January 09, 2025

Britain’s “reverse-Goldilocks” problem

January 09, 2025 | Listen Online | Read Online

In the headlines

Firefighters in Los Angeles are facing a water shortage as they continue to battle the most destructive wildfires in the city's history, which have left at least five people dead and forced more than 137,000 to flee their homes. The infernos, one of which is now spreading across the iconic Hollywood Hills, have destroyed at least 2,000 buildings and burned through more than 27,000 acres, an area roughly the size of Bristol. The pound has sunk to its lowest level against the dollar since November 2023, says the FT. The slide comes as UK long-term borrowing costs surged to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, amid fears from investors about the government's heavy borrowing needs. Belgium's food agency has warned people not to eat their Christmas trees, after officials in the city of Ghent recommended using them to make spicy butter. Spokeswoman Hélène Bonte pointed out that consuming pesticides and flame retardant could have "serious, even fatal consequences".

Comment

Thomas Edison (L) and Henry Ford. Getty

The "broligarchs" who paved the way for Musk and co

Many are worried about the emerging US "broligarchy", says former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in Le Monde: the group of male billionaires hovering around Donald Trump, hoping to extract as much wealth and power as possible from his second term. The likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have struck an extraordinarily good deal with an "unparalleled return on investment": for a few hundred million dollars in campaign donations – "mere crumbs of their fortune" – they reaped, within minutes of Trump's election victory, "hundreds of billions in additional wealth". The value of Thiel's data analytics company Palantir soared by 23%; shares in Musk's Tesla jumped by 40%, making it worth more than the next 15 biggest carmakers combined. Now these business titans have gathered at Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring and "prepare to wield government power directly".

This is the latest incarnation of an old evil. John D Rockefeller, one of America's first robber barons, headed a dynasty that "makes Musk look like an amateur", with a son who became a media mogul and a grandson who became vice president. Thomas Edison publicly electrocuted an elephant with his competitor George Westinghouse's alternating current to convince authorities to favour his own direct current system. Henry Ford bought a newspaper to pressure cities to do away with streetcar lines, "thus making room on the road for Ford cars and buses". More recently, Goldman Sachs made a gift to Bill Clinton's administration of its own CEO, Robert Rubin, who, once appointed treasury secretary, swiftly eliminated the regulations on Wall Street's worst excesses. Now it's Musk and co – using the unprecedented powers of the internet to help shape our behaviour – who are up to the same old tricks.

📚🦹‍♂️ Thiel's favourite book is said to be The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. "Without the slightest hint of irony", the authors compare the ultra-rich to Olympian gods, arguing that their domination of the world is "both natural and just". Thiel likes the book, he says, because it offers an accurate prediction of a "future that does not include the powerful states that rule over us today".

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Photography

PetaPixel has compiled the best photos taken last year with trail cameras, the motion-activated devices left outside to snap unsuspecting wildlife. They include images of an epic fight over a deer carcass between two golden eagles and a coyote in Utah; a black bear in Colorado so fat he was described by one wildlife agency as a "thicc boi"; a rarely-seen Canada Lynx striking a majestic pose in Minnesota; and an elusive "fisher" – an omnivorous member of the weasel family – in Pennsylvania. See the rest here.

Inside politics

The idea that Keir Starmer didn't do enough as director of public prosecutions to address the rape gangs scandal is total bunk, says Andrew Norfolk on Times Radio. After I first broke the story for The Times back in 2011, Starmer met me to discuss how official guidelines were hampering prosecutions, and then changed the rules to make more prosecutions possible. "That happened and there was a huge increase in convictions." What wasn't examined in the original inquiry, which released its findings in 2022, was why "one very small sub-section" of Pakistani Muslim men were so "overwhelmingly, disproportionately responsible". How can we address this problem if we don't understand why it is happening in the first place?

Film

Kate Winslet and her character Ronal in Avatar: The Way of Water

Kate Winslet holds the record for the longest time a leading actor has spent holding their breath underwater, says The New York Times: seven minutes and 15 seconds. She achieved the lung-busting feat when filming the 2022 movie Avatar: The Way of Water, beating Tom Cruise's six-minute hold for 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. To put that time in context, some US Navy Seals "never break three minutes".

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Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Keir Starmer: turns out size does matter. Getty

Britain's "reverse-Goldilocks" problem

Perhaps one of the worst handicaps a nation can have in this century is to be "medium scale", says Janan Ganesh in the FT. Of the countries generally rated most efficient, some are democratic, like Finland, while others, like the UAE, are not. Some are Western, like New Zealand, and some aren't, like Singapore. What unites them is that they are tiny. This is not just an advantage in the public realm. Nordic and Israeli companies are so successful abroad in part because executives have to think about global markets from the off. With 70 million potential buyers at home, French or German firms don't quite have that impetus, but nor can they count on American or Chinese levels of domestic demand and capital. In a kind of reverse-Goldilocks, the conditions for a British tech startup, say, are "just wrong".

We also appear to be re-entering a world in which "might is right". The phrase "international law" is still dropped into conversation with "bizarre solemnity", given it has no third-party enforcement mechanism. The pretence of a "rules-based international order" was nice, but today, brute scale is an advantage again, and there are only two or three giants who count. The silliest statistic in Britain's public discourse is that we are the "sixth-biggest economy in the world", failing to mention that the gap to number one is greater than that to number 20. You might as well claim to be the "third-biggest football club in Manchester". There may be tricky decades ahead for the former superpowers of Europe, "caught in that awkward status between manageably compact and world-shapingly huge".

On the money

Deodorant used to be a humble toiletry, says Ellie Violet Bramley in The Observer, "bought for a quid and used with little pleasure". Not any more. To My Ships, a new brand apparently inspired by The Iliad, sells a 75ml roll-on for a whopping £35. Malin+Goetz, the beauty brand famous for its tomato candles, has a bergamot number for £22 (pictured); Le Labo's £29 BO-basher offers "hints of violet and tonka bean"; and Salt & Stone's £20 Santal & Vetiver is made with Hyaluronic Acid, a popular skincare ingredient. It's an "armpit arms race".

Noted

Everyone knows the "five-second rule", the theory that if you pick up food you've dropped on the floor quickly enough then it's probably safe to eat. Unfortunately, it's balls, says Clarissa Brincat in Popular Science. When researchers in South Carolina tested the rule in 2006 by dropping some bologna sausage on to a salmonella-contaminated surface, they found that over 99% of the bacteria that transferred to the bologna did so within five seconds.

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's a "raw milkmaid dress", says Poppy Sowerby in UnHerd, which was released this week by Evie Magazine, a "Cosmopolitan for conservative babes" that specialises in articles such as "The four levels of manliness" and "15 practical ways to love your husband". Designed in the French countryside, the £157 limited-edition frock is supposedly inspired by the "hardworking dairymaids of 17th-century Europe" and capitalises on the current "tradwife" trend. But the sexy smock hasn't been much of a hit with the magazine's conservative audience. "So disappointed by the amount of cleavage shown," wrote one prudish reader. "Waaaay too revealing for a modest woman." Buy yours here.

Quoted

"A bad lawyer is one who can make a case stretch on for ages. A good one can make it go on even longer."
Victoria Dowd (a lawyer)

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How Texas prisons are scrambling to fix a staffing crisis

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January 9, 2025

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The 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, will be laid to rest today. As such, the nation will observe a national day of mourning for the Georgia native. The major networks will broadcast Carter's Washington, D.C., funeral beginning at 9 a.m. this morning.

☁️ Temperature check: High of 47; low of 40. Justin's insight: Heading to the Cotton Bowl Classic? You might want to read this first before hitting the road. Sign up for our Weather Radar newsletter for more weather news.

J.R. Gonzales, Senior Digital Production Editor

john.gonzales@houstonchronicle.com

Texas corrections officers are increasingly traveling long distances to cover shifts in remote areas, as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice copes with short-staffing and retention.

Photo by: (Illustration by Susan Barber)

How Texas prisons are spending millions on a 'dangerous' staffing crisis as population soars

In the Texas prison system, it's called the Uber model.

It's a system — named after the rideshare company — that sends correctional officers to far-flung rural facilities to work temporary shifts that couldn't be filled locally. Getting to those facilities cost the state more than $111,000 on rental cars in 2023.

Then there's the hotel model. It's the same concept, but for longer stays. That year, hotel and travel meals added up to nearly $14 million in expenses.

The amounts, obtained by the Houston Chronicle through an open records request, show just how creative the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has to get to keep watch over a suddenly surging inmate population. It comes as TDCJ has struggled to find corrections and parole officers.

Read more from Eric Dexheimer about how the shortages are affecting operations at the prison agency here.

📰 Top Stories

HOME SALES SPIKE: The lackluster years of 2022 and 2023 are in the rearview mirror as Houston homebuying activity in 2024 finally started to see modest gains.
A DISTRICT IN MOURNING: The three teenagers that died in a police chase on Jan. 2 have been identified. The teens were in the process of stealing a car, but they were not armed. Three others were injured and are recovering.
HEATING ISSUES AT HISD: Houston ISD campuses battled another day of near-freezing temperatures Wednesday as several schools saw lapses in heat, broken boilers and sewage issues.
IMPORTANT DATES: With the 2025 income tax season set to launch later this month, here are some important dates and information to help taxpayers prepare.
LAWSUIT FILED: The Buzbee Law Firm filed a lawsuit against Pemex alleging it was negligent in the lead-up to an October gas leak that left two dead and dozens injured.
STATUS QUESTIONED: A Texas legal aid group has accused the Houston-based America Family Law Center of defrauding low-income litigants in an IRS complaint aimed at stripping their nonprofit status, according to records.

🥐 Food News

RESTAURANT EXPANDS: Pho Prime, a fast-casual concept with a build-your-own option for the classic Vietnamese noodle soup, is already open in Shenandoah-The Woodlands with locations coming to the Galleria and Pearland.
ORTEGA'S NEXT VENTURE: Few details are available, but the team behind the best-known, Mexico-born chef in Texas confirmed a downtown Houston restaurant is in the works.
RESTAURANT CLOSES: Roka Akor announces the closure of its Houston location after an eight-year run and looks to expand in other markets.
SEAFOOD RESTAURANT CLOSES: The Flying Dutchman, which Tilman Fertitta bought in 1997, was a popular destination on the Kemah Boardwalk for oysters, seafood and sunset views.
COMING SOON: Virtù, ranked 42nd on the prestigious lists of leading bars in the world, is known for its use of Japanese ingredients and techniques. The Four Seasons Hotel Houston's speakeasy-style bar and lounge Bandista will offer a first-hand experience from it for a pop-up.

🧠 Point of View

Photo by: Houston Chronicle

Texans should be concerned that Abbott's court appointments are reshaping the state's highest civil bench in his favor, writes the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board.

📅 Events at the Chronicle

Photo by: Houston Chronicle Staff

EVENT: Meet the new Harris County DA Sean Teare

Chronicle readers are invited to a private Zoom with Sean Teare, Harris County's District Attorney, as he enters his first month in office.

☝️ One Last Word

The story that President-elect Donald Trump wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico has legs, as we say in the news business. That just means the story isn't a one-off.

A day after the idea was floated, Gov. Greg Abbott took it a step further, suggesting it be renamed the "Gulf of Texas." (I'm sure the folks in Florida wouldn't mind renaming it after The Sunshine State.)

Personally, I think "Gulf of Galveston County" has a nice ring to it.

— J.R. Gonzales

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Try to win in the lowest number of moves to score the highest amount of points. Don't let them put your king into checkmate.

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Staff Picks: Our Favorite K-Dramas of 2024 [1.9.25]

allkpop Newsletter

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Daily update ⋅ Jan 09, 2025

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