19: China

Why Ultraprocessed Foods Aren’t Always Bad diet is a bigger contributor globally to early death than smoking. In America, nearly half the adult population has Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes. ....... These industrially produced foods with weird, hard-to-pronounce ingredients that you can’t find in your kitchen have been linked to Type 2 diabetes, depression, heart attacks and Alzheimer’s disease. ........ They are “driving the obesity epidemic” .......... ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless. ....... Ultraprocessed foods are often very energy-dense because food companies have incentives to add fat or sugar to make foods tastier, and to remove water to make foods more shelf stable and cheaper to transport. ........ where the evidence for health is strong and unequivocal: eating lots of fruits and vegetables and lean protein. ......... we should aim to consume a diet rich in unprocessed foods, such as oily fish, nuts, fruit and vegetables ........... It’s not surprising that the population is so unhealthy when it is far easier and cheaper to get cakes, cookies, chips and other junk food than it is to get a healthy, balanced meal. .......... We consume too much fast food, too many sugary beverages, too many cakes, doughnuts and chips. And we consume too few legumes, fruits and vegetables. ........ The biggest dietary ills have been known for half a century; we need the new administration to finally act on them.

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How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations While we were sleeping China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything. .......... China’s export machine is so strong now that only very high tariffs might really slow it down, and China’s response to very high tariffs could be to start cutting off American industries from crucial supplies that are now available almost nowhere else. That kind of supply-chain warfare is not what anyone, anywhere needs. ........... I call it the “Elon Musk-Taylor Swift paradigm.” America would use higher tariffs on China to buy time to lift up more Elon Musks — more homegrown manufacturers who can make big stuff so we can export more to the world and import less. And China would use the time to let in more Taylor Swifts — more opportunities for its youth to spend money on entertainment and consumer goods made abroad, but also to make more goods and offer more services — particularly in health care — that its own people want to buy. ........... By 2030, Smith wrote, the U.N. agency predicts “China will account for 45 percent of all global manufacturing, single-handedly matching or outmatching the U.S. and all of its allies. ............... “This is a level of manufacturing dominance by a single country seen only twice before in world history — by the U.K. at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and by the U.S. just after World War II.” Smith wrote, “It means that in an extended war of production, there is no guarantee that the entire world united could defeat China alone.” ......... I rode all over Shanghai in super-comfortable BYD electric cars operated by Didi, China’s Uber. BYD now offers a subcompact E.V., the Seagull, that starts at less than $10,000. ............. In an effort to export its large inventory of cars, China has begun construction of a fleet of 170 ships capable of carrying several thousand automobiles at a time across the ocean. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s shipyards were delivering only four such vessels a year. ........... I took the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai. The trip is roughly the distance between New York City and Chicago. Only it takes just 4.5 hours because the train goes over 200 miles per hour and there’s almost 100 of them going back and forth each day. The ride is so smooth, if you put a dime on the ledge next to your window — half on the ledge and half off — it will be there exactly as you left it from the beginning of the trip to the end. .............. So, what do you think is going to happen? The rest of the world will gradually transition to Chinese-made self-driving E.V.s, “and America will become the new Cuba — the place where you visit to see old gas-guzzling cars that you drive yourself,” as Keith Bradsher, the Times Beijing bureau chief and an auto industry specialist, mused to me. ........... It was dark because it was so fully roboticized that the company doesn’t waste electricity keeping the lights on for any humans — except for the engineers who come to clean or adjust the machines once a day. ............... ‘dark factories’ with their 24-hour uninterrupted and unattended production capabilities .......... We no longer make that many things China wants to buy. It can do almost everything at least cheaper and often better. ........... You are really good” at taking products “from zero to 1. We are good at going from 2 to 100 ............. We have a three-year target to have zero labor for production and storage using a combination of robots and A.I.” Then “we can sit in China and control production outside of China. Then we can put factories closer to the customer.” ............. “Probably in the future the competition for the U.S. is not China, but A.I. It is coming for both of us.” ............

“The Chinese treat education like we treat sports”

............ the government’s prioritizing of Communist Party ideology and state-owned industries is driving some of China’s most talented private-sector innovators to quietly move their money, families or themselves to Japan, Dubai and Singapore. .............. I caught a virus in China that I never imagined I’d get: “Elon Musk appreciation.”

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What if Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity? Now we’ve finished a third consecutive presidential election when evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for one of the most immoral and cruel men ever to run for president........... a better version of Christianity, or Christianity living up to its ideals. ....... the three fundamentals of Christianity map very well onto the three fundamentals of Madisonian liberalism. And one of those is don’t be afraid. No. 2 is be like Jesus. Imitate Jesus. And No. 3 is forgive each other. And those things are very much like how you run a constitutional republic. .......... Christianity is a load-bearing wall in democracy, and the founders told us that ...... our liberal, secular Constitution, it’s great, as far as it goes, but it relies on virtues like truthfulness and lawfulness and the equal dignity of every individual. ............. Thin Christianity is my term for when Christianity becomes secularized and it becomes a consumer good, a commodity — people just shop for churches and they like what they hear and they’re not really challenged in church. And the problem with that is that a lot of the benefits of belief to the soul and to the Republic come from taking it seriously and participating — joining with a community, giving of yourself to others — not just treating it as a consumer good. ......... And then I come across Dallin Oaks. He’s a law professor and a former Utah Supreme Court justice. And he says that the church’s posture toward civic democracy needs to be based in patience, negotiation and mutual accommodation. And not for strategic reasons. He’s grounding this in the teachings of Jesus Christ. ............ and that’s what Christianity needs more of: teachings about how would Jesus approach politics.

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Elon Musk Flexes His Political Strength as Government Shutdown Looms The world’s richest man led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by promoting false and misleading claims about it. ........ Musk also shared misinformation about the bill, including false claims that it contained new aid for Ukraine or $3 billion in funds for a new stadium in Washington. ....... The president-elect has 96.2 million followers on X, while Mr. Musk has 207.9 million. (Mr. Musk is also far richer than Mr. Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $458 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.) ........... Some even accused him of acting more like the president or vice president than a billionaire executive. .......... Mr. Musk was not initially expected to be part of the dinner but joined as it was underway ......... Despite his occasional presence on the Hill and in his role leading DOGE, Mr. Musk does not interact directly with many members of Congress. Mr. Ramaswamy has been the one talking directly with them. ........... Members were glued to his nonstop feed as they walked to and from votes, and some privately expressed concerns about their own political futures if he went through with his threats. ......... His posts followed a similar pattern of past activity on X, where he can become hyper-fixated on a single issue that bothers him. As the most popular user on X, Mr. Musk has used his feed as a bullhorn to drive conversation on the platform and beyond.

No bills should be passed Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office.

None.

Zero.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

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