Pants on fire fact check

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and rescue

March 15, 2023 by www.npr.org Leave a Comment

US President Biden sought to reassure Americans over the country's banking system on Monday following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week, the second largest bank failure in history, and New York regulators took control of Signature Bank on Sunday. (Photo by NOAH BERGER / AFP) (Photo by NOAH BERGER/AFP via Getty Images)

Noah Berger/AFP via Getty Images

Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th largest bank in America, the bank of choice for tech startups and big-name venture capitalists. Then, in the span of just a few days, it collapsed. Whispers that SVB might be in trouble spread like wildfire through group texts and Twitter posts. Depositors raced to empty their accounts, withdrawing $42 billion in a single day. Last Friday, after regulators declared that SVB had failed, the FDIC seized the bank.

Planet Money

The Collapse Of Silicon Valley Bank

As the dust settles on the biggest bank failure — and bank rescue — in recent memory, we’re still figuring out what happened. But poor investment choices, weak regulation, and customer panic all played their parts. We’ll look into the bank’s collapse to understand what it can teach us about the business of banking itself.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin, with help from Dave Blanchard. It was edited by Keith Romer, and engineered by Brian Jarboe. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Our acting executive producer is Jess Jiang.

Music: ” I Don’t Do Gossip, ” ” Groovy Little Penguins ” and ” Vision .”

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney .

Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , NPR One or anywhere you get podcasts.

Find more Planet Money: Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / TikTok our weekly Newsletter .

Planet Money Records Vol. 3: Making a hit

March 17, 2023 by www.npr.org Leave a Comment

Since we started Planet Money Records and released the 47-year-old song "Inflation," the song has taken off. It recently hit 1 million streams on Spotify.

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Sasha Fominskaya/NPR

Since we started Planet Money Records and released the 47-year-old song “Inflation,” the song has taken off. It recently hit 1 million streams on Spotify. And we now have a full line of merch — including a limited edition vinyl record; a colorful, neon hoodie; and 70s-inspired stickers — n.pr/shopplanetmoney .

After starting a label and negotiating our first record deal, we’re taking the Inflation song out into the world to figure out the hidden economics of the music business. Things get complicated when we try to turn the song into a viral hit. Just sounding good isn’t enough and turning a profit in the music business means being creative, patient and knowing the right people.

This is part three of the Planet Money Records series . Here’s part one and part two .

Listen to “Inflation” on Apple Music , Spotify , YouTube Music , Tidal , Amazon Music & Pandora .

Listen to our remix, “Inflation [136bpm],” on Spotify , YouTube Music & Amazon Music .

“Inflation” is on TikTok. (And — if you’re inspired — add your own!)

This episode was reported by Erika Beras and Sarah Gonzalez, produced by Emma Peaslee and James Sneed, edited by Jess Jiang and Sally Helm, engineered by Brian Jarboe, and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.

Music: ” Inflation ,” ” Superfly Fever ,” ” Nola Strut ” and “Inflation [136bpm].”

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney .

Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , NPR One or anywhere you get podcasts.

Find more Planet Money: Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / TikTok our weekly Newsletter .

Please Get Me Out of Dead-Dog TikTok

March 20, 2023 by www.theatlantic.com Leave a Comment

A brown dog, muzzle gone gray—surely from a life well lived— tries to climb three steps but falters . Her legs give out, and she twists and falls. A Rottweiler limps around a kitchen . A golden retriever pants in a vet’s office , then he’s placed on a table, wrapped in medical tubes. “Bye, buddy,” a voice says off camera. Nearby, a hand picks up a syringe.

This is Dead-Dog TikTok. It is an algorithmic loop of pet death: of sick and senior dogs living their last day on Earth, of final hours spent clinging to one another in the veterinarian’s office, of the brutal grief that follows in the aftermath. One related trend invites owners to share the moment they knew it was time —time unspecified, but clear: Share the moment you decided to euthanize your dog.

The result is wrenching. A dog is always dying, and someone is always hurting. Likes and sympathetic comments amass. The video goes viral. Engage with one—or even just watch it to completion—and you may be served another, and another. Suddenly, you’re stuck in a corner of TikTok you’d rather not see.

“TikTok has to figure out a way to separate dog content from ‘my dog died’ content,” one user observes in a video from February. He says he can’t stand watching the latter, and his comment section is filled with people agreeing. “The amount of dogs I’ve never met that I’ve cried over is unreal,” one writes.

Dead-Dog TikTok gets at a core tension of the platform writ large. TikTok collapses social media and entertainment , and gives an outsize power to its “For You”–feed algorithm: The user has limited control over what shows up on their feed. Unlike, say, on Reddit, where you might enter a rabbit hole by choice (maybe because you’ve subscribed to the True Crime forum), TikTok’s algorithm might throw you down one based on metrics that may not signal your actual interest.

And in the case of Dead-Dog TikTok, the algorithm can’t know what it means to plop a stranger’s pet loss next to a teen bopping to the latest viral trend or a snippet from late-night television. It can’t recognize that a user’s intention behind posting their dog’s last moments—for catharsis, for validation, to find other people who have felt that same loss—may not be a match for many viewers on the other side who are just trying to pass some time. “We often ascribe all sorts of intentions to the algorithm, like, Oh, it knows ,” Nick Seaver, an anthropology professor at Tufts University who studies algorithms, told me. “But it really doesn’t.”

The tension is unresolvable, which is possibly why TikTok rolled out a feature last week allowing users to “start fresh” with a new feed. TikTok, for its part, sees the solution as diversifying the content. “In addition, we work to carefully apply limits to some content that doesn’t violate our policies, but may impact the viewing experience if viewed repeatedly, particularly when it comes to content with themes of sadness, extreme exercise or dieting , or that’s sexually suggestive ,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Whatever equation powers TikTok’s For You feed appears to have picked up that videos about dead dogs engage users. But it doesn’t seem to know when to stop serving it, and it tends to go too far, perhaps even by design. “When it finds something that works, it will go and try to push that—both at the individual level and the overall ecosystem level—pretty far,” Kevin Munger, a political scientist at Penn State who has studied the TikTok algorithm , explained to me. “It’s not going to stop at the right level.” To use a positive analogy, it’s as if the algorithm has figured out that you like cake, and so it’s serving you cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

An algorithmic reset may not be able to totally solve this problem—in theory, the app will relearn what you like and serve videos accordingly. Some of the researchers I spoke with said that they very intentionally—even aggressively—signal to the platform what they do and don’t like. When they see a video of a type they don’t want more of, they take action: swiping away quickly, seeking out positive videos, reporting the upsetting content, even closing the app altogether. Other options include blocking specific users or hashtags, or pressing the “not interested” button.

As Robyn Caplan of the Data & Society Research Institute pointed out, an algorithm “can’t necessarily tell the difference between something that is making you cry and something that is making you laugh.” She told me she once asked a friend for funny videos to help “cheer up” her feed.

Grief is a nuanced human experience. “There’s not an obvious context in which you might want to watch videos about pet grief,” Seaver said. “And so it totally makes sense that these systems do these kind of clunky moves, because I don’t think there’s a non-clunky way to do it.” At its best, Dead-Dog TikTok may offer a support community to people suffering and normalize their pain.

Take Blaine Weeks. Weeks thought she had more time with her dog Indica—a few weeks or months, maybe. He was old, and his body seemed to be failing. Then one day, he didn’t want to get up. “I felt like I just didn’t have enough,” she told me. “I didn’t have enough pictures, I didn’t have enough videos, and I was distraught about that.” Weeks decided to record Indica’s last day, worried that otherwise she might block it out entirely with grief.

In the video montage of that day, which Weeks posted to TikTok, she loads Indica into her truck, and they get McDonald’s burgers as a final treat. Weeks tells him that she loves him as he licks tears from her face. Later, on the floor of the vet office, Indica perks up enough to eat a few fries, before resting his head in Weeks’s lap. It ends there.

The post has been viewed 13 million times and climbing . “Randomly last night that video started going crazy again and got, like, another 400,000 views,” she told me when we talked earlier this month. Weeks said that she’d had to turn off her phone for a bit because of negative comments on the video (detractors questioned Weeks’s decision to euthanize) but that overall she’d found comfort from the experience. The video, she said, connected her with more than a dozen people whom she can talk with about her grief. “We kind of check on each other back and forth, saying, ‘Hey, are you doing okay today?’ ‘Yes, I’m doing okay. How are you?’” A stranger made a painting of Indica and sent it to her.

Stefanie Renee Salyers’s TikTok saying goodbye to Princess, her Shih Tzu, has been viewed 28 million times and has nearly 90,000 comments. Salyers got so many messages after posting that she created a Google Form for other people to share their dog-grief stories, offering to read them privately or—with their permission— create TikToks about their lost pets . “I felt, I guess, glad that, even though my video is of a very sad event, that there were people who saw it and felt like, I’m not alone in feeling this grief. And I’m not crazy for feeling like I lost a family member ,” she told me.

Crystal Abidin, the founder of the TikTok Cultures Research Network—a group that connects scholars doing qualitative research about TikTok—and a professor at Curtin University, in Perth, Australia, has been studying the comment sections on TikTok grief posts at large. She has found “a really beautiful ethos of care work happening” there: people comforting one another, resource sharing, and more.

Videos like Saylers’s and Weeks’s may inspire others to post their own pet-loss stories. Abidin believes that the pandemic really mainstreamed videos about grief and death on the platform—videos from individuals, videos from health-care professionals. “There is a whole collision of these histories and people of different standpoints and expertise, all on GriefTok,” she told me. “It’s not bad; it’s not good. It’s just that you cannot choose what you want on your feed. And that can be arresting for a viewer.”

Dead-Dog TikTok may be a genuinely helpful space for some, and an upsetting one for others. The platform can’t perfectly sort who’s who. “But if we think about your personal ethos, principles, and morality, do we really want platforms to be the arbiter of what we should and shouldn’t see?” Abidin asked. Maybe TikTok could be smarter about not circulating distressing content, but should it really decide who grieves online and how?

Grief is messy and complicated and hits different people in different ways. So it is only natural that its manifestations online would likewise be messy and complicated. To grieve is to be human—one thing that algorithms, no matter how eerily attuned to our interests and desires, never can be.

Suicide rates start spiking in spring, this is why and how to get help

March 20, 2023 by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

Many people believe that suicide rates are at their highest during the winter months, specifically around Christmas, when many people struggle with loneliness, strains on their finances, and exacerbated family issues.

The truth in fact, is that the bulk of research consistently shows that the spring/summer months result in the highest number of suicides, a pattern that has remained consistent for many years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the highest number of suicides in the U.S in 2021 occurred in August. In fact, one study found that cardiac mortality is at its highest around Christmas and New Year’s than any other time of the year, making it far more of a risk factor than suicide at that time of year.

The Christmas suicide myth spreads the false idea that suicide rates increase during the holidays and while it is a positive to see cultural discussions of suicide and mental health, it’s important to recognize that suicide is a complex health issue, and can occur when a variety of biological, psychological and environmental factors come together, often triggered by stressful events.

A study from 2014 examining suicide rates in Queensland, Australia found that between 1990 and 2009 there were significantly more suicides reported on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day than other days. This time of year is the height of summer in Australia.

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the U.S, with 45,979 recorded suicides in 2020, and the number of people who think about or attempt suicide is even higher. In 2020 alone, 12.2 million Americans seriously considered killing themselves, 3.2 million planned a suicide and 1.2 million attempted it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Death by suicide accounts for more fatalities worldwide than accidents, homicides, and war combined.

Despite these shocking statistics and the evident threat of suicide, false and damaging myths about suicide are still prevalent within society, and one of the main ones is that suicide rates go up at Christmas. The Annenberg Public Policy Center regularly conducts research looking at the frequency with which the media falsely link the holidays with a rise in suicides. Between 2010 and 2014, 70 percent of U.S. media outlets supported the myth, while only 30 percent debunked it. Despite this, December 2017 had the lowest rate of suicide in the U.S. of every month in the year.

Are Suicide Rates Actually Higher at Christmas?

The short—and heavily supported by research—answer is no. Suicide by nature can be hard to quantify, with so many going unrecorded. However, the vast majority of global research shows that the holidays often report the lowest suicide rates of the entire year.

“The Holiday Suicide Myth is indeed a myth,” said Leila Azarbad, Ph.D., professor of psychology at North Central College, “in fact, suicide rates drop during the winter months and rise in the spring. November and December tend to have the lowest suicide rates, whereas April, May and June tend to have the highest rates.”

Doreen Marshall, Ph.D., vice president of mission engagement at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention agreed said, “While it is common to experience complex feelings of loneliness, grief and depression during the holiday season, the idea that suicide rates rise in December and on Christmas is not true. We do not typically see more suicide deaths in December than in other months of the year.”

Why Do We Think Suicide Rates Go Up at Christmas?

While suicide rates might be at their lowest, Christmas can often be a time of heightened stress for many . A 2021 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found that out of 2,100 people surveyed, 41 percent reported increased stress during the holidays. Similarly, a study from the National Alliance on Mental Illness found that 24 percent of people with a diagnosed mental illness reported that the holidays made their condition “a lot” worse and 40 percent reported it made it “somewhat” worse.”

Azarbad said that it’s possible the media perpetuates this myth in an effort to validate and normalize the “holiday blues” experienced by many and Dan Romer, Ph.D., research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania agreed. He said, “We think it has to do with the goal of providing advice to people about dealing with holiday stress, which then merges into the idea that this time of the year is actually a time of greater suicide risk. It also meshes with other theories like shorter days and seasonal affective disorder.”

While it can be considered a good thing that this myth is in fact a myth, experts suggest that this misinformation can do damage.

“It goes against the reporting recommendations which encourage giving people accurate information about suicide and not encouraging contagion, which is the phenomenon of thinking that suicide is a solution to life problems that others are taking,” said Romer. Cynthia Vejar, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and program director of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Lebanon Valley College suggested that a positive symptom of this myth may be that “this awareness might alert people to the fact that others are struggling, and people might be inclined to check-in on others during this time of year”.

Why Are Suicide Rates Lower at Christmas?

Despite heightened levels of stress over the holidays and the effects of the weather and Seasonal Affective Disorder , suicide rates are almost unanimously reported to be lower at Christmas globally than any other time of the year.

Despite this, experts agree that a possible reason that suicide rates are lower around the holidays is the tradition of forgiveness and family. Marshall said, “many people may think about the holiday season and connect to traditions which ground us in our histories, our feelings toward one another, and our hope for a new year. The holidays can be a time for introspection that inspires people to check in on ourselves and connect with our loved ones. Holiday festivities and gatherings might also serve to bolster protective factors, such as feeling connected to family and community support, that encourage help-seeking for those struggling.”

This community sense of togetherness during hard times directly feeds in to Durkheim’s theory that periods of external threat create group integration within society and lower the suicide rate through the impact on social cohesion.

This can be seen historically as one study from 2003 found that after the tragic events of September 11, suicide rates in England and Wales immediately afterwards were significantly lower than other months in the same year, and any other September for the past 22 years as people came together to support each other through the tragedy.

The CDC reported that suicide rates in the U.S had been steadily rising every year between 2004 and 2019, but after the COVID-19 restrictions took over the world, despite risk factors caused by the isolation increasing, suicide rates actually dropped from March 2020 . Experts believe that, as at Christmas, the sense of communal feeling led people to reach out more to loved ones, whether for help or to help, leading people to have increased communication and support than during regular times.

This theory is also supported by the CDC data showing that in 2021, when restrictions largely eased in the U.S., the suicide rate went up as people began to resume their normal lives, and the collective support system waned. Despite this rise, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that the average daily suicide rate during the holiday months remained among the lowest in the year.

Why Are Suicide Rates Higher in Spring?

Our experts all agree that suicide rates in the U.S. are higher in the spring and summer months than in the winter or around the holidays. The Annenberg Public Policy Center reported in 2017 that the average amount of suicides per day in December was 117.00, the lowest of the year compared to 137.71 in August, the highest.

In its latest report, the APPC reported that in 2021/2022, only 37 percent of stories that mentioned the link between the holidays and suicide debunked it, despite December 2021 seeing an average of 121.81 suicides per day, compared to 139.61 in August.

Vejar suggests that it may be that “there is an expectation that with the warmer weather, people will be happier and more inclined to be outdoors, participating in fun activities with family/friends. If people are struggling with mental health concerns, and/or if they have strained relationships with loved ones, a spotlight might be shined on the fact that they should be happy/doing fun things but they are not— in other words, their expectations and realities are incongruent with each other and this causes a sense of grief”.

Some experts have even made the link between increased risk factors such as allergies leading to a spike in suicides in the warmer months. Johns Hopkins HealthCare reports that “there is overwhelming evidence that inflammation from various sources including allergic reactions can cause or worsen depression”. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that there are approximately 52.9 million recorded people living with mental health issues in the U.S, while Johns Hopkins HealthCare reports that 50 million Americans suffer from allergies. They report that the chances of depression in people with rhinitis (both allergic and non-allergic) is 42 percent higher than those who don’t.

What Suicide Help Is Available?

Azarbad said that a key misconception about suicide is that talking about suicide or asking someone if they feel suicidal will encourage suicide attempts. “The research has shown that this is simply not true. In fact, asking someone if they are thinking about suicide is a crucial step toward offering support and obtaining proper treatment”.

“It’s important to know you’re not alone,” Marshall said, “If you are struggling with mental health and/or suicide, there are a number of suicide prevention resources , such as visiting your primary care provider or local walk-in clinic. Mental health professionals have education, tools, and resources to support someone that is struggling with their mental health and can help work through challenges they may be facing. In a crisis situation, text TALK to 741741 at the Crisis Text Line or call the National Suicide Prevention and Crisis Lifeline at 988.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “988” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.

House GOP Demands Manhattan DA Testify Over Trump Criminal Probe: ‘Unprecedented Abuse Of Prosecutorial Authority’

March 20, 2023 by www.forbes.com Leave a Comment

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Top House Republicans sent a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday demanding he testify about his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s role in an apparent hush money payment made to a porn star in the final days of the 2016 campaign, which the GOP paints as a politically motivated probe relying on an untested legal theory ahead of his potential indictment.

Key Facts

The letter called the investigation an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” claiming the DA’s office has spent years looking for an excuse to charge Trump and has now settled on a “novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country.”

Trump predicted over the weekend he will be indicted Tuesday for allegedly orchestrating a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from publicly disclosing an alleged affair between the two—Bragg could claim the payment was an illegal political donation amounting to a felony violation of campaign finance law, but legal scholars are uncertain the argument would pass muster.

House Republicans told Bragg he has a deadline of 10 a.m. Thursday to make arrangements to testify, and demanded he turn over all communications since the start of 2017 between the district attorney’s office and federal authorities concerning the Trump investigation.

The letter also asks for all Trump-related communications involving former Manhattan prosecutors Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, who resigned in protest last year over what they claimed was the slow pace of the Trump investigation—Republicans argue Bragg may bring charges against Trump in response to public criticism from the ex-prosecutors.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) signed Monday’s letter.

The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes .

Crucial Quote

“The inference from the totality of these facts is that your impending indictment is motivated by political calculations,” the letter said.

What To Watch For

Trump has called for protests , though the Manhattan grand jury has not yet returned an indictment. The former president is expected to be booked at the district attorney’s office if he’s charged, where he will have a mugshot taken before an arraignment where he will enter a plea and then almost certainly be immediately released. New York City police were spotted Monday setting up barricades outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

Key Background

Trump has repeatedly denied having an affair with Daniels and has distanced himself from the $130,000 payment, likening the investigation to one of several legal “witch hunts” targeting him for political reasons. The check to Daniels was signed by longtime Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who had a falling out with Trump during his presidency and has since become a vocal critic of the ex-president. The Trump Organization then appeared to reimburse Cohen for the payment with a check for legal fees, which prosecutors may argue was a falsification of business records—a misdemeanor in New York. Cohen has testified multiple times before the grand jury, but Republicans have blasted his credibility, calling him “a convicted perjurer with a demonstrable prejudice against President Trump” in Monday’s letter. Daniels ultimately went public with details of the alleged affair in 2018, saying she had the right to since Trump did not personally sign her non-disclosure agreement. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts in 2018, including a charge for violating campaign finance law related to the payment to Daniels.

Tangent

Trump is the subject of two federal special counsel investigations , and he also faces criminal and civil probes in New York for alleged financial fraud and a criminal investigation in Georgia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump’s team filed a motion Monday to block the Georgia probe in an apparent last-minute attempt to end the investigation.