In dusty factories, cramped internet cafes and makeshift home offices around the world, millions of people sit at computers tediously labeling data.

These workers are the lifeblood of the burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Without them, products such as ChatGPT simply would not exist. That’s because the data they label helps AI systems “learn.”

But despite the vital contribution this workforce makes to an industry which is expected to be worth US$407 billion by 2027, the people who comprise it are largely invisible and frequently exploited. Earlier this year nearly 100 data labelers and AI workers from Kenya who do work for companies like Facebook, Scale AI and OpenAI published an open letter to United States President Joe Biden in which they said:

Our working conditions amount to modern day slavery.

To ensure AI supply chains are ethical, industry and governments must urgently address this problem. But the key question is: how?

What is data labeling?

Data labeling is the process of annotating raw data—such as images, video or text—so that AI systems can recognize patterns and make predictions.

Self-driving cars, for example, rely on labeled video footage to distinguish pedestrians from road signs. Large language models such as ChatGPT rely on labeled text to understand human language.

These labeled data sets are the lifeblood of AI models. Without them, AI systems would be unable to function effectively.

Tech giants like Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft outsource much of this work to data labeling factories in countries such as the Philippines, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Venezuela, and Colombia.

China is also becoming another global hub for data labeling.

Outsourcing companies that facilitate this work include Scale AI, iMerit, and Samasource. These are very large companies in their own right. For example, Scale AI, which is headquartered in California, is now worth US$14 billion.

Cutting corners

Major tech firms like Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and Meta have poured billions into AI infrastructure, from computational power and data storage to emerging computational technologies.

Large-scale AI models can cost tens of millions of dollars to train. Once deployed, maintaining these models requires continuous investment in data labeling, refinement and real-world testing.

But while AI investment is significant, revenues have not always met expectations. Many industries continue to view AI projects as experimental with unclear profitability paths.

In response, many companies are cutting costs which affect those at the very bottom of the AI supply chain who are often highly vulnerable: data labelers.

Low wages, dangerous working conditions

One way companies involved in the AI supply chain try to reduce costs is by employing large numbers of data labelers in countries in the Global South such as the Philippines, Venezuela, Kenya and India. Workers in these countries face stagnating or shrinking wages.

For example, an hourly rate for AI data labelers in Venezuela ranges from between 90 cents and US$2. In comparison, in the United States, this rate is between US$10 to US$25 per hour.

In the Philippines, workers labeling data for multibillion-dollar companies such as Scale AI often earn far below the minimum wage.

Some labeling providers even resort to child labor for labeling purposes.

But there are many other labour issues within the AI supply chain.

Many data labelers work in overcrowded and dusty environments which pose a serious risk to their health. They also often work as independent contractors, lacking access to protections such as health care or compensation.

The mental toll of data labeling work is also significant, with repetitive tasks, strict deadlines and rigid quality controls. Data labelers are also sometimes asked to read and label hate speech or other abusive language or material, which has been proven to have negative psychological effects.

Errors can lead to pay cuts or job losses. But labelers often experience lack of transparency on how their work is evaluated. They are often denied access to performance data, hindering their ability to improve or contest decisions.

Making AI supply chains ethical

As AI development becomes more complex and companies strive to maximise profits, the need for ethical AI supply chains is urgent.

One way companies can help ensure this is by applying a human right-centreed design, deliberation and oversight approach to the entire AI supply chain. They must adopt fair wage policies, ensuring data labelers receive living wages that reflect the value of their contributions.

By embedding human rights into the supply chain, AI companies can foster a more ethical, sustainable industry, ensuring that both workers’ rights and corporate responsibility align with long-term success.

Governments should also create new regulation which mandates these practices, encouraging fairness and transparency. This includes transparency in performance evaluation and personal data processing, allowing workers to understand how they are assessed and to contest any inaccuracies.

Clear payment systems and recourse mechanisms will ensure workers are treated fairly. Instead of busting unions, as Scale AI did in Kenya in 2024, companies should also support the formation of digital labour unions or cooperatives. This will give workers a voice to advocate for better working conditions.

As users of AI products, we all can advocate for ethical practices by supporting companies that are transparent about their AI supply chains and commit to fair treatment of workers. Just as we reward green and fair trade producers of physical goods, we can push for change by choosing digital services or apps on our smartphones that adhere to human rights standards, promoting ethical brands through social media, and voting with our dollars for accountability from tech giants on a daily basis.

By making informed choices, we all can contribute to more ethical practices across the AI industry.

Ganna Pogrebna is the executive director of the AI and Cyber Futures Institute at Charles Sturt University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An inescapable presence has been lurking in the sidelines of UFC fights and the inner sanctum of dudefluencers like Adin Ross and Logan Paul. The current most in-demand entity in the so-called manosphere—a Cybertruck-shaped constellation of bro-y gurus like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson—is . . . 78-year-old presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has feverishly courted a young male demographic, carving out a man cave in the house built by right-wing pundits and politicians like Josh Hawley, who have long tried to paint the GOP as the pinnacle of masculinity. That wasn’t sitting right with Creatives for Harris, a grassroots collective of ad execs, TV writers, and comedians who support the vice president. In response, the group is now offering a counterargument with a just-launched campaign that presents the act of supporting women as manlier than a diorama of the Roman Empire made from chest hair.

The “Man Enough” campaign kicks off with a cornucopia of traditionally masculine signifiers: a cowboy, a yoked gym rat, a biker and his hog. Each beacon of machismo takes turns talking direct-to-camera about the testosterrific activities that get their motor running, such as consuming raw steak or barrel-proof whiskey. Things take a turn, though, after the gym rat declares himself “man enough to deadlift 500 and braid the shit out of my daughter’s hair.”

Here’s where the real message kicks in: that the established stratification of gender roles in society is a thing of the past, and clinging to it is ridiculous. 

The video then goes a step further, pitching a new model for masculinity where supporting women is the status quo. (“I’m sick of so-called men domineering, belittling, and controlling women, just so they can feel more powerful,” says one dusty rancher.) The ad also saves room to take swipes at JD Vance’s animosity towards childless cat ladies, and give men permission to cry during Predator, presumably at the part when Carl Weathers loses an arm.

The ad campaign, which also comes in three shorter versions, is tonally consistent with previous Creatives for Harris initiatives like merch based on Trump insults and a dedicated site with a “weird button” that users can push to receive some of Trump’s more puzzling quotables. The “Man Enough” concept was born while Jacob Reed, a comedic director who has worked with Funny or Die and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, was watching the Democratic National Convention. He felt inspired by the way Barack Obama spoke of Michelle Obama when introducing her onstage, and the way second gentleman Doug Emhoff gazed up proudly at Kamala Harris during her speech. He also admired the way Tim Walz talked about his wife, Gwen, and her experience of IVF treatment. All this support struck him as a form of masculinity that hadn’t been talked about enough in the election cycle. It was, to him, the polar opposite of the alternative.

“It almost feels like Trump and JD Vance and all the MAGA-world people are afraid of women,” Reed says. “Like, there’s this subtext that if you’re trying to control women this much, there’s something about your masculinity that must feel challenged.”

Reed articulated his thoughts to the greater Creatives for Harris team, which meets regularly on Slack to brainstorm ideas. The message quickly met with a robust gallery of upward-thumbs, smiley faces, and double-exclamation points. Buoyed by the encouragement, Reed tapped into his network of talented filmmakers, actors, and casting directors, and put together the video on a shoestring budget.

The original version was a bit more scolding. It included lines like, “I’m not afraid of a woman having rights because what kind of creep would I be then?” After marinating on the concept a bit further, Reed realized the last thing he wanted to do was condescend to his potential audience, whom he saw as both people already on board the Harris train and people on the fence. Ultimately, he decided viewers would be savvy enough to intuit the negative implications of the opposing viewpoint without having it spelled out.

It’s exactly the kind of consideration Reed thinks is missing from recent conversations on the left aimed at young men—and part of the reason Gen Z is so politically divided along gender lines. (According to the New York Times, women ages 18 to 29 lean toward Harris by 38 points, while men in the same age group favor Trump by 13 points—a 51 point gap in total.) There is a loneliness epidemic and identity crisis currently unfolding among young men, a group that has seen rising suicide rates. One side of the ideological spectrum appears to have taken it seriously sooner than the other.

Rather than despair over young men drifting into the MAGA zone, though, Reed wants to see a partywide effort to weigh in on the masculinity conversation without preaching or demonizing.

“When no one is talking to someone about an issue, they’re gonna go wherever they feel seen, and if that happens to be a toxic place, they’ll go down that rabbit hole without even realizing it,” he says. “That’s why it’s important to talk about masculinity in a different way.”

Tampa General, a Florida hospital with just over 1,000 beds and the region’s only Level 1 trauma center, sits on the tip of Davis Islands. It’s one of the lowest-lying neighborhoods in the Florida city, and was a mandatory evacuation zone ahead of Hurricane Milton, which swept across the west coast of Florida Wednesday night. 

That storm brought intense rain, flooding, and even tornadoes, leaving more than three million people without power. Davis Islands saw at least four feet of storm surge Wednesday night. But Tampa General weathered the storm, thanks in part to its AquaFence, a reusable mobile flood barrier made of panels that can fold open to be quickly deployed ahead of an emergency, and that secure to the ground with metal anchors.

Tampa General did experience some impacts from Hurricane Milton. The hospital said it had some minor leaks Wednesday night, but that its power and supplies held strong, and that there was no threat to staff or patient safety. The hospital remained open Thursday morning. 

Around Tampa General, the AquaFence stood 10 feet tall in parts of the perimeter. That barrier can withstand up to 15 feet of storm surge, the hospital said. Tampa General deployed the AquaFence for Hurricane Helene as well, where it protected the hospital from a seven-foot storm surge. The facility used the flood barrier system during Hurricane Ian, too.

AquaFence was founded in 1999, and now is used as flood protection for properties across North America, Europe, and Asia. In the U.S. alone, AquaFence says its systems protect more than $30 billion of real estate. The watertight fences come in a few forms, including a FloodWall, which is what Tampa General deployed; a lightweight Flash Wall that can be stored in a carry bag and set up by one person in front of a door to protect against flash flooding; and a Flood Barricade, a short barrier that can be installed on things like windows and garage doors.

The AquaFence is just one flood mitigation effort the hospital has put in place to protect against hurricanes. “While AquaFence has proven effective in the past, it is just the first line of defense and one of many mitigation efforts we’ve implemented this week to safely continue care for our patients,” Jennifer Crabtree, chief of staff at Tampa General, told the Tampa Bay Times ahead of Milton’s landfall. The hospital also has industrial-grade pumps to remove any water that might get past the AquaFence, and it also moved patients away from its first floor ahead of the storm.

As climate change is making flooding more common and fueling stronger storms like Hurricane Milton, more companies have been developing flood barrier systems like the AquaFence. New York City has installed floodgates on top of subway station entrances to prevent them from filling up with water. Ahead of Hurricane Milton, Jacksonville, Florida, deployed Tiger Dams, which are inflatable tube-shaped barriers meant to hold back rising waters. 

So-called “sponge cities” are also adapting to extreme rain with green infrastructure, like parks that turn into reservoirs and green roofs that can slow down the influx of water. In New Orleans, a convent that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina turned its grounds into a flood-prevention urban wetland that can help protect the city from future storms. 

As Amazon’s Prime Day kicked off the holiday shopping season this week, U.S. consumers are expected to spend a record $18.5 billion using buy now, pay later for purchases in the last quarter of the year, according to projections by data firm Adobe Analytics.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) exploded in popularity as the COVID-19 pandemic forced more shoppers online, driving $75 billion in online spending in 2023, up 14.3% from 2022, according to Adobe.

BNPL providers like Affirm and Klarna boost shoppers’ purchasing power by lending them the money for purchases, which they repay in installments spread over as many as 36 months, although the most common products are four-installment payment plans.

Because most BNPL providers do not report their loans to the credit reporting agencies, comprehensive data on BNPL delinquencies is scant. The Financial Technology Association, which counts three BNPL lenders among its members, reports less than a 2% delinquency rate among those companies compared to nearly 9% for credit cards.

Still, 71% of BNPL users also had credit card debt in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Afterpay—which is owned by Block—reported that 96% of customers paid all of their installments on time during the fourth quarter of 2023, while Klarna reported that 96% of its pay-in-four users in 2023 paid off their bills early or on time.

For the three months ended Sept. 30, 2024, Affirm said 2.4% of its loans were delinquent by more than 30 days.

Here are five charts illustrating how BNPL is used:

Share of online spending

Consumers spent more than $731.5 billion online from January through September this year, with $57.6 billion of that coming from BNPL purchases, according to Adobe Analytics. That’s up 10.3% from the same period in 2023.

The record $18.5 billion in BNPL purchases Adobe is predicting for the last quarter this year would be a year-on-year increase of 11.4%.

On-time payments

Most BNPL users make their full payment on time, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and fewer shoppers were late on their payments between 2022 and 2023.

However, the Philadelphia Fed said that it was unclear if shoppers appeared “less risky” because of changes in BNPL companies’ underwriting methods, or if there was a shift in the pool of consumers who were attracted to BNPL from 2022 to 2023.

Credit scores

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2022 reported that most BNPL users who also had revolving balances on at least one credit card had credit scores that were subprime (between 580 and 619) or near prime (between 620 and 659).

Because many BNPL lenders do not furnish data to the credit reporting agencies, consumer advocates have warned that BNPL debt is a blind spot for regulators, other lenders and BNPL lenders themselves.

In May, the CFPB issued an interpretive rule applying new requirements for BNPL lenders, mandating that companies must investigate consumer disputes, refund products that have been returned and provide periodic billing statements. The companies are not required to assess a consumer’s ability to repay a loan.

Average monthly payment

Fifty-eight percent of BNPL users this year reported having an average monthly payment of $100 or less, according to The Motley Fool, a research firm. In contrast, Experian reported that the average monthly credit card payment users had in February was $202.

Only 2% of BNPL users had an average monthly payment of more than $1,000.

Uses across generations

For shoppers considered Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z, or those under age 60, clothes were the most popular BNPL purchases last year, per PYMNTS, a news provider focused on payments, while more Baby Boomers used BNPL to purchase furniture.

Groceries were also a popular BNPL purchase across generations. The CFPB found that BNPL usage for everyday purchases like groceries, gas and utilities was up 434% in 2022 from 2020 as consumers faced rising prices.

—Hannah Lang, Reuters

After the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene and the ongoing impact of Hurricane Milton, it’s clear that extreme weather events won’t stop—and will likely only get worse due to the effects of climate change. Now, more than ever, we need clear communication around the potential impact of storms. To do that, some experts are urging meteorologists to retire one of the most common graphics shown during hurricane season: the hurricane cone. 

The classical cone graphic used by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) is a familiar sight. From the New York Times to the Drudge Report to TV stations across the country, the cone is the dominant graphic shown during an impending hurricane. But it’s also deeply flawed. The cone, designed to depict the probable path of a storm’s center, has misled people into believing that if they live outside its boundaries, they’re safe. 

In reality, storm surges and winds extend far beyond the path suggested by the cone. Rob Lydick, a forecaster for Weather World at Penn State, explained over email that the public needs a lot more. “By highlighting, for example, what 10-15 feet of storm surge looks like in a community, you’re adding important insight that could encourage someone, who for one reason or another, was not going to evacuate or take appropriate action, to do so.”

I interviewed Steve Caparotta, chief meteorologist for WAFB 9 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over Zoom, and he shared similar thoughts. He says he tries to focus less on the cone and more on what really matters to people—the specific impacts to their homes and communities. “People want to know how much wind speed they’re going to get, how much rainfall they can expect; if they’re along the coast, how high that storm surge is going to get,” Caparotta says. 

The classic cone fails to answer these questions in a meaningful way, instead creating a false sense of security for those outside its borders. During Hurricane Francine, which battered Louisiana in September, Caparotta gave his team of meteorologists a clear directive: “Make sure you’re focusing on impacts. It’s all about impacts,” he says. 

A new era for the cone

The NHC has acknowledged the cone’s issues. In January 2024, it introduced a new experimental graphic that attempts to combine the impact zones overlaid on the cone’s path and shape. The hurricane is represented by the stylization of its shape, but this shape doesn’t provide clear information. (As Edward Tufte would say: It’s wasted ink.) The impact zones are shown as big patches that come in four colors: yellow is for “tropical storm watch,” orange for “tropical storm warning,” pink for “hurricane watch,” and red for “hurricane warning.” While this graphic can convey some additional information, its meaning is confusing. The real question: What is the difference between a tropical storm warning and a hurricane warning in terms of impact for the public?

NHC spokesperson Maria Torres explained to CBS News that the organization’s new experimental graphic aims to highlight watches and warnings more prominently. The alerts are taking precedence over the cone, and will be predominant on the graphic, Torres says. This is an attempt to address the so-called containment effect, where people mistakenly believe areas outside the cone are free from risk. 

But the new map still presents challenges. Caparotta says it’s “a bit busy and hard to interpret,” with so much information that the core message can get lost. 

Caparotta also believes that the NHC has become a victim of its own success in predicting storms. In 1992, for example, the cone for Hurricane Andrew was much larger, reflecting the imprecision of forecasts at the time. The broad cone made people more cautious. Now, with vastly improved accuracy, the cone has shrunk, leading to a more precise forecast but one that doesn’t quite communicate the risk for people outside the cone’s prescribed danger zone. “Now the cone is so small that it doesn’t do a good job of showing who will be impacted,” he says.

We need an effective communication center

Information about a storm’s potential impact is out there—the NHC offers detailed maps, wind projections, rainfall estimates—but it’s hard to find, and most people don’t know where to look. Much of the detailed information is buried deep within the NHC’s website, far from the front page. And it looks to be designed for meteorologists, not the average person looking for definitive, easy-to-understand information on a storm. (The NHC didn’t respond to comment as of publication.)

As the information landscape becomes more fragmented, there’s an argument to be made for a centralized, comprehendible source of truth. You could imagine two views of NHC data—more granular data for scientists, and simpler views for the public. Caparotta says that while there’s a need for more detailed information about the impact of storms, “meteorologists want to be a little careful with being too precise because there is still uncertainty [during any given storm].”

Today, broadcast newsrooms are moving beyond the cone with VFX virtual reality graphics that simulate potential storm surges. The graphics are indeed high impact—almost sensational. But they achieve precisely what Caparotta and other meteorologists are after: a simple, visceral graphic that might be the push people need to get out of a potentially disastrous situation.  

Even as the job market remains strong—with employers adding 254,000 jobs in September—some workers are still reeling from the impact of ongoing layoffs across the corporate world. A new Harris Poll survey found that 28% of Americans are worried about losing their job before the end of the year, with younger workers showing even greater concern than their older counterparts. Among millennials and Gen Z workers, more than a third of people surveyed—35% and 37%, respectively—were anxious about losing their jobs.

An uncertain future

These concerns seem to reflect a broader financial precarity that is disproportionately impacting younger workers, particularly millennials. Many workers are making career choices influenced by their financial standing; according to the survey, 40% of U.S. adults say their debt has shaped their career decisions, whether that means staying in a job they dislike or delaying retirement.

Millennials, however, report being the most impacted by debt, with 54% of them saying it has affected their career choices, as compared to just 21% of boomers. Millennials were more likely to hold multiple jobs or seek out a new job because they were burdened by debt.

Growing financial pressure

Still, financial concerns driven by mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and medical debt seem to be driving many workers to seek out new employment. A majority of people surveyed—56%—said they were somewhat likely or very likely to find a second job within the next year, to help supplement their income; over 40% said they would change careers or look for a new job due to financial concerns.

These findings also signal that U.S. workers are under growing financial pressure. This year, household debt ballooned to a record high of $17.3 trillion, then jumping to $17.8 billion by Q2 2024—an increase of $733 billion year over year. Much of that increase can be attributed to credit card debt and home equity or mortgage debt. Under those circumstances, it’s little surprise that debt is driving so many workers to reevaluate their career moves.

A crackdown by the U.S. consumer finance watchdog on hidden or excessive financial fees could expand to target billions of dollars in mortgage, credit reporting and other fees if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential election.

Expunging “junk fees” has been a central, and popular, plank of Democratic President Joe Biden‘s push to bring down prices. And with inflation and the economy at the heart of the presidential race, Democratic candidate Harris has pledged to carry on the fight.

Rohit Chopra, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden, has targeted around $20 billion of annual bank overdraft, credit card and bounced-check fees, according to the agency’s data. But there are billions of dollars of other fees the agency could go after with four more years of Democratic leadership. Chopra’s term ends in 2026.

According to a CFPB official and a second regulatory source, the CFPB’s next top targets include mortgage closing costs and business-to-business fees that trickle down to customers, in particular borrower credit-score fees.

While there is no publicly available data on the total annual value of these fees, a Reuters analysis of CFPB and other data suggests they could exceed $24 billion.

“Harris would be wise to continue to focus on junk fees … as vice president she’s observed the success first-hand,” said Aaron Klein, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

The CFPB says the financial system is riddled with fees that are not disclosed up front or which are excessive and distort the free-market system by concealing the true price of goods and services.

Banks say the fees are transparent and that eliminating them will hinder Americans’ access to credit. They have sued to overturn the CFPB’s March rule capping credit card late fees at $8, down from the typical $32.

“U.S. consumers don’t want new regulations that make it more expensive to use their credit cards and other banking products,” said Bill Hulse, senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which is leading the credit card litigation. He said the group would continue to advocate on fees.

That is not deterring the CFPB, which expects to finalize curbs on overdraft and bounced-check fees by year-end, after which mortgage closing costs are its next top target, said a CFPB official who requested anonymity to discuss the agency’s plans.

The CFPB this year flagged that closing costs, which comprise dozens of individual fees, are a barrier to affordable housing and may merit regulatory action.

Median total loan costs in 2022 rose more than 20% year-on-year to reach nearly $6,000 for home purchase loans and $5,000 for refinancings, according to CFPB data. That suggests borrowers spent roughly $24 billion on closing costs last year, based on the 4.2 million homes that were purchased and refinanced, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data.

The CFPB flagged that title insurance, which typically costs 0.5% to 1% of the purchase price, is among the most expensive components of closing costs.

It also said that mortgage lenders have reported that the fees they pay for borrower credit reports and scores, which can exceed $100 and are ultimately passed on to borrowers, have jumped since 2022, sometimes by as much as 400%.

That is also a key focus for the CFPB, both sources said. The second source added that these types of big-business-to-small-business information fees were generally on the agency’s radar.

The CFPB has also been cracking down on fees lenders charge customers for information about their accounts on items such as outstanding loan balances or fraud inquiries, its website says. It has also called out ATM fees and the fees charged by retailers for cash back in stores.

“If Democrats win, you’re going to see continued pressure on all types of fees,” said Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at brokerage BTIG.

Pushback

CFPB officials believe the agency has the authority to cap fees, but firms dispute that and have signaled they will fight more curbs. In an August letter, lenders and title insurers warned that they believe Congress did not give the CFPB power to set fees in the mortgage-origination process.

Congressional Republicans have also criticized the CFPB’s Chopra for what they see as overreaching. Analysts believe that if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins, the agency would pull back.

Some executives, though, worry that a recent pledge by Trump to cap credit card interest rates indicates that if he wins the election, the CFPB may be tougher on lenders than during his first presidency from 2017 to 2021.

Whoever wins the election, the Consumer Bankers Association, which represents major retail lenders, has already launched a campaign that pushes back on the “junk fee” narrative.

“What we don’t want to see repeated is this administration’s campaign against banks,” said Lindsey Johnson, the group’s CEO, referring to the Biden administration. “Whoever wins, the banks need to be at the table, participating in the discussion.”

—Pete Schroeder and Makailah Gause, Reuters

Additional reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Michelle Price.

New Zealand’s Defense Minister on Thursday publicly criticized online trolling of the female captain of a naval vessel that sunk at the weekend, saying while the cause of the incident was unknown, it had nothing to do with the captain’s gender.

The Manawanui, the navy’s specialist dive and hydrographic vessel, sank on Sunday on a reef off the coast of Samoa that it was surveying. Its 75 crew and passengers were ordered to abandon the vessel in life rafts and were later rescued.

“A court of inquiry has been stood up to establish what caused this terrible incident. The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain,” said Judith Collins, who is New Zealand’s first female defense minister.

She said she was appalled to see the comments online from “armchair admirals, people who will never have to make decisions which mean life or death for their subordinates.”

“I thought seriously in 2024 what the hell is going on here with people who are sitting there in their armchair operating a keyboard making comments about people that they do not know, about an area they do not know and they are just vile. Where’s a bit of decency,” she said.

She added women in uniform were being abused in the street following the incident.

“This is outrageous behaviour and New Zealand is not known for this and we are better than it,” she added.

New Zealand has long been known for its progressive stance on gender equality with the country’s female population the first in the world to gain suffrage. But women in authority, including former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, have often come in for much worse treatment than their male counterparts by members of the public – a topic that has been hotly debated in parliament and local media.

Around 20% of New Zealand’s uniformed defense force personnel are women. The country’s Navy has just five vessels in service after the sinking of the Manawanui.

The Defence Force said an interim report will be made by mid-November and the final report will be released to the public.

—Lucy Craymer, Reuters

Think of your favorite fantasy or science-fiction novel. You’ll know the author and title, of course. But can you think of its editor or publisher?

In publishing, the people who work behind the scenes rarely get their due. But on Oct. 1, 2024, at least, one industry pioneer got the limelight. On that day, PBS aired “Judy-Lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal,” the first episode of its new documentary series Renegades, which highlights little-known historical figures with disabilities.

A woman with dwarfism, Judy-Lynn del Rey was best known for founding Del Rey Books, a science-fiction and fantasy imprint that turned fantasy, in particular, into a major publishing category.

As a scholar of fantasy literature, I had the good fortune to serve as research consultant for the PBS project. Due to time constraints, however, the episode could tell only half of del Rey’s story, passing over how she affected science-fiction and fantasy themselves.

Judy-Lynn del Rey, you see, had very clear notions on what kind of stories people wanted to buy. For some critics, she also committed the unforgivable sin of being right.

The Mama of Star Wars

Over the course of her career, del Rey earned a reputation as a superstar editor among her authors. Arthur C. Clarke, who cowrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, called her the “most brilliant editor I ever encountered,” and Philip K. Dick said she was the “greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins,” the legendary editor of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

She got her start, though, working as an editorial assistant—in truth, a “gofer”—for the most lauded science-fiction magazine of the 1960s, Galaxy. There she learned the basics of publishing and rose rapidly through the editorial ranks until Ballantine Books lured her away in 1973.

Soon thereafter, Ballantine was acquired by publishing giant Random House, which then named del Rey senior editor. Yet her first big move was a risky one—cutting ties with Ballantine author John Norman, whose highly popular “Gor” novels were widely panned for their misogyny.

Nonetheless, del Rey’s mission was to develop a strong backlist of science-fiction novels that could hook new generations of younger readers, not to mention adults. One early success was her “Star Trek Log” series, a sequence of 10 novels based on episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series.

But del Rey landed even greater success by snagging the novelization rights to a science-fiction film that, at the time, few Hollywood executives believed would do well: Star Wars.

This savvy gamble led to years of lucrative tie-in products for Ballantine, such as calendars, art books, sketchbooks, the Star Wars Intergalactic Passport and, of course, more novels set in the Star Wars universe—so many different tie-ins, in fact, that del Rey dubbed herself the “Mama of Star Wars.”

Afterward, she became someone who, as reporter Jennifer Crighton put it, radiated “with the shameless glee of one of the Rebel forces, an upstart who won.”

A big player in big fiction

Del Rey’s tendencies as an editor were sometimes criticized—often by competitors who could not match her line’s success—for focusing too much on Ballantine’s bottom line. But she also chose to work within the publishing landscape as it actually existed in the 1970s, rather than the one she only wished existed.

In his book Big Fiction, publishing industry scholar Dan Sinykin calls this period the Conglomerate Era, a time when publishing houses—usually small and family run—were being consolidated into larger corporations.

One benefit of this shift, however, was greater corporate investment in the industry, which boosted print runs, marketing budgets, author advances, and salaries for personnel.

Ballantine’s parent company, Random House, was also known as an industry leader in free speech, thanks to the efforts of legendary CEOs Bennett Cerf and Robert L. Bernstein.

Accordingly, Random House gave their publishing divisions, including Ballantine, immense creative autonomy.

And when del Rey was finally given her own imprint in 1977, she took her biggest risk of all: fantasy.

The Del Rey era

In prior decades, fantasy had a reputation for being unsellable—unless, of course, your name was J.R.R. Tolkien, or you wrote Conan-style barbarian fiction. Whereas the top science fiction magazines often had distinguished runs, fantasy magazines often folded due to lack of sales.

In 1975, though, del Rey hired her husband, Lester del Rey, to develop a fantasy line, and when Del Rey Books launched two years later, it landed major successes with bestsellers such as Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara and Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Yet even though Lester edited the fantasy authors, Judy-Lynn oversaw the imprint and the marketing.

One lesser-known example of her prowess is The Princess Bride.

Today, most people know the 1987 film, but the movie originated as a much earlier novel by William Goldman. The original 1973 edition, however, sold poorly. It might have faded into obscurity had del Rey not been determined to revive Ballantine’s backlist.

She reissued The Princess Bride in 1977 with a dazzling, gate-folded die-cut cover and a new promotional campaign, without which the novel—and the film—might never have found their later success.

Accolades accumulate

Thanks to these efforts, Del Rey Books dominated genre publishing, producing more best-selling titles through 1990 than every other science-fiction and fantasy publisher combined. Yet despite complaints that the imprint prioritized commercial success over literary merit, Del Rey authors earned their fair share of literary accolades.

The prestigious Locus Poll Award for best science-fiction novel went to Del Rey authors Julian May and Isaac Asimov in 1982 and 1983. Other Locus awardees include Patricia A. McKillip, Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Barbara Hambly.

Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds was one of two winners for the World Fantasy Award in 1985 and won the Mythopoeic Society Award in 1986. Even more impressively, Del Rey ran away with the Science Fiction Book Club Award during that prize’s first nine years of existence, winning seven of them. The imprint’s titles also won three consecutive August Derleth Fantasy Awards—now called the British Fantasy Award—from 1977 through 1979.

Yet despite these accolades, Del Rey’s reputation continued to suffer from its own commercial success. Notably, Judy-Lynn del Rey was never nominated for a Hugo Award for best professional editor. When she died in 1986, the Hugo committee belatedly tried granting her a posthumous award, but her husband, Lester, refused to accept it, saying that it came too late.

Although the current narrative continues to be that Del Rey Books published mainly formulaic mass-market fiction in its science-fiction and fantasy lines, the time may be ripe to celebrate the foresight and iconoclasm of a publisher that expanded speculative fiction beyond the borders of a small genre fandom.

Dennis Wise is a professor of practice in English literature at the University of Arizona.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On Thursday, Delta Air Lines announced that it expects a minor revenue hit in the fourth quarter due to the upcoming presidential election, and lower demand for travel before and after.

The Atlanta-based carrier expects that the decline will occur during the two weeks around the November 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, then pick back up in the following weeks for the holiday season.

“We anticipate a one-point impact to total unit revenue from reduced travel demand around the election,” the airline’s president, Glen Hauenstein, said in an earnings release. 

Delta’s third-quarter earnings revealed a fall of 26%. This is due in part to its struggle overcoming the CrowdStrike technology outage this past summer that caused the cancellation of thousands of flights.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC, “We do anticipate seeing a little choppiness around the election, which we’ve seen in past national elections.” He explained that consumers often pause their investment decisions until after the election. 

This begs the question: Do election years normally see a drop in travel? 

Although other airlines haven’t yet raised concerns of fourth-quarter-revenue declines due to the election, it seems there is some truth in Delta’s claims.  

Looking back at 2020, although it was a pandemic year, travel agencies reflected on their booking trends and noticed a decrease every four years. ThePrint spoke with Dan Sherman, chief marketing officer of Ski.com, who said that sales during election years can be knocked down more than 30% when compared to a normal year.   

Virtuoso, an online travel agency network, also tested this theory in 2019. According to Travel Weekly, Virtuoso analyzed sales data for an election year versus other years and saw a connection between election years and travel slowdowns. Sales in the United States on average increased 14.3% in the year prior to an election, but only 2.9% during an election year.  

Many people during election years are worried about personal finances and the possibility of market fluctuation when candidates change offices, Steven Gould, founder of the Travel Advisor Resource Center (TARC), told TravelAge West. At the same time, a survey of travel advisors published in March found that 68% did not expect the election to impact people’s travel plans—at least, that’s how they were feeling while sales were up for big events such as the Olympics.

Either way, Delta predicts a very successful fourth quarter due to improved pricing power and good holiday travel bookings.  

Britain’s new Labour government unveiled Thursday a slew of new rights for millions of workers, including more generous rules for sick pay and parental leave and major restrictions on certain employment practices such as fire and rehire — a package of measures described by ministers as the biggest overhaul of workers’ rights in a generation.

The Employment Rights Bill was published around 100 days after Labour took power for the first time in 14 years following its crushing victory over the Conservative Party in the general election.

The 28 measures have been broadly welcomed by unions and lobby groups representing businesses, though one described it as “clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned.”

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the measures, which will come into effect in 2026 after more consultations with businesses and unions, will raise the minimum floor of employment rights and provide better support for those businesses that are engaged in good practices.

“This is a comprehensive bill which, once implemented, will represent the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation,” he said.

The government, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has struggled to maintain the initiative since it was elected on July 4, with critics accusing it of weeks of drift and negative headlines over a series of gifts. With lawmakers back in Parliament, Starmer will be hoping his government can get back on track in the coming weeks with a raft of policies, most notably in the budget on Oct. 30.

Among the measures announced, workers will be able to claim sick pay from the first day of absence rather than the fourth, be entitled to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave from day one of employment, and be entitled to bereavement leave. Workers will also have day-one protection against unfair dismissal.

The bill will also increase the likelihood of requests for flexible working arrangements to be granted, and require large employers to produce action plans on how to address gender pay gaps and support employees through menopause, as well as strengthening rights for pregnant workers and new mothers.

Unions have welcomed the measure as a “seismic shift” from the low-pay, low-productivity economy they accused the previous Conservative government of presiding over.

“Whether it’s tackling the scourge of zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire, improving access to sick pay and parental leave, or clamping down on exploitation, this bill highlights Labour’s commitment to upgrade rights and protections for millions,” said Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress.

The Confederation of British Industry, the U.K.’s biggest business lobby group, also praised the government for engaging with businesses in addition to unions and expressed its desire that the cooperation can continue before the measures come into effect in two years.

“With a number of critical details still subject to consultation, it’s important the government builds on the good engagement to date to ensure we get the detail right on this decisive piece of legislation,” CBI CEO Rain Newton-Smith said.

The Federation of Small Businesses was less positive, arguing that the legislation is a “rushed job, clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned” and that dropping 28 new measures onto small business employers all at once leaves them “scrambling to make sense of it all.”

—Pan Pylas, Associated Press

Have you ever found yourself outraged on social media by political posts about the U.S. election—and before you know it, you’re angrily clicking or commenting in disagreement? Well, there’s a name for that.

A new study from Tulane University has found that contrary to popular belief, political outrage actually fuels social media engagement.

While we typically prefer to engage with information that is consistent with our current beliefs (and avoid information that isn’t), researchers have found that online users can become relatively more engaged with posts that clash with their ideology. They’re calling it the “confrontation effect.”

“The research helps explain the large amount of toxic discourse we observe online,” said the study’s lead author Daniel Mochon, associate professor of marketing at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business. “Our results reveal that individuals are strongly driven to voice their outrage toward those with whom they disagree.”

Mochon added that platforms “benefit from keeping users active, regardless of whether the interaction is positive or negative.”

The study is based on data from Twitter, Facebook, and online experiments, some during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. For example, researchers exposed more than 500,000 Americans to political posts for and against then-president Donald Trump on Facebook. The results: The users were far more likely to click, comment, or react to posts that challenged their beliefs, particularly their deepest core values.

These results are especially timely with just 26 days until the 2024 election, as both candidates and their supporters double down on political rhetoric, hoping to engage and win over voters.

She blames greedy companies for price-gouging. He blames the Biden administration‘s economic policies.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump agree on one thing: Tapping into sour consumer sentiment about high grocery prices is one way to court voters.

Bacon prices have been a particular focus for Trump. He mentioned them in his Sept. 10 debate with Harris and again a week later during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Things are not going, right now, very well for the consumer,” Trump said during the interview. “Bacon is up five times.”

Trump’s math is wrong, but bacon has seen some sizzling price increases. According to federal data, U.S. bacon prices peaked in October 2022 at $7.60 a pound, up 30% from October 2019.

In September, bacon averaged $6.95 a pound, 25% higher than five years ago. That’s in line with a 29% increase in overall food prices over that period, according to the Labor Department. Still, September bacon prices were 1.8% lower than they were a year ago.

Prices for bacon are always volatile. Among other things, they’re subject to weather, animal disease, feed costs, seasonal demand and, according to Harris and other critics, some price gouging by giant food conglomerates.

Bacon prices typically go up in the summer when Americans have a hankering for BLTs, for example. A president’s policies generally have little direct impact on the prices consumers pay for bacon or food overall.

Prices for not just bacon but groceries in general — and most other products — began surging in 2021 as the economy rebounded with unexpected speed from the pandemic recession, causing snarled supply chains and goods shortages. The price spikes worsened later after Russia invaded Ukraine. Food costs jumped across the world, not just in the United States.

Though U.S. inflation has tumbled from its peak in mid-2022, average food prices remain elevated. The impact of those price spikes, though, has been cushioned in part by a comparable rise in average wages.

Here are some factors that have made it more expensive to bring home the bacon.

COVID-19 spread quickly in meat processing

Workers stand close together on production lines in the U.S. meat processing industry. Big bacon producers like Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods temporarily closed plants in the spring of 2020 after thousands of workers got sick and some died. While plants were closed, millions of pigs got too big to be processed and were culled instead, leading to shortages just as home-bound Americans were shopping for more breakfast bacon, said David Ortega, a professor of food economics at Michigan State University.

Demand from China jumped

China’s growing demand in 2020 contributed to lower pork supplies at home. U.S. pork exports to China jumped 75% in 2020 as Beijing scrambled to replace hogs that were lost to an outbreak of African swine fever, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Over the course of 2020, U.S. bacon prices rose 6%.

Meat processors faced higher costs

Meat companies paid out pandemic bonuses and invested in protective gear in order to get plants running again. Tyson Foods required all its 139,000 workers to receive COVID vaccines.

By the end of 2021, Tyson said it had spent more than $800 million on bonuses, vaccine clinics and other COVID-related measures. It was also paying more for packaging and transportation in a supply chain that had been mangled by COVID. To recoup those costs, the company jacked up the prices of pork products by 25% in its 2021 fiscal year.

Labor costs took a toll

After risking their lives to keep working during the pandemic, many workers sought better pay and benefits. In June 2021, unionized workers at a Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, threatened to strike after contract negotiations broke down. The coronavirus killed four workers at the plant and infected nearly 1,300.

Smithfield Foods, which is owned by the Chinese pork company WH Group, eventually agreed to higher wages and $520 bonuses for its Sioux Falls workers. U.S. bacon prices rose 24% over the course of 2021.

Moscow’s war against Ukraine sent prices up

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused global wheat and corn prices to surge. That made it costlier to raise hogs. According to Iowa State University, feed costs rose 24% between 2021 and 2022. Early in 2022, Brazil-based JBS, another major U.S. pork processor, said it was raising prices to cover the higher cost of animal feed.

Did corporate profits play a role?

Harris has proposed a ban on “price gouging” by food companies, arguing that some of the companies kept raising prices long after pandemic-related supply problems dissipated so they could boost their profits.

There’s no strict definition of “price gouging,” though it generally refers to sharp price increases that companies impose after a supply disruption. Three big bacon producers — Tyson, Hormel and JBS — reported record sales in 2022, when bacon prices hit a peak of $7.61 a pound.

Eventually, those higher prices reduced demand. In the year ending Oct. 1, 2022, U.S. consumers bought 8% fewer packages of bacon than in the prior year, according to Nielsen. By the end of the 2022, prices were falling.

Over the course of 2022, U.S. bacon prices fell 3.7% to $6.95 a pound.

Animal welfare law had an effect

In 2018, California voters approved a law requiring more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying hens and veal calves. Producers in other states must meet those standards if they want to sell pork, eggs or veal in California. The pork industry sued, supported by the Biden administration. But the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn the law, which took effect on July 1, 2023. Because not all pork producers are meeting the standards, less bacon is available to Californians, thereby driving up prices.

Daniel Sumner, a professor of research and agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, estimates that prices for pork products will be 7% to 10% higher in California over the long term because of the law.

The election raises uncertainty

Joe Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and a former economist for the USDA, said food price inflation was a global issue over the past few years, not one caused by the Biden administration. Past run-ups in food prices, he noted, have occurred regardless of which party was in office.

One wild card this time is Trump’s promise to impose a 20% tariff on everything the U.S. imports. Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, noted that the U.S. generally exports between 20% and 25% of its pork, and other countries would likely retaliate by imposing tariffs on U.S. pork. If that happened, more pork might remain in the U.S., which would cause bacon prices to fall. Yet the price of dozens of other imported products would rise.

“If you want a BLT, the bacon may be a little cheaper, but the lettuce and tomato will cost a fair amount more,” Hart said.

Harris has denounced Trump’s proposed sweeping tariffs, though she has supported targeted tariffs on Chinese imports.

Harris has vowed to crack down on unfair mergers that give big food companies too much pricing power. She’s also said she would investigate and prosecute price-fixing, an ongoing issue in the heavily consolidated meat industry. McDonald’s recently sued four big beef companies, including Tyson and JBS, accusing them of price-fixing.

—Dee-Ann Durbin, Associated Press business writer

In just a few years, brand-name injectable drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound have rocketed to fame as billion-dollar annual sellers for weight loss as well as to control blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.

But the price of these injections is steep: They cost about $800-$1,000 per month, and if used for weight loss alone, they are not covered by most insurance policies. Both drugs mimic the naturally occurring hormone GLP-1 to help regulate blood sugar and reduce cravings. They can be taken only with a prescription.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced an official shortage of the active ingredients in these drugs in 2022, but on Oct. 2, 2024, the agency announced that the shortage has been resolved for the medicine tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Despite the soaring demand and limited supply of these drugs, there are no generic versions available. This is because the patents for semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, which is still in shortage—and tirzepatide don’t expire until 2033 and 2036, respectively.

As a result, nonbrand alternatives that can be purchased with or without a prescription are flooding the market. Yet these products come with real risks to consumers.

I am a pharmacist who studies weaknesses in federal oversight of prescription and over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in the U.S. My research group recently had investigated loopholes that are allowing alternative weight-loss products to enter the market.

High demand is driving GLP-1 wannabes

The dietary supplement market has sought to cash in on the GLP-1 demand with pills, teas, extracts, and all manner of other products that claim to produce similar effects as the brand names at a much lower price.

Products containing the herb berberine offer only a few pounds of weight loss, while many dietary supplement weight-loss products contain stimulants, such as sibutramine, and laxatives, such as phenolphthalein, which increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

The role of compounding pharmacies

Unlike the dietary supplements that are masquerading as GLP-1 weight loss products, compounding pharmacies can create custom versions of products that contain the same active ingredients as the real thing for patients who cannot use either brand or generic products for some reason.

These pharmacies can also produce alternative versions of brand-name drugs when official drug shortages exist.

Since the demand for GLP-1 medications has far outpaced the supply, compounding pharmacies are legally producing a variety of different semaglutide and tirzepatide products.

These products may come in versions that differ from the brand-name companies, such as vials of powder that must be dissolved in liquid or as tablets or nasal sprays.

Just like the brand-name drugs, you must have a valid prescription to receive them. The prices range from $250-$400 a month—still a steep price for many consumers.

Compounding pharmacies must adhere to the FDA’s sterility and quality production methods, but these rules are not as rigorous for compounding pharmacies as those for commercial manufacturers of generic drugs.

In addition, the products compounding pharmacies create do not have to be tested in humans for safety or effectiveness like brand-name products do.

Proper dosing can also be challenging with compounded forms of the drugs.

Companies that work the system

For people who cannot afford a compounding-pharmacy product, or cannot get a valid prescription for semaglutide or tirzepatide, opportunistic companies are stepping in to fill the void. These include “peptide companies,” manufacturers that create non-FDA approved knockoff versions of the drugs.

From November 2023 to March 2024, my team carried out a study to assess which of these peptide companies are selling semaglutide or tirzepatide products. We scoured the internet looking for these peptide companies and collected information about what they were selling and their sales practices.

We found that peptide sellers use a loophole to sell these drugs. On their websites, the companies state that their drugs are for “research purposes only” or “not for human consumption,” but they do nothing to verify that the buyers are researchers or that the product is going to a research facility.

By reading the comments sections of the company websites and the targeted ads on social media, it becomes clear that both buyers and sellers understand the charade. Unlike compounding pharmacies, these peptide sellers do not provide the supplies you need to dissolve and inject the drug, provide no instructions, and will usually not answer questions.

Peptide sellers, since they allegedly are not selling to consumers, do not require a valid prescription and will sell consumers whatever quantity of drug they wish to purchase. Even if a person has an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, the companies will happily sell them a semaglutide or tirzepatide product without a prescription. The average prices of these peptide products range from $181-$203 per month.

Skirting regulations

Peptide sellers do not have to adhere to the rules or regulations that drug manufacturers or compounding pharmacies do. Many companies state that their products are 99% pure, but an independent investigation of three companies’ products from August 2023 to March 2024 found that the purity of the products were far less than promised.

One product contained endotoxin—a toxic substance produced by bacteria—suggesting that it was contaminated with microbes. In addition, the products’ promised dosages were off by 29% to 39%. Poor purity can cause patients to experience fever, chills, nausea, skin irritation, infections, and low blood pressure.

In this study, some companies never even shipped the drug, telling the buyers they needed to pay an additional fee to have the product clear customs.

If a consumer is harmed by a poor-quality product, it would be difficult to sue the seller, since the products specifically say they are “not for human consumption.” Ultimately, consumers are being led to spend money on products that may never arrive, could cause an infection, might not have the correct dose, and contain no instructions on how to safely use or store the product.

Will prices for brand-name products come down?

To combat these alternative sellers, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly began offering an alternative version of its brand-name Zepbound product for weight loss in September 2024.

Instead of its traditional injection pen products that cost more than $1,000 for a month’s supply, this product comes in vials that patients draw up and inject themselves. For patients who take 5 milligrams of Zepbound each week, the vial products would cost them $549 a month if patients buy it through the company’s online pharmacy and can show that they do not have insurance coverage for the drug.

After a grilling on Capitol Hill in September 2024, pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk came under intense pressure to offer patients without prescription coverage a lower-priced product for its brand-name Wegovy as well.

In the next few years, additional brand-name GLP-1 agonist drugs will likely make it to market. As of October 2024, a handful of these products are in late-phase clinical trials, with active ingredients such as retatrutide, survodutide, and ecnoglutide, and more than 18 other drug candidates are in earlier stages of development.

When new pharmaceutical companies enter this market, they will have to offer patients lower prices than Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in order to gain market share. This is the most likely medium-term solution to drive down the costs of GLP-1 drugs and eliminate the drug shortages in the marketplace.

C. Michael White is a distinguished professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Paul Rudolph (1917-1997) is what you might call an acquired taste. While the modernist architect dabbled in elegant international style beach houses, swanky townhouses for the glitterati, and dizzying conceptual megastructures, he’s best known for his mammoth brutalist buildings, many of which have been on the losing end of high-profile historic preservation debates. One person’s monumental structure is just as easily another’s authoritarian symbol.

On my visit to Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first major museum retrospective on the architect, this split was reflected in a couple of the comments I overheard in the gallery. “He really was a genius—misunderstood and underappreciated,” one woman said to her friend while watching a video of Hollywood productions that were either filmed in or had set design inspired by Rudolph’s buildings, including Wes Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums and the Disney+ series Loki. While watching the same scene, another visitor remarked, “A prison, perfect.”

Abraham Thomas, the Met’s curator of architecture, design, and decorative art, says that these mixed feelings about Rudolph’s work made revisiting his career all the more satisfying. “He had always struck me as a bit of a conundrum,” Thomas says. Rudolph had a meteoric ascent in the world of architecture (he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1967 and became the dean of the Yale School of Architecture before he was 40), before he practically disappeared from the North American architectural scene later in his career, spending his final years building in Southeast Asia. 

But where the exhibition is most successful is welcoming us into his intricately made hand drawings, some of which are 6-and-a-half-feet tall, while others are more than 4 feet wide. Thomas says the exhibition was “partly just to have the opportunity to showcase these drawings in the flesh for the first time.”

Who is Paul Rudolph?

Throughout his career, Rudolph was wildly ambitious. Born in Kentucky, he studied at what’s now Auburn University before heading to the Harvard Graduate School of Design. After briefly serving in the military during WWII, he applied the new materials used in battleship repair, like plastic and plywood, to architecture. His first commissions were in Florida, where he developed the Sarasota modern style—think white, boxy, open-plan homes with large windows and deep eaves. He designed affordable housing developments, government structures, university buildings—everything from “Christmas lights to megastructures,” as he once said. 

Rudolph was initially celebrated in the press (one critic speculated that his friendships with editors spared him harsh reviews) and kept his practice in conversation with contemporary events. Engaging with Robert Moses’s Lower Manhattan Expressway idea, he proposed turning the highway into a continuous modular structure with apartments built over an enclosed roadway. If it was going to happen, his thinking was, may as well make it nice. But by the late 1960s, Rudolph was falling out of style as postmodernists came into the picture and positioned him as the figurehead for modernism’s failings. 

For the past 15 years or so, there’s been a steady reconsidering of Rudolph’s work. After he died in 1997, obituaries focused on the “perplexing” nature of his career, and more architecture students and scholars became interested in learning about all the sides to his work, which has led to renewed appreciation for it. 

“I’m not sure there has ever been an architect whose work was as seductive, as beautiful, as exhilarating, and as downright frightening as Paul Rudolph’s,” wrote critic Paul Goldberger in The New Yorker in a 2010 review of a small exhibition at the Cooper Union. The Rudolph Renaissance has also included a show at the Center for Architecture, a scholarly book by historian Timothy Rohan, and a photography book of Rudolph-designed homes on the eve of their demolition (which has become a collector’s item). In 2023, Rudolph’s Modulightor building became New York City’s first landmark to acknowledge an architect’s LGBTQ+ identity. 

The architectural drawing revival

Now, amid a rise in AI-generated images and the ease with which renderings can be produced, Rudolph’s laborious drawings find themselves in the center of a conversation about how architecture is represented. There’s a renewed interest in physical media within contemporary architecture. To wit: The SoHo print shop and architecture gallery a83 opened the third exhibition in its series of shows on architectural drawings, coincidentally, just four days after the Rudolph survey. 

Rudolph’s sketches for his projects were a hit with the design press when he drew them and have continued to captivate audiences ever since. Many of them are now held at the Library of Congress and haven’t been exhibited publicly.

“It’s hard not to be romantic about these drawings,” Thomas says. “I think when people see the power of them, I think it might be an interesting question in terms of the role of drawing within architectural education or even within architecture practice in general.”

Rudolph always held the pen when it came to his drawings. It’s exceedingly rare for the principal of an architecture firm to do this. Just like so much of Rudolph’s career can be considered a “cautionary tale,” as Thomas describes, so too can the drawings. Thomas wonders how different Rudolph’s career might have been if he were able to delegate some of this work.

“You often read these stories about him being quite a difficult architect to work with,” Thomas says. “Many of his students often described him as brutal, but also brilliant and the most important influence they ever had in their career. I think he also refused to play the game. As architectural practices became more corporate and large-scale in the ’70s and ’80s, people like Philip Johnston and I.M. Pei had partners and they were happy to share the headline with other architects. And Rudolph, of course, never did that. He always treated the office almost like an atelier, like he was still at Yale running a studio with students. There’s a cap to how much productivity you can have when he’s being so involved with even client-side renderings.”

That said, architectural spectators today are lucky that Rudolph never passed off the pen since we can now appreciate them as originals, especially since the buildings themselves were never constructed or have since been lost. Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 16, 2025.

Thousands of flights in and out of the U.S. have been canceled this week as Hurricane Milton barreled into the Gulf of Mexico and plowed across Florida—causing many airports in the storm’s path to close their doors.

And airlines across the country grounded flights as a result. There were more than 2,270 U.S. flight cancellations as of Thursday afternoon, according to tracking service FlightAware, following 1,970 on Wednesday.

After battering the southeastern U.S. and parts of Cuba Wednesday, the hurricane moved into the Atlantic Ocean Thursday. Dangers still persist, with officials pointing to storm-surge warnings for much of Florida’s east-central coast and farther north into Georgia, for example, as well as tropical storm warnings reaching South Carolina. That means travel disruptions across the region will likely continue.

Airlines can’t control the weather, but they are still required to provide refunds for customers whose flights are canceled. Earlier this week, President Joe Biden and other government officials also warned companies not to overcharge people fleeing the storm—as some travelers reported unusually high prices—but airlines defended themselves, with some noting they had recently imposed fare caps.

Here’s what to know about your rights, and what to do when cancellations start piling up.

Watch the weather and check your flight before heading out

The widespread damage of Hurricane Milton, which arrives as the region is already reeling from Hurricane Helene, is still being assessed. And, again, storm-surge warnings continued to be in place on Thursday.

Watching weather forecasts and checking your flight’s status ahead of time is key. In recent days, many airports in Florida ceased commercial operations—with Orlando International Airport and Tampa International Airport, for example, remaining closed to the public Thursday. But Orlando, which saw the highest number of cancellations Thursday, later said it would receive a few arrivals in the evening and plans to begin departures again Friday. Tampa’s airport also said it would reopen Friday.

People in the region have been instructed to stay inside and shelter in place until officials say it’s safe.

“If you’re traveling out of Florida, please do not head to the airport unless that airport is open and it’s safe to drive there,” the U.S. Transportation Security Administration wrote Thursday on social media platform X. “Always check with your airline(s) to verify flight status.”

While Florida has been hit hardest by Milton, travel disruptions spread across the country. For those not in the storm’s path, some might be able to reroute their trips, but capacity will be limited. And it’s better to be stuck at home or in a hotel than to be stranded in an airport terminal, so use the airline’s app or flight websites to make sure that your flight is still on before heading out. Carriers try to cancel flights hours or even days before departure.

And with nearly two months of Atlantic hurricane season left to go, it’s possible there will be other severe storms in the near future. Keep an eye on weather forecasts leading up to your trip.

Contact your airline

Airlines should rebook passengers automatically, but that could take much longer as carriers recover from the hurricane, so passengers may have to take more initiative. And be more creative.

People already at an airport usually go to an in-person help desk—but lines are long when there’s widespread disruptions. Travel experts suggest calling the airline and using an international help-desk number, if there is one, to reach an agent more quickly.

Another tactic is to post a few words to the airline on the social platform X. Many airlines have staffers who will help rebook passengers who contact the carrier through social media.

Use your airline’s app—it may have more-current information about flight status than delays and cancellations displayed in the airport terminal.

Can I ask to be booked on another airline?

You can, but airlines aren’t required to put you on another carrier’s flight. Some airlines, including the biggest ones except Southwest, say they can get you to a partner airline, but even then it’s often hit or miss.

A good tip is to research alternative flights while you wait to talk to an agent. It may also be worth checking nearby airports for other routes.

Can I get a refund?

Passengers whose flights are canceled are entitled to a full refund in the form of payment they used to buy the ticket. That’s true even if the ticket was sold as non-refundable.

A refund may be acceptable to travelers who no longer want to make the trip, but many people just want another way to reach their destination, and buying a last-minute replacement ticket could cost more than the refund will cover.

Am I eligible for other cost reimbursements?

There is no provision for additional compensation under U.S. law, and airlines set their own policies for reimbursing stranded travelers for things like hotels and meals.

However, the Biden-Harris administration has been working to change that. In other recent moments of widespread travel disruptions, Transportation Department has appeared to be taking the view that many cancellations and delays are within the airlines’ control, pressuring carriers to cover passengers’ costs.

“We have reminded the airlines of their responsibilities to take care of passengers if they experience major delays,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said earlier this year, when a widespread technology outage also canceled thousands of flights in July.

And last year, the Transportation Department fined Southwest $35 million as part of a $140 million settlement to resolve an investigation into nearly 17,000 canceled flights in December 2022.

The department maintains a “dashboard” showing what each airline promises to cover during travel disruptions.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips and David Koening, Associated Press

When Federal Emergency Management Agency first responders raced to western North Carolina in the days after Hurricane Helene, they expected much of the devastation they found in its wake: totaled cars, crumbling roads, homes filled with mud or ruined by floodwaters or washed away entirely. What they didn’t expect was an alarming number of people under the impression that FEMA had already exhausted its disaster aid budget providing assistance to immigrants; that shadowy forces had orchestrated the hurricane to seize land for lithium mining; and that the U.S. government could control the weather from an undisclosed location somewhere in Antarctica, and may have aimed the storm at Republican-heavy areas in North Carolina in order to hurt President Donald Trump.

Misinformation reliably festers after natural disasters. When networks are down and information is impossible to vet, already-traumatized people are understandably more susceptible than usual to believing bad news. FEMA occasionally launches “Rumor Response” pages in response to such crises, when the stakes are especially high and the misinformation especially dangerous. The page for Hurricane Helene, which recently took on the very wrong assertion that the government can seize land owned by disaster relief applicants whose homes are deemed unlivable, urges visitors to “find trusted sources of information,” and to “discourage others from sharing information from unverified sources.”

But common-sense guidance like this stands no chance on social media, especially X. Instead, the platform formerly known as Twitter was overrun with hurricane-related conspiracy theories after Hurricane Helene. Many of them were pushed by America’s most mendacious demagogue not named Donald Trump: Elon Musk, who bought the site in 2022 and promptly set about reshaping it to suit his vanity, his prejudices, and his political agenda.

On X, Musk has amplified blue-check tweets claiming that FEMA would limit disaster relief to $750 per person, and was “seizing” donations and “claiming them as their own.” He’s spread vaguely apocalyptic claims that sheriffs in North Carolina are threatening to arrest any FEMA employees who “hinder rescue and aid work.” Relative to Musk, who has X’s most-followed account, the original posts come from small-timers—one account posts mostly about Tesla and investing in it, and another seems especially fond of trad-adjacent memes. Musk’s co-sign, though, functions as a bullhorn for agitprop that generates thousands of retweets and millions of views. It’s a dynamic that’s not limited to Hurricane Helene: A recent analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified 50 posts from Musk that contained false or misleading claims about the 2024 election. Together, the posts had been viewed close to 1.2 billion times.

An outspoken xenophobe, Musk seems to especially relish boosting the farcical lie that FEMA lacks sufficient financial reserves to last through hurricane season, since it has exhausted its budget “ferrying illegals into the country” in order to vote for Democrats in elections. (“Treason,” Musk called it.) Already, he and other prominent right-wing influencers on X are blending novel hurricane-related conspiracy theories with more familiar voter fraud ones, providing a grim preview of the depths to which Musk might stoop if Donald Trump, whose candidacy Musk is enthusiastically supporting, loses the presidential election next month.

On October 4, when SpaceX engineers reported to him that they were having trouble helicoptering Starlink internet devices and other supplies to hard-hit areas, Musk raged about “belligerent government incompetence” and accused FEMA of “actively blocking citizens who try to help.” This rhetoric was sufficiently alarming to draw a polite but obviously baffled response from Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who clarified that, no, no one was “shutting down” airspace, and urged Musk to get in touch to clear things up. 

Sure enough, as Politico reports, it turns out the problem was simply that Musk, a wealthy tech executive who designs some of the ugliest vehicles ever produced, was seemingly clueless on how emergency response logistics work. After officials explained to him the protocols for conducting relief flights—protocols that everyone with any actual business in the region had no trouble understanding—the flights apparently resumed without incident. To be fair to Musk, last time he showed up to a crisis in which he had no relevant experience, he produced a hilariously useless rescue submarine and ended up inviting a nine-figure defamation lawsuit. So in at least one sense, a dumb but easily resolved misunderstanding has to be seen as an improvement. 

Musk’s tenure at Twitter has yielded plenty of embarrassing low points for the company. His weaponization of the platform to exploit the fears of vulnerable disaster victims for political gain might be the lowest. It is also the inevitable output of his crabbed vision for the site, which mostly entails putting himself at the center of it. Almost soon as he arrived, Musk gutted the bare-bones content moderation infrastructure that was in place under previous ownership, allowing hate speech, harassment, and child sexual abuse material to flourish. He transformed the blue check verification system, which formerly designated accounts owned by celebrities, journalists, and other public figures, into a badge available to anyone willing to pay for an algorithmic boost. He promoted right-wing politicians and dove headlong into culture wars, launching a one-man crusade against the scourge of the “woke mind virus,” a phrase he uses to denote anyone whose enthusiasm for racism, sexism, and transphobia does not match his own.

Unsurprisingly, the site’s new value propositions appealed most immediately to grifters, white supremacists, or some combination thereof. Pro-Nazi propaganda on X has racked up millions of views, and the porn bots became so ubiquitous that Musk himself was forced to acknowledge the problem. A 2023 study by NewsGuard found that about three-quarters of viral posts containing false or unsubstantiated information about the Israel-Hamas war came from blue-check accounts. High-profile advertisers quickly bailed for platforms not owned by the sort of guy who might at any moment characterize antisemitic conspiracy theories as “the actual truth.” Musk’s primary responses to the self-induced enshittification of the site have been insulting and suing those who had the audacity to recoil from it.

At this point, X is basically engineered for misinformation; if you are still chasing the fleeting dopamine hits that accompany likes and retweets, posting deranged lies that align with Musk’s worldview is the strategy most likely to pay off. In Hurricane Helene’s aftermath, a tweet asserting that “elites” were engaging in “weather modification” in pro-Trump areas racked up more than 11 million views in just a few days, according to analysis from the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. By October 3, when Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene asserted—on X, of course—that an unspecified “they” can “control the weather” and it would be “ridiculous” to pretend otherwise, this notion had been ping-ponging around the right-wing media ecosystem for nearly a week. Well-intentioned efforts to debunk such lies, from FEMA and others, are no match for the compounding influence of the repost button: Meterologists tracking Hurricane Milton’s approach to the Tampa area received death threats for suggesting that hurricanes might not be created by space lasers after all.

Like most things on the internet, the pre-Musk version of Twitter was both badly flawed and nevertheless useful: a staple of the news ecosystem; a borderline-essential part of the experience of watching live sports; a near-bottomless supply of good jokes; a tool that helped drive meaningful social change; and a forum that allowed anyone anywhere in the world to interact directly with famous and/or important people, for better and for worse. For roughly a decade, whenever anything of note happened, the first thing that millions of people did was open their phones to see what the people they followed were posting.

The Musk version of the site—a digital wasteland occupied by neo-Nazis, crypto scammers, and venture capital reactionaries who imagine themselves to be among America’s most influential thought leaders—is none of these things. Under his leadership, X now functions as an addled Silicon Valley billionaire’s personal misinformation engine, which he is free to direct at whomever he feels like hurting. Today, this means terrorizing hurricane survivors and the people working to help them pick up the pieces; next month, it will be poll workers and election officials instead. I’m not sure who he will decide to target after that; I am sure we’ll find out soon enough.

It’s been seven months since Robinhood cofounder Baiju Bhatt entered stealth mode. Last March, he left his CCO perch at the online brokerage valued at $23 billion to quietly shift gears.

This week, he announced his new venture—the Silicon Valley space startup Aetherflux, which aims to beam solar power from space to remote regions where delivering power is expensive, challenging, or dangerous. The long-term goal is a kind of Starlink for solar energy—a network of low-orbiting satellites with solar arrays that capture sunlight and beam it by infrared laser to many small ground receivers. With an initial eye toward military applications, it hopes to one day supply renewable energy for commercial and civilian use.

“The mission is to take this idea of space solar power from the pages of science fiction and make it a real commercial thing,” says Bhatt, 40, the founder and CEO.

But first, baby steps. Bhatt, whose net worth is estimated as high as $2 billion, is seeding a prototype with roughly $10 million of his own money. He hopes to test it by early 2026, by transmitting a peak power of four kilowatts (which could power an average three-bedroom house) from an altitude of 342 miles to a 33-foot spot on the ground. If all goes well, the company will test increasingly larger satellites to deliver more power.

“We’re not just the power plant, but we’re also effectively creating the power lines,” says Bhatt. “Technically speaking, we think this is doable. But this is gonna be hard. Like really hard. And it’s not lost on us.”

From the mind of Asimov

Bhatt credits luminary science fiction author Isaac Asimov with the idea for space solar power in his 1941 short story, Reason. In the 1970s, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy brainstormed ideas for a spacecraft with massive solar arrays in higher geostationary orbit transmitting microwaves from back to Earth. That never took hold, because of the size of the antennae dish needed to focus and receive the energy.

“We’re taking a different approach,” Bhatt notes on his blog. “We’re building a constellation of small satellites in low-Earth orbit working together to transmit power to many small ground stations. Instead of transmitting power through microwaves, we’ll use infrared lasers, allowing for higher power output and smaller footprints on Earth. This isn’t your grandfather’s space solar power concept.”

Bhatt isn’t the only one eyeing this technology. Though still experimental, space solar has been gaining traction with more urgent attempts to mitigate climate change and meet increasing energy needs. “One of the big problems with solar power is that it’s intermittent,” says Bhatt. From space, it’s constantly available, circumventing weather, cloud cover, and darkness. Last year, CalTech researchers became the first to beam solar power to Earth, while other studies are taking place across the globe. Bhatt is also an investor in Reflect Orbital, which wants to build space mirrors that reflect sunlight to solar farms on Earth at night.

Back to his roots

Despite Bhatt’s success with Robinhood, this venture is very much a return to his first passion, one that propelled him to Stanford University for degrees in physics and mathematics.  

“I’ve had a love of space my whole life. I grew up around this stuff,” says Bhatt, whose father worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center. “I had this dream that I wanted to do space eventually.”

The company name does not come from the Magic, the Gathering card Aetherflux Reservoir, though Bhatt loves the game. Instead, it comes from his other passion for historical science: an outdated physics theory that proposed the existence of “aether” as a transmission medium for electromagnetic or gravitational forces. 

Bhatt set up shop in San Carlos, CA, hiring 10 employees from companies like SpaceX and Luminar, and purchased a 330-lb. satellite bus from Apex (another of his investments) to carry the payload his team is designing and building.

It’s a daunting journey ahead, especially considering most folks who hit the entrepreneurial jackpot might have just taken the money and chilled.

“I’m not wired that way,” he says. “I’m constantly tinkering and building things. It’s the going from nothing to something.”

Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Below are some facts about the background and efforts of the movement.

Atomic bombing of Japan

In 1945 the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to bring an end to World War Two and avoid a hugely costly invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The two bombs killed an estimated 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while many thousands more died of burns and radiation injuries in the following years. The two atomic bombs remain the only nuclear weapons used in war.

Local associations

The fates of those who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were long concealed and neglected, especially in the initial years after the end of the war.

Local Hibakusha associations, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations in 1956.

The organisation, whose name was shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo, would become the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.

Witness accounts

Through the years, Nihon Hidankyo has provided thousands of witness accounts relating the experience of the nuclear bombs. It has issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to bodies such as the United Nations and peace conferences to advocate nuclear disarmament.

The movement has helped drive global opposition to nuclear weapons through the force of the survivors’ testimonies while also creating educational campaigns and issuing stark warnings about the spread and use of nuclear arms.

Future

With each passing year, the number of survivors from the two nuclear blasts in Japan nearly 80 years ago grows smaller.

But the grassroots movement has played a part creating a culture of remembrance, allowing for new generations of Japanese to carry on the work.

Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee

—Niklas Pollard, Reuters

CeriBell, a neurodiagnostic startup known for its brain-monitoring headband that can detect seizure activity, made its market debut on Friday in an IPO that is expected to generate $180.3 million in proceeds. Here’s what to know about the medtech company and its initial public offering:

What is CeriBell?

The company was cofounded in 2014 by Jane Chao, its CEO, who is a former McKinsey consultant at and a veteran in the biotech space. Chao has a chemistry degree from Peking University and a PhD in biophysics from Cornell University.

CeriBell operates an AI-powered brain-reading platform that can detect seizures. The system uses a disposable headband and EEG portal that allows for real-time bedside monitoring. The company earns money from the sale of its headbands along with subscription fees it charges to hospitals. CeriBell is based in Sunnyvale, California, and backed by investment firm TPG.

What’s happening with CeriBell’s IPO?

The company priced shares at $17 on Thursday, higher than an earlier estimated range of $14 to $16 a share. The stock is expected to debut on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker symbol CBLL.

How did the stock perform on its first day?

Pretty well. Shares closed at $25, an increase of more than 47%.

Is CeriBell profitable?

Not yet. According to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it had a net loss of $29.5 million on revenue of $45.2 million in 2023. But it’s moving in the right direction—its revenue grew and its losses narrowed last year when compared to 2022.

What else is there to know?

Medtech-focused IPOs in the United States have been all but nonexistent in recent quarters amid a broader downturn in the IPO market. But a report in April by JPMorgan hinted at early signs of a recovery, with medtech venture activity showing “gains in both number of deals and dollars invested quarter-over-quarter.” Needless to say, investors and Wall Street will be playing close attention to CeriBell’s stock price in the days and weeks ahead.

This story has been updated with details about CeriBell’s stock performance.