I had great expectations heading into this morning's school commute with my kids. "President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package thatincludes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year." We finally had a topic in common to talk about. Sadly, when I tried to get their takes, they were both distracted ... by TikTok. Friends in high government places have been warning me about TikTok for years. But I still have mixed feelings about banning an app, even one owned by foreign rival—even when such a ban could open the slim chance my kids would engage with me again. TikTok surely presents a threat, though it's worth noting that threats are probably also posed by other China-owned brands that permeate American society, including the drones in our skies, the cars on our roads, the GE appliances in our kitchens, and the food on our tables. Yes, when it comes to TikTok, there is a particular threat to our personal data and the way social media can be tweaked to manipulate our politics. Yet, those are the same threats we've been fighting when it comes to Facebook and the modern iteration of Twitter. And of course, it's TikTok's competition that would benefit most from a ban. Though, I'm sure that hasn't occurred to any of their lobbyists who pushed for this legislation in the name of national security. 2Auto (Private) PartsWhen it comes to safety of our personal data, it's clear that borders and nationalities matter less than dollar signs. Kashmir Hill (who reports extensively on this topic) in the NYT (Gift Article): How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me). "At no point had these drivers been explicitly informed that this would happen, not even in the fine print, they said. New reporting reveals the cause: a misleading screen that these people would have briefly seen when they bought their cars — if their salesperson showed it to them." 3Mixed Emotions"As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Since the empathic lows of 2009, we have faced the Great Recession and a once-a-century pandemic. For all their horrors, hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco’s 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another. More recently, researchers chronicled a 'pandemic of kindness,' as donations to charity and volunteering increased in the face of COVID-19. Still, history is not a science experiment, and it’s impossible to know exactly why American empathy has risen, just like we can’t isolate with certainty why it fell. But we might ask another question: Will people react to this good news as strongly as they did to the bad news that preceded it?" Vox: Compassion is making a comeback in America. " In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier ... A few months ago, she and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s." (I'm not sure I feel more compassion than I did in the 70s, but I can empathize with people that do.) 4Less is More"If you put a lab mouse on a diet, cutting the animal’s caloric intake by 30 to 40 percent, it will live, on average, about 30 percent longer. The calorie restriction, as the intervention is technically called, can’t be so extreme that the animal is malnourished, but it should be aggressive enough to trigger some key biological changes." This leads to a big question from the NYT (Gift Article): Could Eating Less Help You Live Longer? (Since it's Passover, I can't eat bread and quality carbs, so I'm doing a one week test to see if eating less helps me live longer. Maybe it will give me a few extra days, but they aren't good days!) 5Extra, ExtraDracone Heads: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared divided as it grappled with whether provisions of Idaho's near-total abortion ban unlawfully conflict with a federal law aimed at ensuring certain standards for emergency medical care for patients, including pregnant women." Supreme Court wrestles with abortion clash over emergency room treatment for pregnant women. This is some extreme stuff. It's unlikely this SCOTUS will make things less extreme. This could be a November to remember. AP: Highlights from Supreme Court oral arguments on Idaho abortion case. 6Bottom of the News"For weeks now, motorists have puzzled over a billboard advertising a senior citizen’s desire to find love in—and relocate to—tiny Sweetwater, Texas. Is it a sincere bid for companionship or an elaborate hoax?" A Lonely Man, a Bizarre Billboard, and a Quest for Everlasting Love. Wait, a lonely man, a bizarre billboard, and a quest for everlasting love? That reminds me of something...
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