersection miles away from their homes, parents and school district officials said. Parents told 9News that the driver, who was a substitute for the route that day, forced their Clear Sky Elementary School students off the bus near a cemetery at East Wolfensberger Road and Auburn Drive. In a video posted by 9News, students said the trouble started before they even left the parking lot. One girl said the bus driver refused to move until they all stopped talking, which caused them to leave the school later than they normally would. Multiple parents also said their children reported the driver threatening them and using vulgar language, according to Fox31. “We felt like when he was driving and missing our stops like we were getting kidnapped,” Caitlyn Zavadil, a 10-year-old student at Clear Sky, told 9News. The bus driver eventually stopped around 5 p.m. about two miles from the school, on the corner of Wolfensberger and Auburn, and forced all 40 kids out of the bus, students said. Many of the children were miles from home and had no way to contact their parents as temperatures dropped. While some parents arrived quickly at the intersection to rescue their kids, other students were picked up by strangers, desperate for a ride home, parents told both television stations. Related Articles Education | These Denver kids’ schools could close. Here’s what they have to say about that. Education | Students, parents urge DPS to keep schools open ahead of board’s vote on closure plan Education | CU Boulder to pay $4.5 million in back pay to settle discrimination claim from female faculty members Education | Investigation finds Fort Collins high school failed to eliminate “racially hostile environment” Education | Can DPS make school closures more equitable? Alex Marrero has a plan. Douglas County School District officials addressed the incident in a Wednesday email to families on the bus route. The driver was a “relief driver” on the route and is no longer employed at the school district, Chief Operations Officer Rich Cosgrove said in the email. Cosgrove said the bus was on its third of 12 stops when it stopped “just short” of the usual location, “leading to some confusion.” “At that time, the remaining 40 students on the bus all exited, with many getting off at the wrong bus stop,” Cosgrove said. The driver should have immediately notified the district’s transportation dispatch but failed to do so, Cosgrove said. The school district is working with the Castle Rock Police Department to investigate the incident. It’s not clear if criminal charges will be filed. The Castle Rock Police Department declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A year ago, TikTok’s e-commerce business in Indonesia was thriving. With its viral videos, TikTok had become a worldwide phenomenon, and it was translating its influence into a powerful new revenue stream by letting users buy and sell things while its videos played. Indonesia was a critical market and the first place where TikTok rolled out this feature. The app, owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, had about 130 million users, nearly as many as it had in the United States. Since its launch here in 2021, TikTok Shop had become one of the most popular places for Indonesians to buy things online. Then one day, TikTok said it was removing Shop from its app in Indonesia. The government declared that social media platforms would no longer be allowed to process online payments. TikTok was forced to abruptly halt its e-commerce operations. Some Indonesian officials argued that TikTok was so popular it threatened to monopolize online shopping, while others said it didn’t have the right license. TikTok’s defenders in the industry said the government was acting on behalf of TikTok’s competitors in Indonesia. The government’s edict did not name TikTok. It didn’t need to. No other app blended social media and e-commerce the way TikTok did. Dealing with official scrutiny is familiar terrain for TikTok. The government in India, once home to the app’s largest audience, banned TikTok in 2020 as payback for a violent border dispute with China. In the United States, TikTok is facing a possible ban that could begin as soon as January after spending years fielding concerns about its influence and security. But the threat in Indonesia had the potential to deal an especially devastating blow to ByteDance’s ambitions to make a lot of money with e-commerce. ByteDance wanted TikTok to repeat the success of its sister app, Douyin, whose live video shopping business in China topped $200 billion in transaction value in 2022. New restrictions in Indonesia could inspire neighboring countries to take similar action, said Jianggan Li, the CEO of Momentum Works, a consultancy in Singapore. “This is a market they can’t afford to lose,” Li said. TikTok executives scrambled for a way to continue to offer e-commerce. Word spread through the Indonesian tech community that TikTok was looking for a local company to team up with. And within weeks, it was ready to buy a stake in Tokopedia, a former startup that had become one of Indonesia’s main e-commerce platforms. TikTok wanted Shop back online by Dec. 12, according to two people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood That date had been one of the biggest days for deals on e-commerce platforms in China for years, and the trend had caught on in Indonesia. In recent years, the government promoted it as a day for buying from small businesses. Over a dinner in late October, executives from both companies outlined the contours of the deal. TikTok made clear that getting it done by Dec. 12 was “nonnegotiable,” the people said. Teams from both companies worked around the clock. They repeatedly ran the proposed structure by the government. TikTok Shop restarted as a pilot program under government supervision on Dec. 11. As it had before, Shop appeared as a tab within the TikTok app. But now it was decked out with Tokopedia’s logo and signature green branding. The deeper change was on the back end. When a shopper clicked “Buy,” the checkout process ran on Tokopedia’s system. TikTok Shop was still part of a social media platform. But to satisfy the government, the transaction took place on infrastructure built by an Indonesian e-commerce company. Tokopedia was a key player in Indonesia, one half of the Indonesian tech conglomerate GoTo. The companies behind GoTo spent years developing payment and delivery technology that made it possible, in a country of 270 million people and 17,000 islands, to buy things online and receive them in a day or two. The deal integrated these systems with TikTok Shop. “Combined with the content and experience on TikTok, that’s unique,” said Farras Farhan, a senior analyst at Samuel Sekuritas, an investment firm in Jakarta. TikTok received majority ownership of Tokopedia, which paid TikTok for the right to operate TikTok Shop in Indonesia. GoTo kept just under a quarter of Tokopedia’s shares, and was promised a cut of profits from future TikTok Shop sales. TikTok paid $840 million and said it would invest further, up to a total of $1.5 billion, in the combined entity. Melissa Siska Juminto, 36, spent 12 years at Tokopedia building its e-commerce system. After the deal, TikTok brought her into a new role as the president and director of TikTok e-commerce and Tokopedia. On a recent afternoon, she walked the glass halls of Tokopedia Tower, 50 stories above traffic-choked Jakarta. She explained that the tie-up with TikTok made sense to both sides: TikTok had financial resources, and Tokopedia had spent years getting Indonesians hooked on shopping online. So far, TikTok Shop and Tokopedia’s merged e-commerce operation, which some sellers and delivery drivers call by the nickname Shopedia, is still finding its feet. “We’ve never learned as much as in the past six months,” she said. The episode was a jolt to everyone involved. ByteDance has cut a significant portion of the people working on its e-commerce operations in Indonesia. The government said its new rules for e-commerce were intended to protect small businesses. But the businesses that sold goods on TikTok Shop were caught off guard by the sudden interruption. Some struggled to get by without income they relied on. Agata Pinastika Kenastuti runs a children’s clothing shop in a Jakarta suburb. She had stocked up on new inventory days before TikTok announced that Shop would shut down. “When I found out, I cried for three days,” she said. Sellers reopened their stores on TikTok Shop to find a more competitive marketplace. Last year, TikTok Shop had about 6 million merchants. Now there are 23 million merchants who are able to work easily across TikTok Shop and Tokopedia. In interviews, six sellers said it had been difficult to regain the number of viewers, and therefore paying customers, that they had before TikTok Shop shut down. Edri, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, has a stall on the fifth floor of Jakarta’s Pasar Tanah Abang, the largest textile market in Southeast Asia. He said he was selling about 30 pairs of jeans a day on TikTok Shop these days — down from about 100 before the shutdown last October. Edri said it had become harder to attract viewers to his livestreams, which he taped among neatly folded piles of denim while his assistant smoked clove cigarettes off camera. TikTok’s experience with the Indonesian government over Shop is probably not the last time its e-commerce business will come under scrutiny. In Malaysia, where TikTok Shop held nearly 20% of the e-commerce market last year, officials say they are mulling rules for the platform. And the Indonesian government isn’t done regulating the e-commerce industry, Rifan Ardianto, a director at the Ministry of Trade, said in an interview. Last month, Indonesian officials said they had asked Apple and Google to block the Chinese fast-fashion platforms Temu and Shein from app stores in the country. TikTok Shop is available in eight countries, including the United States and Britain. But the rest are in Southeast Asia, where its transaction value topped $16 billion last year. If the app is banned in the United States, TikTok will depend even more on Southeast Asia to keep its e-commerce ambitions alive, said Li at Momentum Works in Singapore. “They’ll have to evaluate what they have and Southeast Asia is something they already built,” he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

There are now artificial intelligence programs that scan MRIs for signs of cancer, Apple AirPods that work as hearing aids and devices that decode the electrical blips of the brain to restore speech to those who have lost it. Medical device technology is now deeply entrenched in many patients’ health care and can have a stunning impact on their lives. As advancements become more tangible to millions of Americans, regulation of the devices has commanded increasing attention at the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Michelle Tarver, a 15-year-veteran of the agency, is stepping into that spotlight at a critical time. She is taking the reins of the FDA’s device division from Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, who forged deep ties with the device industry, sped up the pace of approvals and made the agency more approachable to companies. Some of those device makers were represented by Shuren’s wife and her law firm, posing ethical conflicts for him that continue to draw scrutiny. More broadly, congressional lawmakers and consumer advocates have become increasingly concerned about the device industry’s influence over the sprawling division, which has a budget of about $790 million and a staff of 2,500. Device safety and standards for agency approvals of products as intimate as heart valves or neural implants will be at the forefront of the division’s mission in the coming years. Among the issues Tarver will encounter: Brains, computers and Elon Musk Few devices will require such intense oversight as one of the most breathtaking technologies in development: brain-computer interfaces that dip into the surface layers of the brain to decode its electrical noise — and return function to people who have lost it. Researchers from a number of teams have demonstrated the capability to restore the voice and speech of a California man with ALS, to enable a paralyzed man to walk and to help a man who is paralyzed below the neck to play Mario Kart by simply thinking about steering left or right. The medical device division is playing a crucial role in this field by authorizing and overseeing trials that evaluate the devices’ safety and effectiveness and, at some point in the future, deciding whether they can be sold. Perhaps no company developing a device is more high-profile than billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink. It is developing the brain-computer device that enabled an Arizona man to play video games with his mind. Neuralink is also beginning work on a device that Musk hopes could restore vision. Musk has emerged as a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump’s, rallying crowds on the campaign trail and donating about $118 million toward Trump’s election. He has also criticized the FDA during campaign events, railing incorrectly about the agency’s failure to approve a drug that cured a friend’s mother’s brain cancer. It turns out that the drug Musk named had been approved in 2021, as STAT news first reported. Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood “Overregulation kills people,” Musk told an audience in Pittsburgh in October, going on to say that “simply expediting drug approvals at the FDA, I think, will save millions of lives.” Neuralink has already received the green light from the agency to implant its device, which is inserted in a quarter-width hole bored into the skull, in a second patient. Depending on the outcome of the presidential election, Musk could gain considerable sway across several federal agencies overseeing his businesses, including Tesla, SpaceX and presumably Neuralink, which could give him leverage over competitors. The weight of industry influence Another agency critic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has joined the Trump campaign and publicized his opposition to many of the FDA’s regulatory duties. He has been exceptionally vocal about the agency’s funding, denouncing the agreements that funnel billions of dollars in industry money into the agency. He is not wrong: So-called industry user fees make up about half the FDA’s budget. In two years, Tarver is expected to take the lead in the next set of high-stakes negotiations that determine how the FDA spends billions of dollars collected from the drug and device industries that the agency regulates. The negotiations have grown in importance to the FDA, with industry funds now providing $362 million or nearly half of the device division’s budget of $790 million, and an overall payment that amounts to nearly half of the agency’s annual budget of $7.2 billion. The process is akin to the Olympics of policymaking for the FDA, culminating in agreements that must by passed by Congress to keep the agency running. The funds support the hiring of hundreds of agency employees who are assigned to maintain a brisk pace of product reviews. The arrangement has its supporters, who note that the money allows the FDA to be competitive in hiring scientists who can keep up with the rapid flow of innovation in biotechnology and other fields. But it has also drawn criticism over concerns that it puts the FDA to work for largely for-profit industries and compromises the agency’s efforts to protect public health. Lingering ethics issues Those concerns loom a bit larger as Tarver steps into the post of the outgoing device division director, Shuren. He has overseen and taken part in the negotiation process with a legal client of his wife’s often at the bargaining table, The New York Times found. An investigation by the Times published in August found that Shuren failed to follow agency ethics rules in some instances when his work overlapped with that of his wife, Allison, a prominent lawyer at the Washington, D.C., office of Arnold & Porter. The findings prompted lawmakers to seek a review by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. One of Allison Shuren’s clients in recent years has been Alcon, a giant in eye care that makes medical devices, including lenses implanted in the eye and lasers used in eye surgery. During user-fee meetings in 2021, Alcon executives negotiated with the FDA on behalf of two medical device trade groups representing hundreds of companies. It was the only company that sent two representatives, even though it is far smaller than some others — such as Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson — that were at the table. Jeffrey Shuren negotiated in person with Alcon and other companies in 2016, agency records show. After each cycle of talks, Shuren presented the agreement to Congress, according to agency transcripts of his testimony. Federal ethics laws bar officials from working on government matters where a spouse has a financial interest that affect one company or a discrete group. The FDA has said that Shuren has “not participated in matters specific to Alcon.” Asked about whether the agency had concerns about the potential for ethical and financial conflicts given Shuren’s involvement in the talks, the agency declined to comment. the Shurens did not respond to requests for comment. Steven Smith, an Alcon spokesperson, did not respond directly to questions, saying that “uncompromising commitments to patient health and safety and corporate integrity guide every action we take.” Ethics experts said that even if Jeffrey Shuren weren’t focused on Alcon-specific policies, he should have considered the appearance of bias in favor of a spouse’s client during a wide-ranging negotiation. “A federal official’s job is to instill trust in government,” said Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor and former federal ethics lawyer. Agreements reached in the deal-making in recent years include an FDA commitment to decide approvals on 95% of low- to moderate-risk devices within 90 days. Another agreement led to a Third Party Review program that allows outside companies to make initial product device approval decisions that are finalized by the agency. The ballooning field of AI The rapid clip of product authorizations has brought the division under scrutiny in the most traditional quarters of medicine and in the most advanced. Harvard University researchers recently reviewed dozens of cardiology device recalls and found that the FDA had deemed many of the devices to be of moderate risk, although they turned out to be deadly. An editorial by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, a former federal health official and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, accompanied the article and called on the FDA to place safety over speed. The FDA said it disagreed with an assertion in the study that devices similar to those already marketed need to be thoroughly tested in people. Doctors and researchers vetting agency-cleared AI programs have also found the agency’s review records lacking. As they consider using such tools in patient care, a lot of answers they seek about how the programs work are nowhere to be found in agency approval records. A vast majority of those programs are considered low or moderate risk, and hundreds have been authorized under the agency’s 510(k) program, in which products are typically authorized in 90 days. They include software programs meant to spot cancers and other problems on MRIs, CT scans and other images. Researchers from Stanford University published a study in October noting that a vast majority — 96% of nearly 700 — of AI programs authorized by the FDA had no information about race or ethnicity, “exacerbating the risk of algorithmic bias and health disparity.” The agency said the publicly released summaries criticized in the study were merely brief descriptions that did not reflect the extent of staff reviews that can amount to thousands of pages about the software programs. Researchers from Mass General Brigham and elsewhere published a report concluding that information from the FDA about the performance of certain programs was too sparse to justify using in medical practice. Still, the promise of AI in health care has generated sky-high interest, and the FDA has discussed its use in drug development and employing it internally to catch “cheating” in product applications, Dr. Robert Califf, the agency’s commissioner, said in a speech at a conference in Las Vegas in October. Jeffrey Shuren has often said the regulatory framework for medical devices was developed for technology dating to his grandmother’s time, nearly 50 years ago. At that Las Vegas venue, Califf acknowledged the agency’s limitations in regulating the vast reach of AI programs, including how they function when they are broadly deployed. Evaluating the scope of AI programs extends far beyond the agency, he said. “It’s so bad,” he said. “If you said, ‘Well, the FDA has got to keep an eye on 100% of it,’ we would need an FDA two to three times bigger than it currently is.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 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Over the summer, Laura Marciano, a researcher at Harvard University, interviewed 500 teenagers for a continuing study investigating the link between technology and loneliness. The results were striking. For several weeks, the teenagers, who were recruited with the help of Instagram influencers, answered a questionnaire three times a day about their social interactions. Each time, more than 50% said they had not spoken to anyone in the past hour, either in person or online. To put it another way, even though the teenagers were on break from school and spending plenty of time on social media apps, most of them were not socializing at all. Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close friendships and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. One in 2 adults reports experiencing loneliness, the physiological distress that people endure from social isolation. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic late last year. Ever since, scholars and psychologists have accelerated research into whether technology is contributing. The rise of smartphones and social networking apps has forever changed social norms around how we communicate. More personable interactions such as phone calls have been superseded by text messages. When people broadcast their lives on TikTok and Instagram, they may not be representing themselves in a genuine way. “It’s hard to know who’s being real online, and it’s hard for people to be themselves online, and that is a recipe for loneliness,” Murthy said in an interview. He concluded that loneliness had become an epidemic after reviewing scientific studies and speaking with college students last year, he said. I went down a rabbit hole for the past few months reading research papers and interviewing academics about tech and loneliness. (Many studies focused on how younger people used technology, but their conclusions were still relevant to older adults who used the same tech.) The consensus among scholars was clear: Although there was little proof that tech directly made people lonely (plenty of socially connected, healthy people use lots of tech), there was a strong correlation between the two, meaning that those who reported feeling lonely might be using tech in unhealthy ways. The correlation was rooted in three main behaviors: — On social media apps such as Instagram, many fell into the trap of comparing themselves with others and feeling that they were lagging behind their peers. — Text messaging, by far the most popular form of digital communication, could be creating a barrier to authentic connection. Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood — And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some people who felt lonely also exhibited addictive personalities — in this case, to streaming videos — that kept them indoors. Here’s what to know and what to do with your tech if you’re feeling lonely. The dangers of making comparisons on social media One of the most comprehensive research efforts on tech and loneliness to date, led by Marciano and her colleagues, was a review that aggregated data from 30 studies published during the coronavirus pandemic exploring tech use and the mental health of adolescents. Most studies found that social media was linked to loneliness — specifically, when people made unfavorable comparisons of themselves with others online. Online and offline, people naturally compare themselves with others, a behavior that psychologists call social comparisons. Social comparisons can manifest online in many different ways. One way could be counting the number of likes, comments and reshares that your posts get compared with those of your friends. It could be comparing your body with the body of a beauty or fitness influencer. For parents, it could be monitoring your newborn’s development compared with that of other infants. When people feel they are behind others in life, it can be isolating. Social comparisons aren’t always bad. In academic and work settings, for example, many past studies have shown that comparing yourself with other high performers can motivate you to do high-quality work. So the solution isn’t simply to stop comparing ourselves with others online, said Chia-chen Yang, a professor of educational psychology at Oklahoma State University. Yang led a study in 2018 that surveyed nearly 220 college freshmen about what they liked and disliked when using apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The study concluded that the interactions that caused the most distress were comparisons of a judgmental nature evoking envy, in which people viewed others as being more popular, having more fun or looking prettier. Social media stirred up more positive feelings among students browsing posts from people who shared useful information online. That could include a friend posting about getting a scholarship or a great deal on a used car, inspiring you to make similar decisions. “I don’t have to see other people as enemies — I can see them as informants in my life,” Yang said. “That type of comparison is not detrimental.” But judgmental comparisons that induce envy and “FOMO” (fear of missing out) may be more prominent on social media because the apps were designed to encourage people to compete with and seek validation (i.e., likes and reshares) from their friends by publishing only the most glamorous facets of their lives. Yang said she had interviewed students who deleted posts if they didn’t get a certain number of likes because it hurt their self-esteem. In response to backlash from activists and researchers about the harms of social comparisons, Meta added controls inside its apps several years ago, including an option to hide the number of likes and shares from posts. I recommend turning it on if you feel bothered: In the app’s settings, scroll down to “What you see” and tap on “Like and share counts” to turn on the setting to hide the engagement. A Meta spokesperson referred to a blog post by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, stating that reactions to hidden likes were mixed. “Not seeing like counts was beneficial for some, and annoying to others, particularly because people use like counts to get a sense for what’s trending or popular, so we’re giving you the choice,” Mosseri said. Instagram also has a tool to “favorite” accounts so that they surface at the top of your feed, which could be useful for focusing on the right people and accounts. But a more helpful step may be to do some self-reflection. “If you feel bad about yourself after browsing a lot of social media posts, maybe it’s time to pause for a few hours or a few days,” Yang said. Maybe we text too much Dozens of studies found that one-on-one digital communications, including messaging, phone calls and video calls, were associated with the most positive mental health effects, including decreased feelings of loneliness. But an overreliance on text messaging, which superseded phone calls as the most-used communication method on phones many years ago, could contribute to loneliness if people weren’t genuinely connecting with one another. An overwhelming majority of teenagers primarily communicate through text messaging, and they have also reported feeling connected with others when they were on “the same vibe,” according to Marciano’s research. They also said some text interactions — like a friend’s taking a long time to respond to a message — stoked anxieties and feelings of loneliness. In addition, very few teenagers — about 2% — used video calls, Marciano said. Therein lies a potential problem. It’s difficult to imagine how people could sense vibes and authenticity through typed messages, which lack the context and social cues of face-to-face interactions. “How can you feel on the same frequency with someone if you don’t communicate properly?” Marciano said. Lonelier people could consider shifting to richer forms of communication. Instead of sending a text message, consider a video call or, at minimum, send a short audio message so that a friend can hear your voice. And by all means, take advantage of the tools in social networking apps that help you meet others in person. Murthy lamented that the tradition of wishing someone a happy birthday had devolved over time, from a phone call to a Facebook wall post and now to the abbreviation “HBD” sent via a text message. “I can’t underscore just how powerful it is to have a few moments of authentic interaction with somebody where you can hear their voice and see their face,” he said, adding, “There is tremendous benefit that comes to each of us from being able to show up for each other.” Binge-watching isn’t helping During the pandemic, researchers also homed in on whether binge-watching, or streaming shows back to back for long blocks of time, was linked to loneliness. An academic review of multiple studies concluded that adults who binged programs tended to experience depression, anxiety and, to some extent, loneliness. Dr. Marc Potenza, a Yale professor and addiction expert who worked on the review, said that although the binge-watching studies focused on streaming apps such as Netflix, it was important to note that other types of apps, including TikTok and Instagram’s Reels, encouraged a similar type of infinite viewing. People with mental health problems may engage in binge-watching as a coping mechanism for stress and other negative emotions, Potenza said. There are also obvious consequences to physical health that can harm mental health: being sedentary for too long, losing sleep and not going out to engage with others. “It consumes a lot of time,” Potenza said. “They may procrastinate and not address other concerns, which may lead to more anxiety.” It may feel good temporarily, but it’s probably not helping. I recommend taking steps to turn off features that enable this behavior, such as Netflix’s ability to automatically play the next program. In the app’s settings, click manage profiles, select a profile and toggle off “autoplay next episode,” and then click done. TikTok and Instagram’s Reels include screen-time tools in their settings that show reminders about how much time you’ve spent scrolling, although those tools can be ineffective because the reminders are easy to ignore. I suggest temporarily deleting the apps when scrolling feels problematic. Netflix declined to comment. Spokespeople for Meta and TikTok said their apps automatically set screen-time limits for teenagers. Looking ahead The relationship between technology and loneliness is a moving target because tech and its users are constantly evolving. Emily Weinstein, a social scientist who has studied how teenagers use tech, said that just as we begin to understand our relationship with our apps and devices, younger people find other ways to be anxious online and new outlets to cope with loneliness. A teenager could feel distressed if you commented with fewer fire emoji on his or her Instagram photo than you did on another person’s photo, she said. And many are rapidly experimenting with chatbots using generative artificial intelligence that can replace human companions, raising new concerns. “Teens are telling us things like, ‘That robot actually listens to me — people are mean and judge you, but gen AI tools don’t,’” she said. “I’m wondering what that’s going to look like.” Murthy said that during his cross-country listening tour at college campuses last year, the dining halls were eerily quiet, as students busily typed on their phones. He said a conversation with a student at the University of Washington resonated with him. “He said, ‘It’s not the culture for people to talk to each other anymore, so how are we supposed to connect?’” Murthy recalled. “His point was that even when you’re walking to class, everyone is occupied, but then they’re looking at their phone. It feels intrusive to say hello to someone.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

By DAVE COLLINS The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday. “The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers. The sale price was not immediately disclosed. Jones confirmed The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars in a social media video Thursday and said he planned to file legal challenges to stop it. An email message seeking comment was sent to Infowars. It was not immediately clear what The Onion planned to do with the conspiracy theory platform, including its website, social media accounts, studio in Austin, Texas, trademarks and video archive. The Chicago-based Onion did not immediately return emails seeking comment Thursday. Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. Both supporters and detractors of Jones had expressed interest in buying Infowars. The other bidders have not been disclosed. Related Articles Business | Green Dragon closing 17 dispensaries, grow facility in Colorado, CEO says Business | Denver’s Infinite Monkey Theorem is closing after 15 years Business | Walgreens adds stores in Aurora, Denver to closing list Business | South Broadway tries to hold on to its funky vibe as beloved small businesses leave Business | Used bike retailer The Pro’s Closet shuttering after raising $90 million The Onion, a satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd, bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers. Jones has been saying on his show that if his detractors bought Infowars, he would move his daily broadcasts and product sales to a new studio, websites and social media accounts that he has already set up. He also said that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms. Relatives of many of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting Jones and his company for defamation and emotional distress for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers. The lawsuits were filed in Connecticut and Texas. Lawyers for the families in the Connecticut lawsuit said they worked with The Onion to try to acquire Infowars. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS NEW YORK (AP) — As money continues to pour into crypto following Donald Trump’s reelection last week, bitcoin has climbed to yet another record high. The world’s largest cryptocurrency topped $89,000 for the first time, briefly peaking at $89,995 early Tuesday, according to CoinDesk. Bitcoin’s price oscillated throughout the day, but is still up more than 27% over the last week — standing at about $88,288 as of 5 p.m. ET. That’s part of a rally across cryptocurrencies and crypto-related investments since Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Analysts credit much of the recent gains to an anticipated “crypto-friendly” nature of the incoming administration, which could translate into more regulatory clarity but also leeway. Still, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict. And while some are bullish, others continue to warn of investment risks. Here’s what you need to know. Back up. What is cryptocurrency again? Cryptocurrency has been around for a while now, but has come under the spotlight in recent years. In basic terms, cryptocurrency is digital money. This kind of currency is designed to work through an online network without a central authority — meaning it’s typically not backed by any government or banking institution — and transactions get recorded with technology called a blockchain. Bitcoin is the largest and oldest cryptocurrency, although other assets like Ethereum, Tether and Dogecoin have gained popularity over the years. Some investors see cryptocurrency as a “digital alternative” to traditional money — but it can be very volatile, and reliant on larger market conditions. Why are bitcoin and other crypto assets soaring now? A lot of the recent action has to do with the outcome of last week’s election. Trump was previously a crypto skeptic, but changed his mind and embraced cryptocurrencies during this year’s presidential race. He has pledged to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” of bitcoin. His campaign accepted donations in cryptocurrency and he courted fans at a bitcoin conference in July. He also launched World Liberty Financial, a new venture with family members to trade cryptocurrencies. Crypto industry players welcomed Trump’s victory, in hopes that he would be able to push through legislative and regulatory changes that they’ve long lobbied for. And Trump had previously promised that, if elected, he would remove the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, who has been leading the U.S. government’s crackdown on the crypto industry and repeatedly called for more oversight. “Crypto rallied as Election Day progressed into the night and as it became increasingly clear that Trump would emerge victorious,” Citi analysts David Glass and Alex Saunders wrote in a Friday research note, pointing to larger industry sentiment around Trump being “crypto-friendly” and a potential shift in regulatory backing. But even before the post-election rally, assets like bitcoin posted notable gains over the past year or so. Much of the credit goes to early success of a new way to invest in the asset: spot bitcoin ETFs, which were approved by U.S. regulators in January. Inflows into spot ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, “have been the dominant driver of Bitcoin returns from some time, and we expect this relationship to continue in the near-term,” Glass and Saunders noted. They added that spot crypto ETFs saw some of their largest inflows on record in the days following the election. In April, bitcoin also saw its fourth “halving” — a preprogrammed event that impacts production by cutting the reward for mining, or the creation of new bitcoin, in half. When that reward falls, so does the number of new bitcoins entering the market. And, if demand remains strong, some analysts say this “supply shock” can also help propel the price long term. What are the risks? Crypto assets like bitcoin have a history of drastic swings in value — which can come suddenly and happen over the weekend or overnight in trading that continues at all hours, every day. In short, history shows you can lose money as quickly as you’ve made it. Long-term price behavior relies on larger market conditions. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, bitcoin stood at just over $5,000. Its price climbed to nearly $69,000 by November 2021, in a time marked by high demand for technology assets, but later crashed during an aggressive series of Federal Reserve rate hikes aimed at curbing inflation. Then came the 2022 collapse of FTX, which significantly undermined confidence in crypto overall. At the start of last year, a single bitcoin could be had for less than $17,000. Investors, however, began returning in large numbers as inflation started to cool — and gains skyrocketed on the anticipation and then early success of spot ETFs. While some crypto supporters see the potential for more record-breaking days, experts still stress caution, especially for small-pocketed investors. “Investors should only dabble in crypto with money that they can be prepared to lose,” Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said last week. “Because we’ve seen these wild swings in the past.” What about the climate impact? Assets like bitcoin are produced through a process called “mining,” which consumes a lot of energy. And operations relying on pollutive sources have drawn particular concern over the years. Recent research published by the United Nations University and Earth’s Future journal found that the carbon footprint of 2020-2021 bitcoin mining across 76 nations was equivalent to the emissions from burning 84 billion pounds of coal or running 190 natural gas-fired power plants. Coal satisfied the bulk of bitcoin’s electricity demands (45%), followed by natural gas (21%) and hydropower (16%). In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration notes that crypto mining across the country has “grown very rapidly over the last several years,” adding that grid planners have begun to express concern over increases in related electricity demand. Preliminary estimates released by the EIA in February suggest that annual electricity use from crypto mining probably represents between 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption. Environmental impacts of bitcoin mining boil largely down to the energy source used. Industry analysts have maintained that clean energy has increased in use in recent years, coinciding with rising calls for climate protections from regulators around the world. _________ AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report from London.

LONDON — Phones hold so much of our digital lives — emails, social media and bank accounts, photos, chat messages and more — that if they ever get stolen or go missing, it can cause major disruption beyond just the loss of a device. In some places, phone thefts have surged so much it’s now an everyday problem, with thieves on electric bikes snatching them out of pedestrians’ hands, swiping them off restaurant tables or pickpocketing them on the subway. In Britain, where 200 phones are stolen every day in “snatch thefts,” the government has pledged to crack down on the crime and is meeting with tech companies and device makers to come up with solutions. Here are steps you can take before and after your phone goes missing: Basic protections There are things you can do to make it less painful if your phone is stolen. Because some of these features are more technical in nature, people often overlook them. Lock down as much as you can. At a minimum, require a password or biometric scan to unlock the device. You can also add similar requirements to important individual apps — like your banking account, WhatsApp or Signal — to protect your finance or chats from thieves. Also, activate the find my device feature, which is available for both iOS and Android. Samsung also offers its own service called SmartThings Find. You’ll probably have lots of precious photos saved on your camera roll. It’s a good idea to back them up, along with contacts, calendar items and other files. Google and Apple offer cloud-based backup services, although the free versions have limited storage space. You can also back up your files to an external hard drive, memory card or a laptop. Some police forces and phone companies advise turning off message previews, which prevents thieves trying to break into your accounts from seeing reset or login codes when the phone is locked. To do this on an iPhone, for example, go to the Notifications section of your settings menu and tap Show Previews. You can also scroll down the app list to turn previews off for individual apps but leave them on for less risky ones like news or weather. Turn on newer features Recent iOS and Android updates include a number of new functions designed to make thefts less attractive. IPhone users can turn on Stolen Device Protection, which makes it a lot harder for phone thieves to access key functions and settings. Many thieves will want to wipe the data off and reset so they can resell it, but with this feature on, they’ll need a face or fingerprint scan to do so. Apple also recently updated its “ activation lock ” feature to make it harder for thieves to sell parts from stolen phones. Android phones, meanwhile, can now use use artificial intelligence to detect motion indicating someone snatched it out of your hand and is racing away on foot or a bike, and then lock the screen immediately. And there’s a feature called Private Spaces that lets you hide sensitive files on your phone. Jot down your device number Take note of your phone’s serial number, also known as an IMEI number. It can link you to the phone if it does eventually get recovered. Call it up by typing (asterisk)#06# on your phone’s keypad. If you’ve already lost your phone you can also find it in other places like the box it came in. If it’s stolen If you’re unlucky enough to have your phone stolen, notify police. Call your insurance company if you have a policy that covers the device. Inform your phone company so they can freeze your number and issue a replacement SIM card or eSIM. Notify your bank so they can watch out for suspicious transactions. Tracking your device Try to locate your phone with the find my device feature. For iPhones, go to iCloud.com/find from a web browser while Android users should head to www.google.com/android/find. Samsung also has its own service for Galaxy phones. These services will show your phone’s current or last known location on a map, which is also handy if you’ve just lost track of it somewhere in the house. Apple says even if a phone can’t connect to the internet or has been turned off, it can use Bluetooth to ping any nearby Apple devices using the same network behind its AirTags tracking devices. Google says newer Pixel phones can be located “for several hours” after they’ve been turned off using similar technology. You can get the phone to play a sound, even if it’s on silent. You can also put the phone in lost mode, which locks it and displays a message and contact details on the screen for anyone who finds it. Lost mode on iOS also suspends any Apple Pay cards and passes. If the device shows up in an unfamiliar location on the map, and you suspect it has been stolen, experts say it’s better to notify police rather than trying to get it back yourself. Cybersecurity company Norton says, “Confronting a thief yourself is not recommended.” Final steps If you can’t find your phone, there are some final steps to take. Log yourself out of all your accounts that might be accessible on the phone, and then remove it from your list of trusted devices that you use to get multifactor authentication codes — but make sure you can get those codes somewhere else, such as email. Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Then, as a last resort, you can erase the phone remotely so that there’s no chance of any data falling into the wrong hands. However, take note: Apple says that if the iPhone is offline, the remote erase will only happen the next time it come back online. But if you find the phone before it gets erased, you can cancel the request. Google warns that SD memory cards plugged into Android phones might not be remotely erased. And after the phone has been wiped, it won’t show up with find my device. ___ Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

The Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts are working to help teachers harness the power of AI, while keeping student data safe and teaching students how to use the emerging technology ethically. When Open AI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, neither district decided to block the new, generative AI technology that so quickly exploded. Bre and Shawn Jaworski teach a session on “Prompting” during an AI “pop-up” teacher training hosted by the Skyline High School feeder system on Oct. 23. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer) “Chat GPT, that was an inflection point,” said Jason Kelsall, St. Vrain Valley learning systems strategist. “We started having a lot of conversations at the leadership level looking at the potential of AI.” In both districts, the conversations centered around data privacy, helping students learn to use AI ethically and how teachers could take advantage of the technology to handle more mundane, time-consuming tasks. “There’s never enough time to plan,” Boulder Valley Superintendent Rob Anderson said at a June school board work session on AI.  “There’s never enough time to assess. If somebody becomes a power user of this tool, the gift will be time they can reinvest in our students.” In St. Vrain Valley, the district is offering two options for teacher learning this fall. The first is a series of in-person, AI pop-up sessions, while the second is a virtual AI exploration class so they can learn at their own pace. The district first tried the AI pop-up format last school year, with professional development and technology staff members designing and leading the sessions. This school year, school leadership and teachers are in charge. “It’s cool to see our leaders and schools really start to tackle this,” Kelsall said. “They can dig in with other educators. We want to create time for teachers to explore how they can use these tools to make what they already do even better.” The first session, held at Silver Creek High School in September, started with a panel discussion by Silver Creek students. They talked about the benefits and risks of AI, noting potential improvements like screening earlier for cancer, debugging code faster or helping generate ideas for a school assignment. “AI is a tool, just like the internet is a tool,” Silver Creek senior Kaylee Crouthamel said. “It’s really hard to replace human creativity.” Related Articles Education | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Education | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Education | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Education | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Education | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Teachers then led sessions on topics that included using AI to enhance design skills, integrating AI into special education practices and streamlining tasks with AI. Cleveland Smith, a sixth grade language arts teacher at Altona Middle School, led a session with the help of Silver Creek senior Lizzie Horton. Horton, who is the student president of the district’s YES Ambassador program, talked about the ways AI is helpful to her and other students with dyslexia. The ambassadors are middle and high school volunteers with dyslexia who speak about their learning differences, self-advocacy and assistive technologies. Horton talked about how ChatGPT and similar AI technology can be helpful for students with dyslexia, but said many of her teachers are now requiring assignments to be handwritten to prevent students from using it – a requirement that can make school more difficult for many dyslexic students. Smith encouraged teachers to “start having better conversations around AI.” “I’ve been hearing a lot of fear driven messages,” he said. “If our job as educators is to prepare young people for the future, having them write all their assignments on paper because we’re afraid of it is not the answer.” Smith said writing assignments from two of his sixth grade students were flagged last year as being generated using AI. One student, he said, was using Grammarly to check for errors and clicked on something to make his writing better, with no intention of cheating. Another admitted to purposefully using AI, giving Cleveland the opportunity to talk to him about the choice and why he made it. Along with having conversations with students on ethical use, Smith said he has used AI in his classroom to help students grow as writers. He asks students to type an essay in a platform called Writeable, which allows classmates and the teacher to give feedback. He starts with the AI grammar aid turned off for the students’ first draft, then turns it on when students go back to revise their work. Students will see misspelled words and tone and voice problems, allowing them to count their errors and make goals to reduce them in future assignments. “We’re pairing the students’ ability to think about their own learning with AI,” Smith said. “That’s the difference between AI making us smarter or dumber.” Rachel Ortiz, who is one of two teachers in the school’s center-based program for autistic students, is using AI to reduce her workload and problem-solve classroom challenges. “The more I look into it and play around with the AI options, it’s definitely helping me navigate situations in the classroom,” she said. AI, Ortiz said, has helped her ratchet down the reading level of classroom materials so her students can access those materials when they’re in general education classrooms. She has also used it to create a “social story” for a student struggling at recess, as well as to generate ideas for students’ high interest areas that also relate to state standards. The trick, she added, is to be as specific as possible in her AI prompts without including any personal data about her students. “If you just give it bare bones requests, you may not get a good answer,” Ortiz said. “But it will ask if you want to change something. You can bounce those ideas off this interface. It’s like having a sounding board without having someone there.” In Boulder Valley, the district started by creating an AI advisory committee and, in the fall of 2023, developed monthly AI learning workshops for educators. The committee worked on identifying a system that would allow teachers to benefit from the technology while protecting student data. The group settled on contracting with the Magic School AI platform, allowing teachers to use the platform while keeping Boulder Valley’s data protected inside a “walled garden.” “It was a real journey to discover what we really needed,” said Lynn Gershman, Boulder Valley’s academic services director. The teacher workshops covered topics that included how AI works, how to write prompts, ways to use it in education to save time and how to use the Magic School platform. In less than a year, Boulder Valley teachers have produced 50,000 content generations using that platform. “Our teachers are really excited and are using Magic School like crazy,” Gershman said. “I’ve been in ed tech a long time. I’ve never seen adoption of a tool like this with so many people.” Teachers, for example, can use the platform to generate the common elements of an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, document for special education students. Teachers then personalize student-specific learning goals. Teachers also can use the platform with students, but it’s only available to students with a teacher guide. “The teachers are in control,” Gershman said. “They show the students how it works. The students join the room with the tools in it, and teachers can see what’s being generated. Teachers are embedding that ethical use into their lesson.” She added that she’s seeing teachers use AI in “really fun and creative ways.” As an example, she pointed to an elementary school art teacher who used AI tools with students to digitally animate the masks they created so they could share information about the different mask types. Plans for this school year include starting an online forum for teachers so they can share AI lessons and ideas. Fairview High language arts teacher Katie Miles said she has found AI more useful as a tool for students than as a time saver with teaching tasks, because she often needs to revise or correct what it generates. One way she is using it with students is to generate book recommendations, with students asking AI to suggest books based on T.V. shows, movies and songs they like. “My goal as a language arts teacher has always been to help students read and write the world around them,” she said. “Whether we like it or not, AI is the world around us. So I’m interested in learning right alongside students how we can wield AI as a tool to help us achieve that goal.” Miles said she has addressed the potential for students to use AI to write their papers by asking students to write about topics they care about and their own experiences. “This year, I haven’t seen many students turn to AI when given the chance to share their own voice,” she said. The best way for the district to help teachers navigate the world of AI, Miles added, is to support them in creating engaging learning experiences that foster creative and critical thinking. “We need more freedom to help students learn to think outside the box,” she said. “We need more inquiry-driven, self-directed, project-based learning that bolsters young people’s ability to transfer skills across disciplines and solve problems creatively. These kinds of thinkers can understand when and how to use AI to further their own ideas, not use it as a crutch to do the thinking for them.” Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

Big tech brands like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Meta have all unleashed tech that they describe as artificial intelligence. Soon, the companies say, we’ll all be using artificial intelligence to write emails, generate images and summarize articles. But who asked for any of this in the first place? Judging from the feedback I get from readers of this column, lots of people outside the tech industry remain uninterested in AI — and are increasingly frustrated with how difficult it has become to ignore. The companies rely on user activity to train and improve their AI systems, so they are testing this tech inside products we use every day. Typing a question such as “Is Jay-Z left-handed?” in Google will produce an AI-generated summary of the answer on top of the search results. And whenever you use the search tool inside Instagram, you may now be interacting with Meta’s chatbot, Meta AI. In addition, when Apple’s suite of AI tools, Apple Intelligence, arrives on iPhones and other Apple products through software updates this month, the tech will appear inside the buttons we use to edit text and photos. The proliferation of AI in consumer technology has significant implications for our data privacy, because companies are interested in stitching together and analyzing our digital activities, including details inside our photos, messages and web searches, to improve AI systems. For users, the tools can simply be an annoyance when they don’t work well. “There’s a genuine distrust in this stuff, but other than that, it’s a design problem,” said Thorin Klosowski, a privacy and security analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, and a former editor at Wirecutter, the reviews site owned by The New York Times. “It’s just ugly and in the way.” It helps to know how to opt out. After I contacted Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google, they offered steps to turn off their AI tools or data collection, where possible. I’ll walk you through the steps. Google Google’s highest-profile AI product, AI Overviews, automatically generates a summary that tries to answer questions you enter into a Google search. The feature had a rocky debut in May — when, among other snafus, Google’s AI told users that they could put glue on pizza — but it has since improved. Still, the AI summaries can be distracting, and there’s no way to deactivate them from loading, but you can click a button to filter them out. After typing something like “chocolate chip cookies recipe” into a search bar, click the “Web” tab to see a list of plain search results, just as Google search used to be. As for search data, users can prevent Google from keeping a record of their web searches by visiting myactivity.google.com and switching off “web and app activity.” Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Google also has an AI chatbot, Gemini, and the setting to prevent it from storing data can be found at myactivity.google.com/product/gemini. Meta In April, Meta AI, a chatbot that can look up flights, generate images and whip up recipes, began appearing in the search bar of Meta’s apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. There is no way for users to turn off Meta AI, Meta said. Only in regions with stronger data protection laws, including the European Union and Britain, can people deny Meta access to their personal information to build and train Meta’s AI. On Instagram, for instance, people living in those places can click on “settings,” then “about” and “privacy policy,” which will lead to opt-out instructions. Everyone else, including users in the United States, can visit this support page to ask Meta only to delete data used by third parties to develop its AI. Microsoft Microsoft’s AI chatbot, Copilot, can be activated by clicking a rainbow button built into some products like the Edge browser and Bing search. The simplest way to avoid the chatbot is not to click on that button. But if you want to remove it from the Edge browser, you can enter edge://settings into the address bar and click “Sidebar,” then “App and notification settings” and, finally, “Copilot,” where you should toggle off the Copilot setting. If you want to prevent Copilot from using your data to train the AI, you have to visit copilot.microsoft.com and go into the privacy menu in the account settings, where you can toggle off an option labeled “Model training.” A bonus tip for users of LinkedIn, Microsoft’s social network for professionals: The site recently began using anything posted on its site to train its AI system, which could eventually be used to help people find new jobs. To prevent LinkedIn from using your content, go into the Settings and Privacy tab under your profile, click the “Data privacy” tab and click on “Data for GenAI Improvement.” Then toggle the switch off. Apple Apple’s suite of AI services, Apple Intelligence, will be released this month in an unfinished state through software updates on some iPhones, iPads and Macs. To use Apple Intelligence, users will have to opt in through a menu labeled “Apple Intelligence & Siri.” Once activated, some of the features will appear inside tools for editing text and photos — when you edit a photo, for instance, there’s a “Clean Up” button to automatically remove photo bombers. If you change your mind and no longer want to use Apple Intelligence, you can go back into the settings and toggle the Apple Intelligence switch off, which makes the tools go away. Apple says it has devised a system that protects users privacy, in which data pushed to its servers is inaccessible to Apple. Rather, the company says, it is used exclusively to process a user’s request, such as a complex question posed to Siri, before the information is purged from its servers. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 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By DEVI SHASTRI, Associated Press Some Apple AirPods wireless headphones can be used as hearing aids with a new software update available in October. It’s a high-profile move that experts applaud, even if they only reach a small portion of the millions of Americans with hearing loss. An estimated 30 million people — 1 in 8 Americans over the age of 12 — have hearing loss in both ears. Millions would benefit from hearing aids but most have never tried them, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Countless others have tried them, but don’t use them because of cost, poor quality, poor fit, how they look or for other reasons. Over the past few years, there’s been a push to change that. Two years ago, federal rules changed to allow hearing aids to be sold over-the-counter, a move that many hoped would bring better and cheaper options to patients. And last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved software from Apple that would turn AirPods Pro 2 into hearing aids. It’s unclear yet whether the rule changed has helped, experts say. But turning AirPods into hearing aids is the kind of creative move advocates had hoped for. Here’s what to know about hearing loss, hearing aids, and Apple’s new option. Hearing loss can contribute to isolation, dementia, even fall risk About 15% of Americans report some difficulty hearing. Most people with hearing loss are over 60, but hearing problems don’t only affect older people. One study found men and people living in rural areas are more likely to have hearing loss. And it has been linked to many health effects beyond the ear. It contributes to isolation, depression and cognitive decline, experts say. It raises dementia risk and rewires the brain. It’s also been linked to an increased risk of falls — a major health concern among older adults. “Everything we do, all our relationships, whether it’s personal or in our work life, involve hearing conversation,” said Barbara Kelley, executive director of Hearing Loss Association of America. “We’re finding now that the sooner that people can pay attention to their hearing health, the better.” You don’t need to see a doctor to get a hearing aid Before the 2022 rule change by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, everyone had to see a doctor and get a prescription for a hearing aid to get one. Now, they’re available without one. “As more of them are sold, then hopefully the price will go down,” said Elizabeth Stangl, an audiologist at the University of Iowa. “But we haven’t seen a big rush to get them.” Even buying over-the-counter, a decent hearing aid can easily run you $400 to $500, said Stangl, who researches how well people adjust to using hearing aids. And some of the less expensive options are really just “cheap amplifiers,” lacking the personalized level settings and noise canceling features that really make hearing aids helpful. How does the Apple AirPods hearing aid feature work? The hearing aid feature is available with AirPods Pro 2 models, and requires an iPhone or iPad to set it up. It starts with built-in tests that will help users determine if they have hearing loss, set up the feature if they do, and set personalized amplification levels. The headphones sell for $249 on Apple’s website, and sometimes less from other retailers. While there are many other earbud-type devices that can function the same way, experts agreed that the AirPods addition is a good one, simply because of the way it could help normalize hearing aids. “It’s just mainstream,” Kelley said. The ubiquity of AirPods could make people worried about the look of a hearing aid more open to using them. There may be some drawbacks, though. Fit and comfort during long use might be an issue. And while other hearing aids are built to last through a whole day or more, Stangl said the battery life of the AirPods won’t allow for that. She also noted that wearing earbuds can send a message to others that the person doesn’t want to be disturbed or spoken to. “But we’re hoping that more people will try it and realize, ‘Yeah, these do help,’” she said. Tips for buying OTC hearing aids Stangl suggests people do plenty of research before buying. She said Facebook and Reddit forums can be especially helpful in vetting devices. The websites Hearing Tracker and Soundly also have reliable reviews and resources for selecting a hearing aid, she said. The Hearing Loss Association of America and American Academy of Audiology have guides to buying a hearing aid at their websites. If you are stuck, consult an audiologist. Look for devices that allow you to adjust different pitches. Most people with hearing loss have the hardest time hearing higher pitches, so find a device that can adjust amplification across frequencies. To avoid the piercing whistle of feedback, buy a device that has a “feedback manager.” Fit is critical, but beware: it might not necessarily be the one that’s initially the most comfortable, so take your time. Can you use your FSA or HSA money to buy OTC hearing aids — or even AirPods? Pre-tax money stashed away in flexible spending accounts or health savings accounts can be used to buy hearing aids, including ones sold over the counter. Does this mean you can score a new set of AirPods Pro2 with pre-tax money? Experts say it’s a gray area that hasn’t been tested yet, so be wary. You may even need a letter of medical necessity. It’s best to check with an accountant before you try it. Your smartphone can help you even without hearing aids Even if you can’t afford the latest and greatest tech, your smartphone can be a tool to protect and improve your hearing. Most phones can now turn speech into text, which can help facilitate conversations. iPhone’s “Live Listen” feature turns your phone into an amplifying microphone that can beam your dinner date’s voice right to your ear even if you’re in a noisy restaurant. Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood There are also many apps and websites that can help beyond hearing aids. Some apps can vibrate your phone if an alarm is going off or the dog is barking. The University of Iowa gathers training resources through its Resource Center for Auditory Training. Free apps like the World Health Organization’s “hearWHO” offer hearing tests and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Sound Level Meter App lets you measure if noise levels are dangerous. “The majority of people own smart phones and don’t realize all that their phone can do, including functioning as a good amplifier for people with mild to moderate hearing loss,” said Catherine Palmer, director of audiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and former president of the American Academy of Audiology. “This has made hearing care accessible to many.” ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t need to type any of them to search the internet these days. Boosted by artificial intelligence, software on your phone can automatically analyze objects live in your camera view or in a photo (or video) to immediately round up a list of search results. And you don’t even need the latest phone model or third-party apps; current tools for Android and iOS can do the job with a screen tap or swipe. Here’s how. Circle to Search Google’s Circle to Search feature, released early this year for Android devices, makes firing off a query as easy as dragging your finger around a specific object on the screen — all without switching apps. The feature is available on dozens of Android phones, including many Samsung Galaxy devices. (Galaxy users also have Samsung’s Bixby Vision tool for visual search.) To use Circle to Search, make sure it is enabled. On Android 15, open the Settings, choose Display & Touch and select Navigation Mode to see the Circle to Search controls. (Steps vary based on the hardware and software involved, but the Settings search box can help you find Circle to Search if you have it.) Now, when you see something that you want to investigate further, summon Circle to Search by pressing the circular home button at the bottom of the screen (for 3-Button navigation) or by pressing the navigation handle (the horizontal line at the bottom of the screen) for Gesture navigation. When Circle to Search is activated, the screen dims slightly and a menu of search tools appears. Drag your finger around the onscreen item that interests you, and Google Search results will appear below the image. You can add keywords to narrow the search, and AI overviews may be included. Google has not released an iPhone edition of Circle to Search, but there is a workaround that skips the circling and analyzes a freshly made screenshot of the object in question. To use it, you need the Google app for iOS and a few minutes with Apple’s free Shortcuts app for automating tasks. Open the Shortcuts app and tap the plus (+) button in the top-right corner. Go to the Search Actions box. Search for and select the “Take Screenshot” action. Next, look for the “Search Image With Lens” action and add it. Tap the Done button. You can command the Siri assistant to run the shortcut by its “Search Image With Lens” name. But for silent research requests, you can activate it by touch once you have an image in the camera’s viewfinder or a photo on the screen. To assign the shortcut to the Action button, available only on iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max or later models, go to Settings, choose the Action Button, then Choose a Shortcut and select Search Image With Lens. On older iPhones, go to Settings, select Accessibility, then Touch and Back Tap. In the Back Tap menu, select your choice of Double Tap or Triple Tap and choose the Search Image With Lens shortcut. Tap the back of your phone twice or thrice to run the shortcut and get your search results. Looking through Google Lens The Google Lens image-recognition technology has been providing visual search results since 2017 and can identify many plants, animals, landmarks, artworks and other objects, as well as stuff (like clothing) you may want to buy. It can also translate signs and assist with math homework, among other things. The software is available in the stand-alone Google Lens app for Android — as well as in the Google app, Google Photos and the Chrome browser (for both Android and iOS). In the Lens app for Android, tap “Search with your camera” and point the phone at the object you want to search. In other Google apps, tap the square Lens icon onscreen to start searching. The results (often related to marketing efforts) appear below the image. Using iOS Visual Look Up Related Articles Technology | Pro rugby coach sues City of Glendale for hiring and then firing him Technology | Doctor’s sleep pill scheme costs Golden attorney her law license Technology | Income-restricted apartments and retail proposed for intersection in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Technology | Hammond’s Candies owner sells to retailer, will stay on as CEO Technology | Formula One race simulator bar driving into Denver’s RiNo neighborhood Apple’s coming AI-powered Visual Intelligence feature for its iPhone 16 models with their Camera Control buttons will supply real-time visual search before the end of the year. Until then (and for older iPhones), there’s the Visual Look Up tool that arrived in 2021. It works with Apple’s Photos app, Safari browser, Quick Look image previews and elsewhere to identify objects. To use it, open a photo or pause a video. If Visual Look Up is available, the information button at the bottom of the screen shows a leaf, paw print, map pin or other icon you can tap for more information from Apple’s Siri assistant on the object in the image. As with all search tools, check the Google and Apple privacy policies if you have concerns. The accuracy of visual search results can vary, but for those times when you don’t have the words or time to describe what you’re seeing, the tool might point you in the right direction. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Get more business news by signing up for our Economy Now newsletter.