Stamp duty isn't going anywhere until we can agree on the tax to replace it

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Stamp duty isn't going anywhere until we can agree on the tax to replace it Nearly all economists and most politicians seem to agree stamp duty is a bad tax. But nearly all state and territory governments rely on it to keep the lights on. It’s a bad tax because it taxes homeowners every time they move, merely because they have moved. At A$40,000 per move on a median-priced home in Sydney or Melbourne, it’s enough to dissuade people from moving for a better job or to a bigger or smaller home when they have children or their children move out. Continued here

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Disquiet in the archives: archivists make tough calls with far-reaching consequences - they deserve our support Right now, for technological, ethical and political reasons, the world’s archivists are suddenly very busy. Advances in digital imaging and communications are feeding an already intense interest in provenance, authorship and material culture. Two recent discoveries – a woman’s name scratched in the margins of an 8th-century manuscript, and John Milton’s annotations in a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio held in the Free Library of Philadelphia – are examples of how new tools are revealing new evidence, and how distant scholars are making fascinating connections. Continued here

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Watch: Noise pollution has a surprising effect on dolphin communication If you’re trying to talk to your friend at a loud concert, your first instinct might be to raise your voice. Dolphins do something similar: When swimming in loud environments, they whistle louder and more frequently to communicate with their peers, according to a new study. Continued here

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Jeff Beck dies of bacterial meningitis - what you need to know about the disease Influential English guitarist Jeff Beck, who rose to fame playing with the Yardbirds and later fronted the Jeff Beck Group, died on January 10 aged 78 after contracting bacterial meningitis. Bacterial meningitis happens when germs get into the tissues (the meninges) surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The infection around the brain can cause swelling and inflammation that interrupts how the brain functions. Continued here

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Astronomers find a group of zombie stars 20 times hotter than the Sun The white dwarf stars are nearing the end of their life — and going out in a blaze of glory. Not even two weeks into 2023, an international team of astronomers has already announced they have found eight of the hottest new stars in the cosmos. Well, not new, maybe — these eight extremely hot white dwarfs are near the end of their lives, according to a paper published this week in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Continued here

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Pregnant learners in South Africa need creches and compassion to keep them in school University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA. After Boitumelo gave birth she decided not to go back to school. She assumed that, because she was now a mother, she would be barred from returning. Then she had a surprising interaction: Continued here

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Like Prince Harry a quarter of British people have consulted a psychic - here's the science on why Extracts from Prince Harry’s recently published memoir, Spare, reveal that he used a person with supposed psychic abilities to contact his deceased mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 when Harry was 12 years old. The woman with undisclosed powers was recommended by a trusted friend. While Harry “recognised there was a high-percentage chance of humbuggery” associated with paranormal claims, when he met the women he reported “feeling an energy”. Subsequently she relayed messages from Diana to him. Continued here

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Starting a New Exercise Routine? A Sports Scientist Explains How to Maximize Gains and Minimize Pain Was your New Year's resolution to get fit? An exercise scientist offers tips on getting started the right way. Continued here

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You need to watch the most important Tom Cruise action movie on Netflix ASAP The sequel is raking in acclaim, but the original remains a fascinating look at military machoism. There’s a paradox at the heart of the military action film. Many attempt to condemn the violence of battle, but just as many inevitably end up aestheticizing it. There’s a fatal allure to the spectacle of it all: it’s easy to lose sight of the toll of warfare when the idea is to make it look as thrilling as possible. Continued here

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'Den of Thieves 2' is "a lot more fun" than the first film, Gerard Butler says It’s been five years since Gerard Butler’s boozy LA detective met his match in a group of ex-MARSOC Marines planning to rob the Federal Reserve. The dirtbag riff on Michael Mann’s Heat was a critical bomb but a surprise box office hit, grossing $80.5 million against a production budget of $30 million. A sequel was quickly greenlit, with writer-director Christian Gudegast returning at the helm, and Butler back to lead the cast alongside O’Shea Jackson Jr and Meadow Williams. However, fans of gritty heist franchise will have to wait a little bit longer: filming will start in earnest this year. Continued here

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7 Top Restaurateurs on How to Navigate the Ever-Fickle Food Business in 2023 This year is fixing to be a bitter pill for founders. Now's the time to explore your options. Continued here

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John Chilembwe: a new statue celebrates Malawi Pan-Africanist the world forgot Samson Kambalu is a Malawian conceptual artist, writer and academic, whose sculpture Antelope was installed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London in September 2022. The Fourth Plinth was originally designed for a large scale equestrian statue of a British monarch but is now reserved for a contemporary sculpture, chosen every two years. This is the most significant public sculpture award in the UK. Antelope is a bronze sculpture depicting two figures: John Chilembwe, a Baptist preacher and Pan-Africanist who in 1915 led the first uprising against the British occupation and colonial rule of Malawi (then Nyasaland), and his friend, a British missionary named John Chorley. Its sheer scale and subject matter provide a powerful counterpoint to the imperial iconography of Trafalgar Square. Historian Susan Williams discusses the work with Kambalu. Chilembwe’s photograph from 1914 chose me. When I moved to Oxford to pick up a professorship at Ruskin School of Art, the first thing I did was to visit Weston Library, where British colonial bureaucrats deposited documentation of their lives in the colonies. The Malawi-related archives produced the mysterious photograph of Reverend John Chilembwe, of Providence Industrial Mission, wearing a white hat, standing next to a white man, John Chorley, of Zambezi Industrial Mission. Continued here

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New Study Shows Companies Use Fake Manager Titles as a Clever Scheme to Pay Employees Less It costs 73,000 employees a total of $4 billion every year. Continued here

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6 reasons 2023 could be a very good year for climate action Many people think of the annual UN climate talks as talkfests which achieve only incremental change, at best. Activist Greta Thunberg has described them as “blah blah blah” moments – grossly inadequate and too often hijacked by fossil fuel producers who would like the world to keep buying their main exports. Look more closely. The world is slowly but surely shifting away from fossil fuels. When historians look back, they will likely see the 2015 Paris agreement as the key pivot point. It achieved a global consensus on climate action and set the goal for nations to decarbonise by mid-century. Continued here

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'Plane' star Gerard Butler on one-take fight scenes and ruling the B-movie When one thinks of a Gerard Butler movie, one might think of grimy action, even grimier accents, and a rainfall of bullets and blood. Essentially: all the makings of a sturdy B-movie. It’s the kind of action movie that Butler’s name has become synonymous with in recent years — the testosterone-fueled crowdpleaser full of rough men and rougher gunplay. Whether he’s protecting Aaron Eckhart from invading terrorists, protecting his bank-robbery haul from the police, or protecting the Earth from a geostorm, Butler has become the go-to king of the B-movie. But it’s a nickname that Butler is surprised to learn he’s been given. Continued here

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The 9 most anticipated RPGs coming out in 2023 PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox all have huge exclusive RPGs coming out in 2023, but they’re not all the genre has in store. Some of the most exciting RPGs of the year may have flown under your radar. Continued here

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Hen Galan: why one Welsh community celebrates the new year on January 14 A small community in Pembrokeshire will be holding its annual new year celebrations on January 14, or Hen Galan as it is known in Welsh. But the residents of Cwm Gwaun near Fishguard are not a fortnight late. Rather, the people of this small wooded hamlet still observe the dates of an old calendar, which was dispensed with by the rest of Britain more than 250 years ago. Continued here

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You need to play the best Dark Souls tribute on Xbox Game Pass ASAP An argument can be made that there are far too many Soulslikes (games inspired by Dark Souls). Since Dark Souls debuted in 2011, the number of copycat games has grown exponentially, oversaturating the market with brutally difficult action games. While lots of Soulslikes are fun, many of them are missing the heart and ... soul ... of what makes FromSoftware’s games so appealing. But one Soulslike that nails the formula is Mortal Shell, a game from 2020 that stands apart thanks to refreshing mechanics that don’t detract from a faithful Dark Souls homage. Best of all is that Mortal Shell has returned to Xbox Game Pass after its removal in November 2022. But what makes Mortal Shell worth your time? It’s abundantly clear that Mortal Shell aims to pay homage to the Dark Souls games. This is evident by the moody atmosphere, its nearly identical combat, and even the UI. But this game actually does a lot to stand apart, particularly in the Shells (hence the game’s title) you gain access to. Continued here

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5 Bad Habits You Need To Get Rid of To Be a Good Leader For starters, stop being so demanding. Continued here

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How does a child become a shooter? Research suggests easy access to guns and exposure to screen violence increase the risk In the aftermath of a shocking incident in which a first grader shot and seriously injured a teacher at a school in Newport News, Virginia, the city’s mayor asked the question: “How did this happen?” Some details are now known: The child took the gun from his home, and the firearm was legally purchased by his mother. Continued here

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Cancer vaccine trials could start in the autumn - UK signs deal with BioNTech The UK government recently announced that it is partnering with German firm BioNTech to test vaccines for cancer and other diseases. The project aims to build on the mRNA vaccine technology that BioNTech became famous for developing, and which has been so successful at preventing serious illness and death from COVID. The goal of this new project is to deliver 10,000 personalised therapies to UK patients by 2030. With trials potentially starting as soon as this autumn. Continued here

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US birth rates are at record lows - even though the number of kids most Americans say they want has held steady Birth rates are falling in the U.S. After the highs of the Baby Boom in the mid-20th century and the lows of the Baby Bust in the 1970s, birth rates were relatively stable for nearly 50 years. But during the Great Recession, from 2007-2009, birth rates declined sharply – and they’ve kept falling. In 2007, average birth rates were right around 2 children per woman. By 2021, levels had dropped more than 20%, close to the lowest level in a century. Why? Is this decline because, as some suggest, young people aren’t interested in having children? Or are people facing increasing barriers to becoming parents? Continued here

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From Bachelor to The Bachelors - why Australia's longest running dating show has updated the old formula Jodi is the author of Here For The Right Reasons and Can I Steal You For A Second?, two novels set on a reality romance show. This week marks the beginning of the tenth season of The Bachelor Australia, Australia’s longest running reality romance franchise. Continued here

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Seven of the most underrated TV gems of 2022 Misfits are the heroes in this sleek, irreverent spy thriller. Gary Oldman stars as dishevelled, alcoholic but supersmart Jackson Lamb, who heads up a team of out-of-favor MI5 agents located in Slough House, which earned them the nickname Slow Horses. Jack Lowden plays young, impulsive, daring River Cartwright, whose promising career was reversed when a training exercise went very wrong. The classic spy tropes keep things moving, but it's the cast that makes the series so glittering. Oldman's sly, irascible Lamb is actually likeable. The charismatic Lowden seems ready for a breakout role. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the haughty deputy director of MI5, and Jonathan Pryce is Cartwright's retired MI5 grandfather. The second season (of four that are planned) features Cold War sleeper agents and Russian oligarchs, and we learn the secret behind Lamb's exile to Slough House. The spy genre is rarely so fresh or fun to watch. Andrew Garfield gives one of his best performances as a faithful Mormon detective and family man investigating the murder of a young mother and her child, with the main suspects members of his own church. The show is based on Jon Krakauer's bestselling true crime book about real-life murders in Utah in 1984. But the series creator, Dustin Lance Black, had the brilliant idea of creating Garfield's fictional character of Jeb Pyre, whose faith is challenged by the investigation, and of inventing his non-religious, Native American partner, Detective Bill Taba (the always solid Gil Birmingham). This thoughtful drama plays out as a murder mystery but is also a timely depiction of how religious extremism, politics and violence can mix with devastating results. Continued here

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How AI Is Improving Data Management Data management is crucial for creating an environment where data can be useful across the entire organization. Effective data management minimizes the problems that stem from bad data, such as added friction, poor predictions, and even simple inaccessibility, ideally before they occur. Managing data, though, is a labor-intensive activity: It involves cleaning, extracting, integrating, cataloging, labeling, and organizing data, and defining and performing the many data-related tasks that often lead to frustration among both data scientists and employees without “data” in their titles. Artificial intelligence has been applied successfully in thousands of ways, but one of the less visible and less dramatic ones is in improving data management. There are five common data management areas where we see AI playing important roles: Continued here

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NASA's busiest year in decades - an astronomer sums up the dizzying array of missions in 2022 NASA had a banner year in 2022, with many successful missions in what was one of the organization’s most active years in decades. NASA’s missions over the past year have been remarkably far-ranging – from practicing how to protect the Earth to preparing for the first manned mission to Mars and learning about the earliest days in the universe. By working in the extremes, scientists are learning about and doing more in space than ever before. Continued here

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Dead billionaires whose foundations are thriving today can thank Henry VIII and Elizabeth I More than 230 of the world’s wealthiest people, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have promised to give at least half of their fortunes to charity within their lifetimes or in their wills by signing the Giving Pledge. Some of the most affluent, including Jeff Bezos – who hadn’t signed the Giving Pledge by early 2023 – and MacKenzie Scott, his ex-wife – have declared that they will go further by giving most of their fortunes to charity before they die. This movement stands in contrast to practices of many of the philanthropists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Industrial titans like oil baron John D. Rockefeller, automotive entrepreneur Henry Ford and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie established massive foundations that to this day have big pots of money at their disposal despite decades of charitable grantmaking. This kind of control over funds after death is usually illegal because of a you-can’t-take-it-with-you legal doctrine that originated 500 years ago in England. Continued here

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Keeping George Santos Honest Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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Green hydrogen: why low-carbon fuels are not benefiting from high fossil fuel prices The number and scale of projects using and making hydrogen, a gas that releases energy when burned without emitting carbon dioxide, is rapidly growing. If its construction goes to plan, a €2.5 billion (£2.18 billion) undersea pipeline will convey “green hydrogen” from Spain to France from 2030. In the US, some power stations are being upgraded to allow hydrogen to be blended with fossil gas, and the Norwegian oil company Equinor is teaming up with Thermal SSE to build a 1,800 megawatt (MW) “blue hydrogen” power plant in Britain. Continued here

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Why Do So Many Prices End in 9? How Left-Digit Bias Increases Sales and Boosts Profits, Backed by Considerable Science Ending prices with 9, or 99, or 999 seems like a too-obvious pricing strategy. Yet it works extremely well. Continued here

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Consumers often can't detect fake reviews - and underestimate how many negative reviews might be fakes Shabnam Azimi is an assistant professor of marketing, Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University of Chicago. Ott and colleagues mined real reviews from travel review websites such as Tripadvisor, Hotels.com and Expedia, which have a reasonably small deception rate. They gathered fake reviews by using Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit people to write fake hotel reviews that sounded truthful. Continued here

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What is the FAA's NOTAM? An aviation expert explains how the critical safety system works Late in the evening of Jan. 10, 2023, an important digital system known as NOTAM run by the Federal Aviation Administration went offline. The FAA was able to continue getting necessary information to pilots overnight using a phone-based backup, but the stopgap couldn’t keep up with the morning rush of flights, and on Jan. 11, 2022, the FAA grounded all commercial flights in the U.S. In total, nearly 7,000 flights were canceled. Brian Strzempkowksi is the interim director of the Center for Aviation Studies at The Ohio State University and a commercial pilot, flight instructor and dispatcher. He explains what the NOTAM system is and why planes can’t fly if the system goes down. Aviation is full of acronyms, and Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, is one acronym that pilots learn early on in their training. A NOTAM is quite simply a message that is disseminated to flight crews of every aircraft in the U.S. Continued here

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Don't Burn Out in the First Month of the Year 2023 is a marathon, not a sprint, run it accordingly. Continued here

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A Message for the Federal Reserve in the New Inflation Data What a difference a year makes. This time twelve months ago, the cost of gasoline was soaring, the prices of many other items were rising sharply as well, and Republicans were gleefully trumpeting “Bidenflation.” Now things are moving firmly in the other direction. When the Consumer Price Index for December was released on Thursday morning, it showed the headline rate of inflation dipping to 6.5 per cent, from 7.1 per cent the previous month. Since peaking at 9.1 per cent in June, the rate has fallen for six months in a row. And other details from the C.P.I. report are even more encouraging. The headline rate of inflation is an annual figure: it shows how much prices rose between December, 2021, and December, 2022. To gauge more recent trends, it is also useful to look at changes over one month or three months, although these numbers should be viewed cautiously. Thanks largely to a sharp drop in the cost of energy, including gasoline, over-all prices didn’t rise at all in the last month: they fell by 0.1 per cent. To be sure, that’s a small change, but it represented the first monthly decline in prices since April, 2020, near the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Continued here

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Meditation and mindfulness offer an abundance of health benefits and may be as effective as medication for treating certain conditions Many people look to diet trends or new exercise regimens – often with questionable benefit – to get a healthier start on the new year. But there is one strategy that’s been shown time and again to boost both mood and health: meditation. In late 2022, a high-profile study made a splash when it claimed that meditation may work as well as a common drug named Lexapro for the treatment of anxiety. Over the past couple of decades, similar evidence has emerged about mindfulness and meditation’s broad array of health benefits, for purposes ranging from stress and pain reduction to depression treatments to boosting brain health and helping to manage excessive inflammation and long COVID-19. Continued here

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How the distortion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s words enables more, not less, racial division within American society U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is just the latest conservative lawmaker to misuse the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to judge a person on character and not race. In the protracted battle to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Roy, a Republican, nominated a Black man, Byron Donalds, a two-term representative from Florida who had little chance of winning the seat. Considered a rising star in the GOP, Donalds has opposed the very things that King fought for and ultimately was assassinated for – nonviolent demonstrations and voting rights protections. Continued here

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Cost of living crisis: why it's been a happy new year for UK retailers keeping up with changing shopping trends The significance of Christmas to retailers’ bottom lines means that updates on trading during this time are always closely watched. This year, the cost of living crisis has weighed heavily on shops. As well as inflation (especially in food), energy, pay and other cost pressures on retailers, transport and postal strikes and the ongoing impact of Brexit also caused concern in the run-up to Christmas 2022 that the retail losers would far outweigh the winners. But results – particularly among clothing and some non-food categories – have pointed to a more positive picture than anticipated before the festive period. British retail giant Next produced a downgraded estimate of annual profits last autumn, but its Christmas trading update points to strong sales – and in its stores more than on online. Budget store B&M also reported excellent Christmas trading figures as did retailers as diverse as Boots, Greggs, The Fragrance Shop, Card Factory, Seasalt and Oxfam. Continued here

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Reunions can be nostalgic and painful as well as happy - as the ancient Greek heroes Achilles and Odysseus show us Celebrations are a joyous time of reuniting with family and friends. But afterward, people can sometimes be left uneasily mulling over their relationships. Annual returns home can induce an uncomfortable nostalgia in the tension between how the past is remembered and how the present is experienced. As someone who studies ancient Greek myth and poetry, I often find myself making sense of my own life through my work. Even though many Greek myths are infamous for disturbing topics such as infanticide and incest, ancient audiences did look to their stories to make sense of themselves and their world. Continued here

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Trump is facing various criminal charges - here's what we can learn from legal cases against Nixon and Clinton A Georgia special grand jury has finished its work investigating whether former president Donald Trump and his allies committed crimes when trying to overturn the 2020 election results. While special grand juries cannot themselves issue indictments, they can recommend district attorneys do so. This and other recent news about Trump’s mounting legal problems has led to a number of legal experts and political observers saying that Trump could soon be indicted. Continued here

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The Haunting of Prince Harry Balmoral Castle, in the Scottish Highlands, was Queen Elizabeth's preferred resort among her several castles and palaces, and in the opening pages of "Spare" (Random House), the much anticipated, luridly leaked, and compellingly artful autobiography of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, its environs are intimately described. We get the red-coated footman attending the heavy front door; the mackintoshes hanging on hooks; the cream-and-gold wallpaper; and the statue of Queen Victoria, to which Harry and his older brother, William, always bowed when passing. Beyond lay the castle's fifty bedrooms—including the one known in the brothers' childhood as the nursery, unequally divided into two. William occupied the larger half, with a double bed and a splendid view; Harry's portion was more modest, with a bed frame too high for a child to scale, a mattress that sagged in the middle, and crisp bedding that was "pulled tight as a snare drum, so expertly smoothed that you could easily spot the century's worth of patched holes and tears." It was in this bedroom, early in the morning of August 31, 1997, that Harry, aged twelve, was awakened by his father, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, with the terrible news that had already broken across the world: the princes' mother, Princess Diana, from whom Charles had been divorced a year earlier and estranged long before that, had died in a car crash in Paris. "He was standing at the edge of the bed, looking down," Harry writes of the moment in which he learned of the loss that would reshape his personality and determine the course of his life. He goes on to describe his father's appearance with an unusual simile: "His white dressing gown made him seem like a ghost in a play." Continued here

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Ukraine war: the bloody battle for Soledar and what it tells us about the future of the conflict The battle over the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar has been raging for several days now, with claims and counter-claims about whether Russia now has full control there. As of the evening of January 11, Soledar was at best under partial control of the Wagner group of mercenaries, according to an assessment by the US-based Institute for the Study of War and the UK Ministry of Defence. Continued here

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Canada's ban on foreign homebuyers is unlikely to affect housing affordability As of Jan. 1, 2023, foreign buyers are banned from buying homes in Canada for two years under the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act. The ban was passed in June 2022, but only came into effect this month. Under the act, non-citizens, non-permanent residents and foreign commercial enterprises are banned from buying Canadian residential properties. The act also has a $10,000 fine for anyone who knowingly assists a non-Canadian and is convicted of violating it. Continued here

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The young ages of the girls charged in the swarming death of a man in Toronto may affect trial outcomes In late December, eight teenage girls who had reportedly met online decided to meet in-person in downtown Toronto on a Saturday night. Shortly after midnight on Sunday Dec. 18, a 59-year-old man was allegedly swarmed, assaulted and stabbed by the group. Bystanders flagged down emergency medical personnel, but the man succumbed to his injuries. Continued here

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How do snowflakes form? Is each snowflake really unique? Why is some snow light and fluffy or heavy? The amazing science of snow For some, it means a day off from school. For others, it’s a signal that skiing season is starting. Or maybe it’s a harbinger of an extra long commute to work. It’s remarkable how many memories and emotions can be evoked by a few billion tiny ice crystals. We may see snow as a blanket or drifts across the landscape or our driveway. But when was the last time you took a closer look at snow, and I mean a really close look? Continued here

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A fishy problem: How antidepressants may impact the health of our aquatic ecosystems William Andrew Thompson is currently a MITACS Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. He was awarded the Eyes High doctoral scholarship at the University of Calgary, with his doctoral work further supported by an NSERC grant awarded to Dr. Matt Vijayan. The use of antidepressant pills has become synonymous with improved mental health, quelling sometimes crippling anxiety, and altering energy levels and behaviour. They are heavily relied upon when treating depression and general anxiety disorder. Continued here

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Ukraine recap: battle of Soledar reveals a lot about the likely next phase of the war Bitter fighting continues in the salt-mining town of Soledar, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. And depending on who is doing the reporting, either Russia is poised to take Soledar any time now or Ukrainian forces are valiantly beating off what has been described as “wave” assaults. On the Russian side, the fighting is reported to mainly involve mercenary troops and ex-prisoners contracted to the Wagner group of mercenaries loosely affiliated to Russia’s military and run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key Putin ally. On Wednesday, Prigozhin insisted his troops had taken the town only to be gently rebuked by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “Let’s not rush … Let’s wait for official statements. There is a positive dynamic in progress.” Continued here

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Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 12th Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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Congress investigates presidents, the military, baseball and whatever it wants - a brief modern history of oversight After regaining a slim majority in the House of Representatives in the November 2022 midterm elections, Republicans unveiled their plans for a series of investigations into the Biden administration. The new Republican majority – after four years in the relatively powerless minority – plans to investigate the Biden family’s connections to foreign businesses, the possible impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Continued here

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Lobsters versus right whales: The latest chapter in a long quest to make fishing more sustainable Maine lobster fishermen received a Christmas gift from Congress at the end of 2022: A six-year delay on new federal regulations designed to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The rules would have required lobstermen to create new seasonal nonfishing zones and further reduce their use of vertical ropes to retrieve lobster traps from the seafloor. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with many types of ships are the leading causes of right whale deaths. Continued here

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Bullying, power and control: why people believe in conspiracy theories and how to respond From vaccine uptake to violent extremism, conspiracy beliefs are linked to distrust in major institutions or powerful figures. Research developed in the last decade shows how conspiracy beliefs can be linked to people’s lack of control in their lives, feeling threatened or even workplace bullying. Continued here

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China looms large as President Biden and Japan's PM Kishida sit down to discuss defense shift, regional tensions Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to sit down with President Joe Biden at the White House on Jan. 13, 2023. The bilateral meeting in the U.S. is the final stop for Kishida in a five-day tour of allies that has also seen him visit France, Italy, the U.K. and Canada. It comes as Japan takes over the presidency of the G-7, with leaders of the seven largest economies due to meet in Hiroshima in May. Continued here

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ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and the collapse of the creative process Some critics have eulogized the college essay, while others have even proclaimed the death of art. After all, for the technology to generate an image or essay, a human still has to describe the task to be completed. The better that description – the more accurate, the more detailed – the better the results. Continued here

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Single-use plastic bans: research shows three ways to make them effective Governments around the world are introducing single-use plastic product bans to alleviate pollution. Zimbabwe banned plastic packaging and bottles as early as 2010. Antigua and Barbuda banned single-use catering and takeaway items in 2016, and the Pacific island of Vanuatu did the same for disposable containers in 2018. Continued here

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The Investigations of Joe Biden Begin Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, still vividly remembers the first meeting of the Church committee, a landmark Senate investigative panel created in 1975 to examine abuses committed by the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and other intelligence agencies. Hart had just been elected to his first term—he was only thirty-eight—but he had been chosen to be one of the eight members of the bipartisan committee. He listened carefully as the chair, Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, asked each senator for suggestions regarding how they could penetrate the seemingly impenetrable secrecy that, for decades, had enveloped the agencies. When Church asked Hart for his thoughts, the freshman proposed something provocative. As he recalled in an interview this week, Hart said, “Why don’t each of us begin by requesting from the F.B.I. and the agency our own personal files.” He was suggesting, in essence, that the senators ask the two agencies what dirt they had collected on them. “The room got deathly silent,” Hart recalled. “The members stared at the ceilings and then at their shoes.” Finally, an outspoken, arch-conservative Republican from Arizona admitted the truth: “Barry Goldwater said, ‘I don’t want to know what they’ve got on me.’ ” The anecdote exemplifies the deep fear that existed in Washington—and, in many ways, still exists—of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The Church committee went on to conduct what is considered one of the most effective congressional investigations in U.S. history, exposing decades of illegal F.B.I. and C.I.A. spying on Americans. The agencies had investigated more than half a million Americans who were conducting constitutionally protected political activities, not crimes. The misconduct spanned the Administrations of Democratic and Republican Presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. Continued here

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Why do so many Turkish people believe 'secret clauses' in the 1923 Lausanne treaty will be unveiled this year? Commonly regarded as the “birth certificate” of modern Turkey, the 1923 treaty of Lausanne was the last of the peace settlements signed at the end of the first world war. This year’s centenary has already provoked far more public anticipation than one might expect, thanks to widespread belief in conspiracy theories. Lausanne provided the foundation for the new republic of Turkey, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as its first president, largely drawing its modern borders. Continued here

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Are vegan pet diets as unhealthy as they're claimed to be? Here's what the evidence says The impact of vegan diets on our pets’ health produces heated debate from people on both sides. So, if you’re considering whether 2023 might be the year for your best (pet) friend to adopt a meat-free lifestyle, read on to find out the benefits and risks, and what we still don’t know. Continued here

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George Santos Applies for a New Job Nassau County Republicans on Wednesday called on Rep. George Santos(R-N.Y.) to resign immediately after the newly elected lawmakeradmitted he fabricated key details of his background and failed toexplain questions about his campaign finances. —The Washington Post My name is George Santos Rockefeller. I have a wide breadth of experience that I believe makes me an excellent candidate for a position at your company, which is a company that I founded. Continued here

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How might the latest George Pell coverage affect child sexual abuse survivors? You might have wondered if the recent death of George Pell, who was jailed in 2019 for child sexual abuse and then later acquitted, would bring a sense of relief or closure for victim survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse. After all, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found Pell had failed to do enough during his time in senior church roles in Australia to stop priests who abused children. Continued here

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Children facing racist bullying at school need support from teachers - but many don't get it In the academic year 2020-21, there were 1,198 instances of racially motivated bullying reported in Scottish schools – up from 409 in 2016-17. These are the highest recorded figures to date. We found that racist bullying increases the risk of poor mental health. It can cause loneliness and lead children to drop out of school. It can result in alcohol and substance misuse. Continued here

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Are you living in a food desert? These maps suggest it can make a big difference to your health Ruvimbo Timba, Planning Officer at NSW Department of Planning and Environment and formerly of Western Sydney University, is a co-author of this article. Public concerns about high food prices highlight how meeting basic human needs can’t be taken for granted, even in a country like Australia. Continued here

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Iran executions: the role of the 'revolutionary courts' in breaching human rights Simon would like to thank an Iranian-born colleague who requested anonymity for their contributions to this article. The Iranian government has attempted to brutally suppress the widespread protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022. Continued here

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Inflation report is a mixed bag - an economist explains why some items are rising faster than others Economists worried about soaring inflation got some good news to start the year: The rate of inflation has eased. The first report card of 2023 on consumer prices, released on Jan. 12, showed that the overall cost of goods and services decelerated to an annual pace of 6.5% in December, the slowest in over a year and down from 7.1% in November. But there’s bad news too, especially if you are an egg-munching renter fond of frequent regular haircuts. In quite a few categories, the cost of living rose at an even faster pace. Continued here

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'Something that happens in fiction': romance writer Susan Meachen's fake death reminds us 'the author' is a construct 2023 may have peaked early for those of us who are fascinated by online literary controversies and fakes: Cat Person, Bad Art Friend, #ReceptioGate. Two-and-a-half years ago, a Facebook post announced the death by suicide of the indie romance author Susan Meachen. But on January 6 this year, Meachen herself appeared on Facebook and Twitter, quipping “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Continued here

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Inflation bites: How rising food costs affect nutrition and health Food for thought: rising grocery prices affect food choices and nutrition, and ultimately health, and even the health-care system. As a result of inflation, the cost of food continues to soar, with data from Statistics Canada reporting the latest price changes of foods purchased from groceries stores and restaurants. Continued here

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A year on, we know why the Tongan eruption was so violent. It's a wake-up call to watch other submarine volcanoes The Kingdom of Tonga exploded into global news on January 15 last year with one of the most spectacular and violent volcanic eruptions ever seen. Remarkably, it was caused by a volcano that lies under hundreds of metres of seawater. The event shocked the public and volcano scientists alike. Continued here

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Sitting all day is terrible for your health - now, a new study finds a relatively easy way to counteract it To reduce the harmful health effects of sitting, take a five-minute light walk every half-hour. That’s the key finding of a new study that my colleagues and I published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. We asked 11 healthy middle-aged and older adults to sit in our lab for eight hours – representing a standard workday – over the course of five separate days. On one of those days, participants sat for the entire eight hours with only short breaks to use the bathroom. On the other days, we tested a number of different strategies to break up a person’s sitting with light walking. For example, on one day, participants walked for one minute every half-hour. On another day, they walked for five minutes every hour. Continued here

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The A$30 billion Sun Cable crash is a setback but doesn't spell the end of Australia's renewable energy export dreams Sun Cable – considered to be the world’s biggest renewable energy export project – announced this week it had entered voluntary administration following “the absence of alignment” with shareholders. Sun Cable is expected to cost over A$30 billion. It proposes to build an enormous, 12,000 hectare solar farm in the Northern Territory, add an enormous (40 gigawatt hour) battery for electricity storage, then connect Australia to Singapore via Darwin through an undersea cable over 4,000 kilometres long. This would be by far the world’s longest electricity cable if it existed today. Continued here