Convenience Big Store: Everyone’s Someone’s Biggest Fan and Cheating in Class

No, really, I'm your biggest fan

Why can't the TV cameras let Taylor Swift watch her boyfriend play football in peace?

The 33-year-old with more than a passing resemblance to a cheerleader has been attending Kansas City Chiefs games, cheering on the hunky tight end Travis Kelce. Swift has sat next to Kelce's mom in Skybox seats for two games now, and cutaways to Swift's reactions to big plays have become a staple of the Chiefs televised games.

Swift fans, known as Swifties, have boosted Kelce jersey sales by 400%.

Fandom is a remarkably powerful phenomenon. Young women fainted in front of Elvis Presley. Young men sit shirtless through snow storms for the Green Bay Packers.

Then there's the profit: Swift and Beyoncé will generate $2.5 billion in combined revenue on their world tours. Their fans still want more and will spend serious money to get as much as possible from their idols.

Don't blame a fan for their fanaticism, they can't help it. It comes from deep inside our primal DNA.

Researchers at Duke University tested 12 thirsty rhesus macaque monkeys to see if they'd rather drink Juicy Juice cherry juice or catch a glimpse at computer images of a dominant monkey in their pack.

They overwhelmingly chose the image of a celebrity monkey over quenching their thirst.

Conversely, the researchers had to give extra juice to convince monkeys to look at images of lower-status members of the pack, which explains a lot about human behavior.

Our massive frontal lobes give us the power to overcome these basic instincts. We can learn to manage our fight-or-flight instincts and learn to cooperate rather than bully. But the instinct will always persist.

Fandom in humans arises from social, cultural and tribal factors. But why people argue over the relative talent of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones remains somewhat a mystery.

Fandom also has a dark side. Personality cults are an example of toxic fandom; in extreme cases, idols convince fans to self-harm. And once fandom takes hold, it can take control of someone's life, something we must consider as we move into the 2024 presidential campaign.

SHAMELESS PLUG: The Texas Education Agency has taken over the Houston Independent School District, and the school year is off to a raucous start. To keep up with the latest, sign up for the Report Card, our new newsletter on everything you need to know about state takeover at HISD.

Chris Tomlinson, Business Columnist

What Else I'm Writing

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Photo by: Jon Shapley, Staff Photographer

Paxton, Texas PUC fight air pollution, climate efforts

Lawsuits aim to stop necessary improvements affecting air quality and climate change.

Elon Musk, billionaire and chief executive officer of Tesla, at the Viva Tech fair in Paris, France, on Friday, June 16, 2023. Musk predicted his Neuralink Corp. would carry out its first brain implant later this year. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Nathan Laine

Photo by: Nathan Laine, Bloomberg / Bloomberg

EU calls Elon Musk's X the global leader in disinformation

Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, leads social networks in disinformation, must obey European Union law.

What I'm Reading

Must Read: House impeachment managers release new evidence after Attorney General Ken Paxton's acquittal The rest of the story. (Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News)

Should Read: The Next Targets for the Group that Overturned Roe Alliance Defending Freedom has won 15 Supreme Court cases. Now it wants religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws — and is going after trans rights. (The New Yorker)

Interesting Read: Ctrl-Alt-Delete Hispanic Heritage aesthetics This Latina columnist is not celebrating the related graphic design, a pastiche of brightly-colored patterns and stylized decorative fonts with awful names like "Taco Modern." (The Los Angeles Times)

Technical Read: Look beyond gross domestic product to assess the effects of tax reforms (Brookings)

Fun Read: Austin's the new Kremlin! A cartoon guide to vouchers and puppet masters Wilks and Dunn (Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News)

Question of the Week

Is there a celebrity that gives you a buzz of excitement or a sense of awe? Reply directly to this email and tell me your thoughts.

Mailbag

Last Week's Question: Do you have a favorite banned book?

"My favorite banned book is 'Fellowship of the Ring.' It was banned for being Satanic. My husband's favorite is 'Fahrenheit 451.' It was banned for language." – Carol Hensel, The Woodlands

"I've read a number of them and am gob-smacked that, among others, the Tolkien books, 'The Lottery' and Anne Frank graphic are included! I remember my mom, who hated conflict, marching over to our local New Jersey library when I was in fourth grade to admonish them for preventing me from taking books from the 'adult' section. She told the librarian to NEVER prevent me from reading whatever I wanted. That is how it should be." – Christine Frank Fuentes, Sugar Land (ex Scotch Plains, New Jersey)

"'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,' by Sherman Alexie. Why stop at books; how about music & YouTube? We need to keep Texas read." – John Callaghan, San Antonio

"'The Handmaid's Tale,' by Margaret Atwood." – Darlene Clark, Houston

"I'm against censorship. This means I'm against book banning by theocrat Republicans in Texas. But it also means I'm against raging censorship of conservative expression by woke Democrats taking place on social media sites and on university campuses that were once bastions of free thought and free speech." – Greg Groh, Houston

"Any book that is banned!" – Cheryl Adamson, Jacksonville

The Takeaway

No new technology has captured more attention this year than artificial intelligence, namely, the large language models like ChatGPT. The computer programs can converse in shockingly human ways, including answering questions or generating reports and stories.

As the name suggests, these machines learned their skills by reading the work of humans. Last week, The Atlantic Magazine revealed how technologists trained several large language models using thousands of books, including my New York Times bestseller, "Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name — One White, One Black."

No one asked me or my publisher, St. Martin's Press, for permission to ingest my copyrighted work into their machine. Nor does it appear they asked any of the writers or publishers of the other 191,000 books they used.

Authors and publishers are launching lawsuits all over the country, which I imagine will ultimately become a class action. Large news organizations are demanding Congress pass laws to protect copyright holders from AI companies using their writing without permission.

Writing is not easy, and writing well is really hard. I don't do it for free. If you want your computer to learn by looking over my shoulder, the least you can do is buy me dinner first.