David Axelrod.  CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

David Axelrod, one of the architects of Barack Obama’s two victorious presidential campaigns, says President Joe Biden should reconsider running for reelection in the wake of a dismal new poll (see below) that shows Donald Trump leading in five swing states.

Axelrod, who in 2019 called Biden “perhaps the strongest candidate” against Trump in what at the time was a still-emerging Democratic field, wrote on X that there is “legitimate concern” this time around as he shared some of the poll’s findings:

Polls this far out are notoriously unreliable.

However, Axelrod noted that Biden’s “biggest liability” among voters “is the one thing he can’t change,” and that’s his age.

Biden turns 81 later this month, and Axelrod said, “The age arrow only points in one direction.”

Axelrod said Biden should be proud of what he has achieved, but warned of the consequences of miscalculating against Trump, who he called “a dangerous, unhinged demagogue.”

He said only Biden can make the call on continuing his campaign.

“What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” he wrote, then added:

Biden’s campaign has dismissed the poll.

“We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll,” spokesperson Kevin Muñoz said in a statement.

Axelrod is giving Biden good  advice!

Tony

New York Times

This rendering shows Theia colliding with the early Earth. The combination of high-resolution giant impact and mantle convection simulations, mineral physics calculations, and seismic imaging suggests that the lower half of Earth’s mantle remained mostly solid after this impact, and that parts of Theia’s iron-rich mantle sank and accumulated atop Earth’s core nearly 4.5 billion years ago, surviving there throughout Earth’s history. – Hernán Cañellas.

Dear Commons Community,

Many scientists agree that Theia, an ancient planet, likely smashed into Earth as it was forming billions of years ago, spewing debris that coalesced into the moon that decorates our night sky today.

The theory, called the giant-impact hypothesis, explains many fundamental features of the moon and Earth.

But one glaring mystery at the center of this hypothesis has endured: What ever happened to Theia? Direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive. No leftover fragments from the planet have been found in the solar system. And many scientists assumed any debris Theia left behind on Earth was blended in the fiery cauldron of our planet’s interior.

A new theory, however, suggests that remnants of the ancient planet remain partially intact, buried beneath our feet.

Molten slabs of Theia could have embedded themselves within Earth’s mantle after impact before solidifying, leaving portions of the ancient planet’s material resting above Earth’s core some 1,800 miles (about 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A bold new idea

If the theory is correct, it would not only provide additional details to fill out the giant-impact hypothesis but also answer a lingering question for geophysicists.

They were already aware that there are two massive, distinct blobs that are embedded deep within the Earth. The masses — called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs — were first detected in the 1980s. One lies beneath Africa and another below the Pacific Ocean.

These blobs are thousands of kilometers wide and likely more dense with iron compared with the surrounding mantle, making them stand out when measured by seismic waves. But the origins of the blobs — each of which are larger than the moon — remain a mystery to scientists.

But for Dr. Qian Yuan, a geophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and the new study’s lead author, his understanding of LLVPs forever changed when he attended a 2019 seminar at Arizona State University, his alma mater, that outlined the giant-impact hypothesis.

That’s when he learned new details about Theia, the mysterious projectile that presumably struck Earth billions of years ago.

And, as a trained geophysicist, he knew of those mysterious blobs hidden in Earth’s mantle.

Yuan had a eureka moment, he said.

Immediately, he began perusing scientific studies, searching to see whether someone else had proposed that LLVPs might be fragments of Theia. But no one had.

Initially, Yuan said, he only told his adviser about his theory.

“I was afraid of turning to other people because I (was) afraid others would think I’m too crazy,” Yuan said.

Interdisciplinary research

Yuan first proposed his idea in a paper he submitted in 2021. It was rejected three times. Peer reviewers said it lacked sufficient modeling from the giant impact.

Then he came across scientists who did just the type of research Yuan needed.

Their work, which assigned a certain size to Theia and speed of impact in the modeling, suggested that the ancient planet’s collision likely did not entirely melt Earth’s mantle, allowing the remnants of Theia to cool and form solid structures instead of blending together in Earth’s inner stew.

“Earth’s mantle is rocky, but it isn’t like solid rock,” said Dr. Steve Desch, a study coauthor and professor of astrophysics at Arizona State’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. “It’s this high-pressure magma that’s kind of gooey and has the viscosity of peanut butter, and it’s basically sitting on a very hot stove.”

In that environment, if the material that makes up the LLVPs was too dense, it wouldn’t be able to pile up in the jagged formations that it appears in, Desch said. And if it were low enough in density, it would simply mix in with the churning mantle.

The question was this: What would be the density of the material left behind by Theia? And could it match up with the density of the LLVPs?

(Desch had authored his own paper in 2019 that sought to describe the density of the material that Theia would have left behind.)

The researchers sought higher-definition modeling with 100 to 1,000 times more resolution than their previous attempts, Yuan said. And still, the calculations lined up: If Theia were a certain size and consistency, and struck the Earth at a specific speed, the models showed it could, in fact, leave behind massive hunks of its guts within Earth’s mantle and also spawn the debris that would go on to create our moon.

“That was very, very, so very exciting,” Yuan said. “That (modeling) hadn’t been done before.”

Building a theory

The study Yuan published this week includes coauthors from a variety of disciplines across a range of institutions, including Arizona State, Caltech, the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and NASA’s Ames Research Center.

When asked whether he expects to encounter pushback or controversy over such a novel concept — that slabs of material from an ancient extraterrestrial planet are hidden deep within the Earth — Yuan replied: “I also want to stress this is an idea; this is a hypothesis.

“There’s no way to prove this must be the case,” he added. “I welcome other people to do this (research).”

Desch added that, in his view, “this work is compelling. It makes a very strong case.” It even seems “sort of obvious in hindsight.”

Dr. Seth Jacobson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Michigan State University, acknowledged that the theory may not, however, soon reach broad acceptance.

“These (LLVPs) — they’re an area themselves of very active research,” said Jacobson, who was not involved in the study. And the tools used to study them are constantly evolving.

The idea that Theia created the LLVPs is no doubt an exciting and eye-catching hypothesis, he added, but it’s not the only one out there.

One other theory, for example, posits that LLVPs are actually heaps of oceanic crust that have sunk to the depths of the mantle over billions of years.

“I doubt the advocates for other hypotheses (about LLVP formation) are going to abandon them just because this one has appeared,” Jacobson added. “I think we’ll be debating this for quite some time.”

Most interesting!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My wife, Elaine, and I leave for Athens tomorrow for ten days.  Although we have been to a number of countries on the Mediterranean, this is our first trip to Greece.   In preparation, I read Ancient Athens: Five Intriguing Lives, a book written by the historian, Sanford Holst, that explores the lives of five Athenians who played a significant role in the development of Athens during its Golden Age. The book delves into the lives of Socrates, Pericles, Aspasia, Peisistratos, and Alcibiades, and how their contributions helped shape the city’s democracy, philosophy, theater, and architecture.

I found it a fascinating read that provides a deep and satisfying look into how Athens became the cultural and intellectual center of the ancient world. It highlights the struggles and triumphs of these five individuals and how they overcame adversity to leave a lasting impact on western civilization.

If you’re interested in learning more about the history of Athens and the people who made it special, this book is an excellent place to start.

Below is a brief review from Goodreads.

Tony

Goodreads

First published October 28, 2016

The lives of five fascinating people were woven so deeply into the fabric of ancient Athens that their compelling stories reveal rich details of how its golden age came into being.

Socrates was a stonemason who became a philosopher while having encounters with rich and powerful people in Athens. Pericles was a cautious young man who grew into a strong leader—in a city known for driving out leaders who became too strong. Aspasia was derided as an outsider and sex worker, but became the consummate insider as lover to Pericles and friend of Socrates. Peisistratos made himself tyrant of Athens in its early years, but he also planted seeds that flourished in the city’s Classical age. Alcibiades was mentored by Pericles and Socrates, then contributed some of Athens’ greatest military victories as the city’s golden years declined.

A wealth of well-established evidence shows how their lives were interlaced with those of Aeschylus, Phidias, Herodotus, Euripides, Themistocles and many other remarkable people. Together they raised the Parthenon on the Acropolis, presented plays in the Theatre of Dionysos, argued philosophy in the Agora and won victories at Marathon and Salamis that sheltered this young democracy from the grip of tyranny. It is through their lives that we see Athens emerge from the mists of antiquity to overcome incredible obstacles and become a beacon of light that still shines in our lives today. The beautiful imagery and illustrations in this highly readable book will cause you to fall in love with Athens all over again.

Titled “Now and Then,” the almost impossible-to-believe track is four minutes and eight seconds of the first and only original Beatles recording of the 21st century. There’s a countdown, then acoustic guitar strumming and piano bleed into the unmistakable vocal tone of John Lennon in the song’s introduction: “I know it’s true / It’s all because of you / And if I make it through / It’s all because of you.”

Dear Commons Community,

More than four decades since Lennon’s murder and two since George Harrison’s death, the very last Beatles song has been released as a double A-side single with “Love Me Do,” the band’s 1962 debut single.

“Now and Then” comes from the same batch of unreleased demos written by Lennon in the 1970s, which were given to his former bandmates by Yoko Ono. They used the tape to construct the songs “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” released in the mid-1990s. But there were technical limitations to finishing “Now and Then.”

That changed in 2022, when the band — now a duo — was able to utilize the same technical restoration methods that separated the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” And so, they were able to isolate Lennon’s voice from the original cassette and complete “Now and Then” using machine learning.

When the song was first announced in June, McCartney described artificial intelligence technology as “kind of scary but exciting,” adding: “We will just have to see where that leads.”

“To still be working on Beatles’ music in 2023 — wow,” he said in “The Beatles — Now And Then — The Last Beatles Song.” “We’re actually messing around with state-of-the-art technology, which is something the Beatles would’ve been very interested in.”

Listen and enjoy!

Tony

Shanghai-based Fourier Intelligence is developing an innovative humanoid robot. The GR-1, as it is called, promises to transform healthcare facilities and offer vital assistance to the elderly.  Fournier Intelligence.

Dear Commons Community,

China has unveiled plans to build humanoid robots that can work in farms, factories, hospitals, and houses within two years.

Beijing’s ministry of industry and information technology has laid out plans to support bipedal robots by funding a series of breakthroughs.

The ambition represents a new technological challenge to the US, where companies like Boston Dynamics and Elon Musk’s Tesla are developing humanoid robots.

Amazon is testing humanoids in its warehouses, recently unveiling a robot called Digit that has arms and legs.

A document from the Chinese ministry says robots will be as “disruptive” as “computers, smartphones and new energy vehicles” and will require advances in both artificial intelligence and artificial limbs. As reported by The Telegraph.

The machines will “profoundly change human production and lifestyle and reshape the global industrial development pattern”, officials said.

The document, which did not outline plans for military uses, said humanoid robots could be used in special environments facing harsh conditions, such as rescuing humans.

China also wants to use the machines in medical settings and to clean houses.

Beijing wants the first robots to arrive in 2025 but said they would be “significantly improved” by 2027.

Shares in Chinese robotics companies surged after the announcement, which did not outline specific programs for achieving the 2025 goal.

Humanoid robots have been a fascination within the technology industry for decades but have struggled to break through into widespread use. Robots find it difficult to master skills that humans find basic such as maintaining balance while walking.

However, interest in the technology is picking up amid advances in AI.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has unveiled a robot called Optimus that is being built using the same AI systems as its cars use.

Mr. Musk has said that he can imagine a future in which everyone owns one or two Optimus bots, suggesting billions of sales.

Speaking at an event broadcast on Twitter, Mr. Musk said that a shortage of robots would be a constraint on an AI-driven “age of abundance” but said there was a risk they would “chase us”. He said robots will need an off switch.

Today, the best-known robot maker is Boston Dynamics, which was once owned by Google before being sold to SoftBank and then Hyundai. It makes a humanoid called Atlas.

The robots are coming!  The robots are coming!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Dozens of students walked out of a class taught by Hillary Clinton at Columbia University in New York City on Wednesday to protest the university’s alleged role in the “shaming” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

About 30 students were involved in the protest at Columbia, where the former secretary of state and previous senator for the state was delivering a foreign policy lecture as part of her global affairs class.

The walkout followed an incident last week in which photographs of students who signed a declaration blaming Israel for the 7 October Hamas attacks were displayed on video screens on trucks parked near the university campus above the words “Columbia’s biggest antisemites”, the New York Times reported.

The photographs, according to the protesters, were lifted from a “secure and private” student portal at Columbia’s school of international and public affairs (Sipa).

The Times reported that the walkout was planned and peaceful, with those leaving almost halfway through Clinton’s two-hour lecture, attended by about 300 students, joining several dozen other demonstrators in the lobby of the school.

They were demanding “immediate legal support for affected students” and “a commitment to student safety, well being and privacy”, according to the Times.

The school’s dean, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who co-teaches the class, spoke with the protesting students following the lecture and expressed her support for them, a university spokesperson said. Clinton had already left.

The Democratic former presidential candidate has taken a strong pro-Israel stance since the conflict erupted last month, last week denouncing those calling for a ceasefire as not understanding Hamas during a discussion at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

Columbia is among the universities that have become a flashpoint for protests over the war, with students on both sides angrily denouncing the other for the escalating violence and growing number of deaths.

A rally at the campus last month called by National Students for Justice in Palestine was part of a “day of resistance” at Israel’s military response to the attacks by Hamas, and also attracted a sizeable group of pro-Israel protesters.

The pro-Palestinian students whose faces were shown on screens near the campus last week had signed a declaration in support of “Palestinian resistance against over 75 years of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid”. The statement said in part: “The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government.”

In a statement to The Guardian, a Columbia spokesperson said the appearance of vehicles displaying students’ photographs was “concerning”.

“Many individuals, including students across several schools, have been subject to these attacks by third parties. This includes disturbing incidents in which trucks have circled the Columbia campus displaying and publicizing the names and photos of Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students,” the spokesperson said.

“The University’s overriding priority is the safety and security of its students and community. The University and Sipa take this responsibility very seriously – and this includes speaking out against doxxing, a dangerous form of intimidation, as unacceptable.”

The university last week unveiled a new taskforce to counter student doxxing – the intentional publication online of a person’s private information, usually with malicious intent – and to enhance student safety.

The Columbia spokesperson also said the protest “was not targeted at the secretary and dean’s class specifically, but all Sipa classes happening Wednesday afternoon”. They noted its organizers called it an “act of solidarity not tied to any political ideals or figures”.

Clinton, 76, Barack Obama’s first-term secretary of state from 2009-2013, began teaching her class, called Inside the Situation Room, at the start of the academic year in September.

Tony

Mike Johnson and Liz Cheney

Dear Commons Community,

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) predicted the nation will “come to see the measure of” of newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) character.

“Mike is somebody that I knew well,” Cheney said earlier this week on “Politics Is Everything,” a podcast by the University of Virginia. “We were elected together. Our offices were next to each other, and Mike is somebody who says that he’s committed to defending the Constitution. But that’s not what he did when we were all tested in the aftermath of the 2020 election.”

Cheney, an outspoken Donald Trump critic and one of only two Republicans on the House Jan. 6 committee, said Johnson was “acting in ways that he knew to be wrong” when he led a legal effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.

“I think that the country unfortunately will come to see the measure of his character,” she said.

She also said it was concerning to see Johnson elected speaker, considering “he was willing to set aside what he knew to be the rulings of the courts, the requirements of the Constitution, in order to placate Donald Trump.”

He’s “dangerous” because he did so even though he knew the truth, Cheney said.

Johnson was elected speaker last week, breaking a weekslong stalemate that saw the GOP conference nominate and then fail to elect three other candidates.

The Louisiana Republican was so little-known before his nomination that some lawmakers admitted they had to Google him.

A Google search will tell you that Johnson holds extreme positions not just on the 2020 election, but on the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, abortion, religion and other social issues.

Liz Cheney is one  Republican who sees things right!

Tony

Sam Blankman-Fried

Dear Commons Community,

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry — a journey that included his testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president — hit rock bottom yesterday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors.

After the monthlong trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried’s claim during testimony in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago. As reported by The Associated Press.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried. Please rise and face the jury,” Judge Lewis A. Kaplan commanded just before a jury forewoman responded “guilty” seven times to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and three other conspiracy charges, which carry potential penalties adding up to 110 years in prison. Sentencing is set for March 28.

As the verdict was read, Bankman-Fried seemed stunned, appearing stone-faced, his hands clasped before him, as his lawyers remained sitting beside him. When he sat down, he looked down for several minutes.

His lawyer, Mark Cohen, later read a statement outside court to say they “respect the jury’s decision. But we are very disappointed with the result.”

“Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him,” Cohen said.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who sat in the front row of the spectator section during the verdict, stood before cameras outside the courthouse and said Bankman-Fried “perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a multibillion dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto.”

“But here’s the thing: The cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption is as old as time and we have no patience for it,” he said.

Justice has been served!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The number of homeless public school students in New York City reached an all-time high of 119,320 last school year, according to new data released yesterday, as migrants crossing the southern border continued to flock to the city.

Since last summer alone, more than 30,000 new students in temporary housing have enrolled in city schools, including some 12,000 in the last five months who were not reflected in the data.  As reported by The New York Times.

The statistics — which include children in shelters, hotels, relatives’ homes and other transient places — illuminate the challenges for Mayor Eric Adams’s administration in handling the rise in homeless students. They are uniquely vulnerable, dropping out at steep rates and often missing school. New York City’s homeless student population is now larger than the entire traditional public school system of Philadelphia.

As the system’s overall enrollment shrinks, the rise in homelessness among children means the issue has touched more schools. Now, about 1 in 9 New York City students are homeless. Some areas of the city have been especially hard hit, however. In one section of the Bronx, more than 22 percent of students were homeless.

The numbers are swelling as the city grapples with a housing shortage and schools face intense financial pressures. The constraints have left some crucial services for homeless students in the system, the nation’s largest, increasingly under threat.

“The situation is becoming more dire,” leaders at Advocates for Children of New York, the nonprofit that has collected the state data for more than a decade, warned in a news release.

Migrant children have made up most of the increase. The students could ultimately be a boon for many schools, helping those with declining enrollment to stave off budget cuts. But several school leaders, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the system was not doing enough to support them.

One Manhattan principal said the Education Department needs to create a separate office to oversee migrant issues and better coordinate resources and enrollment.

Another principal worried that some migrant teenagers might never fully catch up on their schooling before it was time to graduate. And a Brooklyn principal was concerned that migrant students with learning disabilities might not be diagnosed and could miss out on getting help.

Jenna Lyle, an Education Department spokeswoman, pointed to a recent boost in funding for schools with homeless students. “It is our ongoing priority to provide them with every support and resource at our disposal,” she said.

The last record for the number of homeless students in the city was 114,600 in the 2017-18 school year, and 104,000 lacked stable housing during the last school year.

To put this in perspective, New York City’s homeless student population exceeds the total student enrollments in all but nineteen of the country’s 13,000 plus school districts.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced it would be holding interest rates at 5.5 percent in November as it continues its efforts to bring inflation down. This follows a pause in September, as well, and comes on the heels of promising economic data — inflation in September held steady from August at 3.7% year-over-year, the US added 336,000 jobs the same month, and GDP growth came in at a two-year high of 4.9% in the third quarter.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated during the September press conference that the economy is moving toward the Fed’s inflation target of 2%, and following ten consecutive interest rate hikes since March 2022, he said it makes sense for the central bank to slow down its aggressive inflation-fighting efforts.  As reported by Business Insider.

“We need to get to a place where we’re confident that we have a stance that will bring inflation down to 2% over time,” Powell said. “That’s what we need to get to, and we’ve been moving toward it. As we’ve gotten closer to it, we’ve slowed the pace at which we’ve moved.”

The Fed’s latest move, coupled with the economy’s recovery, have also cast aside recession concerns for 2023. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, for example, released a blog on Tuesday stating that “the US economy has proven to be consistently resilient.”

“The American consumer, backed by a persistently tight labor market and recently rising real wages, is one salient force behind this economic resilience,” it wrote.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also said during a Bloomberg event last week that “you don’t really see any sign of recession here.”

“What we have looks like a soft landing with very good outcomes for the US economy,” she said.

However, some prominent voices in finance have expressed skepticism on the economy’s recovery going into next year. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, for example, pointed to conflicts abroad that could make tightening “more evident and will create slowdowns in some areas.”

“There has been an escalation of geopolitical stresses around the globe — the war in Ukraine, ongoing tensions with China and now the conflict in the Middle East,” he said. “Overall levels of risk are more elevated than we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Still, while the Federal Open Market Committee has remained cautiously optimistic about the direction the economy is moving toward, it doesn’t anticipate interest rate cuts will happen anytime soon. Its meeting minutes from September stated that some participants felt it necessary to shift the conversation from “how high to raise the policy rate to how long to hold the policy rate at restrictive levels.”

Good decision based on good economic news!

Tony