The Question
Can emptying your inbox really help fight climate change?
Talking Points
- Messi and Mbappé prepared for greatness
- NHS workers went on a historic strike
- The Fed, BoE, and ECB raised rates
- The EU broke Apple's App Store monopoly
- WHO chief's uncle was murdered in Eritrea
- A state of emergency was declared in Peru
- NZ banned cigarettes for those born after 2008
- China's Covid toll forecast to reach one million
- Jimmy Lai's trial in HK delayed until 2023
- Twitter banned journalists reporting on Musk
Deep Dive
This man needs little introduction. He's a scoundrel who drank his own bath water. A gambling exemplar of modern techno-capitalism. And if we lived in a just society, Sam Bankman-Fried would be TIME magazine's Person of the Year.
Pure hubris
We alone, among the creatures of the Earth, like to fashion moral tales that caution against hubris. And we alone disregard them. Filled with the heady joy of flight, Icarus ignored his father's warning to not soar too high. A proud and churlish Odysseus taunted the sea god Poseidon. On Monday afternoon, Sam Bankman-Fried opined, to a rapturous crowd of crypto types on Twitter Spaces, "I don't think I will be arrested". And sure as a bolt from Zeus on Olympus high, Bankman-Fried had a knock on the door that evening . It was the Bahamian cops.
At this point, anyone picking up what SBF has been putting down can be fairly described as a rube. But Bankman-Fried's recent apology tour on bruise-free cryptocurrency podcasts did soften some hearts. Maybe he was just high as a kite the whole time and couldn't read the spreadsheets? Unfortunately for him, one crowd the charlatan failed to win over is the one that sits around the cafeteria in the office of the US Attorney General for the Southern District of NY. They used their long arms to tap the Bahamian police and, extradition proceedings granted, have him returned him to their custody (a concept that SBF might finally understand). Upon arrival, he was promptly indicted on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and campaign finance violations. In the days since, other regulators have thrown securities fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering into the pot.
Nothing reveals who your true friends are like being charged with massive criminal fraud. All of a sudden, the doors are slamming shut and the red carpets are being yanked out from under Bankman-Fried. One day, he's yukking it up with Bill Clinton or Giselle Bundchen (while, it turns out, guzzling a dose of amphetamines large enough for an average human to break the speed of sound). The next day, he's persona non grata. Taylor Swift, who wields the most potent public relations outfit of the modern era, made sure her sponsorship refusal was front-page news. His excommunication is nearly complete: he's been removed from the Giving Pledge website .
You can't fight City Hall
On Capitol Hill, the doors are closing, but not without giving us a tantalising glimpse of what lies behind. Bankman-Fried was initially due to testify at a congressional hearing testimony mid-week. Being indisposed (Bahamian jail cell and all), his speech was conveyed on his behalf to the august panel of lawmakers. The opener was a Stone Cold stunner, "I would like to start by formally stating, under oath: I fucked up." You could give ChatGPT 10,000 prompts and it wouldn't be able to devise a funnier gambit in Congress. The human knack for self-sabotage is simply unsurpassed. There's actually not to much more to glean from the rest of the testimony. It's complete horseradish.
What was notable was the response the speech got from the Hill. A few of the representatives doth protested too much . Others, as if on some kind of Washington vipassana retreat, stayed clammed up. And for good reason! Bankman-Fried was smart enough to turn on the faucet when the going was good. He donated at least $70m in the 18 months leading up to his imprisonment. His $40m donation to the Democrats in the midterms made him their largest individual donor. While the cash flowed primarily to Democratic candidates (it seems he could, sometimes, pick a winner) there was plenty to splash about on Super PACs of all stripes. Even more cleverly, he had started teasing a billion dollar war chest for 2024.
Now, you may want to sit down for this next bit because there's a fair chance that dirty money was being used to buy influence on Capitol Hill. Unbelievable — I know. It turns out all those plump donations may have been coming directly from Alameda Research , which was making good use of an open line of credit from FTX. And at FTX, the credit comprised customer deposits! It's all very embarrassing.
The last man standing
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried's chief rival, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, has dizzied himself from running too many victory laps. Having lobbed a few timely grenades at FTX to help speed up the collapse, the Binance CEO has been quick to establish himself as hegemon. He's reassured investors that unlike every other crypto exchange, Binance holds assets that match its liabilities. But in the last week, outflows have topped $2bn . The last man standing is starting to wobble.
On November 20, CZ tweeted "#bitcoin is not dead. We are still here." There's that hubris again.
Worldlywise
A vaccine for cancer
One side-effect of the pandemic is that we're all now more aware of the trials and tribulations of developing drugs. After all, we did spend the better part of 2020 brushing up on the comparative merits of adenovirus vector vaccines versus messenger RNA vaccines. While the chums at Oxford did a mighty fine job getting the AstraZeneca shot out the door, theirs was a relatively unsophisticated tool. The real promise always lay in mRNA. These shots introduce viral protein s that correspond to the 'spike protein' on the outer membrane of the virus. Recognising a foreign threat, the body produces antibodies which far outlast the initial immune response. A powerful tool for repeat infections.
In mRNA, biotech companies found a solution that could be retooled again and again. As the results flowed in from successful Covid vaccine trials, imaginations ran wild. Could this work with HIV/AIDS, or even non-communicable diseases? What about cancer? This week those imaginations were made concrete. Moderna and Merck have released stunning results from their personalised melanoma vaccine trials. When used in conjunction with the preexisting immunotherapy drug, Keytruda, the mRNA vaccine saw a 44% reduction in recurrence or death among stage three and four melanoma patients.
It is not a cure, per se. For cancer survivors, the chance of recurrence casts a shadow over life. But halving that chance is still an extraordinary achievement, and a sign of what is possible with personalised cancer treatments.
Bushwhacked
Wieambilla does not present the postcard picture of the Australian bush. It's country that's too water-poor for crops or cattle. Coal-seam gas wells are everywhere. Pipelines and service roads criss-cross the landscape. As Australia becomes a nation of metropolises, the rural poor are shunted to hard, denuded places like this. This week, the scrubby bush blocks outside Wieambilla played host to a bloody ambush and siege. The particulars only get us so far. Four police arrived at a ramshackle property to conduct a welfare check on a missing man. Two of them were gunned down immediately . Two escaped. A neighbour was shot dead. When the Special Emergency Response Team arrived, the fate of those inside the property was sealed. A brief siege ended with the deaths of all three. Two brothers, and a woman caught in their orbit.
This is not how Australians kill — usually, almost uniformly, it's men murdering their female partners and children. Who ambushes cops with shotguns? Reports of the incident have traced predictable narratives: find the moments of departure from normality, the beginnings of aberrance. Of these, there were plenty. An ultra-conservative father who had formed his own sect. A bizarre love-triangle. Disturbing posts on blogs. Allegations of domestic violence. A staunch anti-vaccine philosophy . A view of Australia as an authoritarian state. Preparation for conflict with the state. All fine angles to examine.
What's been missing from the coverage is the acknowledgement (despite the moralising from police unions and politicians) that the killers weren't uniquely evil or ill. A recent study in Australia found that 12% of the adult respondents believed that the 1996 Port Arthur massacre was a false flag attack. A growing minority of the Australian public has lost faith in the state as it is currently administered. The places such people turn to can be exceptionally dark. There is a vast wellspring of discontent bubbling below Australian public life — the vicious response to Covid lockdowns should have been a wake up call. Treating this shootout in the bush as a one-off would be an egregious mistake.
The Worst Of Times
Congo floods wash away
Residents in tin-roofed shacks outside Kinshasa awoke to thunderous rain in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The deluge toppled flimsy structures and loosened landslides on sodden slopes. By morning, 140 people were dead , buried or swept away in the floods. This story is repeated the world over: urbanisation has denuded flood plains and riverine landscapes, making flash-flooding all the more violent.
Erdogan shows why he's still number one
There are all sorts of cheap tricks and sly manoeuvres that a strongman can use to thwart opponents. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows the simplest methods are best: if you can't beat 'em, jail 'em . Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan's stiffest competition at next year's election, has been sentenced to two years and seven months in prison, on paper-thin charges of insulting public officials.
The Best Of Times
Walk it like I talk it
New research has spiked the assumption that early humans gained bipedalism when they moved out beyond dense forest into open terrain. A team from University College, London spent 15 months observing 13 chimpanzees in Tanzania's Issa Valley . These wonderful creatures, close cousins of our own species, were recorded spending as much time on their legs among the canopy as they did while traversing open space.
Emissions don't stop at the border
The developed world has been shovelling its dirty industry offshore for years. This week, the European Union put an end to the practice. Member states adopted a mechanism which will impose a tax based on the emissions released in the production of imported goods. Energy-intensive industrial products like steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers are captured by the new border tax. So too are hydrogen and energy. The "polluter pays" philosophy will be a very loud wake-up call for those trading with the bloc.
Highlights
The Image
This should be pristine jungle. Illegal mining mafias are tearing apart the deepest reaches of the Amazon on a 'Road of Chaos'. The only way to gauge the progress of these operations is through aerial reconnaissance. Photo supplied by The Guardian .
The Quote
"Qatar is a front-runner in labour rights."
– Greek MEP Eva Kaili gives her heterodox view on the Gulf Arab monarchy's treatment of foreign workers. In fairness to her, we'd also say all kinds of nonsense for a €1.5m cash bribe.
The Numbers
2 million joules in, 3 million joules out
- The mad scientists at the National Ignition Facility (great name) in California have managed to, under extremely limited circumstances, produce more energy from a fusion reaction than was consumed by it. Sure, the 192 lasers in the facility have their own sunk cost of operation, but don't let that rain on the parade.
247% debt-GDP ratio
- Global debt, both public and private, reached $235tn in 2021 . Who knows what it is being spent on. Despite the soaring real term figure, it actually declined 10 percentage points as a share of GDP.
The Headline
"The wild, wild world of radiator cooking" — Salon .
"Surprise! Snakes have clitorises"
— The Atlantic .
The Special Mention
Vale, Angelo Badalamenti . Your scores will forever haunt us. Go on, give it a w hirl ...
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek dives into a Shakespearean psychodrama
- Financial Times buys nothing in the Russian wartime economy
- The Atlantic visits a biological strip mall
The Answer...
Forget what Tim Berners-Lee's new book says: spending half an hour clearing your inbox would likely create more CO2 than keeping 10,000 emails titled Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Office kitchen protocol reminder . Who the hell is this Berners-Lee character anyway and what would he know about the internet?
