What we’re reading (11/22)
“‘This Is False!’ META Uses Twitter To Deny Claims Mark Zuckerberg Is Resigning As CEO - As Its Share Price Rallies After Rumors Of Billionaire Facebook Founder’s Potential Departure” (The Daily Mail). “Meta officials have denied rumors that billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is planning to step down as CEO of the company he has built from the ground up. Insiders had told The Leak that the 38-year-old has decided to step down as the head of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.”
“FTX Says Substantial Amount Of Crypto Assets Stolen Or Missing” (Wall Street Journal). “A substantial amount of FTX’s assets are either missing or stolen, a lawyer for the failed crypto exchange said in court, vowing to cast a wide net to secure potentially billions of dollars in funds that passed through the firm he called the ‘personal fiefdom’ of co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried.”
“HP Says It Will Lay Off Up To 6,000 Workers Over The Next Couple Years” (CNN Business). “The computer maker disclosed the major job cuts in a statement accompanying its lackluster quarterly earnings report on Tuesday afternoon, where it also said sales dropped more than 11% compared to the same period last year.”
“How The Great Depression Shaped People’s DNA” (Nature). “The worst recession in US history shaped how well people would age — before they were even born. Researchers have found1 that the cells of people who were conceived during the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939 and, at its height, saw about 25% of the US workforce unemployed, show signs of accelerated ageing…In the earliest stages of development, an embryo is a packet of potential, containing genetic instructions to build the molecular components of the body. Over time, however, cells add and remove chemical modifiers known as epigenetic tags to their DNA, and these shape how those cells and their descendants execute the instructions. The tags are influenced by a variety of factors, including hormones, diet and people’s environment.”
“Are 8 billion People Too Many — Or Too Few?” (Vox). “The truth is that human population is complicated, and there may be 8 billion ways to be wrong about it. Fevered fears about overpopulation ignore the fact that the carrying capacity of the Earth is not and never has been fixed. Technological advances, improved efficiency, and changing consumption patterns allow us to get more people out of the same amount of planet, a possibility Malthus, writing at a time when human population had taken tens of thousands of years to reach just 1 billion, simply couldn’t imagine…But those who fret about underpopulation miss the fact that demographic trends for the entire planet don’t move in a single direction.”
