Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
Robert Prevost: ‘Dark Horse’ American Cardinal Succeeds Pope Francis to Become 267th Pontiff
As we begin today, thank you to the College of Cardinals for selecting a Pope around lunchtime on the U.S. East Coast Thursday, which made it easy for me to wait and include a few interesting links about the new "prince of the church." As a Catholic myself (I mean, not always the best one, but I try), I was struck by how emotional I was when the surprise announcement was made.
For the first time in history an American has been elected as Pope.
The idea of an American pope has often been dismissed, even by theologians in the United States in the run-up to this week’s conclave. So few expected Robert Prevost to walk out on to the balcony at the Vatican as the new head of the Catholic Church.
And yet, on Thursday the Chicago-born cardinal-bishop, known by friends as “Bob,” made history after becoming the 267th pope – the first time in the Church’s 2,000 year history that an American has been appointed to lead it.
Prevost – who has joint Peruvian citizenship and spent years living and working in the South American country – has chosen to be known as Leo XIV. As Bishop of Chicago, the 69-year-old once oversaw the largest Archdiocese in North America.
Vatican insiders had described Prevost as a “dark horse” candidate who quietly rose to prominence in the days just before the conclave, having been made a cardinal-bishop in February this year.
Other links; I mean it’s a big story!
Villanova University in Philadelphia is proud; the new pope earned his Bachelor’s Degree in math there in 1977. (Villanova)
Recalling the day’s feast day of Our Lady of Pompeii, Pope Leo invited those present in Rome to pray a Hail Mary with him. (National Catholic Register)
Pope Leo XIV, the First American Pontiff, Took a Global Route to the Top Post (New York Times)
Everyone is trying to predict what he'll be like as a pope; Leo XIV has at least once called out Vice President Vance for his immigration stance and theological interpretation on Twitter. Some MAGA influencers are not happy. (The Independent)
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.
Teachers have tried AI-proofing assignments, returning to Blue Books or switching to oral exams. Brian Patrick Green, a tech-ethics scholar at Santa Clara University, ... A philosophy professor ... caught students in her Ethics and Technology class using AI to respond to the prompt “Briefly introduce yourself and say what you’re hoping to get out of this class.”
It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, “the ceiling has been blown off.” Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences? After spending the better part of the past two years grading AI-generated papers, Troy Jollimore, a poet, philosopher, and Cal State Chico ethics professor, has concerns. “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” he said. “Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”
That future may arrive sooner than expected when you consider what a short window college really is. Already, roughly half of all undergrads have never experienced college without easy access to generative AI. “We’re talking about an entire generation of learning perhaps significantly undermined here,” said Green, the Santa Clara tech ethicist. “It’s short-circuiting the learning process, and it’s happening fast.”
Top Trump Crypto Buyers Vying for Dinner Seats Are Likely Foreign, Data Shows
The majority of top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin have used foreign exchanges that say they ban US users, suggesting many purchasers are based abroad.
More than half of the top holders of President Donald Trump’s memecoin — who are jockeying for dinner with the president — have used foreign exchanges that say they ban US users, suggesting that many of the purchasers are based outside the US.
Buyers of the Trump token, a cryptocurrency the president began marketing days before his inauguration, drove sales higher in the past two weeks after its issuers announced an unprecedented promotion: More than 200 of the memecoin’s largest holders would be invited to attend a May 22 dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club, while the top 25 would qualify for an exclusive reception beforehand and what the meme coin’s website describes as a “VIP” tour.
Now, an analysis by Bloomberg News shows that all but six of the top 25 holders who have registered on the website’s leaderboard used foreign exchanges that say they exclude customers living in the US. More broadly, at least 56% of the leaderboard’s top 220 holders used similar offshore exchanges.
The Gender Gap Has Narrowed in Climbing. These Women Have Closed It.
As a recent historic climb attests, Olympians Brooke Raboutou and Janja Garnbret are pushing women’s outdoor climbing, and each other, to new heights.
In the months after she claimed a silver medal in sport climbing at the Paris Olympics, Brooke Raboutou returned to the place where she had once competed as a child prodigy: Arco, Italy. Just outside of town, Raboutou set her sights on a sheet of rock called Excalibur, a steep and powerful 40-foot route just two other climbers had ever solved.
With its microscopic holds, Excalibur is considered one of the most difficult climbs in the world. It is rated 9b+/5.15c on climbing’s grading systems, a degree no woman had ever managed. For more than a month, Raboutou tried to become the first. Many days, her hands numbed out, and she was unable to complete the final move on the pitch.
She would wake most mornings in Arco and meditate, wondering whether that would be the day she finally conquered the most difficult project of her career.
See Where Home Prices Are Rising and Falling the Most
Markets in Florida and Texas with lots of inventory post biggest price declines, while prices in Northeast and Midwest rise.
The spring home-buying season is off to a slow start—but not everywhere.
Buyers are still competing against each other for homes in the Northeast and Midwest, where new supply has been limited and attractive listings can draw crowds.
Home prices in parts of the South have been flat or falling, according to Intercontinental Exchange, a financial technology and data company. Even with prices starting to come down, however, buyers are still struggling to afford purchases in places such as Texas and Florida, after prices skyrocketed during the pandemic-era housing boom.
Here’s a look at what’s going on in different regions of the country, and why.
What a $15,000 Electric SUV Says About U.S.-China Car Rivalry
World’s two biggest vehicle markets increasingly look like Mars and Venus.
The offer sounds like a scam—a new Toyota electric-powered sport-utility vehicle for about $15,000, complete with sunroof and cup holders.
But the Toyota bZ3X is real, and it is actually on sale starting at that price. There is a catch: To buy one, you have to be in China.
Auto executives once dreamed of a world car that could be designed once and sold everywhere. That world has fractured, and nowhere more so than in the two biggest markets, China and the U.S., which together account for nearly half of global vehicle sales.
“Decades ago, it was very easy to develop to produce one standard and to provide it globally,” said Volkswagen’s chief executive, Oliver Blume. “Today, it’s impossible because the expectations of the customers are different. The ecosystems are different, the regulations are different.”
The Surprising Ways That Siblings Shape Our Lives
Parents try everything to influence their children. But new research suggests brothers and sisters have their own profound impact.
When we think about the forces that shape us, we inevitably turn to parents. The parent-child relationship is the basis of probably half a millennium’s worth of psychoanalytic conversation and intellectual discourse; parenting books are perennial best sellers, with advice that fluctuates as often as the health advice on what to eat or drink and how much. Their whiplashing instructions don’t stop many parents from reading them, and who can blame those mothers and fathers: Children are baffling, variable, not that verbal — and parents also know that if they get it wrong, their kids will blame them for just about everything.
And yet researchers, after analyzing thousands of twin studies, have come to the conclusion that the shared environment — the environment that siblings have in common, which includes parents — seems to do precious little to make fraternal twins particularly alike in many ways.
They can be exposed to the same rules of oboe practice, dinnertime rituals, punishments, family values and parental harmony or discord, and none of it really matters in many key regards ...
But then there are siblings.
“I think the influence of siblings on each other is an area in psychology that has not nearly received the attention it deserves,” says Lisa Damour, a psychologist and author who writes about adolescence. “When we look at child development, our main frameworks have been around the influence of parents on children, and that’s the established tradition that we’ve had a hard time moving past.”
Intriguing bit on “Everyone is cheating their way through college” and pointing out the impact of AI on college education. I tend to agree with the Cal State Chico ethics professor, Troy Jollimore, as he states that massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees who are essentially illiterate. This is kind of demonstrated by the students comment about “the ceiling has been blown off” indicating that students will take the “easy” way out for every assignment as there are no consequences. What a pity the student doesn’t realize the only real loser is the student. Aside from taking the easy way out, there is very little learning taking place which is part of what college is supposed to be about. I think also the “lack of consequences” is a telling aspect of that student’s personality makeup.
The use of AI, while it can be a tremendously effective tool in many ways, is also very dangerous in that it invites those who are so inclined, to abdicate their own responsibility for thinking and learning. Instead of thinking and learning, some users of AI will just let the AI program do their thinking for them, thereby learning nothing in the process. The unfortunate consequences of such behavior is the lack of growth and development, of not only the user/student, but the lack of development of the scientific basis for understanding how to improve on what is already available.
In many ways, AI is following a similar path that the internet followed. It was supposed to be such a wonderful thing, and it arguably is for many, however, one of the impacts that has been documented is the concept that today’s students, and recent graduates, have failed to develop mastery of their topics. They show a superficial knowledge of whatever it is they studied, but fail to demonstrate any real deep understanding of their fields. Along with this is a shortened attention span that continues to add to the lack of depth of understanding. With AI, the same thing can happen as the user doesn’t need to understand anything, they can just re-iterate what AI says, again, at the expense of their own learning.
That’s too bad. As mentioned before, the student is the real loser, and by default, also the society into which the student becomes a participant. I wonder what happened to learning just to improve one’s self and to educate one’s self just because it is a way for self-improvement and a desire to learn?
Pope Leo is the second American Pope. D. Trump was the first one.
This erudite group: please forgive me. I meant no offense.