The Weekend Edition

Read this and the you’ll be stuck with the worst song of all time in your head all morning. GQ’s “An oral history of … the worst song of all time” is a great read whether you were alive in 1985 or are just a rock ‘n roll aficionado. Warning: The song in question is an autoplay video, so there’s literally no escaping it if you click. Bonus: The story also includes a “compendium of fantastically terrible songs” (with audio clips) ranging from Surfin’ Bird and Rock Me Amadeus to Will Smith’s worst track ever.

Are we literally living in a new epoch? Our impact on the Earth’s chemistry and climate has cut short our time in the 11,700-year old geological epoch known as the Holocene, scientists said, according to Phys.org. We now live in the Anthropocene, or at least we will be if the recommendation of some scientists is accepted at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa — a process that “is likely to take at least two years and requires ratification by three other academic bodies.”

According to the recommendation, the Anthropocene, or "new age of man," would have a starting point from the mid-20th century. “Concentrations in the air of carbon dioxide, methane and stratospheric ozone; surface temperatures, ocean acidification, marine fish harvesting, and tropical forest loss; population growth, construction of large dams, international tourism—all of them take off from about mid-century,” in what is referred to as the “Great Acceleration.” The yardstick according to which the recommendation will be gauged is the impact “measured in rocks, lake sediments, ice cores, or other such formations.”

One of the scientists trying to usher us into the Anthropocene says this is an easy hurdle to clear: “There’s a whole array of potential signals out there,” pointing to microplastics as an example of synthetic, man-made substances that are now components of sediment around the world, both in land and in the sea. There are some sceptics, however. One professor disagrees entirely with the proposal as “not enough time has elapsed for a new epoch.” Stanley Finney, a professor and chair of the International Commission on Stratigraphy says “the drive to officially recognise the Anthropocene may, in fact, be political rather than scientific.”

The world’s first travel photographs were made in Egypt by French writer and photographer Maxime Du Camp during an 1849 trip to Egypt with Gustav Flaubert (who hadn’t as of then written Madame Bovary). In between bouts of debauchery and being arrested as spies (potted summary here), the two “sailed down the Nile on a “cange” or small boat, with a crew that would have frightened even Jack Sparrow” and produced “hundreds of photographs that captured, for the first time, some of the great manmade wonders of the ancient world.” The images caused a sensation in France when published under the title “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie” in 1852. Fifty nine of the original 125 prints Du Camp made are now up for sale and fetched a paltry USD 12,390 at auction. The items were sold by a South African dealer in rare books. Check out the official page for the auction or head over to Business Insider, which has a selection of the images for your viewing pleasure.

“I even watched one of these deaths in real time, live-streamed on Facebook. The video opens with him stepping into a wingsuit. He speaks in German. He gives the finger to the camera and grins. He zips up his suit, flashing more smiles with a sort of nervous or excited energy, the kind you might associate with a child opening a birthday gift. ‘Today you fly with me,’ he says in German. He waves into his outstretched phone. The video goes dark as the phone is now inside his wingsuit, ostensibly in his hand, and still live-streaming to Facebook. Now I hear a whoosh of air. The sound of airflow grows, reaching a ferocious decibel. The turbulent din lasts no more than a few seconds. Suddenly I hear the man emit an acute bellow. Then, pandemonium. He’s tumbling and tumbling. I hear cowbells. The tumbling stops. It’s silent. … More silence. Then long, low, soft moans. Then all that is left is cowbells.” Read: Why Are So Many BASE Jumpers Dying? In National Geographic.

An atheist writes about “why we never die”: If you’re grappling with how to explain death to a child — or confronting your own mortality — you’ll want to read “Why We Never Die.” It’s not a how-to guide and has no magic wand that might help you make the kids feel better. Also, it’s written by an atheist. But read it still.

‘Best news in dementia in 25 years’: Scientists reported yesterday in the journal Nature that they have discovered new medication that could eliminate the amyloid plaques that cause dementia and mental decline in patients. It’s a discovery described as a “game changer” and the “best news” in dementia research for 25 years. “In the high dose group the amyloid has almost completely disappeared. The effect size of this [healthcare compound] is unprecedented,” said Prof Roger Nitsch from the University of Zurich. This could mean an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s in just a few years’ time, after research had previously revealed that nothing had been shown to combat the disease. The last Alzheimer’s medication licensed in the UK became available more than a decade ago.

Uber and Lyft are looking to replace city mass transit systems, signing transit partnership agreements with municipalities in the US to provide on-demand transportation to a transit hub subsidized by public funds. The move, noted by Bloomberg last month, began with suburbs and small cities and is now rapidly expanding to larger cities, with Uber agreements with San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dallas, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Car-hailing apps have been capitalizing cities looking to slash their public transportation budgets. The cost of maintaining bus lines in low-density communities is proving difficult and unpopular, driving small cities to sign these agreements. In one, the agreement with Uber will cost to the city USD 40,000 per annum, or about a quarter of the cost of running two bus-lines in an area that will be covered by Uber. The program would not only mean a marked shift in the strategy of car-hailing apps, who have long marketed themselves as everyman’s personal driver, but could be a defining moment in defining the often strained relationship between these apps and cities.

And with such major changes, it shouldn’t be surprising that problems are already surfacing. The program, for one, is unusable for people without a smartphone or credit card, cutting off a portion of a city’s population. Critics also raise concerns of how increasing local government’s reliance on these companies would leave it entirely beholden to them and unable to revert back to the old system should these agreements fall through or a shift in strategy happen. But the most prominent issue being reported is transparency. These agreements effectively give Uber and Lyft the right to withhold public information, whether they concern the agreements themselves or commuter stats and information which government relies on and what these companies view as state secrets, Vice Motherboard reports. It remains to be seen whether these will hinder the growth of the program, but it seems unlikely. Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs program has joined the fray offering to overhaul transit in Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, DC city officials have proposed having Uber respond to some 911 calls for ambulances. As The Verge to aptly puts it: Welcome to Uberville.

The Ikhwan is making a comeback in Jordan and Palestine, writes the Economist. Experience déjà vu when you read about that the headquarters of Jordan’s Islamists “is a hive of strategists and statisticians calculating campaigns and polls. It is fielding candidates in 15 of Jordan’s 23 electoral districts. Its nearest rivals struggle to muster a handful. … Five Christians are on the [Jordanian Islamists’] list and Hamas, for the most part, has sidestepped the usual bombast about ‘resistance’ and cast itself as a technocratic alternative to Mr Abbas’s corrupt and sclerotic faction, Fatah. They have also wooed Christian candidates.”

In Italy, it’s hard to get a seat at the high-roller’s table — they’ve all been reserved and occupied for 600 hundred years. The wealthiest families in 15th-century Florence have essentially retained their positions for 600 hundred years, according to a study released in May by Bank of Italy economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti which compared data on Florentine taxpayers in 1427 to those from 2011. The study flies in the face of evidence which suggests that the related earnings advantages disappear after several generations. It also poses serious questions on the ease of social mobility. Gianni Riotta, a columnist for La Stampa newspaper in Rome, believes the root cause of this to be the closed economic system among the elite, who pass on their companies and the clout that comes with it and are not as welcoming to new entrants. More than one-third of Italy’s richest people inherited their fortunes, compared with just 29% in the U.S. and 2 percent in China, according to a 2014 study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The issue extends beyond Italy, with 65% of German bnaires having inherited their wealth. The pattern is symptomatic of a stalling economy, says Antonio Schizzerotto, scientific director of the Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies in Trento. He tells Bloomberg that if this inequality continues, it could further constrain the EU’s ability to revive growth. "Societies characterised by a high transmission of socioeconomic status across generations are not only more likely to be perceived as ‘unfair’ they may also be less efficient as they waste the skills of those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds,” concludes Barone and Mocetti’s study.

Why do we buy organic food? Gimlet Media’s new-ish podcast Science Vs attempts to explore how different organic produce is from conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables. The shows continues to do the excellent and much needed service of explaining peer-reviewed science to listeners. Host Wendy Zukerman finds out that we know that fresh produce with an “organic” label slapped on it, even if it’s not actually organic, will rank higher in subjective taste tests, but it doesn’t actually taste better than the conventional stuff and isn’t more nutritious. There is also no scientific proof that organic food is better for our health than conventional produce. However, organic farming tends to create healthier soil and better biodiversity on farms, which is better for the environment — with a caveat that it can still leech nitrogen into waters, probably even more than conventional farms, and it requires more land to grow the same amount of food. (Runtime 32:05)

Live in Canada? Sure. Invest in its housing market? No. Business Insider runs with a piece from Maudlin Economics arguing that one of the best trades you can make is to short the CAD. Read the full story or watch the original video in which the architect of the trade makes his case. His USD : CAD target? 1.60-1.70 from 1.30 today.

If you’ve ever thought of binning it all to fight for something you believe in, you need to read “Once a Bucknell Professor, Now the Commander of an Ethiopian Rebel Army,” the engrossing tale of a New School economics PhD and popular professor who left a gig as a tenured professor to go fight in his homeland. The catalyst was something out of a postmodern thriller: Yemeni security forces, in collusion with Ethiopian intelligence, pulled his friend and fellow activist off a plane during a stopover in Sana and shipped him Addis Ababa, where he now faces a death sentence.

This could be a real-life horror story: Residents of Greenville, South Carolina are freaking out after reports of people dressed as clowns spotted trying to lure children into the woods. There’s little evidence the clowns exist, according to The Atlantic’s Laura Wagner,and it all began when “a resident said her son told her on August 19 that he had seen clowns in the woods. Those clowns, the boy told his mother, were ‘whispering and making strange noises.’ The woman went to the area and, the officer wrote, she ‘observed several clowns in the woods flashing green laser lights.’ The clowns then ran away, she told [a police] officer.” However, so far, “no police officer investigating the claims has seen a single clown,” a spokesman for the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, told The Atlantic.

The culinary “Galapagos” that is Japan: Making us salivate this morning is a post by CNN about 25 Japanese foods we can’t live without. The writers describe the cuisine as “a culinary wonderland thanks to [Japan’s] unique heritage, a national obsession with cuisine and an almost religious embrace of freshness and perfect production.” If you’re really hungry, best to avoid picture number 11 on the list: a beautifully-marbled piece of wagyu steak.

In our reading queue this weekend: In the Heart of Cairo, a novel by Mahi Wasfy set in the fictional “American School in Cairo” and centering on a new teacher who is “shocked to discover the ugly truth behind the school’s prestigious reputation.” We’re looking forward to reading how the author plumbs the inherent clash of cultures on any internationals school campus and her exploration of the “bubble” in which international school students live, juxtaposed against society at large. Born in Alex and raised in Cairo, Wasfy is a product of our nation’s international school system and did her post-secondary education in the US.

Rehaam recommends: BoJack Horseman (three seasons): In a world where humans and anthropomorphised animals live together, this animated series centers around a washed up horse star of a 1990s sitcom. On the surface it’s a very funny dark comedy, but it’s actually a pretty profound musing on depression and a look at much deeper themes despite being about a talking horse. It’s one of those shows that gets much better in the second season, so barrel through and you will be rewarded, or left in a depressive funk. (8.4/10 IMDb, 85% Rotten Tomatoes)

Hanna suggests: Peaky Blinders: The British gangster series set in 1920s Birmingham has enough drama to make a juicy show that is about more than a family whose flat caps have embedded razor blades. The Shelbys’ ambition goes up high in the race track business. Is it the accent? The Tom Waits-y soundtrack? The vintage clothes, cars and kaborya hair-cuts? Also, six episodes per season is a good incentive to check one of Netflix’s trending shows off your list. Watch BBC Two’s launch trailer for the latest season 3. (8.8/10 IMDb, 91% Rotten Tomatoes)

Sara is watching Stranger Things (one season): This the “it” sci-fi show of the moment, with everyone from Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul to Stephen King raving about this Netflix original. The plot centres around the disappearance of a young boy in a small-town 1980s Indiana, where his goofy outcast friends, with the help of a mysterious girl with supernatural abilities, try to get to the bottom of the mystery. If you’re a fan of 1980s pop culture, including alien movies by Steven Spielberg, music by Foreigner and the Clash, and the official emblem for everything 1980s, Winona Ryder, then this is the show for you. The first season runs for just eight episodes, while the second season is set to be aired sometime in 2017. (9.1/10 IMDB, 95% Rotten Tomatoes)

Yasmin tips Love (one season): The New Yorker called it an “unromantic comedy” and the New York Times called it a “revisionist rom-com.” The show has also been applauded by critics since its release earlier this year for its realistic portrayals of addiction and dependence, a refreshing take on a traditionally unoriginal genre that is instead awkward, annoying, and hilarious all at once. The first episode begins aspiring screenwriter and onset tutor Gus courting a conventionally attractive woman then ends with him (almost) engaging in an unlikely threesome while radio show host Mickey dumps her coke-addict lover. Cringe-worthy at times, Love depicts relationships far from the more traditional confines of the courtship ritual. The show has been renewed for a second season and the first season runs for 10 episodes, perfect for a five-hour binge. (Trailer | 7.8/10 IMDb, 87% Rotten Tomatoes)

Hisham likes The Leftovers: HBO, the channel that kicked off the “golden age of television” with monumental works such as The Sopranos and The Wire, has truly returned to form with The Leftovers. For its critics, the show seems more puzzling than an hour-long drama should be, which is somewhat fair. And if a straightforward plotline a la Game of Thrones is more your kick, then best to avoid it. One of its creators is Damon Lindelof of Lost fame (but don’t hold that against the show). This adaptation of a Tom Parotta novel of the same name is an exploration into the psychology of an entire society in the midst of grief. Set in moderns times in the aftermath of the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of 2% of humanity’s population, it explores how the survivors have coped with such a catastrophe. It portrays a humanity grasping for straws to make meaning of such events, with many succumbing to despair, cultism, and a burning desire and failure to move on. The show truly captures that the essence of a time when humanity feared a natural world it could only explain as supernatural and so created so much of our universal culture, quite simply to cope. (8/10 IMDB, 87% Rotten Tomatoes)

Learning economics by watching Seinfeld: It turns out that Seinfeld is not quite the show about nothing. Alan Grant is an associate professor of economics at Baker University talked to Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast (runtime 21:30) about his website, The Economics of Seinfeld and how he uses it for course material. For example, Jerry was teaching us all a lesson when he gave Elaine cash as a gift for her birthday; he wasn’t acting like her “uncle,” he was just trying to avoid the deadweight loss of gift giving (read The Economist’s Is Santa a deadweight loss? —yes, economists are an insufferable bunch). At the end of the episode Alloway says she can’t wait for an analysis of the economics in Game of Thrones — she probably missed the review of Westeros’ sovereign debt crisis by The Economist’s sister magazine, 1843.

Your brain sucks: The folks over at the podcast You Are Not So Smart talked to Dean Burnett, author of "Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To." In the episode, (runtime 53:01) Burnett talks about the things our brains are really bad at, like taking criticism and rationalising fear. In short, our brains are like computers — just really bad ones that rearrange your files, rewrite your documents and mess with your photos.

Then, they came for the lawyers: A kid who created a site that has helped people get out of mns worth of parking fines in the west now thinks that chatbots can help turn law on its ear by having robots provide advice to the poor. Read: This teen programmer built a robot lawyer that helps poor people.

Which do you think garnered the highest number of interactions about the Olympics: Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? Users interacted the most on Instagram, writes Adam Levy in a piece published by The Motley Fool. So apparently the photo filters and frames for Facebook users to support their teams were not enough to take the platform to leading position at the Games. Even though Olympic tweets produced 75 bn impressions on Twitter and on the web from 187 mn tweets this year, the number is only up by 37 mn tweets compared to London Games’, despite growth in monthly active users of 146 mn since 2012. Twitter: out. Between Facebook and Instagram: “On Facebook, 277 million users interacted with Olympic-related content 1.5 billion times; on Instagram, 131 million users made 916 million "likes" and comments on photos and videos of the Olympics,” writes Levy. So Facebook users interacted twice as many as Instagram users. But given that Facebook has around 3.4 times as many users as Instagram: Instagram wins.

Apparently you can give your child an iPad to calm them before an operation and it will work perfectly well, according to a new study by French scientists, writes Anthony Cuthbertson for Newsweek. Imagine the effect on everyday activity and brain response – neuroscientists have called iPads ‘digital heroin’ and ‘electronic cocaine’. “Our study showed that child and parental anxiety before anaesthesia are equally blunted by [the sedative] midazolam or use of the iPad,” said Dominique Chassard, who was heading the study. In a bid to distance itself from encouraging iPad use for children, the piece devotes the second half to listing why iPads are bad for children: tablets increase anxiety, depression and aggression, affect impulse control and can be addictive.

We’re just a few days away from Apple’s annual fall event on 7 September. Kill the time by reading the 1991 joint interview in Fortune of “the two college dropouts most responsible for unleashing the PC revolution,” Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. It’s one of only two times the men sat on the same stage.

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• Enterprise coverage of the new VAT law and our primer on what’s a VAT, anyway (Enterprise)
• Qatari Diar says armed men are now in control of the City Gate project (Enterprise)
• Bikini wars come to Israel: Israeli Singer Asked to Leave Stage For Wearing Bikini Top (Forward)
• Why you need to know more about Gen-X (Goldman Sachs, pdf)
• Coffee, Bikini Waxes, X-Rays: Almost Anything Can Be Sent to Homes in Cairo (New York Times)

As Gawker makes its way out the door, one writer put together a series of the hate mail she’s received, carefully filed under several headers, including but not limited to: the anti-Semites, the Trump enthusiasts, and, most bizarrely, Pokemon deniers. Our favorite: “Your liberal tears are delicious over Chris Christie’s endorsement of Trump. GOD I LOVE YOUR MISERY.”

The political TV advertisements culture that is Russia: Russian voters are heading to the polls to elect members of the State Duma on 18 September. Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog pointed us to the excellent piece on Global Voices by RuNet Echo that “looks back at the most memorable political advertisements in Russia over the past two decades, highlighting some of the strangest, silliest, and scariest videos put out by politicians seeking elected office.” Almost nothing can be worse than 11-minute acid-trip of a video made by 1996 Presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky — even though he didn’t make the run-off and eventually lost to Boris Yeltsin, 5.5 mn people voted for that guy (runtime 11:20). Yavlinsky struck again in 2000 with a series of ads suggesting that not voting for him implied that Russia would descend into dystopia if people didn’t vote — that didn’t work either, he got 1.2 mn fewer votes than in 1996.

Then there’s the overtly racist one: political party Rodina’s 2005 “Let’s Clean the Trash From Moscow!” is one of the most infamous political advertisements in Russian history (runtime 00:30). “The video shows dark-skinned Caucasian immigrants tossing watermelon rinds to the ground, complaining about a passing Russian woman pushing a stroller. Party leader Dmitry Rogozin and Yuri Popov, a pro-Rodina Moscow City Duma member, then approach the immigrants and tell them to clear out… Rodina later collapsed as a political party.”

The one that’s just weird: “In one of his 2012 presidential campaign advertisements, Zhirinovsky is seen whipping a donkey that refuses to pull him through the snow. “This lousy little donkey is the symbol of our country!” Zhirinovsky tells viewers. “If I become president, we’ll again have a valiant troika.” The video ends with the awkward slogan “Zhirinovsky and it will be better!” (Runtime 00:31).