The videogames oddball spirit shines through in this Hollywood adaptation starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa.

Michelle Williams stars in a devastating FX drama about a woman who responds to a terminal diagnosis by pursuing the sexual experiences she has been yearning for.

Pay attention here! Bonobos calls may be the closest thing to animal language weve seen 300 aspects of each call were cataloged, letting researchers estimate meaning. Jacek Krywko Apr 3, 2025 4:14 pm | 3 This situation might call for a whistle. Credit: USO This situation might call for a whistle. Credit: USO Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBonobos, great apes related to us and chimpanzees that live in the Republic of Congo, communicate with vocal calls including peeps, hoots, yelps, grunts, and whistles. Now, a team of Swiss scientists led by Melissa Berthet, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, discovered bonobos can combine these basic sounds into larger semantic structures. In these communications, meaning is something more than just a sum of individual callsa trait known as non-trivial compositionality, which we once thought was uniquely human.To do this, Berthet and her colleagues built a database of 700 bonobo calls and deciphered them using methods drawn from distributional semantics, the methodology weve relied on in reconstructing long-lost languages like Etruscan or Rongorongo. For the first time, we have a glimpse into what bonobos mean when they call to each other in the wild.Context is everythingThe key idea behind distributional semantics is that when words appear in similar contexts, they tend to have similar meanings. To decipher an unknown language, you need to collect a large corpus of words and turn those words into vectorsmathematical representations that let you place them in a multidimensional semantic space. The second thing you need is context data, which tells you the circumstances in which these words were used (that gets vectorized, too). When you map your word vectors onto context vectors in this multidimensional space, what usually happens is that words with similar meaning end up close to each other. Berthet and her colleagues wanted to apply the same trick to bonobos calls. That seemed straightforward at first glance, but proved painfully hard to execute.We worked at a camp in the forest, got up super early at 3:30 in the morning, walked one or two hours to get to the bonobos nest. At [the] time they would wake up, I would switch my microphone on for the whole day to collect as many vocalizations as I could, Berthet says. Each recorded call then had to be annotated with a horribly long list of contextual parameters. Berthet had a questionnaire filled with queries like: is there a neighboring group around; are there predators around; is the caller feeding, resting, or grooming; is another individual approaching the caller, etc. There were 300 questions that had to be answered for each of the 700 recorded calls.But when all this data was finally vectorized and the team started working their distributional semantics magic, gathering it proved worth the effort.Bonobo dictionaryBerthet started with establishing the tentative meaning of the basic calls: singular grunts or yelps. Grunts appeared in many different contexts, including grooming, feeding, or moving, and the team interpreted them as intended to get anothers attention, a bit like saying look at me. Yelps meant lets do this as an imperative, while peeps had a very similar meaning, but were more of a suggestionthink I would like to Bonobos also used peeps or yelps when they wanted others to join them. Low hoots were translated as I am excited, while high hoots signaled the presence and location of the caller in dangerous situations. Whistles meant lets stay together.Once the basic calls were sorted, Berthet started looking at their different combinations. Bonobos combined yelps and grunts into a trivial compositional structure meaning lets do what I do. This was mostly used when the group was building night nestsplatforms made high in the trees out of broken branches, sometimes lined with leaves.However, the team also found examples of non-trivial compositionality, the first such discovery outside of humans.The first non-trivial combination was high hoot-low hoot that was translated as a distress call. But it was also used to stop other individuals display behaviorsdramatic, exaggerated actions or gestures bonobos perform to assert dominance or attract attention. The second was either peep or yelp in the join meaning paired with high hoot to form a structure used for coordinating with others before traveling. Finally, the I would like to peep followed by lets stay together whistle was used for initiating more romantically inclined interactions bonobos are famous for indulging in.Berthet said her team managed to record a few more calls but could not use them in her study because they were too rare to gather meaningful context data. Still, she expects we have much more to learn about bonobos communication.Gestures and soundsOne thing the team was not certain about was whether there were more nuanced variations of the sounds they roughly categorized as grunts, peeps, yelps, hoots, and whistles. There may be subtle acoustic differences that could lead to different meanings, and it may be our dictionary is too rough, Berthet acknowledges. Another thing the team did not include in their analysis is the gestures that bonobos often accompany their calls with. They use a lot of gestures, and they may use them to either refine or completely change the meaning of their vocalizations, Berthet added. Applying the same methodology but with gestures included would be great. Thats definitely the next step to take.But she also has a few further steps in mind, and they go way beyond just bonobos. The team argues that the most important contribution of their work is establishing a methodology for deciphering animal communication. Since now we have this nice tool to investigate compositionality and meaning, what I want to do is apply it to several animal species, Berthet says. Chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas, and monkeys are next on her list. The goal of these future studies is to trace when abilities like non-trivial compositionality started to appear in primate evolution. Maybe well find compositionality in old world primates. Maybe its just present in great apes. Maybe its been there the whole time. Its really an open question now, Berthet says.Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adv1170Jacek KrywkoAssociate WriterJacek KrywkoAssociate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 3 Comments

Switch RTX Nvidia confirms the Switch 2 supports DLSS, G-Sync, and ray-tracing Nvidia says the Switch 2's GPU is 10 times faster than the original Switch. Andrew Cunningham Apr 3, 2025 3:32 pm | 27 The Nintendo Switch 2. Credit: Nintendo The Nintendo Switch 2. Credit: Nintendo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIn the wake of the Switch 2 reveal, neither Nintendo nor Nvidia has gone into any detail at all about the exact chip inside the upcoming handheldtechnically, we are still not sure what Arm CPU architecture or what GPU architecture it uses, how much RAM we can expect it to have, how fast that memory will be, or exactly how many graphics cores we're looking at.But interviews with Nintendo executives and a blog post from Nvidia did at least confirm several of the new chip's capabilities. The "custom Nvidia processor" has a GPU "with dedicated [Ray-Tracing] Cores and Tensor Cores for stunning visuals and AI-driven enhancements," writes Nvidia Software Engineering VP Muni Anda.This means that, as rumored, the Switch 2 will support Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology, which helps to upscale a lower-resolution image into a higher-resolution image with less of a performance impact than native rendering and less loss of quality than traditional upscaling methods. For the Switch games that can render at 4K or at 120 FPS 1080p, DLSS will likely be responsible for making it possible.The other major Nvidia technology supported by the new Switch is G-Sync, which prevents screen tearing when games are running at variable frame rates. Nvidia notes that G-Sync is only supported in handheld mode and not in docked mode, which could be a limitation of the Switch dock's HDMI port.The current Switch hardware is mostly too old to take advantage of these technologies. A handful of late Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, did make some use of AMD's hardware-agnostic (and lower quality) FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling to squeeze out more performance, but at a certain point the base hardware is just too old and slow to achieve acceptable results.For the Switch 2, a good deal of circumstantial evidence points to the Nvidia T239a slightly cut-down version of the Nvidia Orin T234 it sells for automotive, industrial, and robotics applicationspowering the handheld. (In Nvidia's branding scheme, smaller/lower numbers denote a higher-end chip). The T239, or whatever Switch-specific variant of the chip ends up being inside the Switch 2, uses Nvidia's Ampere graphics architecture, the same as 2020 and 2021's GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs for PCs.Ampere doesn't support DLSS Frame Generation, a new feature Nvidia has marketed for the GeForce 40- and 50-series GPUs that generates entirely new frames using the tensor cores rather than touching up existing frames. But it does support all of Nvidia's DLSS upscaling models and hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, making it a good candidate for the Switch 2's GPU architecture.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 27 Comments

A boot print on the dusty surface of the moonPublic domain sourced / access rights from CBW / AlamyFuture lunar bases could be powered by solar cells made on-site from melted moon dust.Building items on the moon, using materials that are already there, would be more practical than shipping them from Earth. When Felix Lang at the University of Potsdam in Germany heard about this idea, he instantly knew what to do. It was like, We have to make a solar cell like this, immediately, he says. AdvertisementTwo years later, Langs team has built and tested several solar cells featuring moon dust as an ingredient. The other key component is a crystal called halide perovskite, which contains elements such as lead, bromine and iodine, alongside long molecules of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen.The team melted a synthetic version of lunar regolith the layer of loose rocks and dust that blankets the moon into moonglass, which they then layered with the crystal to complete a solar cell. They did not purify the regolith, so the moonglass was less transparent than materials in conventional solar cells. But Lang says that the teams best prototypes still reached about 12 per cent efficiency. More conventional perovskite solar cells typically reach efficiencies close to 26 per cent; Lang says computer simulations suggest his team could reach that number in the future.In general, researchers agree that perovskite solar cells will outperform the more traditional silicon-based devices, both in space and on Earth. From the lunar standpoint, using perovskite materials is also attractive because they can be kept very thin, which would reduce the weight of the material to be transported to the moon. According to the teams estimates, a solar cell with an area of 400 square metres would require only about a kilogram of perovskite. This is an impressive claim, says Ian Crawford at Birkbeck, University of London.Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterNot having to purify the regolith is similarly important, as it means that no special reactors would be necessary. In fact, Lang says that a large curved mirror and sunlight could create a beam of light warm enough to make moonglass. One of his colleagues already tested this technique on the roof of their university and saw some signs of regolith melting, he says.Nicholas Bennett at the University of Technology Sydney says that, while past studies tried to process lunar regolith into transparent glass, this is the first time that a solar cell has been shown to work instead with the less finicky moonglass. The challenge now, he says, is to make lots of moonglass outside the lab. If successful, such melting technology could help create other items a lunar base may need, like tiles, says Crawford.Michael Duke at the Lunar and Planetary Institute says that manufacturing moonglass-based solar cells will require many technological advancements, from excavating regolith to connecting individual cells into arrays. Still, if a solar cell factory were ever established on the moon, it could have positive knock-on effects. In this future, space-based systems like satellites could use moon-made solar cells instead of those created on Earth, because launching payloads from the moon requires less energy, he says.Lang and his colleagues are now working on increasing their solar cells efficiency. For instance, they are working out whether they can improve the quality of their moonglass by using magnets to pick out iron from the regolith before melting it.Ultimately, they want to expand the process to other dusty denizens of space. We are already thinking, Can we make this work with Mars regolith? Lang says.Journal referenceDevice DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2025.100747Topics:

Some companies are preparing to raise prices in response to President Donald Trump's tariff proposals. Brandon Bell/Getty, Tyler Le/BI 2025-04-03T20:36:13Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Trump followed through on months of tariff threats, announcing levies on dozens of countries.Even before his so-called "Liberation Day," companies warned they would pass costs on to shoppers.BI is keeping track of companies that said they'd raise prices due to tariffs.Companies could and already have started raising prices on Americans in response to President Donald Trump's latest slew of tariffs.While firms raise prices for many reasons, some were blaming hikes on tariffs long before Trump's so-called "Liberation Day." Now that he's announced tariffs on over f180 countries on top of a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, more price increase announcements are sure to follow. Autos, in particular, are an area of focus since Trump announced a 25% tariff on all car imports into the US."April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again," Trump said during his remarks.Some economists have said that Trump's tariffs and the uncertainty with his overall trade policy could lead companies to raise prices on the goods they produce. "Both businesses and consumers are getting shaken by this approach," Heather Boushey, an economist who served on former President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisors, told reporters on a Tuesday press call.At the end of 2024, some companies warned that they would consider raising prices on consumers if Trump implemented his broad tariff proposals. While it's still possible they could absorb some of the costs of the tariffs, here are the companies that have warned of price increases.AutoZonePhilip Daniele, the CEO of the auto-parts company AutoZone, told analysts on a September earnings call that tariff policies had "ebbed and flowed over the years," and if Trump implemented more tariffs, "we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer.""We generally raise prices ahead of that," Daniele said, adding that prices would gradually settle over time. "So, that's historically what we've done," he said.Trump's 25% tariff on car imports is expected to increase manufacturing costs by anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000.Columbia SportswearTim Boyle, the CEO of Columbia Sportswear, told analysts on an October earnings call that the company was "very concerned about the imposition of tariffs. " He said that while he considered Columbia adept at managing tariffs, "trade wars are not good and not easy to win."Boyle also told The Washington Post in October that the company was "set to raise prices.""It's going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans," he said. He later said in a February interview with CNBC that "we need some surety about what is going to happen" before making price changes.Stanley Black & DeckerDonald Allan, the CEO of the manufacturing company Stanley Black & Decker, told analysts in an October earnings call that the company had been evaluating "a variety of different scenarios" to plan for new tariffs under Trump."And obviously, coming out of the gate, there would be price increases associated with tariffs that we put into the market," Allan said, adding that "there's usually some type of delay given the processes that our customers have around implementing price."Allan later said during a February earnings call: "Our approach to any tariff scenario will be to offset the impacts with a mix of supply chain and pricing actions, which might lag the formalization of tariffs by two to three months."WalmartWalmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC on November 19 that the company will likely raise prices if Trump's tariff proposals are implemented."We never want to raise prices," he said. "Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers."The company's CEO, Doug McMillan, said during a February earnings call that "tariffs are something we've managed for many years, and we'll just continue to manage that."Best BuyBest Buy CEO Corie Barry said during the company's March earnings call that Trump's tariff plans are likely to increase prices."Trade is critically important to our business and industry. The consumer electronic supply chain is highly global, technical and complex," Barry said. "We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely."TargetTarget CEO Brian Cornell told CNBC in a March interview that Trump's 25% tariff plan on goods from Mexico and Canada would likely result in price increases on produce."Those are categories where we'll try to protect pricing, but the consumer will likely see price increases over the next couple of days," Cornell said.VolkswagenAccording to a memo first reported by Automotive News, Volkswagen said it would place an import fee on vehicles made outside of the US in response to Trump's 25% tariff on car imports.The company said it would provide more details on its pricing changes in response to the tariffs by mid-April.Have a tip? Reach out to this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.Recommended video

Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61 2025-04-03T20:18:31Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? A mom of two grew up in an anti-vax community after her own mom said she had a bad reaction to a vaccine.Over the years, she started questioning her beliefs and now vaccinates her kids.Her sons just got the measles vaccine at 7 and 9.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a mom of two in South Carolina. She asked to remain anonymous to protect the privacy of her children and parents. It has been edited for length and clarity.When I was an infant, I had a bad reaction to a vaccine. My mom couldn't wake me up for an entire day at least, that's how she remembers it.That was in the early 90s, and my parents were living at the intersection of conservative Christianity and crunchy parenting. They were surrounded by people who didn't vaccinate, and my reaction scared my mom. I'm the oldest of eight, and after that, none of us got vaccines. My parents fell deeper into anti-vax misinformation.Vaccines were always a topic of conversation around me growing up. As a teen, I read a book by Jenny McCarthy in which she said she believes her son's autism was caused by the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine a theory that numerous scientific studies have debunked.Despite that, I was never one of those people who makes being anti-vax their whole personality. I was somewhat open to vaccineswhich is more common than stereotypes about anti-vaxxers would have you think. In my early 20s, I got a few vaccines before a trip to South America. I was concerned about getting sick there and thought vaccines could help protect me against pathogens like those that cause tetanus and diphtheria. I felt my adult body could handle a few vaccines.The pandemic solidified my willingness to vaccinateMy husband had a similar upbringing. When our son was born 9 years ago, I started reading books and research about vaccines. I could see value in some of them, but I had a lot of questions and still wasn't comfortable vaccinating. But my son's pediatrician didn't seem to be interested in answering my questions about vaccines. I'm not sure if he didn't have the time, the knowledge, or the willingness to engage in the conversation.The next two years were stressful for our family. It was a time of change, including the death of my mother-in-law while I was pregnant with my second child. I started questioning my parenting beliefs further, and critically evaluating how I'd been raised including what I'd been taught about vaccines.Immediately after that, the pandemic started. The COVID vaccine rollout a year later solidified my belief in vaccines. My husband works in a hospital, and I saw the immediate benefit vaccines had. Later, seeing how quickly the government paused the rollout of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine due to rare side effects was reassuring I felt there really was accountability for vaccine safety. My husband and I started discussing vaccinating the kids.I want other vaccine-hesitant parents to see my storyGetting the kids up-to-date with vaccines is a long process. It's still hard for me and them. Luckily, our new pediatrician is a great resource for creating a plan that works for us. They're behind a typical vaccine schedule, but we recently got their MMR vaccines, in part because of measles outbreaks in the US.Even though I knew it was the right choice, it was hard for me. I was proud that I overcame this challenging belief I used to have. But I also want parents like me to see it is OK to change their minds.Changing minds takes respect and timeOne thing that felt very disingenuous to me in the past was when people advocating for vaccination said vaccines have no risk. Everything in life has risks, and it's important to acknowledge that. Today, I know the risk from vaccines is extremely minimal and comes with a huge reward. I put it in perspective by thinking about how driving is a much bigger risk and one I take every day.I was a good mom when I wasn't vaccinating my kids, and I'm a good mom now. Any conversation about vaccines should start with that in mind. Get curious about a person's reasons for not vaccinating. Don't blame, judge, or try to change their minds just ask about their beliefs. Maybe they'll ask about yours, too.Don't expect immediate change. For me, this took years, and it's still difficult. But you never know when a piece of your conversation might stick with someone and open them to more honest, nonjudgmental conversations about vaccination.Recommended video

The Trump administrations tariffs are, by every reasonable account, an economic catastrophe in the making. So why are they happening?One explanation is that this is simply democracy at work. President Donald Trump campaigned on doing more or less exactly what hes just done, and the voting public elected him. So here we are.Thats at best a partial story. In fact, its probably more accurate to see Trumps tariffs as a symptom of democratic decay of America transitioning into a kind of strange hybrid system that combines both authoritarian and democratic features.Were Americas democracy functioning properly, Trump wouldnt have the power to impose such broad tariffs unilaterally. Congress, not the presidency, has the constitutional authority to raise taxes and tariffs are, of course, a tax on imports.Yet the basic design of the American system has broken down, allowing the president to usurp far more authority than is healthy. In many policy areas, the presidency functions less like a democratic chief executive who operates under constraint and more like an elected dictatorship. And historically, dictatorships elected or otherwise suffer from a fatal flaw: they have no ability to stop the people at the top from acting on their policy whims and, in the process, producing national disasters. This tendency is why democracy tends to produce superior policy outcomes over the long run; why America, and not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, won the 20th century.The tariffs, in short, show the true stakes of democratic decline. Its not just a matter of abstract principle, but the difference between stability and disaster.Americas democratic decline caused the tariffsWhen Donald Trump and Elon Musk began laying waste to the federal government in February, the political scientist Adam Przeworski declared himself at a loss. Though Przeworski is one of the worlds most eminent scholars of comparative democracy, author of many defining pieces in the field, he could not find the right vocabulary to describe what was happening in the United States.Though Trump was elected in fair elections, his subsequent policy agenda amounted to revolutionary change of the relation between the state and society one that attempts to replace the rules and norms that define democratic politics with something very different.Understanding America in this more textured sense, as a country under a new and confusing regime that is both democratic and not, helps us make better sense out of the Trump tariff debacle.On the one hand, an electorate that picked Trump is getting one of Trumps signature policies. Sometimes, in democracies, demagogues win elections a problem so old that you can find a discussion of it in Platos Republic.On the other hand, democracies rely on legal rules constraining the executive to prevent any such demagogue from becoming a dictator. In the American system, that means a complex system of constitutional checks and balances one of which is the Constitution granting taxation powers to Congress and Congress alone. Yet instead of asking for statutory authorization to raise tariffs, Trump is exploiting broadly worded emergency legislation to do an end-run around the legislative branch.This is what a hybrid political system looks like in practice. The United States still has free and fair elections at all levels of government, and is in that sense democratic. But elections dont matter in the way that theyre supposed to, because the peoples representatives in Congress are not playing their constitutionally assigned policymaking role. This is the autocratic component of the current American system, one that enables the president to sabotage the global economy if he so wishes.The transformation of America, from democracy to Frankensteinian amalgam, has been in the works for decades.The primary culprit is Congress, which has due to a combination of partisanship and political cowardice become both unable and unwilling to act as the supreme lawmaking body. Instead, it began delegating significant amounts of its own authority to the executive.Sometimes, this was intentional authorizing the president to make policy through executive agencies, creating the administrative state conservatives decry. Sometimes, it was unintentional: Congress giving the president vague emergency powers that were supposed to function in narrow circumstances, but in practice allowed the president to act unilaterally in all sorts of normal policy debates. And sometimes, Congress simply did nothing on crucial policy issues forcing the president to try to address them with dubiously broad interpretations of their own powers.The judicial branch deserves some blame too. While the Supreme Court has occasionally stepped in to address presidential overreach, it has done so in a haphazard and partisan way. Moreover, it has long deferred to the president on key issues like immigration, trade, and war.Observers on both the liberal left and the libertarian right warned for decades that growing executive power posed a problem for democracy and good policymaking. Obviously, they were right to do so in hindsight. Yet part of the reason that they were ignored is that there were other checks on the president that seemed to keep the executive in line.Some of these were internal executive branch checks. The White House relied on the Office of Legal Counsel a group of senior executive branch attorneys to provide independent opinions on the legality of various policy options. Internal policy shops like the Council of Economic Advisers provided informed expert opinions that would steer presidents toward more evidence-based policymaking. In dire cases, the Justice Department would probe potentially criminal activity by executive branch staff.Other checks were more informal. Fear of losing the war for public opinion might prevent a president from taking a particularly radical stance. The presidents own moral code, a sense that there are just certain things one shouldnt do even if you can, also provided a kind of soft check on the abuse of power.But whats clear now is that all of these internal mechanisms were voluntary. Trump has neutered executive branch checks on his authority and (clearly!) does not possess the judgment we expect from people in the highest office. It turns out that the rest of the political system and especially Congress had created the conditions for our descent into a hybrid political system. The only barriers remaining were norms about how the executive branch should work, ones that a determined president like Trump could smash through with ease.The tariffs show why our hybrid system is so dangerousSometimes, the stakes in this kind of conversation can feel a little fuzzy. Why does it matter if we are living in a hybrid system rather than a full democracy? Sure, the president may be powerful, but if weve still got elections, then isnt everything going to be fine in the end? The tariffs provide one of the clearest examples of why this matters for everyone: without democracy, the quality of our policymaking gets dangerously worse.Political scientists have long found that, on average, democracies produce better outcomes for citizens than authoritarian states. They produce higher rates of economic growth, superior technological innovation, better public health services, and are even more likely to win wars.One of the key reasons for democracys success has been its formalized policymaking process. Because laws are changed through legal and transparent processes, ones subject to public debate and legal oversight, they are more likely to both be well-informed by the best available evidence and corrected if something goes badly. Authoritarian and hybrid regimes ditch these constraints, which allows them to make policy changes a lot faster. But it also enables one person, or a small group of people, to make radical decisions on a whim with disastrous consequences.Think about Maos Great Leap Forward in China, a direct product of the leaders adherence to a Communist ideology that was out of touch with reality. While Trumps tariffs are nowhere near as evil the Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 18 and 32 million people the same formal problem contributed to both mistakes.For a more recent example, look at Russias invasion of Ukraine. The disaster began with Putins personal obsession with the idea that Ukrainian nationhood was fake and that the territory was rightfully Russian. This notion went from Putins personal obsession to actual war because no one could stop him.Trumps tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldnt have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes. The fact that America isnt functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin.Now, its still possible that Trump steps back from the brink. But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: the long decay of Americas democratic system means that we are all living under an axe.And if this isnt the moment it falls, there will surely be another.See More:

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on pretty much everything imported into the United States. Among other things, the tariffs include a 10 percent minimum tax of imports outside of North America, a hodgepodge of different tax rates on Canadian and Mexican goods, a 25 percent tax on cars manufactured outside the US, and a chaotic mix of country-specific tariffs ranging from 10 to 50 percent.Trumps tariffs are likely to deal a significant self-inflicted blow to the US economy. As of this writing, the S&P 500 a common index used to track US stock prices is down about 4 percent. The Budget Lab at Yale predicts that the tariffs will cause enough inflation to effectively reduce the average US households annual income by $3,789 in 2024 dollars. A similar analysis by Auckland University of Technology economics professor Niven Winchester predicts a $3,487 blow to US households.Thus far, Trumps second presidential term has been a series of staring contests between Trump and the courts. Trumps tariffs could lead to yet another, though the answer to the question of whether a lawsuit challenging them might succeed is quite unclear. And not just because the Supreme Court has shown great solicitude for Trump in recent years. The federal laws governing tariffs give the president very broad authority over trade policy generally, and specifically over tariff rates. A court concerned solely with following the text of federal law is likely to uphold Trumps tariffs.But the current Supreme Court is not such a court. During the Biden administration, the Courts Republican majority frequently used a novel legal doctrine known as major questions to strike down executive branch actions they deemed too ambitious. Under the doctrine, the courts are supposed to cast a particularly skeptical eye on executive branch actions of vast economic and political significance like, say, a new tax policy that is likely to cost the average American household thousands of dollars a year.The major questions doctrine cannot be found somewhere in the Constitution or a federal statute. It is fairly new, the Court has never explained where it comes from, and it appears to be entirely made up by the Republican justices. So it is difficult to predict whether those justices will apply it to a Republican president, or whether they will deem Trumps tariffs a violation of this entirely arbitrary doctrine.Still, the argument that Trumps tariffs violate the major questions doctrine is sufficiently straightforward that it would be easy for a judge to write an opinion reaching this conclusion. It might seem that Republican judges, especially those appointed by Trump, would hesitate to apply the doctrine in a manner that would harm him. Judicial politics, however, do not always align perfectly with the behavior of elected officials.Federal judges serve for life, so they do not need to fear electoral retaliation if they break with a president of the same party. And justices sometimes have ideological commitments that trump their loyalty to whatever transient agenda their partys political leaders are pushing at any given moment. The major questions doctrine centralizes power in the judiciary, something that members of the judiciary may find attractive. And a decision applying this doctrine to a Republican president would help legitimize it, as it has previously only been used against Biden.There is a very real chance, in other words, that five justices would place their commitment to judicial supervision of the executive above their commitment to Trump striking down his tariffs in the process.In his executive order announcing the latest round of tariffs, Trump claims the power to do so under a wide range of federal laws, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trade Act of 1974. Though these laws do impose some constraints on Trump and his subordinates, those constraints are largely procedural and impose few substantive limits on the scope and size of tariffs.Under one provision of the Trade Act, for example, the US Trade Representative, a Cabinet-level position currently held by Jamieson Greer, must make certain findings such as a determination that a foreign countrys conduct is unjustifiable and burdens or restricts United States commerce, or that this countrys actions are unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts United States commerce before the United States may impose new tariffs under this act.Once Greer does so, however, executive power to tax imports is quite broad. The government may impose duties or other import restrictions on the goods of, and, notwithstanding any other provision of law, fees or restrictions on the services of, such foreign country for such time as the trade representative determines appropriate.Trumps latest executive order, meanwhile, appears to rely heavily on his power to regulate trade after declaring a national emergency the order makes such a declaration in response to what he labels the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system.Notably, this law only permits the president to declare such an emergency to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, but the law does not define terms like national emergency or usual and extraordinary threat.Once a declaration of emergency is in place, the presidents powers are quite broad under the statute. Trump may regulate any property in which any foreign country or any national thereof has or has had any interest.The Court doesnt pay much attention to the text of federal laws in its major questions decisionsThough the text of the laws governing presidential authority over tariffs give Trump and his administration a great deal of authority, so did another law known as the Heroes Act. That law gives the education secretary sweeping power to waive or modify student loan obligations as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency such as the Covid pandemic.But the Courts Republican majority paid no heed to this broad statutory language in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), which struck down a Biden administration program that would have forgiven $10,000 worth of student loans for most borrowers.Nebraska relied, at least in part, on the major questions doctrine, claiming that the student loan forgiveness program was illegal because it was simply too big. The economic and political significance of the Secretarys action is staggering by any measure, the six Republican justices claimed in that opinion, pointing to a University of Pennsylvania analysis that concluded that the student loan forgiveness program would cost between $469 billion and $519 billion.Trumps tariffs, meanwhile, involve similarly eye-popping numbers. According to the Census Bureau, there are about 127 million households in the United States. If Yales Budget Lab is correct that the average household will lose $3,789 in real annual income because of Trumps tariffs, that means that American consumers face a staggering loss of more than $480 billion in real income.In fairness, Nebraska also pointed to what it called the unprecedented nature of the Secretarys debt cancellation plan to justify its conclusion, and Trump may be able to point to a precedent for the kind of sweeping tariffs he recently announced. In 1971, President Richard Nixon briefly imposed a 10 percent tariff on nearly all foreign goods, and a federal appeals court upheld this tariff. Notably, however, Congress has since amended some of the laws that Nixon relied upon more than half a century ago.Additionally, there appears to be a bit of a debate over whether the major questions doctrine applies to laws that delegate power directly to the president as opposed to a statute like the Heroes Act, which empowers a cabinet secretary or other agency-level official. In Nebraska v. Su (2024), for example, the Biden administration argued that this doctrine does not apply to the president. Though the federal appeals court which heard this case did not reach this question, Trump-appointed Judge Ryan Nelson argued that it does in part because the separation of powers concerns that animated decisions like Nebraska apply equally regardless of whether executive power is exercised by the president or one of his subordinates.Its impossible to guess whether the current slate of justices will rule that the Nixon precedent justifies setting aside the major questions doctrine, or whether they will conclude that this doctrine does not apply to Trump. Again, this doctrine is brand new, is not grounded in any constitutional or statutory text, and appears to be entirely made up by the Courts Republican majority. So asking whether this fabricated doctrine applies to the president is a bit like asking your daughter if her imaginary friend likes to dance. The answer is whatever she wants it to be.Still, the case for applying the major questions doctrine to Trumps tariff is at least as strong as the argument for applying it to Bidens student loan forgiveness plan. And, while this Court has been extraordinarily protective of Trump in the past, there are cynical partisan reasons why its Republican majority may want to apply the major questions doctrine to Trump in this case Republicans would likely get crushed in the next election if Trump tanks the economy with his tariffs.See More:

Following President Trumps announcement of sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, users on social media were quick to try and decipher the math behind the tariffs. On top of a baseline 10% tariff against the entire world, individual countries will face additional tariffs based on how unfairly Trump believes they are treating the U.S. It turns out, however, that the White House may have used rudimentary suggestions from a chatbot to come to its calculations. From The Verge: Economist James Surowiecki quickly reverse-engineered a possible explanation for the tariff pricing. He found you could recreate each of the White Houses numbers by simply taking a given countrys trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports to the US. Halve that number, and you get a ready-to-use discounted reciprocal tariff. The White House objected to this claim and published the formula it says that it used, but as Politico points out, the formula looks like a dressed-up version of Surowieckis method. Asking various chatbots for a simple way to rectify trade imbalances with other countries, The Verge found that they all suggested a formula that aligns closely with the one used by The White House. That should not be terribly surprising to anyone who understands the fundamentals of chatbots. They are imitating what they frequently see posted online. The trick to understanding chatbots is to preface anything they say with, I have heard a lot of people are saying that But in the same way that you would not trust a survey of fifty people who do not know anything about a subject, you should not trust what a chatbot says either. They confidently say things that are wrong or confounding all the time. Although the administration has denied using a basic chatbot over experienced economists, it has already gotten itself into hot water over its penchant for using consumer apps. It just went through a scandal for prolifically using the consumer app Signal to discuss confidential war plans, a move that seems likely to have been influenced by Elon Musk, who is known for using Signal. And his DOGE cost-cutting initiative has been forthright in its plans to use AI across the federal government in order to cut costs. Further supporting the idea that the White House haphazardly put together its tariff strategy is the fact that there are territories on the list that are uninhabited, like Heard Island. And other countries being hit with tariffs, like Australia, in fact, have a surplus with the United States, meaning they buy more from the United States than they export. You have to wonder if they even read the tariff list before sharing it.There are perfectly good reasons why a country might have a trade deficit with another. The United States is a service economyit does the lucrative work of designing products, developing software, managing supply chains, and other work while outsourcing the physically laborious work to other nations. The U.S. has a trade surplus in services as countries use many American services, from Facebook to Netflix. Every country has what economists call a comparative advantage, something they do well that other countries do not. Americans, put simply, do not want to do the grunt work, so the country imports a lot of goods from countries that will do it. Somehow, the president expects factories are suddenly going to come roaring back, and deporting migrants will not make lettuce more expensive.