Happy Thanksgiving.
A well-informed turkey.
Note to Subscribers: News Items will be off the grid beginning tomorrow (27 November), We’ll resume distribution on Monday, 1 December.
Note to Paid Subscribers: You will receive a special News Items Podcast link on Saturday, 29 November. We’re recording the podcast today. My guest is Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports. We’ll cover a lot of ground, including NBC’s upcoming coverage of the Winter Olympics.
Note to Free Subscribers: The open access experiment is over. The paywall returns on Monday.
1. Scientists have identified five major “epochs” of human brain development in one of the most comprehensive studies to date of how neural wiring changes from infancy to old age. The study, based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organization moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years. “Looking back, many of us feel our lives have been characterised by different phases. It turns out that brains also go through these eras,” said Prof Duncan Astle, a researcher in neuro-informatics at Cambridge University and senior author of the study. “Understanding that the brain’s structural journey is not a question of steady progression, but rather one of a few major turning points, will help us identify when and how its wiring is vulnerable to disruption.” (Sources: theguardian.com, nature.com)
2. A build-up of sticky proteins in the brain is a key hallmark of Alzheimer’s, thought to be closely linked to the disease’s progression. Now scientists have found a new way to clear these harmful clumps in the brains of mice and the eyes of fruit flies. This potentially promising Alzheimer’s treatment involves an oral dose of arginine, an amino acid already used as a medication for conditions including chest pain and high blood pressure. The discovery was made by a team from Kindai University and Japan’s National Institute of Neuroscience, who focused on the amyloid-beta plaques seen in Alzheimer’s disease. (Sources: sciencealert.com, sciencedirect.com)
3. Robin Harding:
There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to. For now, to be sure, China is still a customer for semiconductors, software, commercial aircraft and the most sophisticated kinds of production machinery. But it is a customer like a resident doctor is a student. China is developing all of these goods. Soon it will make them, and export them, itself.
“Well, how can you blame us,” the conversation usually continued, after agreeing on China’s desire for self-sufficiency, “when you see how the US uses export controls as a weapon to contain us and keep us down? You need to understand the deep sense of insecurity that China feels.”
That is reasonable enough and blame does not come into it. But it leads to the following point, which I put to my interlocutors and put to you now: if China does not want to buy anything from us in trade, then how can we trade with China? (Source: ft.com)
4. China has overtaken the US in the global market for “open” artificial intelligence models, gaining a crucial edge over how the powerful technology is used around the world. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and open-source AI start-up Hugging Face found that the total share of downloads of new Chinese-made open models rose to 17 per cent in the past year. The figure surpasses the 15.8 per cent share of downloads from American developers such as Google, Meta and OpenAI — the first time Chinese groups have beaten their American counterparts. Open models — which are free to download, modify and integrate by developers — make it easier for start-ups to create products and researchers to improve them. Widespread adoption will confer outsized influence over AI’s future. (Source: ft.com)
5. Eurointelligence:
This week, two foreboding developments for Europe’s auto industry coincided with each other. The bigger, and more obvious, of the two was VW’s announcement yesterday that it can now develop cars entirely in China, without needing to involve Germany. For the company, the cost savings, especially for an electric car, of doing this are quite substantial. It said that, thanks to China’s scale and technological base in the electric car industry, doing this can be up to 50% cheaper than it would be otherwise.
VW is also now exporting cars elsewhere directly from China, as opposed to just building them there for the Chinese market. It’s started by sending internal combustion-engined limousines to the Middle East from its Chinese factories. But the firm is open to exporting more from China, particularly to Southeast Asia. Demand for electric cars there is really picking up. It’s at least a possibility that VW could, at some point in the future, be sending fully Chinese-produced electric cars straight from there, without really involving Germany.
6. The U.S.-backed 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which became public last week, drew from a Russian-authored paper submitted to the Trump administration in October, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The Russians shared the paper, which outlined Moscow’s conditions for ending the war, with senior U.S. officials in mid-October, following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington, the sources said. The paper, a non-official communication known in diplomatic parlance as a “non-paper,” contained language that the Russian government had previously put forward at the negotiating table, including concessions that Ukraine had rejected such as ceding a significant chunk of its territory in the east. This is the first confirmation that the document was a key input in the 28-point peace plan. (Source: reuters.com)
7. President Trump said he would dispatch special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow in another push to secure a peace plan to end the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. The US president said his negotiators had made “tremendous progress” in ending the war — but he would wait until a deal was within reach before meeting Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin. “I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” the US president said in a social media post on Tuesday. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, who has emerged as an unlikely diplomat in US efforts to end the war, would meet Ukrainian officials, Trump said. (Source: ft.com)
8. Russia launched a deadly barrage of missiles and drones on the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday, as Kremlin officials signaled they would resist changes negotiated by Ukraine to President Trump’s peace plan. The attack on Kyiv, the capital, killed at least seven people and injured 20 others, according to the city’s mayor. It came as the Trump administration was working to maintain diplomatic momentum behind its efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war, which were jump-started last week when it presented a 28-point peace plan to Ukraine. (Source: nytimes.com)
9. Congressional Republicans who view Ukraine as a bulwark against Russian aggression are openly blasting President Trump’s team for an approach they argue amounts to appeasing the Kremlin in a bid to swiftly draw the conflict to a close. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky feuded on social media on Tuesday with Vice President JD Vance, a key player in the ongoing talks, scolding him in a series of posts for defending an emerging deal that Mr. McConnell argued would not secure Ukraine and would play into Russia’s hands. “A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” Mr. McConnell, the longest-serving Senate Republican leader and one of his party’s most vocal proponents of American support for Kyiv, wrote in conclusion. “America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one.” (Source: nytimes.com)
10. Crypto-hoarding companies are ditching their holdings in a bid to prop up their sinking share prices, as the craze for “digital asset treasury” businesses unravels in the face of a $1 trillion cryptocurrency rout. Shares in Michael Saylor-led Strategy, the world’s biggest corporate bitcoin holder, have tumbled 50 per cent over the past three months, dragging down scores of copycat companies. About $77 billion has been wiped from the stock market value of these companies, which raise debt and equity to fund purchases of crypto, since their peak of $176 billion in July, according to industry data publication The Block. With Saylor’s company now worth less than the bitcoin it holds, investors worry that a business model that relied on a virtuous circle of rising crypto prices and massive share and debt issuance is now unravelling. (Source: ft.com)
11. Katie Martin:
Proponents have told me for years that bitcoin is money (it’s not, really), that it’s an inflation hedge (come on, now), or that it’s a haven asset for times of stress (LOL), but it turns out that its most useful function is to serve as an early warning system that markets are unwell. On several occasions of late, it has been a lurch lower in bitcoin that has led a decline in global stocks. It sinks, stocks follow. And it has sunk a lot, down by a third since early October to $84,000 or so. Only another $84,000 to go before it reaches fair value. (Source: ft.com)
12. Robinhood Markets Inc. and Susquehanna International Group are taking over a regulated exchange that was tied to the now-defunct crypto business FTX, giving them a powerful new foothold in the fast-growing world of prediction markets. The two firms are buying a majority stake in LedgerX, a US-based derivatives exchange once owned by FTX and now run by Miami International Holdings. The buyers already have strong ties to prediction markets. Susquehanna has said it serves as a market maker on Kalshi, the leading US prediction market exchange. Robinhood offers Kalshi’s event contracts to its retail investing clients. (Source: bloomberg.com)
13. Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has exhausted his appeals, the country’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, and will begin his 27-year sentence for plotting a military coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss. He is the first former president to be found guilty of attempting to subvert Latin America’s largest democracy. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
14. America is quickly moving toward a system in which tens of millions of blue-state Republicans and red-state Democrats effectively have no congressional representation at all. (Source: theatlantic.com)
Recent Podcasts:
1) Episode #8 of ‘Alternate Shots’, featuring Richard Haass and yours truly, is now available on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and most of the other major podcast platforms.
2) A conversation with Sven Beckert, author of the just-released Capitalism, A Global History, is here. It’s an extraordinary book. Its author was a great guest.
Quick Links: Ugh: The consumer confidence index slid to 88.7 in November — a sharp, 6.8-point drop from 95.5 last month. An affordability crisis is sweeping the US. Grim retail sales data fuels concerns about health of US economy. Across the U.S., the number of homes covered by so-called “insurers of last resort” has been steadily increasing for the past five years. It’s 1848 in 2025: A high gold price is luring prospectors to California’s mountains.
Financialization Links: White House NEC Director Kevin Hassett is seen as the frontrunner to be the next Federal Reserve chair. Market volatility underscores epic buildup of global risk. ‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry on why he’s shorting Nvidia stock. Mr. Burry is now posting on Substack. SoftBank Group Corp. shares have plunged around 40% since late October amid worries about new pressure on OpenAI. Klarna launches stablecoin to cut cost of cross-border payments.
Political Links: Brazil’s Lula leads potential right-wing rivals ahead of 2026 vote, poll shows. Here’s the latest edition of Political News Items. Trump opens the door to Obamacare subsidy extension. Trump administration slashes Ozempic and Wegovy price for Medicare. Louisiana vaccine skeptic gets No. 2 CDC job. U.S. House ramps up security as lawmakers’ fears rise. Democrats say FBI is investigating them over video. Trump faces realities of aging in office. At pardoning ceremony, Trump informs turkey of all he’s accomplished.
Science/Technology Links: Blending ‘old-fashioned’ logic systems with the neural networks that power LLMs is one of the hottest trends in artificial intelligence. HSBC: OpenAI needs to raise at least $207 billion by 2030 so it can continue to lose money. Google has pierced Nvidia’s aura of invulnerability. Sign of the times: McKinsey & Co. cut about 200 global tech jobs. Embodied AI: China’s big bet on smart robots. The Montreal Protocol: Ozone layer on track for full recovery after UN treaty “success story”. Hoverflies: The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops. Technology turns farming into a career young workers like. Two simple numbers can predict your heart disease risk. Amazon scorpion venom shows stunning power against breast cancer. Parkinson’s link to gut bacteria suggests unexpectedly simple treatment: B vitamins. Interoception: Scientists are learning how the brain knows what’s happening throughout the body. Your body thinks you’re fighting lions every day.
War: You may not want to read this: IISS Conflict Trends 2025. The People’s Liberation Army is prepping for battles in which AIs work to distort each others’ reality. Iran has lost control of the Houthis in Yemen. Witkoff advised Russia on how to pitch Ukraine plan to Trump. A transcript of that advice is here. Taiwan plans to spend $40 billion on U.S. arms, increase defense budget.