Obesity rates have declined in the US for the past three years after rising for years before that. Guess why. CC-licensed photo by stuart anthony on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Slimline. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Republican lawmaker says don’t give China Nvidia’s Blackwell chip • Reuters via Yahoo
Karen Freifeld:
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A leading Republican voice in Congress on China policy said on Wednesday that selling Nvidia’s best AI chip to China “would be akin (to) giving Iran weapons grade uranium”, as experts argued it would shrink the American advantage in artificial intelligence.
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar said in a post on X that he told the administration, “we cannot sell the latest advanced AI chips to our country’s primary adversary.”
His comment came after President Donald Trump opened the door on Wednesday to Nvidia selling a lesser version of its Blackwell AI chip to China.
US trade experts said giving China the chips could effectively spell the end of US chip export restrictions, which were put in place in 2022 to make sure Beijing’s military would not benefit from American technology, and to slow the development of China’s AI efforts.
“If we decide to export B30As, it would dramatically shrink the US’s main advantage it currently has over China in AI,” said Tim Fist, co-author of an analysis of the impact of allowing China the B30A chip, a downgraded version of Nvidia’s state-of- the-art Blackwell chip.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and 11 Democratic senators also urged Trump on Wednesday to not lift restrictions on AI chips and American technology in pursuit of a trade deal.
Moolenaar said, “these chips should instead go to the US companies that are building American AI dominance for years to come — not the future of the Chinese military.”
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The B30A may be downgraded – half the power of Nvidia’s top-end chip – but that’s OK, China can just buy twice as many. Meanwhile Nvidia’s market capitalisation (which is the market’s guess at the net present value of its total future profits over its lifespan) hit $5 trillion on this news: the first company ever to do so.
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Obesity rate declining in US • Gallup
Dan Witters and Mary Page James:
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After peaking at a record high of 39.9% in 2022, the U.S. adult obesity rate has gradually declined to 37.0% in 2025. This is a statistically meaningful decrease representing an estimated 7.6 million fewer obese adults compared with three years ago. Meanwhile, diagnoses of diabetes — a lifetime disease that can be managed but not cured — have now reached an all-time high of 13.8%. Both metrics are part of the ongoing Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index.
Gallup calculates obesity using the federal standard of having a BMI [body mass index: square of weight in kg, divided by height in metres] of 30 or higher, while the diabetes rate includes both those with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. This is based on a question that asks US adults, “Has a doctor or nurse ever told you that you have diabetes?”
The most recent results are based on combined data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults interviewed by web in the first three quarters of 2025 using the probability-based Gallup Panel.
…Over the past year, more Americans have turned to Type 2 antidiabetic GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) for weight loss purposes. The percentage of adults who report taking this class of medicine specifically for weight loss has increased to 12.4%, compared with 5.8% in February 2024 when Gallup first measured it.
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This is very notable. Now perhaps we will start to see the second-order effects.
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The hatred of podcasting • The Baffler
Brace Belden is the co-host of the podcast TrueAnon:
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Of course, most aren’t actively listening to Fridman and Huberman for two hours at a time. The episodes are a layer of white noise, a way to blot out thoughts. Podcasts came of age amid the growing absence of meaningful contact in the average person’s day, in a time when silence is hated. That’s probably why parasocial relationships—that two-dollar phrase for people who are also excited to write things like “ontology”—are so popular now, being simulacra that work just good enough to replace the real thing. The “friendship simulator” element is crucial in all this, and also its most sordid part. The hugely popular shows have a familiarity to them, the host drawing listeners in such that you feel like you might just be a shy participant in an exciting conversation.
…Shows like this have a flow that the listener doesn’t actually participate in—the hosts have gone home, you’re the only one in the room, and it’s a dead conversation that’s already happened—but, given the intimacy of how the product is consumed, can get the same psychic impression. On your commute, while you do laundry or cook dinner, your best friend lives in your phone.
This is tricky for the hosts, especially if you didn’t get into the business to pretend to be the number-one pal of thousands of strangers. Many embrace this relationship with fans, promoting a feeling of intimacy by making certain disclosures about yourself. Your audience, for the most part, will love it. Many will even prefer that to other content featured on the show. Many shows contain a dizzying mixture of news, political opinions, and debased confessions, resembling a chat with an outré friend you can’t give up, no matter how strange their opinions.
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There’s plenty more – the whole historical sweep. Strangely, it isn’t available to listen to. The subhead is “Talking has finished off writing”. Maybe.
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EU carmakers ‘days away’ from halting work as chip war with China escalates • The Guardian
Lisa O’Carroll:
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Carmakers in the EU are “days away” from closing production lines, the industry has warned, as a crisis over computer chip supplies from China escalates.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) issued an urgent warning on Wednesday saying its members, which include BMW, Fiat, Peugeot and Volkswagen, were now working on “reserve stocks but supplies are dwindling”.
“Assembly line stoppages might only be days away. We urge all involved to redouble their efforts to find a diplomatic way out of this critical situation,” said its director general, Sigrid de Vries.
Another ACEA member, Mercedes, is now searching globally for alternative sources of the crucial semiconductors, according to its chief executive, Ola Källenius.
The chip shortage is also causing problems in Japan, where Nissan’s chief performance officer, Guillaume Cartier, told reporters at a car show in Tokyo that the company was only “OK to the first week of November” in terms of supply.
Beijing banned exports of Nexperia chips near the start of the month in response to the Dutch government’s decision to take over the Netherlands-headquartered company on 30 September and suspend its Chinese chief executive after the US flagged security concerns.
Last week car companies in the UK, EU and Japan, including brands such as Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen and Volvo, said the ban on exports from Nexperia factories in China could halt production lines.
“The industry is currently working through reserve stocks but supplies are rapidly dwindling. From a survey of our members this week, some are already expecting imminent assembly line stoppages,” de Vries said.
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Jaguar: has to shut production because of ransomware.
Other car manufacturers: have to shut production because the Dutch became itchy about Chinese control of a local chip company, took it over, and are now reaping the consequences. The Chinese are better at these games than the Dutch and Americans, evidently.
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Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses users film and harass massage parlour workers • 404 Media
Emanuel Maiberg:
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A number of Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views have uploaded videos filmed with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses show men entering massage parlors across the country and soliciting the workers there for “tuggy” massages, or sex work. In some cases, the women laugh at the men, dismiss them, or don’t understand what they’re talking about, but in a few cases they discuss specific sex acts and what they would cost.
It doesn’t appear that the women in the videos know they are being filmed and that the videos are being shared online, where they’re viewed by millions of people. In some cases, the exact location of the massage parlor is easy to find because the videos show its sign upon entering. This is extremely dangerous to the women in the videos who can be targeted by both law enforcement and racist, sexist extremists. In 2021, a man who shot and killed eight people at massage parlors told police he targeted them because he had a “sexual addiction.”
The videos show how Meta has built an entire supply chain for dangerous, privacy violating content on the internet. It sells glasses that allow people to surreptitiously film others in public and operates a social network where inflammatory, outrageous content is rewarded and monetized, and where Instagram often only moderates violating content after journalists reach out for comment.
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Who could have predicted etc etc. There’s so little consideration of how terrible some people are in create products like this.
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Bending Spoons to acquire AOL • TechCrunch
Aisha Malik:
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Bending Spoons, one of Europe’s largest mobile app developers, announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to buy AOL from Yahoo, which is backed by private equity giant Apollo. Bending Spoons says it has secured a $2.8bn debt financing package to support the purchase.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
“AOL is an iconic, beloved business that’s in good health, has stood the test of time, and we believe has unexpressed potential,” said Bending Spoons CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari in a press release.“By our estimation, AOL is one of the top ten most-used email providers in the world, with a highly retained customer base counting around 8 million daily and 30 million monthly active users,” he continued. “We intend to invest significantly to help the product and the business flourish. Bending Spoons has never sold an acquired business—we’re confident we’re the right long-term steward for AOL, and look forward to serving its large, loyal customer base for many years to come.”
The news doesn’t come as a surprise, as Reuters reported earlier this month that Yahoo was in talks to sell AOL to Bending Spoons for around $1.4bn.
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But what the hell is this mobile app development company going to do with AOL? It’s a shell of a company, and this transaction is the last gasp of a company whose merger in January 2000 with Time Warner in a $350bn deal marked the moment the dot-com bubble had inflated to its peak.
Now, though? It’s a portal to nowhere. I don’t see why you’d spend a million on it, let alone a billion.
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Injuries and deaths in children fell after backup camera mandate • MedPage Today
Jennifer Henderson:
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After a 2018 federal mandate requiring backup cameras in all new vehicles, there were far fewer severe injuries and deaths in young children, a retrospective cohort study suggested.
Among children aged under five treated at a level 1 pediatric trauma centre in Texas, the trauma rate before the mandate was approximately 7.2 backovers per year, compared with 2.7 backovers per year after the mandate was implemented (rate ratio [RR] 0.38, 95% CI 0.21-0.66), reported Natalie Drucker, MD, of UTHealth Houston.
A similar trend was observed among children included in publicly available injury records from surrounding metropolitan counties, with rates of events also reduced to approximately one-third, from 3.0 backovers per year pre-mandate to 0.9 backovers per year post-mandate (RR 0.30, 95% CI 0.12-0.75), she noted during a presentation at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting.
Backover trauma is an injury to a person hit by a motor vehicle going in reverse, Drucker said. “This disproportionately affects small children because they’re hard to see, they don’t have common sense to get out of the way of the car, and they can be injured really severely … because of their short stature.”
“We noted in our level 1 trauma centre in Houston an anecdotal decrease in the number of these injuries that we were seeing, and decided to study it,” she said.
Indeed, “these are among the most terrible injuries to take care of,” pediatric and trauma surgeon Aaron Jensen, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, told MedPage Today. This is because often in such traumas, a parent has backed over their own child, and many of the children don’t survive, or have a lifelong injury.
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Europe made the same requirement of new vehicles in 2022. The UK hasn’t mandated it (or any of the GSR 22 mandates), though of course most vehicles will already have those functions.
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Microsoft Azure outage: Websites come back online – BBC News
Imran Rahman-Jones and Lily Jamali:
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Websites for Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft returned to service late on Wednesday after experiencing problems amid a global Microsoft outage.
Outage tracker Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with a number of websites around the world over several hours.
Microsoft said some users of Microsoft 365, external saw delays with Outlook among other services, but by 21:00GMT, many websites that went down were once again accessible after the company restored a prior update.
The company’s Azure cloud computing platform, which underpins large parts of the internet, had reported a “degradation of some services, external” at 16:00 GMT. It said this was due to “DNS issues” – the same root cause of the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week.
Amazon said AWS was operating normally. [Amazon East 1 went down briefly on Tuesday – Overspill Ed.]
Other sites that were impacted in the UK include supermarket Asda and mobile phone operator O2 – while in the US, people reported issues accessing the websites of coffee chain Starbucks and retailer Kroger.
The M&S website remained unavailable late on Wednesday even after many others returned online.
Microsoft said business Microsoft 365 customers experienced problems. Some web pages on Microsoft also directed users to an error notifications that read “Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.”
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Monkeys escape after truck overturns on Mississippi highway; three still missing • CBS News
Lucia Suarez Sang and Associated Press:
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Monkeys being transported Tuesday on a Mississippi highway escaped after the truck carrying them overturned, and all but three that got out have since been killed, authorities said.
The crash happened approximately 100 miles from the state capital of Jackson. It’s not clear what caused the truck to overturn. Video showed monkeys crawling through the tall grass on the side of Interstate 59 just north of Heidelberg, Mississippi, with wooden crates labeled “live animals” crumpled and strewn about.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department said the rhesus monkeys were from Tulane University, and initially wrote in a post on Facebook that “they are aggressive to humans and they require PPE to handle.”
The department later said on Facebook that “[t]here are 3 monkeys still on the loose after the officials from Tulane were able to get inside the truck and get a correct count.”
It’s not clear how many monkeys were originally in the truck or how many were killed.
The sheriff’s department said the driver of the truck relayed that “the monkeys were dangerous and posed a threat to humans,” and that it took “appropriate actions after being given that information.”
…The sheriff’s department initially said the monkeys were carrying diseases, including herpes, but Tulane University said in a statement that the monkeys “are not infectious.”
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I feel sure that the instructions to the truck driver would have included phrases like “drive carefully” and “monkeys”. And yet, like something from a sitcom, there’s the truck steaming by the side of the road. We TOLD you AND YET.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 