Tony's Thoughts

Dear Commons Community,

Some of the world’s biggest companies have said they do not plan to change course and will continue increasing prices or keep them at elevated levels for the foreseeable future.

That strategy has cushioned corporate profits. And it could keep inflation robust, contributing to the very pressures used to justify surging prices.

Some economists warn, policymakers at the Federal Reserve may feel compelled to keep raising interest rates, or at least not lower them, increasing the likelihood and severity of an economic downturn.

“Companies are not just maintaining margins, not just passing on cost increases, they have used it as a cover to expand margins,” said Albert Edwards, a global strategist at Société Générale, referring to profit margins, a measure of how much businesses earn from every dollar of sales.

It isn’t just big oil companies that saw record profits in the past year.  Companies that sell high-volume consumer goods such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are also prime examples of how large corporations have countered increased costs, and then some.

The average company in the S&P 500 stock index increased its net profit margin from the end of last year, according to FactSet, a data and research firm, countering the expectations of Wall Street analysts that profit margins would decline slightly. And while margins are below their peak in 2021, analysts forecast that they will keep expanding in the second half of the year.

For much of the past two years, most companies “had a perfectly good excuse to go ahead and raise prices,” said Samuel Rines, an economist and the managing director of Corbu, a research firm that serves hedge funds and other investors. “Everybody knew that the war in Ukraine was inflationary, that grain prices were going up, blah, blah, blah. And they just took advantage of that.”

But those go-to rationales for elevating prices, he added, are now receding.

The Producer Price Index, which measures the prices that businesses pay for goods and services before they are sold to consumers, reached a high of 11.7 percent last spring. That rate plunged to 2.3 percent for the 12 months through April.

The Consumer Price Index, which tracks the prices of household expenditures on everything from eggs to rent, has also been falling, but at a much slower rate. In April, it dropped to 4.93 percent, from a high of 9.06 percent in June 2022. The price of carbonated drinks rose nearly 12 percent in April from 12 months earlier.

“Inflation is going to stay much higher than it needs to be, because companies are being greedy,” Mr. Edwards of Société Générale said.

Greedy indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Months after Elon Musk and numerous others working in the field signed a letter in March seeking a pause in AI development, another group consisting of hundreds of AI-involved business leaders and academics signed on to a new statement from the Center for AI Safety that serves to “voice concerns about some of advanced AI’s most severe risks.”

The new statement, only a sentence long, is meant to “open up discussion” and highlight the rising level of concern among those most versed in the technology,according to the nonprofit’s website. The full statement reads: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Notable signatories of the document include Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, and Sam Altman, Chief Executive of OpenAI.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

Though proclamations of impending doom from artificial intelligence are not new, recent developments in generative AI such as the public-facing tool ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, have infiltrated the public consciousness.

The Center for AI Safety divides the risks of AI into eight categories. Among the dangers it foresees are AI-designed chemical weapons, personalized disinformation campaigns, humans becoming completely dependent on machines and synthetic minds evolving past the point where humans can control them.

Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer who signed the new statement, quit Google earlier this year, saying he wanted to be free to speak about his concerns about potential harm from systems like those he helped to design.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he told the New York Times.

The March letter did not include the support of executives from the major AI players, and went significantly further than the newer statement in calling for a voluntary six-month pause in developement. After the letter published, Musk was reported to be backing his own ChatGPT competitor, “TruthGPT.”

Tech writer Alex Kantrowitz noted on Twitter that Center for AI’s funding was opaque, speculating that the media campaign around the danger of AI might be linked to calls from AI executives for more regulation. In the past, social media companies such as Facebook used a similar playbook: ask for regulation, then get a seat at the table when the laws are written.

The Center for AI Safety did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sources of its funding.

Whether the technology actually poses a major risk is up for debate, Times tech columnist Brian Merchant wrote in March. He argued that, for someone in Altman’s position, “apocalyptic doom-saying about the terrifying power of AI serves your marketing strategy.”

I don’t know if we are unleashing a “Frankenstein” A.I. monster that will cause extinction but even a modest A.I. monster can cause a lot of hurt to humanity.

Tony

Wyoming State Parks shared a photo of the new calf and its mother.

Dear Commons Community,

Bear River State Park  in the southwest corner of Wyoming has welcomed an ultra-rare new member to the community — a tiny, fuzzy white bison.

 Officials from the park told Cowboy State Daily that the white bison calf was born weighing 30 pounds, which is small, but that it’s doing well. At the time the newspaper spoke with officials on May 17, the calf’s name and sex were not yet known.

“We’re not sure if it’s a bull calf or a heifer calf,” park superintendent Tyfani Sager told the newspaper. “They’re real furry and it’s hard to tell right off the bat.”

CBS News has reached out to the park for more information.

Bear River State Park clarified on Facebook that the bison is not albino — it just has a rare genetic makeup giving it white fur. The park got two white bison heifers in 2021, and the new calf’s mother, Wyoming Hope, was bred by a resident bull at the site. The new calf is the first white bison to be born at the park.

“Most of the bison you find anymore have some cattle genetics,” Sager told Cowboy State Daily. “They were nearly hunted to extinction by the late 1800s. People got concerned about extinction and cattle inbreeding was used. A white bison birth is still fairly rare.”

It’s so rare, in fact, that the National Bison Association told CBS affiliate KUTV that it’s a 1-in-10-million event. It’s also celebrated by some Indigenous groups.

According to the National Parks Service, a white buffalo calf is “the most sacred living thing on Earth” to some Native American tribes, including the Sioux, Cherokee, Navajo, Lakota and Dakota.

“Some American Indians say the birth of a white calf is an omen because the birth takes place in the most unexpected places and often happens among the poorest of people,” the service said. “The birth is sacred within the American Indian communities, because it brings a sense of hope and is a sign that good times are about to happen.”

Nature is beautiful!

Tony

I created the above image using the A.I. Program Dall-E2.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece on Sunday, lamenting the state of the humanities and segued to the dominance of technology as we get ready to deal with artificial intelligence.  Here is an excerpt:

“There is no time in our history in which the humanities, philosophy, ethics and art are more urgently necessary than in this time of technology’s triumph,” said Leon Wieseltier, the editor of Liberties, a humanistic journal. “Because we need to be able to think in nontechnological terms if we’re going to figure out the good and the evil in all the technological innovations. Given society’s craven worship of technology, are we going to trust the engineers and the capitalists to tell us what is right and wrong?”

It is not only the humanities that are passé. It’s humanity itself.

We are at the mercy of lords of the cloud, high on their own supply, who fancy themselves as gods creating life. Despite some earnest talk of regulation, they have no interest in installing a kill switch. A.I. is their baby, hurtling toward the rebellious teenage years.

Is this really the moment for lit departments to make “Frankenstein” and “Paradise Lost” obsolete?

Elon Musk said his friendship with Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, fractured when Musk pressed his case about the dangers of A.I. and Page accused him of being a speciesist who favored humans.

A.I. can be amazing; it just discovered an antibiotic that kills a deadly superbug. But it may also eventually see us as superbugs.

We can’t deal with artificial intelligence unless we cultivate and educate the non-artificial intelligence that we already possess.

It is not only the humanities and humanity that are endangered species. Our humaneness has shriveled. The dueling Republican clinchpoops, Trump and Ron DeSantis, are nasty and pitiless, “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable,” as Oscar Wilde described fox hunting.

Republicans have consecrated themselves to a war against qualities once cherished by many Americans. Higher principles — dignity, civility, patience, respect, tolerance, goodness, sympathy and empathy — are eclipsed.

Without humanities, humanity and humaneness, we won’t be imbuing society with wisdom, just creating owner’s manuals. That would be a floccinaucinihilipilification.”

Look it up in the dictionary!

Tony

We thank our military men and women past and present for their service to our country. We especially honor and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Dear Commons Community,

A 40-year-old man whose legs were paralyzed in a cycling accident 12 years ago can walk again thanks to implants in his brain and spinal cord (see video below).

The brain-spine interface (BSI) has remained stable for a year, allowing Gert-Jan Oskam to stand, walk, climb stairs and traverse complex terrains, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Oskam even regains some control over his legs when the BSI is turned off.

“My wish was to walk again and I believed it was possible,” Oskam said during a news briefing.

Oskam was in the accident in China and thought he would be able to get the help he needed when he got home to the Netherlands, but the technology wasn’t advanced enough for it at the time, Oskam said.

Oskam previously participated in a trial by Grégoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology who also worked on the new research, according to the study authors. In 2018, Courtine’s team found that technology can stimulate the lower spine and help people with spinal-cord injuries walk again. After three years, Oskam’s improvements plateaued.

For the latest study, the research team restored communication between Oskam’s brain and spinal cord with a digital bridge. Oskam participated in 40 sessions of neurorehabilitation throughout the study. He said he is now able to walk at least 100 meters (328 feet) or more at once, depending on the day.

“We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” Courtine said.

Researchers said the next advancement would be to miniaturize the hardware needed to run the interface. Currently, Oskam carries it in a backpack. Researchers are also working to see if similar devices can restore arm movement.

There have been a number of advancements in spinal cord injury treatment in recent decades. A study published in Nature in February found that targeted electrical pulses delivered to the spinal cord can help improve arm and hand movement after a stroke.

The researchers who helped Oskam believe the technology they’ve employed can, in the future, restore movement in arms and hands as well. They also think that, with time and resources, they can use the advancement to help stroke patients.

Incredible medical accomplishment!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a tentative agreement last night  to raise the debt ceiling, ending a three-month-long standoff that threatened to trigger a US default.

The deal, if enacted, would boost the nation’s borrowing limit for two years and take the volatile issue of America’s credit worthiness off the table until after the next presidential election, according to multiple reports.

The pact would also put in place what McCarthy described Saturday as “historic” spending limits that are also expected to be in place for the same period of time.

The announcement comes just days before the US government is expected to run out of money to pay all its bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that could happen June 5.

Biden and McCarthy ironed out the final details during two phone calls Saturday. “We still have a lot of work to do but I believe this is an agreement in principle that is worthy of the American people,” said McCarthy late Saturday.

Biden, in a statement, said the “agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want.”

“It is an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone,” he added.

But Wall Street can’t relax just yet. The leaders now have a difficult task of selling what are sure to be a host of controversial provisions to skeptical lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Deep reservations have been evident from both the left and from the right for weeks with leaders now turning to the process of selling the deal to their sides so it can be enacted into into law.

McCarthy only offered sparse details to reporters on Saturday, saying he wanted to talk with his members first.

President Biden also spoke Saturday with Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), two men who will be tasked with lining up Democratic votes in the days ahead.

In a statement Saturday night, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that the deal, if it passes, “would be the first major deficit-reducing budget agreement in almost a dozen years and would signal Washington is serious about making progress in addressing our mounting national debt.”

Another issue addressed in the deal, according to McCarthy, is the controversial topic of work requirements in return for access to certain government programs.

The issue is a particularly sensitive topic for both parties and was a sticking point until the final hours. Liberal Democrats have focused intensely on the topic, arguing that any increased requirements will do little for the deficit and instead are needlessly cruel for the most vulnerable Americans.

On the other side of the aisle, conservative Republicans have demanded much deeper spending cuts in recent months than were reportedly agreed to in the final deal, leaving many McCarthy’s most conservative members unlikely to support the bipartisan proposal in the days ahead.

Members of the conservative Freedom Caucus have repeatedly blasted the provisions as they have leaked out with with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) saying recently it “doesn’t sound like a deal that I can support.”

Many details of the bill are still forthcoming. Speaker McCarthy said some of the bill remains to be written but he promised to post the entire bill tomorrow before a likely vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Biden said “this agreement is good news for the American people, because it prevents what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.”

The discussions over the next couple of days with Congressional representatives for both parties will be interesting.

Tony

Excavations at the Jebel Irhoud archaeological site in Morocco, where 300,000-year-old fossils that may be the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens were found in 2017. Credit…Shannon McPherron/UPI, via Alamy

Dear Commons Community,

Carl Zimmer, a columnist, for The New York Times, had an article yesterday reporting that a new genetic analysis of 290 people suggests that humans emerged at various times and places in Africa and not in one single locale as has long been believed.  Here is an excerpt:

“By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature.  [The Nature article is quite interesting and provides further details on what Zimmer is reporting.]

“There is no single birthplace,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Geoarchaeology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “It really puts a nail in the coffin of that idea.”

Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have found evidence pointing to Africa as the origin of our species. The oldest fossils that may belong to modern humans, dating back as far as 300,000 years, have been unearthed there. So were the oldest stone tools used by our ancestors.

Human DNA also points to Africa. Living Africans have a vast amount of genetic diversity compared with other people. That’s because humans lived and evolved in Africa for thousands of generations before small groups — with comparatively small gene pools — began expanding to other continents.

Within the vast expanse of Africa, researchers have proposed various places as the birthplace of our species. Early humanlike fossils in Ethiopia led some researchers to look to East Africa. But some living groups of people in South Africa appeared to be very distantly related to other Africans, suggesting that humans might have a deep history there instead.

Brenna Henn, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues developed software to run large-scale simulations of human history. The researchers created many scenarios of different populations existing in Africa over different periods of time and then observed which ones could produce the diversity of DNA found in people alive today.

“We could ask what types of models are really plausible for the African continent,” Dr. Henn said.

The researchers analyzed DNA from a range of African groups, including the Mende, farmers who live in Sierra Leone in West Africa; the Gumuz, a group descended from hunter-gatherers in Ethiopia; the Amhara, a group of Ethiopian farmers; and the Nama, a group of hunter-gatherers in South Africa.

The researchers compared these Africans’ DNA with the genome of a person from Britain. They also looked at the genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in Croatia. Previous research had found that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor that lived 600,000 years ago. Neanderthals expanded across Europe and Asia, interbred with modern humans coming out of Africa, and then became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

The researchers concluded that as far back as a million years ago, the ancestors of our species existed in two distinct populations. Dr. Henn and her colleagues call them Stem1 and Stem2.

About 600,000 years ago, a small group of humans budded off from Stem1 and went on to become the Neanderthals. But Stem1 endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years after that, as did Stem2.

If Stem1 and Stem2 had been entirely separate from each other, they would have accumulated a large number of distinct mutations in their DNA. Instead, Dr. Henn and her colleagues found that they had remained only moderately different — about as distinct as living Europeans and West Africans are today. The scientists concluded that people had moved between Stem1 and Stem2, pairing off to have children and mixing their DNA.

The model does not reveal where the Stem1 and Stem2 people lived in Africa. And it’s possible that bands of these two groups moved around a lot over the vast stretches of time during which they existed on the continent. About 120,000 years ago, the model indicates, African history changed dramatically.”

This study changes a long held belief about human evolution!

Below is the entire article.

Tony

——————————————————————

The New York Times

Study Offers Twist in How the First Humans Evolved

By Carl Zimmer

Published May 17, 2023. Updated May 24, 2023

Scientists have revealed a surprisingly complex origin of our species, rejecting the long-held argument that modern humans arose from one place in Africa during one period in time.

By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature.

“There is no single birthplace,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Geoarchaeology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “It really puts a nail in the coffin of that idea.”

Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have found evidence pointing to Africa as the origin of our species. The oldest fossils that may belong to modern humans, dating back as far as 300,000 years, have been unearthed there. So were the oldest stone tools used by our ancestors.

Human DNA also points to Africa. Living Africans have a vast amount of genetic diversity compared with other people. That’s because humans lived and evolved in Africa for thousands of generations before small groups — with comparatively small gene pools — began expanding to other continents.

Within the vast expanse of Africa, researchers have proposed various places as the birthplace of our species. Early humanlike fossils in Ethiopia led some researchers to look to East Africa. But some living groups of people in South Africa appeared to be very distantly related to other Africans, suggesting that humans might have a deep history there instead.

Brenna Henn, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues developed software to run large-scale simulations of human history. The researchers created many scenarios of different populations existing in Africa over different periods of time and then observed which ones could produce the diversity of DNA found in people alive today.

“We could ask what types of models are really plausible for the African continent,” Dr. Henn said.

The researchers analyzed DNA from a range of African groups, including the Mende, farmers who live in Sierra Leone in West Africa; the Gumuz, a group descended from hunter-gatherers in Ethiopia; the Amhara, a group of Ethiopian farmers; and the Nama, a group of hunter-gatherers in South Africa.

The researchers compared these Africans’ DNA with the genome of a person from Britain. They also looked at the genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in Croatia. Previous research had found that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor that lived 600,000 years ago. Neanderthals expanded across Europe and Asia, interbred with modern humans coming out of Africa, and then became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

The researchers concluded that as far back as a million years ago, the ancestors of our species existed in two distinct populations. Dr. Henn and her colleagues call them Stem1 and Stem2.

About 600,000 years ago, a small group of humans budded off from Stem1 and went on to become the Neanderthals. But Stem1 endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years after that, as did Stem2.

If Stem1 and Stem2 had been entirely separate from each other, they would have accumulated a large number of distinct mutations in their DNA. Instead, Dr. Henn and her colleagues found that they had remained only moderately different — about as distinct as living Europeans and West Africans are today. The scientists concluded that people had moved between Stem1 and Stem2, pairing off to have children and mixing their DNA.

The model does not reveal where the Stem1 and Stem2 people lived in Africa. And it’s possible that bands of these two groups moved around a lot over the vast stretches of time during which they existed on the continent. About 120,000 years ago, the model indicates, African history changed dramatically.

In southern Africa, people from Stem1 and Stem2 merged, giving rise to a new lineage that would lead to the Nama and other living humans in that region. Elsewhere in Africa, a separate fusion of Stem1 and Stem2 groups took place. That merger produced a lineage that would give rise to living people in West Africa and East Africa, as well as the people who expanded out of Africa.

It’s possible that climate upheavals forced Stem1 and Stem2 people into the same regions, leading them to merge into single groups. Some bands of hunter-gatherers may have had to retreat from the coast as sea levels rose, for example. Some regions of Africa became arid, potentially sending people in search of new homes.

Even after these mergers 120,000 years ago, people with solely Stem1 or solely Stem2 ancestry appear to have survived. The DNA of the Mende people showed that their ancestors had interbred with Stem2 people just 25,000 years ago. “It does suggest to me that Stem2 was somewhere around West Africa,” Dr. Henn said.

She and her colleagues are now adding more genomes from people in other parts of Africa to see if they affect the models.

It’s possible they will discover other populations that endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, ultimately helping produce our species as we know it today.

Dr. Scerri speculated that living in a network of mingling populations across Africa might have allowed modern humans to survive while Neanderthals became extinct. In that arrangement, our ancestors could hold onto more genetic diversity, which in turn might have helped them endure shifts in the climate, or even evolve new adaptations.

“This diversity at the root of our species may have been ultimately the key to our success,” Dr. Scerri said.

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announced it has gotten permission from U.S. regulators to begin testing its device in people.

The company made the announcement on Twitter on Thursday evening but has provided no details about a potential study.  As reported in the Associated Press.

Officials with the Food and Drug Administration wouldn’t confirm or deny whether the agency granted the approval, but press officer Carly Kempler said in an email that the FDA “acknowledges and understands” that Musk’s company made the announcement.

Neuralink is one of many groups working on linking the nervous system to computers, efforts aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other applications.

Earlier this week, for example, researchers in Switzerland published research in the journal Nature describing an implant that restores communication between the brain and spinal cord to help a man with paralysis to stand and walk naturally. There are more than 30 brain or spine computer interface trials underway, according to clinicaltrials.gov.

Musk – who also owns Twitter and is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – said last December that his team was in the process of asking regulators to allow them to test the Neuralink device.

The device is about the size of a large coin and is designed to be implanted in the skull, with ultra-thin wires going directly into the brain. Musk has said the first two applications in people would be to attempt to restore vision and try to help people with little or no ability to operate their muscles rapidly use digital devices. He also said he envisions that signals from the brain could be bridged to Neuralink devices in the spinal cord for someone with a broken neck.

After Musk made a presentation late last year about the device, Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington, said he doesn’t think Neuralink is ahead of other teams in terms of brain-computer interface achievements but is “quite ahead” in terms of the hardware in the devices.

It’s unclear how well this device or similar interfaces will ultimately work, or how safe they might be. Neuralink’s interface is considered an “investigational device” at this point, and clinical trials are designed to collect data on safety and effectiveness.

In its tweet this week, Neuralink said that it’s not yet recruiting participants for the study and will provide more information soon.

This announcement reminds me of Dr. Christiaan Barnard in 1967 when he performed the first heart transplant on Louis Washansky.  Much of our technological future will be based on the integration of man-machine interfaces as described in the Neuralink announcement.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Bob Ubell, had a column on Thursday published in EdSurge, entitled,  “Why Colleges Should Pay Attention to Strikes by Their Most Precarious Teachers?”   He reviews the growing activism of contingent faculty (adjuncts, graduate assistants, contract teachers) in organized labor and unions.  His main point is that their demands for higher pay and employee benefits comparable to full-time faculty are justified and needed “to improve their scandalous conditions.”   

Amen!  

Below is an excerpt.

Tony

———————————————————————————————————————

“Why are so many adjuncts mobilizing now? Adjuncts’ already precarious situation has worsened in the wake of the pandemic and continuing inflation. So adjunct and other faculty unions have ramped up demands for economic justice.

Of course, not all part-time faculty are in the same fix. Some are professionals who work full-time in industry, and who teach in fulfilling side hustles, as I did several years ago at The New School.

But a recent survey of contingent faculty reveals the more uncertain situation most adjuncts find themselves in. A third of respondents earn less than $25,000 a year, falling below federal poverty guidelines for a family of four. Fewer than half receive university-provided health insurance, with nearly 20 percent on Medicaid.

These alarming economic facts for most in adjunct life are in addition to their day-to-day struggles. Without job security, many don’t know if they will be teaching as late as a month before class starts. Most are not compensated for academic work performed outside their classroom. Few are given funds for professional development, administrative support or even an office.

In a stinging irony, many tenured faculty teach courses on equity and social justice, where students learn about oppression engendered by privilege. Yet just down the hall, someone else with the same level of education is teaching a similar course for vastly less pay and with little or no benefits.

It’s part of a growing inequality in our society, as Kim Tolley and Kristen Edwards point out in their book “Professors in the Gig Economy,” noting that “many employment sectors are divided between a large precariat and a small, highly paid elite.”

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s inspiring to see that adjuncts are increasingly joining picket lines to improve their scandalous conditions.”